Blake sagged against the cold metal wall, the severed vine still twitching at the end of the tunnel. The darkness pressed in, absolute save for the faint emergency strip running along the floor. His breath rasped in the confined space, each inhale dragging fire across his ribs where the vine had sliced him. Sweat slicked his skin beneath the bodysuit, mingling with the warm wetness spreading from the wound. The air tasted thick, metallic, like old blood and ozone.

You think I'd recognize shock by now. Stupid fucking way to die.

He slid further down the wall, gritting his teeth against a wave of dizziness. His left arm trembled, not just from exertion, but from a deep, penetrating cold that started at the wound and crept inwards. Copper filled his mouth.

"Stanch it. Now". Kitt's thought was sharp, cutting through the fog clouding his mind. Whether it's poison, venom, infection… we don't know. But you can't risk collapse here."

Right. Focus. He fumbled at his belt pouches, fingers clumsy, slick with sweat and something else—the vine's residue? The med-kit felt impossibly far away. His vision swam, the dim emergency light blurring into streaks. He blinked hard, forcing clarity.

Oh. Right. The medical supplies were impossibly far away.

He took a deep breath and focused his Intent, reaching through the air in front of him and activating [Dimensional Cache]. However the ability worked, it knew what he needed, and his hand closed around one of the triage patches Mara & Sara had insisted he take with him. Blake had pushed back at the time, noting the overall shortage of medical supplies. He'd been outvoted. Smart women.

He ripped the patch free, tearing the sterile packaging with his teeth. Fully unfurled it was maybe 18 inches long, more than enough to cover the injury. The self-applicator hissed as he pressed it against the gash. Cold foam erupted, flooding the wound, followed by an intense, cleansing burn that made him gasp. It was a good pain, a cauterizing fire pushing back the encroaching numbness. He held it there, pressing hard, knuckles white, until the initial agony subsided into a fierce, manageable ache.

"Hold on, Blake." Kitt's presence was a steady warmth against the cold dread seeping from the wound. It wasn't words, more a low, resonant hum weaving through his awareness, bolstering him. A fragile thread of shared mana flowed between them, buoying him, but he felt the drain, the shared wellspring dipping dangerously low. They were running on fumes.

"Kitt?" Blake prodded the bandage, wincing. "Any chance you could work your magic here? Like when we bonded?"

"No." Her tone carried regret. "That required Eland's medbay. I manipulated specific tools, calibrated nanites..."

"I get it. No stress. Not your fault." Blake shifted, testing the patch's hold. "We've got what we've got."

"If you'd pursued certain Body Cultivation paths, I could rebuild tissue, accelerate healing. Currently—"

"You're ill-equipped. Got it." Blake coughed, tasting metal. "I'll take your suggestions under advisement. Once we're out of this nightmare, we'll talk cultivation paths."

A wet gurgle erupted from the severed plant limb. It twitched, fluid seeping from the cut end. Blake looked from the vine to his own wounded side, then back to the limb.

"Gross."

"Yeah," Kitt agreed. "Hopefully that triage patch will help negate the effects."

The patch throbbed, a localized burn against the deeper, insidious chill spreading from the wound. His vision flickered at the edges, the dim light strip wavering like a heat haze. A muscle in his jaw jumped, a small, involuntary tremor. He tasted copper again, thick on his tongue.

"Job maybe ten years back," Blake muttered, the words thick in his throat. "Odesa. Port city. Lots of illicit goods passing through, just like any port city." He shifted, trying to find a less painful angle against the wall. The movement sent a jolt through his side, followed by a wave of nausea. "Got hired as part of a team intercepting the sale of a Novichok variant. Fancy name for powdered death. Sellers got cornered, decided to go out messy. Scattered the stuff everywhere."

He remembered the chaos. Gunfire echoing in the warehouse, ricochets whining off shipping containers. Dust motes dancing in the shafts of light, each one carrying the promise of a painful death. A stray round had creased his arm, barely a scratch. But enough. Enough for the powder kicked up in the firefight to find its way in.

"Didn't even feel it at first," he continued, voice raspy. "Then... the shakes started. Muscles twitching like faulty wiring." He recalled the terrifying loss of control. His pupils shrinking to pinpricks, vision blurring until the world was a smear of color. His chest had seized up, breath catching, each gasp a struggle. Sweat poured off him, cold and clammy, saliva flooding his mouth. His own nervous system, turned traitor.

"Took damn near a year," Blake rasped, closing his eyes against the memory, against the present. "A year before I felt right again. From a trace amount." He touched the patch gingerly. The skin around it felt tight, unnaturally cold. The tremor in his jaw hadn't stopped. "Hope to hell this isn't that bad."

"Yeah," Kitt's responded quietly. The silence that followed felt heavy, punctuated only by Blake's ragged breathing and the distant, unsettling hum of the corrupted ship.

After another minute, he started to feel… Not better, but more solid. Those patches were good stuff. He pushed himself upright, leaning heavily against the wall. If he could push forward to the core, they'd have a chance to rest and recoup.

The maintenance shaft stretched ahead, a narrow gullet disappearing into shadow. It wasn't just metal and wires anymore. The walls seemed… damp. They pulsed with a faint, sickening rhythm, like the inside of something diseased. Stringy, mucous-like filaments hung from the ceiling, brushing against his helmet as he forced himself forward. The floor squelched under his boots. It felt like walking through a wound.

The air grew heavier with each step, thick with the cloying sweetness of decay and that persistent metallic tang. Rot and something else. Something alien. Distant groans echoed through the structure, deep, organic sounds that vibrated in his bones. The emergency lights flickered erratically, casting shadows that writhed and converged just at the edge of his vision. He kept glancing over his shoulder, the feeling of being watched a physical weight on his back.

"This way." Kitt's voice came. "The ship—Aeons but I wish she could remember her name, it feels terrible talking about her this way… Sorry. The ship is trying her best to feel out our route here. To guide us to the path of least resistance."

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Least resistance still felt like wading through tar. He moved slowly, favoring his injured side, his good arm taking most of the strain when he had to climb over buckled conduits or squeeze through narrowed sections where the ship's infected and bloated flesh had encroached. Every movement cost him. His gear felt heavier, dragging at him, eventually forcing him to unload much of it into his [Dimensional Cache].

The nutrient bars he'd eaten earlier was a distant memory, hunger a hollow ache beneath the throb of his wound. His canteen was empty—he didn't even remember drinking. That was a bad sign.

They reached a junction, a branching of the narrow tunnels. One path angled sharply downwards, slick with black ichor. The other continued level but seemed to narrow even further, choked with pulsing fungal growths.

"We've got a choice," Kitt projected, her thought laced with strain. "She's offered two possibilities. The left path is… longer, more climbing. With you injured, we risk exhaustion. The right path is shorter, but…"

She paused, and he could sense her trying to make sense of something through their bond. Likely more information from the ship, but something the barely-conscious Leviathan was having a hard time communicating.

"Archon shit," Kitt spat as her presence returned fully. "The right path has something living to worry about. A nest of some kind of. She's not sure about the details, just that there are a lot of legs. The upshot is that nothing in this tunnel could be too big."

The long way, he risked passing out from blood loss or sheer fatigue. The short way, he walked into the spider hole. Some choice.

"Right," Blake grunted, the sound made flat by the oppressive dampness. Better to face the threat head-on than collapse alone in the dark.

He squeezed into the right-hand tunnel. The air immediately grew hotter, more humid, thick with the smell of ammonia and decay. Bioluminescent fungi coated the walls, casting a sickly green-blue light. They pulsed rhythmically, revealing glistening black slime oozing down the metal. The passage, already barely shoulder-width, forced him to turn sideways to make any progress.

He saw the pods first. Clustered on the walls and ceiling, dozens of them, like leathery, oversized eggs. They quivered, surfaces slick with the grey-white ichor.

Then the floor moved.

Not the floor itself, but the shadows covering it. Small shapes detached themselves, unfolding spindly legs tipped with chitinous claws. Spider-crab things, the size of his hand, swarmed upwards, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They moved with an unnatural speed, clicking and hissing, a wave of segmented bodies and grasping claws surging towards him.

No room to maneuver, no space for Verdict. Knife and boot.

Blake kicked out, crushing several under his heel. A wet crunch, a spray of caustic fluid that sizzled on his armor. He drew his knife, stabbing downwards, shearing through carapaces. The things latched onto his legs, their claws finding purchase even through the bodysuit. He felt sharp pricks, burning sensations where they managed to pierce the fabric.

Pain flared in his side, sharp and deep, stealing his breath. His movements grew sluggish, his vision greying at the edges. Not good.

Then, a ripple. Not physical, but a thrum against his awareness, a faint drain from his mana core. A half-dozen of the nearest creatures flew backward, tumbling end-over-end down the narrow passage as if swatted by an invisible hand. They slammed into the pulsing fungal growths with wet cracks.

"Kitt?" The sloppy, unfocused push wasn't his own doing.

"You focus on your body," Kitt's thought cut through the haze, sharp and focused. "I'll play with the magic."

Good call. His side screamed protest with every twist, every lunge. He needed his strength for the knife, for staying upright. He gritted his teeth, ignoring the burning points where claws found momentary holds, and drove the blade down again.

He roared, a raw sound of exertion and fury, stomping and slashing in the confined space. It was a messy, close-quarters brawl. Lightheadedness threatened to overwhelm him. He focused on the rhythm: stomp, slash, kick, turn. The creatures were relentless, surprisingly tough. Their insides weren't blood and guts, but thick, off-white, writhing threads that clung like nightmarish marshmallow. The air filled with the sickly-sweet stench of their ruptured bodies.

One climbed his leg, reaching his injured side. Its claws dug in near the med-patch. Pain exploded, white-hot. Blake slammed his elbow down, crushing the thing against the wall. He stumbled, catching himself, adrenaline momentarily clearing his head. He fought with renewed ferocity, a whirlwind of kicks and blade-strikes in the narrow passage.

Slowly, the swarm thinned. He broke through the main cluster, wading through broken chitin and viscous gore. He didn't stop until he reached the end of the Nest tunnel, collapsing against the junction wall beyond, chest heaving. His legs burned, dotted with small punctures oozing pearlescent fluid. The adrenaline spike faded, leaving behind profound exhaustion and a throbbing constellation of new pains.

He pushed onward. The shaft began to change again. The metal walls seemed thicker here, the pulsing more pronounced. The air vibrated with a low thrum, a discordant beat layered beneath the Leviathan's organic groan. It felt… wrong. Hostile.

"Just what we needed, more outsider nonsense." Kitt's voice was strained, and Blake could feel the rising tide of her panic over Blake's deteriorating condition. He didn't blame her. Things were getting worse than he had thought they would.

Eland had warned him that this ship was a deadly challenge.

As if on cue, gravity lurched. The corridor twisted sickeningly. For a disorienting moment, the floor became the ceiling, the ceiling the floor. Vertigo slammed into him, threatening to buckle his knees. He braced himself, planting his boots, fighting the urge to vomit. His inner ear screamed in protest.

Through the disorientation, he caught glimpses. Impossible angles. Corridors folding back on themselves like origami. Walls veined with pulsating, non-Euclidean geometry. Colors flashed at the edge of his sight, hues that scraped against his optic nerves, colors that shouldn't exist. Sanity felt thin, stretched taut.

Steady, Blake. Kitt's presence anchored him, a point of focus in the swirling chaos. Breathe. It will pass.

He focused on her, on the shared core, the bond that held them together. The gravity stabilized, the impossible architecture receding back to the periphery. But the wrongness lingered, a taint in the very fabric of the space around them.

The maintenance shaft finally opened out, not into another corridor, but into a vast, swollen chamber. It felt less like a part of the ship and more like a diseased organ. Overhead, the tunnel exit resembled a fleshy maw, ringed with corrupted bio-luminescence.

And across the chamber, the goal. The blast doors to the main core.

They were barely recognizable. Warped, twisted metal, half-melted and fused with something that looked disturbingly like bone. Grotesque, organic patterns spread across the surface, like a cancer consuming the steel. Sections were peeled back, not rusted, but rotting open, revealing glimpses of the darkness within.

The entire chamber hummed, vibrated with an energy that made his teeth ache. The Outsider's presence was a physical weight here, a pressure against his skin, making the ambient mana feel caustic, poisonous. He suppressed a cough, the wound in his side flaring in sympathetic agony. This place was saturated with the entity's power.

He took a step forward, boots crunching on debris—shattered metal, desiccated organic matter. As he moved towards the ruined doors, the walls around him twitched. Veins pulsed beneath the corrupted surface.

Then came the sound.

Not a roar, not exactly. Deeper than that. A vibration that started in the deck plates and traveled up through his bones, resonating in his skull. It was a sound that scraped against the soul, less a warning and more a statement of absolute, alien hostility.

Blake didn't even complain; he was just too tired. Sighing, he reached for the door.

Time to make the donuts.

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