Classification Level: CONFIDENTIAL
Special Markings: FIELD ANALYSIS ONLY
Clearance Requirement: Tier 2 (Field Review Teams)
File Reference: ENGAGE-RECON-XH1-BLOCKD6
Originating Division: Tactical Applications Division <tad@halcyon-biostructures.net>
Review Status: VERIFIED

“Compiled from partial telemetry, squad feeds, hostile helmet recordings, and recovered civilian surveillance footage.”

Civilian Evacuation and Initial Contact⌗

The squad entered the civic block along Route D-6. Buildings loomed on either side, ragged stalls and discarded goods scattered across the wide street. Cloth awnings flapped weakly in the morning breeze.

The civilians scattered at the first glimpse of her. Some screamed. Others simply ran, their heads down, desperate not to be seen. None dared stay. None dared look back.

At point, Chimera advanced. No camouflage. No deception. Her presence alone was the weapon — a black silhouette of dread.

Halfway down the block, her dermis flickered. Camouflage reflexively shimmered, then suppressed. A tell, captured in the recordings. She had sensed it.

A fraction of a second later, she moved.

Twin multispectral obscurant grenades burst from her dorsal harness, flooding the street with dense particulate fog that smothered optics, infrared, and targeting systems alike. Visibility collapsed in an instant. The air tasted metallic, acrid, biting the lungs of those caught within it.

The IED detonated — too early, set off by panicking hostiles who lost line of sight. It had been meant to catch her or her squad in the center of the block. But her reaction, and the sudden deployment of the obscurant, had made them jumpy. The blast was a dull thud, muffled by the smoke. It sent a shockwave through the street, rattling windows and sending debris tumbling from the awnings. The ground shook beneath her feet, a tremor that reverberated through the concrete.

Smoke, dust, and debris swallowed the street. Quickly followed by the sound of gunfire and muzzle flashes from the rooftops.

Even through the chaos, her hearing dissected the scene with surgical clarity. The sharp report of aging assault rifles — AK-pattern weapons, poorly maintained but lethal in volume. Her implants parsed the acoustic signatures, overlaying threat assessments onto her HUD.

She barely glanced at the data. She didn’t need it. They could hurt her, but they could not kill her.

This was all within the first second of the explosion. The hostiles had barely begun to fire — wild shots through the smoke, a few lucky impacts striking her dermis but glancing away. Their timing, their setup, already unraveling.

On the left, two on the first floor, three on the second and another two on the rooftop. Four on the right, spread along the rooftop edge. Caught in a prepared kill box now collapsing around them.

Before the squad could react, she sprang into action. The hostiles were still firing blindly, trying to catch her in the smoke. They were too slow. Too disorganized.

A shriek tore through the haze — a thrown charge, disk-shaped, spinning end over end. It sailed through a window on the left. A heartbeat later: detonation. Thousands of metal fragments scattered outward, shredding the room, the walls, the hostiles inside. The blast wave rippled through the smoke, a shockwave of sound and force that rattled the windows and sent debris tumbling into the street.

Through the smoke, she launched herself upward, tentacles unfurled and aiming for the first floor. She punched through the window, shattering glass, and concrete, and landed inside the room. The entire room was speckled with tiny metal shards, the walls pockmarked with craters. The hostiles were already dead, torn apart by the blast. Blood and viscera coated the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. The air was thick with the smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder.

Chimera stopped moving for an instant, her tentacles searching for contact points with the environment. She sensed the vibrations of their footsteps, the sound of their breathing, the faintest rustle of fabric. She could feel their fear, their panic, their desperation. Another click, another explosive charge ejected from her dorsal harness, and she attached it to the ceiling.

Meanwhile, the squad had taken cover behind the nearest stalls and their armored vehicles. They were still trying to assess the situation, but the smoke made it impossible to see anything. They could only hear the distant sound of gunfire and explosions, punctuated by the occasional scream. Chimera’s handler, meanwhile, watched the chaos unfurl on his HUD, a front-row seat to the carnage from Chimera’s point of view.

Still dazed from the explosion below, the remaining hostiles on the second floor were slow to react. They were still trying to figure out what had just happened, their minds racing to catch up with the chaos. Suddenly, one of the hostiles disappeared in a flash of light. The blast wave from the shaped charge ripped through the floor, turning the man into a cloud of blood and viscera. The shockwave sent the other hostiles tumbling backward, slamming into the walls and each other. They were thrown off balance, their rifles clattering to the ground. From the hole in the ground, Chimera’s tentacles lashed out, snatching one of the hostiles and dragging him into the void. He screamed as he was pulled into the darkness, his body twisting and contorting in unnatural ways. The last hostile on the second floor scrambled to find the rifle he had dropped, as Chimera slowly lifted herself from the hole, tentacles coiling around the edges of the shattered floor. He froze, eyes wide with terror, as she emerged from the smoke. Her form was massive, towering over him, the tentacles writhing and twisting like serpents. She was a nightmare made flesh, a creature of pure terror. As he lunged for his rifle, a tentacle shot forward, the bladed tip slicing through the air with deadly precision. It impaled his head, piercing through the skull and out the other side.

On the rooftop and the neighboring building, the remaining hostiles were trying to make sense of the chaos. They had seen their comrades disappear into the smoke, heard the screams and explosions, but they had no idea what was happening. Their morale started to waver, the fear creeping in. As the men on the rooftop peered down into the ruined street below, they saw the smoke swirling, the debris falling, and the blood pooling on the ground. The obscurant and smoke were rising, swirling like a living thing, and the men on the opposing rooftops began to lose sight of each other.

The men on the opposing rooftop began shouting for their comrades to respond, but an answer was quickly cut short, followed by silence. The remaining hostiles on the rooftop were now in a panic, their rifles raised, scanning the smoke for any sign of movement. They were still trying to make sense of what was happening, but the fear was palpable. They could feel it in the air, a thick, suffocating dread that clung to them like a shroud.

Out of the smoke, two objects suddenly hurtled toward them. They were the lifeless bodies of their comrades, thrown with brutal force. The first body slammed into the rooftop, sending debris and gore flying. The second body followed, hurled into an open window below. It was a distraction.

Chimera came screaming out of the smoke, a blur of motion. She had slingshot herself across the street, tentacles unfurling as she descended upon her first victim. Distracted by the bodies, the hostiles barely had time to react. She landed on the rooftop with a bone-crushing thud, the impact annihilating the hostile beneath her and spreading his remains across the rooftop. The other hostiles scrambled to find cover, but it was too late. Chimera was already upon them, her tentacles lashing out with deadly precision. She moved like a predator, her body a blur of motion as she tore through the remaining hostiles.

The squad below heard more gunfire, but it was different now. It was frantic, desperate. The hostiles were firing wildly, trying to hit something they couldn’t see. They were panicking, their shots going wide, ricocheting off the walls and the ground. The squad could hear the screams of the hostiles as they were picked off one by one, their cries echoing through the smoke. The sound was haunting, a symphony of terror that sent chills down their spines.

The remaining hostiles in the building, some covered in the remains of the body flung into the room they were in, finally realized they were being hunted. They scrambled to flee. They rushed for the stairwell, tripping over each other as they fought to reach the lower floors.

Gunfire forgotten, they pushed past the remains of fallen comrades, boots skidding on blood-slick steps. The old concrete stairwells, narrow and claustrophobic, became a bottleneck of terror.

From below, even muffled by layers of crumbling walls, they could hear it: the heavy thump of something massive moving faster than anything had a right to move. Vibrations rippled up through the cracked handrails, a low seismic shudder that seemed to clutch at the base of their spines.

They reached the ground floor, stumbling toward the rear exit, the final threshold between life and whatever hunted them.

They thought they’d make it.

They were wrong.

The first man reached the door. Relief almost crossed his face — before something unseen seized him. He was yanked upward with brutal speed, his rifle slipping from numb fingers, clattering uselessly to the ground. There was a crack — wet, heavy — like a tree snapping under its own weight. A spatter of blood rained down onto the ground with a pattering hiss, soaking the concrete, their boots, the doorframe. The stench of iron flooded the air. His body followed an instant later, slamming into the threshold. The top of his neck — or what was left of it — gaped open, a jagged ruin of torn muscle and shattered bone, blood pumping weakly from what remained of his severed arteries.

Panic seized the remaining two. Without thought, they turned and fled back up the stairwell they had just descended, slipping and clawing their way upward in blind terror. They passed the narrow stairwell window — the same one they had rushed by moments earlier. Something moved. One of them was seized and hurled through the broken frame, spinning in a grotesque arc before crashing into the wall of another building. The wet crack of impact echoed across the block.

The last survivor stumbled upward alone, slipping on blood-smeared steps, mind white with terror. He reached the rooftop exit — but didn’t try the door.

He pressed his back to the cracked side wall, trying to make himself small, rifle raised in trembling hands. There was nowhere to run. He knew it.

Silence.

Then, without warning, the thin concrete behind him buckled outward — a jagged, wet eruption as a bladed tentacle punched straight through.

It speared through his abdomen with a sickening crunch, lifting him off his feet.

He stared down at it, too shocked to scream, mouth opening and closing like a fish dragged from water.

The tentacle twisted, sawing through ribs and spine. Blood gushed from his mouth in a thick, wet stream.

The wall fractured further as Chimera yanked him backward through the collapsing masonry, bones snapping audibly, trailing viscera in a grotesque arc.

The rooftop stairwell was left empty except for the dripping remnants: blood pooling on the cracked tiles, organs strewn across the floor, the last heartbeat fading into silence.

In the street, the squad stood frozen. No words. No movement. Only the rising, suffocating stench of blood and burned concrete.

One soldier stumbled back a step, boots scraping on broken stone. Another gagged audibly, ripping off his helmet as he doubled over. A third simply dropped his rifle, the weapon clattering to the ground and bouncing once before lying still. They all had seen what happened on their HUD.

Even the handler’s hand hovered uselessly over his comm, forgotten, fingers trembling.

From the dissolving smoke, Chimera emerged. She was a silhouette of death, her form massive and inhuman, tentacles writhing like serpents. The combat harness glistened with blood, the remnants of her victims clinging to her like a shroud. She moved with a predatory grace, her body coiling and twisting as she stepped over the remains of the fallen hostiles. The ground was slick with blood, the air thick with the stench of death.

Her voice, when it came, was low and guttural:

“Threat neutralized.”

No one moved. No one spoke.

The world held its breath.

The only sounds were the distant crackle of fire, the slow settling of rubble, and the soft, wet drip of blood from awnings and splintered beams. One of the squad members finally exhaled a shaky breath. Another fumbled to reload by instinct, though there were no more enemies. Their rifles, their armor, their training — none of them had prepared them for her.

She turned her head slightly, a slow, deliberate gesture that made something deep in their instincts scream to run.

For a moment, she seemed to look at them. Her eyes were dark, unfathomable, the pupils dilated and glistening in the dim light. They were the eyes of a predator, cold and calculating. They were the eyes of a creature that had been forged in the fires of war, a creature that had been made to kill.

Then, as if sensing their fear, she turned away. Her tentacles coiled and uncoiled, the bladed tips glistening in the dim light. They flinched back, instinctively, as she moved. The squad watched in silence as she moved through the smoke, her form disappearing into the haze.

No one followed.