The processing plant’s metal dome shuddered violently.
Dull tearing noises came from inside the walls.
Red alarm lights strobed madly, staining the churning wastewater in the pool crimson.
The Queen Leech’s second form straightened to its full height.
Its enormous body nearly filled the entire central platform.
Its limbs were thick, and its surface was covered in a black shell formed from countless calcified leeches.
Inside its abyssal circular maw, layer upon layer of fangs scraped against one another with a skin-crawling clack-clack.
“ROOOAR—!” A deafening bellow erupted from that gaping mouth.
A foul gale, laden with droplets of acid, swept across the entire plant.
Several rusted pipes overhead finally gave way under the shaking and crashed to the floor, throwing wastewater high into the air.
Rebecca panted hard, her face pale as she stared at the monster that nearly reached the ceiling.
“Its outer layer hardened!” Rebecca shouted.
“The shotgun can’t penetrate it at all!
We’ve only got seven minutes left—we’ve got nowhere to retreat!” Leon stood his ground, his huge frame enclosed in the full suit of black high-carbon-steel plate armor.
The armor was mottled with acid burns and gouged by deep claw marks.
His iron-soled boots stood in filthy water as he slowly raised his helmeted head.
This illegal construction job isn’t just huge.
The load-bearing walls are pretty solid too.
Leon didn’t answer.
He simply lifted the heavy Doorstop one-handed.
He stamped both feet against the floor and charged straight into the monster’s roar.
The creature was clearly enraged by the tin can’s provocation.
A thick tentacle whipped up behind it and swept sideways.
Two rows of massive steel water tanks shattered in its path, bursting wastewater across the room.
“Come on!” Leon roared, gripped the sword hilt in both hands, and raised the broad black-steel blade vertically before him in an Ox Guard.
He meant to take the blow head-on with his own mass and the armor’s protection.
“CLANG—BOOM!” Metal thundered through the plant as the tentacle smashed into the sword’s spine.
The gap in raw force became brutally obvious.
Even Leon’s vaunted footing couldn’t absorb that much kinetic energy.
He never even got the chance to step back and bleed off the force.
Man and sword were knocked clean off the ground.
He flew backward more than ten meters and smashed through a brick wall with a tremendous crash, disappearing beneath broken masonry and dust.
“Leon!” Rebecca screamed.
She swung the shotgun toward the monster and fired twice at the tentacle.
The heavy buckshot struck the creature’s black calcified hide, throwing off a few sparks without leaving so much as a white mark.
“Cough…” A fit of coughing came from the rubble.
An arm wrapped in black steel suddenly shoved half a broken wall aside.
Leon staggered upright.
He turned his head and spat a mouthful of bloody saliva through the faceplate.
One edge of his iron helmet had been caved in.
Brute-force demolition isn’t going to work.
This thing is way outside my weight class.
“Get to the control room!” Leon shouted as he used the wall to straighten himself.
“See if there’s a switch to open the skylight up there!” Rebecca froze for an instant, then understood.
“The research said this bug hates light!” Leon bent over without bothering to retrieve the Doorstop from the floor.
“Let’s give it a sunbath!” Rebecca gritted her teeth, turned, and sprinted toward the crane control room on the distant raised platform.
Her black tactical pants cut through the standing water, kicking up rapid splashes.
The Queen Leech immediately noticed the smaller target moving away.
Its eyeless face swung toward Rebecca.
Several tentacles writhed through the air as the enormous creature began crawling in her direction.
“Where are you looking, big bug?” A roar came from its flank.
Leon’s eyes locked onto an industrial-grade iron chain in the wreckage.
The chain had once secured a heavy crane.
Each link was thicker than an adult man’s fist, and one end was firmly anchored to a massive square concrete footing.
He charged over and seized the middle of the chain with both hands.
The high-carbon-steel plates scraped against one another as his muscles swelled beneath them.
You’re up, construction-site meteor hammer.
Leon’s boots dented the metal floor as he planted his feet and violently twisted from the waist.
He swung the heavy length of chain through the air.
“WHOOO—!” The chain tore through the air with a sharp sonic crack.
“BANG!” The thick chain slammed into the Queen Leech’s flank.
The blunt strike couldn’t split its hardened shell, but the tremendous impact still made the monster’s massive body lurch sideways.
A deep white scar appeared across the shell on the side of its torso.
The creature bellowed in fury and stopped dead.
It turned, aiming its huge mouth at Leon once more.
“Your opponent’s the demolition crew over here!” Leon said coldly, both hands wrapped around the chain.
Those few seconds of distraction were enough.
Rebecca had already raced up the rusted iron ladder and into the control room above.
“BANG!” She kicked the warped steel door open.
The control console was a disaster, packed with flashing red lights and error codes.
Rebecca’s eyes raced over control panels labeled in a mixture of Russian and English.
“Skylight…
where’s the hydraulic control for the skylight?!” She bit her lower lip and swept her fingers across several rows of massive levers.
Then a tremendous grinding of gears sounded outside.
“Clack-clack-clack—” Rebecca yanked down a heavy lever marked with a yellow warning symbol.
High above the water treatment plant, the thick steel dome began sliding apart to either side.
Morning sunlight pierced the thin mist over the Arklay Mountains, forming a dazzling golden column that fell directly across the wastewater pool at the center of the plant.
“SSSSS—!” The instant the sunlight touched a patch of the Queen Leech’s skin, it began to hiss and spit, giving off acrid white smoke.
The creature shrieked and instinctively retreated toward the deeper shadows behind it.
Trying to run?
Not happening.
The instant the monster turned for the darkness, Leon seized his chance.
He drew a deep breath, his arm muscles swelling as he hurled the iron chain.
“CLATTER-CLATTER—” The heavy chain arced through the air and wrapped around the Queen Leech’s thick neck and right forelimb, the iron links locking against one another.
“You’re staying right here!” Leon roared.
The monster heaved toward the darkness.
The chain snapped taut with a shriek of metal, and tremendous force surged down its length into Leon’s arms.
The tug-of-war began.
Leon stepped one foot back and braced it hard against the edge of a metal drainage trench.
He clung to the chain with both hands, every muscle in his body straining to its limit while the black armor groaned under the pull.
“Medic!” Leon shouted through clenched teeth.
“Open that damn skylight…
all the way!” Of course Leon’s strength alone couldn’t hold back a beast weighing several tons.
But he wasn’t pulling alone.
At the chain’s other end, the square concrete footing gouged a deep trench through the floor as the monster dragged it forward.
The friction, the weight of the concrete block, and Leon’s desperate pull combined into one brutally simple physical anchor.
Together, they stopped the Queen Leech dead just one step short of the shadows.
“It’s already at the limit!” Rebecca shouted from the control room, both hands forcing the lever down while the console crackled under the strain.
“Hold on, Leon!
It’s about to break free!” “Then let it try!” Sparks sprayed from Leon’s iron boots where they ground against the edge of the trench.
The red self-destruct lights reached a frantic peak.
A mechanical female voice began the final countdown.
“Warning.
Sixty seconds.
Fifty-nine.
Fifty-eight…” The patch of sunlight widened as the dome continued opening.
Its edge had already reached the Queen Leech’s hindquarters.
Driven mad by pain, the giant creature began thrashing violently.
“CRACK—BOOM!” The concrete footing serving as the anchor finally gave way after the prolonged strain.
It slammed into a rusted support column and shattered.
The chain instantly went slack.
That brief loss of tension let the monster surge forward, almost reaching the darkness.
But Leon didn’t try to keep pulling.
The instant the chain slackened, he released it, pitched forward with the loss of resistance, and turned that momentum into an explosive sprint.
As he ran, he scooped up the abandoned Doorstop from the floor.
Time to settle the bill.
Leon leveled the broad greatsword in front of him like a battering ram.
Wrapped head to toe in black steel, he charged the Queen Leech while it was still tangled in the chain.
“BOOM—!” A deep impact shook the room.
The collision, combined with the sudden reversal of the monster’s own backward momentum, produced a lethal billiard-ball effect.
The Queen Leech lost its balance.
Its thick hind limbs slipped violently on the wet floor.
“Here’s the sunlight allowance you deserve!” Leon roared through his faceplate.
He drove both feet into the floor and shoved the heavy sword against the monster, forcing the Queen Leech completely out of the shadow line and into the full, merciless beam of direct sunlight.
“SSSAAAAAA—!” The Queen Leech screamed beneath the direct sunlight.
Its cells popped and boiled under the ultraviolet light.
The hardened black shell began melting almost at once, pouring off dense, foul-smelling white smoke.
The leeches composing its body writhed frantically and tried to peel away from the main mass and flee back into the sewers, but the sunlight gave them no chance.
Thousands upon thousands of leeches shriveled and carbonized in the heat.
The enormous body rapidly collapsed until nothing remained but a reeking mound of smoking char.
“Ten seconds.
Nine.
Eight…” The alarm was still counting down.
The entire Executive Training School began collapsing in sequence under the self-destruct system’s preliminary charges.
Huge chunks of concrete fell from around the dome and crashed into the wastewater pool, sending columns of water skyward.
Fire erupted from pipes in every direction.
Rebecca jumped down from the console and raced down the iron ladder.
She glanced at the monster reduced to ash, then at her watch.
The color drained from her lips.
“Leon!
We’re out of time!” she shouted as she sprinted toward the central platform.
Amid falling stone and fire, Leon tossed aside the badly deformed chain, turned, and swept the approaching Rebecca up under his left arm.
Rebecca yelped at the sudden movement, then immediately grabbed the edge of his black armor to steady herself.
Ahead, the freight-elevator passage leading outside was mostly buried under rubble.
Only one narrow gap remained, and debris was still falling through it.
Leon stared at the unstable opening, a hard smile tugging at the corner of his mouth beneath the helmet.
With his right hand, he lifted the soot-covered Doorstop and leveled its broad blade in front of him, preparing to smash through.
“Hold on, rookie,” he shouted over the rolling explosions.
“The next roller coaster might get a little bumpy.”