The hunger was gone. In its place a cold and humming engine vibrated in the marrow of the bones of Mike.

  He stood in the center of the silo with the carcass of the mastiff at his feet reduced to a mangle of picked-clean bone and gristle. He felt heavy and grounded as his feet sank inches deep into the sludge. He did not feel dirty. The filth did not feel like contamination anymore. It felt like texture.

  Mike closed his eyes. The darkness of the pit was absolute save for the pale circle of light fifty feet above. He did not need eyes to see. The mutation had opened a new channel in his brain that manifested as a low-frequency buzz at the base of his skull.

  He was not alone.

  He could hear them. Not with his ears but with that new and twitching sense. They were in the walls and behind the metal plates and under the grate. Heartbeats. Dozens of them were fast and frantic and starving.

  Mike took a breath and inhaled the ammonia-rich air. He did not just smell the rot now. He smelled the fear hiding inside it.

  "Come out," he whispered.

  He did not speak the words aloud. He pushed them out with his mind and shoved the intent through the static. It was not a request. It was a gravity well. He uncorked the pheromones that the System had been synthesizing in his glands and let the chemical signal of the Apex flood the stagnant air of the silo.

  Scritch. Scratch.

  The sound came from everywhere at once. It came from the seams in the metal plating and from the drain pipe in the floor and from the shadows that the overhead light could not reach. They poured out like black oil.

  Pit-rats.

  These were not the skittish scavengers of the upper streets. These were creatures bred in the dark and fed on the runoff of Sector 4 and the occasional prisoner who did not survive the drop. They were the size of cats and their fur was patchy and stiff with grease. Some were blind with eyes sealed shut by scar tissue as they navigated by scent and desperation alone. Their tails were thick hairless whips that lashed against the metal.

  They flowed down the walls and erupted from the drain as a chittering squealing tide of teeth and claws. They smelled the blood on him. They smelled the fresh meat of the mastiff. The wave crashed toward him.

  A normal man would have screamed. A normal man would have been stripped to the bone in seconds and overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the swarm. Mike did not flinch. He did not raise his bone-spur. He just stood there naked and bloody in the dark and looked at them.

  He projected the signal harder. He visualized a boot crushing a skull. He visualized the cold green fire of his own dominance.

  Mine.

  The mental command slammed into the swarm like a physical wall. The front line of rats skidded to a halt inches from his bare toes. The ones behind them crashed into their brethren and tumbled over each other in a chaotic pile of fur and squeals.

  The silence that followed was instant and terrifying. The rats did not attack. They froze. Dozens of wet twitching noses sniffed the air. They smelled the mastiff blood but underneath it they smelled something more potent. They smelled the toxin running through the veins of Mike. They smelled the genetic marker that said predator.

  One of the largest rats was a scarred male with half an ear missing. It crept forward and lowered its belly to the sludge. It did not bare its yellow teeth but let out a soft submissive whine.

  Mike looked down at it. He felt a strange dark affection stir in his chest. It was not the affection of a pet owner. It was the affection of a craftsman looking at a hammer.

  "You are hungry too," Mike said softly. He gestured to the remains of the mastiff. "Eat."

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  The command broke the spell. The swarm descended on the leftover carcass in a frenzy of tearing and chewing. They did not touch Mike. They moved around his ankles like a flowing river and were careful not to graze his skin.

  Mike looked up at the grate. Fifty feet of smooth alloy walls were impossible to climb for a human. But he was not just a human anymore. He was the Sovereign of the pit.

  "Done," Mike said.

  The rats stopped eating instantly. They turned toward him with muzzles wet with dog blood and waited. Mike walked to the wall and placed a hand on the cold slick metal. He looked back at the swarm.

  "Up," he commanded. "Build."

  He did not know how he knew they would understand. He just knew. The connection between them was a thick biological cable and his will was their instinct. The rats surged forward. They did not climb the wall. They climbed each other.

  They rushed the base of the silo where Mike stood and piled up in a writhing squeaking mound. They hooked their claws into the fur of their kin and locked their bodies together to form a living ramp.

  Mike stepped onto the first layer of rats. They held his weight. He could feel their small ribs flexing under his feet but they did not break. They braced themselves as a solid mass of muscle and devotion. He stepped higher. The swarm flowed around him. As he climbed the rats from the bottom scurried up the sides of the pile and raced over his feet to form the next step above him. It was a perpetual motion machine of vermin and a rolling wave of fur that carried him upward.

  It was grotesque. It was magnificent.

  Mike ascended through the gloom on a throne of living filth. He pressed his hand against the wall for balance but his feet found purchase on the backs of his subjects. Ten feet. Twenty. Forty. The air grew cooler and the smell of the open city began to filter down.

  Mike reached the top and his hand closed around the bars of the grate. The living ladder held him suspended fifty feet above the floor. Mike pushed against the grate. It was heavy and locked from the outside. But Mike was Level 10 now. His Strength was no longer that of a malnourished boy.

  He braced his feet on the rats and gritted his teeth and shoved. There was a screech of metal on metal. The lock groaned. Mike pushed harder and his triceps burned as the energy from the mastiff meat flared in his muscles.

  Crack.

  The locking mechanism snapped. The grate swung upward with a heavy clang. Mike pulled himself up and rolled onto the cold concrete of the surface. He gasped for the air.

  He was out.

  He lay there for a moment and waited for a shout or a gunshot. Nothing. The courtyard was empty. The guard had likely gone inside for his break just as he said he would. They did not expect the rat to climb out of the bottle.

  Mike sat up. The swarm below chattered softly and waited for a command to follow.

  "Stay," Mike sent the thought down. "Wait."

  He stood up. The night wind bit at his naked skin but he barely felt it. His hide was tougher now. He was standing in the back lot of the Processing Plant. To his left was the heavy transport gate and to his right was the alleyway that led back to the main drag of Sector 4.

  Mike walked to the edge of the alley and looked out at the street. It was raining. The neon signs of the shops sputtered in the gloom. Down the street he could see the flickering sign of Jory's.

  The lights were on. Maybe he was drinking tea. Maybe he was telling himself he had no choice.

  A flash of heat flared in the chest of Mike. It was the old human anger. He could go there now. He could smash the window. He could call the rats up from the sewers and fill that shop with teeth until there was nothing left of the old man but red stains on the floor.

  Mike watched the shop for a long minute. His eyes glowed in the shadows of the alley. Slowly, the heat faded. Killing Jory served no tactical purpose. It wouldn't undo the betrayal or stop the hurt. Jory was nothing.

  He turned his back on the shop and the betrayal. He had not made it ten paces into the shadows when a silhouette detached itself from the top of a rusted dumpster.

  Grim.

  The little creature had disobeyed. He had not run. He had waited and perched in the rain to watch the exit like a gargoyle. Before Mike could scold him Grim launched himself into the air. It was a leap of blind faith. Mike did not flinch and instinctively dipped his shoulder to catch the weight. Grim landed perfectly and his claws pricked the skin just enough to hold on while his wet fur pressed against the neck of Mike. He let out a low vibrating chitter that was half greeting and half accusation.

  Mike reached up and ran a thumb over the wet head of Grim.

  "I told you to leave," Mike murmured though he did not push him away.

  Grim just shook his fur out and sprayed cold rain against the cheek of Mike before settling in. He was not going anywhere.

  He had nothing. No clothes. No money. No weapon but the bone inside his arm. But as he slipped into the shadows and merged perfectly with the dark Mike smiled. He had the Heap. And the Heap was full of soldiers waiting for their King to call.

  He headed deeper into the dark.

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