049. Curiosity And The Cat

Without hesitation, the creature's spear darted toward the man's head, its metal tip glinting menacingly. Bayu, however, was a blur of motion, moving faster than the robotic skeleton's mechanical limbs. Rather than retreating, he surged forward, eyes locked on his foe. The mjorask blade in his hand gleamed with a deadly promise.
As the creature's metallic body loomed closer, Bayu's blade arced through the air with precision, its edge poised to slice through the metal as if it were mere parchment. The air crackled with tension, each breath a countdown to the inevitable clash. Every EPCU task force member knew that for any being—immortal or not—a severed head meant a swift and irrevocable end.
The creature's height and build were similar to an ordinary human's. Bayu, wielding his dagger, calculated that he could sever its metallic neck with three precise slashes. Yet, it seemed he had underestimated his opponent’s resilience. As Bayu's blade cut through the creature’s neck on the first strike, a quarter of it fell away. The creature collapsed, its dark yellowish fluid—resembling lubricant—pooling on the floor, trickling from severed cables in its neck.
Astounded by how easily the creature fell, Bayu crouched to inspect its form. He meticulously searched for any remaining weaknesses, discovering that its vulnerability lay in the large cables beneath the metal muscles of its neck. He hadn’t expected such a terrifying adversary to have such a critical flaw. Given Andrei's claim that bullets were ineffective against the creature, Bayu’s success was undoubtedly due to the mjorask-bladed dagger borrowed from the OCK.
After confirming the creature was truly dead, Bayu spent several minutes examining and hacking at the gate, trying various methods to open it. He chuckled upon realizing that the large metal slab at the center of the gate actually served as a door handle. His laughter was suddenly interrupted by a harsh cough, the lack of air catching in his throat. Regaining his composure, he pressed the panel, and a grating sound merged with a loud hiss as the massive gate creaked open.
Without waiting for the gate to fully open, Bayu slipped through and quickly dropped to his knees, surveying his surroundings. He found himself at the intersection of a corridor, where copper covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. Numerous silos and large pipes clung to the walls, their shadows merging in the dim light. The sparse illumination made it easy for Bayu to blend into the shadows, his presence almost invisible in the metallic maze.
The lower oxygen levels in the corridor made the middle-aged man struggle for each breath. The intense, metallic odor of copper seemed to tighten around his lungs, making it feel as though they were being squeezed. Despite the discomfort, Bayu pressed on, his determination to fulfill his responsibilities driving him. He meticulously traced the corridor, documenting every detail to ensure nothing was overlooked for the EPCU.
Like his son, Bayu was among the few in the secret task force who had trained with the Nizari Hashashin in Alamut. The term 'Hashashin,' which gave rise to the word 'assassin,' referred to this elite sect's unparalleled prowess.
Founded in the 11th century, the Nizari Hashashin were renowned for their extraordinary skills in stealth, infiltration, and disguise. They operated from their impregnable mountain fortress in Alamut, mastering the art of blending into any environment and executing missions with deadly precision.
Despite their decline from the heights of their medieval power, the Hashashin’s techniques in covert operations and subterfuge have remained unmatched, far surpassing modern technology in their effectiveness.
Swift and silent, Bayu navigated the corridor with practiced ease, weaving through silos and pipes to avoid drawing attention. The end of the corridor was within reach, neither too close nor too distant. Yet, the lack of oxygen and the overwhelming scent of copper made his chest feel like it was on fire. Each breath came in gasps, as if he had run countless kilometers. Despite the discomfort, his vision, previously clouded, sharpened as he glimpsed what awaited at the corridor’s end.
Bayu stood at the top of the stairs, peering into a vast room below. Unlike the corridor, the walls here were lined with not just silos and pipes, but hundreds of glass tanks, each the size of an African elephant and spaced evenly. Every tank was filled with a yellowish liquid, and it was the sight within that made Bayu's eyes widen in horror. In twenty-seven of these tanks, human corpses floated in a fetal position, one body per tank, their lifeless forms suspended in the eerie fluid.
From the tailbones of the floating corpses, metal cables snaked down to the bottoms of the tanks. Bayu's gaze followed these cables, which led to a row of large altars in the center of the room, previously obscured by a large silo. The cables connected to twenty metallic-skeletal beings lying on the altars, their forms eerily illuminated by the dim light.
Some of the metallic-skeletal beings were covered almost entirely in human skin, while others had it only in patches. Bayu struggled to piece together the connection between the missing persons and the scene before him. From every angle and analysis, the grim conclusion was clear: the missing victims had been used to give these living metal skeletons their disturbing semblance of humanity.
Bayu's eyes were drawn to the faintly glowing symbols etched into the metal altars, his mind struggling to fathom how creatures could transform human flesh and skin into metal skeletons. His horror intensified as the full extent of the scene became clear. The room, a chilling fusion of steel and shadows, seemed to whisper of dark rituals and arcane experiments. An unsettling energy crackled in the oppressive air.
The revelation hit him with brutal clarity: the room itself was a grand altar for a twisted form of alchemy, where human remains were not merely ingredients but the very source of grotesque transmutation. Their essences were drained and transformed into a nightmarish fusion of flesh and metal, driven by some unknown, sinister knowledge. Bayu’s heart pounded as the true nature of the horror he had uncovered came into focus, the depth of the darkness now painfully evident.
As Bayu neared one of the altars, the whispers in the room swelled, their mournful wails like ghostly echoes on the wind. His eyes fixed on the skeletal figure sprawled motionless on the altar, its half-human, half-metallic form eerily lifelike. He had been so engrossed in deciphering the symbols and absorbing the chilling atmosphere that he nearly missed the sudden, horrifying twitch of the figure’s leg—a subtle, yet disturbingly eerie movement that pulsed with a hidden, malevolent life.