The screams of the wind whipping through the rusted scrapyard were drowned out by the collective gasp of Squad 5.
They stood on the crest of the hill, looking down into the nightmare. Eren lay in the dirt, his face a mask of pale shock, clutching the ragged, bleeding stump where his right leg used to be. The Mimic stood over him, holding the severed limb like a discarded toy, its suit soaked in fresh blood.
"EREN!" Edy screamed, his voice cracking with pure terror.
The sound snapped the team out of their paralysis.
"Engage!" Jod roared, his voice cutting through the panic like a whip. "Containment Formation! Do not let it finish him!"
Jod didn't draw his weapon. Instead, he sprinted straight for Eren. He moved with the desperate speed of a father, sliding across the gravel on his knees. He grabbed Eren by the collar of his tourist jacket and dragged him behind the cover of a crushed shipping container.
"Max! Malina! Raina! Buy me time!" Jod barked into the comms. "Edy, cover fire! Keep its head down!"
Max, Malina, and Raina launched themselves off the hill. They didn't land gracefully; they crashed into the clearing like falling stars, weapons drawn, fluids burning in their veins.
The Mimic looked up, tossing Eren's leg into a pile of scrap metal. It smiled, its face rippling as it adjusted its biological mask.
"More guests," it rasped, its voice a hollow echo. "And this time, the meat looks... tender."
The Rescue
Behind the rusted wall of the container, Jod was working with terrifying efficiency. He ripped a pouch from his belt. Eren was going into shock; his eyes were rolling back, and his skin was cold and clammy. The blood loss from the femoral artery was catastrophic.
"Look at me, speedster!" Jod shouted, slapping Eren's cheek. "Don't you dare close your eyes! You hear me? Stay with me!"
Eren's lips moved, but no sound came out. He was shaking violently.
Jod pulled out a canister of Bio-Foam—a military-grade coagulant that burned like acid but sealed wounds instantly.
"This is going to hurt," Jod gritted out.
He jammed the nozzle into the open stump of Eren's leg and pulled the trigger.
HISSSSSS.
The foam expanded, cauterizing the torn vessels and sealing the flesh in a hardened, white shell.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Eren's scream was primal. He thrashed against the dirt, his back arching, veins bulging in his neck.
"Hold him down!" Jod yelled at the empty air, pinning Eren's shoulders with his own body weight. He grabbed a stim-shot—pure adrenaline and painkillers—and slammed it into Eren's chest.
Eren gasped, his eyes flying open, pupils dilated. The screaming stopped, replaced by ragged, shallow breathing.
"You're alive," Jod whispered, wiping sweat from his brow. "You're a cripple, but you're alive. Stay down."
Jod drew his combat knife, his eyes turning to the battle raging ten feet away. The air was already smelling of ozone and death.
The Fight
Max was the first to reach the monster. The sight of Eren's leg flying through the air had shattered something inside him. The hesitation he felt in Oakhaven was gone. The Void inside him wasn't whispering anymore; it was roaring.
"YOU BASTARD!" Max screamed.
He didn't use a sword. He used his fists. He coated his arms in Void Gauntlets—dense, violet energy that devoured light. He threw a right hook aimed at the Mimic's jaw.
BOOM.
The impact created a shockwave that blew the windows out of the surrounding car wrecks. Max's fist connected with the Mimic's face.
But the Mimic didn't fly back. It didn't even flinch.
Max felt like he had punched a wall of solid diamond. The Mimic's head had snapped to the side, but its neck didn't break. It slowly turned its head back, its jaw unhinging and realigning with a wet crack.
"Is that it?" the Mimic taunted.
It backhanded Max.
It was a casual slap, but it carried the force of a wrecking ball. Max was launched sideways, smashing through a stack of oil drums and tumbling into the dirt.
"Max!" Raina yelled.
Raina was moving like a dancer of death. She held two high-caliber automatic pistols, loaded with explosive rounds. She circled the beast, firing in a rhythmic staccato.
Bang-bang-bang-bang.
The bullets struck the Mimic's chest and head, exploding on impact. Clouds of fire and shrapnel engulfed the creature.
"Did we get it?" Edy asked from his vantage point on the hill, his hands glowing green as he prepared a gravity spell.
The smoke cleared.
The Mimic stood there, brushing soot off its suit. The bullets had torn holes in its disguise, revealing the writhing, black shadow-flesh underneath. But the holes were already closing.
"Bullets," the Mimic sighed, looking bored. "How primitive."
It pointed a finger at Raina.
"Bang," it whispered.
A condensed bullet of air pressure shot from its fingertip. It moved faster than sound. Raina barely had time to react. She threw herself into a cartwheel, but the air-bullet clipped her shoulder, tearing through her uniform and spinning her around in mid-air. She landed hard, rolling to her feet, clutching her bleeding arm.
"It's too fast!" Raina hissed. "It's predicting us!"
"It's not predicting," Edy's voice came over the comms, panicked. "It's adapting. Its density is shifting every time we hit it. When Max punched, it became diamond. When you shot it, it became liquid. It's physically countering everything!"
"Then we hit it with something it can't adapt to!" Malina roared.
Malina charged.
She was the tank. The Titan. The Red Fluid in her veins was boiling, turning her skin a flushed crimson. She didn't have a weapon; she was the weapon.
She grabbed a rusted I-beam from the ground—a piece of steel twenty feet long and weighing three tons. She swung it like a baseball bat.
"HOME RUN!"
The beam collided with the Mimic's ribs.
CLAAAANG.
The sound was deafening. The sheer mass of the attack forced the Mimic to slide backward, its feet carving trenches in the ground. The I-beam bent around the creature's body like a horseshoe.
"Hold it there!" Max shouted, scrambling to his feet.
Max and Edy synchronized their attacks.
"Gravity Well!" Edy screamed, clamping his hands together. A sphere of heavy green gravity materialized around the Mimic's feet, crushing the ground and locking it in place.
"Void Lance!" Max thrust his hand forward, shaping the violet energy into a spear of pure nothingness. He threw it.
The lance flew true. It pierced the Mimic's chest, right where the heart should be.
The Mimic shrieked—a sound of grinding metal. It fell to one knee.
"We got it!" Edy cheered.
But the cheer died in his throat.
The Mimic began to laugh. A low, gurgling chuckle that grew into a maniacal cackle.
It reached up and grabbed the Void Lance sticking out of its chest. Its hand sizzled as it touched the energy, but it didn't let go. It pulled the spear out.
"Tasty," the Mimic said.
It crushed the Void Lance in its hand, absorbing the energy. Its eyes began to glow a deep, violent violet—the same color as Max's power.
"It... it ate my attack," Max whispered, horrified.
The Mimic stood up, breaking Edy's gravity hold as if it were made of cobwebs. Its form began to change. It shed the human disguise completely.
The suit ripped apart. The skin melted away.
What stood before them was a nightmare. It was twelve feet tall, a hulking mass of jagged obsidian muscle and bone. It had no face, only a vertical slit of a mouth filled with rows of rotating teeth. Its arms elongated, the fingers turning into scythe-like blades that dripped with a corrosive green acid.
"Playtime is over," the Guut roared.
It moved.
It disappeared from sight. It was faster than Eren.
It reappeared in front of Edy on the hill.
"EDY! MOVE!" Jod screamed from his position near Eren.
Edy tried to shield himself, but the Guut simply swatted him out of the air. Edy fell thirty feet, crashing into a pile of tires, limp and unconscious.
"No!" Malina screamed.
She charged again, abandoning all defense. She was the strongest. She had to hold the line. She leaped at the monster, winding up a punch that carried every ounce of her Titan strength.
"I will break you!" Malina yelled.
The Guut looked at her. It didn't dodge. It opened its arms wide, welcoming her.
Malina's fist connected with the creature's chest.
THUD.
It did nothing. The creature's density was now beyond anything they had ever encountered. Malina's wrist snapped on impact.
She gasped, the pain blinding her for a split second.
In that second, the Guut made its move.
"You are strong," the Guut whispered, its voice vibrating through Malina's bones. "But you are soft in the middle."
The Guut's right hand—now a three-foot-long serrated blade of bone and shadow—shot forward.
It wasn't a slash. It was a stab.
SHHHH-LICK.
The sound was wet and terrible.
Max froze. Raina froze. Jod froze.
Malina stopped moving. She looked down slowly.
The Guut's blade had pierced her abdominal armor like it was paper. It had entered just below her ribcage and exited out her lower back.
"Malina..." Max whispered.
The Guut twisted the blade.
Malina coughed, blood spraying from her mouth onto the creature's dark chest.
"Pathetic," the Guut hissed.
It ripped the blade out.
SPLAT.
Malina collapsed backward. She hit the ground with a heavy thud.
Her hands instinctively went to her stomach, trying to hold herself together. But the wound was catastrophic. A massive, horizontal gash had torn her open.
Through her fingers, slick with red fluid and blood, pink loops of intestine began to spill out, steaming in the cold night air.
"No... no..." Malina wheezed, her eyes wide with shock, staring at her own insides. Her legs kicked feebly in the dirt, trying to push herself away from the pain, but her body was failing.
She was a Titan. Her biology was enhanced. A normal human would have died instantly. But Malina was still alive—awake, aware, and feeling everything.
Max stood paralyzed, watching his strongest friend holding her own guts in her hands, her blood pooling rapidly around her waist. The Guut stood over her, licking the blood from its blade, ready to deliver the final blow.