The air filled with hissing, organic quills. One pinned the bomb bag to my midsection, and I tore it out with a gasp. Blood gushed from the gaping wound. The quill felt like rough, splintered wood, and bore several large, bladed barbs.

Several more punctured my body as I hung, inspecting the object. The painkiller ramped up intensely. I groaned and concentrated on getting away. As I went to fly overhead, the quill-throwers focused their fire on me with nearly impeccable aim.

I plummeted to the floor just on the other side of their formation, unable to breathe or move my limbs. The starfish suit spun into action, yanking and cutting portions of my body away as my consciousness slid in and out.

More quills flashed my way, thrown from gaps in the armor, and from great, flat tails. The suit's tendrils began to spark, diverting or destroying incoming quills until enough damage was repaired for me to raise my armored gauntlets in front of my body.

The diving suit was ruined, but the helmet stayed mostly intact. My HUD cracked as a quill struck the faceplate directly. I got to my knees and reached in the punctured bomb bag for a tube of thermite, trying to cover behind one hand as well as I could. As I fumbled through it, I activated a toggle with a broken safety switch and immediately lost it in the bag.

I held my breath for a full second as quills filled the air, my legs, and the bag of bombs.

Then I shrugged, tore the bag free from my body, and tossed the entire thing in the middle of the quill-thrower beasts. I held my armored hands in front of me and concentrated on getting away as fast as I could. The suit worked on repairing my damage and keeping my vital systems running, while I pushed it for more speed.

I was a torn-apart pincushion, flying through the air in bleeding tatters.

My cartoon showed up to keep me company, sending a severe glare my way. “You’re going to run out of charge in flight again, and it’ll be the end of you one of these days, user!” it squawked.

The thermite bombs all went off in a chain of explosions. Kraken immediately roared in pain, and I heard the hiss of boiling ink and seawater both rushing into the tunnel.

Then the situation changed entirely. The walls around me clicked audibly, a heavy, metallic snap that echoed up and down the giant halls. Then they flexed inward, the ceiling rushing down toward me.

I pushed the suit harder, focused on a tiny dot in the distance, another sphincter-door. My arms reached out in front of me, and I willed the atomic breaker gauntlets to become active as I mentally pushed the gravitic drive to move me as fast as it could.

The remnants of the suit below my waist and my boots ripped free in an instant of dizzying, tearing velocity. The walls and floors bent in, as I rushed through the air to slam into the door, a shockwave tearing through the tunnel behind me.

The sphincter blasted apart in an explosion of blue light and fragments, and I tumbled into the new area, another dome. I craned my neck around to see behind me. The tunnel clamped down and sealed flat against the curve of Kraken’s body.

I slammed into an oversized metal and rubber tube, cratered it, and ricocheted to the side, tumbling to a stop on the floor.

This dome was different, it wasn’t full of residential neighborhoods or parks. Just tubes, and somewhere in the mess of them, the bone-thrumming sound of heavy machinery.

A raptorial alien descended from above on black feathered wings. She reminded me of Darclau’s favorite translator, Sheena. It wasn’t her, but they were the same species. This one was wearing heavily stained coveralls, complete with toolbelt.

“Wait!” she yelled. Her tentacle followed via pod, and she flew gently to allow it to keep up easily as she landed nearby, hands raised.

I groaned and hauled myself to one knee, yanking the shotgun’s heavy strap out of the meat of my shoulder before the suit could cut it free. I raised it and racked a flechette into the right hand barrel, then shot her.

The bird-woman fell, a bloody hole punched into her chest. She gasped and gave a weak cry, before straightening out with a terrible, visibly agonized effort and looked me in the eyes. “We can make a deal, there’s no need to keep-”

I shot her again, in the head this time, before she could keep talking. The flechettes tore out the tentacle, which receded into the rainbow beam while Kraken rumbled.

The painkiller in my system faded a bit as the repairs ceased. The ground around me was covered in sawed up quill parts, and my wetsuit was gone from the nipples down. Resurfacing was going to be a challenge, I suspected.

I flew around the room, trying to get a sense for what it could be. The walls, floors, and everything else was made from the same material as the tunnel had been, a mixture of metallic bones, and whatever that hardened rubber-looking stuff was. It seemed to solidify as hard as iron when it was dried.

Various pipes made of the stuff led from each corner of the dome to the center, where they all convened at a single tower that appeared to plunge down into the Kraken’s body.

I hung in the air momentarily before shrugging and racking the shotgun. I selected another two of the laser slugs and activated the ion saturator on the barrel. When I fired both barrels, I swept the beam in an arc, trying to cut a circle through the hardened material.

Kraken roared and roiled, its entire body shuddering with the movement. The piping collapsed, spilling jet-black ink across the dome’s floor in a rush as machinery on the interior of the piping cluster erupted. A fireball rose to light the dome, and the center of the machinery collapsed into the flames.

The ground surged, and the walls of the dome screamed as they bent to accommodate the Kraken’s movements. The gigantic beast flailed in pain. I’d dived deeper in the trench, following the tunnel down the slope of Kraken’s trunk toward the tentacles. If it was built anything like earth octopi or squids, I was getting closer to its brain.

With a scream of shattering metal and tearing hull material, the external dome smashed into the cliffs of the trench outside, and the ocean screamed in from all angles. I dove, flying down into the ruined machinery and billowing flames. When I slammed into its lowest available surface, fists first, I activated both my power blow and breaker gauntlet abilities.

The material blasted away in an explosion of blue light, and I plunged into surging ink. I took a quick, deep breath before it filled my mask, through the broken breathing apparatus at the back of my neck.

I raised the machete as soon as I felt flesh, falling as straight as the strong current of ink would allow me to. I’d entered an underground river and felt the liquid sucking me further into the Kraken’s body. With one hand, I dug my fist into the soft tissue, dragging a furrow until I stopped. Then I hacked down on the wall, tearing a slit into it.

The shotgun tore free with the movement, and immediately vanished into the river of fast-moving ink.

As I crammed myself into the rent flesh, machete first, the current of the ink suddenly reversed and increased in pressure dramatically. It was trying to flush me out.

I hacked and stabbed, using the gravitic drive to push myself further into the rubbery, torn flesh. The machete opened up a path inside the giant creature’s body. The shearing force of the ink flood behind me eased the deeper I went, but my lungs were already screaming for air.

The deeper I burrowed, the more frenzied Kraken’s movements became, and the deeper the screams of pain. I slashed and hacked, forcing myself further and further in, chased by surges of ink.

Within moments, I couldn’t hold my breath any more, and started choking it out in tiny gasps, before inhaling a great glob of ink.

It burned and froze all the way down into my chest, and I immediately coughed hard, drawing in a great, panicked breath of pure liquid. My attempts to get further in Krakens tissues slowed, then stopped entirely as I retched and choked on noxious, vile ink. It filled my nostrils, mouth, and lungs wholly, and the world went dark with excruciating slowness.

I awoke with a gasp, as ink soaked lung tissue ground its way out of my chest turbine. The air was filled with the stench of fried squid, but I could breathe it. The starfish suit had carved and cauterized a sphere around me, I could just barely stand inside of it without crouching.

Gray walls of charred flesh surrounded me on all sides. I slid and fell backwards on my bare ass, sliding down the still-warm squid-flesh. Lifting my mask, I spewed vomit from the stench. It eased after that, and I firmed up my grip on the machete. I’d never dropped it, even when drowning in ink.

The shotgun and thermite bombs, however, were gone.

There was a great, pulsing slit behind me, where the starfish suit had sealed my rend in Kraken’s flesh, so I faced the opposite side. I raised my machete and looked at the task ahead of me, before sighing and getting to work.

I hacked at the rubbery flesh, heading away from the scar behind me. With proper application of force, I was able to slice myself a makeshift doorway through the beast’s body. Kraken reacted occasionally, but the reactions were slight, compared to their previous roars and flailing.

My HUD still functioned, in spite of some small cracking in the goggles. Its map feature showed that just behind me was a channel filled with ink that seemed to run along the surface of Kraken’s body, beneath the skin. In the direction I was heading, another wall of organic metal and composite material buttressed the beast’s flesh from inside.

Beyond it was a void, something the mapping software in my loaner helmet wasn’t capable of seeing.

With some effort, I hacked apart a pathway through the monster, hauling great slabs of rubbery squid flesh back into the chamber my suit had carved until I reached the next wall. My machete bit into it with a hard enough swing, and I forced the blade through the material, cutting out a hole big enough for me to slip through.

When I pushed my way through, I instantly started to fall, and shot out one arm to catch the bottom of the doorway I had made. There I dangled, taking in my surroundings.

The room I entered was cavernous with a low ceiling that hung in either direction, curving gently into the distance. A ring of organic metal and composite material formed the walls of the room, sloping in the vague shape of a massive donut. The roof of the room was made from that same organic material, and stretched off into the distance overhead, lit by the organ beneath it.

Kraken’s brain thrummed with power, electrical surges flickering between slippery looking coils. The entire area surged from left to right, cycling dim light around the curve of the ring. In the distance, the shape of small robotic drones could be seen, hovering like flies over a corpse.

They ignored me, even when one came close enough for me to nearly touch it. Each insectile drone seemed only interested in attending to the brain matter beneath them. Fine sprays of mist emitted from the drones, and they occasionally reached a heavy proboscis down to manipulate some portion of the ring-shaped brain.

I gripped the machete and slid down the side of the wall, to the bottom of the ring. More drones buzzed around the brain matter down there too. I clung to the wall and shook my head. This thing was like me, in specific, but substantive ways.

Its brain was full of machines too, and I had to wonder how much choice this monster had in what it had become. As I raised my machete, I wondered what I would become before someone figured out how to put me down for good.

A thought pulled up my BuyMort panel, and I began searching for bombs to purchase. While I doubted a regular BuyMort pod could reach me, if I bought a bomb big enough to kill this creature, I felt confident I would get free instant shipping. Something that size was likely to be expensive.

But, the interface wouldn’t allow me to make any purchases. When I tried, I got a simple message. “Due to customer location, BuyMort purchase and sale services are not available.”

I read the message and snorted. Of course. Because I was inside another customer, I couldn’t violate their autonomy with my commerce. BuyMort and its slavish adherence to its own rules.

Well, if I couldn't buy or sell anything, I could still try and get the work done the old fashioned way. My hand tightened on the grip of my machete and I stared up into my target’s brains.

I slashed into the brain matter and was instantly blasted back against the metal wall. I was unconscious before impact. When I awoke a few seconds later, it was to my cartoon starfish peering at me.

“Careful user! Electrical sources like that can be dangerous, even to someone like you,” it said. “Now get up and find something to break, that took a lot of juice to repair!”

I glanced at my hands. They were brand new all the way up to the elbow, and I could see the charred remnants of my old arms, discarded, and left to rot in the middle of Kraken’s brain cavity. My heart also felt new, like the old one had burst and been replaced. The cut in the beast’s brain was minimal, and I could see electrical activity still jumping through the torn material.

A nearby drone diverted course and approached with a small, red light flashing. The insectile creature deployed legs as it arrived, and I hurriedly scooted further away. It braced itself against the wall and started prodding the rent brain matter with a shielded proboscis, guiding the disparate ends of torn material back together with gentle pokes.

My machete was nearby, partially slagged. Its blade in particular melted to the point of uselessness, and it was stuck to the floor.

Before I could think much further, my phone rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Urgent call from Rayna,” MortMobile informed me, in the cracked goggles of my diving mask.

Before I even accepted the call, I realized what it meant. Kraken had turned off its own MortMobile block, specifically so I could take Rayna’s call. It wanted me to answer the phone.

“Boss!” she said, out of breath. “Reaper hounds!”

“How bad?” I said, watching for the nearby drones.

“They attacking tower. First report say multiple hounds,” Rayne said. “Ground floor employees all dead.”

I nodded and flicked up my own BuyMort affiliate tab. “Rayna,” I said. “I need you to send word to our people in Los Angeles. Tell them to tell Whalehunter I had to retreat.”

“Yes boss!” Rayna shouted. She was in a vehicle, and it slid to a stop as she opened a door, flooding sunlight across her camera.

“I’m on my way,” I said. I activated one of our newly recharged free portals, and ran to grab my old, burnt arms. No reason to leave them for Kraken to use against me somehow. The pod arrived in a cloud of burnt ozone that actually improved the smell in Kraken’s brain momentarily, and then projected a rainbow beam for me.

It opened onto the Prescott tower’s lobby. Through it, I could see Rayna, Tollya, and a squad of starfish troopers entering the lobby through the front doors.