Smoke still hung in the air, curling around Thariel’s fractured smoldering corpse littered with plasma slugs. No one spoke. John stood over his body, heart hammering against his ribs like a warning drum. He had to remind himself to breathe.

  The chamber felt too quiet. Something about it was too final. Samantha knelt nearby, holding her side where Thariel’s blade had kissed her armor. Blood streaking down Rhea’s cheek.

  “Did you really just kill him?” Samantha muttered, afraid to break the silence as if that might bring Thariel back to life.

  John didn’t answer right away. His fingers trembled as he activated his wristband and raised it over Thariel’s form. A soft blue halo circled Thariel’s body.

  “Scan complete,” Sasha’s voice echoed from his ear. “Biometric march: Thariel’s host. Confirmed. Logging subject as deceased. Updating to SPECTRE intelligence database.”

  The words didn’t feel real.

  “Say it again,” John said.

  “He’s dead, Arbiter,” Sasha said.

  Rhea raised her brow, confused. “He is dead dead. Right?”

  Sasha spoke again. “Thariel’s host is dead. We need to find his Hyperion and confirm that it has been deactivated.”

  “Are you telling me there's a chance he is still alive?” John asked.

  “You have to be joking,” Sam said.

  “Hyperions are a resilient species,” Sasha said. “Hosts link to Hyperions in ways we can’t understand. We know a Hyperion dies when its host body dies. Most of the time, the trauma from losing a host is fatal.”

  “Most of the time?” John said.

  “Yes. There have been a few instances in history where that has not been the case. That is why we must confirm that Thariel’s Hyperion is also deceased.”

  John nodded, but his eyes were on something else—Thariel’s ring.

  It lay beside his boot.

  Rhea spoke up, her voice hoarse. “What about the ring?”

  John knelt and picked it up. It was warm. It had its own pulse, faint but steady. He turned it over in his palm and squinted at the fine circuitry lines etched into the metal. He tried slipping it onto his finger—it resisted, then slid down easily.

  Nothing happened.

  He tapped the side of it.

  Still, nothing happened.

  Samantha walked over, wiped the blood from her cheek. “May I?”

  John hesitated. Then took it off and placed it in her gloved hand.

  Samantha turned it once, twice, then looked at the Idol. She stepped toward the pillar.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Samantha, be careful,” John warned.

  “I just want to try something.”

  She approached slowly, every footstep cautious. The pillar shimmered faintly as if heat warped the air around it.

  She pressed the ring against its surface.

  The ring flew out of her hand and snapped to the Idol with a magnetic jolt. The ring glowed— so did the pillar.

  Then, heat surged through the room like an exhaling furnace.

  “Move!” John shouted.

  John, Rhea, and Sam bolted back, shielding their faces. The pillar glowed white-hot. The Idol vibrated so intensely that it blurred. Then, it crusted over with a strange black soot.

  The entire structure shrieked like metal twisting in agony. And then, the sound stopped and the pillar turned to black ash and crumbled like brittle charcoal. The ring fell into the ash.

  John stood still, his heart hammering all over again.

  “...What was that?” he whispered.

  No one had an answer.

  The first scream didn’t sound human. But neither did it sound entirely Braccari. It came from the tunnel mouth behind them—it was wet and warped as if something had been forcibly reshaped.

  John barely had time to raise his Scorcher before the first creature hit the wall beside him with a sickening crunch, flailing as if unsure whether to attack or flee. Its carapace was blistering, splitting almost along the ridges. Fungal tissue gushed from its joints like pulped fruit. It shrieked—then lunged.

  John shot it in the throat.

  The blast lit the tunnel with a searing orange. The Braccari’s head snapped back, its body crashing into the ground in a convulsion. Before the echo died, four more came rushing from the dark—some lurching, other twitching, two of them fought each other mid-charge like rabid dogs confused about their purpose.

  “What is wrong with them?!” Samantha yelled as she opened fire, unleashing a trio of high-velocity slugs into one of the creature’s eye clusters. It collapsed in a steaming heap, only for another to leap onto its corpse and begin tearing it apart.

  “They’re breaking down,” Sasha said. “The infection—the mutation—it’s destabilizing their minds. It’s mutating them.”

  “We don’t have time for diagnostics!” Rhea snapped, pumping a shock round into the tunnel ceiling. Debris rained down on two of the creatures, pinning one and dazing another. “We move! Now!”

  “Selathe,” John barked, activating comms mid-sprint. “Hemingway, do you read? We need extraction!”

  The response came in sharp. “Copy, Arbiter. Reading your position. I can bring the ship within shuttle range in eight minutes. Hold fast!”

  “Noted,” John growled. “We’ll be there in five.”

  They sprinted through the narrowing tunnels—twisted bone halls pitted with slime and black mold. The deeper they went the more everything rotted. Braccari husks were half fused into the walls, eyes glazed with fungal cataracts. Some whispered in voices that sounded like children. Or was that just an illusion?

  They turned a sharp corner and were ambushed—three more Braccari dropped from the overhead alcoves, jaws splitting sideways, acid drool sizzling to the ground.

  Mid-step, John dropped to one knee and unloaded. His Scorcher hissed with low energy warnings. The plasma rounds cut through their chests like a lit match through paper.

  Rhea dragged Samantha behind a fungal cyst and laid down suppressing fire. “Where are they coming from?!”

  Sasha spoke. “Whatever hold the Idol had over them…the hive mind is fraying. They’ve lost cohesion.”

  “Then why are they still attacking us?” Samantha shouted.

  “Because they’re still breathing!” Rhea yelled.

  John ducked under a jagged claw swipe. He slammed a plasma grenade into the creature’s open chest cavity and rolled clear as it detonated. The blast tore the passage open—it revealed a faint, sacred light just beyond.

  “The egress tunnel,” Sasha said. “It leads directly to the exo-ridge. You’re almost there, Arbiter.”

  John pushed forward, teeth clenched. His boots kept slipping on ichor and shattered bone. “Go! Go!” he barked.

  The team surged into the final stretch, a long, rising corridor veined with Braccari growth—some of it still twitching. The walls narrowed.

  The noise behind them hadn’t stopped.

  John glanced back.

  Dozens of Braccari of every type, shrieking and distorted, started attacking each other. Others kept tailing them, determined to reach the humans at the front.

  “Sasha,” he growled. “Tell Selathe to hurry up!”

  “Heard you loud and clear,” Selathe Min responded, voice steely. “Hang on, Arbiter. Help is on the way.”