The moment the Goulizban's heavy footsteps vanished down the corridor toward the sound of the lure, Adil threw open the locker door. Cold, dusty air rushed into his lungs like something he hadn't realized he'd been missing.
"We need to head toward the medical room," Adil whispered, the hunter's heavy dagger gripped tight in his fist. "He's not going to make it if we try to find an exit first."
Garu didn't argue. He got his arms under the semi-conscious tracker and hoisted him onto his back, adjusting his grip with the focused efficiency of someone who had decided complaining was a luxury he couldn't afford right now. "Lead the way. We don't have much time before that tiger figures out it's a trick."
They moved through the corridor in silence—the careful, deliberate silence they had learned the hard way, each footstep placed with the terrifying weight of knowing exactly what sound cost in these halls.
They were halfway to the medical room when the mist ahead thickened, and a figure emerged from the gloom.
Not a ghost. Not a spirit.
Something worse.
It had the shape of a person, approximately, in the way that a bad copy has the shape of the original. A reanimated corpse, its movements wrong in the particular way that things move when whatever controlled them is no longer interested in pretending to be human. Its eyes glowed purple—the same purple as the spirits, the same purple as the hunter's, the same purple as everything in this world connected to something Adil didn't understand yet.
He filed it automatically. No time to process it now.
The moment its hollow eyes found them, it lunged.
Adil stepped forward and swept his arm back—a simple signal, and Garu read it immediately: Go. I'll handle it.
Garu hesitated for exactly one second. Then, trusting what seven years of knowing Adil had taught him, he kept moving.
I can't make a sound if it hits me, Adil thought, watching the creature reorient toward him. And I can't let those claws touch me. That thought from earlier—the one about poison he'd filed away—pressed against the back of his mind with the insistence of something about to be proven right.
But I don't have a choice.
The creature lunged. Adil slid through the damp space beside it, letting its momentum carry it forward while he repositioned—the same instinct from the classroom fight, the same patience, waiting for the pattern to show itself.
The creature spun, its purple eyes flaring in the dark.
Great. He's the straightforward type.
It swung wide. Adil twisted under the sweep and drove the dagger across its neck in one fluid motion.
Nothing. No reaction. No sound. The blade passed through, and the thing didn't even flinch.
A muffled snarl. Claws coming in fast from the left. Adil barely got his arm up in time—the deflection saved his face, but the raw impact staggered him against the concrete wall. He countered with an uppercut that accomplished almost nothing, confirming the massive gap between his human strength and whatever was animating this horror.
It grabbed him. Both forearms locked, claws pressing inward, its rotting face inches from his.
Those claws, he thought, panic spiking. Don't let those claws—
Instinct moved before the thought could finish.
Adil pulled his head back and drove his forehead straight into the creature's face.
CRACK.
The impact echoed through his skull like a heavy bell struck from the inside. A deafening ring tore through his brain, and his vision blurred white at the edges—but he pulled back and did it again. And again.
Forehead to face. Forehead to face.
Each impact was a transaction he was paying for in real time, the excruciating pain a thing he was aware of and actively choosing to ignore, raining blows with his own skull until the creature's grip finally faltered.
He tore the dagger free and drove it deep into the creature's neck.
The trade wasn't free.
In the same chaotic fraction of a second, a claw ripped across his chest. Uniform and flesh tore together. Adil bit back the scream trying to burst from his throat with everything he had—because the corridor's rules didn't care that he was injured, didn't care about context, and cared only about sound.
Why hasn't it died—
He drove a front kick into its torso, buying distance. The wound across his chest burned with an intensity suggesting it was going to get significantly worse before it got better. The creature came again, but slower—a new sluggishness in its movement. Adil read it the way he read everything in a fight: as information.
If Jake's here... he'll probably punch the first monster he sees.
Adil slid low and drove the dagger straight across its ankles.
The tendons severed. It collapsed heavily onto the floor.
Maybe you can't feel pain, Adil thought, breathing heavily as he watched it hit the concrete, but you can't move a body whose nerves are cut.
It kept moving anyway—dragging itself forward on ruined legs, those glowing purple eyes still locked on him, burning with whatever passed for intent in something that had stopped being alive long ago. He cut through its other ankle. Dark purple blood spread across the concrete in slow, thick patterns.
It kept crawling.
If it's not the head, Adil thought, watching the thing pull itself toward him, then the eyes are all that's left.
He kicked it onto its back.
Drove the dagger clean through its eye.
It went completely still.
A bright blue panel materialized in the air in front of him—crisp, clean, and deeply incongruous with the blood-soaked hallway:
OBSERVATIONS
Subject 999 has terminated a Zog.
Method: Noted.
Efficiency: Noted.
Cost to Subject: Noted.
ITEM LOGGED: Corruption Shard
Description: When exposed to corrupted—
[DATA UNREADABLE]
Adil stood there, swaying slightly, blood soaking warm and continuous down his ribs, reading the text.
Okay, he thought. Whatever it is... open the inventory.
INVENTORY
[SUBJECT 999 PARAMETERS STILL UNRESOLVED]
Access estimated: 1 hour, 02 minutes.
The Eye is watching.
He read it again.
...An hour. I have a system that takes an hour to open a bag.
Somewhere in the dark behind him, something else was still listening. He didn't have an hour. He didn't have ten minutes. He let the panel flicker and dissolve, left standing alone in the corridor with a chest wound, a glitched system, and four mysterious words echoing in his head:
The Fault of the Universe.
He felt like laughing and crying at the same time, but he could do neither.
The wound across his chest flared sharply—a surge of poison-like pain traveling through his body. He pressed his hand against it, gritted his teeth against the groan wanting to escape, and pushed himself forward. His vision swam at the edges, but the corridor stayed mostly upright.
Later, he told himself. Everything is later.
Meanwhile, Garu's arms burned under the hunter's weight—a deep, sustained ache that had moved past complaint into something that simply existed, right along with the cold, the damp, and the sound of the tracker's labored breathing against his neck.
Where's Jake? Garu thought.
It wasn't just the physical weight making his throat tight.
I hate this, he thought, adjusting his grip and blinking against the sting at the corners of his eyes. Why am I always the one running?
A memory flashed—uninvited.
He remembered a smaller version of himself, curled on the cracked concrete of an orphanage yard, arms thrown over his head as fists and feet rained down from older boys. Laughter. Someone's heavy shoe finding his ribs with pure cruelty.
Then, a body had stepped between him and the next blow. Smaller than the bullies, but standing his ground anyway, fists raised in the awkward stance of someone who had made a decision and wasn't backing down.
"Touch him again," a young Adil had said, his voice shaking with something that wasn't fear, "and I'll make sure you regret it."
Adil hadn't even known Garu's name yet. He'd just seen someone smaller getting hurt, and that had been enough.
Garu blinked hard. The memory dissolved back into the dark corridor, the hunter's weight resettling on his shoulders, the faint burn grounding him back in the terrifying present.
Don't die on me, Adil, Garu thought, tightening his grip and shoving forward into the gloom. You're the only brother I've got.
He reached the heavy double doors of the medical room. Shifted the hunter's weight to one arm. Threw the door open.
And froze.
Lying in the center of the room... was Jake.