A rush of noise flooded the cave.
— That thing doesn't look natural — Víctor said, eyes fixed on what was in front of them.
— It can't be real — Dante replied. — But it's acting with all the reality in the world, so I suppose we have no choice but to treat it as such for now.
Axel fired. The bullets bounced off as if they'd hit something with no intention of yielding — rubber balls against steel, no damage, no defined direction on the rebound.
— Understood. The bastard is harder than steel. — Axel stepped back. — Avoid direct combat.
The spider didn't wait.
A flaying shriek filled the cave from end to end before the creature's body lunged forward in a movement that didn't match its size — too fast, too decided. The jump had no direct impact on anyone present, but the position it left gave it a point-blank angle straight at Auren.
Auren extended the weapon in lance form as a separating impulse. Every strand that made contact with the tip was incinerated — the heat at that proximity soaked his face in sweat in under a second, the time it took him to look away from what had nearly reached him.
A flash of frustration.
Using the momentum of the maneuver he spun in the air and drove the lance into the insect's body to impale it. A metallic sound rang out on contact — the lance barely managed to hold, as if the surface itself was rejecting the grip.
— Metal?
He couldn't finish the question. The monster spun in circles trying to shake Auren off and sent him flying through the air. As he broke free of the grip, the spider shrieked and launched itself in an impossible leap toward the rest of the group.
Axel and Nadia barely managed to dodge the main body, but the creature's legs caught them full on. The solidity was undeniable — taking a hit like that wasn't lethal, but it put you out of the fight. Broken bones at minimum. It sent them flying in opposite directions.
And then the cave's light went out again.
But what emerged wasn't darkness.
◈
It was a city.
— A city? — Celia said. — What the hell?
— I think I'm starting to— — Dante didn't finish.
Not because he couldn't. Because what was in front of him didn't give him the time.
Where the spider should have been there was now a bipedal silhouette: dragon jaw, curved horns, burning fur, claws. A full-fledged demon, at a scale that filled the available space with the presence of something that had no business existing in any war laboratory.
The shock cost him too much.
The plasma ray disintegrated his entire weapon. Dante used it to throw himself clear of his original position — enough to avoid taking it dead on — but the danger didn't stop. The beast lunged without pause and connected a blow that shook the entire interior, destroying parts of the projected buildings of the false city. Among the rubble, Dante went still — barely alive, face soaked in blood, considerable wounds across his body, no strength left to speak.
The others shouted his name.
The creature didn't react to the name. It reacted to movement.
Johnny tried to drive his lance into one of its eyes. But something was wrong — the impact arrived late, as if there was a lag between what his eyes registered and what was actually real. He could see the lance connecting, but it just kept falling. The metal-like rigidity sent him back to a safe distance.
— Víctor — Johnny said. — I need you to distract it. And put your visor on.
Víctor didn't ask why.
He threw grenades at the ground around the demon. The creature's mobility was reduced for a few brief moments — enough. Víctor took position and fired the shotgun at point-blank range. Regular bullets had minimal effect against that thing, but a shotgun blast at that distance was a different kind of problem for any living creature to absorb.
A cry of pain rang out.
And that cry didn't belong to any demon.
Johnny threw the flashbang. White light flooded everything — blinding everyone present except Víctor, who had the visor on. In that instant of total white the projection shattered.
◈
The city disappeared.
The demon disappeared.
What remained was the reality of Confragos: the cave, the rocks, the darkness — and in front of them the silhouette that had always been there.
Six metal legs. Deformed metal at the front giving the impression of a jaw. A cannon of massive proportions with technology that didn't belong to the year of the laboratory — more advanced, more carefully crafted than everything else, as if it had been added later. The whole thing had the neglected look of something assembled without any concern for appearance.
The movements were the exact opposite.
The previous cry — the one of pain, the one that followed the shotgun blast — transformed into something none of them expected to hear.
Human. Very human. With the specific timbre of someone young, the vocal cords of an age that none of those present wanted to calculate out loud.
Víctor looked at the machine.
— Don't tell me there's a child inside that thing.