The sky outside split along jagged seams of amethyst light, raining powdered drywall across the sill. Dust plumed, choked by the acrid scent of ozone and something metallic, like burnt copper. The colossal crystalline brute, its faceted hide reflecting the unnatural glow of the sky, took another shuddering step, its shadow swallowing the entire ward. Behind it, a tide of four-limbed vermin with segmented shells surged forward, shrieking like metal dragged over grinding wheels. Eneko stood motionless, Patella’s newly spliced form twitching beside him, staring down at the ruined skyline. Maite whimpered, clutching his arm, her small body trembling. “My peaceful death,” Eneko murmured, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that barely cut through the cacophony. “My perfectly quiet, miserable, well-deserved exit. You ruined it.” His head snapped up, eyes burning with a fury that felt less human, more elemental. “You all ruined it!” Without pausing, he jammed an index finger toward the nearest cracked girder, which bristled with iridescent tendrils. Patella lunged, a blur of bone and chitin, its sharpened claws tearing through reinforced steel as if it were parchment. The pillar groaned, then folded in two, puffing pulverized plaster across the floor. [ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: ‘STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISE’. Rewards: 5x Bone Shards, 1x Chitin Fragment.] “More,” Eneko snarled, sweeping his arm across the devastated ward. “Everything you touch, everything you broke, I’ll take it back. Or I’ll take *you*.” He started moving, dragging Maite behind him, Patella a loyal, terrifying shadow. The few remaining patients and medical staff scattered, screaming, but Eneko paid them no mind. His focus narrowed to the encroaching threat. A six-limbed crawler, its head an oily cluster of beads, scuttled through a fracture in the tiles. Eneko kept walking. He extended a hand, and the creature’s movements seized. Its bead-eyes bulged as its legs locked rigid against the linoleum. “Patella. Splice.” The skeleton monstrosity was there in an instant, its bone-claws carving into the alien’s carapace. Carapace split with a sharp wet pop, spraying indigo bile before the carcass slumped. Eneko waved his hand, and the alien corpse, still twitching, rose. He fused it into a wrecked gurney, welded a chrome surgical lamp to its spine, and anchored the mass to cracked masonry. Bone and metal and alien flesh twisted, groaned, and began to solidify into a grotesque, organic barricade, blocking off the breached ward entrance. [FUSION SUCCESSFUL: ‘MAKESHIFT BULWARK’. Durability: MODERATE. Efficiency: HIGH. Current Obstruction: TEMPORARY.] “Temporary isn’t good enough!” Eneko roared, kicking a loose chunk of rebar into the growing wall. He was a whirlwind of motion, his rage fueling an obscene creativity. Every corpse, every piece of debris, every shattered piece of medical equipment became a component. He raised fallen nurses, fused them with alien scouts, then with each other, creating multi-limbed, bone-plated horror-constructs that shambled to reinforce his macabre defense. He was building an abomination-dam against a flood of nightmares, and he was *enjoying* it. Maite squeezed his knuckles, pointing down the hall. “Eneko. More coming.” A brassy bellow reverberated down the passageway, punctuated by hoof-strikes that jarred the ceiling tiles. Eneko pivoted; Patella snapped to his flank, throat vibrating with dry clicks. “Fine,” Eneko bit out, already moving towards the sound. “They want to see what happens when you interrupt a dying man’s peace? I’ll show them. I’ll show all of them.” He kicked open the swinging doors to the transit artery between wards. The scene was pure pandemonium. Survivors fled in all directions, pursued by smaller, dog-like aliens with teeth like obsidian shards. Smack in the middle, an eight-foot biped with bovine shoulders and curved prism horns pounded through steel fire doors. It had pried a snack dispenser off the anchors and was gouging grease-stained claws into the metal to snag a foil pouch. “Are you joking?” Eneko shouted, bile rising in his throat. “You wreck my hospital floor just to loot plantain chips? Those coils have been jammed since March!” The horned beast grunted, multi-faceted eyes tracking the noise as it lifted the crushed metal cabinet. This was deliberate mockery. Eneko wrenched a red pressurized canister off the bulkhead bracket, its brass nozzle clattering. The bull-beast charged, cloven feet pulverizing ceramic tiles as its brow dipped forward. Eneko braced his boots, waiting until the beast's rancid breath hit his collar, then slipped left. As it skidded to turn, he swung the red cylinder like a sledge into its rear knee joint. Bone cracked like dried pine. The monster bellowed in pain, stumbling. Eneko jerked the safety pin free and unleashed a blinding blizzard of monoammonium phosphate into its snout. Choking on white chemical dust, the blinded beast flailed wildly into the drywall. [ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: ‘EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT’. Rewards: 10x Chitin Fragments, 1x Bone Marrow Extract, 1x ‘Overpressure’ Skill Fragment.] Before it recovered, Eneko looped the steel hose bracket around its curved horn and torqued the leverage hard until cervical vertebrae snapped, dropping the carcass limp to the floor. “Patella!” Eneko barked, already raising a hand. “Mine!” [FUSION SUCCESSFUL: ‘MINOTAUR GRUNT’. Status: LOYAL. Class: HEAVY BRUISER. Incorporating unique crystalline properties.] The reanimated bull-grunt rose, its spinal plates clicking into rigid alignment as it offered a guttural snort of obedience. It stood protectively over Eneko, its horned head scanning for threats. Eneko smirked. This was better. Much better than dying peacefully. The left partition wall burst inward under an explosion of razor-sharp frost. Through the spray stepped a woman in reinforced tactical canvas, a braid coiled tight behind her neck. Her pale blue gaze flicked from the freshly raised construct to Eneko, tracking the residual necromantic fumes. A shimmering, frost-rimmed blade of ice materialized in her hand. “Efficient pest control,” she remarked evenly over the settling grit. “Mind explaining why your pack mule has hooves and blue rot?” Eneko, still bristling from the vending machine incident, glared at her. “I made it. What’s it to you, Frostbite? And you just smashed through my barricade!” She dismissed her frost blade into vapor. “I needed a shortcut. I'm Nerea Zaldua. Those portals aren't wandering rifts; they're anchored to an orbital dreadnought run by refugees called the Vanguard. We sever the flagship's core, the rifts fold shut.” “Storm an alien dreadnought and butcher the bridge crew to shut the portals?” Eneko bared his teeth. “Suits my calendar. Problem is, I can't drag thirty stitched hulks down the street.” [NEW SYSTEM FUNCTIONALITY UNLOCKED: ‘SUB-SPACE INVENTORY’. Provides instant access storage for organic and inorganic matter. Capacity: LIMITED. Warning: Extended storage of live entities may lead to unforeseen mutations and ecosystem instability.] Eneko tapped the pulsing rune. “A pocket dimension for corpses? Perfect. Pack inside, both of you.” A tear of violet vacuum parted the floorboards. Patella stepped across the threshold with a clatter of knuckles before the slit snapped shut. Before Eneko could shove the bull inside, the rift tore open a second time, thrice as wide. Patella emerged. But it wasn't the same Patella. It had grown, not just bigger, but *wider*. Its bone plates had thickened, sprouting new, jagged protrusions. Its claws were longer, almost scythe-like, and its two head-eyes now had four, glowing with a sickly emerald light. It was twice the size, a hulking monument to accelerated evolution, and it looked… hungrier. Nerea shifted back half a pace, her palm frosting over. “What crawled back out?” Eneko’s grin grew wicked. “Now that is proper structural engineering.” [STORAGE CAPACITY AT 1%. WARNING: INTERNAL ECOSYSTEM TIME-DILATION ACCELERATING, ENTITIES TURNING HOSTILE.]

Sub-Space Storage Solutions