Tia “Stitch” Nguyen, the colony’s medic and de facto leader, knelt in the mud at the edge of what used to be their cornfield. Now, it was a heaving, carpet of pinkish-grey tissue, studded with twitching ocular nodes and pulsating bladders that dripped amber fluid. The fleshmass had arrived with the psychic drone—a low, humming wrongness that made teeth ache and dreams bleed.
The fight was chaos. Tola’s frag grenade took one Gestalt at the knees, but the second charged Mendez, its blade-arm punching through his stomach. Mendez had time to look down, shrug, and press the detonator on the satchel charge he’d been carrying. The explosion vaporized him and the Gestalt. Shrapnel tore through Tola’s leg, sending him down into the pink muck. rimworld fleshmass nucleus
She sprinted into the Gestalt. Its blade-arm missed her spine by a centimeter. She slid, feet-first, into the shallow pool at the base of the Nucleus. The digestive fluid burned through her pants, her skin, down to the muscle. She screamed. Tia “Stitch” Nguyen, the colony’s medic and de
“We lost the cornfield,” Tola grunted, wrapping her leg. “And Mendez. And the megasloth.” The fight was chaos
“Don’t look into their eyes,” Tia whispered. The Gestalts turned in unison.
Something that wasn’t sweet. Something that tasted like dirt and defiance.