Alex descended, watching the humidity of Floor 15 die against the creeping cold of the stairwell.
Floor 10. Floor 5. By the time he reached the Ground Floor, frost had coated his gas mask lenses, turning the world into a blurred haze of grey.
The basement door lay on the marble tiles—or what was left of it. The steel hadn't been forced open; it had been melted. Warped metal rested in a puddle of yellow, steaming slag that bubbled and popped faintly in the silence.
Alex stopped, tightening the straps of his Inferno Gauntlet and checking the seal on his MK12.
"Luna," he rasped into the comms. "Crossing threshold. Signal might degrade."
"Copy," Luna's voice crackled, filtered through the interference. "The heat spike is massive. B1 reads 38°C with 95% humidity. It's a rainforest down there."
"How?" Alex asked, looking at the frost on his shoulder. "It's minus sixty outside."
"Insulation," Luna replied, analyzing the data. "The biomass reading is off the charts. It's lining the walls like fiberglass, trapping the colony's metabolic heat and the residual warmth from the Geothermal Pylon. It's a self-sustaining ecosystem."
"It's a stomach."
Alex stepped through the melted frame.
The cold vanished instantly, replaced by a wet, biological heat that slapped him like a physical blow. The air tasted of rotten eggs, ammonia, and old urine.
He went deeper.
Squelch.
His boots hit the B1 landing, but there was no sound of concrete.
A yellow-green biomass carpeted the floor, inches thick and pulsing like a lung lining. Mucus dripped from the walls, sizzling wherever it touched the ground.
He clicked his weapon light on. The beam cut through the rising steam to reveal the Riverside Gardens garage—once home to Bentleys and Ferraris, now a graveyard of luxury.
It was a hatchery.
A red Ferrari 488 sat near the entrance, its convertible top down. The interior was filled with translucent, gelatinous spheres the size of beach balls. Dark shapes twitched inside the amniotic fluid. Biomass had swallowed the tires and was already digesting the aluminum chassis.
"Expensive nest," Alex muttered.
He moved carefully, stepping on "dry" patches where the fungus looked less reactive. Perception 3.0 fired a headache warning at the base of his skull. Spores choked the air; without his high-grade Constitution, his lungs would have melted minutes ago.
A sound echoed from the VIP corner.
Hhhhuuuh... Hhhhuuuh...
Wet, ragged breathing.
Alex killed the light and flipped to thermal vision. The garage lit up in angry shades of orange and red. He stalked toward pillar B-12, where a cocoon hung from the wall, suspended by hardened resin ropes.
A face protruded from the wax—Neighbor 502. The man who used to leave passive-aggressive notes in the elevator.
He was alive.
His skin was translucent and grub-pale. His eyes were wide, darting frantically in the dark. Resin webbed his mouth, and his nose flared with desperate breaths.
"Mmmph! MMMMPH!"
502 saw Alex. Recognition flashed in his eyes, followed by a surge of hope. He thrashed, but his limbs were fused to the wall.
Alex didn't cut him down. Instead, he turned his flashlight back on.
"Quiet."
He shone the beam on 502's torso. The wax was transparent there. Under the bruised skin of the man's stomach, lumps were moving. Dozens of them. Writhing, fighting for space.
Incubator.
The colony didn't just eat people. It used them.
502 looked down, seeing his own belly ripple. The hope vanished instantly, broken by horror. Tears mixed with the slime on his face. He looked back at Alex, no longer begging for rescue, but for the end.
"Mmm... k-kill..." Muffled sound leaked through the resin.
Alex calculated quickly. Rescue was impossible. The larvae had likely tapped into major arteries. Cutting the sac would release the parasites.
"Paperwork confirmed."
He raised the MK12, pressing the suppressor against the man's heart, right through the resin.
502 closed his eyes in gratitude.
Pfft.
One round. The chest popped, and the thrashing stopped. The body slumped in its wax coffin.
[System Notification] [Mercy Kill Performed] [XP: +10]
Alex pulled back, wiping the blue slime from his suppressor onto his pants. "Waste of a bullet."
Suddenly, a sharp whine came from the wall, like a hydraulic line bursting.
SSSS-THWIP.
A neon-green glob shot from the ceiling, missing Alex by inches and striking the pillar instead.
SIZZLE.
The concrete smoked and bubbled as acid ate a fist-sized crater into the stone. The fumes smelled of concentrated hydrochloric acid.
Alex rolled, hitting the deck behind a ruined G-Wagon, his rifle snapping up.
"Ambush."
Movement scurried across the ceiling.
Hanging upside down was a creature with a flat, mottled yellow-brown shell. Hooked legs clung to the fungal mat, and its abdomen glowed a toxic green.
[Enemy Detected: Acid-Spitter Roach (Level 4)] [Attack: Corrosive Bile] [Danger: High Armor Penetration]
The creature chattered, its mandibles dripping green saliva that pitted the floor below. More lights flickered on in the vents and shadows of the luxury cars. The hatchery was waking up.
Spat.
Another glob of acid struck the G-Wagon, dissolving the armored glass with a sound like meat hitting a hot grill. Alex peeked out. Four Spitter Roaches clung to the ceiling, their abdomens pulsing in sync.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
Green bile shotgunned the area.
Alex scrambled low, his boots slipping on the slick fungal mat. One glob clipped his shoulder.
FZZZT.
Smoke choked him—the smell of burning hair and melting plastic. He glanced at his pauldron. The Chitin Plating was bubbling, the grey metallic sheen turning into soft, black sludge that ran down his arm.
[System Warning] [Armor Integrity Compromised] [Corrosive Damage Detected] [Chitin Durability: 85%... 80%...]
"Chemistry beats biology," Alex muttered through gritted teeth.
He slid behind a concrete barrier as acid ate through the rebar inches from his ear. They had the high ground, the range, and the armor-piercing spit.
Alex checked the M203.
"Let's try physics."
He popped up, but he didn't aim at the roaches. They were too fast, skittering shadows between the ducts. Instead, he aimed at the ceiling—directly at the cluster of glistening, pulsating egg sacs.
THUMP.
The launcher kicked against his palm. The 40mm High-Explosive round spiraled into the dark and impacted the center of the egg cluster.
BOOM.
The ceiling detonated.
Fire mixed with the fluid shockwave. The blast ruptured hundreds of incubation sacs simultaneously. Orange flame boiled the yellow amniotic slime, and the concussion ripped the Spitters off the fungal mat. They fell like wet stones, shrapnel from their own unhatched kin shredding their soft underbellies.
One crashed onto the Ferrari hood, screeching as it flipped onto its back, legs flailing.
Alex wasted no time. He stepped out, MK12 raised.
Bang. Bang.
Two rounds to the head. The roach stopped twitching. The others scrambled in the slime, disoriented, wings broken.
Alex advanced, the launcher raised again.
Recoil slammed into his palm again... CRACK.
The second grenade hit the floor. Shrapnel tore through the mottled shells, spraying green acid blood across the walls to mix with the fire.
[System Notification] [Target Eliminated: Acid-Spitter Roach x4] [XP: +600] [Target Eliminated: Larval Cluster x200] [XP: +200]
The garage fell silent, save for the wet plop of slime dripping from the ruined ceiling.
Alex walked to the nearest carcass. The acid sac on its back was glowing and intact. He pulled his knife.
"Luna needs toys."
He carved the carapace open, steel biting into the yellow shell. The smell of vinegar burned his nose as he extracted the gland—a translucent, green bladder the size of a canteen. It was warm, heavy, and sloshing with liquid death.
[Loot Acquired: Volatile Acid Gland] [Grade: Rare] [Usage: Crafting / Alchemy]
He harvested four of them, his inventory humming as it accepted the items.
Checking his shoulder, he saw the Chitin Plating had stopped smoking, though the surface was pitted and scarred deep. Calories would fix it later.
He looked at the ramp leading down to B2.
Heat radiated from the dark, and the biomass on the walls grew thicker, throbbing with a heartbeat that shook the floor.
"B1 cleared," Alex whispered. "Just the lobby."
He reloaded the M203.
"Going down."