NOVPUBDeep within the tunnels—beneath stone, soil, and the last threads of reason—lay a cavern.
Not just a tunnel or offshoot chamber, but a true underground hollow, the size of a football field. A biome, twisted and created in secret.
The air here was wet and strange. The silence, heavy and artificial. Like sound itself refused to stay here long.
The floor had long since stopped being rock. It was overrun with grass that shimmered oddly in the light—wrong in color, wrong in movement.
Petal-like blooms rose between patches, opening and closing slowly like mouths learning to breathe. Thick vines wound across the space in heavy knots, climbing the walls and ceiling in a chaotic web.
And nestled in those walls—pods.
Large. Pliant. Suspended by pulsing vines and coated in that familiar blend of blood and chlorophyll slime. Half cocoon, half horror.
Inside them: people.
Men and women of varying age. All of them grotesquely thinned, their bodies wrecked by malnutrition. Their skin clung to their bones like a sheet draped over wire. Bloated bellies shifted faintly beneath the pod membrane, moving with disturbing irregularity.
Murmurs filled the space—weak, breathless.
"Please…"
"…make it stop…"
One woman writhed faintly in her pod, her neck twitching. Her jaw trembled as she moaned something unintelligible.
Then her throat swelled.
**Grrkkkh—**
She convulsed, mouth tearing open as a torrent of worm-like vines spilled out, soaked in blood and mucus.
They slithered across her chin and down her chest, her eyes rolling back in their sockets as her limbs jerked involuntarily.
Elsewhere in the chamber, two figures were present among this chaos like they belonged to it.
Father John stood at the center of the space, hands clasped behind his back. His clerical attire was still intact—barely.
The once-crisp collar was dirt-streaked and warped, stained with things that didn't come out in wash cycles. Mud. Slime. Blood. It was all there.
And yet, his expression was unchanged.
Calm. Serene. That same soft gaze he offered every Sunday from the pulpit.
He stood beside a massive pool of fluid—a bubbling mixture of blood and mucus, thick with movement. Vines snaked out of its rim like veins pushing through flesh.
At the center of the pool floated Sister Rose.
Or some of her.
Her form was bare, featureless. Like a sculpture only half finished. Breasts without nipples. Fingers without nails. Skin smooth and poreless. A false flesh.
Only her face had definition—sunken, sharp.
Her eyes glared out from above hollow cheekbones, their whites too pale, their pupils too thin. Her mouth was twisted into a frown, her nose sharp and angular. No eyebrows. No hair.
Vines—dozens of them—were embedded in her body like needles, threading through her limbs, chest, and skull. They pulsed faintly, feeding something into her. Like some alien, viscous nutrient.
Father John looked on with reverence.
"We have more uninvited guests, Sister," he said gently, like sharing weather news.
Sister Rose's frown deepened. Her voice was cracked but sharp as usual, rising like a shard of glass from the pool's stillness.
"They'll only keep coming. Now that they've found this place, it can't be helped."
She blinked slowly, hate burning behind every word. "These damned fleshy parasites… They've ruined everything!"
Her voice echoed across the cavern walls. One of the pods jolted violently in response.
Father John remained unshaken. "Do not worry, Sister. This is only a minor setback."
He gestured around them with a faint sweep of one hand.
"Our harvest in this city may have been cut short… but Mother has many nests. And this one has borne more than enough new children for her."
He turned toward one of the pods.
The man inside was beginning to convulse. His eyes fluttered open as his mouth stretched unnaturally wide, expelling a thick cluster of vine-worms that writhed down his chest and splattered against the inside of the pod.
Father John's lips curled into a smile at the sight.
"It is a shame, though," he added, "that we didn't gather enough hosts."
Sister Rose's tone was even more venomous now.
"There will always be more fleshy parasites, Brother."
She glanced down, letting the slime slide across her artificial skin as she sank lower in the pool.
"For now, it's time we abandon this nest. Permanently."
Father John didn't blink. His grin spread impossibly wide. Lips stretching beyond what a human jaw should allow.
"As you say, Sister."
He tilted his head just slightly.
"And the uninvited guests?"
Sister Rose was already halfway submerged now. The slime wrapped around her like it remembered her shape.
"Use them," she said flatly, "to feed the newly born children."
Her body slid further beneath the surface, the veins still pulsing faintly as she sank.
Father John bowed his head slightly.
"I will not disappoint you."
He paused for a moment.
"…or Mother."
And with that, Sister Rose disappeared into the pool completely.
The room held still for just a moment.
———
Meanwhile as the Don, Charles and Agent Hathaway went deeper, the worse the air became.
Not in the conventional sense—no rot or decay thick enough to choke on. It was quieter than that. Subtler. Like walking through someone else's breath.
The tunnels narrowed and curved in unnatural ways. The walls were uneven, blotched with organic filth—remnants of something that once lived.
Every few feet, a dismembered limb was half-embedded in the wall like a failed attempt at decor. Fingers twitching. Veins visible. Some fresh, some long past expiration.
Don walked ahead, his steps careful but steady. Beastshift was already active—bones tightened, muscles coiled. His body buzzed quietly with that familiar low voltage feeling, his senses stretching into the dark like strings.
Charles followed a few feet behind, gaze drifting from wall to ceiling. His expression wasn't nervous. It was intrigued. Studious. Occasionally disgusted.
Behind them came Agent Hathaway, head tilted down at a tablet the size of a dinner tray. His gloved finger scrolled slowly, watching the feed from the drone he'd sent ahead. The screen flickered softly, lighting his face in pale blue.
No one spoke for a while.
Then Hathaway broke the silence.
"So tell me," he said, voice echoing just slightly off the walls, "how did you come to the conclusion that those people at the Casino couldn't be saved?"
Don didn't respond immediately. He didn't even look back.
Charles glanced his way, clearly prepared to give some version of a response.
But Don beat him to it.
"First-hand experience."
Hathaway let out a soft, dry scoff—not mockery, just mild disbelief.
"Right… That church incident. You and, what's his name, Donald."
He didn't stop walking. Just kept watching the feed.
"I'll admit, his telling made it sound real. But without hard evidence, you two are still on the hook. When people lose someone, saying a creature took over their mind and disappeared when we killed it—it doesn't land. Especially not with a body count like that."
This time Charles spoke, calm but firmer.
"We're well aware of the implications, Agent. Was there somewhere you were going with this?"
Hathaway came to a stop.
The others followed suit, boots crunching softly on the damp stone.
He looked between the two of them, then exhaled and said, "This whole thing is bigger than anyone thought."
He tapped something on the tablet, brought up another screen briefly—faint images of the tunnel system under the church.
"The limbs, the tunnels, the way those people died. We pulled DNA samples from the embedded flesh. Missing persons—dozens of them. Some gone as far back as five years. All over the country."
Don's expression didn't change. He just asked one thing.
"Where did that tunnel lead?"
Hathaway didn't hesitate. "Caved in. After a few hundred meters. It was ruled to an isolated incident—Nightshade-related so no one thought to look deeper than that."
He looked at them both now. "No follow-up. No second team. No press. Just filed away as unfortunate. It seemed like the right call given how messy supervillain cases can be. That is… until you two massacred hundreds of 'people' in a Casino."
His tone didn't hold accusation. Just weight.
"Look. I'm not your enemy. All I'm saying is—this is bigger than you, and I want the truth. Help me understand it. Whatever you know—"
Don snapped his gaze down the corridor before Hathaway could finish.
No words. No cue.
Charles turned immediately, following his line of sight.
Hathaway stiffened, fingers tapping quickly at the tablet, pulling up the drone feed again.
"Something wrong?" Charles asked quietly.
Hathaway narrowed his eyes at the screen. "Nothing. Just… wait."
The feed was showing what the drone saw—a slow, empty corridor, barely lit by the drone's torch, the walls crawling with vine tendrils. Suddenly, it's torch flickered, and then—
**GrrrrrRRRRRRRRK**
Low. Predatory. Too deep for a dog. Too sharp for a growl.
"What's that noise?" Hathaway muttered, adjusting the feed angle. "Sounds like a big dog growling or something—"
**CRRSHH-KRKK**
The sound came through both the tablet and the tunnel itself.
Then—
**CHHK**
The feed cut to black.
Hathaway froze, staring at the blank screen. The light from the tablet faded with it, leaving only torchlight.
"Shit," he muttered before moving closer, one hand drifting toward his sidearm.
"What the hell was that?"
Don didn't blink. His eyes stayed forward.
"I don't know," he said.
Then he took one slow step forward.
"But it's coming this way."
