Massive water conduits lined the next room, their surfaces glazed with frost where insulation had failed. Valves blinked fitfully along the walls, their lights flickering in slow, irregular pulses, as though the system itself was struggling to breathe.

But Akiko didn't care about the machinery. Something moved in the gloom.

Hunched, shuffling figures stepped into the dim light. Too tall, too bent.

Their limbs moved with the stuttered precision of something remembering how to be human. Patches of scaled skin gleamed faintly as they shifted. Eyes, slit-pupiled and wet with reflection, tracked the group in silence.

"Company," Akiko muttered, tail lashing once.

Kess drew up beside her, voice low. "They're alive."

Akiko didn't take her eyes off the nearest figure. "Define alive."

Raya stepped past them, breath catching as the figures resolved into shape. Uniforms hung in tatters from stretched torsos. Their hands flexed. Clawed. Discolored. But their faces...

Still shaped like people.

"Oh gods," Raya whispered. "They're like the worker in the bay. Just... further gone."

One of the hybrids turned toward them, lips curled back in a snarl that was part-grimace, part-warning. A wet, guttural sound scraped from its throat. No language, just intent.

"They're guarding something," Kess said, gesturing toward the center of the chamber.

Akiko followed his gaze.

Clusters of leathery eggs pulsed faintly between the conduits. Soft, bulbous, and warm with faint internal light. The hybrids circled them with the reverence of cultists around a shrine.

"They're protecting the eggs," Raya murmured, stepping forward.

Akiko's hand snapped out, catching Raya's arm with a firm grip.

"Raya. Don't," she said. "They're minions."

"Minions?" Raya echoed, twisting free. "They're not constructs in some dungeon, Akiko—"

"Sure looks like one," Akiko snapped. "That's how this works. The boss sends in the fodder first. They soften us up, keep us busy. Then something worse shows up."

Raya stepped forward again, voice sharper now. "They're not fodder. They're people."

Akiko turned on her. "Were."

"They might still be!" Raya shouted.

"They're trying to kill us, Raya!"

Kess stepped between them, his posture controlled. "We don't know that."

Akiko's claws flared. Her voice lowered. "They're not human anymore."

Raya's voice trembled, but not from fear. "Stop. Talking. Like. That."

The nearest hybrid hissed, stepping forward with a lurching gait, claws dragging faint trails across the floor.

"They're moving," Akiko said, body already coiling.

"Stand down," Kess ordered, hand raised toward her.

She froze. Barely. Her claws still burned at her sides.

Kess stepped forward slowly. "We're not here to hurt you," he called. "We're here to stop the corruption. Let us help."

The hybrids hissed again. Their formation shifted. A circling pattern. Measured. Controlled.

Predatory.

Raya stepped beside Kess, voice calm but audible. "If you can hear me… If you're still in there… You don't have to protect the eggs. They're not yours. You don't have to be this."

The largest hybrid stilled. Its eyes narrowed. For a moment, the room seemed to pause. Pipes humming, frost hissing.

Then the hybrid lunged.

Akiko didn't hesitate. Her claws surged forward in a burst of light, intercepting the creature mid-charge. The impact sent it skidding back in a spray of ice and blood. It screeched in pain.

"I knew it!" Akiko barked. "Raya, get back!"

The others reacted instantly, protective stances turning into attack formations. The air filled with hissing growls and scraping claws.

"Fall back to the conduits!" Kess snapped, drawing his sidearm.

Akiko didn't need the order. She was already moving, already striking, her body faster than her thoughts, her claws answering threats with clean, reflexive arcs.

She darted forward as another hybrid lunged. The creature's claws scraped harmlessly off her scaled plating of her forearm. With a sharp kick, she sent it reeling into a nearby conduit. Steam hissed from the dented pipe, blanketing the floor in fresh haze.

"You doing okay back there?" she called over her shoulder, voice tight.

"We're fine!" Raya shouted. She fired twice, and the shots sparked against a hybrid's scaled forearm. It hissed, stumbled, but didn't fall.

Akiko swore under her breath. She spun, driving her claws through another attacker's lunge and slamming it down with a crack of bone and scale.

"I hate this," she muttered, shifting her stance.

"Hate what?" Kess called, his voice dry as he put a shot through the leg of the nearest hybrid.

"Being the tank," Akiko growled. "This is not my thing."

"Could've fooled me," Kess said, lining up another shot.

"Focus," Raya snapped, cutting through the banter. "We hold or we die here."

Akiko gritted her teeth and moved back into position, claws sweeping wide. Her tail lashed once. She stole a glance toward Raya, crouched behind a fallen beam, eyes scanning the fight with sharp concern.

Stay safe, Raya. That's all that matters.

Akiko dropped low, spun. Her claws met bone and sinew, foxfire searing through flesh. She ducked beneath a claw-swipe and countered, ribs humming with the force of the hit.

Too many. Too close.

A shadow to her left. Another hybrid leaping from a side platform. Akiko turned, but too late.

A shimmer of golden light snapped into place just before impact.

The hybrid bounced off a curved barrier midair, landing in a heap with a wet grunt.

Raya stood a pace behind, both hands raised, jaw clenched, eyes tight with focus.

"Thanks," Akiko breathed.

She turned back into the fray. The heat in her limbs pulsed, familiar and rhythmic. Foxfire Nova would clear the pack, but she held it back. Too wide a blast radius. Too risky.

Her breath rasped in her throat. Her armor hissed with each impact it absorbed.

Another swing. She snapped out a spellform, feeling her reserves dip slightly.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Flare (Tier I)

A flare of pale-blue light burst from her palm and carved a clean line through the air. The bolt slammed into the hybrid's chest and dropped it mid-lunge, smoke curling from the scorched impact.

Another screeched. Then the rest swarmed.

She adjusted her stance. Shifted her center. Claws dipped low, tail swept behind her for balance.

This was attrition, not speed. And they weren't falling fast enough.

"Akiko!" Raya called. "Left!"

She pivoted. Another hybrid lunging for her. Raya's barrier was already cracking from strain. No time.

Akiko met it mid-strike, claws flashing.

Pain lanced through her shoulder where it raked her plating. She retaliated with a growl and drove both claws up into its gut.

It shrieked, twitched, and went limp against her. She stepped to the side and let it fall.

Another down. Still more coming.

And somewhere behind them, deeper in the dark, movement. Watching. Waiting.

Akiko squared her stance. Braced.

"Keep the barriers coming," she said low, to Raya.

"We can't keep this up forever," Raya replied, breath shaking.

"We don't need forever," Akiko said. "Just long enough."

Akiko slashed one down, but another surged in to take its place, claws snapping just shy of her ribs. She twisted and parried, movement raw and instinctive, her muscles already starting to drag.

She'd burn out before they did. That was the truth chewing its way through the back of her skull.

They weren't winning. And the hybrids knew it.

Akiko ducked under a lunging swipe and broke contact, vaulting over a broken pipe. Her boots splashed down near a cluster of half-submerged egg sacs, dozens of them, nestled like tumors along the curved base of the wall.

Predatory shrieks echoed behind her.

Her breath caught.

This was their nest. And she was standing in it.

"Takuto. I need Pulse Vector."

"Caution: Spellform output exceeds structural tolerance. Recommend localized modulation."

"Then help me dial it in. I need to move, not explode."

"Confirmed. Engaging limiter protocol."

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Pulse Vector (Tier I) — Kinetic Limiter Engaged

Blue fire burst from her heels as she launched sideways across the chamber. Her silhouette flickered through steam and shadow, bounding across pipes and platforms with tight, controlled bursts of propulsion. The heat warped the air. Steam howled as fresh pipes ruptured behind her.

She flared near another cluster of eggs, this time making sure they saw her.

A chorus of shrieks answered.

The hybrids broke formation. Two peeled off from Raya's position immediately, scrambling toward Akiko with a vicious, single-minded intensity.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Claws tore into metal as they climbed, fast and agile, even half-feral. One of them slammed a fist into a pipe to change trajectory mid-jump, hurling itself toward her with shocking speed.

Akiko pulsed backward, just narrowly clearing its lunge.

A second hissed, tail coiled tight like a spring before launching skyward, straight over the piping and down toward her from above.

She flipped backward, foxfire blooming in a low arc beneath her boots. The burst curved her trajectory at the last second, sending her just out of reach as claws scythed through the air where she'd been.

Eggs cracked.

But these weren't newborns, helpless and afraid like she'd thought. They were freshly transformed, their metamorphosis complete into serpentine bestial creatures. They spilled out, half-armored and fully grown. Their eyes opened mid-motion, locked on her before the fluid had even dried.

The fight had changed.

Akiko hit the wall running, boots scraping along frost-slick metal. Her claws cut a brief handhold as she rebounded off a support strut and launched again, vaulting above one of the newly emerged creatures as it slashed up at her belly.

She landed hard on the back of a thick pipeline, slipping once before catching herself, breath ragged.

Steam billowed around her now. White, choking sheets of it as the ruptured systems bled pressure into the room. Shapes moved within it. Claws scraped. Pipes groaned.

And behind it all: more hissing. More eggs splitting open.

Then it came. A whistle, high and cutting.

The hybrids froze mid-motion. Their bodies jerked slightly, eyes shifting toward the far end of the chamber.

Akiko didn't need to look to know something worse had arrived.

She crouched on a warped length of piping, foxfire pulsing low at her heels. Her breath scraped out shallow, burning from the run. Her claws trembled from use. Below, the hybrids paced in slow, unsettling arcs, no longer lunging. Just watching.

A shape emerged through the fog. Slick, coiling, and far too familiar.

The scar was still there across its flank, where she'd carved deep in the tunnels earlier, but the tissue had regrown, laced with dense scales. The creature moved with a slow, sinuous grace now, as if it remembered her.

Akiko straightened. "Great," she muttered. "You again."

The serpentine beast let out a low, guttural hiss. The other hybrids answered in kind, a harmonic clicking rising like a tide of breathless anticipation.

Then another figure followed it into view.

A man in a reinforced survival suit, its plating traced with faint silver-blue veins of mana circuitwork. His helmet retracted with a hiss, revealing a lean, pallid face, sharp-eyed and smiling with too many teeth. He moved with a practiced, calculated calm, as if he had all the time in the world.

"Akiko," he said, his voice warm and unhurried. "Glad you survived the tunnels. That one"—he gestured lazily to the serpent—"was rather upset when you drove it away."

Kess stepped forward. "Fenrik Eisfall. Protest leader turned terrorist. I thought you disappeared after the Zephara strikes."

Fenrik's smile sharpened. "Ah. Inspector Kess. Still loyal, I see. I prefer to think of it as stepping into a greater purpose."

Raya's voice thinned to a whisper. "That's Skadi's brother."

Akiko didn't look away. "Figures."

"By turning workers into monsters?" Kess spat.

Fenrik spread his arms, as if welcoming them all to the theater.

"Monsters?" Fenrik's voice dipped low. "No. Cast-offs. Abandoned by Haven. They gave everything, and were discarded. Karn gave them meaning. Evolution."

"These were people," Akiko said.

Her claws flared brighter, tail arced high. "They had names. Memories. You erased all of that."

Fenrik met her gaze evenly. "You see corruption. I see progress. Change is always uncomfortable for the stagnant."

He gestured to the creature beside him.

"This one was dying. Broken lungs, failing kidneys. Now it breathes water and steel. The flow that sustains this moon sustains it. You call it infection. I call it rebirth."

Raya stepped forward, her voice shaking. "You think this is life? This… this half-mindless state, chasing prey and guarding eggs like beasts? You didn't save them. You just made them into tools."

For a moment, Fenrik looked almost… sympathetic.

"Some of them were grateful."

"Looks like premeditated murder to me," Akiko said, her voice flint-sharp.

Fenrik chuckled. "Still clinging to your myth of the self. You'll understand eventually."

Akiko's stomach twisted.

"Don't hold your breath," she said. "I've seen what your kind calls evolution. I'm not impressed."

Fenrik's expression fell into cold regret. "Such wasted potential."

The tension snapped.

Akiko didn't wait for Fenrik's signal. Didn't need to. The hybrids' bodies shifted, crouching low, claws scraping into the soaked floor. The serpent coiled tighter, ready to spring.

She moved first. Stepped off the pipe. Dropped like a flare into the steam and mist. Hoped Raya would be able to protect herself from the blast.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Nova (Tier I)

The spellform ignited mid-fall, foxfire blooming around her in an expanding ring. Heat collided with vapor in a sharp, thunderous crack, blasting steam outward in a chaotic rush. The entire chamber lit up, blue-white light slicing through haze, shadows thrown sharp against the metal walls.

Below, the hybrids shrieked. Bodies were flung backward. Claws scorched black. Some hit walls and didn't get back up.

She twisted midair, momentum slowing just enough with a pulse of foxfire. Landed crouched on all fours, armored knees skidding across the wet metal.

Behind her, a translucent shimmer bloomed: Raya's barrier, flickering but holding, just enough to shield her and Kess from the outer edge of the blast. The glow around Raya's hands guttered as she fell to one knee.

"Still standing," she gasped.

Akiko didn't answer. Couldn't. Her lungs burned. Her mana pulsed wild in her chest. But it was working.

The field was thinning. She'd broken the wave.

At least—

A hissing roar cut through the mist. The serpent still stood, coiled around where Fenrik stood. Its scales were blackened and peeled, but it was alive. And now it was angry.

It uncoiled fully from the wall, shedding bits of metal and slime like a second skin. Its wounds were already sealing. Beneath the translucent scales, fresh tissue pulsed, glossy and wrong.

Akiko's ears flattened.

Water hissed through cracked valves and flooded the floor in shallow waves. Pipes rattled with pressure. And with each breath the thing took, the moisture bent toward it, pulled like thread toward a needle.

Akiko lunged left as its tail whipped toward her, scraping the wall with a sound like a rusted blade. She ducked, rolled, rebounded off a nearby bulkhead.

A clawed hand slammed down where she'd been. Cracked metal dented inward.

She vaulted higher, boots clipping a hanging pipe. Foxfire trailed her heels like contrails, flaring with each pulse-jump. But even as she moved, she watched it, waited for the next opening.

It surged forward, jaws splitting wide. She twisted midair, too slow to close the distance, too close to fully retreat.

Now.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Flare (Tier I)

The spellform snapped to life midair, and a pulse of flame lanced forward.

It caught the creature's flank. Scales cracked. Flesh split. A burst of steam screamed from the wound.

For a breath, Akiko thought she had it.

Then the water surged again. Drawn from floor, from pipe, from air, it poured toward the wound like blood flowing in reverse. The tissue closed.

Her stomach turned.

This was its arena, she realized. It didn't need to win. It just had to last.

The creature hissed, a sound low and wet, like water boiling from a cracked valve.

Akiko barely landed before the pressure shifted.

A gout of water burst up beneath her, arcing like a geyser. She twisted sideways, momentum dragging her into a wide spiral as foxfire flared beneath her boots. A second blast followed, slicing toward her from the left, then a third. Closer, faster, drawn from the room itself.

"Akiko!" Raya's voice cracked through the steam. "It's channeling—"

"I noticed!"

Akiko kicked off a pipe, flipping up and over a jet of scalding vapor. Another followed. Then another. The bastard was using the room like a conduit, pulling from every leaky joint, every fractured seal.

Foxfire surged at her heels again, and she vaulted high, twisting in low gravity, turning the next pulse into a sharp, midair spiral. Her claws caught on a support strut as she rotated, launching her back down with purpose.

She dropped like a meteor, foxfire trailing in a tight spiral. The creature reared back, raising its claws to strike.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Flare (Tier I)

The blast hit center-mass.

The creature buckled. Its regeneration slowed, but didn't stop. Already the pipes beneath its claws were trembling, siphoning up more water.

Below, Raya's fingers flew across one of the wall consoles. "The flow controls… there's a manual override! I can choke the input line, cut off the source—"

"Do it!"

The creature hissed again, louder this time.

Akiko landed hard, skidding across a slick beam. She barely found her footing before another burst of water slashed up toward her. This time, she was ready, leaping backward, launching herself with another foxfire pulse to draw the creature away from Raya.

"She's not your target," Akiko snarled. "Come and get me."

Raya's voice cut through the haze. "Cutting the main feed… now!"

A deep groan echoed through the flow station. Somewhere behind the veil of steam and broken pipework, pressure dropped. The next jet of water sputtered midair. No longer sharp and clean, but weak, unfocused.

Akiko's next strike landed clean. The creature staggered, and this time the wound didn't close all the way. The hiss of siphoned water was fainter now, like a faucet left half-open.

Good.

She pressed the advantage, darting in low, claws slashing across scaled muscle. The creature reared back again, limbs twitching, tail lashing wildly.

Better.

But then she felt it. A shift. A tremor beneath the skin of reality. Water curled unnaturally around her boots. Too smooth, too coordinated. A half-second later, tendrils burst from every direction. Dozens of them. Too many to dodge.

She raised her arms… and time froze. But not in her usual way, not her inner space's time-dilation. This was colder. Deeper. The world around her slowed to a syrupy crawl, every droplet suspended midair. In that silence, the entity stepped into being, half-formed and shadowed, its limbs a shimmering mockery of hers, features rippling with familiarity.

"This is the part where you fall," it said. Calm. Certain.

Akiko's mouth was dry. "You again."

The entity tilted its head. "You waste yourself in these scraps. Bleeding stamina for what? To protect a friend who will soon fall? To stall a transformation that cannot be stopped?"

She didn't answer.

"You could take the handler. Twist his mind. Turn his creations on Karn himself. You could be more."

Akiko's fists tightened. Her pulse pounded against the inside of her skull.

"No," she snapped, twisting to fend off another charge. Her claws flared, casting shadows she didn't trust. "I don't work for you."

"You misunderstand," it said gently. "You work for yourself. I simply remove friction."

Its form shimmered at the edge of her perception. Her posture, her face, but wrong in the way a predator mimics trust.

"Give me control," it said. "I will neutralize the threat. You will survive."

Akiko spat. "I don't want survival. I want them safe. I want them free."

The entity's expression didn't change. "Autonomy is inefficient."

"Yeah?" Her voice cracked. "So is being a monster."

It stepped closer. Its presence grew, sweeping around her, as if the thought of it took more space in her skull.

"Last chance," it said. "Surrender. Or be removed."

"Pass," Akiko said, voice rough. "Find another puppet."

The entity blinked once. Slowly. Then it vanished.

Time snapped back. The tendrils lunged, a blur of motion rejoined. Akiko didn't think, she burned.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Nova (Tier I)

Foxfire flared outward in a violent sphere, catching every strand of water mid-lash. Steam erupted around her, blinding and white-hot. The backlash hurled her sideways, skidding across a metal beam with a shriek of friction.

She coughed once, then twice, chest seizing. The air tasted like rust and scorched magic. But she was still breathing.

A spike of pressure hit her. Sharp, surgical. Her HUD crackled with errors. Her spine jolted with data she didn't request.

Takuto intercepted the foreign data and parsed it into something she could interpret.

Incoming mana signature: origin — high orbit.

Descent vector: targeted.

Velocity: increasing.

A burn. Ballistic. Too fast to intercept. Whatever it was, it wasn't meant to miss.

Her stomach turned cold.

"Raya. Kess," she snapped. "Something's coming down from orbit. We've got minutes."

Raya's head jerked up from the console, eyes wide. "Missile?"

"Or worse."

The serpent hissed and lunged again, and Akiko barely had time to twist away, foxfire flaring to soften her fall as she skidded off the upper pipe and landed hard, boots biting metal.

She turned back toward them, claws up. "We need an exit."

"There isn't one!" Kess shouted. "We came in through maintenance. It's the only route!"

Akiko bared her teeth. "Too slow. We'd never make it with that thing chasing us, we'd have to fight every step."

"Then—" Raya's gaze cut toward the outer wall. Her voice fell. "Outside."

Akiko followed her eyes.

A surface hatch. Reinforced. Manual override. If they could reach it and seal the hatch behind them…

Akiko's stomach dropped. The atmosphere beyond these walls was thin. Toxic. Raya and Kess didn't have suits. No shelter. Just frostbitten rock and wind-shear.

Behind her, the creature snarled. It didn't care about their odds. It just wanted her down.

And then, from the corner of her eye, movement.

Fenrik.

The bastard was already halfway to the auxiliary hatch, his pressure suit sealed, a compact shield humming at his hip. He met Akiko's gaze, cold and unreadable, and vanished into the tunnel smoke.

Of course.

"Coward!" Akiko shouted, but he was already gone.

She half-turned to Raya and Kess. "Go!" she barked. "There has to be an emergency supply station. Find suits. I'll hold it here. Don't stop. Don't wait for me."

"You can't—!" Raya's voice cracked.

"Go!"

She surged forward again, intercepting the creature before it could give chase. Her claws raked down its flank, foxfire hissing as it split scaled flesh. The thing howled, more fury than pain, and wheeled on her.

Akiko didn't give it the chance to regroup. She struck again, feinted left, twisted right, every movement a calculation. This wasn't something she could win anymore, she just had to delay.

Behind her, the clang of metal and the hiss of hydraulics, Raya and Kess forcing open the emergency supply station.

Come on. Hurry.

The creature lunged. She ducked low, letting it slam past her into the wall, piping groaning under its weight. Her claws flashed again, glancing off thick hide.

Just a little longer.

She heard Raya's voice muffled through the noise, calling to Kess. The snap of seals. The rasp of fabric against fabric as the suits went on. But Akiko's heart twisted. There wasn't time.

Her gaze shot upward, through the steam, through a fracture in the ceiling where light bled down in sickly bands and air escaped in a thin wail.

A fireball streaked overhead. Descending. Fast.

Akiko's blood ran cold.

Whatever the entity had dropped, it wasn't a missile. It was a statement.

She disengaged with a burst of foxfire, driving herself backward across the floor. Her claws skidded, leaving molten furrows. Then she turned, sprinting.

"Down!" she shouted, voice hoarse. "Now!"

Raya spun, eyes wide. "Akiko—!"

But Akiko didn't stop. Her claws scraped the floor as she dropped to one knee between them, flaring a hand wide.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Harmonic Barrier (Tier I)

Mana surged, a pulse through her spine. Her barrier snapped into place around them just as the ceiling exploded in light.

The construct's fusion drive slammed into the flow station like a vengeful god, fire and force obliterating everything it touched. The creature howled one last time and then there was nothing but heat and pressure.

Akiko braced, teeth clenched, pouring everything she had into the barrier. Mana bled from her core in sharp, rhythmic pulses. It wouldn't be enough.

A second glow lit beside her. Raya, eyes blazing, hands outstretched. Her barrier joined Akiko's, overlapping in a lattice of desperate protection. Their magic met, tangled, held. And still the fire raged.

They crouched together in the shrinking space between life and annihilation, backs pressed tight, hands locked on barrier constructs, shoulders trembling with the effort.

Then, at last, the flames began to fade.

The drive cut. Silence crashed in.

Akiko sagged, limbs trembling, foxfire flickering low. She turned, barely catching Raya's silhouette through the haze.

"I've got you," she rasped. Or maybe it was Raya who said it. Didn't matter.

Akiko collapsed against her, arms curling instinctively around her waist as darkness overtook her, mana spent and body barely holding shape.

But even in unconsciousness, she didn't let go.

Raya's voice followed. Distant, urgent, tearing at the edge of silence.

Akiko.

Akiko—

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