The air inside the abandoned boathouse was thick with mildew and fear. Paul Best stood at the cracked window, staring out at the lake. Its surface still glowed with that sickly, unnatural green — the color of radiation and corrupted biology, pulsing faintly like a living thing breathing just beneath the waterline.
They were running out of time.
Garet sat slumped against the far wall, his skin already turning translucent, glistening like wet cellophane. Each breath came shallower than the last. The transformation was accelerating. What had once been a man was becoming something built for the depths — and the depths were calling him home.
“We have to do something,” Mordecai growled, his massive frame hunched over his pack. “I can build him a rebreather. A full immersion rig. His head needs to stay submerged in oxygenated water or he dies on dry land.”
Arkadiusz was already working in the corner, sweat dripping from his brow as he carefully wired together a monstrous device — five photon grenades, two smart grenades, a plasma grenade, seven fragmentation grenades, four white phosphorus, two bricks of Semtex, and Garet’s own homemade fertilizer bomb from weeks earlier. The thing looked like a suicide vest designed by a mad engineer.
“If we can get this down to the Radboleth’s lair,” Arkadiusz said grimly, “we end it.”
Garet’s voice was wet and strained. “I… I can summon a Nano-Guy. Guide it from the surface… but I won’t last much longer like this.”
The argument was short, brutal, and desperate.
Let Garet return to the water? Certain death.
Paul offered to go with him and put down Vulgaris — now fully under the creature’s control and patiently tearing at the boathouse supports from below — but even he knew the odds were terrible. The Plantiant was buried in the mud, virtually untouchable from land.
Then Mordecai’s Geiger counter, jostled loose from his pack, began to scream. The needle slammed into the red. Garet had taken a near-fatal dose of radiation, likely from the Radboleth’s own corrupted flesh.
“Jesus Christ,” Mordecai whispered.
Garet gave a weak, bitter laugh that turned into a wet cough. “Save it for later. The Staff… I could use it now, but the cost is too high. That thing out there is the greater disaster.”
Time was collapsing around them.
Mordecai worked like a man possessed. Using parts from an old rocket pack, scavenged tanks, PDA components, and a laser welder, he constructed a portable immersion rebreather in just under five minutes — a sealed helmet system filled with oxygenated water, complete with a regulator, heads-up display, and external audio. It was ugly, improvised, and brilliant.
But Garet didn’t have five minutes.
Two minutes in, his breathing became agonized gasps. His eyes rolled back. They had no choice.
They activated the Stabilization Unit. Garet went limp as the device put him into deep hibernation — four hours of suspended animation, with no way to set a shorter duration. A temporary reprieve, nothing more.
Now they waited.
Arkadiusz finished the bomb — a nightmare of high explosives strapped to a makeshift pack. They mounted two smart grenades on the sides, insurance in case the Nano-construct failed to deliver it.
For thirty minutes, there was only silence.
Then the boathouse began to shake.
Vulgaris had found the support beams. He was tearing them apart from below, one by one. At this rate, the entire structure would collapse within another thirty minutes — long before Garet could wake.
The three remaining conscious Knights — Mordecai, Arkadiusz, and Paul — looked at one another, then at Noelani’s unconscious form on the floor.
They had four hours.
Vulgaris was giving them thirty minutes.
And somewhere beneath the glowing green water, the Radboleth waited — ancient, patient, and already winning.
The real war for Melkath had just begun.
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