The vapor billowed in dense curtains, seeping into every crevice of the makeshift clinic, clinging to the grimy fabric of the cots, and masking the stricken faces of the slum dwellers. A child’s hack turned wet and rattling. Acid scorched Olenka’s throat, burning downward into her bronchial tubes. Her vision blurred, tears streaming from eyes that felt like they were dissolving. “Cover your mouths!” she croaked, pulling the stained collar of her tunic over her nose and mouth, a futile gesture against the rapidly thickening haze. “Get low!” Misha, still propped on his cot, coughed violently, a wet, rattling sound that tore through Olenka’s frayed nerves. He gasped for air, his hand instinctively clamping over his sternum. But as he tried to push himself up, a sharp shriek ripped from him. His right arm, the one Olenka had bandaged just hours ago, began to warp. The skin around his elbow, once merely bruised, now pulsed with an unsettling, dull sheen. Tiny, coppery flecks erupted from his pores, like rust blooming from within. “What in the…?” Misha’s voice was strained, laced with a new, horrifying pain. He tried to flex his fingers, but the movement was stiff, as if his joints had seized. The coppery patches branched across his forearm, the skin hardening, darkening, taking on the brittle texture of old, corroded iron. Spasms wracked his torso, his arm locking into a grotesque, half-bent position as he stifled a sob. Olenka stumbled toward him, nausea gripping her stomach. This was necro-rust—an outlawed transmutative agent described in contraband journals, rumored to turn flesh into inert, rusting alloy. It was rewriting their biology. “Misha, let me see!” She yanked back his sleeve, exposing an advancing tide of rust. The hardened skin was cold to the touch, inflexible, locking the muscle beneath. His fingers were fused into gnarled talons. The vapor was working with terrible speed. [LIFESPAN DEDUCTION: 50 POINTS. EVACUATE SECTOR 4 IMMEDIATELY. REMAINING LIFESPAN: 650 POINTS.] The message flared, blood-red, behind her eyes, the pain of the deduction a familiar spike in her temples. But Olenka didn’t flinch. She grabbed Misha’s shoulders, her face grim. “Listen to me. This isn’t a gas, it’s a living rust. It spreads. We need to stop it.” Her clinical training with mangled biomechanical tissue kicked in. This mimicked aggressive necrosis, but calcified into brass and slag. It had to be excised before it reached the torso. “Stop it? How? My arm… it feels like it’s full of grinding gears!” Misha wheezed, tears cutting through the grime on his face. His good hand clutched his rusted limb, his knuckles white. Olenka’s gaze swept across the room. The other slum dwellers were starting to show the signs now, too. A woman’s cheek, blossoming with tiny, golden flecks. A man’s leg stiffened, grinding like dry gears as he stumbled. She could not abandon them. [WARNING: CONTINUED DISOBEDIENCE WILL RESULT IN SEVERE LIFESPAN DEDUCTIONS. ABANDON CURRENT LOCATION.] “I need a blade!” Olenka shouted, rifling through the meager field supplies. She snatched a tarnished bone saw. Crude, but it would have to do. “And something to cauterize! A live wire, a hot poker, anything!” “Olenka, no! What are you doing? My arm… you can’t!” Misha backed against his pillow, staring at the saw’s serrated edge. “Don’t you dare!” “It’s the only way, Misha! It’s spreading too fast. If we don’t stop it, it will take your whole body.” She faced him squarely, ignoring the burning in her lungs and the red runes jarring her vision. “This is a temporary measure. We’ll find a cure, but we need to buy time.” She grabbed a thick, grimy rag. “Bite on this. And don’t move.” The stench of oxidizing vapor clogged the vault, thick with copper and burnt sulfur. Her hands shook, yet she pinned his forearm flat against the table edge. She drew the blade into the joint above the corroded line. Teeth bit into crystallized bone and calcified flesh with a wet, gravelly crunch. Misha shrieked into the rag, his heels drumming the floorboards until the severed limb dropped with a dead, heavy thump. As Olenka cinched a tourniquet tight around the stump to stem the gray fluid oozing from the veins, a low thrum reverberated through the flagstones. A distant, rhythmic thrumming, growing louder, closer. It was the heavy, deep pulse of an air-skimmer, not the light, agile scouts of Casimir’s enforcers, but something massive, descending through the strata of the Spire. The green gas seemed to swirl faster, as if stirred by the powerful downdraft. Then, a booming voice, heavily amplified, sliced through the smog, echoing from the massive opening of the incinerator chute above. “ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF SECTOR 4. THIS IS THE VOLNIRAN PUBLIC HEALTH AUTHORITY. A LOCALIZED BIOHAZARD HAS BEEN DETECTED. IMMEDIATE QUARANTINE PROTOCOL INITIATED.” A colossal, armored vehicle, a true behemoth of polished, reinforced chromesteel, slowly descended through the incinerator chute, its powerful thrusters kicking up clouds of the sickly green gas. It was an armored containment rig, its hull bristling with sensor clusters and automated turrets, treads churning the rubble of the floor. “A CURE IS AVAILABLE,” the speaker droned with flat, synthetic authority. “SUBMIT TO BIOMETRIC TRIAGE AT THE DESIGNATED ENTRY POINTS. COOPERATION ENSURES YOUR SURVIVAL AND THE CONTAINMENT OF THE NECRO-RUST PLAGUE.” The transport touched down with a deafening crash, ramps uncurling with pneumatic hisses. An illuminated circular vestibule rolled forward from its belly, awash in blue phosphorescence. A beacon of hope, or a trap? [WARNING: THE ARMORED RIG IS A KNOWN PURSUIT ASSET. APPROACHING WILL LEAD TO IMMINENT CAPTURE. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.] Olenka looked at Misha, pale and shivering over his tied-off stump, then toward the groaning crowd. She could not watch them calcify into iron husks to preserve her own skin. “I’m going in,” she said, her voice hoarse. She ignored the interface's violent spasms, pushing through the cold ache behind her brow as phantom strings jerked at her kneecaps. She had made her choice. She had to save them. She shoved past the stumbling crowd toward the blue glow. Her boots dragged as unseen resistance locked her joints, but she forced each stride forward against the protocol's pull. She mounted the circular platform. A hum whirred through the plating as a cool lattice of light swept her shoulders down to her boots. Pneumatic seals fired, and the heavy hatches snapped shut, cutting off the vault in pitch-black silence. White phosphor tubes flickered alive to illuminate a pristine partition, and Casimir stepped from the shadows. He moved with a languid grace, his tailored coat rustling softly, his silver hair glinting in the pale light. His face was unblemished, his gaze utterly serene, almost peaceful. But it was a serenity that made the hairs on Olenka’s arms stand on end. His lips curved into a slow, knowing smile, devoid of any warmth, yet filled with a terrifying, absolute certainty. Casimir Zhelanov had found her.

The Necro-Rust Trap