Riven sighed and made his way to the equipment rack, tucked between two ruined storage crates that smelled faintly of charred rubber. He snatched up a portable contamination scanner, a pair of bone shears, and an old-model toxic mask with a cracked filter valve. It hissed faintly when he put it on, which wasn't comforting.
"Chest cavity spelunking," he muttered again, slinging a corpse harness over one shoulder. "Why not just toss me in headfirst and see if I come out seasoned?"
The east quadrant was a mess — scorched buildings collapsed like crushed paper, blood pooled in puddles thick enough to ripple when he stepped too close, and at the center of it all lay the monster.
Or what remained of it.
Its body stretched over twenty meters long, curled like a dead centipede half-submerged in rubble. Thick, armored plates ran down its back like jagged metal shields, many cracked open and leaking oily green fluid. Dozens of segmented legs jutted from its underside — some twitching reflexively, others torn off entirely. Its mandibles were the size of a sedan, and its head was riddled with deep sword gouges, though it still looked far too intact for comfort.
Riven stopped a few meters away, squinting at the corpse through his mask visor. "What the hell are you supposed to be?"
He'd read through countless monster files — as part of Cleaner Orientation, sometimes as punishment, even out of morbid curiosity. But he didn't recognize this one.
"Don't think I've ever seen anything like this… not in any database."
"'Cause it's a rare-class," said a voice beside him.
Riven jumped.
A lanky cleaner in an orange-tinged suit stepped into view, visor up, chomping a stim-gum tablet like it owed him money. Belt, one of the senior crew. His uniform was dirty, his boots half-melted, and his smile a little too amused for comfort.
"Guild's saying it's some kind of high-value Sable-Tier Burrow Wasp, local to Subzone Twelve. Never been recorded topside till now. Guess it popped up during the breach and got curious."
Riven looked back at the corpse. "This thing tunneled all the way up here?"
"Yup. Ate a squad of civvies and a vending machine before a Class-B Esper finally cracked its shell. You're standing in for, like… three people right now."
Riven stiffened. "Thanks for that."
"No prob."
Belt jabbed a thumb behind them, where Manager Wang's voice still barked faintly over comms. "Wang's extra pissed 'cause the guild's fighting over resource rights. Monster this rare? Tiny parts alone are worth a fortune."
"How bad's the split?"
"Eight-two." Belt gave a low whistle. "They get eighty, we get twenty. Not twenty percent of the whole haul — just twenty percent of our own contracted share. Barely leaves enough to pay hazard rates."
"Fuck."
Riven sighed. "Of course."
Belt shrugged. "So yeah — Wang's losing his spleen, and you're the lucky bastard who gets to go elbow-deep into insect guts to count corpses and make sure nothing explodes."
Riven tightened his gloves, eyeing the monster's ribbed thorax where emergency tags fluttered in the steam. A small crater had been blasted open near the center — revealing an internal cavity filled with faintly pulsing sacs, melted debris, and something that might've been a shinbone.
"Great. Let's hope it's dead-dead."
He activated the scanner.
A soft chime.
[Contamination Scan: Active. Mana Saturation: 78%. Cavity stability: Unstable.]
He sighed again. "Of course it is."
…
…
The inside of the creature was worse than he expected.
And he hadn't exactly been expecting great.
Riven crouched in the narrow cavity of the slain burrow wasp.
The interior of the throat was huge, more like a collapsed tunnel than an esophagus. The walls were slick with mucus-like slime, glistening under his headlamp in oily shades of green and black. Ribbed flesh contracted faintly around him, a dying reflex — as if the creature wasn't entirely convinced it was dead.
The floor — if it could be called that — was uneven and littered with debris. And not the kind that fell from a building.
Human body parts.
A hand, half-melted at the wrist. A boot still clutching a leg bone. What looked like someone's jaw, teeth perfectly intact. Scattered remains embedded in folds of monster tissue like grim decorations. Long, jagged spikes jutted from the throat walls, sharp and curved inward like biological teeth — meant not to chew, but to impale and prevent escape.
Riven's stomach turned, but he forced it down.
This was Bag Duty.
Not pulling out pre-packaged bodies from nice, zipped-up bags like the junior cleaners liked to joke. This was crawling inside oversized predators and finding the pieces that still resembled people. Then tagging, bagging, and dragging them back for burial — and to give their families a strange sense of closure.
He exhaled shakily, wiping a smear of something off his visor.
"Damn it… This is going to be an absolute pain."
He adjusted his scanner, which was already whining softly from the mana saturation. His gloves made a faint squelch as he stepped forward, the slime resisting like half-set glue.
"Alright, Riven," he muttered grimly, sweeping his light across a rib-thick bulge of meat tangled with bones. "Forget full retrieval. Let's just start with a head count…"
He crouched near the first intact upper torso, clicking on his tag beacons — little magnetic chips that latched to flesh and synced with the city's retrieval drones. The scanner gave a soft chime as it logged the bio-signature.
[Human remains detected. ID: Unavailable. Tag Registered – Corpse #1]
Riven didn't pause. There wasn't time for sentiment. He'd learned early on not to stare too long at the faces. Half the time, they didn't have enough face left to recognize anyway.
He moved deeper.
Body #2 was just a torso and a broken pendant. #3 had both legs missing and a company badge from one of the logistics towers. #4 and #5 were still tangled together, arms locked, as if they'd died trying to shield one another. He tagged them both and muttered, "Dumb way to go, but hell… maybe the less painful one."
He pressed on, ducking under a spike that jutted down like a hooked fang, careful not to let it graze his suit.
He was halfway to vomiting when he stopped dead.
The scanner had gone quiet.
There, nestled in the curve of the monster's inner throat lining — where the ridged walls bulged slightly like a diseased organ — was something new.
It was a cocoon.
Roughly man-sized, lodged between two spike-ribs, coated in translucent film and pulsing faintly with a sickly, yellow-green glow. It looked biological. Organic. Alive. The texture was fibrous, webbed like hardened mucus, but with strange veins running through it. Like an overgrown gland — or worse, a womb.
And protruding from its side, slick with slime and half-curled in rigor, was what looked like a human arm.
Female. Adult. Pale skin. Unmoving.
Riven stared, blinking twice, then raised the scanner again with shaky hands.
Still no chime.
No corpse registration.
But the cocoon…
It gave a soft thump, like something inside had a heartbeat.
Riven leaned in slightly, trying to get a better look. The translucent membrane fluttered as the light from his visor hit it, revealing the faintest outline beneath the surface — curled limbs, a face partially obscured, maybe a breathing mask. Maybe not.
His heart began to race.
"What the hell… is this?"