The Chitin-Guard was a wall of pressurized iron and cold intent.
As the armor-clad giant stepped through the wreckage of the door, the hydraulic actuators in its legs hissed, stabilizing its three-hundred-pound frame against the uneven floor. The red visor swept the room, thermal sensors locking onto the two heat signatures: the spindly, elongated frame of Vrax and the pulsing, violet-veined silhouette of ***Karys***.
"Biological Anomaly detected," the Guard's internal speakers crackled, a mechanical voice devoid of human inflection. "Subject 402. Designation: Scrubber. Status: Immediate Reclamation."
The Guard raised its right arm. A pneumatic "Spike-Launcher" mounted on the forearm whined as it pre-loaded a six-inch tungsten bolt.
***Karys*** didn't think. The Loom-Nidus had already bypassed his conscious mind, overclocking his *medulla oblongata*. To his eyes, the Spike-Launcher didn't just fire; he saw the tension in the springs, the vibration of the barrel, and the exact trajectory of the bolt.
He pivoted.
The tungsten spike whistled past his ear, embedding itself six inches deep into Vrax's collection of "Nerve-Clusters." Glass shattered, showering the floor in preservative fluid and pickled gray matter.
***Karys*** closed the gap. His bare feet gripped the grime-slicked floor with unnatural traction, his toes digging into the gaps of the floorboards like claws.
He lunged.
The obsidian "Nerve-Shiv" in his right hand wasn't just a blade anymore; it was an extension of his nervous system. As he swung, the Nidus forced a surge of bio-electric current into the blade. The obsidian didn't just cut; it vibrated at a frequency designed to shatter molecular bonds.
The blade struck the Guard's breastplate.
Instead of a metallic clang, there was a sound like a hot knife sliding through frozen fat. The bile-coated obsidian sliced through the rusted iron, carving a jagged trench toward the internal wiring.
The Guard reacted with a brutal, short-range counter-punch. The hydraulic fist slammed into ***Karys***'s ribs.
*Crack.*
The sound was sickening. Two of ***Karys***'s ribs—un-grafted and still brittle—snapped instantly. The force sent him reeling backward, his lungs collapsing as the *pleural cavity* filled with blood.
He hit the back wall, his vision swimming in a sea of red and purple.
"Karys!" Vrax shrieked, ducking behind her surgical chair. She wasn't cheering for him; she was terrified of the collateral damage.
The Guard advanced, the heavy thud of its boots shaking the jars on the shelves. It didn't feel pain. It didn't feel fatigue. It was a machine designed to grind biological meat into submission.
Inside ***Karys***'s chest, the Nidus went into a frenzy.
*Metabolic Debt: Critical.*
*Systemic Integration Percentage: 8.4%.*
The parasite didn't care about the broken ribs. It saw the injury as an opportunity. Hundreds of violet filaments exploded from the Loom-Nidus at the shoulder, racing down to the fracture site. They didn't just knit the bone; they consumed the shattered fragments and replaced them with "Siderite-Lattice."
The pain was a white-hot iron being pressed into his side, but the "Dry-Marrow" was being replaced by something that could withstand a tank shell.
***Karys*** coughed up a thick, black clot of blood and stood up.
His eyes were no longer human. The pupils had vanished, replaced by solid pools of bruised violet light. The skin on the right side of his face was beginning to peel back, revealing the metallic-black bone of his jaw beneath.
"Reclamation... denied," ***Karys*** rasped.
He didn't use the shiv this time. He dropped it, letting the obsidian clatter to the floor.
He needed more marrow. The Guard was encased in iron, but inside that exoskeleton was a human pilot—a high-ranking Company enforcer fed on "Elite-Tier Nutrients."
Rich. Dense. Marrow.
The Guard fired another spike. ***Karys*** didn't dodge. He raised his right hand—the "Nidus-Claw"—and caught the tungsten bolt mid-air.
The metal hissed as the Nidus-threads wrapped around it, corroding the tungsten in seconds. ***Karys*** squeezed. The bolt crumpled like wet paper.
He leaped.
The Guard tried to raise its hydraulic mace, but ***Karys*** was too fast. He landed on the Guard's shoulders, his legs locking around the machine's neck. His right hand plunged into the gap between the helmet and the breastplate—the "Tracheal-Vulnus."
The Nidus-threads didn't wait. They bypassed the pilot's armor and went straight for the spine.
The pilot screamed—a raw, muffled sound from behind the red visor. It wasn't just the pain of the puncture; it was the sensation of being *emptied*. The Loom-Nidus was a high-speed pump, sucking the spinal fluid and the marrow from the pilot's vertebrae.
***Karys*** felt the rush. It was better than any drug in the Gyre. His *SIP* spiked to **9.2%**.
The Guard's exoskeleton began to malfunction. Sensors flickered. The hydraulic legs buckled, the metal joints screaming as the dead weight of the pilot's collapsing body dragged the suit down.
With a final, violent wrench, ***Karys*** tore the helmet off.
The pilot's face was a grey, shriveled husk. Every drop of moisture, every scrap of protein had been harvested.
***Karys*** dropped the empty suit and stood in the center of the room. The ammonia-green fog was clearing, but the scent of ozone and copper remained.
He looked at Vrax. She was staring at him, her obsidian needle-fingers clicking together in a rhythmic, nervous tic.
"You... you ate him," she whispered.
***Karys*** looked at his right hand. The skin was stitching itself back together, but the violet glow was deeper now. It was no longer just an arm; it was a hungry god attached to a starving boy.
"He was... fuel," ***Karys*** said. The word felt natural now.
He picked up the "Nerve-Shiv" from the floor. The blade seemed to hum in his grip, acknowledging its master.
"The Company will send more," Vrax said, her voice regaining its clinical coldness. "That was just a Scout. The 'Heavy-Graft' units will be here in minutes. You can't stay here, and neither can I."
She grabbed a heavy leather satchel from beneath her desk and began shoving jars of "Graft-Slugs" into it.
"Where?" ***Karys*** asked.
"The Hepatic-Basin," Vrax said, not looking at him. "It's deeper. More dangerous. But the Company doesn't go there. The 'Feral-Grafts' eat anything with a serial number. If you want to survive the next integration spike, you need 'Synapse-Silk' from the Blood-Auction."
***Karys*** felt the weight of the Nidus in his shoulder. It was quiet now, sated for the moment, but he knew the hunger would return. It was a debt that could never be fully paid.
"Lead the way, Witch," ***Karys*** said.
He turned to the shattered door, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the floor—the shadow of something that was no longer a Scrubber, but the beginning of a plague.
---