They ran.
The hive thundered behind them.
Hundreds of feet pounded through the corridors in wet, uneven rhythm. Sugar-glass claws scraped along the walls. Bodies slammed into corners too tight to hold them. Somewhere deeper back, the Chupacabra zombie’s furious screech tore through the gumball like a command.
Arcade sprinted with the panic of a man who had already been experimented on once today and had absolutely no interest in a sequel.
“C.H.I.P.!” he shouted. “Exits! Doors! Windows! Holes! Suspiciously convenient ventilation shafts! I am open to anything!”
C.H.I.P. zipped ahead, optics flashing red.
“CALCULATING ESCAPE ROUTES. GOOD NEWS: THERE ARE MANY PATHWAYS.”
Arcade’s ears flattened. “Bad news?”
“SEVERAL ARE TEETH.”
“Why would that even be on the map?!”
Celeste raced beside them, blades in hand, breath sharp in her lungs. The voices pressed against her skull again—closer now, louder, churning with hunger and obedience and pain.
But if she listened just enough—
Not too much.
Never too much.
She could feel them.
“Six up ahead!” she shouted.
Arcade glanced at her. “Six what?”
“Zombies!”
“Are you guessing?”
“No!”
They rounded the corner.
Six zombies burst from the side passage.
Exactly six.
Arcade’s head snapped toward Celeste so fast he nearly tripped.
Silver, still clutching the pastel-purple toddler against his chest with one arm, fired with the other. Windswept flashed. Two arrows punched through the first wave while Celeste carved through the rest in a blur of blue-white light.
Arcade stumbled after them, eyes wide.
“Since when can you do that?”
Celeste ducked under a taffy arm and sliced it clean off.
“Oh. Around twenty minutes ago.”
Arcade stared at her.
She gave a strained little smile.
“It’s very noisy and loud in my head, so I’d rather we don’t do it for very long.”
“That is not a normal sentence!”
Silver leapt over a fallen gum cable, the toddler pressed close beneath his coat.
“In her defence, nothing about this building appears committed to normality.”
C.H.I.P. blasted a Sugar Rusher off the ceiling with a sharp little beam.
“LEFT TURN ADVISED. ALSO, WE ARE BEING FLANKED BY SOMETHING WITH SEVENTEEN LEGS. POSSIBLY TWELVE. IT IS MOVING TOO DISRESPECTFULLY TO COUNT.”
Arcade skidded left.
Celeste followed.
“So,” Arcade shouted between breaths, “how exactly did you get out earlier?”
Celeste frowned. “What?”
“Your pod! You got out. I saw you on a monitor.”
A zombie lunged from the front.
C.H.I.P. spun and fired, blasting it backwards in a burst of sparks.
Arcade continued, voice sharper now. “And who were you talking to?”
Celeste blinked. “Oh—you mean Silver?”
Silver glanced sideways. “Charmed to still be relevant.”
Arcade shook his head violently.
“No. Not him. You called someone Bradwr.”
Celeste missed a step.
“What?”
“And you were talking in Bardic.”
Celeste stared at him as they ran.
“I don’t remember that.”
Arcade’s quills bristled. “Of course you don’t.”
“I remember waking up in a hallway,” Celeste said, panic flickering across her face. “There were zombies bowing, which was horrible and extremely impolite, and then I asked where you were and they pointed and—”
Silver exhaled sharply.
“Great. Wonderful. And you’re insane. Will wonders never cease?”
Celeste shot him a wounded look. “I’m not insane.”
“You just said bowing zombies gave you directions.”
“They were very helpful!”
“That does not improve the sentence.”
C.H.I.P. chirped brightly, weaving around a hanging cluster of candy wires.
“PERHAPS THE ZOMBIE CHASING US CAN HELP EXPLAIN. ARCADE DOES SHARE DNA WITH IT.”
Arcade nearly fell flat on his face.
“What do you mean, share DNA?”
C.H.I.P.’s optics spun. “WOULD YOU LIKE THE LONG VERSION OR THE EMOTIONALLY DEVASTATING VERSION?”
“Neither!”
Before C.H.I.P. could answer, the corridor ahead bulged.
Something round pushed through the gummy wall.
Then another.
And another.
They rolled into the passage with heavy, wobbling thumps.
Huge gumball hamsters.
Each one was almost as tall as Celeste, swollen into glossy spheres of layered candy and fur, with tiny twitching paws, dead bright eyes, and cheeks stretched too wide around gumdrop teeth.
Arcade stopped dead.
“…No.”
One of the creatures opened its mouth.
A bubbling, gargling noise built in its throat.
Gargle.
Gargle.
BOOM.
The first one exploded.
The blast hurled sugar shrapnel down the hall, slamming into the walls hard enough to crack the gum-glass. Celeste threw up her blades just in time, but the shockwave still knocked her backwards.
Silver staggered, shielding the toddler with his body.
Arcade yelped. “Self-exploding gumball hamster! Why is that a thing?”
C.H.I.P. scanned rapidly.
“CLASSIFICATION: GARGLEBOOM. BEHAVIOUR: APPROACH, GARGLE, DETONATE. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY: RUDE.”
Another Gargleboom rolled toward them.
Celeste lunged.
“Wait!” Arcade shouted.
Too late.
Her blade struck the outer shell.
The hamster detonated.
Celeste went flying down the corridor in a blur of limbs, tail, and offended squeaking.
She slammed into a patch of gum wall and stuck there for half a second before peeling off with a wet pop.
“Ow.”
Silver winced. “That looked educational.”
“Don’t hit the outside!” Arcade yelled.
Celeste pushed herself up, dizzy. “Then where do we hit?”
C.H.I.P. zipped forward.
“LAYERED STRUCTURE DETECTED. STRIP OUTER SHELL. EXPOSE CENTRAL CORE. THEN STRIKE GOOEY MIDDLE.”
Arcade stared at him. “You could have led with that!”
“YOU WERE BUSY SCREAMING.”
The next Gargleboom rolled toward them, throat already bubbling.
Gargle.
Gargle.
Celeste’s eyes sharpened.
“Lunar Cross!”
She surged forward in a flash of blue-white light, both blades sweeping in a quick X-shaped slash across the Gargleboom’s glossy outer shell. A starry trail shimmered behind the strike, hanging in the air for half a heartbeat before fading like scattered moonlight.
The first candy layer split apart.
C.H.I.P. zipped in beside her, tiny claws crackling with electricity.
“VOLTAGE CLAW!”
He slashed twice in mid-air, charged strikes tearing across the exposed seam. Sparks burst outward as another layer peeled away, spinning off into the corridor and splatting against the wall.
Arcade lifted his arcbracer and fired a sharp pulse.
A third layer cracked.
The Gargleboom’s centre bulged into view—soft, pulsing, neon gum.
Silver stared.
“Number one,” he said, breathless, “how did you do that? It was impressive.”
Celeste blinked mid-stance. “Oh. Thank you.”
“Number two, can I do that?”
“Probably?”
Silver’s eyes gleamed. “Excellent.”
“And number three,” he continued, “why do you announce the move before using it?”
Celeste gave him a look of absolute sincerity.
“It makes it sound epic.”
Arcade snapped his fingers toward her without looking away from the Gargleboom.
“Don’t question the method in the madness.”
Silver scoffed.
“Clearly, I won’t.”
The Gargleboom swelled.
Arcade shouted, “Middle! Hit the middle!”
Celeste drove both blades straight into the gooey centre.
The creature froze.
Then pixelated.
Its body broke apart into sparkling squares of light and dissolving sugar, vanishing with a soft chime.
A tiny flicker of mana rushed into Celeste’s core.
Arcade blinked.
“…Did that just give us experience?”
C.H.I.P. chimed. “CONFIRMED. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE DEFEATED: GARGLEBOOM.”
Silver stared at the fading pixels.
“I hate that I understood that.”
Arcade backed away as another distant gargle echoed from the hall behind them.
“That’s another nightmare to avoid.”
Celeste swayed, one paw pressed to her temple.
The voices were closer now.
A left turn full of crawling things.
Three above.
Two below.
One rolling.
One crying.
One wanting the song to stop forever.
Her face tightened.
“This way,” she said.
Arcade looked at her, worry cutting through his panic. “Celeste—”
“We have to keep moving.”
Behind them, the horde surged closer.
The corridor shook beneath the stampede.
Silver adjusted the sleeping toddler in his arms and raised Windswept again.
“Then lead on, Sparkles.”
Celeste ran.
The hive screamed behind them, walls pulsing with amber light as the horde surged closer. C.H.I.P. zipped ahead, blasting open sealed vents and shrieking extremely unhelpful route updates.
“LEFT IS DEATH. RIGHT IS ALSO DEATH. FORWARD IS STATISTICALLY LESS DEATH.”
“Forward it is!” Arcade yelled.
Silver sprinted beside Celeste, one arm still wrapped protectively around the sleeping toddler. His boots slid on the gummy floor as the corridor curved sharply, and for one terrible second, his balance vanished.
He brushed hard into Celeste.
“Careful—!”
His foot caught on a sugar cable.
He tripped.
Celeste reached without thinking and grabbed his hand.
His glove slipped loose beneath her fingers.
Skin met skin.
The world flashed.
Silver jolted as if lightning had punched through his bones.
Golden scales bloomed across the back of his hand, spreading up his wrist in shimmering plates. His claws snapped out, sharp and curved, scraping against Celeste’s palm without cutting her. More scales flickered across his cheeks, catching the hive-light like molten metal.
His eyes changed.
Turquoise irises narrowed into bright dragon slits.
A tiny breath escaped him.
Not air.
Turquoise flame curled from his mouth, delicate and hot, vanishing in a wisp of smoke.
Silver froze, breath caught.
“What—”
Celeste changed too.
Iridescent scales shimmered across her hands and cheeks, pale as moonlit glass. Her eyes burned bright blue, pupils narrowing into sharp slits. Light rippled under her skin, ancient and wild.
But she wasn’t looking at Silver.
She was looking behind him.
A candy wolf dropped from the ceiling, jaws wide, claws outstretched toward his back.
Celeste moved.
She ripped Silver sideways, released his hand, and spun past him in a blur of blue-white light.
“Lunar Cross!”
Both blades flashed.
A starry X tore through the wolf mid-leap, splitting it clean apart. Before the pieces hit the floor, Celeste rolled forward beneath the falling sugar shards, planted both boots against the next zombie charging from the dark, and kicked it so hard it flew backwards into three others.
Then she was up again.
Still running.
“Come on!” she shouted over her shoulder.
Silver stayed where he was for half a heartbeat, panting.
His hand shook.
Golden scales covered his knuckles and crawled halfway up his wrist. His claws were still out, trembling with unfamiliar strength.
He stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.
“No,” he whispered. “That’s new.”
The scales flickered.
Then vanished.
His claws slid back beneath his fingertips.
His eyes softened into round pupils again, though the turquoise glow lingered for one breath longer than it should have.
Silver looked down at the fallen glove.
Then at Celeste’s back as she cut through another zombie without slowing.
Something inside him had stirred.
Not woken.
Not fully.
But stirred.
Deep.
Old.
Hungry for sky.
“Silver!” Arcade shouted from ahead. “Admire your weird hand later!”
Silver blinked hard, snatched up his glove, and forced his expression back into something close to composure.
“Yes,” he called, voice only slightly unsteady. “Naturally. Very calm. Nothing alarming happening at all.”
He shoved the glove back on as he ran.
But beneath the leather, his hand still tingled.
And somewhere under his ribs, something warm and scaled stretched once in the dark.
