Chapter 2
GYON
Icome with blood in my mouth and fury in my bones.
My body feels wrong. The air’s too clean, too thin, like it’s been scrubbed sterile of anything natural.
I taste metal and ozone, and when I shift, something in my ribs grinds like shattered glass.
My first breath comes out a snarl, and the sound echoes off the walls—metal walls.
Not a ship. Not a cell. Something in between.
Where am I?
I force my eyes open. White light burns them raw. The corridor around me hums with power, veins of blue energy pulsing under the surface like arteries in skin. The architecture isn’t human—too symmetrical, too smug. Every corner smells like manufactured air and old death.
When I move, pain answers. My armor’s in tatters, plates scorched and fused to my shoulder.
The wound in my chest sears with every breath, but pain means I’m alive.
Pain means I’m still dangerous. I pull myself upright, and my claws scrape the wall, leaving gouges like claw marks on bone.
My vision clears enough to see the faint red tint coating my fingers.
My last memory claws its way forward: a raid, the flash of a pulse round, the stink of burning flesh, then blackness. The freighter we boarded—was it a trap? It must’ve been. But this place… no freighter’s big enough for corridors like this.
Something about it hums beneath my skin. Patterned. Designed.
Then a voice slithers out of the ceiling, all smug charm and mockery wrapped in static. “Good morning, Reaper!” it croons. “You’re awake! Wonderful! I was worried you’d stayed dead for good.”
I freeze. My lip curls.
A projection flickers to life ahead of me—a man’s face, but wrong. Overly bright teeth. Cartoon eyes. A mask pretending to be human. “Name’s Dirk Husker,” he says, cheerful as poison. “And you, my sharp-toothed friend, are special content! You’re our little wildcard. Our difficulty spice!”
He claps. The sound is hollow and perfect.
I snarl low, the growl rumbling in my chest. “You’ll regret speaking to me.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it!” Dirk chirps. “But not yet. We’ve got rules, you see. It’s a game! Monstrous Mazes. Heard of it? Of course not—no time for games while you’re hunting and killing, ha! But don’t worry, you’ll learn fast.”
He gestures, and a grid unfurls in midair, displaying a 3D labyrinth that shifts as I look at it.
Corridors crawl and rotate like mechanical worms. Rooms open and close.
The whole place breathes. “Your objective is simple: survive. Hunt if you like, kill if you must, but do try to play along. Cameras are live! The audience is watching!”
Audience.
My jaw tightens. This isn’t war. This isn’t a raid. This is theater.
He’s turned me into content.
I bare my teeth, but the projection keeps grinning, oblivious. “Oh, and one more thing! There are other contestants. Don’t eat them all at once, hmm? We need the tension.”
The feed cuts out. The corridor lights flicker, and somewhere in the distance, a scream ricochets off the metal.
I start walking.
Every step echoes. My boots hit the floor with a hollow thud, and my shadow stretches long behind me.
I test my senses. The air smells faintly of human sweat and fear.
My ears pick up the faint whir of moving walls, the distant hiss of something venting gas.
Somewhere far off, a rhythmic clicking—mechanical, deliberate. The maze shifts.
Then I catch it—a scent. Sweet. Warm. Alive. Prey.
I follow.
The corridor branches, and I press a palm to the wall. It’s vibrating—alive in its own way. My claws sink in just enough to leave a mark. I like marking things. It means I’ve been here. It means I’m coming back.
When I reach the corner, I hear voices.
Two humans, maybe three. Their panic is a tangible thing, thickening the air.
I peer through a break in the wall—an observation slit disguised as a seam—and there they are: civilians.
Soft, trembling, clutching each other like that’ll keep them safe.
Their clothes are the same as mine—white jumpsuits, spotless and anonymous.
A girl with bright hair sobs, “I want to go home.” Another slaps her. “Shut up. You’ll get us killed.”
And then the Maze answers.
The floor under them splits open. One of them screams. The air flash-freezes in a burst of mist, and the sobbing girl solidifies mid-breath—her mouth open, her eyes wide. Then gravity returns, and she shatters like glass. Pieces scatter across the floor, glittering red under the sterile lights.
The screen above flickers. Dirk’s voice bursts through, giddy: “Oooooh! Style points! 8.5 for the landing!”
The others run. I don’t blame them. Fear smells good, but theirs stinks of despair. There’s no thrill in this kind of hunt.
I watch them vanish into the next corridor before stepping back, every muscle thrumming. This isn’t a prison.
It’s a show.
And I’m supposed to perform.
I keep moving, staying low, letting the maze whisper its secrets. Each corridor smells different—one reeks of antiseptic, another of copper and smoke. The walls shift behind me, closing off the path I took. Good. It means I’m going forward.
I pass through a chamber where light pulses in sync with a heartbeat. Not mine. The floor ripples like fluid. I crouch and touch it. It’s warm. It hums. Organic tech—living architecture. Ingenious. I hate how much I admire it.
Then I hear it: a whisper of movement behind me. I spin, claws out. Nothing. Just the lights flickering overhead. But the scent is new—feminine. Sharp with adrenaline. Human, but different. Not prey. Not soft.
I shake it off and keep walking. Whatever she is, she’s not mine to worry about. Yet.
The maze leads me downward, spiraling through corridors that feel tighter the deeper I go. Symbols etch themselves onto the walls as I pass—patterns that rearrange when I blink. The place is rewriting itself around me, adapting to my presence. Testing me.
A trapdoor opens without sound under my left foot. Reflex saves me. I twist, catch the edge, and haul myself up just as spikes slam shut where my legs should be. My laugh echoes through the corridor, wild and low. “Nice try.”
Through the hum of shifting machinery, another voice breaks through the comms. Human again. Calm. Steady. Female.
“Attention players,” she says. “Teams are being assigned. You’ll find your group in the nearest marked chamber. Cooperation increases survival odds.”
It’s not Dirk this time. It’s someone else—someone trying to help. Her voice is clean, clipped, intelligent. I like it. It cuts through the chaos like a knife.
I start running.
When I find the chamber, the door seals behind me with a hiss. The lighting drops to amber. I smell fear, blood, and something that makes my pulse spike.
On the far wall, a glowing sigil appears—a stylized labyrinth, the logo of Monstrous Mazes. My snarl deepens. I’ve seen this before. Not in this place, but on a stolen datapad, once, years ago. It was a game. A human’s game. Some upstart prodigy designed it.
Husker didn’t build this maze.
He stole it.
That thought sits heavy in my chest, heavier than the armor plating still fused to my ribs.
Because whoever made this thing knew how to manipulate the human brain.
Every pattern, every light shift, every scent—engineered to trigger emotion.
Anticipation. Panic. Despair. A maze built to feed off suffering.
The speaker crackles. Dirk again, gleeful and manic. “Oh, don’t look so serious! It’s just a little fun! Besides, the audience loves you already, Reaper. Look—your kill metrics are spiking! You haven’t even done anything yet!”
“I will,” I promise softly, to no one and everyone.
The walls shift again, revealing a window—one-way glass.
Beyond it, I see movement: a group of players moving cautiously through the next corridor.
One of them is small, human, blonde hair tangled, jaw tight with defiance.
She’s snapping at a larger man, pointing at the wall, making calculations in midair with her fingers. She’s thinking.
I should look away. I don’t.
Something about her stance—it’s all edges and light. Like she’s already mapping her own survival.
I watch as she leads the others forward, arguing, commanding, her voice muffled through the glass. Then a mechanical hiss fills the chamber. One of the walls starts closing on them. Panic breaks the group. Two civilians bolt the wrong way. The panel under them turns red, then—boom. Gone. Just gone.
The blonde doesn’t flinch.
She pushes the survivors through an open door, yelling something I can’t hear. The door seals, and she’s gone from view.
The Maze Master chuckles in my ear. “She’s clever, that one. Thinks she can beat me at my own game. I might have to bump her up the leaderboard.”
“Her name,” I growl. “What’s her name?”
“Why?” Dirk purrs. “You planning to eat her?”
I bare my teeth at the camera. “Planning to make her watch while I end you.”
“Ohhh, I like you,” he sings. “Keep talking like that—you’re testing so well with the audience!”
The feed dies again, and silence fills the space.
I lean against the wall, dragging one claw down its surface. Sparks flare where metal gives way. My blood hums with violence, but under it, something colder coils in my gut. A flicker of recognition I can’t explain.
Whoever she is—the blonde with the bright eyes—she doesn’t belong here any more than I do.
But that’s the thing about monsters like me.
Once I find something worth keeping, I don’t let it die.