CHAPTER 1171: MURDER IN THE STREETS (1).

The blast didn’t kill them. It only buried them.

Cain awoke to silence. Heavy, suffocating silence. His ribs screamed as he pushed the concrete slab off his chest. Every breath tasted like smoke and iron. Above, the ceiling had collapsed into a mess of twisted steel and rebar.

He got to his feet, swaying. His weapon lay a few meters away, half-melted from the reactor’s energy surge. He picked it up anyway. "Still with me, huh?" he muttered.

No answer. Not from the blade, not from anyone.

Then—static.

"—ain! Do you—copy—" Roselle’s voice crackled through the damaged comm.

He tapped the side of his head. "I’m alive. Barely."

"Good," she said. "We’re... under the north sector. The blast cut us off. You need to find a way down before the secondary core goes."

Cain glanced around. "Secondary what now?"

Steve’s voice came next, shaky and distorted. "The hybrids tapped into the backup reactor. If it breaches, everything within a mile gets atomized."

Cain cursed softly. "Of course they did."

He started moving through the rubble, one hand pressed to his bleeding side. The glow of molten metal reflected off the debris, giving the tunnels an eerie, shifting light. He could hear faint echoes—mechanical footsteps, scraping along the walls.

They weren’t dead.

As he rounded a corner, something moved in the dark. The sound of shifting metal, slow and deliberate. Cain froze, blade ready.

Out of the shadows stepped one of the hybrids—or what was left of it. Its upper torso was half gone, ribs made of steel rods, face peeled back to reveal a pulsing gold core.

It tilted its head. "C...Cain..."

He blinked. That voice—too human. Too close to his own.

"Why... resist...?" it wheezed. "You... are us."

Cain stepped forward. "No. You’re scraps pretending to be alive."

The hybrid smiled—a perfect copy of his smile. "Then... what are you pretending to be?"

It lunged.

Cain’s blade cut it in half, sparks and blood raining across the corridor. The remains convulsed, then dissolved into a puddle of molten metal. The gold core within pulsed weakly before going dim.

He didn’t answer the question. He didn’t need to.

By the time he reached the lower levels, the heat was unbearable. The floor glowed faintly red, and the air felt heavy enough to chew. He could hear Roselle and the others on the comms again—closer this time.

"Cain! South maintenance shaft, we’ve cleared the path!"

"On my way."

He broke into a run. The deeper he went, the louder the hum became. Machinery roared like a beast coming back to life.

When he reached the shaft, Roselle and Hunter were waiting—bloodied, exhausted, but standing. Steve knelt by the control panel, hands trembling over the melted circuits.

Cain dropped beside him. "Talk."

Steve wiped his face. "They’ve fused themselves into the secondary reactor. If we kill the power now, it’ll detonate instantly. But if we can isolate the core from the main grid..."

"Then what?"

"Then it burns itself out."

Roselle looked up at the trembling ceiling. "We might not have time for that."

The floor shuddered. A deep metallic groan filled the chamber.

Cain looked toward the reactor door. The sound wasn’t from the machinery. It was footsteps—massive, deliberate.

A hand the size of a car clawed its way through the metal bulkhead. The door tore open like paper.

The colossus had survived.

But it had changed. The entire right side of its body was blackened and molten, its form less defined, more fluid—like a living furnace. Where its face should have been, a single golden eye burned.

It spoke in layers of distorted voices. "You cannot destroy the core. We are the core."

Cain’s fingers tightened on his weapon. "Then I’ll kill both."

The colossus reached out, slamming its arm into the platform. The impact sent everyone sprawling. Steam hissed from the cracks as molten metal poured upward.

Hunter fired grenades into its chest. They exploded uselessly. Roselle emptied two mags into its head, sparks flying off its surface.

Susan shouted, "Cain, we need thirty seconds to isolate it!"

"You’ve got ten!" he yelled back.

Cain sprinted forward, running along the reactor’s scaffolding as the colossus swatted at him. Each swing could have flattened a building. He dodged one, two, three hits—then drove his blade deep into the creature’s shoulder. The wound sizzled, pouring molten metal instead of blood.

It grabbed him.

The heat was searing—his skin blistered instantly as the creature lifted him high.

"Your strength... came from us," it growled. "Without us... you are nothing."

Cain’s grin was bloody and defiant. "Then I guess I’m nothing with better aim."

He jammed his free hand into the blade’s runes, forcing energy into them. The weapon screamed—then detonated point-blank.

The explosion ripped his arm open and tore half the creature’s torso away. Both fell—Cain crashing through the platform, the colossus collapsing into the core chamber below.

Roselle screamed his name, but the sound was drowned out by the reactor alarms.

Steve’s voice: "Core isolation complete! Pull back!"

The others scrambled, dragging Cain’s half-conscious body toward the service tunnel. The air burned with radiation and molten ash.

The last thing Cain saw before blacking out was the reactor melting inward—the colossus reaching up, clawing for him as it was devoured by its own heat.

Then—silence again.

When he opened his eyes, he was outside. The facility was gone, reduced to a crater of molten stone. The others were lying nearby, alive but battered.

Roselle stirred first, coughing. "You alive?"

Cain sat up slowly. "Unfortunately."

Hunter laughed weakly. "Hell of a way to win."

Steve looked toward the horizon where the reactor once stood. "We didn’t win," he said. "We just stopped it from spreading."

Cain stared into the smoke. Deep down, he could still feel it—the faint hum of that golden core.

Somewhere beneath the ruins, it was still beating.

The ruins burned through the night.

The air above the crater shimmered with toxic heat, distorting the stars. Cain stood on what used to be the upper causeway, boots crunching against charred metal and ash. His jacket hung in tatters, one sleeve missing entirely.

Roselle was patching Steve’s arm a few meters away. Hunter sat on a broken beam, silent, smoking something that looked like a piece of rebar.

Susan paced. Always pacing.

"This wasn’t just a reactor," she said finally. "The hybrid core—it was a seed."

Cain turned, slow. "Explain."

She gestured at the molten pit. "You felt it too, didn’t you? The hum. That wasn’t power. It was alive."