Apocalyptic Rebirth: With a repairman system space, she rises again.-Chapter 540: A death, unexpected.

Massive, heavy shapes plummeted through the northern part of the forest, snapping old branches like toothpicks. They hit the forest floor with the sound of falling boulders, the impact cracking the dry earth and sending a tremor through the soles of the squad’s boots. It was a shock-and-awe tactic designed to rattle the teeth right out of their skulls.

Leah zoomed in on the images on her visor and watched in horror as the shapes hit head-first, but instead of their skulls shattering, they tucked into tight balls and rolled, popping up onto four powerful legs in a single, fluid motion. They moved like warriors heading into combat, or at least very fluid gymnasts. If the gymnasts were about to commit murder.

"This is not good." She muttered with nervous urgency. Whatever these were, they were not in the mutated beast handbook she had been given on day one in Fortress four.

"Simon...Simon..." Phillip screamed.

Before they could make sense of what was going on, darkness had swallowed the area, a thick, suffocating blackness that could only be seen in the deepest times of the night. The exo suits reacted instinctively to the change. Glowing blue light flickered to life, shoulder-mounted floodlights cut through the gloom, they could see up to about ten meters.

Others got flashlights, mobile phones.... anything that could light the way.

"I can’t find Old Simon." Phillip shared anxiously. "Or Blair."

"What do we do now?" Geoff whispered. His voice was barely a breath, but in the sudden, eerie silence of the woods, it sounded like a shout to his own ears.

Leah activated the thermal heat scanning feature of her suit. "We fight or fly."

"We can’t fly; we don’t know what is up there." Geoff hissed. "I suggest we run, right now." In fact, he did not know what they were waiting for to start sprinting. Those who could leave needed to save themselves. Old Simon had been on the brink of death before the watchers appeared. For all they knew, he was already dead.

It made no sense to mount a search for him.

From the darkness beyond the light, a low, wet growl rumbled_ the sound of a dozen hungry stomachs and a hundred sharpened teeth. Then came the stomping. It wasn’t the sound of a walk; it was the rhythm of a hunt.

"Form up! Weapons hot!" Leah shouted, her voice finally breaking the paralysis of the group. "Prepare to fight!"

"We don’t even know what we are fighting." Geoff whined. "Let’s just run."

"How sure are you that whatever these things are, they are not faster than us?" Phillip hissed. "And I am not leaving Old Simon and Blair." He yelled out, "This is captain Phillip to command, be advised, we have lost track of Old Simon and Blair. Can you track their thermal bands and send an evacuation team?"

There was no response from the other end, arousing a curse from him.

Something leaped into the light, and it was a vision of pure nightmare. Another followed.....and another. They looked like hounds that had been dragged through a meat grinder and stitched back together by a blind god. Their skin was a hairless, bruised red, stretched tight over bulging muscles. Instead of a face, they had massive, obsidian horns that curved forward like pikes, and their jaws split into four distinct mandibles, dripping with a corrosive, glowing saliva.

No eyes, no nostrils...just monsters.

Leah didn’t wait. She reached into the air, pulling the very wind toward her palms until it crackled. She shoved her hands forward, launching a Bolt of Wind that hit the first hound to step out in the chest like a physical cannonball.

The beast was thrown backward, tumbling through the dirt, but it didn’t stay down. It rolled, hissed, and sprang forward with even more momentum.

"They are about fifty!" Morris yelled, drawing his massive sword.

Suddenly, another hound lunged at Leah from the shadows. It didn’t bite; it slammed into her, catching her waist between its wicked horns. It squeezed, its neck muscles bulging as it tried to crush her like a soda can. Leah felt the pressure, her breath hitching as the creature tried to reach her "intestines for dinner," but the high-grade plating of the exo-suit held firm. The metal groaned, but it didn’t snap.

"Get... off... me!" Leah roared. She balled her hand into a fist and triggered the Shock wave Fist.

BOOM!

The mix of magnetic and kinetic discharge sent a ripple of force through the hound’s skull. It shuddered, its mandibles flapping uselessly as it staggered back. It stumbled, blind and dizzy, and fell backward with all its massive weight_ landing directly on the spot where Old Simon lay unconscious, under a pile of fallen trees.

One of the trees hit Old Simon’s head. The sound was sickening. A dull thud followed by a snap, like porcelain shattering in one move.

The moment hung in the air, the crunching echo fading into silence, leaving only the impression of something totally shattered.

"NO!" Phillip screamed, his voice cracking. He didn’t need a medical scan to know that the old man was gone. People his age did not survive accidents like that.

The grief turned into a white-hot fury. Phillip didn’t wait for orders. "Everyone down! Hit the dirt!"

He raised his arms, and the Laser Ray emitters on his gauntlets hummed to life. He spun in a slow, lethal circle, spraying beams of concentrated red light across the clearing. The lasers sliced through the trees and the hides of the hounds alike. One beast was decapitated mid-leap; another lost three of its four legs and collapsed into the brush, howling.

Meanwhile, Morris wasn’t just standing by. He let out a guttural roar as his body began to shift. His muscles expanded, his specially made suit stretching and groaning to accommodate his massive growth. Within seconds, he had morphed into a giant, a seven-foot tower of rage.

He swung his sword in wide, brutal arcs, bisecting a hound that tried to jump him with his fingers. "I am going to rip you all apart." he bellowed, his voice deep and gravelly as he stepped on one, crushing it to death like a soft grape.

Driven by rage and grief, the squad found their rhythm. Acid Grenades were tossed into the dark, melting the mutants into puddles of goo, and Air Bombs sent the smaller mutants flying into the high canopy. For a moment, it looked like they were winning.

The mutants realized it, too. These weren’t mindless animals; they had a smidge of intelligence. As if on a silent command, the surviving hounds backed away into the shadows, forming a wide semi-circle around the squad.

"Why are they stopping?" Geoff panted, his rifle shaking in his hands.

"I don’t like this," Private Stone muttered. "They’re looking at us like we’re the ones trapped."

The mutants didn’t charge. Instead, they stood perfectly still and began to vibrate. A low, bass-heavy hum started to pulse through the air. At first, it was just a sound, but then it became a feeling_ a vibration that bypassed their ears and went straight for their nervous systems.

"Uggh... my head," Pamela groaned, dropping her dragonoid.