Rusted bars bit into his palms as he climbed. By the time he reached the top, his hands throbbed. Pulse hammering in his ears. He didn't want to see what waited above, but leaving wasn't an option. This was his job. To face whatever crawled out of the Rifts and threatened the people below.

He needed a new job.

The Dark was restless, spilling from him in thin threads that clung to his skin like hair. He couldn't pull it back in. He tried not to think about what that meant. The threads slid up the ladder ahead of him, probing the darkness, letting him sense it as if with new eyes.

He reached the top.

The hatch was closed. His hand trembled as he gripped it and pushed upward. Weak light spilled down, painting him in pale color. The Dark rushed out, filling the space ahead. He waited. Listening. Only the quiet hum of a machine. No movement.

He shoved it fully open, letting the metal hatch bang against the floor of the room above. He lifted himself into the room. He pulled out both his pistols as he stood up and took in the space around him.

A small space. Once a storage room, now a lair. Warm, thick with the stink of damp mold. Shelves pressed against every wall, each one heavy with books. Loose papers fluttered to the floor, disturbed by the hatch. In the corner, a desk. A laptop glowed, blue and fractured across its cracked screen.

A mattress on the floor, ringed by an odd collection of things. Cell phones. ID cards. Jewelry. Watches. The detritus of human lives, sifted into piles of evidence. On the wall above, symbols scrawled in chalk. Equations, runes, sigils. They pulsed softly, still humming with spent Dark. The creature was trying to study it, to use it, the way science tried to grasp gravity.

A cable snaked across the floor, vanishing into a patch of darkness in the far corner. An old generator hummed. In the shadows, a long shape hunched over itself.

He leveled his pistols at it. The air thickened, pulsing around him. A gentle pressure brushed his mind. The Dark pushed back.

The shape moved. Unfolded itself from the shadows with deliberate grace. Everything about it was wrong, but there was a strange beauty in the way it moved. Long limbs. Pale skin. The folds of its robe whispered as it rose to its full height and turned. The computer's glow painted blue across its face. Pale head, slick and smooth. Writhing tentacles.

The creature's thoughts slid against his consciousness. It seemed careful now.

"Why do you come?"

He felt the words writing themselves behind his eyes, gentle caresses in the dark. Each one an invitation, seductive and cold. Each word left a residue of longing, sharp and empty.

Still pointing his pistol at it, he answered, “You killed them.” His voice was a rasp. “The people from the train. You fed on them.”

The tentacles twitched.

"They were useful."

The creature tilted its head to one side and blinked slowly.

"Like you, I must feed or die."

Bile rose in his throat. He swallowed, hard.

"But we're intelligent. You could eat all kinds of things that aren't."

"It's the intellect that I devour. The experiences and emotions. Everything that makes you human is what sustains me."

Jared fired both pistols.

The shots caught it in the chest. Grey ichor splattered the wall. It didn't fall. It turned, tentacles writhing in agitation. Jared fired again. Again. Each shot found its mark. The air around the creature began to hum, thick with invisible pressure.

Pain slammed into his skull. Lanced through his mind. His vision fragmented, thin layers flaking apart like glass. He staggered back, screaming.

"You are open. You see too much."

The creature stepped forward. Its pale hand extended and long fingers reaching out towards him. Jared could feel it entering his mind. It brushed through the folds of his memories. Moments of his life were dragged up and played out.

Training rooms. Tessa's lifeless body lying in the street. The cold alley where he first summoned the Dark.

He tried to shove the memories back, but the fingers kept pulling, laying everything bare. The Dark writhed, chaotic and roiling, oozing from his skin. The creature caressed the edge of the abyss.

"You don't understand what you hold."

It dug its fingers in and pulled. The maw of the abyss tore open, screaming.

The creature was close now. It laid a hand against his face, just as Tessa had before their kiss. Tentacles crept around his neck and chest.

“Get out of my head,” he hissed.

"Your mind is loud."

The words cut into his thoughts. Tentacles tightened, pulling him closer.

The universe unfolded inside him. The ocean of Dark, ebbing within the abyss, surged through him and out into the room. The wave struck the creature. Books and papers flew from the shelves. The generator smoked, grinding to a halt. The creature's grip slipped away.

For the first time, he didn't fight the Dark. He let it fill him, let it pass through into the small room.

The world shattered into infinite reflection. He dissolved, skin, bone, thought, until there was nothing but the Dark, vast and tidal, rushing through him with the force of creation. Space folded and unfolded in his lungs. Each breath drew in galaxies, exhaled stars into ruin. He tasted the raw mathematics of existence, saw the latticework of reality as veins of light threading the black. Inside every atom, every silence between. The Dark was no longer a tool, no longer something to wield. It was awareness itself, eternal and wordless, whispering the true geometry of everything. The creature was no longer flesh, but a distortion. A wound in the cosmic weave. A scream given shape. The Dark surged toward it, a flood reclaiming lost ground. He drifted in its wake, unmade and remade in the same heartbeat.

As quickly as it came, it was gone. He felt whole. Vital. Everything in its place. Purpose thrumming beneath his skin. He had touched it.

He raised his pistols and fired. Light twisted, bending around the creature. Its outline shifted, melting from reality.

The pressure came again. A fist closing around his thoughts. Vision narrowed to a tunnel. The creature was trying to crush his mind. He felt the edges of himself coming undone. The Dark screamed inside him, reflecting everything he was. Terrified. Desperate.

He let it go.

Darkness poured from him in a black tide. It flooded the room, swallowing the pale light, filling every corner with living shadow. For a moment, nothing but that. Dark meeting mind, colliding, devouring. The creature shrieked, a noise that was not sound but pure thought, flaying the senses.

Shapes flickered in the dark. Impossible geometries. Flashes of alien hunger. He glimpsed the creature’s mind as their forces clashed. Vast caverns. Coldness. Emptiness. A pool of writhing worms. A network of thought. The creature tried to drown him in its history.

He fired blindly through the dark.

One bullet found its mark. The psychic pressure faltered. He surged forward, boots skidding on the slick floor, and emptied the last of his magazine into the creature’s chest. Each shot punctuated by a pulse of Dark, hitting like a hammer. Flesh tore. Robe shredded. The thing reeled back, clawing with invisible hands.

It tried to retreat, levitating toward the open shaft at the back of the chamber. He was faster. He snatched at the Dark swirling around him and hurled it. The makeshift spear pierced the creature’s abdomen, pinning it to the wall. It screamed. Not aloud, but through him, rattling every nerve.

He staggered closer. Blood, thick and gray, splattered across his coat and face. The creature’s limbs twitched. Tentacles curled weakly toward him, almost pleading. For a moment, he saw not a monster but something lost. Something that had built this nest out of desperation, clawing at understanding. An exile, studying its own damnation.

Then he pulled the trigger one last time.

The bullet struck the creature between its pale eyes. Its skull burst inward with a wet, dull sound. The tentacles spasmed once and then went still. The psychic hum in the air faded into nothing.

He stood there for a long time, chest heaving. The smell of burned ozone and blood clung to everything. The Dark settled slowly back into him, whispering as it coiled into the hollow spaces of his body.

He looked around the room. Walls pocked with bullet holes. Shelves overturned. The computer’s screen flickered once, then died. He could still feel the echo of its mind brushing against his. Fragmented images, equations, thoughts hanging in the air like ghosts.

He approached the desk. Notebooks lay scattered, filled with cramped, alien handwriting. Diagrams of circles within circles. Sketches of human faces beside dissected brains. He didn't touch them. He should take the evidence, but something in them radiated the same quiet malice that had filled the creature’s thoughts.

He holstered his weapons. The Dark hummed low in his chest.

The creature’s body sagged against the wall, blood pooling around the baseboards, steaming faintly in the cold air. He turned away, limping toward the ladder. The smell of blood and gunpowder followed him up into the silence of the tunnels below.