The grenade didn't kill Mike, but the shockwave felt like a physical punch to the brain.

  He hit the dirt floor hard as the floorboards disintegrated above him in a shower of splinters and twisted metal. The blast vented upward into the container, and dust rained down in choking sheets to coat his eyes, his mouth, and his open wounds.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  The ringing in his ears was absolute. Mike couldn't hear the Cleaners, but he could feel the vibrations of their boots through the packed earth under his chest. They were moving, sweeping.

  He crawled. He didn't think about it, simply scrambling on his elbows and knees to drag himself through the darkness of the sub-floor. Above him, the heavy thud-thud-thud of tactical boots tracked his movement.

  BAM. BAM. BAM.

  Three shots punched through the floorboards inches from his left ankle. They were firing blind, shredding the wood to flush him out.

  "Under the floor! Flush him!" The voice was muffled, but the intent was clear.

  Mike rolled onto his back and pressed himself into the dirt, staring up at the slivers of light cutting through the shattered floor. He was trapped. His traps were spent, and his energy was low. He reached out with his mind in a desperate, clawing mental scream.

  Come.

  He didn't target specific insects, he cast a wide net to snag the minds of every living thing in the crawlspace and the walls. A dozen sewer rats, a handful of spiders, and a nest of roaches answered. Not with loyalty, but with enslaved terror.

  "Go! Get them!" he commanded, pushing them upward through the gaps in the floor.

  It was a suicide charge.

  Above, the gunfire became a continuous roar. Mike watched through the mental link of a spider as it crested the floorboards. It saw a wall of black armor and a muzzle flash before static cut the feed. It was a slaughter. The Cleaners weren't panicking, they were stomping and shooting, crushing the swarm with efficient brutality. Mike’s head pounded with the feedback of dying minds as tiny lights snuffed out one by one.

  Useless, the crystal in his chest sneered. Weak.

  Mike grit his teeth and prepared to fight with just his shiv. He gripped the rusty metal with white knuckles. Then, amidst the mental static of dying vermin, he felt a pulse. It wasn't the frantic, blind panic of the other rats. It was cold. It was angry.

  He focused on it.

  Through the eyes of a dying roach, Mike saw the battlefield above. The floor was slick with rat blood and green insect gore. A Cleaner was reloading, ejecting a spent magazine.

  A massive sewer rat scuttled out from under a fallen locker.

  This wasn't a normal scavenger. It was huge, the size of a small cat, with patchy, mange-ridden fur. One ear was almost torn off completely, leaving a jagged scar. It had survived the toxic waste of the sewers for years, it was a veteran.

  The Cleaner saw it. He stomped his heavy boot down, aiming to crush its skull. A normal rat would have frozen or run. This rat dodged. It sidestepped the stomp with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for a rodent. It didn't retreat. It waited.

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  The Cleaner’s boot hit the floor with a heavy clang, leaving the soldier off-balance for a fraction of a second.

  Now, Mike thought. He didn't even need to send the command. The rat was already moving.

  It launched itself upward, not at the armored leg, but higher. It scrabbled up the greaves as claws found purchase on the tactical webbing. The Cleaner panicked, swatting at his leg. "Get it off! Pest!"

  The rat reached the gap in the armor behind the knee—the same weak point Mike had exploited earlier. But it didn't bite blindly. It dug in, gnawing with focused, malicious intent, seeking the artery.

  Mike watched, mesmerized.

  [Species: Sewer Rat (Alpha Variant)]

  It had tactical awareness. It had survived this long by being smarter, faster, and meaner than the rest. It was a kindred spirit. A sudden surge of emotion hit Mike. Not pity. Respect.

  He reached out and bypassed the crude domination he used on the roaches. He poured his will into the creature, but he didn't try to crush its mind. He offered it power. He offered it a partnership.

  "Kill him," Mike whispered, his voice raspy. "Fight, Grim."

  The System shuddered.

  [Named Unit Recognized.]

  [Mental Link Solidified: Permanent Bond Established.]

  [Unit 'Grim' stats amplified by User.]

  Above, the eyes of Grim flashed with a violet light. The rat released the knee and scrambled higher, moving like a blur of grey fur. The Cleaner dropped his rifle to grab it, but Grim was too fast. The rat reached the neck seal.

  The Cleaner screamed as Grim sank teeth the length of nails into the soft synthetic rubber and the flesh beneath. Blood sprayed against the inside of the man's visor.

  "Contact! It is on me! It is inside the...!"

  The soldier thrashed, firing his sidearm wildly into the ceiling. The distraction was total. The second Cleaner turned and shouted. "Hold still! I cannot get a shot!"

  NOW.

  Mike didn't crawl this time. He exploded upward through the weakened floorboards directly behind the distracted second Cleaner. He was a demon rising from the earth, covered in dust and blood.

  The Cleaner tried to spin, but Mike was already inside his guard. With his new Strength, he didn't just stab, he drove the shiv through the gap in the armpit plating with enough force to puncture the lung and clip the heart. The man folded instantly.

  [LEVEL UP!]

  [Level 7 -> Level 8]

  The world slowed down. The energy of the level-up washed over Mike, knitting the cracked ribs in his chest and clearing the concussion fog in an instant. But he wasn't done.

  The first Cleaner, whom Grim was mauling, had finally managed to rip the massive rat off his neck. He threw Grim against the wall with a sickening crunch and raised his pistol toward Mike. Grim hit the floor, stunned and bleeding from the mouth, but still hissing.

  Mike looked at the soldier. He felt the energy pool in his gut expand with the level up. He felt the System offer him a new tool evolved from the carnage. He didn't have time to craft a bomb, he needed a weapon now.

  [New Skill Unlocked: Venom Spike]

  Mike didn't think, he acted. He extended his hand, palm open. He felt his own blood boil. The bones in his wrist shifted and split painfully. A hidden gland he didn't know he had contracted violently.

  Thwip.

  A three-inch barb of calcified bone, coated in viscous purple neurotoxin, shot from the center of his palm like a bullet. It wasn't accurate enough to hit an eye, but at this range, it didn't miss. The spike slammed into the Cleaner’s neck, right where Grim had chewed away the seal.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  The Cleaner didn't scream. He seized. Every muscle in his body locked up at once. He stood there, rigid as a statue and vibrating, before toppling face-forward onto the metal deck with a heavy crash.

  Silence fell over the container. Smoke swirled in the beams of the tactical lights lying on the floor.

  Mike stood there, chest heaving, his hand throbbing with a dull ache where the spike had ejected. He looked at the bodies, then at the wall.

  Grim was limping toward him. The rat was dragging one back leg, and its ribs were clearly broken, but its eyes were bright and intelligent. It stopped two feet away and looked up, chittering softly.

  Mike knelt, ignoring the carnage around him. He reached out a bloodied hand. Grim didn't flinch. The rat sniffed his fingers and then climbed up his arm to settle onto his shoulder. Mike could feel the pain of the rat through the link, but he also felt its satisfaction. It was a predator, and it had just taken down prey a hundred times its size.

  "Good boy," Mike whispered.

  He stood up, the pain in his body replaced by a cold, hard resolve. He grabbed the kinetic rifle from the hands of the dead Cleaner. It was heavy and complex, biometric-locked, but he didn't need to fire it. He just needed the flashlight attached to the barrel. He checked the corpse's belt and found two fragmentation grenades and a combat knife.

  "Time to go," he said to the rat on his shoulder.

  The raid wasn't over. But now, he wasn't alone.