Hallow Shells 1 – Jon Taku (1)

Sable’s armor was screaming in the presence of someone whose armor was silent. “Commander. Thank you for the escort.” Slade’s voice was even. Moderate volume. No affect. The vocal equivalent of her armor: nothing wasted, nothing revealed. “The Accord appreciates your diligence.” The Accord didn’t look like it appreciated much. The six other council members were studying me with varying degrees of fascination, calculation, and the familiar hunger of mimics encountering unshielded male emotional energy.

One woman was taking notes on a grown-mimic tablet. Another was whispering to an aide. “The Accord has reviewed the reports from Thornfield,” Slade continued. She was talking to Sable but looking at me. “A male of unknown origin with the ability to amplify bonded mimic organisms through physical contact. Enhanced combat performance in host fighters. Potential influence over mimic behavior beyond simple feeding.” She paused. Let the words sit. “Is this accurate?” “It’s accurate,” Sable said. “I’d like a demonstration.” Sable’s blades curled backward.

“He’s not a performing animal.” “No. He’s a strategic resource in a war we’re losing. I’d like to understand what he can do.” Slade’s eyes hadn’t moved from mine. “With his consent.” She said consent with the precision of a word she’d chosen carefully. A word she wanted me to hear and wanted Sable to hear and wanted the record to reflect.

“It’s fine,” I said. Sable looked at me. Her expression said don’t. Her armor said don’t. Every blade on her body was telling me not to cooperate with this woman. “It’s fine,” I said again. “What do you want to see?” Slade raised a hand. A guard approached. Young. Armored. Nervous. Her mimic’s eyes were wide and her weapon was half-formed on her arm, a blade that kept solidifying and dissolving because the organism was too agitated by my proximity to hold a shape. “Take her hand,” Slade said. I took the guard’s hand.

The surge hit. The guard gasped. Her blade snapped to full extension, perfect and clean.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. OceanofPDF.com Contents Quick Ref Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 OceanofPDF.com Quick Ref THE WORLD A continent-spanning civilization built on living biological infrastructure.

Settlements are connected by grown-mimic roads and communication networks. Architecture is organic — walls breathe, streets pulse, buildings regulate their own temperature. The technology is biological rather than mechanical. No electricity. No combustion engines. Everything is grown, bonded, or cultivated from living tissue. Two moons. Wrong-colored sky. Alien flora. Familiar gravity and atmosphere. Humans exist here but did not originate here — they were seeded by the Shapers alongside the mimics.

The Withering — A generation-old catastrophe that killed most of the male population. Presented as a plague. Actually an engineered famine designed by the last remaining Shaper to maximize suffering output from bonded mimics. With men gone, grief skyrocketed. Grief feeds mimics. Mimics feed the Shaper’s system. The Withering was agriculture.

The Scar — A two-hundred-mile dead zone south of the Bastion. Origin point of the Withering and the Husk swarms. The Shaper’s cathedral sat at its center. With the Shaper dead, the Scar is slowly healing. MIMICS (SHELLS) Living organisms that bond with human hosts. Flat, gray-brown in their wild state. Roughly dinner-plate sized.

Four amber eyes. One feeding maw (undersurface). They attach to a host’s chest and form a breastplate of living armor that grows and adapts over the host’s lifetime. What they eat: Emotional energy. Mimics feed on the full spectrum of human emotion — grief, joy, rage, love, fear. Stronger emotions produce more energy. This is why the Shaper engineered the Withering: grief is high-yield fuel. The bond: Permanent. Lifelong. A mimic reads its host during bonding, cataloguing every memory, trauma, and psychological defense.

The bond cannot be broken without killing one or both parties. Hosts feel their mimic’s state (hunger, contentment, distress) and the mimic feels the host’s emotional landscape. The breastplate: The base form. Every bonded mimic produces a fitted chest piece that serves as the foundation for all other armor expressions. The breastplate contains the mimic’s core body, its eyes, and the feeding maw (sealed during combat, opens for direct feeding).

ARMOR EXPRESSIONS Bonded mimics produce armor and weapons through pseudopods — extensions of living tissue that grow from the breastplate and can form virtually any shape the host’s psychology and the mimic’s capabilities allow. Combat Forms • Blades — Edge weapons grown from pseudopods.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• Pages: 345
• Language: English (en)

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