CHAPTER 19: UNDER THE SKIN OF THE EARTH [2]

DING!

~----~

[Improvisation Draw Activated!]

[Improvised Gear: Quick Foam Sealant!]

Dual-canister foam that expands on contact, neutralizes mild acids, seals breaches and gaps. Hardens in 6 seconds.

~----~

Ethan popped the caps with his thumbs and sketched a line with the foam along a low arch, creating a lip that diverted the spray.

He tossed the second canister to Holt, who caught it and sealed the vents they’d just dropped through. The hiss went from rain to drizzle to angry spitting.

A second pulse came... this time lower and heavier.

The Detector pinged. Movement!

The arrived like rumors, climbing head-first down the columns, sliding along the webs overhead, easing from holes they’d chewed in the walls.

Not the brutes from the bridge, not the fast flankers from the gully. These were mid-sized, sinew and blades, with forelimbs that split at the elbow into two hooked scythes and a crown of sensory fronds that tasted the air.

Their eyes were a solid white, yet they moved with certainty.

"They’re the handlers’ guard," Holt said, his voice tight.

"They move with the hum," Mira breathed. "It’s telling them where we are".

"Then we silence it," Reid said. "Ethan?"

The Wheel didn’t wait for fear this time. It spun rapidly like it wanted blood.

DING!

~----~

[Improvisation Draw Activated!]

[Improvised Ability: Resonance Baffle!]

Creates a 6 meter field that phase-shifts incoming acoustic pulses, scrambling echolocation and hive signals.

Duration: 25 seconds. Movement within field must be deliberate to maintain cohesion.

~----~

Ethan threw the baffle like a card.

It unfolded midair into a thin, rippling disc that hummed a counter-note, soft and stubborn.

BZZZ!

The next pulse hit and bent around them, sliding off into the columns. The crown-fronds of the nearest creatures shivered in confusion.

"Go," Reid ordered. "Right column, then low tunnel. We ghost".

They moved through the nursery with predatory patience. Jonas carried his bulk like a whisper, while Kara’s spear tip drew thread-thin lines in membrane that sealed behind her with a sigh.

Holt picked a path that didn’t splash and didn’t squelch.

Mira cupped the air and shaped their heat into a smear instead of a spotlight. For twenty five seconds, they were wrong notes in a song that didn’t know how to catch them.

At twenty four seconds, the baffle fluttered.

At twenty five, it died.

Then the hum came back like a held breath released as every crown-frond in the chamber turned.

"Run," Reid said, already moving.

The first attacker dropped on Kara like a noose. She pivoted under it, her spear shaft taking the impact, then she snapped the butt up into the soft seam under its jaw.

Jonas caught another mid-leap and piledrove it into the floor so hard the sac beside them burst, flooding the ground with lukewarm amniotic jelly and a half-formed thing that tried feebly to crawl before Kara spiked it still.

Ethan threw himself sideways as a scythe-limb sliced the air where his face had been, carving a humming line in the light.

He fired the Grapple into a column, swung, and in the swing let the Wheel go again.

DING!

~----~

[Improvisation Draw Activated!]

[Improvised Gear: Arc – Cutter Line!]

Monofilament laced with current. Anchors to a surface and slices taut path through soft tissue. 9 meter reach.

~----~

Ethan reacted immediately, clipping the line to the Grapple, snapping it taut across a cluster of lunging bodies, and pulled.

The wire sang a quiet fury.

The first two creatures came apart at the waist with a wet, surprised hitch; a third lost both scythe-forearms and collapsed, spasming, black bile spraying in stuttering arcs.

"Stairs!" Holt shouted, pointing.

Not exactly stairs; rather, it was chitin ridges descending to a lower gallery, like a balcony turned inside out.

They fell back in formation, Jonas the wall, Kara the blade that kept eyes off throats. Mira finally spent a sliver of wind to shove a falling membrane sheet aside before it draped over Reid.

The sheet slapped into a column and stuck there, wriggling like a jellyfish trying to remember how to be dangerous.

The ridges took them down into a gallery that circled a void.

Below, the nursery fell away into a pit lit by a heart-sized glow. The hum was strongest here; not loudest, but purest, an unbroken tone that filled the spaces in bones.

At the far side of the gallery, a shape waited.

It stood on two legs.

It was wrong to call it human. But it was close enough that Ethan’s brain rebelled before it accepted the truth.

It had a body plan; torso, arms, and a head that mimicked a man. But the skin was a map of plated seams and living sutures, and where a face should have been there was a mask grown from the same amber that lit the columns, veined with slow light.

Two long, backward-bent limbs, and a second pair of legs or some stabilizing struts anchored into the floor behind it like a root system.

At its back, the membranes converged into a mantle that pulsed in rhythm with the hum.

The handlers’ prints led to it and ended there.

It tilted its head at them. Then it spoke.

"..."

For a moment, a shocked silence reigned.

It didn’t speak words, but a chord. The hum changed; a modulation like a key shift, and the entire nursery flinched.

Creatures froze mid-leap, adjusted, then began to rush in patterns.

No longer swarming, not rushing. Now, they moved in formations; lanes opened, angles closed. The gallery was suddenly a board and they were pieces and something else was playing.

"Conductor," Mira whispered, voice breaking. "What the actual hell?! I-it’s... conducting!"

Reid raised his blade. "Break the baton".

"Copy," Kara said, and launched forward.

WHOOSH!

The Conductor did not move. It sang.

The air thickened in front of Kara as if the hum itself had weight; she hit it like a wall and snapped into a slide, spear stabbing low. But a scythe-creature was there before the spear closed the distance, its forelimbs crossing like scissors to catch the shaft.

Jonas plowed into that one and took it and the one behind it over the rail in a tumble of limbs and roars.

"Ethan!" Reid barked, eyes never leaving the Conductor. "Cut its voice!"

The Wheel knew what he meant.

It spun... faster than ever before.

It spun with a hunger that felt like the first time he’d breathed after almost drowning.

DING!