The monster in the clam

Suddenly, a slender, uncanny hand reached out through the crack in the clam's shell.

Its fingers were impossibly long, joined by broad webs of membrane, and groped outward for something.

Then Harold poked his head out.

Gordon froze for a moment.

That face had become grotesque beyond belief. Its skin was tender, but the cheekbones stretched it wide, forming a toothless expression that seemed to laugh and cry at once.

He quickly planted both arms on the ground and crawled out. Below the waist, he had yet to take shape, dragging a huge sack of flesh from the clam, packed with intestines, cartilage, and strange organs whose purpose had yet to be decided.

Vera stared hard at Harold, considering where her first strike should land.

"Gor... don... I... hurt." His voice sounded like a baby's wailing.

Vera watched Gordon out of the corner of her eye and found that he wasn't smiling. He didn't even talk back.

The flippancy that always lingered on his face had vanished without a trace.

In fact, Gordon could see a powerful, sinister glow radiating from Harold.

"It hurts!" Harold suddenly shrieked.

At his command, three streams of black water rose from the reservoir, soared into the air, formed whips, and slammed down.

Gordon rolled swiftly, his shoulder scraping the floor.

Boom!

The water whips struck the floor, denting it and bursting it into cracks.

A loosened bolt flew past Gordon's ear and embedded itself in the brick wall, grazing his ear with searing pain.

Vera didn't look back to check. Hearing his reasonably steady breathing, she stopped dividing her attention and lunged forward.

Using the momentum of her charge, Vera swept in low to the ground. The Black Piercer thrust straight through the mist and pierced Harold just below his left chest with pinpoint accuracy.

Squelch!

His gelatinous skin split, and blackened bubbles of blood welled along the blade.

A thick cluster of white fleshy buds immediately curled out of the wound, like maggots suddenly exposed to light. They wrapped tightly around the sword and dragged it inward, trying to swallow the whole weapon.

Vera swiftly twisted her wrist, vibrating the blade and churning the fleshy buds into pulp. Only then did she pull the sword free and retreat, landing firmly on the floor.

Harold lashed out with his arm. It was long and thin, yet swung like a steel beam, cracking through the air.

Before Vera's eyes, the world split into two paths.

On one, her head would be smashed to pieces, her brains bursting out. On the other, her shoulder would be shattered.

There was no third path.

[Fate-Biting: Rewrite the Dead End]

This was Vera's other piece of source substance, which activated only when death was certain.

She stepped toward the path on which she would die more slowly.

Bam!

Harold struck her left shoulder, sending her spinning through the air and into the hall's wall.

Vera hit the floor and pushed herself up with one arm.

Once steady, she spat out the blood in her mouth. Her left shoulder sagged unnaturally, and a bloody stain began to spread.

"He's growing," Vera said.

Gordon saw it too.

Above the hall, the ruptured pipes were still pouring black water inside. Every time it washed over Harold, his deformities diminished a little.

His crooked face became symmetrical, ribs grew inside his chest, and his unfinished legs began to stretch.

Especially that unusually soft, smooth skin of his...

Just as he had said, he was being reborn from the water, his skin so smooth its pores were almost invisible.

The Lace Pumping Station was still running.

Water fell from above, the reservoir lay below, and moisture filled the air all around...

For Harold, this was home ground.

Although his wounds couldn't heal, his whole body kept growing larger and taller.

"How do we kill him?" Vera held her sword in one hand, her body already off balance. "Think of something."

Gordon thought.

Shutting down the boiler wouldn't be enough.

Even if the main pump stopped, water would remain in the pipes, and the reservoir held enough for Harold to recover countless times.

He had to cut off the incoming water, then drain the reservoir completely.

"Wait for me!" Gordon searched for the control room.

"Hurry!"

Gordon forced himself to stay calm.

Broken pipes dripped, steam wheezed, gears meshed, and metal beams hummed in the lingering tremors.

He was listening for the distinctive sounds of the control levers and drive shafts.

The main pump's heartbeat was heavy, while the pressure relief valve made particularly short bursts of noise.

Then there was the drive shaft... on the right side of the hall, metal trembled in intermittent bursts...

...Found it!

On the right side of the hall, at the top of the iron stairs. He had to reach the second floor.

Gordon rushed toward the right side of the hall.

The cast-iron stairs leading to the second floor had been knocked askew by the explosion, and the bottom two steps had pulled away from the wall.

Gordon hurried over and grabbed a rung above with both hands. Hauling with his arms, he kicked off the brick wall, tucked his abdomen, and swung his legs, throwing himself up toward the second floor.

Half of Harold's face split open. A black tongue shot out at tremendous speed, crossing more than ten meters of mist straight toward Gordon's back.

Vera stepped across its path and swung her sword at the tongue.

Clang!

The tongue struck the blade with the ring of metal on metal.

Vera's wrist dipped. Using the force to slide sideways, she skimmed her blade along the tongue and carved a long gash.

Harold withdrew his tongue.

Just then, a stream of river water crashed down from above, and the black tongue convulsed violently inside it.

Fine tendrils sprouted along both sides of the wound and stuck together.

By the time he closed his mouth again, that single tongue had grown into two!

Gordon rushed up and threw the door open.

Inside, gauges were everywhere, along with a row of control levers wrapped in hemp rope so night-shift workers could distinguish them by touch. Tarnished brass labels hung beneath them.

He quickly identified them.

"Power valve"

"Intake gate"

"Drain valve"

"Settling basin bypass"

"Emergency discharge"

[A bunch of control levers. Pull the wrong one, and you'll become this station's last trainee engineer.]

Gordon realized he had only one chance.

If he got the sequence wrong, the time he wasted would never come back.

He quickly turned the [Power valve].

Rumble...

The roar of steam inside the pumping station stopped abruptly, as though a giant beast's throat had been seized.

The gauge needles steadied at once, their wild jumping reduced to occasional twitches. One final thud sounded inside the massive pump tower, then it fell silent.

Next, he tried to pull the [Intake gate].

The intake gate's lever was heavy and slick with oil. He stripped off his coat, wrapped it around the lever, and hauled downward with all his strength.

Clack!

The lever went all the way down, and the roar throughout the pipes diminished dramatically.

Above the hall, noticeably less water poured from the pipes.

Harold raised his head, panic entering his expression for the first time.

Gordon hurried to the [Drain valve], a giant metal wheel that required two people to operate.

He braced both feet against the floor, found the best position to apply force, and pushed with everything he had.

One turn...

Two turns...

The wheel scraped his palms raw, but it turned faster and faster.

Sweat covered Gordon's head as he heard rumbling from the bottom of the pumping station.

It sounded as though a bloody maw had opened underground and begun gulping down the reservoir. The pipes below shook violently.

The water level dropped rapidly, exposing the markings on the reservoir walls.

But it was still too slow.

Gordon steeled himself and rushed to [Emergency discharge]. Its warning sign read, "Do not operate except in an emergency."

If this isn't an emergency, what is? Gordon glanced through the observation window at Harold, who stood several meters tall.

He yanked it down.

Boom!

Six emergency drainage gates opened simultaneously.

The accumulated water surged toward the fully opened underground culverts, turning the reservoir into a gigantic black whirlpool.

Gordon watched the water level plummet. The ruptured pipes no longer dripped, but his heart remained in his throat, and he couldn't even feel the pain in his hands.

Harold was locked in combat with Vera in the hall.

Vera stood side-on to Harold.

Only now did she truly unleash her core source substance.

[Fate-Biting: Fated End]

Phantom chains entwined their fates, marking every weakness on Harold's body.

Harold raised a hand and forcibly dragged up the remaining water around him, forming three water spears that shot straight at Vera with piercing whistles.

At the same time, a tail-like organ sprang from his fetal membrane. Covered in gray-white nerve nodes and broken scales, it swept toward Vera's flank, trailing slime.

The three water spears blocked the front.

The fleshy tail cut off her retreat.

The blood-red light in Vera's eyes brightened.

[Burning Instinct: Final Reserve]

She ignited the piece of source substance she had yet to fully integrate.

The meat, bread, hot soup, sugar, and everything else she had swallowed earlier... were actually stored inside it.

Now, all of it was brutally converted into fuel and poured into her muscles and nerves.

Transformed into an unending stream of strength and courage!

Her heart accelerated.

Her blood pressure rose.

Vera exhaled a scorching white breath and practically flew along the floor, closing in directly before Harold.

The water spears and tail struck where she had been standing, reducing the floor to fragments and puddles.

She kicked off the ground and leaped straight onto Harold's swollen, misshapen torso, aiming for the fissures marked by fate.

Her heavy sword pierced his skull with the first strike, his chest with the second, and his shoulder with the third.

As Harold struck at her in fury, Vera dropped with the motion, thrusting, flicking, and slashing at his long, twisted legs.

"Roar!" Harold lost his balance and screamed. His enormous body lurched backward, and he instinctively reached for the reservoir.

When hurt, he sought water. When afraid, he sought water. When hungry, he sought water.

But only a layer of sludge remained in the once-abundant reservoir, and the drainage culverts swallowed the last few trickles.

Harold toppled over the rim and fell.

Bam!

Hundreds of pounds of flesh slammed into the bottom!

The horrifying sound of his spine snapping echoed up from the empty reservoir, reverberating again and again.

He struggled to rise, but the wounds left by the Black Piercer burst open simultaneously. His head and face, chest, shoulder, knees... all ruptured together.

His abdomen bulged high for a moment, then abruptly collapsed.

"My... my... last mouthful..." Harold exhaled a cloud of warm, wet foam, then stopped moving. His colorful scales ceased pulsating.

The hall fell quiet.

Vera stood at the reservoir's rim, blood and black water dripping from her sword tip.

"We won," she said.

"Rid the people of a menace." Gordon jumped from the control room back onto the hall's platform.

"What would you call this cause of death?" Vera leaned against the railing and looked down at the hideously swollen monstrosity.

"Natural causes," Gordon said. "I mean, natural science caused his death."

"Well done." Vera surveyed the drastically changed pumping station. Throughout the fight, her nerves had been taut, her focus absolute. Only when she confirmed that Gordon had started joking again did she know the battle was truly over. She had defeated a Cultist of at least the Swimmer's level, not some mere member of the Wet-Foot People.

"Thanks. You can say that more often." Gordon's scraped palms hurt, but he felt delighted. For the first time, he had brought down a hulking monster like that.

After savoring it for a while, Vera stood still beside the railing, feeling that everything was unbelievable.

Looking at it another way, if she had come alone tonight, things would not have unfolded like this.

Maybe if she had lunged straight at Harold, he would still have sealed himself inside his clam shell, and she would still be wondering where to pry it open. But Gordon had blown it apart. Harold probably never imagined, even as he died, that anything like this could happen.

Even crippled Harold, with his ritual unfinished, had put one of her arms out of commission. If he had finished the ritual... she probably would never have made it out of the pumping station.

"...So, what's next?" Vera looked at him.

"Quick, let's strip this place clean," Gordon decided.

During the emergency discharge just now, Lace Pumping Station had emptied an entire pool of eerie residue into the Blackwater River. There was no telling what strange things it might attract, and Vera was clearly in bad shape.

Without another word, the two immediately split up.