I Evolve 10,000 Times Faster

The first thing Holden saw when he climbed out of the basement was the sky.

It was still black. Still choked with abyssal smoke. But the texture had changed. The furious, churning clouds had settled into something slower and thicker, like old bruised skin stretched across the heavens. The fires on the horizon had dimmed. The cannon fire had stopped.

The swarm had pulled back.

Captain Venus was waiting for them at the surface. He looked worse than before, if that was possible. The bandage on his arm had been replaced with a strip of someone else’s shirt.

"They’re retreating," he said. His voice was a wreck. "Pulling back to the portal perimeter. Happens every night. The fodder can’t operate without the bigger ones pushing them forward, and the bigger ones go dormant after sunset. We’ve got maybe six hours before dawn."

"What about the foundation?" Venus asked.

"Secured. Forty Burrowers, all eliminated. But the pillars are compromised. You need engineers down there before dawn to reinforce them."

Venus stared. "Forty?"

"Forty."

"Rank 2 Burrowers. Forty of them. In the basement."

"Yes."

"And you killed them all."

"They were in the way."

Venus opened his mouth in awe, then rubbed his face with a muddy hand. He looked like a man who had been hit with too many impossible things in one day and had run out of capacity to question any of them.

"Engineers. I’ll send them down. Get some rest. All of you. That’s an order."

He walked away, muttering something under his breath that sounded like a prayer.

The barracks were a concrete blockhouse near the center of the compound. Four cots, a single lamp, a water basin that was more mud than water. It wasn’t much. After the basement tunnel, it felt like a palace.

Renna dropped onto her cot face first and didn’t move for thirty seconds. Then she rolled over, pulled her bow under her arm like a stuffed animal, and passed out.

Emric sat on the edge of his cot, removed his glasses, and cleaned them on his shirt. The shirt was filthy. The glasses didn’t get cleaner. He put them back on anyway.

"Structural assessment," he said to no one in particular. "The probability of the foundation holding without permanent reinforcement is approximately sixty-two percent. Which means there is a thirty-eight percent chance of catastrophic failure during tomorrow’s engagement if the swarm applies lateral pressure to the..."

He trailed off. His eyes were already closing.

"Emric," Lyra said quietly.

"Yes?"

"Sleep."

He lay down. Within two minutes, his breathing was steady.

Within five, he was snoring. Renna was already snoring louder.

Holden sat on his cot in the dark.

He waited.

The lamp had been turned off. The only light came from the faint blue glow of Lyra’s eyes, still open, watching him from across the room. She was lying on her side, her spear resting against the wall beside her.

She hadn’t slept.

He could tell.

Holden reached under his cot and pulled out the heavy black cloak. Under it was the gold Asura mask.

Lyra watched him pick it up.

She didn’t ask where he was going or even ask why he needed a mask and a cloak that looked like it belonged to a serial killer.

She trusted her gut that he was going to come back.

"Don’t stay out too late," she whispered. "I’ll tell anyone who asks that you went to the latrine."

"For how long?"

"I’ll say you have a sensitive stomach."

"That’s the most unflattering cover story you could have picked."

"It’s the most believable." The faintest smile crossed her lips. "Be careful."

"Always am."

"That’s not true at all."

"It’s a little bit true."

She rolled over, her back to him. The blue glow of her eyes faded as she closed them. "I’ll leave the door unlocked."

Holden pulled on the cloak. The fabric settled over his shoulders like a shadow. He pressed the mask to his face and tied the straps behind his head. The world narrowed to two eye holes. Everything else disappeared.

He moved to the window. The barracks were on the ground floor, but the window faced the outer wall. He climbed through the frame, dropped into the mud, and pressed himself against the building.

squelch.

The mud sucked at his boots. Rain had started falling. It was the kind of rain that made everything slippery, cold, and miserable.

Perfect conditions for hunting.

He activated the Void Mantle.

His presence vanished. To anything watching, he was a smear of empty air that disappeared completely the moment he stopped moving.

He crossed the compound. Past the barracks, past the medical tent where wounded soldiers groaned on cots. Nobody saw him. Nobody heard him.

He moved like a rumor.

The outer wall was twelve feet of cracked stone. He scaled it in three silent movements, using the gaps in the masonry as handholds. He reached the top, looked out, and dropped over the other side.

thud.

The battlefield stretched in front of him. Black mud. Black sky. The faint glow of the distant portal, a smear of dark light on the horizon. Scattered fires burned where the swarm had been, their embers hissing in the rain.

tssss.

And everywhere, in the dark, energy signatures.

His 10,000x processor painted the battlefield in layers. The surface layer was quiet. Empty. The fodder had retreated. But beneath the quiet, scattered across the muddy field in hidden pockets, were the bigger ones.

Rank 2 brutes. They were half-buried in the mud and dormant for the night. They looked like regular boulders. But Holden’s processor read their energy signatures like bonfires in the dark.

And deeper down lurked something worse. Three massive signatures. Rank 3. These were the mini-bosses that drove the swarm through the daylight hours and slept in the muck at night.

He made his move.

The first target was two hundred meters out. A Rank 2 Abyssal Crusher. It was a hulking mass of muscle and bone armor that had been smashing against the eastern wall all day. It lay in a crater of its own making, its chest rising and falling in slow, rhythmic breaths. Its eyes were closed. Its mouth hung open, revealing rows of black teeth the size of daggers.

He dropped into the crater.

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