THE GOAT CORE
READING AGE 18+
Nineteen-year-old Ash Kessler wakes trapped in a morgue drawer in derelict Coldwater County Hospital, with no memory of how he got there, one missing eye, and only a faded ID to confirm his name.
The hospital is stalked by a towering goat-headed anomaly—a near-immortal mutant from an old underground biohazard leak, powered by an internal glowing "morph core" hunted and traded by private containment firms.
Ash’s desperate call draws ruthless Underline section chief Sol Whitlock, who offers him a high-stakes interview: survive the night and harvest the beast’s core. To stay alive, Ash embeds a goat core in his empty eye socket, and discovers he can freely remove and swap cores—a rare, invaluable ability no other human carrier has.
Unfold
The powder was still coming down when the man spoke.
"Nice work."
He was standing with his weight on the leg the blood wasn't running down. It came out of the top of his boot on the other side and drew a line across the tile, slow and steady, and he had one hand flat over his side, holding it there.
Waiting for the first comment……