Rahs struggled, pushing against the grey chest with both hands. It was like pushing against a solid wall. He was a soldier of Pragna, trained for war, trained to fight men and machines. But this wasn't war. This was nature gone wrong. This was a nightmare made flesh.

Jeila screamed.

She ran forward, the small combat knife in her hand. She didn't think. She didn't calculate. She acted.

She stabbed the creature in the back, putting all her small weight behind the blow.

*Snap.*

The blade broke on the stone-like skin. The metal shard skittered away uselessly.

The creature ignored her. It didn't even register her attack. It was focused solely on Rahs. It lowered its jaws, the jagged teeth grazing Rahs's neck.

Rahs closed his eyes. The weight crushed his ribs.

*I failed,* he thought, darkness closing in. *Just like Unit 32. Just like everyone else who came here.*

SCENE V – THE NERVE

A whistle cut the stagnant air. Sharper than a scream, faster than the thought of death.

*Thwack.*

The pressure on Rahs's chest vanished.

There was a wet, tearing sound, followed by a heavy thud against the wall.

Rahs opened his eyes, gasping for air, hand instinctively going to his throat to check for blood. He was alive.

He looked up.

The creature was pinned to the concrete wall three meters away. A long, black metal spear had punched straight through its chest, lifting it off the ground. The creature thrashed, grey limbs flailing, clawing at the shaft, but it couldn't pull itself free. The metal had pierced the callous skin and anchored deep into the wall behind it.

Rahs scrambled backward, boots sliding in the slime. He grabbed Jeila and pulled her close, shielding her. He looked toward the entrance of the lab, toward the source of the spear.

A figure stood there.

He was not wearing white like Voi. He was not wearing rags like the girl in the market.

He wore a suit of matte-black tactical armor, but it was scavenged, pieced together from different units—a Pragna chest plate, a resistance shin guard, a belt made of industrial webbing. It fit him like a second skin, customized for silence. His face was covered by a mask—half military gas mask, half ballistic visor.

He didn't move like a soldier. He didn't march. He moved like a shadow, liquid and silent.

He walked over to the pinned creature. The Reject snapped its jaws at him, *click-click-clicking* in fury.

The figure reached out. His hand was gloved in black. He grabbed the creature's head with a grip that looked casual but was terrifyingly strong.

With a simple, brutal twist, he snapped its neck.

The sound was like a tree branch breaking in a storm—a dry, final *crack*. The creature went limp, arms hanging uselessly.

The figure reached up, grabbed the spear, and placed his boot against the creature's chest. With a wet squelch, he pulled the spear free. He wiped the black, tar-like blood on the creature's tattered gown.

Then, slowly, he turned to Rahs and Jeila.

He didn't speak. He just stared at them through the dark visor of his mask. The silence stretched, heavy and dangerous.

"Who are you?" Rahs asked, voice shaking as he stood up, keeping Jeila behind him. He looked for his rifle but didn't dare move toward it. "Pragna Special Forces? Project Adaptation?"

The figure stood still. Then, he reached up and unclipped his mask.

There was a hiss of depressurization, a release of filtered air. He pulled the mask off.

His face was young, maybe mid-twenties, but it was a ruin. His skin was pale, almost translucent. Beneath the surface, a web of green veins pulsed, radiating from his neck up to his temple, throbbing with a toxic rhythm.

His eyes were green—not a human green, not the color of emeralds or leaves. They were the phosphorescent green of a chemical spill, glowing faintly in the gloom.

And on his forehead, right between his eyes, was a **Dot**.

Rahs froze. Blood drained from his face. "A Pika."

The man looked at Rahs. He looked at the Pragna uniform—the grey symbol of the order that had burned the world. He spat on the floor. His saliva was dark.

"You are loud," the man said.

His voice was raspy, damaged, as if he hadn't used it in years. It sounded like grinding stones. "Noise attracts them."

"Attracts who?" Jeila asked, peeking out from behind Rahs.

The man turned his glowing eyes toward the deeper darkness of the lab.

"The others," the man said. "The ones who are hungry. The ones the spear doesn't kill."

He turned and started walking back toward the forest entrance, moving with a predator's grace.

"Wait!" Rahs called out, stepping forward despite his fear. "We came for answers. We need to know what this place is. We need to know about Voi."

The man stopped. He didn't turn around. He stood framed by the sick green light of the forest entrance.

"This is the factory," he said, voice flat. "This is where they made us. This is where they broke the world."

"Us?" Rahs asked.

The man turned his head slightly, the green veins on his neck pulsing.

"The mistakes," the man said. "I am **Nerve**. If you want to live, you follow me. If you want to die, stay here. The facility wakes up at night."

He walked out into the green gloom, disappearing into the vegetation.

Rahs looked at Jeila. He looked at his broken knife. He looked at the dead monster on the wall.

"We follow," Jeila said instantly. She picked up her half of the red ball, clutching it to her chest.

"He's a Pika, Jeila," Rahs whispered, panic rising in his throat. "He has a Dot. He could kill us."

"He just saved us," she countered, eyes hard and far too old for her face. "And he knows what Voi is. He knows the secret."

Rahs looked at the dead creature on the floor, then at the green-eyed man disappearing into the trees. He realized that his war, the war of guns and orders, was over. He was in a new war now.

The order of Pragna ended here. The logic of the world ended here.

Rahs picked up his rifle. It felt heavy and useless in his hands.

"Let's go," he said.

They stepped into the deeper dark of the forest, following the monster to find the truth about monsters.

END OF CHAPTER V