The attacks grow fiercer, coordinated strikes that split and reform mid-motion. Blades become spiked fists, then revert to liquid tendrils that lash out from impossible angles. I manage to land hits on two of them, plasma energy tearing through liquid-metal flesh, but their bodies absorb the strikes like water accepting stones. Ripples spread across their surfaces before reforming without permanent damage.
Five strikes connect with my defense for every two I manage to return. Purple eyes burn brighter with each exchange, shadows becoming increasingly chaotic as the combat escalates beyond human comprehension.
Saliva turns to paste. My heart hammers against ribs that feel fragile as bird bones.
"Three of them now," I manage between exchanges that blur technology and biological warfare. "They're sharing everything they learn about me."
"Integration levels spiking beyond our monitoring capabilities." Panic edges Kira's voice, something colder than professional concern. "Devon, his neural pathways are lighting up like a city grid during a power surge."
"The alien adaptation protocols are more sophisticated than we anticipated." Dr. Aveline's clinical mask cracks, genuine alarm bleeding through. "Each hunter is incorporating lessons learned by the others. He's fighting the collective knowledge of their species."
The aliens coordinate assault patterns with liquid precision. One feints left while elongating into blade-form, another strikes right with tendrils that coil around my guard, forcing me to choose between certain contact and probable dismantlement. I choose neither, launching into a diagonal roll that brings my plasma blade up in a desperate arc.
Energy tears through liquid-metal flesh with the sound of superheated water meeting fire. The alien's surface ripples, purple light flickering as my strike disrupts its molecular cohesion. But within heartbeats, the wound flows closed, liquid-metal systems adapting faster than I can exploit weaknesses.
"Jesus, look at his brain activity." Devon's voice cracks. "Those aren't normal human neural patterns anymore."
My boots find purchase on surface now slick with alien blood that reflects stars in patterns that hurt to perceive directly. The hunters move like parts of a single organism, each strike calculated to drive me toward coordinated killing positions.
The closest alien phases through liquid state while another circles behind me. Arms reshape into serrated blades that rake across my ribs, tearing through enhanced combat gear. The third strikes from above, liquid-metal fist hammering my guard aside before elongating into a whip that lashes my back with molecular precision.
I manage one desperate counterattrike, plasma blade carving through liquid-metal torso in a spray of superheated metal. The alien's form ripples, purple light flickering, but reforms within heartbeats. Five brutal strikes answer my single hit—blades, fists, tendrils attacking from every angle while I stumble through increasingly desperate defenses.
"Critical trauma detected." Terror fractures Devon's voice. "Multiple lacerations, possible internal bleeding. How is he still fighting?"
White-hot feedback fragments my vision as another coordinated assault drives me to my knees. One alien's arm becomes a massive club that crashes against my raised sword, while twin tendrils from the second wrap around my ankles. The third reforms into a spear-like configuration, purple eyes burning with predatory satisfaction.
My counterattack connects with the club-wielder's center mass, plasma burning through liquid-metal flesh. But the other two capitalize on my commitment, landing strikes that send me sprawling across blood-slick surface. Two hits for every five I receive—the ratio grinding my defenses to nothing.
"His neural pathways are rebuilding in real-time." Dr. Aveline's clinical mask cracks completely. "The simulation is creating brain architecture that shouldn't be possible."
The plasma sword grows heavy in hands slick with my own blood. Each swing feels like moving through liquid amber while the aliens adapt to my deteriorating coordination, their strikes becoming surgical in precision as my defenses crumble.
The spear-configured alien circles behind me while I focus on deflecting attacks from its companions. Liquid-metal point pierces between my shoulder blades from my blind spot, driving deep before expanding into barbed anchors that pin me face-down against the endless surface.
The weapon remains embedded, surface pulsing against torn flesh with alien heartbeat. Liquid metal flows deeper into my nervous system, mapping every pathway with invasive precision while the other two aliens move to flanking positions.
I lie there, plasma sword just beyond reach, looking up at three liquid-metal figures that tower over my prone form. Purple light burns in their eyes as they prepare coordinated strikes to finish what they started.
Pain surges through every nerve ending, but with it comes something else—a sudden, invasive connection that burns behind my eyes. The embedded spear becomes a conduit, forging psychic link through shared agony that spans impossible distances.
That's when my consciousness explodes outward through the alien weapon like weaponized chaos.
"Devon, his vitals just flatlined for three seconds." Kira's voice trembles with barely contained panic. "Then spiked to levels that should kill him. Whatever he's doing—"
"Integration approaching dangerous levels." Desperation cuts through Kira's clinical training. "Push any further and the neural damage becomes permanent."
No retreat exists. Only forward, through destruction that will reshape everything I am.
My consciousness explodes outward through the alien conduit like weaponized chaos. The liquid-metal spear embedded in my flesh becomes the pathway for something the collective has never encountered—raw, undiluted human individuality forced into minds designed for perfect unity.
Purple light flares blindingly as the aliens shriek in unison. Their liquid-metal forms convulse, morphing uncontrollably as my fragmenting awareness burns through their coordination network like acid through silk. Individual thought—messy, chaotic, human—floods their collective with interference patterns that make perfect harmony scream with unfamiliar agony.
"What the hell is happening to the deep space monitors?" Devon's voice carries awe that makes my chest tighten despite the agony. "Something's hitting the invasion fleet."
Through the psychic link forged by embedded alien metal, my awareness reaches across light-years to touch the approaching fleet. Bio-mechanical vessels the size of continents experience something they lack words to classify as my consciousness spreads like discord through perfect symphony.
Each ship I touch costs neural pathways I can't spare, my consciousness trading pieces of itself for the ability to introduce pain to entities that have never known anything but unified purpose. The purple glow that defines their existence fractures into chaotic spectrum as human chaos corrupts their perfect order.
"The fleet's breaking formation!" Devon shouts over warning klaxons that scream through dimensions. "Ships the size of continents are changing course!"
The simulation fractures as liquid-metal figures dissolve into quantum static, their connection severed by interference patterns spreading confusion through networks spanning galaxies. Reality tears around my wounded body as the Consciousness Transfer Array shorts out from feedback that destroys every safety protocol.
I collapse inside the neural interface pod as blood loss greys my vision at the edges. Copper taste floods my mouth while bio-mechanical connectors spark against skull that feels cracked like an eggshell. Warning systems shriek through the facility.
"Neural pathway reorganization is extensive." Relief and terror fight for dominance in Kira's voice. "Reading permanent changes to brain structure, but he's stable. Injured, but stable."
"The deep space monitors show massive disruption in the fleet's approach pattern." Quiet awe threads through Devon's words. "They've broken their direct course to Earth for the first time since we detected them."
Through the pod's failing displays, tactical readouts show bio-ships circling the outer system rather than approaching with predatory confidence. For the first time in their ten million years of conquest, the aliens display something that can only be called caution.
"You didn't just survive their hunters." Dr. Aveline's clinical mask slips completely, wonder mixed with genuine concern. "You taught them something they've never experienced in eons of conquest."
"The neural changes are permanent." Kira whispers as bio-mechanical connectors extract from my skull, each leaving burn marks that will heal into scars. "These pathways are completely new. You're not the same person who entered that pod."
"Seventeen test subjects died attempting what you just accomplished." Devon's voice carries relief that makes my throat tighten. "But watching you push beyond every safe parameter—"
He doesn't finish, but I hear the unspoken weight. Fear of loss, watching someone you care about burn from the inside out for the chance to make humanity's enemies bleed.
Through emergency lighting that bathes everything in crimson warning, the facility's monitoring systems stream data showing the fleet's changed behavior. Ships that moved with the patience of inevitable predators now circle Earth's solar system with movements that whisper of something they've never known.
I drift at consciousness's edge while neural pathways struggle to integrate damage that rewrote the architecture of thought itself. Through the quantum bridge's fading connection, I feel something that chills my perception more than any cosmic threat.
The Devourers have learned to experience pain.
And they've learned to experience it from me.