The silence in Outpost Rhombus had teeth.
It wasn't the silence of an empty room or a quiet night. It was thick and heavy, like the air itself was waiting for something to move so it could pounce. Every footstep the six cadets took seemed too loud, too sharp, even though they were trying their best to tread lightly.
"Still hate this," Jake whispered, hugging his arms around himself as their boots scraped over cold metal. "Just in case anyone was wondering. I hate this."
"Duly noted," Swift murmured.
Danny swept his lamp across the corridor. The beam cut through dust motes, illuminating untouched consoles, perfectly aligned chairs, doorway thresholds with no signs of forced entry. Everything looked… normal. That was the worst part.
There was no damage. No scorch marks. No overturned furniture. No blood.
Just absence.
They regrouped in the central research hall—a tall, wide space with multiple glass-walled labs branching off like transparent cells. A ring of consoles sat around a lowered central platform. Screens were dark. Workstations dormant. A few mugs sat beside terminals, their contents long since dried.
Like everyone had just gotten up in the middle of a shift and walked away.
"Still no bodies," Jade muttered, crunching a loose piece of casing under his boot. "Not even a skeleton lying around for dramatic effect. Zero out of ten, bad horror set dressing."
"Can you not joke right now?" Jake hissed.
"I cope with fear by being hilarious."
"You are not helping."
Shadeclaw sniffed the air, claws half-extended, shoulders tense. His nose wrinkled.
"No blood," he said. "No char. No rot. But scent of panic. Old panic. And something else."
"What else?" Danny asked.
Shadeclaw's ears twitched. "Wet," he said finally. "Wrong."
Mira didn't need heightened senses to know something felt off, but now? Now the wrongness pressed against her like pressure behind her eyes. Her new instincts ticked in the back of her mind, whispering that a hunter had passed through here. Something that did not walk like a man or run like a wolf or clank like a machine.
Something that slid.
Her claws slid out a little further without her asking them to.
"Central lab's up there," Swift said, snapping them all back to task. He gestured toward the largest glass enclosure on the far side of the hall. Its door was sealed, emergency locks still engaged. "If there were any high-level projects, they'd be logged inside."
"Or in someone's head," Jade said. "Which, judging by the corpse count, is not ideal."
Mira took point without thinking about it—moving smoother than she ever had, weight balanced evenly, every sense reaching outward. Shadeclaw padded beside her, mirroring her posture. Danny, Swift, Jake, and Jade formed a loose diamond around them as they approached the lab door.
The control panel beside it was dark.
"Manual override?" Danny asked.
Swift slid in front of him. "Allow me."
He accessed the panel, pulling a cable from his suit and connecting to the port beneath the dead display. A few taps. A moment of silent processing. A quick reroute of portable power into the lock circuits.
The door hissed, then stuttered open a few inches, scraping with a faint groan as it stuck halfway.
"Of course," Jade muttered, shoving his shoulder against it. With a grunt and a screech of metal, the door slid far enough for them to slip through one at a time.
The inside of the lab looked like someone had shaken a snow globe of research and let it settle mid-panicked shake.
Papers littered the floor, scattered like leaves. Datapads lay cracked in corners, some still flickering with low battery indicators. One of the larger tanks along the wall—reinforced glass, circular, about two meters across—was shattered along one side, its interior slick and dripping.
Danny shone his lamp on the tank. A thick, translucent residue clung to the fragments, sliding slowly downward in slow, viscous trails.
"Please tell me that's not what it looks like," Jake whispered.
"It looks like a giant slime sample busted out of its space prison," Jade said.
"Don't say giant slime," Jake begged. "I'm still dealing with giant wolves."
Mira crouched near the base of the tank. Her nose wrinkled at the scent—clean water, yes, but not. There was a sweetness to it, and something acidic underneath. Like magic water left to ferment with something hungry.
"Recognize it?" Danny asked quietly.
Mira nodded. "Smells related to magic water. Like the precursor slimes they use to make it."
Jake groaned. "Of course. Of course it's slimes. Why not. Great."
Swift moved toward a central console still intact near the back wall. He brushed debris aside and placed his gloved hand on it.
"This terminal might still have non-volatile storage," he said. "If the cores haven't degraded…"
He connected his suit again.
The console flickered to life with a weak, struggling glow. A login prompt appeared, then melted away as Swift bypassed it in three strokes.
"Accessing project logs," he murmured. "Pulling most recent."
Lines of text scrolled.
Mira stepped beside him to read, claws retracting so she wouldn't scratch the surface.
At the top of the file, bold letters lit the screen.
B.L.O.B. – BOUNDLESS LIFEFORMS OBTAINING BIOMASS
Experimental Regenerative Unit – Phase III
Jake blinked. "Blob? It's literally called Blob?"
Jade snorted. "That's the least intimidating acronym I've ever seen."
Mira's eyes narrowed as she read. "It's a regenerative project."
Swift nodded, scrolling.
Text appeared: clinical, precise, unnerving.
"Origin organism," Swift read aloud, "a magic water slime. Intended to analyze and weaponize its regenerative properties. Goal: create a self-sustaining entity capable of restoring damaged organic matter in the field."
Danny frowned. "So… a healing slime? That sounds… good?"
"Hold the optimism," Jade said. "These things never stay good."
Mira read further.
Early entries were full of cautious optimism—reports of minor tissue repair, accelerated self-stabilization, high energy retention. Then the tone shifted.
Entry 239: "Slime displays accelerated growth beyond projections. Requires increased containment."
Entry 242: "Entity appears to respond not only to injury, but to proximity of organic matter. Several tests demonstrate it 'reaching' toward live samples through tank walls."
Entry 245: "Attempted to rebalance stimulus. Entity now reacts to ALL biological sources. Including non-injured."
Danny's hand tightened on the edge of the console.
Swift scrolled.
Entry 247: "We mistakenly assumed healing. The slime is not repairing tissue; it is assimilating it. New cell samples show no remnant of original DNA. All biomass becomes BLOB."
Jake paled. "Assimilating? Like… turning people into… itself?"
"Like eating," Shadeclaw said flatly.
Entry 249: "Entity mass has tripled in twenty-four hours. Containment parameters strained."
Entry 250: "We have reclassified BLOB as hostile until further evaluation. Its replication by biomass acquisition marks it as potentially infinite growth risk."
Final entry, flagged priority:
"BLOB achieves exponential mass through full organism assimilation. Self-replicating. Sentient. Do NOT allow contact."
The log ended there.
A stillness settled over the group, heavier than the silence had been before.
Danny swallowed. "So… what we have here is a sentient slime super-soldier experiment that stopped healing and started eating people."
Jake made a strangled sound.
Jade blew out a slow breath. "Called it."
Shadeclaw's claws fully extended now, tips glinting in the low emergency light. "It is still here," he said. It wasn't a guess. It was instinct.
Mira didn't argue.
Because she could feel it.
Not clearly—not like a beacon—but like the subtle awareness that something else was sharing the space with them. Something damp. Something spreading.
"Listen," she whispered.
They did.
At first, there was only the hum of dead cold and the faint crackle of damaged circuits.
Then the ducts above them breathed.
A whisper.
Then another.
Then many.
"Do you hear that?" Danny asked.
"I hear everything," Mira said, voice low.
The sound grew clearer. It wasn't the creak of metal or the click of expanding air. It was voices. Human voices. Layered, panicked, distant, muffled by metal but unmistakable.
"Help…"
"Is someone there…?"
"…please…"
They looked up.
The air ducts ran in a mesh of mesh and metal across the ceiling, forming a grid. Some grates were intact, others slightly bent or stained.
Jade shone his light upward. "Hey! Is someone up there?!"
The response was immediate and chaotic.
"HEY! Down there!"
"Can you hear us?!"
"Oh stars, they sent someone!"
"Don't shout, idiot, it hears us when we—"
"SHUT UP, IT'S COMING BACK—"
Danny's chest tightened. "We're cadets from B.U.D.D.I.E.S. We're here on recon. Are you survivors from the outpost?"
"Yes!" someone shouted. "We barricaded ourselves in the ducts after we realized the slime was hunting anything that touched the floor—"
Another voice cut over that one. "Don't tell them that, you moron, they're ON the floor—"
Jake lifted his feet slightly. "I hate this I hate this I hate this—"
Mira stepped beneath the nearest vent, senses sharpened to a fine point. She could hear their hearts hammering. Multiple people crammed into a too-small space, breathing too fast.
"How many of you?" she asked.
"Fifteen! …Wait, sixteen? Did we count Del?"
"He doesn't count, he broke the coffee machine—"
"FOCUS!"
Swift shouted, "Is there any safe path to you?"
"Safe?" another voice barked. "There is NO safe path. It's everywhere. In the walls. In the vents. It—"
The voice cut off into a strangled squeak, then a hissed whisper: "Don't move. Don't breathe. If it hears—"
Something shifted deep in the ductwork. A wet dragging sound, like a sack of jelly being pulled across metal.
The survivors fell silent all at once.
Jake whispered, "Oh, that's not good."
"Light off," Shadeclaw snapped.
Jade killed the beam.
Darkness rolled in close around them, broken only by the ghostly glow of the half-alive console.
They listened.
The sound in the ducts grew louder.
Not a crawl.
A flow.
Swift's eyes narrowed. "It's travelling through the ventilation system."
"Of course it is," Jake whispered faintly. "Why wouldn't the man-eating slime also have free access to the airways?"
Mira felt something cold trace the underside of her skull. Her claws flexed.
"Back," she murmured. "Everyone, away from the walls."
They moved, feet silent, into the open center of the lab.
For a moment, the only sound was breathing and the distant wet slide.
Then, from the corridor to the right, came the sound of stumbling footsteps.
Human.
Panicked.
"Someone's coming," Danny said.
Shadeclaw turned first, nose lifting, ears forward. "One person," he said quickly. "Human. Injured. Afraid. And…"
And something else.
They saw him then—a man in a torn lab coat, limping down the hallway toward them with wild eyes. His skin shone with sweat. One leg looked half-melted, torn lab fabric fused into glistening tissue. He stumbled, crashed into the doorframe, nearly fell.
Danny stepped forward instinctively. "Hey! We're with Buddies—"
The researcher's eyes locked on them.
"Run," he rasped.
Mira's heart clenched. "What—"
"It's right—"
Something enormous and translucent surged from the side wall and wrapped around him.
It didn't break through with a roar or a crash. It simply flowed out of a wide vent grill like a tide of thick, glistening gel, pale and faintly luminous. It engulfed the man from the side in one smooth motion, swallowing his scream with its bulk.
Jake screamed for him.
Danny lurched forward, golden energy flaring in his hand.
Swift grabbed his arm. "DON'T TOUCH IT!"
The man inside the mass flailed, his features distorted through the slime. His body convulsed. Bubbles formed around him, popping as his flesh began to break apart under the creature's slow, relentless digestion.
Mira's stomach churned. Her instincts screamed to tear it apart, but her mind shoved them down.
The thing wasn't just slime.
It was organized. Structured. A living mass with clusters of denser tissue that pulsed like organs. Tiny tendrils moved within it like nerves.
A primitive, hungry intelligence.
It turned as if looking at them—though it had no face, no eyes.
The man's outline softened. His scream became a gurgle.
And then the mass shuddered.
Where there had been one grotesque, pulsing blob—
It split.
Right down the middle.
Two smaller blobs slid off, dripping and leaving a smear on the floor before pulling together into coherent forms. Both pulsed once, as if taking a breath.
The half-dissolved man vanished entirely.
Jade swore. Loudly. "It just… just made copies?!"
Swift's voice went thin. "Mass replication via biomass assimilation. Every human it consumes, it multiplies."
Jake gagged. "We're gonna die. We're gonna die to evil healing jello."
The larger mass, the one that had done the initial engulfing, rippled once, then poured itself upward—back into the duct, sucking along the wall and vanishing like thick water being vacuumed away.
The two smaller blobs lingered on the floor.
One flowed toward the far corridor.
The other slid toward the doorway the cadets had entered through.
They moved with unsettling purpose.
Mira could hear the survivors above them beginning to whisper again in terrified fragments—begging them to run, to hide, to burn it.
"Can Danny just nuke it from orbit?" Jake begged. "Metaphorically?"
"We're inside the building," Swift said. "We don't know how far its mass extends through the outpost. If Danny unleashes full power, he could take half the structure and all remaining survivors with it."
Danny grimaced. "I—yeah. I can't go all out. Not here."
Shadeclaw growled at the retreating blobs, hackles raised. "It tests boundaries. It did not attack us. It is not afraid. It is curious."
Mira's claws dug into her palms. "We have to get those people out of the vents."
"And not get eaten," Jake added.
"That too," Jade said.
One of the smaller blobs reached a wall vent and oozed upward, flowing between the slats with horrifying ease.
Mira could smell its passage now. Damp. Acidic. Wrong.
She closed her eyes and expanded her awareness. She could faintly track its movement overhead—a slow, creeping warmth in the network of metal veins.
"We're in a nest," she said. "The outpost is full of it. In the vents. Under the floors. Behind the walls. It's not what's in this room that scares me."
Danny looked up at the vents, imagining the survivors packed in there with that thing sliding just meters away.
"It's what we can't see," he finished.
A faint static scratch hissed in their ear-comms.
Sorn's voice, low and serious, cut through the oppressive air.
"Cadets," he said. "Status."
Danny swallowed. "We've located survivors. They're hiding in the ductwork. Outpost is structurally intact, but a hostile bio-entity is present."
"Define."
Swift answered. "B.L.O.B. experiment. A biomass-consuming regenerative slime with apparent sentience and replication behavior. It's using the interior architecture to move and hunt."
On the other end, there was a pause.
Then Sorn said three words they'd never heard from him before:
"Do. Not. Die."
The channel snapped closed.
Jade blinked. "I think he's worried about us."
Jake shook his head. "No, he's worried about paperwork if we die."
Mira looked up at the vents again.
The whispers had gone quiet.
Either the survivors had learned to shut up.
Or they no longer could.
She exhaled slowly, controlled.
"We need a plan."
Danny nodded. "We can't fight this thing like a normal enemy. It sees everything as food. Including us."
Swift's eyes flickered, mind already racing. "We need to map its movement. Identify a central mass, if one exists. Or a core. Anything that, if destroyed, could destabilize the rest of its biomass."
"And not get slimed in the process," Jade said.
Jake raised his hand, hesitant. "Uh… question? If it eats people and makes more of itself… what happens if it eats, say, a dragon?"
Danny and Swift went silent for a beat.
Mira's new instincts dug their claws into her spine.
"…We're not going to find out," Danny said.
"Agreed," Swift said immediately.
Shadeclaw's tail lashed once. "We move soon. It learns us. Learns our patterns. The longer we stand here, the more we become… prey."
Mira nodded. "Then let's reverse it."
Jake blinked. "Reverse what? The being hunted part?"
"Yes," she said, eyes narrowing. "Let's hunt it."
Danny glanced at her, then at Shadeclaw.
A small, fierce smile tugged at his mouth.
"Shadowwolf suits you," he said.
Mira didn't smile back.
But her claws flexed.
"I intend to make it regret eating Buddies," she said.
From somewhere deep in the ductwork overhead, the wet sliding sound restarted—
Closer this time.
Much closer.
The BLOB had found them.
And it was hungry.