A Different Time

*This time would be different—it had to be.*

Barin shoved his way through the crowded streets, though “streets” was hardly the right word for the pathways of this scavenger city.

Suspended grav-lanes braided their way through the Bowl, their edges lined with holo-stalls and drone vendors pouring coded offers into the air. Data-ads flickered across Barin’s vision, messages attempting to force themselves into his tech. He blinked hard to dismiss them.

He wasn’t here for the stalls this time.

The Bowl was a monster of a city: a vast crater filled with impossible architecture. Towers of adaptive alloy rose like teeth, tunnels burrowed deep into the bedrock, and sky-bridges shifted and folded of their own accord. Above him, defensive machines hovered at every tier, silent and watchful.

For a scavenger, it was both paradise and potential death.

The crowds around him were a chaos of species and creeds. Underans lumbered through the masses, exile or curiosity driving them to explore. Slender Drifters flickered in and out of phase as unstable blink-pads pulsed beneath their feet. The wealthy glided overhead on grav waves, masked and anonymous, their bodyguards little more than swarms of nanite clouds. Beneath them, the poor trudged through the crowds, patched augmentations sparking as they bartered amid the rabble.

Barin had fallen on hard times.

His last caravan had been ambushed. All his supplies had been destroyed or taken, and yet he had walked away—alone, scarred, but alive.

Some gaps remained in his memory, along with phantom pains that still troubled him, but neither seemed worth surrendering a life of adventure over. Survival had sharpened him. Something burned inside him now: a strange resolve that did not feel entirely his own.

As he pressed deeper into the Bowl, passing stalls peddling memory crystals, black-market DNA cultures and half-functional war technology, he felt it.

A tug.

Not a thought. Not a sound.

A pull.

It drew him towards the centre.

*Destiny,* he told himself.

During his ascent, Barin stopped and looked back towards the city’s massive outer walls. He remembered seeing them from the other side when he had departed on his last journey. He remembered the excitement and anxiety he had felt about what lay ahead.

Then his thoughts shifted.

Something flashed through his mind.

The ambush?

No. Something else.

For a moment, he felt dizzy—almost sick.

What had he forgotten?

Barin paused at the edge of the plaza.

The core of the Bowl was a spectacle of power. Banners projected in holo-fire towered over data-canopies displaying ever-shifting maps of trade and influence. Caravan leaders stood ringed by AI-driven defences. Clans nested within encrypted collectives, their members connected by pulsing light-weave tattoos that shimmered with status.

The greater clans presided openly, confident that no one would dare challenge them.

And there—

Diamond Sand’s banner.

Barin’s chest twisted.

Nerves.

Or something else.

He began moving towards the banner, anticipation building with every step.

Behind him, a roar rose above the usual bellowing of the crowd as a fight broke out. The two scavengers involved knew better than to draw weapons inside the Bowl, lest the watchful guards obliterate them from afar. This did not stop the larger of the two from lifting his opponent from the ground and hurling them across the plaza.

The flying scavenger crashed into a startled Barin, flailing and grabbing his shoulder as they fell. Their hands tore through his coat as they desperately tried to soften the impact.

Barin snarled in fury.

Part of his coat remained clutched in the scavenger’s hands.

He raised his fist to strike.

Then he noticed the silence.

All around him, the noise and chaos had subsided.

Barin lowered his hand, his breath heaving. The scavenger scrambled backwards across the ground, still clutching the torn fabric of his coat.

Every gaze was fixed upon Barin.

Not with anger.

Not with scorn.

With fear.

A crawling unease trickled down his spine.

He had seen looks like these before—during the ambush, when his caravan had realised something had gone terribly wrong.

His stomach lurched.

A memory, sharp and sudden, stabbed through the haze.

Screams.

Blood.

And something else.

The scavenger’s eyes darted downwards.

Slowly, Barin followed their gaze.

Something shifted beneath his ribs.

For a moment, he thought it was merely pain—another of the phantom aches that had plagued him since the ambush.

Then the movement came again.

*Writhing. Deliberate.*

His breath caught.

His chest bulged unnaturally. His skin stretched and twitched in ways that flesh should not.

Barin froze.

His coat hung in tatters, exposing what lay beneath.

A pulsing lattice of flesh writhed inside him, slick tendrils winding through his bones. Multiple eyes blinked back at him, darting in every direction. His lungs were not lungs at all, but sacks squeezed by alien muscles. His spine glistened with crawling veins that twisted and pulled his body like a puppet.

And there, impossibly clear, his heart continued to beat—suspended within a cage of churning Host tissue.

“No…”

The word tore from his throat, half gurgle, half denial.

The Host surged outwards.

Limbs split.

Tendrils lashed.

Barin’s body collapsed like a hollow shell, spilling what remained of him onto the cold grav-stone. The thing that had worn him burst free in a storm of flesh and eyes.

The Bowl erupted into chaos.

Traders screamed. Stalls overturned. Weapons flared as the city’s guards opened fire.

Through it all, Barin’s head—still tethered to the creature by writhing cords of Host matter—was dragged across the plaza, his mouth opening in a strangled attempt to scream for help.

*This time was different.*

The last caravan hadn’t noticed in time.