The fog screamed, and the pack answered.
Fifty hounds hit them from every direction at once. The transport shuddered as shapes slammed into steel, claws raking, jaws snapping, the shriek of metal drowning beneath the howls. Jinx barely got his shotgun up before the first one crashed through the viewport.
Glass sprayed. Cold air flooded the cabin. And then there was only noise.
"CONTACT LEFT!" Twitch's voice cracked through the chaos. "RIGHT! ABOVE—"
Boiler's steam-cannon roared. The concussive blast punched a hole through the fog, sent three hounds tumbling backward in a spray of gore and ash. But for every one that fell, two more came. They poured over the transport like water, all teeth and yellow eyes and fingers that had become claws.
Varris swung. His hammer caved in a skull. Another hound lunged; he caught it by the throat and threw, bones crunching as it hit the hull. His hammer came back around—crack—and something wet splattered across Jinx's visor.
'Move. Move, you useless—'
A claw raked across his shoulder. He screamed, spun, fired. The shotgun's kick slammed him backward. The hound's chest opened in a bloom of red mist.
And then Craw started laughing.
---
Heat rolled across the killing ground like a furnace door had swung wide. And someone had forgotten to close it.
Craw's hands blazed orange-white, fingers spread wide as he shoved both palms into the nearest hound's face. The skull melted. Bone ran like candle wax. Eyes popped and sizzled. The thing didn't even have time to scream before its brain boiled out through its ears.
"Yes! Yes!" The Lieutenant's voice had gone shrill, ecstatic. He was dancing through the combat, grabbing hounds by their snapping jaws and cooking them from the inside out. Smoke poured from every kill. The stench of charred meat mixed with ash and sulfur until Jinx's eyes watered.
A hound caught fire and kept running. It crashed into the transport's fuel line. Sparks. A flash of heat.
"Craw! The wagon—!" Varris's shout cut off as he blocked another lunge.
Too late. The burning hound thrashed against the hull, spreading flames across the metal. Suture cursed, abandoned her saw, ripped a tarp from the supply rack. She beat the fire down with it, ash-soaked canvas smothering the flames, while Craw didn't notice. Craw didn't care. He was already on to the next kill, hands plunging into another body, laughing as the heat haze rippled around him like visible joy.
'He's going to kill us all.' The fire was spreading. The hounds kept coming. And Craw was having the time of his life.
---
It happened too fast to track.
One moment he was reloading, fumbling shells with shaking fingers, pressure gauge in the yellow, come on come on, and then a hound lunged at his face. Claws extended. Jaws wide. Close enough that he could count the teeth.
He ducked.
The claws missed.
Twitch screamed.
Jinx spun. The scout was on his knees, staring at his left arm. Or where his left arm had been. Blood pumped from the stump in arterial spurts, painting the ash crimson. His goggles had cracked. His mouth hung open, no sound coming out anymore. Just that blank, empty stare.
'No. No, I dodged. I moved. I—'
He hadn't touched Twitch. Hadn't been near Twitch.
But the arm was gone.
Suture was there in an instant, tourniquet appearing from somewhere, bone-saw clinking against her belt. She didn't ask questions. Didn't hesitate. Just tied off the stump with the efficiency of a butcher sectioning a carcass.
Varris's eyes found Jinx across the chaos. Held for one second. Two.
Something cold settled in Jinx's stomach.
'He knows.'
A hound lunged at his throat. He sidestepped, reflex, pure animal instinct.
And Boiler staggered.
The Heavy's breastplate buckled inward. Metal screamed as claws punched through steel that should have stopped them. Boiler didn't cry out. Didn't falter. Just adjusted his stance, leveled the cannon, and fired again. But his cooling suit was sparking now. Hydraulics hissing. Something cracked under the bent plate.
Two deaths. Two saves.
'Don't look at them.' The familiar guilt coiled in his stomach. 'Don't let them see you looking.'
He'd known. Of course he'd known. He'd known since the first time someone standing next to him took a blow meant for his throat. The Stigmata didn't care about fairness. It just moved the harm, shuffled it like cards in a rigged deck, and someone else always drew the losing hand.
But if anyone found out...
Jinx forced his eyes away from Twitch's stump. Varris was still watching. Still calculating. 'He suspects. He doesn't know. Keep it that way.'
His hands were shaking again. He couldn't make them stop.
---
The guns went silent.
Not because they'd run out of targets. Not because they'd won. The hounds were still there: dozens of yellow eyes glinting in the smoke and ash, silhouettes low, circling at the edge of the firelight.
They'd stopped because he was moving.
Desmond Price stepped off the transport.
The ash crunched beneath his boots. A normal sound. But something else groaned with every step, deep, structural, like the earth itself was protesting. His skin had changed. The black had taken on a metallic sheen, catching the firelight like polished iron. His joints creaked. His bones groaned.
He'd gotten heavier.
The hounds noticed. Some of them pulled back, not fleeing, just deferring. Making room. Whatever pack instinct drove them recognized what Jinx was only now understanding:
There was a bigger predator here now.
Craw stopped laughing. His burning hands lowered. Even he watched.
A hound lunged. Fast. Desperate.
Desmond caught it by the throat.
His fingers closed. The bones crunched—wet, immediate, like a man crushing an egg. He didn't throw it. Didn't need to. Just let go, and the corpse dropped at his feet.
Another one came. He turned, slow, deliberate, and punched.
His fist went through the skull.
Gore sprayed. The hound kept moving for half a step, momentum carrying what was left of its body forward before it collapsed. Desmond pulled his arm back, dripping red, fragments of bone clinging to his skin, and moved to the next one.
No weapons. No Stigmata tricks. Just mass and violence.
'A steel beast.' The words came unbidden. Watching Desmond Price tear through the pack wasn't like watching a fight. It was like watching something wearing a man's shape finally stop pretending.
Three more fell. Then five. Then the pack started retreating, not running, but pulling back, circling wider, making space.
The General walked through the kill zone like a man taking a stroll. His face hadn't changed. Not rage. Not satisfaction. Nothing.
He was working.
---
The pack went silent.
Not retreating — deferring.
The surviving hounds had stopped at the edge of the fog, yellow eyes unblinking, forms pressed low. Waiting. Watching something that wasn't Desmond.
The fog bank shuddered.
The smell hit first.
Not sulfur. Not ash. Something primitive. A musk so thick it coated Jinx's throat and made his lungs seize. Pheromones. Predator-stink concentrated to the point of physical force. His legs went weak. His bowels clenched. Every instinct screamed run, run, run even as his muscles locked in place.
The pack-beasts had smelled like danger. This smelled like death itself had a scent gland.
Something that hadn't been a hound for a very long time.
It stepped into the clearing.
Larger. Three times the size of the pack beasts, shoulders hunched, spine curved at an angle that shouldn't have been possible for something that had once been human. Its fur had fallen away in patches, revealing skin that had hardened into something like bark or chitin. Its eyes burned. Not yellow, but amber.
And they were looking directly at Desmond.
'It recognizes him. It knows what he is.'
The General tilted his head. His metallic skin caught the firelight.
"Interesting."
The beast answered with a roar that made the fog ripple.