Dani didn't ask him outright.
She didn't have to.
Lance could feel the way her eyes lingered a beat longer when she thought he wasn't looking. The way her fingers hovered just above her weapon when they crossed paths in the narrow hall. The silence between them had thickened—not heavy, not angry—just calculated.
He understood.
If he were in her shoes, he wouldn't trust himself either.
Because something was changing.
It started in his fingertips.
They felt... wrong. The nerves weren't quite where he left them. Sometimes, brushing against surfaces felt muffled, like touching objects through a sheet of damp cloth. Other times, the feeling was too clear—every texture too sharp, every vibration too loud, like the world was crawling beneath his skin.
He didn't say anything.
Dani didn't either.
But that night, she gave him a cup of coffee.
Black, bitter, same tin can they'd been drinking out of for days.
Only... this time, she watched him take the first sip.
He pretended not to notice. But when the coffee hit his tongue, it didn't taste like anything at all. Just heat. No bitterness, no sharpness—just the texture of liquid.
His heart slowed in his chest.
He swallowed, forced a smile, and nodded. "Thanks."
She said nothing.
Later, she checked the milk.
Still sealed. Still in its crate. But the container felt warmer than it should. Not hot. Just... alive.
She ran a blacklight over it.
The label flickered faintly under the UV. A symbol—something geometric, like a circuit diagram fused with a nervous system—pulsed once and faded.
"You've had nosebleeds?" she asked from the far end of the safe house.
He paused, wiping his hand across his face instinctively. "No?"
His fingers came back red.
A slow, thin trickle had crept from his nostril without him noticing.
"Shit."
Dani didn't move closer. She just nodded once. "Okay."
No panic. Just confirmation.
She made a note in the margin of one of her folders. The pen scratched a little too loud in the quiet.
That night, Lance didn't dream of faceless people or endless hallways.
He dreamed of teeth.
Rows and rows of them, arranged in concentric circles inside a vast, breathing chamber that pulsed like a lung. The walls were wet. The ceiling watched. Somewhere, far above, something blinked.
When he woke, he was on the floor.
Not just off the cot—across the room, curled up near the milk crate like a child sleeping beside a campfire.
Dario stood a few feet away, unmoving, eyes locked on Lance with an unreadable expression.
And in his chest, just behind his sternum—
—a twitch.
A twitch that wasn't his.
It fluttered once, like the wings of something small and growing.
Lance sucked in a breath. Slow. Careful.
The milk jug remained sealed.
But the thing inside him?
It didn't need permission.
The first sign was the smell.
Not rot. Not sulfur. Just wrong — like wet bandages left out in the sun, warm dairy, and something too metallic to be blood. Lance gagged as it rolled through the vents, thick and humid, coating the back of his throat like syrup.
Dario stood stiff at the door to the hall, ears low, body still.
Then the lights went out.
Every bulb in the safe house snapped off at once, plunging them into heavy, unnatural dark. It wasn't the black of absence — it was textured, like something pressed against his eyes from the inside.
"Dani?" Lance whispered, heart sprinting in his chest.
Her voice came calmly from the other room, slightly too far away. "Don't move."
He didn't intend to.
Dario growled low, the sound vibrating against Lance's ribs as the dog pressed into him. Then... they heard it.
Thud.
The sound of something massive shifting weight just outside the door.
Thud-thud.
Each step slow, deliberate — as if whatever it was didn't need to hurry because it knew.
Lance's breath hitched. His fingers clutched at Dario's fur. His mind clawed for rationality — maybe it was another hallucination. A dream. A bleedover from the twisted thing inside him.
But then the door creaked open.
Not flung. Not slammed. Just... pushed.
And through the gap, something stepped inside.
It had the shape of a cow — if cows were ten feet tall and impossibly compressed, fitting into the room like it had been built around it. No spots. No fur. Just flesh — pale, damp, stretched too tight over unnatural muscle. Its hooves didn't clop — they made no sound at all as they moved over concrete.
Its eyes were the worst.
Too human. Bloodshot. Blinking far too often.
And its mouth — gaping and slow — wasn't where it should have been. It replaced the nose entirely: a wet, slack cavity that flexed with a slow inhale.
It smelled him.
Lance couldn't scream. Couldn't even breathe.
His mind went blank.
His body just held Dario tighter — arms shaking, sweat cold down his spine, heartbeat pounding like it wanted to tear through his chest and run on its own.
The thing tilted its head.
Then—
FWUMP.
The entire safe house shook as Dani stepped into the hall from the other side, dragging a grenade launcher nearly half her height.
She didn't shout. Didn't posture.
She just muttered under her breath: "Shitty timing."
The cow-thing's mouth twitched.
Lance whimpered.
Dani aimed.
Then the air snapped.
Not from the grenade launcher — not yet — but from the thing. It folded itself backward, neck bending like a hose, limbs locking as it spasmed once in an impossible stutter. Like a corrupted frame of footage on a broken VHS tape.
It looked at Lance again.
And smiled.
Not with lips. Not with teeth.
But with its eyes.
Lance lost it.
He backed into the wall, still gripping Dario, whispering things like "nononono" and "make it not real", throat raw.
Dani didn't hesitate.
BOOM.
The launcher lit the hallway with a blinding, orange-white pulse — a blast so loud it clipped out reality for a second.
And when Lance opened his eyes again—
The thing was gone.
Just scorch marks. A cratered wall. Wet air and twitching heat.
Lance was shaking. Breathless. Eyes wide, unfocused.
Dani lowered the smoking tube and glanced at him. "Still think you're just imagining things?"
He couldn't speak.
He just held Dario tighter.
And felt the flutter again.
Inside him.