The smell of salt, iodine, and petrified god-flesh had never seemed so comforting to me.

  As the Dreadnought Truck descended the final curves of the Serra dos órg?os, the dawn revealed Guanabara Bay. There it was. Leviathania. The Carcass Continent.

  After the aseptic and symmetrical nightmare of Genesis and the swarm of rust and clay in the interior, our city of bone, steam, and European crystal looked like an abomination's paradise.

  Valéria sighed, relaxing her shoulders for the first time in days. The truck was in a pitiful state. The front armor was melted by the acid of the Necrophage-Leafcutters, the left side was shattered, and the Ether engine coughed like a chain-smoker.

  "I've never been so happy to see this pile of garbage," she said, guiding us toward the Black Crystal bridge that connected the continent to the island.

  We crossed the bridge. The reception wasn't met with fanfares, but with the tense relief of sentinels who feared they would never see us again.

  The city had changed in our absence. The fusion between the local survivors and the refugees of the Exodus Fleet was accelerating. I saw whale-bone cabins reinforced with deactivated antimatter plates. Former "Hollows"—the European soldiers freed from the Piper—worked side-by-side with amphibious mutants, installing steam pipes to heat the floating neighborhoods.

  The Tropical Necro-Cyberpunk was alive and pulsing.

  I parked the Dreadnought in the courtyard of my clinic, located in the empty eye socket of the Leviathan's skull.

  I climbed down from the cabin, my heavy boots touching the worn calcium. My Black Crystal arm hummed, passively refueling itself with the residual mana of the monster's carcass.

  "Doctor Veras!" A young former European officer, now sporting an organic eyepatch and a leather jacket, ran toward us with a clipboard. "Ether levels are stabilized and ration production increased by 12% this week. Also..."

  "Cancel the productivity reports, lieutenant," I interrupted, my voice coming out colder than the crystal on my shoulder. The pain of losing my mother was still an open wound, stanched only by pure adrenaline and cynicism. "Convene the Council. Now. In the boiler room."

  Half an hour later, we were gathered around a rusted metal tactical table.

  Gristle, still wiping green blood from her cleaver; Valéria, drinking coffee that looked like tar; Luna, with a worried look fixed on me; and the representatives of the city's factions—a captain of the European fleet and the leader of the Oil Sirens cult.

  "The central tumor has been excised," I began, without beating around the bush. I pointed to the tattered map of Brazil spread across the table. "Hélio Veras is dead. Genesis has fallen. The system holding the continent's interior hostage went into multiple organ failure."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  A murmur of relief and surprise ran through the room. The European captain smiled.

  "This means the continental threat is over. We can begin expanding our agriculture inland..."

  I smashed my crystal hand against the table. The sharp sound made the captain fall silent instantly.

  "You didn't hear me. The system failed."

  I looked at each of them. "When a body dies, parasites and scavengers take over. The interior of Brazil is now the biggest feast on the planet. And the one presiding over the table is the Clay Queen."

  Luna shuddered. "Ants the size of wolves. Their carapace deflects bullets and the acid they spit melted our truck's Blood-Steel in seconds. And there aren't hundreds. There are millions."

  Gristle spat on the floor. "They eat anything that is biomass or magic. They are sweeping through Minas Gerais like a vacuum cleaner from hell. And guess what is the biggest piece of dead, magic-filled biomass in the southern hemisphere?"

  Silence fell over the room. Everyone looked down, at the bone floor we were standing on.

  Leviathania wasn't just an island. It was a mountain of petrified flesh.

  To the Necrophage-Leafcutters, we weren't a fortified city. We were a giant wedding cake.

  "They are on their way," I stated, crossing my arms. "Territorial animals stop at borders, but ants have no territory. They have logistics. As soon as they clean up the ashes of Genesis, they will march south. We have less than two weeks until their vanguard reaches the coast."

  "How do we fight a continent of insects?" asked the leader of the Sirens, his dark eyes dilated with dread. "Not even with the fleet's entire antimatter arsenal will we be able to disintegrate so many."

  "We don't fight. We impose a quarantine." My left eye blinked, calculating variables with the remnants of the Babel Code. "Valéria, what is the status of The Last Breath's antimatter core?"

  Valéria frowned, her engineer's mind aligning with my insanity.

  "The cruiser's core is stable, but it can't be used as a bomb without vaporizing half the planet."

  "I don't want a bomb. I want a repellent barrier. A cordon sanitaire."

  I leaned over the map, tracing an imaginary line along the base of the Serra do Mar mountains.

  "The Leafcutters eat biomass and magic. But antimatter is the opposite of existence. It's the vacuum. Valéria, I want you to dismantle the European fleet's weapons and install emitters along the channel separating us from the mainland. We are going to create a fence of black light. If the Clay Queen tries to cross, the swarm falls into the void."

  "It's viable," Valéria nodded slowly, running mental calculations. "But it will drain our energy reserves in a matter of days."

  "That's what we have the Leviathan's fat for," Gristle smiled, thumping her own chest. "We use the steam boilers to feed the reactors. We burn the ground we walk on to keep the ants away."

  The Parasite inside me shivered, anticipating the carnage.

  [DEFENSE PROTOCOL: ABSOLUTE SIEGE.]

  [THE APEX SPECIES DEFENDS ITS NEST.]

  "There's one more thing." I looked at Luna. "The Clay Queen controls the swarm through pheromones and seismic vibrations. An organic command and control system. Luna, you're going to need to figure out the queen's frequency. If we can jam her communications, the swarm will collapse and devour itself in confusion."

  Luna swallowed hard, gripping her baton. "I'll try. But her voice... is like the sound of mountains grinding together. I'm going to need amplifiers the size of buildings."

  "You have an entire naval fleet and the skeleton of a sea god at your disposal," I told her. "Build whatever you need."

  I straightened up, facing the Council. The exhaustion was like an anchor in my bones, but there was no time to close my eyes. My father had taught me one last cruel lesson: evolution never sleeps.

  "Prepare the city. Reinforce the bridge. No one leaves the Leviathan's carcass. The outside world has just become an infected operating room.

  "Welcome to the continental quarantine, ladies and gentlemen. The consultation is about to begin."