The decaying thing dragged its shattered femur across the slick tiles, leaving a smear of dark, coagulated filth in its wake. Its jaw hung loose, disconnected on one side, exposing yellowed teeth stained with old copper and dried rot. It wasn't a vampire”it was a leftover, an unrefined flesh-puppet animated by rogue, polluted enzymes discarded in the sewer runoffs beneath the cathedral.
Cattleya didn't move. Her grey eyes remained unblinking, tracking the creature”s jagged center of mass as it clawed its way across the threshold of the abandoned transit station.
Every instinct honed inside the thousands of Oakhaven loops the calculated evasions, the algorithmic combat responses, the clean hard-light trajectory predictions”flared to life, only to die instantly against the stark, brutal tr
