Chapter 2 : First Blood
Nash jerked the trigger and the weapon kicked sideways, the stock slamming his shoulder because he hadn't braced it right, because he'd never braced anything in his goddamn life. Red light scorched a black line across ferrocrete two meters above the Ork's head.
The Ork didn't flinch. It laughed — a wet, guttural bark — and swung the axe.
Something hit Nash from the side. Priscilla, throwing her full weight into his ribcage, driving them both behind a supply crate as the axe carved the air where his neck had been. The blade bit into the wall and stuck, ferrocrete crumbling around the crude metal edge.
[COMBAT ASSESSMENT: HOST SURVIVAL PROBABILITY — 7%]
[TACTICAL RECOMMENDATION: ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD EXPLOITATION]
More Orks behind the first one. Three, four — packed into the corridor, shoving and snarling, fighting each other for space to get through the door. The lead Ork wrenched its axe free and kicked a cot out of the way like it was made of paper.
Nash's back pressed against the supply crate. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. Priscilla was next to him, breathing in short, shallow gasps, her fingers white-knuckled on his arm.
"Seven percent. That's not a survival chance. That's a rounding error."
He fired again. The bolt went wide — closer this time, grazing the Ork's shoulder. The xenos didn't even register it. Las-fire against Ork hide was like throwing pebbles at a freight train unless you hit something critical, and Nash couldn't hit the broad side of a hive block.
[STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS AVAILABLE — ACTIVATING]
The system did something without his permission. His vision shifted — the walls, ceiling, and floor lit up in a wireframe overlay, stress points glowing amber and red. Load-bearing columns. Support beams. Fracture lines where the bombardment above had already weakened the structure.
One section of the ceiling, directly above the doorway, pulsed angry crimson.
[LOAD-BEARING JUNCTION COMPROMISED — ESTIMATED FORCE REQUIRED FOR COLLAPSE: 340 JOULES]
[M36 LASGUN CONCENTRATED FIRE: SUFFICIENT AT POINT-BLANK RANGE]
"Bring the ceiling down on them."
Nash didn't think about it. Thinking would involve acknowledging that he was a dead man in a stranger's body firing a weapon he couldn't aim at aliens he'd only ever seen as plastic miniatures. He aimed at the crimson point — a hairline fracture where two support beams met the ceiling — and squeezed the trigger.
Not once. He held it down, the lasgun whining as it dumped its entire power pack into a space the size of his fist. Red light chewed into ferrocrete. Dust exploded downward. The Ork in the doorway looked up.
The ceiling gave.
Two tons of reinforced ferrocrete dropped like a guillotine. The lead Ork disappeared under it — one arm still visible, twitching, the axe clattering free. The Orks behind it vanished in a cascade of rubble and dust that billowed through the bunker like a gray tidal wave.
Nash coughed. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't see. Dust filled everything, coating his tongue, clogging his nostrils. Priscilla was coughing next to him, her grip on his arm now the only fixed point in a world of gray.
[THREAT NEUTRALIZED: 3 HOSTILES CONFIRMED KILLED]
[BUNKER EXIT: BLOCKED]
[ALTERNATIVE ROUTE DETECTED: MAINTENANCE ACCESS TUNNEL — REAR WALL, PANEL 7-C]
The dust settled in layers. Where the doorway had been, a wall of broken ferrocrete and twisted rebar filled the frame. One green arm jutted from the bottom, fingers still twitching.
Behind the rubble, muffled roars. More Orks. Digging.
"Move." Nash grabbed Priscilla's wrist and pulled her toward the rear wall. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else — flat, tight. The system highlighted a maintenance panel, bolts rusted but intact.
His hands shook too badly to grip the latch. He tried twice, fingers slipping on corroded metal.
Third try. The panel popped open. A tunnel beyond — narrow, dark, air moving through it in a stale current that meant it connected to something bigger.
"There are others." Priscilla's voice came out hoarse, raw from dust. "I heard them during your seizures. Banging on pipes. Survivors, in the adjacent sections."
[LIFE SIGNS DETECTED: 3 — ADJACENT BUNKER SECTION, 40 METERS EAST]
Nash dropped into the maintenance tunnel. His knees hit grating and pain shot up both legs — the body had no padding anywhere, no muscle memory for impacts. He turned back, reached up.
"Jump. I'll catch you."
Priscilla stared at his outstretched hands. Behind her, the rubble shifted. Something growled.
She jumped. He caught her — barely. Her weight drove him backward into the tunnel wall, his spine hitting a pipe fitting that sent a spike of fire through his lower back.
They ran. Or hobbled — Nash's version of running in this body was a shambling jog, Priscilla keeping pace beside him, the chemical glow-stick she'd grabbed casting wild shadows on corroded walls. The tunnel branched once, twice. Nash followed the system's directional markers, amber arrows in his peripheral vision pointing him toward the life signs.
They found the survivors behind a sealed maintenance door. Nash pounded on it until someone inside started screaming.
"We're human!" he shouted. "Open the door!"
A woman's voice, muffled: "How do we know?"
"Because Orks don't knock!"
Silence. Then the scrape of bolts. The door cracked open and three faces stared out — two women and a man, covered in dust and dried blood, eyes the same hollow, shell-shocked shape that Nash figured his own wore.
The system catalogued them instantly:
[CIVILIAN — HIVE WORKER — POTENTIAL: D]
[CIVILIAN — ADMINISTRATUM JUNIOR SCRIBE — POTENTIAL: D]
[CIVILIAN — TRANSIT OPERATOR — POTENTIAL: D]
Three terrified people who'd locked themselves in a maintenance closet and waited to die. They were shaking. One of the women was crying silently, tears cutting tracks through the dust on her face.
Five survivors. One empty lasgun. An alien army overhead.
"This is what I have to work with."
"My name is Garrett," Nash said, because his voice worked better than his brain right now and he'd deal with the identity crisis later. "We're leaving. Stay close, stay quiet, and do exactly what I say."
Nobody argued. The transit operator — a thin man with grease under his fingernails — stared at the dead lasgun on Nash's hip.
"That gun's empty."
"I know."
"So what good is—"
"It's a club if I need it. Move."
They moved. Nash led them deeper into the maintenance network, following the system's map overlay — a ghostly blue wireframe painting the tunnel junctions in his vision. Behind them, distant but persistent, the sound of rubble being torn apart. Orks digging. Following the scent of prey.
The tunnels opened into a larger passage — undercity infrastructure, water pipes thick as tree trunks running along the ceiling, chemical runoff pooling in corroded floor grates. The air here tasted worse. Rust and decay and something organic, rotting in standing water.
[SURVIVAL OBJECTIVE: REACH HUMAN-CONTROLLED TERRITORY]
[ESTIMATED DISTANCE: UNKNOWN — INSUFFICIENT DATA]
[XP GAINED: 50 — SURVIVAL OBJECTIVE (PARTIAL)]
[SYSTEM LEVEL: 1]
Nash checked behind them. Darkness. The sound of digging had faded, swallowed by distance and the drip of leaking pipes. His shoulder throbbed where the lasgun had kicked it. His lower back ached from the pipe fitting. The headache from integration sat behind his left eye like a coal.
Five people. No weapons. No food. No map except the one the system was building in real time, filling in corridors as he walked them.
"On Earth, I managed a team of twelve building software for insurance companies. Now I'm managing five people trying not to die in a sewer. Same skill set. Lower stakes back then."
He almost laughed. Didn't.
The passage forked ahead. Water sounds echoed from both directions — one a trickle, one a rush. The system highlighted something at the edge of its detection range, deeper in the tunnel network.
[ANOMALY DETECTED: 7 LIFE SIGNS — HUMAN BIOSIGNATURE — 200 METERS NORTH]
[STATUS: STATIONARY — POSSIBLE INJURED]
Seven more. Nash adjusted course without breaking stride.
"Where are we going?" Priscilla asked from behind him. She'd taken position at the rear of the group without being asked — administrator's instinct, keeping count of everyone, making sure nobody fell behind.
"North. There are more survivors ahead."
"How do you know that?"
Nash didn't turn around. "I can hear them."
The lie came out smooth. Too smooth. He filed that away as a problem for later — the ease of deception, the way this body's mouth shaped words he hadn't fully decided to say.
Water dripped from cracked pipes above. The darkness ahead smelled of rust and old blood.
The seven life signs on his display hadn't moved. Not even a twitch. That meant injured, unconscious, or dead — and the system was reading biosignatures, so at least some of them were alive.
Something dripped onto Nash's neck. Cold. Metallic.
He kept walking.
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