Mike slid the multi-tool from his belt and flicked it open to the flattest blade. It was chipped and dulled from years of scraping oxidized metal, but it was what he had. His hand trembled as he extended it toward the crystal. It wasn't out of reverence, but from the creeping edge of fear that he was tampering with something that operated on different rules. He set the edge of the blade against the base of the crystal where it met the Celestial’s palm and applied gentle pressure.
Nothing.
He pressed harder. The blade skated off the surface with a screeching hiss and left not even the faintest scratch. "Of course," he muttered while gritting his teeth. He repositioned the blade and tried a different angle while putting more of his weight into it. On the third attempt, the multi-tool slipped completely, and the force of his push sent his hand down hard onto the crystal’s tip.
The sharp point pierced his thin glove and drove into the soft flesh just below the pad of his thumb. Pain lanced through his palm. It was white and instant. Mike yelped and jerked back while the multi-tool flew from his grip to clatter somewhere on the slag.
"Shit."
He grabbed his wrist with his other hand, his heart in his throat, expecting to see a neat puncture wound. Instead, he saw the crystal.
It was changing. The point embedded in his palm no longer looked hard. Its sharp facets were softening and edges blurring like ice under sudden heat. The rigid structure slumped and sagged against his skin. His first rational thought was that it was melting into him and that its material was reacting with his blood or his body heat. A scientist might have called it a phase transition, but Mike just called it wrong.
The second thought never finished forming because the crystal liquefied completely in the space of a heartbeat. What had been solid moments ago turned into a viscous, luminescent fluid that clung to his skin. The rest of it spilled from the Celestial’s palm onto his own. It was thick like sap and glowed from within, while being impossibly heavy for such a small volume. It ran sideways and upward with greedy intent, defying gravity to seek the puncture point it had made.
The sound of his own scream curdled in Mike's chest as the first tendril of that liquid forced its way into the wound. It was cold. Not the numbing cold of ice or night air, but a knife-cold. It was all edge and no mercy. It burned as it moved and seared a path up under his skin.
His fingers spasmed and curled into a claw. He tried to yank his hand away, but the fluid held fast and climbed his wrist in thin, glowing veins that pulsed in sync with his racing heartbeat. Each pulse felt like a punch from the inside. Then the rest of the scream tore free. It ripped out of him raw and echoed off the crater walls, only to bounce back at him distorted. The sound didn’t feel like it belonged to him, but the pain was his. Oh, it was his.
He watched, helpless, as the luminescent fluid burrowed under the surface of his skin. It moved like living roots or invasive circuitry, branching and splitting while leaving behind faint glowing lines that traced his veins. Where it passed, his flesh convulsed and muscles tightened hard enough to cramp. It ate him. That was how it felt, like something hungry was crawling through meat and bone and replacing parts of him with itself.
His mind skittered on the edge of hysteria. He tried to fling his arm away, smash it against the ground, or chew it off. Any instinct that promised escape would have done, but his body wasn't listening anymore. It was seized by its infiltrator and locked in a rictus of tremors.
Mike's vision blurred. Blackness crowded the edges then receded in and out with each rapid, shallow breath. Spots of electric blue and green danced across his field of view, overlaying the crater, the Celestial, and his own convulsing hand. Text flickered in front of his eyes. Not in the air, and not engraved on his retinas, but somewhere behind his sight, wormed into the way his brain processed information. Ghostly, glitching lines of data scrolled and snapped too fast to read at first.
INITIALIZING...
ERROR_███: HOST-ENVIRONMENT COMPATIBILITY < 0.03%
The letters were sharp and brutal, edged in the same sickly light that now traced his veins. Each one felt like a nail hammered through his thoughts. He tried to squeeze his eyes shut, but that didn’t help, as the text was on the inside. He squeezed harder anyway, and tears leaked out to sting where they met the dust on his cheeks.
His consciousness flickered then steadied. He was pulled back from the brink by a fresh wave of pain as the invasive fluid reached his forearm and then his shoulder. It coiled there and pooled like cold fire in the joint before surging upward along nerves and vessels toward his neck.
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His spine arched off the ground and his heels dug into slag. A whine built in his throat, high and thin. He could smell himself: burnt metal, scorched flesh, and something cleaner that didn’t belong in the Heap.
OVERRIDE: INITIATE EMERGENCY ADAPTATION PROTOCOL_Y-9.
Searching for viable integration pathway...
Scanning [GENETIC / NEURAL / ENVIRONMENTAL] parameters...
Each bracketed term pulsed like icons on an invisible interface. Another cascade of code followed, with lines jittering and many of them smeared out with static-like interference. He caught fragments.
WARNING: TARGET SPECIES BELOW MINIMUM SPECIFICATION.
WARNING: ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD LEVEL_████ EXCEEDS DESIGN LIMITS.
Searching for SUB-OPTIMAL SOLUTION...
Mike's chest hitched. The invasive cold-heat reached his throat and wrapped around it from the inside. For a terrifying second, he couldn’t breathe at all. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint. You’re dying, he thought. Good. It’ll stop hurting.
But then air rasped back in, harsh and rusty, and with it came a new layer of sensation. A crawling itch began beneath his skin like a thousand tiny legs scratching at his insides. His fingertips tingled and his ears buzzed.
ADAPTATION PATHWAY FOUND: [PARASITIC / VERMIFORM / SCAVENGER-TIER].
Initiating CLASS-SEED deployment...
The words CLASS-SEED slammed into his awareness with a weight that had nothing to do with understanding. They felt important and capitalized in a way no one in Sector 4 ever wrote anything. Memories of stories bubbled up disjointed, tales traded in the dark between coughing fits. Old legends of the Before, when people had Classes and Systems and numbers that meant power. He’d half-thought they were fever dreams from moldy water.
His body jerked as a new burst of cold knifed into his chest, then radiated outward in fine branching patterns. He could feel it threading through his ribcage and coating his lungs like frost. He coughed once. Wet blood splattered his lips and mixed with rust-dust.
SYSTEM BOOTSTRAP: PARTIAL.
CORE-FUNCTIONALITY: 3.7%
Assigning compatible Class archetype...
Searching local ecologies...
MATCH FOUND.
Something skittered just beyond the crater’s edge. Mike's hearing sharpened abruptly, with pain hitching for a fraction of a second as his attention was forced outward. He heard the faintest rustle of metal, the drip of distant sludge, and the soft flutter of tiny wings somewhere high above. He also heard the distinct, measured clack of claws on steel.
Closer this time.
[CLASS_???? [DATA UNREADABLE] DOWNGRADED TO:]
[VERMIN TAMER]
[,Sub-tier Acclimation Instance: lv. 0,]
[ERROR: Skill libraries corrupted.]
[ERROR: Attribute matrices incomplete.]
[Proceed with degraded configuration? (Y/N)]
...
[AUTO-CONFIRM (Y).]
The title hung in front of his ruined vision, stark and absurd. Vermin Tamer. He would have laughed if he could move his mouth. Of course. Of course the universe gave him trash.
A tremor ran through his entire body as something deep within him settled like machinery slotting into place. The pain didn’t stop, but it changed quality. It went from raw invasion to a steady, drilling ache, as if whatever had burrowed into him was now expanding and testing its new home.
At the edges of his perception, new threads tugged. He became abruptly aware of things he’d ignored his whole life. The faint chittering static of rat-things nesting under a nearby panel. The sluggish minds of filter-feeders chewing through the chemical-rich sludge at the crater’s periphery. The thin, quivering alertness of a dozen tiny, unseen bodies in the shadows, watching, waiting, and ready to scuttle.
They felt like knots in a net. Points he could tug on if he just reached for them.
Something moved at the top of the crater, cutting across the rancid light. The clack of claws on metal grew louder and was no longer cautious. Mike dragged his gaze up. Every inch was a struggle. His muscles twitched uselessly and his limbs felt like they were filled with sand. He could just barely tilt his head enough to see the ridge.
A Scrap-Wolf stood silhouetted there.
It was larger than the one he’d seen earlier, if it was even a different one. Its flanks rose and fell in heavy, deliberate breaths while the warped slits along its sides opened and closed with a deep, rumbling rasp. The thick, rope-like tendons along its neck pulsed faintly and hummed with some barely-contained force running beneath its skin. Its muzzle lifted and nostrils flared as it took in the scents below: hot metal, alien ozone, blood, and fear.
Its red eyes locked onto his prone form at the crater’s center. The Celestial’s corpse beside him seemed suddenly insignificant. The wolf’s lips peeled back from its steel-hook teeth in what might have been a grin. Mike tried to move. He tried to roll or crawl or do anything. His body replied with a twitch and a convulsion, and then nothing. The cold fire in his veins held him like shackles mid-integration.
[WARNING: HOST-MOBILITY SUSPENDED DURING CLASS-SEED BINDING.]
[EST. TIME TO STABILIZATION: ██.██ seconds.]
[WARNING: EXTERNAL THREAT DETECTED.]
[Recom,##% ERROR: NO DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS INSTALLED.]
The wolf took a step down the crater wall, its metal claws finding purchase in the slag. Then another. Each movement was fluid, predatory, and easy. It advanced slowly, savoring the approach. Its gaze never left him.
Mike's fingertips curled helplessly in the dirt. Inside his skull, the new net of awareness trembled. Small, skittering minds tugged in alarm at the approaching predator. The rats. The slugs. The flies. Vermin.
Vermin Tamer, the System had said.
He bared his teeth against another wave of pain and reached blindly for anything or anyone that might move when he could not. The Scrap-Wolf descended step by deliberate step. The shadow of its jaws fell over him as the System’s glitching text flickered and steadied and the cold burrowed deeper.
