A special thanks to Finicolcomic68 for the power stone—really appreciate the support 🙏
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He went lower than before. Slower. Left hand on the wall, the Matilda at chest height, right arm at his side.
The Matilda was still in his hand. Everything else had stayed with the water.
The center of the channel stayed to his left and he kept it there. The water pushed at his shins. Consistent. Forward. He tracked it against his legs and held the baseline in whatever part of his brain was still running clean.
The corridor bent right and he checked the angle before committing — left hand forward, body angled so the right shoulder stayed away from the wall. The bend was clear.
The next section was narrower. The ceiling came down two feet, the walls closing to three meters across. He moved along the right wall, stride short, each step landing before the water settled from the last.
A pipe knocked overhead. He stopped. Counted. It didn't repeat.
The pressure came at the twenty-meter mark — below and to his left, pushing outward from a point four meters off the wall. Not current. He held the wall and watched the surface.
It held position.
Not passing through. Not moving with the flow. Waiting in it.
He kept the Matilda forward and held the wall and didn't give the center of the channel anything to track.
The shape was against the left wall, half-submerged, the torso at water level and the legs below it. He'd taken it for debris until the current broke wrong around it and his body understood the shape before his eyes finished the sweep.
Officer. RPD uniform, the fabric darkened and torn at the right side in a pattern he recognized. Both arms raised — one against the wall, one extended into the water. He'd seen it coming. Put himself to the wall.
Hadn't been enough.
Leon crouched, right arm protesting the angle. He worked left-handed through the belt pouches. A partial magazine. Three loose rounds worked free from the fabric seam. A speed strip of magnum rounds — four. He pocketed all of it.
The last pouch required his right hand. He got two fingers in and felt something hard and flat. A key. Metal, short chain, plastic tag. He worked it free.
Maintenance tag. A number he couldn't read in this light.
He stood. More rounds than before. The magnum strip useless without the gun to fire it. He looked at the officer's extended arm, still reaching into the water toward nothing.
He turned and went.
The section had collapsed inward — the left wall pushed out of true at the base, rebar exposed and bent outward, the water running in small broken circles around the obstruction. He moved through it carefully, right shoulder staying away from the jagged edge.
The body was face-down on the near side, draped over the broken concrete like something that had been moving and stopped mid-step. U.B.C.S. gear. Someone who'd come down here knowing what was in the water.
The shotgun was underneath him. Stock visible, barrel pinned under the body's weight. Leon worked it free left-handed. The body shifted with the pull. He adjusted his footing and kept pulling until the weapon came loose.
A Remington. Pump action, the finish worn at the grip from use. He checked the tube — four shells. One in the chamber. Five total. He worked the action — stiff, but it moved.
He looked at the discharge marks on the concrete to the left. The officer had fired. Whatever he'd hit, it hadn't mattered.
Leon slung the Matilda and took the shotgun in his left hand. He tested the pump once with his right hand, slow and shallow.
Slower than he needed it. Better than not having it.
He heard it before the surface broke — a shift in the water pressure against his legs, coming from the left channel junction eight meters ahead.
He brought the shotgun up.
It came out of the junction already moving. Water broke around it as it came — low, wide, coming straight for him.
He fired.
The shot hit center mass at six meters. It shifted under itself, one step right, and kept coming. The distance closed before he had the second shot ready and it hit him on the left side.
He went into the right wall. The shotgun stayed in his hand. The wall caught his right shoulder and the shoulder sent something immediate up through his neck and he got his left leg braced and shoved off before it could use the wall to hold him.
It had come in too fast and carried past him. He had two seconds. He brought the shotgun up and fired into its back as it turned.
Hit. It went into the left wall.
He was already moving backward. Right wall, each step tested, watching it pull itself off the concrete and turn back toward him.
He fired the third shell into it as it came.
Hit. It came through the shot like the shot was weather.
He turned and moved — fast, the water pulling at his legs. He put twenty meters between them before he found an alcove in the right wall and pressed into it.
The surface behind him settled.
Two shells left. Three hits, and it had walked through all three.
The locker was where the tag said it would be — a junction room, barely four meters square, the door set above the water level on a raised concrete step. The key fit. The lock turned on the second attempt, the mechanism stiff but not seized.
Four shells on the top shelf, still packaged. Below them, a speed strip of magnum rounds — six. He loaded two shells into the tube immediately, brought the shotgun to six, pocketed the other two. He took the magnum strip and added it to the others.
Ten magnum rounds in his pocket. No magnum.
Six shells in the shotgun. Partial in the Matilda. Enough to try again. Not enough to waste.
He stepped back into the water and pulled the door shut behind him.
The displacement came from the right channel. This time he didn't move away from it.
He held the wall and let it come.
It surfaced eight meters out, already moving. He waited. Seven. Six. His left hand tightened on the shotgun.
Five meters.
He fired.
The shot hit higher than before — the left side of the chest where the bulk thinned. Something gave under it. Not just the creature moving through force — the surface of it opening, the tissue underneath visible for a fraction of a second in the muzzle flash.
Something in there that wasn't muscle.
It pulled back from it. One step. Two. The head moved differently — shorter, less settled, like something in it had gone briefly wrong. Then it steadied, and the opening closed, and it turned toward him.
Leon had seen something like it once. A room. A man coming apart from the inside. An eye where eyes didn't belong.
He didn't follow it. He moved right, put the wall between himself and its line, and broke contact.
He heard it coming — the displacement faster than before, more direct. It had found him again.
He held his position at the right wall and waited.
It surfaced at nine meters. Coming straight. He kept the shotgun down and made himself wait. Eight. Seven. Upper left — where the bulk thinned, where it had opened. Six meters.
It came fully, throwing its weight forward.
He fired.
The tissue opened again. The structure underneath briefly there — wrong in a way he recognized and didn't try to name. It pulled back from the shot, balance breaking, coming apart from the place the damage had found.
He pumped the action and stepped into the space it had given him.
His right boot came down on a section of floor that wasn't level — the ankle rolled, the step went wrong, and the shot dragged off the line he'd intended. He felt it leave wrong before the trigger broke.
It still hit the opening.
Not clean. Enough.
The creature came off its footing and into the left wall and didn't find a way back from the impact. It slid. The limbs lost their order. It went into the water and the water took it.
He brought the Matilda up and fired twice into the mass of it while it was still going down.
It went still.
He didn't lower the weapons immediately.
He watched the body for thirty seconds. The water moved around it, found it, went past it. The surface everywhere else stayed flat.
He lowered the shotgun. Then the Matilda.
Two shells left. Partial in the Matilda. Ten magnum rounds in his pocket he still couldn't fire.
His right arm had done what he'd asked and was describing that in detail. His breathing had less room than before the fight — the ceiling the ribs allowed having dropped again somewhere in the last few minutes without his permission.
What stayed was the moment it opened. The half-second between the surface giving and whatever was underneath pulling back into the dark.
He didn't name it. He filed it.
The corridor ran deeper ahead — away from the corroded strips and the standing water and the things moving through it. Toward cleaner walls. Recessed lighting. A sealed door.
Two people on the wrong side of it.
He checked the shotgun's action. Checked the Matilda's chamber.
He went forward.