The air in Sector 4 was usually thick with the smell of frying grease and ozone. Tonight, through the sensory hairs of the cockroaches, it smelled of something else.

  Calculated violence.

  Mike sat in the center of his container with his body still and his breathing shallow. His mind was a fractured mosaic spread across a network of vermin patrolling the perimeter of the alleyway.

  He was watching the street corner three blocks away.

  Through the compound eyes of a blue-bottle fly resting on a rusted lamppost he saw them.

  A squad of four moved with professional silence. They were not the usual street thugs or low-level enforcers but men who wore the matte-black tactical armor of Riggs’ elite Cleaners. They avoided the puddles and scanned the rooftops as they advanced.

  But it was the fifth man who made Mike’s stomach turn cold.

  He was a Tech-Specialist hunched over a heavy handheld device that looked like a Geiger counter modified with crystal optics. A dish on the front of the device rotated slowly and clicked like a metronome.

  Click. Click. Click.

  The Specialist stopped and adjusted a dial. The dish swung left to lock onto the alleyway leading to Mike’s container.

  Click-click-click-click.

  The tempo increased. It was a heartbeat accelerating as it found its target.

  "Signature confirmed." The voice was distorted by a rebreather mask but the fly’s audio pickup caught the words clearly. "High-yield resonance. It is not just residual radiation sir. The source is active. It is pulsating."

  The lead Cleaner racked the slide of his heavy kinetic rifle. "Distance?"

  "Two hundred yards. The container stack behind the old filtration plant."

  "Standard containment," the leader ordered. "Flash-bangs first. If it moves you cripple it. If it does not you bag it."

  Mike snapped his eyes open. The fly’s vision vanished and was replaced by the dim and rusty interior of his home.

  "They are tracking the crystal," he whispered. His hand instinctively went to his chest.

  Riggs did not just want the body of the Celestial. He wanted the missing piece and he had the tech to sniff it out like a bloodhound.

  Mike stood up as panic flared in his chest. The urge to grab his bag and burst out the back door to run into the labyrinth of the Undercity was nearly overwhelming.

  No.

  The thought was sharp and foreign. It came from the crystal.

  Running is for prey. You are the apex.

  Mike looked around the container. This was a metal box and a coffin. If they breached the door he had nowhere to go.

  But it was also a chokepoint.

  "Two hundred yards," Mike muttered. "In this terrain that gives me ten minutes."

  He did not pack and he did not run. He went to work.

  He moved with a frantic and feverish energy. He dragged his heavy workbench across the floor and tipped it onto its side to create a barricade facing the main door. He grabbed sheets of corrugated scrap metal and wedged them into the gaps to create a funnel.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He was turning his home into a kill box.

  He reached out with his mind.

  Wake up.

  From the shadows beneath the floorboards his three Acid-Spitters emerged.

  He had created two more since the plaza incident which had burned through his reserves and nearly caused him to pass out. They were ugly and hissing things with green carapaces that gleamed in the low light.

  "Up," Mike commanded. He pointed to the ceiling rafters.

  The roaches obeyed and scuttled up the walls with unnatural speed. They wedged themselves into the darkness above the door with mandibles clicking and acid sacs pulsing.

  Hold fire, Mike projected. Wait for the signal.

  Next was the floor.

  He grabbed a handful of rusted intake pipes from his scrap pile. They were jagged and heavy iron tubes that he scattered in the narrow path he had created with the workbench. To a human they looked like trash but to an invading tactical team moving fast they were ankle-breakers.

  He needed more. He needed a bomb.

  He looked at the cage where he kept the volunteers. He had five normal roaches left.

  He grabbed the largest one.

  [Skill Activated: Bio-Detonate]

  The energy drained from him like a cold siphon in his gut. The roach began to swell and the green light ignited in its belly. It thrashed as its legs scratched against his skin.

  Mike did not flinch. He walked to the center of the kill zone right where the breach team would stack up and placed the glowing insect inside an empty fuel canister. He kicked the canister onto its side and aimed the open mouth toward the door.

  It was a shaped charge. It was a claymore mine made of meat and acid.

  "Stay," he hissed. The roach vibrated on the verge of critical mass and was held in check only by his willpower.

  He stepped back behind his workbench barricade.

  He was sweating profusely. His skin felt tight and his bones ached with a deep grinding throb. He wiped his forehead and his hand came away with something flaky.

  He looked at his arm.

  The skin on his forearm was not just dirty. It was changing.

  Patches of his flesh had turned a dark bruised grey. He scratched at one expecting it to bleed but it did not. It made a sound like a fingernail tapping against hard plastic.

  Click. Click.

  He pressed harder. The skin did not yield. It was rigid and segmented. A patch of chitin had formed over his radius bone and looked exactly like the armor plating of the roaches he had been consuming.

  The pain hit him then. It was a searing and itching fire that washed over his torso and shoulders. It felt like a thousand ants were biting him from the inside.

  Mike fell to his knees behind the barricade and gritted his teeth to keep from screaming. He could feel his skin tightening and drying and calcifying.

  [LEVEL UP!]

  [You are now Level 6.]

  [PASSIVE SKILL ACQUIRED: REINFORCED CARAPACE]

  Description: Dermal layers infused with bio-polymers. Increases resistance to laceration and blunt force trauma by 15%.

  He forced himself to stand. The pain subsided into a dull and manageable itch. He felt heavier and sturdier.

  He checked the time. Seven minutes had passed.

  They were close.

  He closed his eyes and pushed his mind out again to try and flood the alleyway with a wave of vermin. He wanted to summon every rat and every beetle and every crawling thing in a hundred-yard radius. He wanted to drown the Cleaners in a tide of teeth and claws.

  Come! All of you!

  He grabbed the minds of the sewer rats and the colony of ants in the wall. He grabbed the stray cat sleeping by the dumpster.

  A blinding white spike of pain drove itself into his temples.

  Mike cried out and clutched his head. The connection shattered. The rats scattered and the cat ran away.

  He fell back against the wall gasping with his nose bleeding.

  He had tried to hold too much. His brain was not a supercomputer but still human. He could not command an army of distinct individuals because the noise was too loud and the chaos was too great.

  He wiped the blood from his nose.

  "Quality," he muttered as he spat pink saliva onto the floor. "Not quantity."

  He could not use a swarm because a swarm was messy and distracting.

  He needed precise control. He focused on the three Acid-Spitters in the rafters. He focused on the Living Bomb in the fuel canister. He focused on two large rats he kept in reserve near his feet.

  Six minds.

  The connection snapped into place. It was crystal clear and high definition. He could feel the tension in the legs of the Spitter and the volatile heat of the Bomb.

  This was not a mob. This was a squad.

  Click-click-click.

  The sound came from outside the door. It was real sound this time and not a mental projection.

  Heavy boots crunched on gravel. There was the subtle whine of the scanner.

  "Signal is strong," a muffled voice said from the other side of the corrugated steel. "It is inside."

  "Breach charge," came the command.

  Mike crouched low behind his workbench. He pulled the shiv from his boot and gripped it in his newly armored hand. The grey chitin on his knuckles scraped against the metal handle.

  He checked his mental map.

  The Acid-Spitters were locked on the door. The Bio-Bomb was pulsing and ready to rupture.

  "Three," the voice outside counted down.

  "Two."

  Mike’s eyes glowed with a faint violet light in the shadows.

  "One."

  Welcome to the hive, Mike thought.

  BOOM.

  The door blew inward.