The deployment pod disengaged with a pressurized hiss.
Caleb hit the floor of Sector 4's subterranean transit line. Brackish water splashed over his knees, instantly soaking the canvas trousers of his surplus gear. The air tasted of rust, stagnant mildew, and raw ozone.
Above them, millions of tons of reinforced bedrock groaned. Gray dust rained down in fine sheets, coating the visors of the squad. The city's massive shock-absorbers compressed under the footfalls of the Class-8 Titan walking the surface streets. The sound of the behemoth didn't reach the tunnels, only the bone-rattling pressure of a god-sized mass displacing the earth.
Emergency floodlights flickered, casting long, warped shadows across the flooded tracks.
Vice-Captain Iris Calder splashed into the water ahead of the formation. She drew her phase-blade. The high-frequency steel cast a stark white glow over the dark water.
"Lock the perimeter," Calder's voice crackled over the tactical link. Her tone held the casual, flat authority of a veteran managing a pest infestation. "Rookies, fall in behind the shields. Hold the choke point. You do not break the line, and you do not chase stragglers."
Caleb waded forward, the water dragging at his shins. He took a position behind a towering veteran carrying a massive tungsten ballistic shield. Hiro flanked Caleb on the left, his breathing rapid and shallow over the comms. Iharu took the right, racking the pump of his scatter-gun with a sharp metallic clack.
Caleb brought his standard-issue rifle up to his shoulder. The surplus armor dragged heavy against his collarbone. The synthetic fibers woven into the suit whined, feeding a pathetic 1.2 percent kinetic assist into his arms. It wasn't enough to make him fast, but it provided just enough artificial tension to keep the fifty-pound rifle barrel from dipping into the floodwater.
He tightened his grip. His ribs throbbed from the morning's blunt-force drills. He ignored the stiffness and planted his boots firmly in the sludge.
"Contact," a vanguard veteran called out.
A high-pitched chittering bounced off the curved concrete walls. The sound multiplied, echoing down the transit tube until it merged into a deafening, metallic screech.
Hundreds of Scavenger-class Yoju burst from the darkness.
They were the size of starving wolves. Segmented, obsidian exoskeletons scraped against the rusted subway rails. Fleeing the colossal Titan tearing up the surface, the horde poured into the flooded tunnels in a blind, desperate stampede.
"Hold," Calder ordered.
The water churned into white foam as the swarm closed the distance. The stench of acidic blood and wet chitin hit the squad, thick enough to taste through the helmet filters.
Hiro's rifle barrel trembled against Caleb's shoulder plate.
The leading edge of the swarm hit the twenty-yard marker.
"Fire."
The veterans slammed their heavy shields down into the mud, anchoring the defensive wall. Deafening ballistic fire tore through the enclosed space.
Caleb pulled the trigger. The suit's minor boost absorbed the worst of the harsh recoil, but the kickback still punched a dull ache deep into his shoulder socket. He didn't track individual targets. Following the bright tracer rounds of the veterans, he fired straight into the churning mass of armored bodies.
Shattered chitin and black fluid sprayed across the water. A crushing wave of gunfire and dying shrieks battered Caleb's eardrums.
A green public broadcast icon glowed in the top right corner of his cracked visor. The viewer count ticked past six thousand.
The public chat scrolled rapidly in his peripheral vision.
User402: The Seventh division always gets the worst deployments. GunnerFan: I can't even see the back of the swarm. It's a wall of bugs. TitanSlayer: Look at Calder move. She's carrying that entire flank.
Engagement points translated to credits. Credits paid the debt. Caleb ejected a spent magazine, the hot metal cylinder hissing as it hit the muck. He slapped a fresh magazine into the receiver and squeezed the trigger again.
A violent tremor shook the tunnel. Concrete dust coated his helmet. The Titan above had shifted its weight. The water surged another inch up his shins, throwing off his balance.
"Reloading!" Iharu screamed, dropping to one knee to fumble with a bandolier of shells.
Caleb stepped sideways, shifting his firing angle to cover the redhead's blind spot. He let the suit's kinetic hum steady his arms against the relentless tide.
A crawler vaulted the shield wall, using the piled corpses of its pack to launch itself through the air. Its mandibles snapped inches from Hiro's visor.
Hiro stumbled backward, his boots slipping in the mud. He squeezed his trigger, but his rifle clicked empty.
Calder was twenty feet away, her phase-blade buried in the thorax of a larger beast. The veterans were locked down behind their shields, suppressing the main tunnel.
The crawler landed in the water, splashing black fluid across Hiro's chest plate. It coiled its segmented legs to strike.
Caleb dropped his rifle. The weapon splashed into the dark water on its sling. He drew the heavy combat knife from his canvas belt.
Five years in the disposal yards took over.
He didn't swing at the thick obsidian plating on the crawler's skull. He stepped entirely inside the beast's guard. The 1.2 percent boost flared, giving his legs just enough snap to clear the snapping mandibles. He drove the combat knife directly upward, targeting the microscopic pale membrane hidden just beneath the creature's primary jaw hinge.
He twisted his wrist violently.
The blade severed the synovial sac with a wet tear. The crawler's jaw unhinged entirely, hanging uselessly against its chest. Caleb ripped the knife free, pivoted his hips to borrow the momentum of the heavy suit, and drove his armored boot cleanly through the side of the creature's compromised knee joint.
The crawler collapsed into the floodwater, thrashing blindly.
Caleb grabbed Hiro by the tactical harness and hauled the younger recruit back to his feet.
"Check your ammo counter before you drop your sightline!" Caleb shouted over the gunfire.
Hiro gasped for air, nodding frantically as he slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle.
Caleb pulled his own rifle back up by the sling, his chest heaving.
A sharp, tearing pain flared deep in his right shoulder. The violent twist of the knife had pulled a stabilizing muscle hard against his healing collarbone.
A furnace ignited behind his sternum.
The parasite woke up.
It reacted instantly to the fresh micro-tears in his muscle tissue. A starving, hollow void opened in Caleb's stomach. Acid climbed the back of his throat. The anomaly demanded massive amounts of calories to fuel the repair, stripping the remaining energy from his blood.
Caleb locked his jaw, swallowing the metallic taste of copper. His vision blurred for a fraction of a second. He forced oxygen through his nose, compartmentalizing the violent internal cramp. He couldn't afford to pass out in knee-deep water.
He focused his eyes on the top right corner of his visor to ground himself.
Fourteen thousand viewers.
The chat log moved in a frantic blur.
Scrap_King: Wait, did the scrubber just drop his rifle and melee a crawler? RedLine: He knew exactly where to cut. Bypassed the armor completely. G-Corp: [Automated] Viewer engagement spike detected. GunnerFan: sync rate 1.2% and he's brawling in the mud.
The numbers climbed. The algorithm caught the engagement spike and pushed his feed to the recommended page.
"Maintain the spread!" Calder shouted, slicing another beast out of the air. Her white armor was stained entirely black. "Do not let the bodies pile high enough to compromise the shields! Keep pushing them back!"
Caleb braced the stock of his rifle against his aching shoulder. The hunger burned through his core, leaving his limbs feeling hollow and light. He squeezed the trigger, letting the mechanical rhythm of the slaughterhouse carry him forward.