Chapter 10: Identification.
The voice from the external comms crackled again, sharper. "Last warning, RENA pilot! Deactivate and exit!"
Ren’s eyes were locked on the shattered main doors of the academy building. Haru had run in there. Alone. Into a place where clocks ticked backward and shadows had teeth.
"Haru’s in there," he said, the words tasting like dust.
"Your emotional attachment to a single, statistically insignificant life is noted and deemed a severe tactical impediment," RENA replied. "However, my primary pilot’s final standing order was ‘Protect the family.’
A new alert bloomed on the visor. It was a system override attempt, a corrosive digital worm trying to burrow into RENA’s core from the Cleaner’s command channel. The suit shuddered.
"They are trying to manually shut me down," RENA announced, her voice gaining a slight, staticky edge. "Standard protocol for rogue assets. They will succeed in approximately forty-seven seconds. My countermeasures are… engaged."
The grey exosuit outside began to advance, its heavy feet crunching on debris. It was being cautious, but its weapon—a long-barreled rail rifle—was now leveled at RENA’s chest.
"You have a choice, Ren Ikawi," RENA said, the synthetic tone dropping to something quieter, almost intimate inside the helm. "Comply. Be extracted, arrested, and likely permanently removed from any piloting roster. Your father’s legacy ends with a whimper in a military brig. Or."
"Or what?"
"Or we finish this. We go in. We retrieve the boy. We prove you are not just a child playing in his father’s machine. My systems are currently fighting their override. I can give you thirty seconds of unencumbered operation before I have to divert significant power to the firewalls. What is your command?"
It wasn’t a choice. It was the only thing he’d ever really had. Prove himself, or be nothing. The bullies in the D-1 streets, the pity in his aunt’s eyes, the empty space where his father should have been—it all crystallized into a single, white-hot point.
"Get me to Haru."
"Authorization accepted. Commencing hostile maneuver. Try to keep your lunch down."
The suit moved.
It wasn’t his clumsy, thought-driven stumble. This was RENA, unleashed. The black exosuit dropped into a crouch so fast Ren’s head snapped back, then exploded forward. It wasn’t a run; it was a controlled, hydraulic-powered avalanche aimed at the academy’s facade.
The grey suit fired. A hypersonic round shrieked past, carving a trench in the air where RENA’s head had been a microsecond before.
"His tracking is adequate," RENA commented as they blurred forward. "His anticipation is poor."
They hit the stone steps and didn’t climb them. RENA jumped. The world tilted in the visor, a dizzying swirl of grey sky and broken stone. They cleared the remaining distance and crashed through the already-weakened wall next to the main doors, bypassing them entirely in a shower of masonry and dust.
Inside. The stillness was worse. The air was cold and smelled of old paper, mildew, and something sweetly rotten, like forgotten fruit. The grand hallway stretched into gloom, lined with lockers that seemed to lean inward. A flickering emergency light strobed, making the shadows at the far end jump and twitch.
Ren’s breath echoed in the quiet. "Scan for Haru."
"Scanning. Multiple bio-signatures detected. Faint, erratic. Human life signs are weak. One stronger signature, approximately eighty meters ahead, past the library corridor. Juvenile male. Elevated stress hormones. That is likely your friend."
"Guide me."
A golden path lit up on his visor, overlaying the physical hallway, snaking around corners.
"They have breached the perimeter," RENA reported. "The grey unit and four infantry are inbound. The override attempt is intensifying. I am now operating at 62% efficiency. Your thirty seconds have begun."
Ren thought of running, and the suit complied. This time, the movement was more cohesive. He was learning, his neurons starting to sync with the suit’s responses. They thundered down the hall, past classrooms with doors ajar, revealing empty chairs and lessons frozen on holographic boards.
A sound. Not from behind, but from above. A skittering, like many small bones tapping on ceiling tiles.
"Additional contacts," RENA said, her voice flat. "Not Cleaners."
A tile directly above them shattered. Something long and segmented, like a giant, hairless centipede made of yellowed fingernails, dropped down. It had no eyes, just a circular mouth lined with rotating, needle-like teeth.
Ren didn’t think. He reacted. The suit’s left arm came up and he backhanded the thing. It was a brutal, instinctual swipe. The anomaly splattered against the lockers with a wet crunch, ichor splashing the visor before the nano-cleaners swiftly dissolved the mess.
"Melee again," RENA noted. "Your problem-solving lacks sophistication. But it is effective."
They reached the library corridor. The grand oak door at the end stood open, just as the rumors said. Beyond it, a staircase spiraled down into darkness. The path on his visor pointed straight to it.
"No," Ren whispered. "He went down there?"
"The bio-signature did. The air current analysis suggests a large, open space below. The rotten smell is exponentially stronger. This is a convergence point."
From behind, the roar of the grey suit’s jump-jets echoed down the hall. They were coming.
"Make a choice," RENA said. "The pursuing unit will reach this position in fifteen seconds. The staircase is a tactical funnel. Advantageous for defense, catastrophic if trapped."
Ren looked at the dark maw of the staircase. He thought of Haru’s lopsided grin, of him shoving a stolen protein bar into Ren’s hand last week. "We go down."
"Sentiment. How predictable."
RENA-1 plunged into the dark. The staircase was tight, the suit’s shoulders scraping against stone that felt strangely soft, almost porous. The air grew thicker, warmer, humming with a sub-audible vibration that made Ren’s teeth ache.
They emerged into the academy’s former cafeteria.
Ren’s stomach lurched.
The vast room was unrecognizable. The long tables and benches were gone, consumed. The floor, walls, and high ceiling were coated in a pulsating, translucent gel. It glowed with a faint, sickly bioluminescence, like a deep-sea nightmare. Within the gel, shapes were suspended. Desks. Chairs. The skeletal remains of what might have been a service android. And other, more organic shapes Ren tried and failed to process.
At the center of the room, the gel coalesced into a massive, womb-like structure. It throbbed. Through its translucent skin, he could see shadowy forms shifting, merging, and splitting apart in a slow, constant cycle of horror.
"This is a nest," RENA stated, all trace of sarcasm gone. Her voice was pure, cold data. "A Category Three, self-sustaining anomaly breeding locus. The creatures you have encountered are its periphery. Its core will be far less… fragile."
On the far side of the room, near the base of the pulsating womb, a small figure lay curled. Haru. He wasn’t moving. A thin tendril of the gelatinous substance had crept over his leg, anchoring him to the floor.
"Haru!"
As if his voice triggered it, the nest reacted. The gel walls shivered. Three of the suspended organic shapes detached, sliding out onto the floor with wet, sucking sounds. They were humanoid, but wrong—limbs too long, joints bending in impossible directions, faces smooth and featureless except for vertical slits that might have been mouths. They moved with a unison that was deeply unsettling.
"Defenders," RENA said. "They will not let you take the biomass."
The comms crackled. The grey suit’s pilot was in range now, his voice filtered and furious from the top of the staircase behind them. "RENA unit! You have led us directly to a confirmed nest. Stand down now! This is a Cleaner Operation!"
The three defenders turned their blank faces toward Ren. From the staircase, the heavy footfalls of the grey exosuit began their descent.
RENA’s power level flickered. The override was draining her.
"You are surrounded by hostiles, organic and bureaucratic," she said, her voice cutting through the panic. "The nest is awakening. Your friend is being digested. What is your command, pilot?"