Rebirth looked different from above.
From the ledge, the Hatcheries weren't just a location; they were an ecosystem of misery. Thousands of translucent sacks hung from the tower walls like grapes in a vineyard designed by a madman. Each one glowed with a sickly, bioluminescent blue. Each one held a curled, drowning silhouette.
Thirty meters down, a sack popped.
A small figure tumbled out, maybe a child, screaming as it fell into the mist. Discussions of gravity ended abruptly in the wet dark below.
'A river of lungs,' Grigor thought, the sound of the collective drowning washing over him. It wasn't wind. It was the echo of a million people gasping for air they would never get.
He looked at his hands. Pale. Wrinkled. Shaking.
'I survived.'
The thought should have brought relief. It brought only a cold, chemical assessment.
'This isn't an afterlife. This is a factory.'
His palm throbbed. The phantom weight of the silver cat was still there, seared into his nerves, a ghost limb of ownership. He closed his fist around the emptiness.
'Anchor. I still have an anchor.'
For now.
---
Movement was agony. Stillness was death.
Grigor forced his legs to work. The ledge connected to a rusted metal walkway that wound around the tower, a service vein for the hive. The rain hammered his naked skin, smelling of sulfur and rot.
'Shelter. Heat. Clothing.'
The survival calculus was simple. He had nothing. He needed everything.
The walkway was slick with a paste of amniotic fluid and ash that squished obscenely between his toes. He moved carefully, hand on the wall, scanning for threats.
The sacks pulsed. Synchronized. The tower wasn't just holding them; it was feeding them. Or feeding on them.
He rounded a corner.
Three figures crouched ten meters away, huddled over a pile of rags.
'People. Civilization.'
The instinct was instant. Other humans meant allies. Safety in numbers.
"Hey!" He raised a hand, his voice raspy. "I need help. I don't know where—"
They turned.
Grigor stopped.
There were two men and a woman. The men wore rags stitched from leather that didn't match any animal he knew—patchwork greys and browns, stitched with what looked like sinew. Their skin was the color of old mushrooms.
The pile of rags between them wasn't rags at all. It was a torso. Half-eaten.
The woman was worse.
Built wide and low, she had the shoulders of a linebacker and a jaw that looked like it could crush cinderblocks. A missing ear. A milky eye. She smelled of fermentation: sour, yeasty rot that the rain couldn't wash away.
She wore a heavy leather pouch at her belt, stained black with grease. As Grigor watched, she reached inside, pulled out a wet, purple lump, and bit into it like an apple.
'She's eating it raw,' Grigor's mind recoiled. On Earth, this was madness. Here, it was lunch. 'A liver. She's carrying a liver in a pouch.'
The hunger in her eyes wasn't desperate. It was casual. That terrified him more than the violence.
The third figure was smaller. A boy, maybe twelve, crouched apart from the others. He wasn't eating. He was watching. His eyes were wrong—too still, too patient. The eyes of something that had been twelve years old for a very long time.
"I'll give you my liver for a good mating," the woman said to the wiry man beside her, not looking up from her meal. Her voice was wet gravel. "Just this once."
The wiry man spat. "My rod would rot."
The woman laughed, a gargling, drowning sound. Bits of organ clung to her teeth. Then she saw Grigor.
All three heads locked onto him. Not his face. His body. His thighs. His ribs. The soft, unhardened fat of his stomach.
The wiry man whistled. Sharp. Commanding.
The boy's head snapped to attention. He didn't look at the man; he waited for the signal. A dog waiting for the release command.
'The child isn't a leader,' Grigor realized. 'He's a hound. A pet.'
"Fresh one," the woman crooned. A gap-toothed smile split her face, liver-juice running down her chin. "Look at him, Soren. Still got fat. Dibs on the kidneys."
The wiry man shifted. He held a length of rusted rebar bent into a hook. The boy produced a sharpened femur from somewhere—human, by the size. His first weapon. His training tool.
'Wolves,' Grigor thought. 'They are a pack of wolves in human skin.'
Grigor ran.
---
Running was stupid. The floor was slick. His feet had no traction.
Running was also the only option.
He sprinted down the walkway, slipping, catching himself, slipping again. Behind him, no shouts. No threats. Just the wet slap-slap-slap of pursuit.
'They're not rushing. They're herding me.'
The walkway branched. Left: darker, narrower, descending. Right: wider, brighter, curving upward. His instincts screamed for the light.
The ground here was rougher—dark red rock, pitted and uneven like the surface of a flayed muscle. Patches of mud made the footing treacherous. The whole structure felt organic, chaotic, like the interior of a massive ant-hill carved by desperation rather than design.
'Light means exposure. Dark means ambush. Pick your death.'
He went left.
The darkness swallowed him. The pursuit sounds faded. For three heartbeats, he thought he'd lost them.
Then he smelled it. Old meat. Rotting sweetness.
The corridor wasn't built; it was excavated. Hewn from the rock with crude tools, the walls jagged and weeping moisture. It wasn't just a path. It was a larder.
Hooks had been driven into the stone ceiling. From them dangled regarding things that had once been people. Legs. Arms. A torso with the ribs splayed open like a cabinet, the cavity stuffed with something that looked like salt or moss. Some were fresh, still dripping onto the rocky floor. Some were dried, distinct and leathery, cured by the sulfurous air.
A shiver racked Grigor's spine. Not cold. Primal rejection.
'Storage. I ran into their storage.'
Behind him, the woman's voice echoed down the passage. "He went for the pantry, Kiv. Smart little meat. Knows where the food is."
Laughter. Getting closer.
Grigor pushed forward, ducking under hanging limbs, his shoulder brushing against a calf muscle that swung like a side of beef. The walkway opened into a corridor between sack clusters. Faces pressed against the membranes on either side—mouths open in silent screams, eyes tracking his flight with desperate hope.
He didn't look.
His foot hit a puddle of mud. He went down hard, sliding into a stone pillar that knocked the wind out of him.
'Get up.'
His hand closed around a jagged bone on the floor.
'Weapon.'
A shadow detached itself from the darkness ahead.
The boy. He'd circled around. Faster than a child should move. Quieter than anything alive.
He didn't speak. Hadn't spoken since the encounter began. Grigor understood now—words were inefficient. Words were for beings who needed to negotiate. This thing didn't negotiate. It harvested.
The boy swung a sharpened femur at Grigor's legs.
'Tendons,' Grigor's brain screamed. 'He's grounding the meat. Standard cattle procedure. Hobble first, butcher second.'
Grigor twisted. The bone grazed his calf: pain, bright and clarifying.
'KILL THE SMALL ONE.'
He swung his own weapon for the throat.
He missed. The blow hit the boy's shoulder. The child absorbed it without sound, rolled, and came up with the femur already cocked for another strike. No wince. No hesitation. This wasn't a child. This was a predator that had stopped aging, stopped feeling, stopped being anything except hungry.
Heavy footsteps behind. The woman was humming a lullaby. Something about bones and marrow.
'No time. Odds: three on one. No weapons. No mobility advantage. Survival probability: declining every second.'
Grigor kicked the boy square in the chest.
The impact sent the child stumbling back, but he didn't hit the wall.
The boy recovered instantly. Head tilted. Watching. Not angry. Not hurt.
'Calculating. Learning. Filing this away for next time.'
Grigor ran.
Three steps.
The boy's hook caught the back of his knee. Not a strike. A pull.
Pain exploded up his leg—white-hot, electric, absolute.
"AAAAHH!"
Grigor screamed. He couldn't help it. The sound tore from his throat, raw and animal.
His leg folded like wet cardboard.
He hit the stone face-first. Teeth loosened. Blood filled his mouth.
He tried to push up. His leg didn't respond. The hamstring was gone. He could feel the muscle bunching uselessly near his hip.
'Mobility: zero.'
Heavy footsteps stopped above him.
Grigor rolled over.
The wiry man stood there, silhouetted against the blue glow. He held the rebar hook loosely. His expression was flat. Bored.
"Good cut, Boy," he said. Nebraska accent. Flat. "Clean through the string. You're getting better."
The woman loomed over him, grinning. "Dibs on the kidneys. You promised, Kiv."
"Take what you want, Bruna. Leave the calves. The Boy earned those."
Grigor clawed at the stone.
"Wait." Blood bubbled on his lips. "I can... I have..."
Kiv looked down.
"They all say that." He raised the hook. "Right before."