Beast of the Underground (2)
[Zzzzt... Zzzzt... Zzzzzt (Alright, kids, wake up. Time to eat.)]
｢Wow!｣
｢Food!｣
Having first taken a full circuit around the area, I roused my little ones. The meal I'd brought them consisted of six Corpse Catfish, hauled over using every limb I had — my combat arms, the small arms on my chest, even my mouth.
[Zzzzzt... Zzzzt... Zzzzzzt (Eat it all up. We're moving somewhere else after.)]
｢Making a new nest?｣
[Zzz (Yeah.)]
As always, No. 26 caught on instantly. She snagged a catfish with a tentacle and tucked it into her body, and thanks to her translucent flesh I could see the whole creature dissolving inside her in vivid detail.
｢Tasty.｣
True to form, she was no picky eater — she polished off that catfish in no time. Adhai, on the other hand, took a single sip of the catfish's blood through her mouth-tentacles and immediately screwed her eyes shut.
｢Food｣｢Tastes bad｣
I'd never seen a Gallagon twist its face up like that. For all that I, Amorph, had nothing but a twitching mouth to work with, she seemed remarkably expressive.
｢Taste｣｢Terrible｣
Apparently it was bad enough that she shook herself all over and shuddered in disgust.
Well, she's not wrong.
The worst thing I'd eaten since becoming Amorph had been the calorie bars. Up until I started eating Corpse Catfish, that is. I was the one who'd brought it to her, but bad was bad — I had nothing to say in my own defense, and no intention of scolding her for it.
No. 26, however, saw things differently. She snapped out a tentacle and smacked Adhai squarely on the head.
｢Ow!｣
｢Big Baby got big by eating lots. If you wanna be like Big Baby, you gotta eat it all.｣
｢Me｣｢Grow｣｢Want｣
｢Right.｣
｢Me｣｢Grow｣｢Big｣｢Elder｣｢Know｣｢Can｣
｢…….｣
｢Painful!｣
Well, the two of them clearly got along, so I'd leave them to it.
Once they'd finished off every last catfish, I gathered the kids and moved on to the next location. Sewage treatment facilities sat at intervals along the passages of this underground network. Here, the small-scale facilities performed the first stage of the process, straining out bulky debris along with the catfish, before the water flowed on to the colossal treatment plant buried deep beneath the city for a second, thorough purification.
From what I've scouted, the sensors are only absent where the small treatment facilities are located.
As far as I could tell, the detectors only triggered when something too large for a small facility to handle came drifting nearby. I'd watched from a distance, and a catfish swimming past hadn't registered so much as a blip.
At my size, though, I'd trip one for sure. Adhai, the smallest of us, would just barely squeak under the threshold. Even if I didn't set it off, spinning a nest right next to a sensor would be asking for trouble.
With a small treatment facility so close by, there was a very real chance the city's maintenance crews would come by for routine inspections. Bad luck, and they might show up today. I couldn't lay roots down in a place like that.
This spot should do. The point I'd chosen for my new nest sat at roughly equal remove from both the manholes and the treatment facilities. The water ran shallower here, and a protruding section of the wall offered a dry ledge to rest on. Adhai wasn't an aquatic creature — she needed somewhere comfortable to settle while No. 26 and I were fine in the water.
[Zzzzt... Zzzzzzt... Zzz (I'm going to build the nest now, so wait here.)]
｢Okay.｣
After telling the kids, I clambered up the wall toward the ceiling. The nest I'd laid down previously had been destroyed completely while I slept.
Just as I expected. The enemy had found my secret passage quickly enough. They must have torn the nest out while combing through that tunnel. Which was exactly why I intended to build a fresh one here in the sewers.
Any other time, I'd just let it spread across the floor.
Normally I'd secrete my mucus and simply wait for it to harden into a nest on its own. Not this time. I'd have to paint the discharge on by hand, layer by layer. A nest can't take root underwater. Submerged, the mucus thinned out and never set — though once the nest was finished, its stalks and spores touching the water was another matter entirely.
Still, water makes an excellent medium.
A nest read its surroundings — nearby objects, environmental conditions — through the countless kinds of stimulation that reached it. In constant contact with water, it could easily pick up vibrations and survey a far wider radius than usual. With no time to wait for the nest to spread on its own, the water was the perfect tool to amplify its reach.
Let's get started.
Using my arms, I spread the mucus now oozing from my body across the ceiling. The thick secretion dripped down, then hardened into stalactite-like growths. Where it ran along the curved walls it branched out like tree trunks, trailing down until the tips just brushed the surface of the water.
An hour after I began, the basic frame was complete. Nesting along the wall and ceiling, it would fatten and spread of its own accord now, without my help.
Good.
Satisfied that the nest was slowly claiming its territory, I pressed myself flat against the ceiling, locked my hands and feet in place so I couldn't fall, and linked the auxiliary organ in my jaw to it.
The nest seized hold of my mind and dragged it under. In place of my small flesh-and-blood body, I felt that vast artificial structure as though it were my own. Information about the fluids coursing through the city's veins — and the impurities carried within them — seeped into my awareness.
Corpses lying dead and unnamed in a darkness without a single point of light, and the catfish swarming greedily over them. Beneath the bright, glittering face of the city sprawled nothing but dankness without end.
I was tearing my attention away from the catfish as they devoured the dead like ghouls, surveying the sewer through my new senses, when something unexpected brushed against my awareness.
People?
The presence of humans was suddenly registering at points all across the sewer network. At first I assumed they were corpses dumped in secret. But they weren't drifting with the current — they were moving under their own power. Living people, without a doubt.
People came in here? That many of them at once? I need to find out.
I broke the link and plunged down into the water.
｢Where going?｣
[Zzzzt... Zzz (Something to check on.)]
｢Okay. Waiting.｣
After telling No. 26 I'd be back, I made for the spot where the movement had been detected. Gliding along submerged, I felt the pattern of the current shift. I raised only my auxiliary organ above the surface to taste the air, and from somewhere far off in that direction came the sound of human voices.
Not just one or two of them.
I was at a junction. From the left passage I detected ten people moving; from the right, three. The unrefined quality of their movements and the tremor in their voices told me they were all civilians.
Why would ordinary people come down here?
I sank low and submerged again, slipping toward the right-hand passage where the smaller group moved. Apart from the babble of water, the sewer was silent — and through that silence rang the noise three men made as they came.
"F-fuck, if we survive down here they'll clear our debt for sure, right?"
"That's what I heard."
"Christ, beats dying in the Entertainment District. You know what happened to the guys who came with me last time? Every one of them got carved up alive. Sashimi. While they were still breathing."
"Ugh, fuck, that's creepy. Bunch of goddamn lunatics. What the hell's down here that they'd send us?"
"Don't know what it is, but those bastards keep their promises. We make it out alive, we're all free."
"Lucky him, that son of a bitch. Guy's got flowers growing where his brain should be."
The three men were coming this way, trading talk as they went. They'd entered this filthy place without so much as a hazard suit over their bare skin. The only thing protecting them from this contaminated environment was the oxygen masks covering their faces.
"Busted my ass in the Entertainment District, and now I'm busting it in shit water."
"Quit whining. Water's getting deeper — everybody watch your step."
"Shit... I've got a phobia of drowning, man..."
By human standards, the water in my passage ran deep. Moments ago it had lapped at their waists; then it surged up to their chests in a single step, and the cursing began in earnest.
"Goddamn Mega Corp sons of bitches! The least they could do is hand out hazard suits!"
"Keep the pistols out of the water! That's all money, you hear me?"
"Forget debt — we'll freeze to death down here first."
Each of them held a flashlight in one hand and a laser pistol in the other, lifting both high to keep them clear of the water. I dove down toward the bottom, out of the flashlight beams, and thought.
Not maintenance crews.
Everyone responsible for the infrastructure of a space city ranked among the elite custodial class. No one like that would enter the sewers with such shabby equipment. And there was one more thing that bothered me — something one of them had said.
Debt repayment?
In Mega Corp, the word "repayment" carried two meanings: the literal, dictionary sense, and the work that those "Employed" by Mega Corp were bound to perform.
The Employed fell into three broad categories: individuals crushed under debts too vast to ever repay, criminals convicted of serious offenses, or the humans raised on the farm planets that bred the Employed like livestock. They were treated not as people but as cattle, as resources. Their term of employment lasted until Mega Corp judged it had squeezed out sufficient profit — and until then, they obeyed every order without question.
On the forums we used to joke and call them corporate livestock.
Even the mercenaries player-controlled Mega Corps fielded were, by lore, all drawn from the Employed. In-game, mercenaries were routinely deployed as scouts or meat shields, and in the fiction it worked the same way — most of the Employed died long before their debts were ever cleared. And whatever debt remained passed on to their families and kin.
Personally, I always thought that bit was going too far, but word was the dystopia enthusiasts loved it.
Anyway, those three have to be the Employed.
People like that existed somewhere below the level of slaves; they couldn't simply abandon their posts. Which meant someone had deliberately given the order and sent them down here.
Worth watching a little longer.
I drifted toward them slowly, still submerged. My sluggish wake set the water trembling ever so slightly.
"Gah!"
"What?"
"Something just moved in the water. Just now."
"Oh, fuck off with that!"
"There's nobody else down here. Quit talking nonsense."
"No, I'm serious! Something really did move back there!"
｢Krrzt, Team 15. What's going on? Why has your position stopped moving?｣
"Uh, n-nothing, sir."
｢The other teams are still advancing. Team 15 seems insufficiently committed to fulfilling its debt.｣
"N-no, sir! Moving now!"
The man at the front kept ducking his head toward the small transceiver clipped to his chest. The moment the transmission ended, he laid into the man beside him in a fury, hammering the flashlight down on his skull until blood came streaming from the man's crown.
"You miserable piece of trash! If you want to end up as mince, die alone! Don't drag the rest of us down with you!"
"I-I'm sorry!"
"Knock it off, you lunatics!"
They were bait, just as I'd suspected. And I had a fairly good guess as to who had loosed it into these tunnels.
The Edgerton Knights.
They'd arrived in this city recently to meet the Board of Directors, and they were almost certainly the ones pulling strings down here. I just hadn't expected them to find me this fast.
The enemy was tracking my movements faster than I'd anticipated. That the Knights knew about the sewers meant the city's leadership had full operational intel as well. They could easily have poured heavily armed knights and soldiers down here — but they hadn't.
Not out of concern for casualties, surely. Something's brewing that they don't want seen.
Either way, killing the three of them now was off the table. Their plan was still unclear, and unless the enemy was an idiot, they'd have laid countermeasures around their bait.
I stayed perfectly still in place. The three men shuffled past me, trembling with dread and fear.
"See! You crippled piece of shit, there's nothing there."
"D-did I just see things?"
"Ugh... starting to feel sick already. Let's just finish this and go."
I followed quietly behind them. At one point one of the sharper ones swept his flashlight back our way, but I passed undetected — the water was filthy enough that nothing inside it could be seen at all.
Tailing them for a while, I came to a wide chamber where several passages converged. There, roughly sixty people in matching gear stood waiting. And in their midst stood a knight clad in heavy silver armor.
Closing the distance risked detection, so rather than entering the chamber I stationed myself behind the wall, extending nothing but my auxiliary organ.
"Looks like everyone's here."
Unaware of my presence, the knight raised his transceiver.
"This is Team 3, Tennessee. All sixty accounted for. No anomalies."
｢Krrzt, this is Team 1, Vickers. All eighty accounted for. No anomalies.｣
｢Krrzt, this is Team 2, Jacob. Five members have not yet arrived, krrzt, holding position.｣
"Team 3, Tennessee here. Lord Jacob's signal is poor — request you check your equipment."
｢Krrzt, under, krrzt, stood.｣
I eavesdropped on their chatter while scanning the surroundings with my auxiliary organ. Overhead I could feel the footfalls of a large number of people, moving in strict order — soldiers, every one of them, positioned directly above this chamber.
There's a manhole nearby too. So this is their staging ground.
Judging by what I'd overheard, the enemy had three strongholds in total. When I'd linked to my nest earlier, I hadn't sensed the other two — they seemed to sit a fair distance apart from one another. A broad initial search grid, narrowing slowly toward a single point. They were trying to encircle me.
They want to lure me into taking their bait, then drive me into a kill zone.
A fox hunt, essentially. The only difference was that instead of hunting dogs, they'd released waves of human bait.
Every time I snapped up their bait, the Knights and the army would tighten the noose a little further. And when, at last, the encirclement was complete, the extermination operation would begin.
"Team 3, Tennessee. Standing by for the operation."
｢Krrzt, Team 2, Jacob. All units assembled.｣
｢Team 1, Vickers. Confirmed. Commencing the Devil-Hunt operation. All teams, release the bait.｣
"You all heard that? Move, and move fast."
"Y-yes, sir!"
The knight who called himself Tennessee cut the transmission and barked his orders to the crowd. They had just been openly told they were being used as bait, yet not one soul among them showed the slightest trace of resistance.
Hardly surprising, with bombs in their heads.
To be precise, they were minuscule chips that flooded the brain with electromagnetic pulses upon receiving a certain signal — but the effect was no different from a bomb. Disobey, and your brain cooked inside your skull.
Gray-faced, the bait began trudging back down the passages they'd come from. The three who had led me here turned to leave as well — and that was when Tennessee called out to them.
"You there."
"Sir?"
"There's blood on his head. Why is that? Were you attacked?"
"N-no, sir. He just... fell down, and—"
"Tch. Pathetic."
Tennessee clicked his tongue and waved them off with a flick of his hand, and the three bowed their heads and shuffled away.
Hmm.
Whenever the bait stopped moving, headquarters contacted them within moments. I'd seen it with my own eyes while tailing those three earlier, so I was certain. Their bodies very likely carried some kind of chip that transmitted their movements. Their orders, in all probability, were to advance ceaselessly along a fixed route without stopping.
And if someone dies or goes down and can't move — that's when they dispatch knights and soldiers.
But what I'd just witnessed changed things. The strongholds didn't know about minor injuries to the bait.
Well, this is getting interesting.
An unstable communications environment, restricted information flow between units, a battlefield dark and choked with obstacles. All of it played directly into my hands.
They mean to hunt me?
Charming. I was rather fond of that particular game myself.
Which of us ended up the fox — that, we would learn when the hunt was over.