THE GLUTTONY SYSTEM

Chapter 18: Breach in the Firewall

Chapter 18: Breach in the Firewall

"Keep your teeth clenched, big guy, or you’re going to swallow half your own tongue when I drop this bead," Lin snapped, her welding visor clicking up with a sharp, mechanical snap that cut through the humid reek of the workshop.

Chai didn't answer. He couldn't. His jaws were clamped down so hard on a length of heavy industrial I-beam that the cold structural steel was already groaning and deforming under the sheer pressure of his mutated bite. Every muscle fiber in his neck was corded tight like steel cable, trembling violently as Lin’s plasma-torch flared to life again, illuminating the cramped, grease-streaked room in an aggressive, strobing violet glare. She wasn't just patching him; she was searing industrial-grade carbon plates straight into his calcified muscle tissue, burning away the necrotic layers of flesh where the Sky-Ark’s internal security systems had tried to digest him back on Level 75.

HZZZZZZT.

The sound of molten metal sealing against bone made Chai’s vision white out for a terrifying, silent second. Box flickered violently inside his left optic, the amber HUD stuttering like a dying fluorescent tube before finally stabilizing with a sickening, wet digital squelch.

[WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. FOREIGN REINFORCEMENT DETECTED. PAIN THRESHOLD EXCEEDED BY 400%.]

"Shut up, Box," Chai growled around the steel beam, the words vibrating with a harsh, double-toned resonance that shook dust flakes loose from the low ceiling.

Lin tossed the smoking torch aside, wiping a streak of black soot across her forehead with the back of a greasy leather glove. She reached out, knocking sharply against the newly welded plating over Chai’s right shoulder with a heavy wrench. The sound was a solid, reassuring thunk instead of the hollow, squelching rattle of tearing meat.

"There," Lin said, her voice dropping its usual cynical edge as she inspected her handiwork with grim satisfaction. "That should keep your arm from falling off the next time you decide to crawl through a high-voltage conduit. Though if the Peacekeepers trace that data-burst you pulled off Somsak back in the mid-tiers, even that plate won't save you from a railgun slug."

Before Chai could spit out the mangled piece of I-beam, the low, ambient hum of the workshop’s ventilation system cut out entirely.

The overhead fluorescent strip flickered once, twice, and then died, plunging the cramped room into absolute, pitch-black shadow, save for the pulsing amber glow of Box's interface inside Chai's skull and the faint, dying embers of Lin’s welding rig.

[ALERT: LOCAL NETWORK PROBE DETECTED.]

[ENCRYPTED FREQUENCY MATCH: PEACEKEEPER RECOVERY SQUAD — OMEGA-7.]

[SOURCE: CORRIDOR OUTSIDE - DISTANCE 15 METERS AND CLOSING FAST.]

"They're here," Chai rasped, his voice dropping an octave as his jaw unhinged slightly, the calcified plates along his jawline clicking open like a set of loaded bear traps. He spat the ruined I-beam onto the concrete floor with a heavy clatter.

Lin didn't panic. She didn't scream. Her hands moved with terrifying, practiced speed, sweeping across her workbench to scoop up a handful of jagged tungsten shrapnel and a heavy-duty plasma cutter. She kicked open a rusted panel beneath the workbench, revealing a dark, foul-smelling maintenance crawlway that smelled of stagnant water and burnt wiring.

"Back door," Lin hissed, shoving the plasma cutter into Chai's massive, half-scaled palm. "Move your heavy ass before they blow the blast shutter off the hinges."

"I'm not running from a cleanup crew," Chai growled, his shoulder plates shifting with a metallic screech as he flexed his newly armored arm. The hunger inside him—that gnawing, bottomless pit that had driven him through the cryo-vaults and the blue-light alleys—flared up, hot and demanding, at the thought of fresh corporate blood.

"You aren't running, you're tactical-withdrawing," Lin snapped, grabbing the front of his scavenged jacket and giving him a sharp, surprisingly strong yank. "There are four of them out there, and they're carrying suppression beams that will turn your new shoulder plating into a puddle of slag before you can even reach for their throats. Get in the duct, Chai!"

BOOM.

The heavy steel entrance door of the workshop didn't just open; it blew inward in a shower of sparks, twisted framing, and white-hot shrapnel. The force of the breaching charge picked up the iron workbench and slammed it against the far wall with a deafening crash.

Thick, blinding white smoke flooded the room instantly, smelling of industrial flash-powder and ozone. Through the rolling haze, heavy tactical boots crunched rhythmically against the debris. Red targeting lasers crisscrossed the smoky air, painting jagged lines across the walls, the ceiling, and Chai’s chest.

"Target sighted," a harsh, synthetic voice barked through a high-grade military modulator from the doorway. "Subject Chai. Unregistered bio-anomaly and corporate asset thief. Drop your weapons and kneel for immediate administrative recycling."

"Recycle this," Chai muttered.

Instead of diving into the crawlway, Chai lunged forward with explosive, unnatural speed, his heavy boots cracking the concrete floor beneath him. He caught the leading Peacekeeper enforcer mid-stride, his massive, newly armored hand wrapping around the front of the enforcer's pristine white ceramic chest plate with bone-crushing force.

The enforcer let out a startled, mechanical gasp as Chai lifted him off the ground with one arm, using the struggling soldier as a living, breathing meat shield just as the three remaining squad members opened fire.

ZAP-ZAP-ZAP.

Blue suppression beams slammed into the human shield with blinding intensity, searing through the enforcer’s ceramic armor and cooking the flesh beneath in a fraction of a second. The smell of burning hair and scorched fat filled the cramped air, sickeningly sweet and heavy. Chai didn't even flinch. He used the dead enforcer's weight to hurl him directly into the second and third attackers, bowling them over in a tangled mess of limbs, dropped rifles, and shattered visors.

"Lin, go!" Chai roared, pivoting on his heel to face the last standing enforcer, who was frantically clearing a jammed railgun barrel.

"I told you I'm not leaving you to clean up my scrap yard alone!" Lin yelled from behind him.

She didn't run. Instead, she popped up from behind the overturned workbench, leveling a heavy pneumatic rivet gun directly at the final enforcer’s exposed neck joint. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. Three industrial steel rivets slammed through the enforcer’s armored collar with the force of small-caliber bullets, pinning him instantly to the corrugated iron wall behind him. The enforcer’s boots kicked twice in the air before going completely limp, his red targeting lasers spinning uselessly against the floor.

"Not bad," Chai grunted, his optical HUD flashing amber as he instinctively reached out, pressing his bare, half-digitized palm against the charred chest plate of the first enforcer he had killed.

[DOWNLOADING TACTICAL CLEARANCE...]

[SYNAPSE RECOVERY: 62%]

[WARNING: TEMPORARY SYSTEM STABILITY ACHIEVED. HOST HUNGER LEVEL: 71%.]

A rush of cold, clinical data flooded Chai’s nervous system, drowning out the lingering pain of the welding process. He saw what the Peacekeepers saw: tactical grid maps of the entire mid-tier sector, patrol routes, ammunition counts, and, most importantly, the encrypted transit codes for the cargo lifts leading to the upper-middle administration blocks.

"They weren't just a local cleanup crew," Chai said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble as he pulled his hand away from the smoking corpse. He wiped a streak of dark, thermal fluid from his wrist. "They were looking for the rest of Somsak’s network. Which means the upper tiers know I'm moving up."

Lin dropped the empty rivet gun onto the floor, wiping her hands on her trousers as she stepped carefully over a pile of smoldering wiring. She looked up at Chai, her expression a mix of grudging respect and deep, lingering dread.

"Well, congratulations, big guy," Lin said, her tone dry, though her hands trembled slightly where she clenched them at her sides. "You just officially upgraded from a corporate nuisance to a Level 1 high-priority threat. The whole mid-tier security grid is going to be locked down tighter than a vault by sunrise."

"Then we don't wait for sunrise," Chai replied, turning toward the blown-open doorway where the dark, cavernous service corridors stretched out into the distance, humming with the invisible, electric pulse of the Sky-Ark’s dying infrastructure. He rolled his newly reinforced shoulder, the heavy industrial plates grinding satisfyingly against each other. "Where is the nearest cargo lift with the clearance codes I just pulled?"

Lin stared at him for a long, silent moment, the blue light from Box's interface reflecting sharply in her wide eyes. Then, slowly, a grim, reckless smile touched the corners of her mouth. She reached down to the small of her back and pulled a heavy, modified plasma-torch from her tool belt, flipping it into a reverse grip.

"Two levels up, past the old tax-processing facility," Lin said, stepping past him into the smoke-filled corridor without looking back. "Hope you're ready for some heavy climbing, Chai. Because the elevators don't run for unauthorized trash like us."

Chai let out a low, rattling chuckle that vibrated deep within his chest, his jaw plates parting to reveal rows of razor-sharp, steel-etched teeth. He stepped over the wreckage of the doorway, his heavy boots shaking the floor beneath them as he followed her into the dark.

[ROUTE CALCULATED.]

[DESTINATION: UPPER-MIDDLE CARGO LIFT 404.]

[WARNING: MULTIPLE HOSTILE SIGNATURES DETECTED AHEAD. PROCEED?]

"Proceed," Chai muttered aloud, the amber light in his left eye flaring with an agg

ressive, predatory brightness as they plunged deeper into the corporate labyrinth.