Caleb gripped the spreader bar. The metal groaned under his hands. The fibers in his suit locked up, treating the crushing pressure like an immovable object. The anomaly behind his sternum flared, sending a starving, vicious heat through his veins. He borrowed the raw muscle density from the damaged thing inside him, holding the steel bar steady against the crushing gray tissue.

The massive weight of the Siege-breaker shifted.

The heavy left shoulder dropped. An overhead chain slipped off its winch. A sharp screech of tearing metal grated against the support beams. The carcass lurched downward, swinging heavily over the floor grating.

Tons of dead weight plummeted.

"Lock the secondary winch," Caleb yelled. He grabbed a hanging cable to steady himself on the tilted scales. "Sully, slack the line. Boz, bind the left forelimb to the floor grate before it crushes the pump."

Boz hammered the console buttons. The winch gears ground to a halt, smoking under the friction. Sully hauled a thick, rusted chain over the beast’s swinging arm. The worker moved with desperate speed, locking a heavy iron clamp directly to a floor anchor.

The carcass settled into a steep angle, hanging precariously over the trench. The floor grating buckled slightly under the tension.

The spreaders remained jammed in the chest cavity. The steel arms warped further under the contracting muscle. The pressure was building to a breaking point. If the muscle did not release, the spreader would snap. Shrapnel would tear through the crew, and the core would shatter behind the ribs.

Caleb looked down at the concrete floor. He pointed a taped finger at the swelling tissue near the lower ribs.

"Miller, ease off the pump. The pressure is locking the joint," Caleb ordered. He looked at Kikaru. "The plasma rifle."

She kept her weapon raised. "I can vaporize the central mass. Create a clear entry."

"You shoot center mass, you melt the core," Caleb said. His voice cut through the noise of the trench, blunt and practical. "We do not destroy. We dismantle. Shoot the primary intercostal anchor. Right behind the third rib."

Kikaru did not quote the academy manual. She did not argue the biology. She looked at the twisted, impossible angle of the hanging carcass. She watched Caleb holding the steel bar, reading the pressure of the dead meat perfectly. His logic worked.

She evaluated the deep mud. She placed her right heel squarely onto a shattered bone fragment jutting from the sludge to anchor her carbon-fiber brace. She adjusted her optic sight, ignoring the laser reticle and trusting the barrel alignment just as he had taught her in the kill house.

She fired a single plasma round.

The blue streak burned directly through the tiny gap Caleb had indicated. The superheated plasma severed the thick nerve cluster.

The surrounding gray muscle instantly released its grip. The hydraulic spreaders slammed open. The massive ribs cracked wide, exposing the dark chest cavity. A foul cloud of trapped gas vented into the rain.

The overseer checked his gold watch. "Extraction team, move in. Secure the payout."

Caleb leaned into the open wound. The stench of industrial bleach and pulverized bone rolled over his visor. He pulled his combat knife to cut the membrane away. He reached out to grab the core.

He stopped.

The smooth membrane designed to hold the biological core hung loose in the dark. It was scraped clean. The core was completely gone.

Caleb pulled a tactical flashlight from his belt. He shined the beam deep into the empty chamber.

The flesh was hollowed out from the inside. Behind the empty membrane, a clean, circular tunnel bored directly through the beast’s thick spine. The entry point lacked the jagged edges of a weapon strike. It looked chewed. The walls of the tunnel were slick with a clear, hardening resin.

He stared at the perfect circle. The exact trajectory matched the strike that had hollowed out his own chest last month. The same missing mass. The same resin.

Jax climbed the lower scales, resting his boots on a broken rib section. He peered into the cavity.

Jax’s hand tightened on the scale. His bad arm pressed harder against the sling.

"That tunnel wasn’t there," Jax muttered. He looked up at Caleb. "When we did the morning rotation, the core was whole. Something dug through it."

Caleb kept his face blank. He lowered the flashlight.

"The core is gone," the overseer stated. His voice pitched up in panic. He marched through the mud, holding his digital clipboard high to capture the empty cavity. "This is a contract violation. The Guild is going to dock this entire sector. You cut the core out to sell on the black market."

"Nobody touched the core," Vance barked, stepping forward.

"I am logging the visual evidence to the registry right now," the overseer said, tapping the screen to initiate a biological scan. "A full investigation team will tear this bay apart."

The digital clipboard projected a flat red laser into the cavity. It scanned the residual resin coating the bored tunnel. The device beeped twice.

The overseer stared at the glass screen. He stopped tapping. The anger drained out of his posture, leaving a rigid, terrified stiffness.

The standard string of Guild processing numbers identifying the carcass deleted itself. The automated hazard registry cross-referenced the biological signature of the resin. New text populated the designated lot code, flashing in bright yellow warning colors across the clipboard.

HOST SHELL 02.

Caleb stared at the new file name. The heavy rain continued to beat against the tin roof.

HOST SHELL 02.

Jax looked from the empty chamber to Caleb’s chest. The older worker swallowed hard.

"Caleb," Jax said quietly. "What was Host Shell One?"

Caleb closed his hand around the flashlight. He turned away from the console, leaving the corporate monitor to panic over the locked screen.

Nobody in Bay Four said the first number out loud.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hours later, the industrial noise of the disposal yard faded into the quiet hum of Barracks 4.

Caleb sat on the edge of the stiff, plastic-wrapped mattress. The single overhead bulb cast long shadows across the concrete ceiling. The room was freezing. The Division 7 heating grid barely reached the lower housing blocks, leaving the air damp and bitter.

He stripped off the dark canvas of the Break-Tab Harness, letting the heavy ceramic plates clatter onto the floorboards.

Removing the dark-gray undersuit sent a deep, grinding ache through his right shoulder. The physical toll of hauling the spreader bar in the rain settled into his bones.