Earlier that day.

  “It’s a trap, the floor, the warp weaver dug out the floor,” came the captain’s voice over the intercom. There wasn’t much Lieutenant Richard McClair could do about that at the moment, unfortunately. He was in his own predicament, as he stood atop a levitating decanid. Black, snake-like tendrils attempted to strike him, forcing him to dodge, maneuvering narrowly around the blows with what little room there was on the creature’s head. He cut off another of the tendrils at the stalk with his nano-blade before finally getting a good chance to plunge the blade into the sphere itself. The nanite acid did its work and began to eat away at the massive warp beast. Richard calmly jumped from it, to avoid having the nanites eat away his boots as well. He landed in a crouch, his exo-kit absorbing much of the impact from the fall as the newborn decanid crashed down behind him, shaking the ground.

  “Deactivate Nano-blade,” the captain shouted from a few meters away. Richard swiveled his head just in time to see the ground give way under her.

  “Yeva!” Richard shouted, but it was too late, she was already gone. He took a step, intending to chase after her, but his foot punched right through the hollow floor. He stumbled, going to one knee, catching himself before he could fall fully through the treacherous floor. There must have been pit traps dug all over this room. He was fortunate to not have landed directly on one like the captain had. He looked around, assessing the chaos, as he tried awkwardly to pull his leg from the hole. Aiden and the two Honeybadger CBRN’s had taken down three more decanids with their exo-cannons, but that still left six of the class 8 monsters, which had started to tear into the squads’ formations. Already, Captain Coldwell was gone, as evidenced by another hole in the floor a few meters away.

  This was the problem with warp weavers. It had hardly been thirty seconds and already identified and eliminated both their leaders. Until they could regroup with the captains, he would have to take charge.

  “They’re trying to split us up,” Richard called over the intercom. He gave his foot a yank, breaking off more bits of tile as his boot was forced back through the hole. “We need to avoid that at all costs.”

  Honeybadger squad’s medic was next, dragged from their fortified position by the decanid’s warped gravity. Richard was quickest on the draw, shooting the offending decanid tendril with his sidearm. It recoiled, and the medic fell, his momentum sending him sliding across the tile floor.

  Richard swapped his comm channel so he could talk to both squads at once. “We’re following our captain, I recommend Honeybadger squad does the same.”

  “Copy that, Lieutenant,” Lieutenant Wiesner replied.

  Richard swapped back to his team only, so he wouldn’t have to hear the other squad’s chatter, and sliced off a decanid tendril that attempted to flatten him.

  “It’s got me,” Corporal Quick shouted. He swiveled and saw her hit her legs on the makeshift barricade as she flew past, causing her to start flipping wildly in the air. The decanid he’d just dismembered took advantage of the distraction, swiping his legs out from under him with one of its nine remaining limbs. The world pitched as Richard hit the ground, the back of his head impacting the hollow tiles where his boot had made a hole. More tiles crumbled away as he pitched towards the opening, but his exo-arm grabbed the edge and stopped him from slipping completely into the void.

  Fracture detected to tibial shaft. Reducing pain response. Bone placement sufficient to begin the mending process. Warning, attempts to walk on broken limbs can cause injuries to worsen. The lifeless words drifted clearly into his mind in a blank monotone as the pain in his leg faded to a dull throbbing.

  He took aim from his back, deterring the decanid’s follow up attack with three shots from his sidearm. Beyond his looming opponent, Melony was hit mid air by the decanid that had caught her in its gravity. The crushing blow spiked her downwards, directly into another hollow patch of tile, which exploded into shards at the impact. A moment later the decanid was hit, center of mass, by one of Corporal Avery’s exo-cannon blasts, which tore a hole in its unprotected core.

  “New plan, everyone after Melony,” he shouted into the intercom, climbing to his feet, eliciting a sharp pain increase in his leg. Yeva would have to take care of herself. If anyone could, it was her. Plus, she had been uninjured when she fell, unlike Meloney, who’d just gotten slammed full force by a decanid. Sasaki might have to set a few bones before they could start the healing process. Assuming these pits weren’t death traps and really were just meant to split them up, which honestly wasn’t that great an assumption, but it was the only way they were going to get out of this mess alive.

  Sasaki and Avery vaulted the barricade and dashed towards the hole Melony had been tossed down. Richard needed to follow them, but there was currently a decanid between him and his destination. Unfortunately, the decanid had grown wise to his tricks - after seeing him and Yeva cut his friends to pieces - and refused to use its gravity manipulation on the otherwise flightless lieutenant. His sidearm wasn’t going to be sufficient for bringing down a warp beast of that size, and with it staying in the air, out of reach of his nano-blade, he was out of good lethal options. That left him with either bad lethal options, such as throwing a live pyro-grenade at it, or limping under it with a broken leg and hoping he could avoid getting squashed like a bug.

  He rolled his shoulders, twirling his nano-blade in one hand while reloading his sidearm with his other hand and exo-arm. He could see the hemispherical black eyes of the decanid watching him, looking for their opening. It still had nine arms left, which hung down around it in a curtain. He’d have to be quick on his feet to get past all those deadly tendrils. Gritting his teeth, he took one step, then another. As soon as his full weight was on the fractured leg, the decanid struck. Only his exo-kit saved his life. The body augment had titanium struts supported by synthetic muscle fibers that acted as an exo-skeleton, which was also the thing holding his broken bone together. With the power provided, even a broken leg was able to launch him into a lateral dive between the two sweeping appendages, cutting them as they went past. He landed on his back again and had to roll to avoid the next blow, the tendril shattering the floor to reveal another pit where he’d been moments before. Without slowing, he pushed himself to his feet, his nano-blade eating into the ground wherever it touched. Staying low he ducked under the fourth tendril and shot the fifth with his sidearm.

  He was almost half way, but that also meant he was right under the decanid now. The alien beast rotated in the air, sending four tendrils after him at the same time. He cut one down and shot another, but the two behind him hit, wrapping around him in a crushing grip. He let out a gasp as the air was squeezed from his lungs. His blade arm was being restricted by the stranglehold, stopping him from cutting himself loose. As his vision began to fade, a boom rang out overhead. The tendrils recoiled, tossing him as they retracted to protect the decanid’s spherical core. The world spun for a moment before he hit the ground in a slide. When he came to a stop, it was Aiden’s grinning face that came into view.

  “Looks like I get to save you for a change, ey Richard?” he said, reaching down to grab the Lieutenant by the chest harness and heaving. The powerful servos in Corporal Avery’s exo-kit whined as he sent Richard sliding across the polished tiles. He slid right past Kumiko, who was holding off a second decanid with her assault rifle, and pitched, head first, into a hole.

  “Deactivate Nano-blade!” he shouted as his back impacted a slick, sharply slanted tunnel wall, and he picked up speed. Flailing around, he desperately tried to slow his descent, only managing to snag a piece of rebar with his exo-arm. The jolt sent him spinning down the tunnel but did little to reduce his speed. Before he could regain control, the tunnel shot him out, eight meters over the ground, into a large open-air laboratory. Even with all of his martial training, his landing was far from graceful, as he bulldozed three workstations covered in medical equipment.

  He groaned, his nanites rattling off its damage report in his mind. Nothing serious was broken that couldn’t be repaired by the intravenous micro-machines, so he tuned it out, instead focusing on Avery’s girlish scream echoing out of the tunnel overhead.

  “Goddamnit,” Richard said as he scrambled to disentangle himself from the rubble, his hand crushing a microscope, causing him to fumble for leverage. Avery shot from the tunnel’s mouth, melodiously belting out a chord of half jubilance, half terror. Richard grabbed his deactivated nano-blade - which had landed beside him - and had to throw himself out of the way of the grenadier's equally destructive landing. The CBRN’s heavier kit gave him the momentum to plow through another two workstations, including a large rack of sample containers.

  “You think you could have warned me before tossing me down the damned hole,” Richard snapped at the dazed corporal.

  “The situation called for decisive action,” he said to his own amusement, before picking up one of the broken plastic sample containers he’d landed on. “What is this stuff?”

  “I believe those are urine samples,” Richard replied, surveilling the surrounding laboratory. Warp feelers grew from the tunnel’s maw like mold from a sewer drain, spreading out across the ceiling in a veined web, but there didn’t appear to be any warp beasts present in the room.

  “Eeewwwgh,” Avery whined, quickly extracting himself from the refuse. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Avery, you’re literally wearing atmospherically sealed hazmat armor,” Richard said, hiding his amusement at his friend’s squeamishness.

  “So? I don’t want to touch it, that’s someone’s piss, dude.”

  “Suck it up, Avery,” he commanded, noticing no signs that anyone else had fallen into this room. “Where are the girls?”

  “I… I don’t know. Kumiko was supposed to follow right after me.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You’re sure this is the tunnel Melony fell down?”

  “Yeah, it was pretty hard to miss. Maybe there were multiple paths?”

  It was possible. Maybe weight had played a factor, he and Avery had at least four stone on either of the girls, or maybe it was just random chance. There was no way to be sure, but if the warp weaver’s primary objective was to split them up and pick them off, then they needed to find them and fast.

  “Sasaki,” he said over the comms. The radio’s range was severely limited by the nature of this underground facility. Stone and reinforced concrete walls, floors, and ceilings that were in places meters thick meant that communicating with someone over long distances was hopeless, but if they were somewhere nearby, then he should be able to get a signal through. “Sasaki, do you read? Captain, do you read? Quick, do you read?” He swapped the radio to include all channels. “Does anyone copy? We are in a laboratory, believed sub-level two.”

  Static was his only answer.

  “Hey, uh, Richard?”

  “Give me a second, Avery, I think there’s a way I can boost the signal.”

  “No, dude, lookout!” Avery shouted, shoving the lieutenant to the side. Richard pirouetted as he stumbled, catching a glimpse of the black glob of gossamer warp streaking towards him before it hit his outstretched left arm, enveloping it - and his nano-blade - in sticky threads. His eyes followed the projectile's tail, which stretched through the air eight meters to where it vanished into the tunnel’s maw, ending just below two amber orbs of reflected light. The warp weaver’s pale, heartshaped face came into view of their headlamps, looking as though it were floating in the darkness. The monster’s oversized mouth hung open, spilling forth the black, web-like tendril like it were its own guts hanging from an open wound. More of its body came into view, as it lowered itself further from the tunnel’s mouth, revealing its bare, slender, and almost human torso.

  For a moment, the two of them were frozen by the sight. The nightmarish alien horror was both mesmerizing and petrifying in its unnaturally smooth and silent movements, but the spell was broken as its diaphragm began to rhythmically contract. The skinny, humanoid girl convulsed like a snake trying to swallow its food whole, gulping down the 10 centimeter thick bundle of sticky strands without using her hands, instead pulling on it purely with the muscles inside of her, the process clearly visible through her emaciated chest and stomach’s contractions. Richard’s arm was pulled forcefully towards the monster as it ‘reclaimed’ the stringy excretion.

  “Lieutenant!” Avery yelled, anchoring himself into the ground with his exo-kit’s stabilizers and grabbing hold of Richard’s exo-arm with both hands. Richard grabbed back, gripping the corporal’s arm firmly with his mechanical claw, as he became the object of a tug of war between the warp weaver and Grenadier Specialist Avery. He took aim with his sidearm and put a slug right between the monster’s eyes. The wound spat out the lead moments later and started to slowly knit itself shut, red blood streaked with black trickling down the pale face and mixing with long oily strands of hair.

  The strain on his body was building at an alarming rate. The strength of the deceptively skinny warp weaver was insane. It felt like he was being drawn and quartered. If this kept up, his armor would tear apart like a T-shirt being fought over by two rottweilers. He considered activating his nano-blade, but with the indiscriminate nature of the nanite acid, there was a good chance that it would eat right through the warp’s webs and spread to his gloves underneath. If that happened and his armor’s seal was broken, then he was dead for sure.

  “Avery, let go,” he grunted, holstering his handgun.

  “No way, you crazy?”

  “Do it,” he ordered. After another moment's hesitation, the corporal obeyed and Richard was yanked from his feet by the sudden release. The warp weaver eagerly resumed gulping, effortlessly dragging Richard towards it. With his exo-arm free, he took the pyro-grenade from his bandolier and used his mechanical claw to pull the pin while he pinched the lever. He’d always wanted to try pulling the pin with his teeth like they did in the movies, but of course, he couldn’t while wearing a faceshield. He let the handheld explosive cook, while carefully counting in his head.

  His timing would have to be perfect. By the time he was ready to throw, he had already slid four meters closer to the monster, which was concerning, considering he was about to throw a bomb with a three-ish meter radius at something barely another four meters away. He let the explosive fly. The trajectory was just right to hit it right between the breasts, but a spider-like bladed foreleg came from the darkness in a blur, catching the explosive mid-air. It made a sound like an aluminum bat hitting a lightpost. The timing was good, though. It blew a moment later, but with the shift in momentum, the blooming flames showered the left half of the room in a rain of fire, the explosion only catching the foreleg and one of its human-like clawed hands. The sticky napalm stuck to the monster and started to sizzle its flesh.

  It hadn’t been the lethal result Richard was looking for, but it wasn’t worthless either. The warp weaver attempted to put out the flames by waving the limbs back and forth, but when that failed, it resorted to violence. The foreleg was the first to go, a second leg swiping from the darkness to slice it off at the joint. The arm was more difficult for it, as it took its other human-like hand and used its clawed fingers to dig into the flesh of its shoulder, tearing away muscle until it could rip the entire flaming appendage out of its socket and discard it. The missing limbs immediately began to regrow, but the distraction had been enough. With a whomp, the room lit up as the warp weaver’s head exploded in a ball of blue plasma, as CBRN Specialist Avery finally got his exo-cannon shot off. Richard skid to a halt; the rope of webs that had been dragging him now severed. Meanwhile, the warp weaver’s form silently retreated back into the darkness of the tunnel.

  It wouldn’t die from those injuries, not with the breach tumor it dragged around still untouched. However, it would take a while to regrow its lost bodyparts, and it wouldn’t be able to see or spit those webs without its head.

  “Good work, Corporal,” Richard said, pushing himself into a sitting position. “That should buy us some time. See if you can get a signal through to the others.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Richard clambered for a nearby flaming metal chair, carefully ripping off one of its legs with his two free hands. He held the burning metal experimentally to the mass of black webs that still encased his left arm and exo-blade. The substance stubbornly refused to light on fire, but did start to cook like meat.

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Aiden said sheepishly, before getting to work. He picked his way through the room to the other side, where a heavy fire door with a red ‘exit’ sign over it was waiting. He gave the handle an experimental jiggle before attempting to bash it with his shoulder. When it still refused to budge, he took a step back and shot it with his exo-cannon, the blast vaporizing most of the door and a small chunk of wall with it.

  Meanwhile, Richard continued to try getting the sticky warp off his arm. When cooking it didn’t seem to help, he took the red hot metal and stabbed it into the mass of threads, attempting to wrench it off by force. Their consistency was similar to a tough silicone, the heat and strain making a few of the strands snap, but ultimately doing little to free his arm.

  “Is anyone out there? This is Corporal Aiden Avery, we encountered the warp weaver and need back up,” Avery said over the intercom, once he’d stepped out into the hallway.

  “I -ear you, t–s is Co–oral Sa–ki Kumi-o. Wh-t’s yo– location?” buzzed the response, static interference making it cut in and out.

  “Oh, Kumiko, thank goodness, we were worried you hadn’t made it. We're at one of the biolabs, second level. You should have seen this warp weaver, Kumi, it looked like a girl with huge tits, nothing like the last one we killed. You’d have loved it.”

  “Breasts? Th–’s strange, w–t purpose -ould –e w-rp have –r lactation? Sur–y, the –rp doe-n’t breast fee-”

  “Corporal Sasaki,” Richard interrupted, setting aside the flaming brand for the moment, “is Corporal Quick with you?”

  “H-re, li–tenant,” Melony’s voice crackled in response.

  “So-ry, yes sir, sh-’s -ere,” Sasaki added. “I w– ab-e – patch her up. She’s still reco–ring from -ome p–tty serious injuries tho-h. I was sup—ed not to –nd either of –u he–. We are in - machining lab, -ull of nano-printers. I th–k – can –nd –r — to y–.”

  “You’re breaking up. I didn’t get that last part. Have either of you seen or heard anything from the captain?” Aiden added.

  “No, no-hing,” Sasaki responded.

  Richard clenched a fist. Yeva would be alright, he told himself. At least if the warp weaver was here, it meant it wasn’t going after her.

  “Well, get here as quickly as you can, corporals. Once we've regrouped, we can go looking for the captain. In the meantime, we need to stick together. The warp weaver could come back at any-” he was hit square in the back with enough force to knock him to the ground. A moment later the force was reversed, and he was dragged backwards, sliding across the floor on his belly. He twisted in an attempt to roll over, but only managed to catch a glimpse of the long black cord attached to his back and exo-arm.

  “It’s back!” Avery shouted over the intercom, followed by the characteristic sound of exo-cannon deployment.

  Richard cursed to himself. He’d been so relieved when the girls made contact that he’d let it distract him and had forgotten to watch the tunnel. This warp weaver had also regenerated far faster than he’d anticipated. It had to be twice as good at healing as the last one they’d fought, but that was just an excuse. Yeva wouldn’t have made this mistake. Now he was down to just one arm and grabbed in a way that made it impossible to even face his opponent. He would have to rely on his grenadier, but in the meantime, he could still make it more difficult for the monster to eat him. After all, he was being dragged through a lab full of heavy looking equipment. He reached out his last hand and grabbed a metal table leg as he slid past. His exo-kit whirred in protest at the extreme strain being put on it, but this time it was entirely distributed across the titanium and carbon exoskeletal framework. He was much more confident in holding out like this than he’d been last time. Then the table started to move with him, metal feet slowly grinding along the smooth floor.

  “Take the shot, Avery!” Richard shouted, alarm building as he got closer.

  A whomp sounded, followed by a boom. Richard didn’t stop moving.

  “What’s going on back there, Corporal?”

  “Uh, it threw a rock.”

  “What?”

  “It threw a rock,” he repeated more forcefully. “I shot, it threw a rock, boom, no more rock.”

  “So shoot it again.”

  “What if it throws another rock?”

  I don’t know, figure something out.”

  Your leg is now fully healed. The monotone notification couldn’t have sounded sweeter. As he began to lift off the ground towards the tunnel mouth, he reached out with both legs and wrapped them around the base of a second metal table. Each of these metal behemoths must have weighed 300 Kg, and the warp weaver was finally feeling it, as he jerked to a stop, suspended in mid air. He could feel the vile thing’s presence less than a meter above him, its alien muscles creaking with effort.

  “Damnit, Avery, just shoot it. It’s pinned.”

  “But, if you get caught in-”

  “Just shoot!”

  “Richard!” Sasaki’s voice, not from the intercom, the doorway.

  Whomp.

  The pressure doubled. He felt electronic nerves tear as metal screamed and wires popped. Then the pressure was gone, and he was falling.

  Boom.