Cryptomining Supervillain

279 SOMEONE OVER THE WELL

Lander and Dorin streaked across the city skyline, their jet packs flaring blue against the dimmed sky. Their destination was the crater — the Well.

But halfway there, Dorin slowed.

"Lander… look."

Below them, the streets were littered with bodies.

It was not debris or rubble….

…. But people.

Citizens lay sprawled across roads and sidewalks, their limbs twisted and faces pressed to concrete. There were no signs of explosions or struggles or fights with the alien hounds.

They had simply… fallen.

Lander's voice hardened. "We're going down to check."

They descended between abandoned vehicles and flickering streetlights. The silence on the ground was worse than the chaos earlier.

There was no screaming or running…

… Just shallow, uneven breathing.

Dorin knelt beside a middle-aged man. His eyes were open but unfocused. His lips trembled and his body shook in desperation.

"He's alive," she said, relief flickering—

Then she checked his pulse when her expression changed.

"His pulse is weak. Really weak."

Lander activated his scanner and swept it across the street. Data scrolled across his visor.

His brows furrowed."That's impossible…"

"What?" Dorin demanded.

"They're not sick… or wounded."

He scanned again after recalibrating his instrument.

Then the readings stabilized.

Lander went still."They're bleeding out."

Dorin froze. "Bleeding out? That's not possible. There's no blood anywhere."

The pavement was clean. There wasn't even a stain of blood visible.

Lander slowly crouched and placed his palm on the ground when his scanner pulsed.

The readings spiked.

"The blood didn't spill," he said quietly. "It drained."

"…Drained?" Dorin whispered.

"The ground is absorbing it… somehow."

As if to prove his words, a thin dark line surfaced beneath a nearby woman's body — not flowing outward, but downward. The concrete beneath her seemed to darken for a split second… then returned to normal.

"The ground is drinking her blood."

They moved further down the street. There were more bodies.Every one of them shows catastrophic blood loss.

Dorin staggered at the sight.

Lander caught it immediately. "Dorin?"

She brushed him off. "I'm fine."

But she wasn't.Her face had gone pale. A faint tremor passed through her fingers.

Lander's scanner snapped toward her.

"Hold still."

She frowned. "Lander, this isn't—"

He didn't let her finish.The reading flashed red.

"Your blood pressure is critically low."

She stared at him. "That's ridiculous. I monitor my vitals daily. I don't have hypotension."

"It's not your health," Lander said grimly.

He looked around at the fallen civilians.

"It's the Blackout," he reasoned.

Dorin's breath hitched.

"It's not just suppressing meta-energy," Lander continued. "It's extracting biological energy. Blood."

Her voice dropped. "Like the blood cults… the sacrificial rites."

"Yes."

"But this scale…" She looked down the endless street of bodies. "This is happening around the entire city."

Lander's jaw tightened.

"And blood is one of the most efficient biological carriers of energy. If someone is harvesting it…"

"…they're fueling something massive," Dorin finished.

A tremor ran through her again.

Lander made the decision instantly.

"We're not going to the Well."

Dorin looked up. "But that's the source."

"Exactly." His tone was firm now. "If the Well is doing this, we'll be dead before we reach it."

"We go to GenSyn first. Do a full biological scan and find out the cause of what's happening to our bodies. Only then can we find a cure."

"What about the well?"

"We deploy drones to the crater and let machines take the risk," Lander said.

"What should we do about the people dying in the streets?" she asked.

"There is nothing we can do about them now unless we know for sure what is happening", he replied then ignited his jet pack again.

"Move. Now."

Dorin nodded, though her movements were slower now, she activated her jets.

They rose into the dim sky and veered toward GenSyn building, leaving behind a city…. being silently bled dry.

And somewhere beneath the streets…

Something was feeding.

------

[Back at the abyss of the Well]

Damen circled the interior walls of the crater slowly, his eyes scanning the stone walls.

"Something is wrong," he thought. "The fractures lining the stone weren't random… there is a pattern to them."

He stepped closer, brushing his fingers along the jagged grooves.

"They were too deliberate—too evenly spaced."

"Look at these cracks," Damen called out. "They're not from natural damage. They're markings… they are like some kind of writing."

Liorea glanced up from the Priest and narrowed her eyes at the wall. After a moment, she nodded.

"Now that you mention it… yes. These resemble ancient hieroglyphic structures."

Fearose jerked the Priest's head up by the collar and forced him to face the carvings.

"Do you recognize them?"

The Priest squinted, panic trembling in his breath. "I—I don't understand them."

Fearose's eyes hardened. A pulse of fear seeped into the Priest's mind.

"Look again."

"Yes! Yes!" the Priest cried. "I recognize the style! They're Ancient Anu scripts—but I'm not fluent. I swear it! You need a linguistics expert to read it not me!"

"Ancient Anu…" Damen murmured.

Liorea had already taken out a compact scanner and captured high-resolution images of the markings.

"Kail," she asked when she realized Kail couldn't enter this dimensional space.

"I'll forward these to Kail later," she said. "If Anu translators exist, we'll find one. Perhaps the writings on the wall can tell us how to rewrite those damn commandments."

Damen didn't answer.

Instead, he tilted his head upward.

His perception stretched beyond sight—threading through the blood-mist, climbing the inner walls of the well like a silent, searching pulse.

Higher.

Further.

Then—

He froze.

"There's someone above," he said quietly. "At the mouth of the well."

Liorea stiffened. "Who?"

Damen didn't answer immediately. His jaw tightened. His pupils contracted as if focusing on something only he could see.

"That's impossible…"

A flicker of disbelief crossed his face.

"She was away. In another city. Training."

Without another word, he activated Vision Connect, pulling up his Favorites list. His fingers trembled—just slightly—as the interface confirmed the identity signature.

It was confirmed.

The color drained from his face.

"It's her," he said.

Silence fell over the chamber.

"She is Eryn."

No one breathed.

Then he finished.

"Eryn Veyran."

The name struck like a shockwave.

"Eryn? Why is she here!" Liorea's voice cracked as the water around them surged violently. The tide inside the well was climbing—too fast. "What do we do now? The water's rising. We have to leave!"

The liquid roared against the walls, swallowing the lower runes.

Damen's eyes never left the darkness above.

"Yes," he said at last. "You return to GenSyn. Study the Anu writings. We gain nothing by staying here."

"What about you?" Liorea demanded.

He stepped toward the spiraling interior wall, blood-mist coiling around him like a mantle.

"Me…" His voice lowered.

"I'm going up."

He looked toward the mouth of the well.

"To the top."

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