The junior orderly collapsed against the floor tiles, his throat rattling beneath Ostran’s intercom transmission while a ward apprentice, frozen by the sight, backed away from a ventilation grate actively spewing the green-black miasma. The boy tracked the toxic tendrils coiling toward his boots, choking on a half-strangled gasp as the putrid vapor hit his face. “Get behind the shield array!” Dacha shouted, shoving Vorek sideways. She sprinted toward the boy, her fingers tearing at her utility belt. Vorek caught his footing against a console, swore through the smog burning his throat, and lunged after her, tackling the apprentice behind a fortified plasteel partition with a brutal shove. The metal groaned as the rot’s tendrils licked at its surface, leaving a trail of shimmering corrosion. Dacha dropped to her knees beside the youth, ripping open his tunic. The black veins were already visible, a sickening filigree beneath his pale skin. He coughed, a wet, rattling sound, his body spasming. His gaze, wide and pleading, met hers. “Don’t let it take me, Dacha,” he rasped, clawing at his throat. Vorek watched, his face tightening, as Dacha’s hands flared with violet somatic fire. She slammed her palms flat over the apprentice's sternum, teeth grinding as the output flared. The boy's violent shaking subsided into a weak, ragged groan. The black veins on his neck seemed to recede, a barely perceptible inch, then held their ground. Dacha’s knuckles whitened, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on her temples. Her own vital glow began to flicker, dimming with each painful pulse of effort. Vorek, recognizing the strain, saw her lips press into a thin line of agony. Her face, already drawn, tightened further. She was filtering the rot out of his lungs, but the sheer volume of soot-spores meant she was burning raw somatic life-force to keep his heart beating. It was a brutal, agonizing exchange, buying precious minutes at an immense cost. “Enough,” Vorek grated, gripping her shoulder. “You’ll kill yourself. We need you.” Dacha snarled, shaking off his hand. “He’s family! We don’t leave him to rot!” Her voice frayed into a harsh rasp. The violet light around her hands pulsed again, weaker this time, but her resolve was absolute. The boy whimpered, his eyelids fluttering. His skin was unnaturally cold against her touch. Finally, with a guttural cry, Dacha ripped her hands away. She swayed, her vision blurring, and Vorek caught her before she could fall. Her chest heaved, a sharp, aching pain radiating through her. She had bought him a reprieve, but a temporary one. He was still dying, slowly, inexorably. “We need to get to the central synthesizer. Now,” Dacha bit out, ignoring her own exhaustion. She pulled a blood-analysis kit from her belt, a compact device humming to life. With shaking hands, she drew a dark vial from the boy's median vein. The device whirred, its internal optics scanning the dark, contaminated fluid. A projected display flickered into existence above its casing, depicting complex molecular structures and rapidly deteriorating vital markers. “The rot is… mutating,” Dacha whispered, her eyes fixed on the display. “Faster than Ostran predicted. Standard anti-toxins will be useless. We need a pure somatic anchor.” She tapped the monitor's diagnostic readout. “A dense biological charge capable of shattering the rot's parasitic frequency.” Vorek watched her, his expression unreadable. “And what does that mean?” “It means,” Dacha said, turning to him, her voice level and sharp, “the cure requires a living battery. Your Spire vitality, matched against my blood's mutated antibodies, can crack the spore shell. You are the anchor.” His body stiffened. “Drain me? You saw what happened to that boy—what it took just to keep his lungs clear.” He shook his head. “Find another vessel.” “This isn't an offer, Yastov!” Dacha snarled, anger cutting through the tremor in her arms. “The lower tiers are rotting from the pipes up, and that orderly won't survive ten minutes. What good is your hoarded vitality if you let the wards choke?” She lunged forward, her open palm connecting with the side of his face with a sharp, resounding crack. Vorek reeled, more from shock than the impact, a furious flush creeping up his neck. Before he could react, Dacha grabbed his face, twisting his head violently. Her lips crashed against his, hard and unyielding. It was not a kiss of passion, but a blunt, predatory siphon. She seized the raw somatic reserves pooled in his core, dragging the vitality across the contact point. The stolen warmth scorched through her chest like liquid copper, needle-sharp and blistering along her capillaries, but she clamped down harder, wringing out every scrap of charge she could harvest. His muscles locked beneath her grip, a low growl rumbling in his chest, but she ignored it, driven by the ticking minutes. She felt the metallic tang of blood in her mouth as her teeth scraped against his, a primal, visceral transfer. Finally, she broke away, gasping, her own lips bruised and tingling. Vorek stood rigid, his eyes blazing with a mixture of rage and bewildered shock, a bead of blood at the corner of his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his hand, staring at her as if she were a new kind of monster. “Move,” Dacha commanded, her voice raw. She broke into a run toward the blast door stenciled ‘CORE SYNTHESIS’, the stolen current humming hot in her blood. She thrust a hand into a biometric scanner, the panel glowing green. The door hissed open, revealing a short corridor leading to a vast, sterile chamber dominated by a colossal, humming apparatus. Inside, Dacha worked with practiced speed, feeding Vorek’s harvested charge and her serum isolate into the synthesizer's primary manifold. The machine whirred to life, its crystalline conduits glowing with vibrant, swirling colors. A digital display flickered, showing a countdown: “CURE COMPILATION INITIATED: 00:10:00.” “Ten minutes,” Dacha breathed, turning back to Vorek. “Then the cure is ready.” A heavy metallic clang echoed from the corridor behind them. The blast door, designed to withstand siege, buckled inward with an ominous groan. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface as a horrific, tearing sound ripped through the chamber. From the shattered metal, grotesque, multi-limbed abominations began to force their way through, their distorted forms writhing in the dim light. Ostran’s pets had arrived.

Somatic Anchor