The stillness was unnatural.
Chris sat by the faint embers of the tiny fire they'd scraped together—thin, worm-like tendrils of smoke twisting upward and vanishing in the murky, gas-choked air. Kelvin lay sprawled beside him, face slack, breath shallow. The guy had passed out, his body giving in after days of nonstop movement and stress.
Chris couldn't blame him.
But something was wrong.
He hadn't heard it at first, just the soft sucking sounds of shifting flesh and trickling acid, but now… now he could feel it. Like being watched by a thousand eyes in total silence. His neck prickled. The black bloodstained landscape around them—the gnarled, fleshy ridges and rubbery canyon walls—had grown too quiet.
Chris stood, slow and cautious, scanning with the flashlight. The beam jittered across the terrain. Everything seemed still.
Then something moved.
No noise. No warning. Just a twitch—a shadow where there hadn't been one. Then another. Dozens.
They were surrounded.
Dozens of them: pale, fleshy things that looked like someone had tried to make a crab out of hands and teeth. Their bodies shimmered with wetness, eyes like swollen boils. Some had too many legs. Others none. A few dragged themselves across the acid-damp terrain like tumors with mouths.
Chris whispered, "Kelvin."
No response.
"Kelvin."
Still nothing.
Chris turned and shook him—gentle, then hard. "Kelvin. We gotta go. Now."
Kelvin groaned but didn't move.
Chris slapped his face. Nothing. His eyes rolled under his lids, trapped somewhere deep in whatever nightmare the Leviathan had slipped into his brain.
A raspy hiss came from behind.
Chris didn't think.
He grabbed Kelvin, threw him over his shoulder with a grunt—his own shoulder screaming in protest from his still-recovering injury—and drew his Glock in the same motion.
The first shot cracked the silence like lightning.
One of the things exploded into a puddle of steaming meat. The others screamed—not with mouths, but like the air itself shuddered around them.
Chris ran.
Boots pounded against the fleshy floor, Kelvin's limp form bouncing against his back. He fired again—hit something crawling along the wall. It let out a wet, wheezing cough and burst into twitching parts.
They chased him in a slow, lurching swarm. Some scuttled, others flopped, but they were unrelenting.
His flashlight flickered. Acidic mist burned his eyes.
He ran anyway.
The terrain changed—at first a mild incline, then a steeper ridge, then down into a trench made entirely of what looked like rotting cartilage. Every step squelched. His lungs burned. The Watch beeped a warning, something about overexertion, but he ignored it.
He kept going.
Minutes passed. Five. Ten. His arms and legs were jelly. Kelvin's weight dragged at him like a corpse in a body bag. But he didn't stop.
And then—
There.
At the edge of a twisted outcrop of what might have been vertebrae—a door.
A massive vertical slab of bone, smooth and pale, embedded in a wall of rippling flesh. Veins pulsed across its surface like roots. It didn't look mechanical, but it radiated purpose. Like it was meant to be here.
Chris stumbled toward it, one hand still firing into the horde. He dropped Kelvin to the ground gently, panting hard, then slammed his palm against the door.
Nothing happened.
The creatures were closer now.
He shouted, "OPEN, DAMN YOU!"
The Watch on his wrist buzzed violently.
VOICEPRINT CONFIRMEDCAPTAIN CHRIS MANTLETARTARIAN EXPLORATION FORCE ZETA-12
Biogate 71-A – Access Granted
The bone flexed like it was alive, splitting down the center with a wet crack and pulling open into darkness.
Chris didn't hesitate.
He hauled Kelvin's arm over his shoulder and dragged him inside.
The door slammed shut behind them with a sickening crunch, sealing them in.
Total blackness swallowed them.
Then, slowly—dim light pulsed from the floor beneath their feet, casting the chamber in a sickly bioluminescent glow. The air inside smelled different—less acidic, but metallic and heavy with ozone.
Chris collapsed against the wall, chest heaving.
Kelvin stirred beside him, eyelids fluttering. "Did… did we make it?"
Chris coughed, spit blood, and stared at the strange, alien architecture of the chamber. The veins on the wall pulsed with faint light. Console nodes made of flesh and metal blinked slowly, as if waking up.
The Watch buzzed again.
Welcome Back, Captain.Zeta-12 Forward Nexus Reestablished.Temporal Loop Detected – Confirming Identity…
Chris Mantle: Alive. Unknown Passenger: Alive.
Recommended Action: Restore Full Systems. Seek Flight Core.
Survivability in Current Conditions: 0.84%
Chris looked at Kelvin, who was blinking now, pale but alert.
"We're not dead," Chris muttered. "But I think we just unlocked the next level of hell."
Chris pushed himself off the floor slowly, like every part of his body was made of rusted metal. His arms trembled. His legs burned. Something inside his ribs felt like it had torn loose and was floating. Still—he stood.
He was breathing like a man who had just crawled out of his own grave. The room didn't help. Pulsing walls of fleshy architecture, dimly glowing nodes that hummed with a tone somewhere between tinnitus and whale song. It wasn't cold or hot. It was wrong—like standing inside a lung that had forgotten how to breathe.
Kelvin was still groggy on the floor, mumbling to himself, caught somewhere between consciousness and whatever dreams still clung to his brain like parasites.
Chris staggered over to the console.
The monitor above it blinked with low-res, amber text that flickered like it was typed by a dying hand.
WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN CHRIS MANTLETARTARIAN EXPLORATION FORCE ZETA-12TEMPORAL LOOP STATUS: UNSTABLENEXUS ENVIRONMENT: BIO-COMPUTATIONAL STASIS PRESERVED
Chris leaned heavily on the edge of the console. "I don't even know what the fuck that means," he muttered. Then louder, slamming his hand on the flesh-wrapped keyboard: "What the hell is a temporal loop?! Why am I a captain?! What the fuck is the Tartarian Empire?! And where the hell are the supplies?!"
The console buzzed. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the lights dimmed.
The Watch on his arm clicked once—like a vault locking shut.
QUERY RECEIVEDRESPONSE PERMITTED: LEVEL 3 CLEARANCE
From somewhere deep behind the walls, something moved—shifting, breathing, or remembering.
The screen flickered and then spoke—not with voice, but with text and pain.
"THE TEMPORAL LOOP IS A SELF-SUSTAINING EVENT CHAIN BOUND TO THE REANIMATION OF IDENTITY SIGNATURE: CHRIS MANTLE.YOU HAVE DIED 117 TIMES.EACH INSTANCE RETURNS TO THIS POINT."
Chris stared, heart pounding. "That's not possible."
"THE LOOP IS MANDATORY. DESIGNATED TO COMPLETE THE TASK. THE NEXUS CANNOT BE ABANDONED. YOU ARE ITS ANCHOR."
A cold dread slid down his spine.
Kelvin, stirring now, looked up. "What are you talking to?"
"The computer," Chris said flatly. "It says I've died. A hundred and seventeen times."
Kelvin blinked. "Are… are we ghosts?"
Chris ignored him and leaned closer to the screen, knuckles white on the console.
"And the Tartarian Empire? What is it?"
The monitor pulsed, and for a split second, the room dimmed again. Then:
THE TARTARIAN EMPIREFOUNDED CIRCA 79,000 BCEOBLITERATED CIRCA 1830 CESTATUS: REDACTED
Images began flashing across the screen—flickering like a corrupted reel of film:
—A city made of obsidian towers spiraling into the sky, their peaks disappearing into artificial clouds.—Massive machines the size of planets, chained to glowing suns.—People with eyes black as space and no mouths, screaming through vibrating necks as data was pumped into their skulls.—A man being dissolved by light, pixel by pixel, begging for release.—A diagram of Earth—not a sphere, but a layered disk, like a fossilized record, each continent sitting on concentric rings.—The phrase: "GAIA IS A MACHINE, AND YOU ARE ITS BLOOD."
Chris recoiled. His skin crawled.
"What… the fuck…" he whispered.
YOU WERE SELECTED FOR COMMAND STATUS DURING LAST SUCCESSFUL EXPEDITION.YOU DIED AT NODE 119-OMEGA.RECOVERY OF YOUR BODY WAS REQUIRED FOR LOOP CONTINUATION.TARTARIAN EMPIRE: FINAL ORDER = EXPLORE AND CONSUME EXTERNAL CONTINENTS.MAGICKA: HUMAN UPGRADE FAILURE.
Kelvin stood shakily behind him now, reading over his shoulder. "Upgrade? What upgrade?"
Chris stared. "We're part of something older than any civilization on Earth. And apparently, we failed to evolve."
The screen changed again.
A new file opened—labeled SUPPLIES.
A diagram of the Nexus appeared. A pulsing dot marked their current location. Another blinked far deeper into the structure.
SUPPLY NODE: STORAGE CAVERN 3-CPATH: 1.9 KM DOWNWARD – CAUTION: BIOFILAMENT BREACH DETECTED
Suddenly, the screen warped. Like someone had taken the image and folded it from behind.
Another message popped up in garbled, half-coherent text.
IT'S UNDER YOUR SKINTHEY LEFT SOMETHING BEHINDTHEY NEVER LEFTTHE DOOR WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE OPENED
"IT WAS YOUR VOICE THAT KILLED US, CHRIS. YOUR VOICE THAT SCREAMED THE LOOP BACK TO LIFE."
Chris staggered backward.
His skin itched.
His veins felt hot—alive. As if something were crawling through them.
The Watch buzzed violently.
WARNING: SYNCING MAGICKA TO UNKNOWN ENGRAMYOU ARE BEING UPDATED.
Chris looked down at his hands. His veins were glowing faintly. Not with light—but something just beneath it. Like a second circulatory system, slowly waking up.
Kelvin looked terrified. "Chris—your eyes—"
Chris turned to him. "What?"
"They're… they're not your eyes anymore."
Then the room dimmed again, and somewhere in the walls—maybe even in the floor—a voice spoke.
Not text. Not mechanical.
A voice, soft and wet like a whisper behind skin:
"Welcome back, Captain. You must complete the cycle."
Chris looked down at his forearms. The faint light beneath his skin now pulsed rhythmically—too slow for a heartbeat, too fast for comfort. It didn't glow. It flickered, like fire smothered beneath tissue.
The veins on his arms were black and thick like oil-filled wires, twisted under the skin in spiraling patterns that hadn't been there before. He could feel his Origin Organ—his heart—pumping wrong. Like it had new chambers. Like it had been modified.
The console buzzed again.
TISSUE MODIFICATION COMPLETECAPTAIN CHRIS MANTLE: SYNCED TO THAUMIC GRIDSTATUS: FUEL UNIT (TEMPORARY)REVERSION PROTOCOL: INACTIVE
CAUTION: MAGICKA CONSUMPTION WILL INCREASE BIOLOGICAL ENTROPY
Chris's AI Watch immediately came to life, its old, garbled voice gruffer than usual—something between a drill sergeant and a dying modem.
"You need to burn it off. Now."
Chris blinked. "What?"
"That upgrade? That's not a gift. That's processing prep. You've been altered to be combusted. Like dry coal packed with soul energy. That light in your veins? It's your Magicka draining—leaking into a lattice so someone, something, else can burn it. Eventually. Doesn't matter if it's today or a thousand years from now. You're being stored. Like a goddamn battery."
Chris stared at the monitor, then back to his arms.
"Burn it off," the AI snapped. "Push Magicka through every inch of your system. Hard. Tear those roots out before they wrap around your damn spine."
"But I don't even know how—"
"Figure it out. Or die screaming like the last 117 of you."
Chris turned to Kelvin.
Kelvin was already shaking, eyes wide, sweat pouring down his face. He'd been too quiet. Way too quiet.
Chris's voice cracked. "What… what do we do?"
Kelvin just looked at him. That expression—pure civilian panic. Not fear of the unknown. Fear of knowing too much. Like he was standing in the center of a cosmic autopsy and realizing he was on the table.
"I…" Kelvin swallowed. "I don't care about the goddamn Empire or the loop or your glowing-ass veins."
Chris didn't move.
Kelvin took a shaky step forward. "Let's get the fuck out. We take this info home. We show it to the Council. Get paid. Get drunk. Try to forget."
Chris looked down at the creeping blackness in his veins, his twisted reflection in the monitor, then back to Kelvin.
"Alright," he whispered.
The Watch buzzed quietly—annoyed, but not arguing.
Chris turned to the console one last time.
TEMPORAL SYNC: DESTABILIZEDCHANCE OF SUCCESSFUL ESCAPE: 3.2%
NOTE: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE, CAPTAIN.
Chris didn't respond. He turned away. Shouldered his half-burnt bag. Walked toward Kelvin.
And as they stepped back into the breathing hallway, the console screen shifted—unseen:
SUBJECT AWAKE.THE CYCLE RESUMES.