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.
Then she jammed the thermo lance into the soft underbelly of the Nucleus—where the veins met the main trunk—and pulled the trigger. rimworld fleshmass nucleus
Tia looked down at her hands. The skin between her fingers was weeping a clear sap. She’d stopped trying to wash it off. She looked at the others: Mendez, the farmer, now missing three fingers he’d hacked off after they sprouted tiny, toothy mouths. Little Whiskers, the colony’s tame megasloth, had grown a second, weeping eye on its flank. They’d had to put Whiskers down. She sprinted into the Gestalt
The third Gestalt lunged. Tia didn’t shoot it. She dropped her rifle, pulled the last gift from her belt: a thermo lance, salvaged from an ancient danger, its fuel cell ticking. The digestive fluid burned through her pants, her