Chapter 6
"Maybe you wanted to bring me here and turn me into a specimen for you to study." Cypher said to him with a glare on his face.
Cypher's knuckles were white where he gripped the hydro-spanner, his arm tense. The man had said he wouldn't kill him, but words were cheap in District 13. Trust was a currency no one could afford.
"I'm the one with a gun. The hydro-spanner you have with you doesn't mean anything. And you really think I'd have brought you here alive before killing you? I'd have done it the moment I saw you before you could even blink." The man said to him.
Cypher doubted his words.
"That's easy for you to say," Cypher said, his voice tight. He didn't lower the tool. "I don't know that. I don't know you."
The man let out a short, humorless puff of air that might have been a laugh. He walked over to a storage crate and rummaged inside, his movements calm and unhurried, as if a terrified young man wasn't standing in his home ready to cave his skull in. He pulled out a small, silver foil packet and tossed it to Cypher.
Cypher caught it out of pure reflex. It was a nutrient paste packet, a standard-issue meal supplement. Dense, tasteless, but packed with enough calories to keep you going for half a day.
"My name is King," the man said, finally introducing himself. He watched Cypher with his one good eye, a flicker of something unreadable in its brown depths.
Cypher stared at him. The name meant nothing. It wasn't the name of a gang leader or a well-known fixer. It was just a name. "Am I supposed to know you?"
This time, the man's chuckle was real, a low, gravelly sound. "No. I suppose not." He gestured with his chin toward the packet in Cypher's hand. "Eat. You look like you're about to fall over."
Cypher's eyes narrowed. He stared down at the packet, turning it over in his hands. He checked the seal. It looked untampered with, but that meant nothing. In District 13, people had found ways to inject poison through the smallest of holes. His suspicion must have been written all over his face.
King sighed, the sound full of weary patience. "Look, kid…"
"I'm not a kid." Cypher grumbled out.
King ignored his statement and continued. "If I wanted you dead, I would have left you on that roof to be eaten by that winged thing. Or I would have let the little one take a bite out of your face. It would have been a lot less effort than dragging you here."
The logic was sound, brutally so. It didn't make Cypher feel any safer, but it was hard to argue with. Still, the question remained. "Then why?" he demanded, his voice gaining a hard edge. "Why save me?"
King's gaze became more focused, more serious. He leaned back against his workbench, crossing his arms over his chest. "Because I know your uncle. Corbin."
Corbin. It was the last thing he expected to hear from this stranger's lips. His mind raced, trying to connect the dots between this monster-hunting scholar and his uncle, the grizzled, bad-tempered owner of a scrap-and-parts workshop.
"How?" Cypher asked, his voice now laced with disbelief. "How do you know Corbin?"
"We did business together," King said simply, offering no further details.
Cypher still doubted his words. Worked together? His uncle's work was scavenging parts from abandoned machinery and selling them to desperate engineers and mechanics.
Corbin was a glorified junk dealer, a good one, but still just a man who knew his way around scavenged tech. This man, King, was something else entirely. His home was a museum of dead creatures, a research station dedicated to understanding the very things that were tearing their world apart. What could they possibly have worked on together? The idea was absurd.
As Cypher tried to process this, a sudden, heavy thump from directly above them made him jump. It wasn't the sound of footsteps. It was the sound of something massive landing on the roof of the hab-unit, a dead weight that made the entire structure groan in protest.
Cypher's head snapped up, his eyes wide with fear.
Instantly, King's demeanor changed. The little patience he had vanished, replaced by the sharp, focused intensity of a predator. He uncrossed his arms and held a single finger to his lips…or rather what could serve as his lips since the mask was covering half his face, his eye wide and commanding silence. He moved without a sound to the center of the room, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.
A low, scraping sound followed the thud. The sound of thick, heavy claws dragging across metal. It was slow and deliberate like the creature was investigating. A deep, growl vibrated down through the ceiling, a sound so low and powerful that Cypher could feel it in the bones of his feet.
He was frozen, his earlier bravado gone. He knew how these hab-units were built. They were stacked boxes of cheap steel and recycled composites, designed to keep out the rain and the neighbors, not… this. Not something that heavy, that strong. He imagined the roof buckling, the creature tearing its way through the metal like it was wet paper.
The scraping became more frantic. A loud bang echoed through the room as the creature slammed its weight against the roof again, this time with more force. Dust and flecks of rust rained down from the ceiling panels. Cypher held his breath, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard he was sure the creature could hear it. Glitch, still on his shoulders, had powered down its lights, becoming a silent, motionless weight.
King remained perfectly still, his energy pistol held loosely at his side, his head cocked as he listened. He was a statue of calm in the face of Cypher's rising panic.
The relentless pounding continued for what felt like an hour, each impact sending a fresh wave of terror through Cypher. Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. A moment of silence passed, thick and heavy with dread. Then they heard it again: the scrape of claws, moving away this time, followed by another heavy thud as the creature leaped off their roof and onto the next building. It was gone.
Cypher let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, his body slumping with relief.
King moved to the wall, sliding open a tiny slit in the metal, no wider than his finger, and peered outside. After a long moment, he slid it shut and turned back to Cypher, his face grim.
"We can't stay here any longer," he said, his voice low. "This place is built to withstand a gang raid, but not one of those."
"Fuck!" King cursed. "I hoped this would protect us for a while before we continued but we have to go. This place can't withstand one of those." He repeated more to himself than to Cypher.
Cypher's eyes, which had just started to lose their wide-eyed terror, bulged again. "One of what? What do you mean by that? What was that thing?"
King picked up his coat, his movements now filled with a new urgency. "That was a Cerberus Hound," he said. "A mutation of three, maybe four canids fused together. It has three heads, incredible speed, and enough brute strength to peel this hab-unit open like a can of tuna."
As if on cue, a fresh wave of sounds from outside proved his point. It wasn't just screaming anymore. It was the distinct, sickening thud of bodies hitting the pavement from a great height, followed by the wet, tearing sounds of a feeding frenzy.
King cursed under his breath, a string of sharp, foul words. He looked at Cypher, his expression hard as stone. "It's hunting in the street now. We need to go. Now. I'll take you to your uncle."
People remaining: 298,790
Accepted residents: 0