Chapter 20: The First Wave
"Stay here." Alex's voice cut through the panic rising in Luna's throat. "Lock the door. Weld it shut if you have to. Nothing comes into this room unless it's me."
Luna nodded, knuckles white on the armrests of her wheelchair.
Alex didn't wait. He stepped into the cut in the floor, dropping back down to the 23rd floor. Then the 22nd. He didn't stop until he hit the 18th-floor hallway.
He looked up at the ceiling—the jagged tunnel he had burned through the building's entrails with the Thermal Lance. It was a tactical weakness.
"Seal it."
He grabbed a heavy steel security door ripped from a nearby apartment. Strength 3.0 flared. He slammed the slab over the hole in the ceiling.
VWOOM.
The Inferno Gauntlet traced the edges. Plasma melted steel into concrete. The tunnel was gone. No flanking. No surprises.
This was the choke point.
Below, the building screamed. The sound of hundreds of frozen limbs scrabbling against concrete echoed up the stairwell like the buzzing of a disturbed hive.
They weren't slowing down. The corpse blockade at the main entrance must have been overrun in seconds.
Alex turned to face the stairwell door. Reinforced steel bulged outward with the pressure of the bodies behind it.
"System. Status."
[Combat Mode Engaged.] [Enemy Count: 150+ (Wave 1).] [Threat Level: High.]
[Environmental Temperature: -65°C.]
The Inferno Gauntlet hummed. Heavy industrial servos locked his left arm into a rigid firing stance. The blue light of the Micro-Fusion Cell pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Fear was a luxury. There was only the cold calculus of the kill zone.
BANG.
Stairwell door hinges snapped. The steel slab flew off the frame, crashing into the opposite wall.
They poured out.
A tide of grey, emaciated flesh spilled into the hallway. The Ghouls—Runners—were a nightmare of viral efficiency. Clothes shredded. Skin tight against bone. Fingers elongated into blackened claws.
They didn't scream. They didn't pause. They saw the lone figure standing in the dark. They charged.
"Come on."
The first Runner lunged. It leaped five meters through the air, jaw unhinged, aiming for the throat.
Alex stepped into the arc.
Left fist swung.
CRACK.
The impact was wet and heavy. Backed by Strength 4.5, the Inferno Gauntlet didn't just break the Ghoul's skull; it disintegrated it.
Black, frozen ichor sprayed the walls.
The headless body cartwheeled through the air and slammed into the wall.
But there were more. Ten. Twenty. A wall of teeth and claws filled the narrow space.
Alex activated the thermal vents.
VWOOM.
He swept his palm across the corridor. A cone of superheated plasma erupted from the gauntlet, painting the air a blinding orange.
The front row of Ghouls didn't just burn; they popped. Extreme heat flash-vaporized the water in their cells.
Flesh blackened and peeled away from bone in milliseconds.
The smell of cooked meat filled the hallway, mixing with the sharp ozone of the plasma.
Alex became a machine. Punch. Burn. Advance.
Whirr-CLICK. CRUNCH.
A Ghoul grabbed his right arm. He shattered its spine with the rifle butt. He crushed its windpipe with his mechanical left hand.
VWOOM.
Another burst of fire cleared a path.
He painted the walls with them. The hallway transformed into a slaughterhouse. The floor became a slick of gore that flash-froze into black ice under his boots.
[XP Gained: 50.]
[XP Gained: 50.]
Notifications scrolled in his peripheral vision. A dopamine feed of violence.
But the horde was endless. For every kill, three more crawled over the rigid corpses. They piled up, creating a ramp of dead meat.
Then the floor shook.
BOOM.
Impact knocked a Runner off its feet. Dust rained from the ceiling tiles.
The elevator doors at the end of the hall—pry-barred open by the horde—buckled.
A massive, calcified hand gripped the steel frame. Metal groaned and sheared as the frame was ripped from the concrete.
The Alpha stepped out.
No longer human. It was a biological siege engine.
Standing nearly three meters tall, its body was a swollen mass of grey muscle fibers bursting through the tatters of a security uniform. Skin as hard as tire rubber.
But the right arm drew the eye. An atrocity of evolution—a massive, bony piston dragging along the floor, twice the size of the left.
The Ghoul Alpha looked down the hallway. It ignored the smaller Runners scurrying around its legs like rats.
It saw the fire. It saw Alex.
Red pits flared where eyes used to be.
"GRRR... RAAAAGH!"
No words. Just the sound of gravel grinding in a mixer.
It kicked a pile of dead Runners aside. Path cleared.
It raised the massive bone-club arm and roared—a sound that shattered the remaining light fixtures.
"MEAT!"
The Alpha charged.
The hallway floor cracked under the impact. The mutated Alpha moved with the momentum of a derailed locomotive. Its massive bone-club arm scraped sparks against the frozen walls.
Bracing for impact was impossible. Strength 5.0 would shatter ribs like dry twigs, even through ceramic plates.
Alex stopped breathing.
[Trait Active: Thermal Void.]
Body temperature plummeted. He synced perfectly with the -65°C ambient air.
To the thermal-dependent eyes of the Ghoul, the heat signature of "prey" vanished.
The Alpha faltered. Red pits scanned the hallway frantically. It swung the bone club in a blind, rage-fueled arc. It pulverized a concrete pillar where Alex had stood a split-second before.
"Grrr...?" Drool flash-froze on its chin.
"Behind you."
Alex was already airborne.
Agility 3.0. He vaulted off the wall and landed silently on the Ghoul Alpha's broad, misshapen back.
The Alpha roared. It reached back to crush the parasite. Too slow.
Alex drove his right knee into the creature's spine for leverage. He brought his left hand—the heavy, mechanical claw of the Inferno Gauntlet—down onto the Alpha's face.
WHIRRR-CLICK.
Titanium servos engaged. The sound of a bear trap snapping shut.
Claws dug deep into the grey, rubbery flesh of the Alpha's skull. He crushed the eye sockets. He locked the jaw shut.
The Alpha thrashed. It slammed its back against the walls to dislodge the rider. Alex held on. Grip amplified to Strength 4.5.
"Open wide."
Manual override engaged.
[Warning: Plasma Emitter Overload.]
VWOOM.
Not a burst. A continuous purge. The fusion cell dumped its energy directly into the Alpha's cranium.
A blinding sphere of orange plasma erupted from Alex's palm. It turned the inside of the Ghoul's head into a blast furnace.
The scream died instantly. Vocal cords vaporized. Smoke poured out of the ears.
The smell of burning bone overpowered the metallic scent of the cold.
Three seconds.
The massive body went rigid. Then limp.
Alex kicked off. He landed on the ice-slicked floor. The headless corpse of the Ghoul Alpha toppled forward. It hit the ground with a wet, sizzling crash. Superheated flesh melted the permafrost beneath it.
The remaining Runners froze. Alpha dead. Hierarchy broken.
They didn't attack. They scrambled backward, hissing in fear. The horde retreated down the stairwell into the dark.
[System Alert:] [Boss Enemy Defeated: Mutated Security Chief (Level 3 Elite).] [XP Gained: 2000.] [Level Up! You are now Level 4.]
[Loot Dropped: Territory Token (Class: Residential).]
Alex stood amidst the carnage. Breath invisible. A small, glowing hexagonal chip hovered over the smoking remains.
He snatched it out of the air. Cold. Pulsing with a rhythmic blue data stream.
[Territory Token] Effect: Claims ownership of a structure. Range: 1 Building Unit.
Unlocks: Base Management System.
"Finally."
He didn't crush it.
The token pulsed against his palm, heavy with data, demanding to be activated. But doing it here, in a frozen, corpse-filled hallway, felt wrong. This was the heart of the battle, but not the heart of the territory.
"Not here," Alex whispered, clenching his fist around the chip. "I need to be at the core."
He looked up at the ceiling where he had welded the plate shut.
"Luna," he spoke into his comms. "Open the hatch. I'm coming up."
He fired a grapple line into the vent shaft. The winch screamed, hauling him up through the bypass he had created earlier.
Back in the guest room of the Penthouse, the secure door hissed open.
Luna rolled out. Her face was pale. Her eyes went wide as she stared at the blood dripping from his armor.
"Is... is it over?" she whispered.
Alex looked at the holographic schematic of the building now floating in his vision. He saw the red dots of the remaining Ghouls fleeing the premises. He saw the potential.
He turned to Luna. The Inferno Gauntlet still glowed faintly with residual heat. His expression was void of comfort.
"No."
He held up the glowing Territory Token in his hand.
"Get your tools. We're turning this tomb into a fortress."