“Found a map.” Carmina hoarsely announced to the rest of the team with a smile on her face and her journal tightly clenched in her hand before collapsing. The sight of blood and Infected flesh caked onto her skin was followed with a gut curdling stench of copper and swamp muck.

“Mina!” Matteo bellowed as he ran to her sister. Everyone else congregated around her, giving Joanna and Matteo room to attend to Carmina.

“I need everyone to step back.” Joanna looked at the rest of the group. Matteo didn’t budge.

“I’m not moving away from her.” Matteo responded with a passionate resolution. Jose would have been taken aback but if this were Emma… well he couldn’t fault Matteo and his stubbornness in any way.

Joanna glared at Matteo before relenting, “Fine. Make yourself useful then and open your hands.” Matteo shot out his arms and eagerly carried Joanna’s opened bag. She rummaged through its contents and pulled out a washcloth and clean water, gently rubbing away the viscera on Carmina.

A pensive silence filled the room as Joanna quietly tended to her patient, humming along to a discordant half remembered tune just to avoid the overwhelming emptiness around them.

“Is she going to be okay?” Matteo asked.

Joanna wiped her brow of sweat with her sleeve, “She’ll be fine. Her leg got caught by something and isn’t responding to treatment. Whatever it was, it left behind a gnarly mess of hooks in her ankle.

“What do we do then?” Lysa chimed in, eager to participate.

“Well, she’s in no condition to continue. Just the fatigue in her muscles alone should be enough to keep her out for a good few hours. No telling when she’ll come to.” The diagnosis deflated the glimmer of hope the rest of the group had.

“And none of your potions or medicine or whatever can help her out?” Matteo challenged her assessment.

“These ingredients heal wounds, not fatigue. I’m not an Arcanist like Jose over there. I can make her comfortable and I can accelerate her natural healing, but she’s out of commission for the remainder of this test.”

Matteo roared and kicked at a wall but said nothing else.

Joanna turned her attention from the patient to Jose, “What do you want to do?” It was a question he was mulling over himself while waiting for a diagnosis of Carmina’s condition, a terribly bad turn of events that limited them greatly.

“If she’s found the map, we should look at our route and deduce how far away we are from the forge. If we’re close, we send a team of 3 to retrieve it while some stays behind to keep Carmina safe. If it’s farther out, we’ll do our best to mobilize with an injured Scout. I’ll take the lead in her stead and do what I can. Are we in agreement?” Jose squeezed the bridge of his nose, a faint ringing in his ears manifesting.

“I disagree with your assessment.” Joanna picked herself up from the floor and brushed off the dust on her knees. “I think that’d be fine if we were out in the field, but we’ve got the advantage of this being a simulation.”

The mention of this being a simulated experience had Jose running down the rabbit hole of her possible suggestions, none of them good enough for him to entertain even a discussion on.

She pressed on, “If it’s close by, dump the weight and go at the forge with full force. Why hamstring ourselves and our time if she pushed herself to the brink just to get us this map?”

Matteo gently placed Joanna’s bag onto the ground and walked towards her, placing a hand that covered her whole shoulder, “You want me to leave my sister behind?”

“In a real circumstance, no. In this one, yeah. No reason to keep her around if she’s going to diminish our chances of getting on that boat.” Joanna shrugged her shoulders, her clinical calculations devoid of any moral consideration.

“For what it’s worth, I see her point,” Lysa started, receiving a shocked and wary glare from Jose, “If only because I don’t want Carmina’s sacrifice to be in vain. Ideally, I’d like to bring her with us if we can, but if we can’t, we cannot leave the option of leaving her behind off the table.” Matteo looked at Lysa with pain in his eyes, then turned to Jose with wordless pleas.

He sighed, “We can take a moment to consider all of those possibilities when we take a look at that map.” Jose gave himself a bit of breathing room. Joanna looked disappointed in his hesitation but Jose refused to leave Carmina behind out of an easy convenience. Matteo wasn’t too happy with his response either.

Jose walked up to Carmina’s belongings and grabbed her journal. The map was on the most recent page, a detailed scan of the maintenance map of the fictional vessel, complete with dead end tunnels and pathways that didn’t logically follow at the margins. He was curious in noting that a bulk of her journal was locked away from public viewing but didn’t pry further.

“How close are we?” Lysa asked suddenly. Jose jumped and she snickered at his audible yelp.

“Fuck, agh. Don't do that!” Jose reprimanded Lysa to no avail before turning back to deciphering the map. He used their great hall, labelled the Hall of Anhalar, as reference to pathfind his way to the forge in the vessel. His fingers moved through the path on both ends until they converged at a connecting line; the atrium with the swollen core and the Shrike.

“We’re going to have to backtrack to the other tunnel.” Jose announced to the rest of the crew. “Which means we might be facing off against the Shrike again.”

“Are you naming the monster out there ‘the Shrike’, Jose?” Lysa had a smarmy smile, excited to confirm that-

“Yes, Lysa. I think that we need a name for the monster since Carmina was attacked by something different and yelling out ‘monster’ or ‘creature’ is too vague in gauging our level of response.” Jose waited for a reply but didn’t get one, only having Lysa wordlessly smile and shake their head.

It was his school days all over again.

“How far is the forge then?” Joanna asked.

Jose winced, “ It’s somewhat nearby. I can only hope the route is as direct as it’s drawn on the map but...yeah.” He trailed off.

“And what if it’s farther than you think? Or we have to go in a roundabout direction? Have you planned for-”

“Back off, Joanna. He’s clearly doing his best with what he’s got.” Lysa placed her hand on his shoulder in solidarity.

“Look, doing your best is great but we want to win, right? If that means I have to put the screws on us, I’ll do it.” Joanna’s glare passed across the room, daring either of them to respond.

“Jose says it’s close enough. That’s all I need.” Matteo walked over to his sister and threw her onto his shoulder.

“What are you doing? We haven’t decided what-”

“I’ve decided I’m bringing my sister with me. I’ll be drowned before I leave her behind.” Matteo walked out of their encampment.

“Well, guess Matteo’s decided for us. You lead the way, Jose!” Lysa sprung up and out of the encampment. Joanna looked at Jose, the wordless disapproval radiating across her face, but followed suit with the rest of the group.

The tightness in his lungs didn’t go away.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jose rounded up his team and huddled them in a circle with the statues as their witness, “Our path is the main hall at the fork we avoided going down when running away from the Shrike. Chances are high that it’s still there and that the path we avoided is its proper hunting grounds.” He voiced his suspicion and found no dissenting opinions from the rest of the group. This grand hall was far too empty and clean to sustain the Shrike’s feeding habits. The only other path, then, would be chock full of prey that the monster could feed on, and maybe even other evasive Infected.

“And then what? It isn’t as simple as walking through the other path, is it?” Joanna asked derisively.

“No. The main path ends in a circular room with a number of small halls. It used to be this vessel's central throughway. If it’s in shape it’s as simple as looking at the signage above and walking down to the forge.”

“And if there’s no signage? Or the paths blocked off?”

“Then we do our best with what we’ve got and find another way around.”

He understood Joanna’s frustrations over their uncertainty, but this wasn’t the time to act indignant over their test conditions. Just getting to the forge was proving enough of a challenge and he didn’t want to dwell on the uncertainty over whether leaving with the forge was part of their exam process. He looked at the path ahead and took a nervous step forward, his foot on the ground like crackling thunder through that spacious hall.

They moved slowly. Jose led their slow crawl forward with Lysa close behind. Matteo didn’t fidget with the limp and injured body of Carmina on his back. Even if he wasn’t looking behind himself, Jose could feel the critical gaze of Joanna at the end of their line.

The archway that sliced their great hall with the uncertainty of the Shrikes nest was mere steps away now. He took a deep breath and waited for the acrid stench of sloughing flesh to burn his eyes and corrupt the air in his lungs.

Nothing happened when he passed through the threshold.

Jose balled up his soul as tight as he could before exploding it outward around him in a wave. The range wasn’t far, but it was enough for him to confirm that the Shrike wasn’t in the immediate area.

“It’s not in here.” Jose wheezed out the all-clear. Was he reaching his limits already?

“Let’s keep moving then.” Matteo waited for Jose to catch his breath before walking behind the leader, towards the other hall at the fork of their journey.

The threshold crossed between the Shrikes domain and the unknown hall was as apparent as the other one in a decidedly stomach churning twist. Where the decadent great hall they had found solace in was coated in undisturbed dust and gray sheen, this hall was oppressively dark with roots of pulsating flesh spreading around the walls and floors like a viral infection. Although they were spared the scent of decay from sloughing flesh, the hallway carried a scent of curdled copper and fungus that could not be ignored by their nose.

Jose’s Sense was becoming noisier the deeper they went. Pus colored sacks hung on the ceiling and littered the floors like forbidden fruit, the wave of soul passing over them causing the thin film keeping the contents contained to writhe and stretch in agitation.

“I think our Shrike’s going down the same direction.” Lysa pointed to a section of the hall where multiple sacks were crushed under the weight of the creature, the liquid contents as putrid smelling as the decayed meat their monster had left behind. “I’m pretty sure we’re in an Infected nest if it’s hunting here.”

“What does that mean?” Joanna cried out, jumping out of her skin when a boil on the floor popped with warm gas and fluid.

“What else does a Nest mean? If an infestation is large enough, they congregate into a Nest and continue evolving and breeding until…” Lysa stopped, placing her finger on her lip as she wrinkled her brows.

“Until the Nest takes a mind of its own. Or a Scourge emerges. Or the Vanguard stamps it out. Or it connects with another Nest and weird stuff happens.” Jose vaguely responded. It was clear from her demeanor that Joanna was revolted by the Infected and informing her of specifics not pertinent to the task at hand would only serve to fray her nerves, even if this was a good teaching opportunity. He didn’t have a read on Matteo and how he felt about this Infected situation so it was best to play it cautious with him too.

“I bring it up because I’ve been bugged with how few Infected there’ve been since we stepped into its threshold. The way Nora describes it, you’d think they’d swarm us from the onset or ambush us this far in but neither has occurred.”

“What if the Shrike has killed them all?” Matteo chimed in.

“That’s what I thought at first but that doesn’t make sense either. If it was able to take down a Nest's worth of creatures, wouldn’t it have been Scourge levels of crazy? At best, it’s on a path to become one but not at that stage yet.” Lysa opened up about her expectations.

“Does any of this fucking matter? Let’s just find the forge and get on with it.” Joanna pressed forward, speed walking ahead of Matteo, Lysa, and Jose to be at the front of the line.

“Finish your thoughts, Lysa. I think you’re onto something.” Jose gave Lysa a pat on her back

“It’s just that if they weren’t planning to ambush us and they weren’t aggressive from the outset, and I don’t think the Shrike’s done them in, what would they do to prey on creatures?” Lysa pondered.

Jose considered his friend's statement and looked at the hallway with a new perspective. Beyond the flesh spreading onto every inch of stone and metal, what was the function of the Nest? If the Shrike was an apex predator in this environment, what were the traits that allowed it to prosper?

He took a deep breath and sent out a pulse through the hallway. The difference was in the noise that each crevice gave. The pustules were tightly compacted noise and the walls and floor varied in the level of fuzz he picked up.

Jose stopped walking, squinting at the walls and floor for visible proof of his assessment.

“Joanna, you need to stop.” Jose called out to her.

“No. I want to get out of here now. It’s the first right and I can feel it's just a bit further.” Joanna replied, walking further away from the group.

“You don’t understand Joanna, they’re beneath the flesh. The Infected.” He kept his eyes trained on a slightly raised lump of flesh and how the wet scuttling noises they heard coincided with the near imperceptible movement of these growths.

She took another step forward. Her foot depressed into a large lump on the ground and the floor beneath her feet began to tear open. Joanna struggled to pull out of the sinking folds of skin, falling backwards and losing her boot to the sticky floor. She turned around at once, crawling back to the safety of her group as sections of wall and floor scuttled to the location of the boot. The creatures beneath the flesh were evasive but the flesh that tore open from the ground as they scuttled past hinted at coiled bodies with spiky chitinous carapaces akin to a centipede.

Once the boot was entombed underneath the flesh the centipedes scattered to their respective corners of the Nest, waiting for something small and unwitting to disturb them again.

Jose counted hundreds of them, each creature primed to attack at a moment's notice.

A heavy thrum echoed from the end of the hall, their hearts sinking with the weight of each step and the speed at which it moved. It wasn’t just the centipedes they had attracted the attention of.

“Keep together! We have to move now.” Jose tried to keep cool as the group compacted and traveled at a brisk pace.

Thump. Thump. Thump.