The world spun. Red. Green. Not his. Not here. Vael's boot slammed down on crumbling concrete, the impact jarring through his spinal pierce-lock. His suit thrummed, a low, constant vibration against his skull, a growing pressure behind his eyes. Not pain. Not yet. A cold hum. He moved, a blur of matte black against the shattered urban sprawl. Behind him, orders barked.
"Subject Rask.09-V, cease movement. Protocol violation imminent."
The voice crackled, devoid of warmth. Command. His own kind. Hunters. The betrayal was a blunt force trauma, dull now, absorbed. Vael registered the shifting weight of his suit. It felt heavier, yet faster. The neural crown pulsed beneath his helm, a faint throb, a new, cold power. It was no longer a part of him. It was him. Or he was it. The distinction blurred. He ran.
Explosions rocked a derelict high-rise to his left. He felt the concussive wave, a sharp jolt. His suit shivered, red liquid seeping from a seam near his elbow. Not Gorebreed blood. His. The first manifestation. A metallic taste, acrid, coated his tongue. It was faint but undeniable. The pain enhancement protocols were active, a paradox. The suit fed on it. Grew stronger.
"Move, Subject." The voice again, closer.
Vael cut a hard right, sliding through a narrow alley filled with skeletal debris. The air was thick with dust and the cloying scent of scorched flesh. Not the Rindscale's unique stench yet. Something older. Human. He vaulted over a collapsed wall, his seismic feet barely touching down. Two human soldiers, their Ravelin suits bulky and slow, turned the corner. Too late.
Their kinetic dampeners flared, but Vael was already past them, a phantom. He heard a wet thud, a choked cry. He did not look back. Empathy was a luxury, discarded. His mind, or the suit's, processed the encounter with brutal efficiency. Threats eliminated. The cold, predatory focus solidified. The whispers of "Vael Rask" were fainter now, almost gone, drowned out by the thrum of his accelerated heart.
He entered a wide, decaying plaza, its central fountain choked with rusted rebar. Moonlight, thin and sickly, illuminated the cracked asphalt. Here, the scent shifted. Wet earth, something sickly sweet. Rindscale. Scouting variants. Smaller, faster versions of the multi-layered horror. They moved like scuttling crabs in the shadows between the ruined storefronts.
A faint, high-pitched shriek cut through the silence. A human scream. One of the hunters. Vael did not react. He felt the distant thrum of more SymSuits. They were closing in. He needed a distraction.
He spotted a Rindscale variant, barely four feet tall, its outermost layer peeling like scorched paper, revealing glistening red flesh beneath. It skittered towards the sound of the approaching human squad. Vael did not engage. He shifted his weight, creating a subtle tremor that attracted its attention. The Rindscale paused, its multiple eyes swiveling. A hunting noise. A low, wet hiss. It was the sound of something hungry.
"Subject Rask.09-V, confirmed visual," a comm crackled. "Engaging on sight."
Gunfire erupted. Not at Vael. At the Rindscale. The small beast shrieked again, then exploded in a flurry of shed layers. Each layer, a small, independent combat entity, now thrashed and snapped at the human soldiers. Vael heard the shouts, the grunts of pain. Five distinct screams, then silence. Five less hunters. Five less obstacles. The pain-enhancement protocols flared, a sharp jolt of agony in his skull, paradoxically fueling his suit's efficiency. More crimson fluid seeped from his left bicep, tracking a thin, phosphorescent trail down his bio-plate. He ignored it.
His objective was clear: evasion. The hunt had transformed him, stripped away the last vestiges of "Vael Rask." Now there was only "Subject Rask.09-V," a creature of purpose, honed by betrayal, fueled by pain. The suit was him. He was the suit. The identity drift was almost complete.
He moved through the urban labyrinth. A memory, cold and fragmented: his father's laboratory, the hum of machinery, a scent of ozone and synthetic flesh. Not his memory. The suit's. Or the inherited trauma of the Fracture. He pushed it away. Focus. Escape.
He reached the edge of a crumbling industrial district, a skeletal landscape of rusted girders and broken pipes. A patrol vehicle, an armored troop transport, waited at the junction. Two Ravelin pilots and a single Mournclad pilot, their suits still and imposing against the grim backdrop. The Mournclad pilot, a figure Vael recognized even through the distortion of his heightened senses. Anna Reeves.
Her suit was cracked, matte bone-plating, similar to his own but with subtle differences. The red veins visible beneath her armor glowed faintly, a sign of her own suit's regeneration. Vael knew her abilities. Healing. Preservation. His opposite. He could feel her fear, a faint echo on the shared comms frequency. Not for herself. For him. Or for what he had become.
He slowed, melted into the shadows of a collapsed building. The hunters had set up a choke point. Anna stood slightly apart from the two Ravelin units, her head tilted, as if listening for something beyond the tactical comms. She sensed him. He knew it. Her self-harm scars, though unseen beneath her helm, felt like they pulsed with his own internal bleeding. A shared understanding of pain.
"GRAVEMIND-7," her voice, a whisper, cut through the comms. Just his callsign, formal, but with a subtle tremor. Not a hunter's shout. A plea. "Don't. Don't do this."
The Ravelin pilots shifted, their weapon systems locking onto his last known location. He heard the whine of their kinetic dampeners powering up. He was trapped. A crumbling building at his back, the hunters in front, and Anna Reeves, the last flicker of humanity, in between.
Vael did not respond. His suit's internal systems buzzed, a new command rising to the forefront of his consciousness. Not his. The suit's. Eliminate obstacles. Secure escape.
Anna moved. Not towards him, but towards the Ravelin pilots. She raised a hand, a gesture of desperate de-escalation. "Hold. There's another way."
The Ravelin leader, a hulking figure with a wide chest, lowered his rifle fractionally. "Stand down, Medic. He's compromised."
"He's not compromised. He's evolving. We can–" Anna's voice broke.
The Ravelin leader barked, "He killed our men. That's enough." He raised his rifle.
Vael's systems registered the threat. A choice. Escape or engage. The suit urged him towards the former, its logic cold and efficient. Anna Reeves was a liability. A variable.
But a flicker, an unwelcome sensation, rippled through him. Not empathy. Something close. A memory of her face, subtly marked by her scars, compassion in her eyes. Healing. A sharp contrast to the raw, visceral violence of his new existence. A dissonance.
Anna lunged, not at the Ravelin pilot, but at the crumbling wall directly behind him. Her Mournclad suit, designed for regeneration, absorbed the impact. He heard the groan of stressed concrete, the screech of twisted rebar. Her action was desperate. Uncalculated. She was trying to create an opening, to force the conflict away from him.
A massive crack spiderwebbed across the already unstable wall. Dust billowed. The Ravelin pilot, startled, spun around. "What in the—!"
The wall gave way. A cascade of concrete, steel, and rebar descended with a deafening roar. Anna, caught in the heart of her own desperate gambit, was swallowed by the collapsing structure. The Ravelin pilot, his last words choked by falling debris, was buried with her. More screams, muffled and short. At least three more human soldiers, drawn by the commotion, were crushed in the sudden, chaotic collapse. The arc's death toll escalated.
Vael stood at the edge of the new crater of debris, his suit still bleeding, the metallic taste strong in his mouth. Anna was gone. Buried. The suit's internal comms, always vigilant, registered her faint, weakening bio-signature beneath the tons of rubble. Faint. Fluctuating. Still alive.
His escape path was clear. He could leave. He could continue his Feral Drift, embrace the cold, predatory focus, and vanish into the night, free of the last ties to humanity. The suit, a cold whisper in his consciousness, urged him forward. Go. Now.
But the flicker remained. A direct, almost physical, pain in his own chest. Not from his suit. Not from the bleeding. Something else. The consequence of her actions. Her desperate, almost suicidal, charge.
He looked at the shifting pile of rubble, the faint, dying signal of Anna's life.
His suit thrummed, ready to flee. His bleeding intensified, pulsing with a faint internal light, not a wound but a terrible power. The choice. Save her or escape. His last tie to the past or his future as a monster. The crack widened. Not in the wall. In him.