He shouldered through the last hatch, boots scraping across a glossy surface that was neither metal nor flesh. The chamber opened around him—broad, cathedral-high, lit by veins of bioluminescent color running the spectrum from bruised blue to electric green. Air cold and clean, no rot, no sticky organic stink. This place was untouched.

The Leviathan's core chamber. Sanctuary at the heart of hell.

Everything here radiated order, as if some final law still held sway inside these walls. Walkways curved in gentle spirals around a raised central platform, obsidian-black but shot through with neural gold. At the center floated the core itself: a crystalline mass the size of a small car, suspended in a web of living conduits and pulsing tendrils. Light flickered through it—purple, gold, amber—each pulse steady as a heartbeat.

A shimmer wrapped the platform—a membrane of force humming at the edge of vision. The barrier glowed with contained violence, like ozone before a storm. That was the objective: get to the console nestled against the base of the core and plug Kitt in deep.

Blake's jaw worked. For a moment he just stood there, hunched and breathing slow. His side throbbed where the med patch strained to keep up with blood loss. Every inch of him wanted to sit down right here on the deck and let someone else finish this.

But there was no one else.

He forced himself forward, limping a little as he crossed onto the first ramp. As he stepped out into open view—something moved above.

A mass dropped from the shadows on the far side of the chamber, shaking deck plates and making his vision flicker at the edges. It hit with a sound like metal shearing under impossible strain.

It looked almost like a man once—tall as an ogre, broad-shouldered—but fused all through with blackened armor plating and cords of meat gone gray-green. Extra arms sprouted from its flanks, some bone-white and spindly, others swollen with muscle. Half its face was a jagged mask of polished steel fused directly into exposed skull; what remained was stretched tight and wrong over too many teeth.

Wires trailed from its back, digging into pustules where tech met flesh. Where its heart should have been pulsed something black and luminous—a rotten star trapped behind ribs made from splintered alloy.

It charged at the barrier around the core console—a sudden explosion of motion for something so massive—and struck it with both fists balled together overhead. The impact thundered through the chamber. The field didn't buckle or even flicker; arcs of blue light danced up its surface, tossing back scorched hunks of biomass that steamed where they hit polished floor.

The thing screamed—not with fear or pain but wild frustration—then attacked again, hammering at the barrier with every limb in reach. Each blow bounced off with diminishing effect until it stood there panting thick vapor into empty air.

For a long moment it just stared at its reflection in that shimmering shield: not recognizing what it had become or refusing to care.

Then its head turned.

It saw Blake standing alone in that ring of light—bloodied but upright, body held together by stubbornness and borrowed time.

The thing cocked its head as if confused by this new arrival. Then it roared—a sound that seemed to tear at local space itself, distorting walls and warping gravity for an instant before fading back to silence.

It flexed all four arms in sequence—shoulders popping loud enough to echo—and spread them wide as if inviting Blake to make his move.

Black energy crawled along its veins and pooled between claws thick enough to crush skulls whole. It started forward with lurching steps that shook every walkway in turn, never taking those dead white eyes off him.

Blake watched all this happen—the posturing, reality-bending howls, muscle on display like some boss fight out of an old video game—and didn't move an inch except maybe for one eyebrow twitching higher than usual.

"This one likes theatrics," Kitt said.

Blake didn't answer her; didn't bother talking at all, instead just bringing up Verdict to sight in on the thing. It was one smooth motion—no drama in it at all—just another day on someone else's nightmare ship. He let his breathing steady, and on the exhale, slowly squeezed the trigger. Repeatedly.

Verdict spat the Displacer rounds in tight succession—the recoil from these special shots barely nudging his battered wrist. Five rounds, four to mark the quadrants of the monstrosity, and one for center mass.

Space broke open around each point of impact: reality folding inside-out for a heartbeat's duration. The monstrosity twisted violently mid-step; lines blurred and fractured across its entire form as though some cosmic hand had decided to reach down and pluck it out of existence.

It wasn't just death—not even destruction—but erasure so total nothing could have remembered what stood there moments before. Where muscle met armor now hung only rags of colorless fog; then even that went away too quickly for afterimages to catch up.

There was no time for drama or last words or any kind of spectacle; one moment it existed—the next there was only empty air swirling above black glass tiles—

—except for something left behind: a dense orb about fist-sized clattering onto tile and spinning once before settling against Blake's boot with an ugly clink.

He glanced down at it: the sphere was incongruously clean, a gleaming jet shot through with fibers of green and grey. It was probably valuable. He kicked at it, allowing it to roll off the platform and out of sight. He dismissed it entirely because nothing here mattered except what came next:

The barrier still held around that shining core console—the real target—the heart that needed saving or destroying depending which way fate bent tonight.

Blake started forward again: one foot after another, despite wounds protesting every step.

The barrier shimmered like water in sunlight. Blake placed his palm against it, felt warmth spread up his arm. No resistance. The field recognized him—or Kitt through him—and let his hand pass through.

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"Ready?" Kitt's voice held an odd note.

"Not really."

He stepped through. The air changed, became charged with potential. Each breath tasted like ozone and, oddly, slightly of mint.

The console waited: black glass and living metal merged into curves that followed no human design logic. Cables thick as his arm spiraled up from its base to join the mass of tendrils supporting the core.

"This will hurt," Kitt said. "You are NOT her pilot, and whether she wants to push back against you or not there's going to be… resistance."

Blake pressed his hand to the smooth surface. The console lit up gold beneath his palm—then pain shot through him like lightning. His muscles locked. The world went white at the edges.

Kitt's consciousness stretched away from his, drawn into the deep currents of the Leviathan's systems. The separation felt wrong, like an entire limb going suddenly numb. But he held on, kept his hand pressed flat while sweat ran down his face.

He stayed braced against the console until the pain burned itself out—sharp, white, needle-raw—then faded to a steady static hum in his bones. The air lost its taste of lightning. He pulled his hand back and stared at his palm: shaking, but not bleeding. Some part of him had expected more.

A mental nudge—soft as Kitt could manage—told him it was done. He could let go.

Blake slumped to the deck, armor scraping against obsidian that was almost warm now. He pressed his back to the nearest support strut and shut his eyes. Just a few breaths, he promised himself. That was all he'd take. The ground under him thrummed with the heartbeat of a living ship, quieter now, almost shy.

He felt hollowed out. His side pulsed beneath the triage patch; sweat beaded down his jaw and stuck in the week-old stubble on his throat. He let his head loll back and looked up into the swirling patterns on the ceiling: living tissue shot through with pale circuitry, all of it gently pulsing with borrowed light.

An intrusive scrap of memory: cold sand in Iraq, tracer fire turning the night into daylight, breath like knives in his lungs—he pushed it aside. Not now. Not here.

Kitt drifted at the edge of his mind, tired but alive. "It worked," she murmured inside his head, voice like water running over gravel. "The link is stable…for now."

He tried to answer but what came out was closer to a grunt.

They rested together like that for a minute—maybe two. He could almost forget where he was.

Then something wet and ragged sounded from below—impossible to mistake for anything but trouble. Blake tensed, eyes snapping open as he levered himself upright by sheer force of habit. It started quiet: a dragging, sucking noise under the catwalks that grew into an ugly rhythm.

He fumbled Verdict out from its holster with hands still shaking and edged toward the nearest railing.

The chamber below was a drop into violet-lit shadow, split by ramps and hanging cables tangled up with half-melted bone. Down there—the sphere he'd kicked away minutes before glimmered dully where it had come to rest beside a pool of something black and viscous.

The muck bulged around it as if reacting to breath or heartbeat or both.

It swelled up—a misshapen thing clawing its way back together out of cast-off flesh and shattered plating. The outsider-spawn he'd erased from existence was reforming around that core—a grotesque parody of resurrection as hunks of meat and metal snapped into place at angles never meant for biology or machinery.

A single arm jerked out first: too long, elbow bent backward, fingers sharp as blades where fingernails should have been. Then a leg: twisted sideways at the knee so it had to crawl on one joint while dragging itself upward with frantic determination.

It wasn't quick but it was relentless—scrabbling for purchase against exposed support beams as it began hauling itself hand over fist toward the catwalk's edge.

Blake wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. He didn't have many more hard-hitting tricks to play, especially if five consecutive [Displacer Rounds] weren't enough to keep this thing dead.

Kitt's voice returned—thin, tight with strain. "It's drawn to the core," she said. "If it gets close…"

"I get it." He could hear the fatalism in his tone.

He watched as the thing's mangled face turned upward: a mask slashed open where its jaw should have been, drooling some phosphorescent ooze onto decking that sizzled on contact.

Another arm sprouted from its side—a whipcord muscle ringed in metal wire—helping it haul up another meter before it slipped back down with an angry screeching noise that hurt Blake's ears in ways regular sound shouldn't have been able to manage.

A glance over his shoulder showed nothing but darkness behind; above him the core glimmered, tendrils twitching nervously toward their anchor point in reality.

The outsider-spawn lunged suddenly, all limbs flailing at once—it caught hold just beneath Blake's platform and started hauling itself up faster now, rage or hunger driving what little passed for logic in its ruined skull.

Blake raised Verdict again; sighted down barrel at that churning mass climbing toward him—and fired three times center-of-mass—

Each shot warped space where it struck: meat folding inward on itself with each hit, reality shivering around entry wounds that didn't bleed so much as leak possibility—

Still it climbed: howling through shattered teeth and twisted vocal cords—how the hell does something learn to adapt to an attack like that?

Blake's world shrank to tunnel vision: gun hot in his hand; platform trembling underfoot; something old and angry trying to break through every line he'd ever drawn between himself and oblivion—

The thing crested onto the catwalk three meters away—a bundle of writhing muscle and splintered steel topped by an expressionless face stitched together by accident rather than design—

Its good arm reached out across open air; claws clacking against support rails as it levered itself upright—all wrong proportions; nightmare geometry rendered flesh—

Blake stepped back once—twice—not giving ground so much as buying seconds—and thumbed for another Displacer round knowing damn well there weren't many left—

It staggered toward him; shrieked again; every surface around them shimmered with hungry malice, some kind of aura—

Far below—a deep tremor rolled through deck plates as something else moved beneath the core chamber—a warning pulse sent up through floor and into Blake's bones—

The outsider-spawn raised its claws for one killing swipe just as Blake squeezed off another round point-blank into its chest—

Space buckled—the world lurched sideways—the monster stumbled—but didn't fall. The creature righted itself and loomed over Blake, its aura weighing down on him like a blanket.

Kitt was saying something. He wanted to pay attention, but the thing's claw was lifting for another killing blow. Blake dropped Verdict and with as much mana-fueled speed as he could muster, drew Fang and slammed it home into the writhing open wound in the creature's chest. He forced the blade into the thing's guts until his hand was buried to the wrist.

Claws raced toward him, hungry scythes ready to reap his life. Blake's battered body made the idea of dodging laughable, so he grinned a gallows grin and fed [Kinetic Detonation] everything he had left.

Blake looked death straight in the eyes, and did not blink. He was all-in.

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