Part X – The World is Not the Worst of Them II
The patient room door had failed. Metal peeled outward. A jagged opening yawned where the seal had buckled, edges bent and smeared with dark, corrosive residue across the panel. Through it, Nyla saw movement that made her lungs hold tight for a moment.
Kaodin was barely visible through the churn of black coils. Shapes wrapped and tightened around him, dragging him inward by inches. Blue light flickered, weaker than before.
Her hand clenched around the magnum.
Arika caught her wrist mid-reach.
"Don't," Arika said. Flat. Immediate.
Nyla did not look at her. Her eyes stayed locked on the corridor, jaw clenched hard enough to tremble.
"We can give him some support, can't we?" Nyla said. It came out more like a challenge than reassurance.
Another surge rolled down the hall. The mass shifted. Kaodin's outline lurched, the shape tightening around him the way a python cinched its prey.
Nyla stepped forward again.
Arika moved with her this time, shoulder sliding in, body angling between Nyla and the breach. One armored palm pressed against Nyla's chest plate, firm and final, without force and without apology.
"If you cross that line," Arika said, quieter now, "you put all of us at risk. And you break his trust in me to keep you and Somsri safe."
Nyla's breath hitched. Her grip loosened. The magnum slipped free from her thigh holster.
Somsri had already turned away.
The android stood at the wall port, fingers splitting into interface filaments as they drove into the exposed socket. Status lights bloomed along her forearm, then collapsed into rapid cycling patterns.
"Internal routing degraded," Somsri said. "External relay intermittent."
"Patch through anyway," Arika snapped.
"I am attempting," Somsri replied. "Priority traffic only."
Another crash thundered through the corridor. The floor vibrated beneath their boots. Dust sifted down from the ceiling.
Nyla's eyes burned. She blinked once. Looked away. Looked back.
"Kaodin," she breathed, too low for anyone else to hear.
Arika did not release her grip. She shifted her stance instead. Feet planted wider. Weight settled. Her rapier stayed at her side, held back by discipline rather than calm.
"Hold on," Arika murmured, more to herself than anyone else.
Somsri cut in again.
"Connection window narrowing," she reported. "Manual authorization required."
Arika turned sharply. "Then get it."
Somsri's fingers moved faster.
Behind them, the corridor roared.
And none of them stepped forward.
Cold light flickered across the ward as emergency power cycled.
Lina stood at the central console, spine straight, shoulders set, eyes fixed on a lattice of collapsing routes and cascading alerts. Her fingers moved in short, decisive bursts, never lingering long enough for doubt to settle.
"The rapture index just spiked again," Yuri said from the auxiliary station, leaning closer to her panel as pressure-wave data scrolled in jagged bands. ""Localized mass displacement. Internal compression signatures. Something moving fast, and it's not on the maintenance corridors."
Another vibration rolled through the floor, deeper this time. Bed frames rattled. IV stands chimed softly as stabilizers corrected.
Lina's eyes flicked down for a fraction of a second.
"The east wing just forced a proximity relay," she said. "Somsri's signal punched through on the priority channel. External reinforcement requested. Priority flag tied to patient name… AS-K-07. Poor boy. Some militia tagged you like a test subject." Lina shot Yuri a sideways glare.
Dr. Mintra crossed the ward with measured steps, one hand brushing a bed rail as she passed. The tremor traveled cleanly through the metal into her arm.
"That confirms it," she said calmly. "Whatever is moving is stressing the structure close to the east-wing corridor. And someone is still riding our prioritization logic."
Yuri stepped closer, voice low. "You're sure it's not residual system noise?"
"No," Lina replied. "The rapture sensors are independent. Structural strain, pressure rebound, thermal wake. Those patterns don't lie."
Yuri asked. "Can you isolate the intrusion without losing internal telemetry?"
"I can collapse everything that isn't essential," Lina said. "External links included."
"So…what's that mean exactly in a human word?" Donghan said dumbfounded.
"We were cut off from the start," Lina replied. "You either cut everything and reroute clean, or you keep a leech riding behind us while we move forward."
Another distant impact echoed through the building. This one longer. Heavier. The floor flexed, then settled.
Dr. Mintra did not hesitate. "Do it."
Lina's fingers slid across the interface.
Routes vanished. Permissions dropped. Layers peeled away in rapid succession, the system contracting inward as if drawing breath.
"I'm forcing a full sign-out," Lina said. "Every channel. Every handshake. Autonomous recognizes one authority only."
Yuri watched the network topology collapse into a single spine. "That's you."
"That's the point."
The lights flickered hard, then steadied. The room's displays dimmed to their minimal modes, leaving only the essential lines active.
"Firewall rewriting," Lina continued. "Foreign logic embedded deep. Someone had their hands inside my system."
Dr. Mintra asked, "Can you locate them and lock them out?"
Lina exhaled through her nose, eyes never leaving the data.
"Doctor, I could do more if the medical staff let me work without interrupting every ten seconds," she said. "Permanent removal takes time."
A signal thread tightened somewhere outside the Medical Bay.
Routes collapsed. Permissions vanished. Layers peeled away faster than expected.
A pause followed before a quick data transfer for another encrypted channel.
A secondary path flickered, thin and quiet, riding residual latency left behind by emergency power cycling.
A remote console dimmed. Symbols rearranged into simpler patterns. Less routing. Less noise.
A hand rested against an unseen surface, steady.
A mirrored feed flickered white, then dark.
Kaodin tried to move, but tendrils bound him from shoulders to ankles. Slick bands pulled tight around his chest and limbs until even small movements vanished. Air scraped shallow through his throat.
His muscles strained on reflex. When he pushed his Qi circulation outward, the coils tightened further.
Pressure climbed along his neck.
A training floor. A senior's grip. Breath shortened on purpose.
He stopped resisting. His shoulders lowered. Breath narrowed. The pressure stayed, but the rising panic lost shape. His awareness folded inward, Qi drawing closer to his center with each controlled inhale.
His senses widened instead.
Wawa.
Wrapped coils scorched where they touched Wawa's body. Heat bled outward in faint wisps, burning shallow scars through layered black flesh. The glow along his fur flickered, dimmed, pressed thin by weight he could not shake.
His limbs strained. Nothing shifted.
Home.
The thought surfaced simple and bright.
Master
Outside the coils, the creature drew the bound forms inward. Tendrils flexed and tightened in coordinated pulls, bands contracting the way a tightening band gathered itself before a crushing pull. Kaodin's body dragged lower, on the verge of being pulled into the center of the mass.
Suddenly, then smoke bled through the bindings.
Wawa answered his master's intent at once. His body folded inward midair, light drawing tight as his form compressed into a dense orb of Qi. In the same instant, he surged back toward Kaodin and slipped into the narrowing gap between the coils.
The tendril holding him thinned where he passed. Pale smoke curled up from between the layered wraps. The bands shuddered as if seared. A ripple ran through the mass, and the tendril twitching hard before snapping back into the body.
The wrapped tendrils holding Kaodin abruptly got smoke thickened.
The mass reacted hard.
Tendrils convulsed, then whipped outward in a violent spin. Kaodin's bound body ripped free and hurled down the corridor, a dark blur tearing past sealed doors and shattered panels before slamming into the far wall.
Concrete burst outward.
The wall bowed, fractured, and held.
Kaodin hung there for a moment, embedded in the broken surface steam lifting from his clothes in thin threads. Black residue clung to his clothes and skin in thick, slick smears, slowly creeping as if alive. Where it touched bare flesh, angry red welts bloomed beneath the grime, skin flushing and tightening as heat bit deep. The substance hissed softly, bubbling in places before thinning and sliding away in viscous trails.
The air around him shimmered, not just with heat, but with the lingering burn of something still reacting against his skin as if to leech on his unmatched internal energy.