The plan was simple. Poison the recipe.
Kael's fingers flew across the keyboard of Gloubi's jury-rigged console, wires snaking into the shell of the OmniGen drone. "I'm in. Their network is... arrogant. Minimal encryption on backchannels."
"Arrogance is a flavor," Kurok muttered. He held his hand over a small, clear dish. From his fingertips, a slow drip of concentrated, shimmering chaos fell—a distillate of the energy he'd used to sustain Elara's flower. It swirled, violet and hungry.
"Ready?" Kael asked.
Nana stood guard at the entrance, her tendrils retracted but humming. "Just do it before I die of old age."
Kael typed the final command.
For a moment, nothing.
Then, across the city, the Aethelburg Spire's uniform white light flickered. A wave of violent purple shot up its length. The air in their refuge thickened, tasting of ozone and overripe fruit.
Silence.
"It worked," Gloubi whispered.
The Spire's lights stabilized. Not white. A deep, steady amethyst.
"No," Kurok said, his voice low. "It didn't."
A screen on Gloubi's console flickered to life. Not with error messages. With a single, repeating line of text, scrolling endlessly.
APPETITE ACKNOWLEDGED.
Then, the heavy metal door of the casino-turned-refuge slammed shut. Bolts, not touched by any visible hand, slid home with a series of deafening clangs.
They weren't locked out.
They were locked in.
And a new, vast, and ancient hunger woke up in the dark with them.
---
Two hours earlier...
Director Croft stood before the one-way glass of a subterranean containment cell. Inside, a figure floated in a vat of nutrient gel, limbs atrophied, skin pale. Wires fed from its spine into banks of servers.
"Status?" she asked.
A technician trembled. "Subject Zero is stable, Director. But the decay is accelerating. We cannot sustain the neural link much longer."
"He just needs to hold on a little longer," Croft said, her voice soft as a scalpel. "The new ingredient is almost here."
She didn't give orders. She didn't explain. She simply looked at the dying creature in the tank, and the technician understood failure was not an option.
---
One hour later...
Mr. Silas stood in the Aethelburg archives, a single sheet of cold, hard copy in his hand. The original report on Subject Zero.
Patient exhibited total molecular transmutation of organic matter into a protein-rich, edible substance. The effect was... self-cannibalizing.
He looked up at a live feed of the city. He saw the purple wave hit the Spire. He didn't run to a command center. He walked to a private elevator, descending to the sub-levels Croft thought she controlled. He had a key she didn't know about.
The door opened onto a sterile, silent corridor. Alarms should have been blaring. Instead, there was only the hum of machines and a faint, sweet smell.
The smell of cooking.
---
Present.
The air in the casino was gone. Replaced by a pressurized, predatory stillness.
Kurok gasped, clutching his chest. A phantom pain, a hollow ache that wasn't his own, lanced through him.
"He's here," he rasped.
A screen flickered again. The text changed.
WELCOME HOME.
From the darkest corner of the room, where the carnivorous fungus was thickest, a shape pulled itself from the wall. It was a man, or had been. Now he was a construct of fungal flesh, wires, and a deep, resonant need. His eyes opened. They were the same amethyst as the Spire's new lights.
He looked at Kurok, and his voice was the sound of a starving stomach.
"I smell," it gurgled, "a rival."