The dust still hadn't settled.
Evelyn coughed, pushing herself up from the rubble. Blood trickled down her temple, and her ears rang from the explosion. Around her, debris stretched for blocks. The skyscraper was gone.
Mia groaned nearby, clutching her arm, the infection crawling up her veins like blackened roots. Reaper pulled himself from the wreckage, his face smeared with dirt and sweat.
"We did it," Mia wheezed.
But Evelyn wasn't so sure.
Then—a deep, wet crunch.
A chill ran through her spine.
The rubble shifted. Moved.
Something was still alive.
From the ruins of steel and concrete, a shape emerged. Twisted. Reformed.
The Black Maw was gone. But something new had taken its place.
It was bigger. Bulkier. Flesh stretched taut over sinewy muscle. Its head—no, its brain—was exposed, pulsating with raw hunger. Teeth jutted from its maw, gnashing in anticipation.
No longer just a tendril—it was now a weapon. Long, segmented, with barbed hooks dripping with venom.
Evelyn's stomach dropped. "It evolved."
The creature let out a shrill, piercing screech.
Reaper raised his shotgun, firing twice. The first blast took off a chunk of its shoulder. The second—the thing caught in its teeth.
Then it swallowed the bullet.
Mia tried to move, but the infection surged through her body. The veins in her arm bulged, turning black. "Evelyn—" she gasped. "It's... in my head."
The creature twitched, its massive claws curling inward.
She dropped to her knees, clutching her skull as if it were splitting open. Her breathing grew ragged, her pupils dilating too wide.
Reaper grabbed her shoulders, shaking her. "Mia! Stay with us!"
The creature tilted its head.
And Mia's scream stopped.
Evelyn's blood turned ice cold.
Mia stood up. Her eyes—glassy. Unfocused.
And then she turned toward them.
Reaper froze. "Oh, hell no."
Evelyn grabbed her knife, but her hands shook. "Mia?"
Mia twitched, her fingers flexing unnaturally. Her lips parted, but the voice that came out was not hers.
"You let me in," it whispered.
Evelyn took a slow step back.
The monster hadn't just mutated.
It had taken control.
The Mind Eater had begun.