Phagocytosis

November 2034, Warsaw. European Federation

The "Muzeum Wojny" sat like a jagged scar on the edge of Warsaw's old district,. Once a government hall, now it stood reborn, part research building, part museum, A shrine for some, a scar for others to the Crab Wars.

Inside, the air was dry. Inside, darkness was deliberate. Every wall, every corridor was shrouded in deep shadow, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. Only the exhibits themselves were lit, tight beams of cold illumination cutting. Here, amid silence and dust, the bones of Earth's last great war told their story.

Zofia Kowalska moved through the exhibits with the poise of a scholar. Tall, hawk-eyed, and wrapped in a faded curator's coat, she was the museum's keeper. Her steps echoed across the marble floor as she walked a few steps ahead.

Before the war, she'd chaired the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Warsaw. Now, she curated its aftermath.

"Here's the skull vault"

A triptych of beetle skulls loomed, the smalles, the size of a Volkswagen Golf, the largest, the size of a Leopard 2a8 main battle tank. Banners of the regiments that took them out were hanged just under it. Be it if they had been taken out during the first battle of the Suwalki gap, the second, the siege of Warsaw or its liberation. On the far wall, the cracked remains of a Tripod walker, the smaller category one. It stood like a skeletal mech, one leg still bearing the scorch marks of an TOW anti tank missile if am to believe the panel next to it.

She paused before a sealed glass case. Inside lay a crab artefact, small, twisted, obsidian-black. Sitting there on a piece of silk. Its function remained unknown.

We passed through the Hall of Blasters, an armory-like-exhibit housing the stripped-down remains of crab blasters. Some fine works of art, some crudely made, part exoskeleton, part synthetic, part metal, from earth or some where far far away. They all lined the walls like fossilized predators.

Some were nearly human-length, long-barreled siege variants, used against armored vehicles. Others were shorter and resembled metal pipes, clearly modified for urban close-quarters.

I settle into the chair across from Zofia Kowalska's desk, the hum of a low-frequency air filter in the corner barely noticeable beneath the quiet buzz of her workspace. The office is still cluttered, old textbooks and biological specimens fighting for space next to digital screens projecting 3D models of anatomy, both alien and terrestrial. The smell of preservation chemicals is sharp in the air, mixing with the sterile scent of clean plastic and ozone.

Zofia doesn't look up immediately, her fingers tracing the edge of a small, iridescent crab claw displayed on a nearby monitor. When she finally speaks, her voice is calm, but there's a certain heaviness in it.

"Didn't feel like fleeing yet," she says, eyes narrowing as if the memory had just surfaced again. "My son was out, and I was waiting for him to come by the time I got the call."

"First, the rector of the University of Warsaw," she continues, tapping her fingers on the edge of her desk. "Yeah, it was one of those phone calls you couldn't miss—even if World War III had started. I had almost lost signal, the phone channels were so overloaded, but by some miracle, I still managed to get through. It was less than 24 hours after the first landings."

"Asked me how fast I could get to the university," Zofia continues. When I told him half an hour, assuming I didn't get stuck in one of the endless traffic jams, he told me not to waste any time. And then—he told me to ditch my car and run there if I had to."

"I thought he was just being dramatic. But I got there as fast as I could. By some miracle, I made it on time."

"The rectrrr was waiting for me outside the administration building. Tall. Grey hair. You could see it in his face—he had the look of someone who had two PhDs and was still trying to make sense of a world that no longer made any damn sense. And I saw it in his eyes. The weight of what he'd just lost. His son had been on the frontlines up north, lost in the fighting near the border. And he hadn't even had time to grieve."

"He didn't even give me a chance to say hello," she continues, "Before he motioned to the three military officers standing behind him. They were tense, eyes darting to the skyline as if waiting for something to come from the horizon. The silence between us was… thick. None of us had time for pleasantries."

Zofia leans back in her chair, cleaning her glasses before continuing, as if steadying herself against the weight of what's coming next.

"They handed me a CBRN suit—Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear. The old stuff. The stuff they had barely updated in the last twenty years. It felt... heavy. Overkill, almost. And then they handed me a gas mask. It smelled of old rubber and antiseptic. I had to put it on to make sure it fit, as if I could be ready for some kind of chemical fallout in the next five minutes."

Two Polish Army Black Hawks appeared first, flying low across the skyline. Their dark, matte frames blended into the clouds, but you could feel the power in the way they moved. Not far behind them, there was that thud of a Chinook that seemed like it shook the ground. Didn't know much about helicopters, but I knew this one was special. I saw how those twin rotors spinned with a deafening roar. It was massive, bulky compared to the sleek Black Hawks, and as it banked around a nearby building, the force of its blades sent debris flying into the air, scattering like leaves in a storm.

The Black Hawks were already close to the ground, moving with precision, like they knew exactly where they needed to be. The Chinook followed, its engine growling in the background as it lowered into place behind the others. The ground seemed to tremble as the choppers touched down, and a cloud of dust kicked up around them, momentarily hiding the scene in a mist that made your face and eyes itch.

The Black Hawks landed first with a soft thud, their landing gear hitting the cracked earth. A few seconds later, the Chinook touched down with a low rumble, its tail barely clearing the university's gates as it landed on that empty parking lot. Sending leaves, paper and dust flying every where.

They must have shut off the engines, but the guys inside didn't wait for that. The cargo door of the Chinook lowered, and the side doors of the Black Hawks slid open. At least a dozen operators poured out of each.

Dressed in multicam uniforms and wearing up-to-date gas masks, they were equipped with high-end gear. Quad tubes night vision goggles, rifles and optics on those the price of a car. You didn't need to be a military aficionado to know they were GROM—our country's elite. The best Poland had to offer.

But even they looked beaten down. As they approached the university entrance, I could see the toll the last 24 hours had taken on them. Their uniforms were lined with dust, specks of blood scattered here and there across the fabric, mud on their boots and lower legs. It was obvious they'd come from somewhere unforgiving.

I knew the fighting up north was brutal and merciless—one of the few things us civilians had heard when the war first started. Not much had leaked about what had landed in Europe, but it was clear from the beginning that everyone was suffering.

One of the soldiers, rifle tucked under one arm, ran toward an officer. The officer signaled for the other soldiers inside the university hospital to bring out a gurney.

At the same time, he signaled to the men near the Chinook. They disappeared inside, and a moment later, two bags emerged. The soldiers carried them on military stretchers, but even carried by men in the peak of human physical form, it was clear the weight of what they were carrying wasn't typical.

One bag seemed larger than the other, as if the legs of whatever was inside had stretched beyond the body bag. The other was smaller, but even so, the soldiers struggled with it. At one point, they stopped and dropped the stretcher. One of the men near it then hit the top of the body bag with his rifle stock—one brutall and sharp thuds—as if to silence whatever or whoever was inside.

They walked towards us, flanked by operators on all sides, covering every angle as if expecting someone in the university neighborhood to open fire at any moment.

They got close enough, and the stretchers were lifted onto the gurneys. I could see their sweaty faces through the gas mask lenses as they heaved the weight. But even then, the operators didn't just stand idle, they surrounded the gurney, facing inward, ready to act in case whatever was inside decided to make a move.

The gurneys were pushed past the endless halls, through the elevators, and finally into our forensic laboratory.

Warsaw was dealing with power outages, but somehow the Ministry of Defense had worked some magic, ensuring the university would only be without power for a maximum of four hours. That was my deadline to do my job.

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I still remember that opening moment. The first body bag had been laid out in Examination Room 1, where I stood—men my assistant, a dozen operators, and the examination table with that heavy black bag stretched across it. The second one—the one they had struck to keep quiet—was taken to our in-house vet clinic.

"Where'd you catch this one?" I asked, trying to cut the tension as my assistant helped me glove up. The process was clumsy, made worse by the layers of the CBRN suit and gas mask.

Silence followed. Clearly, that was classified.

"Shot in Vilnius," one of the operators finally said. "Took ten rounds before it stopped moving."

I approached the body bag, the operator beside me letting his rifle drop to the sling and pulling a compact shotgun from his back.

"Insurance," he said, placing the barrel over the spot where the head would be.

I took a deep breath and stepped closer. The fluorescent lights above buzzed faintly, casting a sterile glow over the room. My gloved fingers found the zipper—thick, reinforced, black as the bag itself. I hesitated just long enough to feel the weight of all the eyes on me. Then I pulled.

The zipper sounded louder than it should have, the teeth grinding open inch by inch. A faint, sickly odor leaked out—something between rotting meat and burned plastic, chemical and organic at once. Even through the filter of my gas mask, it clawed at my senses.

The operator next to me tensed, shotgun steady. I heard the shift of boots on tile as the others tightened their formation, just enough to move but not enough to panic.

The zipper gave one final rasp, and the bag fell open.

It stood about six, maybe seven feet tall—curled in death, but still massive. For a second, it almost looked like a man in some kind of exosuit. But the longer you looked, the more wrong it became. The "armor" wasn't armor. It wasn't made. It was grown. Dark and ridged, crustacean-like plates fused directly into muscle, as if bone and shell had evolved together. Each segment looked separate, but they fit perfectly, like a puzzle of chitin and tendon held together by design. Two long antennae drooped from either side of the snout—fleshy, flexible, twitching slightly when the bag opened. Like shrimp tendrils, moustache-like cords, tipped with sensitive bristles. They didn't belong on land, let alone on a biped.

Its chest, or what looked like it was full of entry wounds of bullets, do I guessed correctly that the shot that had taken it out came in at the snout.

""Request immediate assessment on optimal neutralization methods, biological sustenance requirements, and the anatomical location and structure of the central nervous system.""

"How can we kill it, does it eat or drink, and where's the nervous system" Basically what the military brass wanted to know.

We proceeded immediately. The operators assisted without hesitation, ignoring standard protocol. They focused on the head, starting just beneath the snout to begin removal. That's when we discovered the snout wasn't fixed—it could open, splitting along concealed seams, revealing an interior structure consistent with feeding anatomy.

My assistant quickly connected the dots—the antennae along the snout functioned much like those found on shrimp, likely serving a sensory role. On closer inspection, the tendrils were lined with fine, hair-like structures—setae—capable of detecting changes in air pressure, vibration, and possibly even chemical traces in the environment. In other words, these things didn't just see or hear. They could feel movement, track heat signatures, maybe even smell us in ways we hadn't considered.

It made sense in hindsight, how they moved through the dark so effortlessly, that they could see well in close distance. Those antennae gave them spatial awareness far beyond our own. Cutting them off might have been more effective than blinding them.

We couldn't make sense of the eyes, though. Even after we carefully extracted them, their function remained unclear. Structurally, they were jet black, glassy, and seemingly without any lens or iris—just featureless orbs. We ran a penlight over one; the beam didn't reflect, didn't pass through, didn't even scatter. It was like shining light into a dead star. No response. No clue what they processed, if anything.

What puzzled us more was the placement—just two, positioned precisely between where you'd expect the eyes of both a predator and a prey mammal. Forward-facing, yet slightly offset. Not quite binocular, not quite panoramic. It was almost as if the placement served both purposes, or maybe neither. We kept asking: why two? Why there? If it had other sensory organs doing most of the heavy lifting, what were these for? Redundancy? Deception?

Even now, we're not sure if the eyes were functional organs or some form of biological misdirection. The positioning, the strange blackness—it made us wonder. It was like how some tigers have false eyes on the back of their ears, white specks in the fur to deter predators from flanking them. Maybe these creatures weren't designed to see, but to appear as if they could. A way to mislead their prey or rivals, to create the illusion of heightened awareness. A predator's trick, or a tactical advantage.

As we continued examining the creature, something else became evident—the antennas and the sensory organs weren't isolated. My assistant and I were already deep into the dissection when we noticed something peculiar. At the base of the neck, just beneath the armor plating, there was a pulsating mass—firm, yet soft, like a heart, but unlike any human or animal heart we were familiar with. It seemed to be at the center of the creature's sensory network. The sensory organs, including the antennae, were directly connected to it via a complex web of nerves and conductive tissue.

The organ itself had a texture unlike anything we had seen before, smooth, almost translucent in some areas, with faint, pulsing veins running through it like conduits for some sort of internal energy. The more we cut into the area, the more we realized that this organ wasn't just for circulation. It appeared to play a crucial role in processing the signals from the sensors.

It seemed that every sensory function—the ability to detect vibrations, track movements, even the heightened awareness of its surroundings, was directly linked to this central organ. It wasn't just a heart,n it was a nerve center, capable of processing vast amounts of data from its sensory network. We had a sudden realization: the creature didn't just react instinctively. It was almost thinking, processing information in real-time. The connection between the sensory antennas and this organ explained the creature's uncanny ability to perceive threats long before we saw them.

The more I studied it, the more I began to wonder just how advanced these creatures were. Their physiology seemed to mix elements of biology and bioengineering. Didn't know if half of it came from evolution or bioengineering

As I began inspecting the creature's arms, carefully peeling back the layers of its exoskeleton, one of the men approached with a satchel bag. He set it down on the table beside us, unzipping it with practiced precision. Inside, he pulled out two claw-like hands—still fresh, their tips sharp and glistening with the remnants of whatever it had been using them to tear through. He placed them beside the creature's own appendages as if to compare.

The hands were unmistakable in their design—large, jagged claws, reminiscent of something you might see on a predatory bird or a crustacean. They were built for gripping, tearing, and likely capable of digging into prey with terrifying precision. Each claw had a serrated edge, the kind that could easily slice through flesh, bone, and even armor. Then I noticed a tube extending from one of them. "Tube" wasn't quite the right word. It resembled a thick vein, copper-toned in color, its texture suggesting it was designed to be exposed to the elements. It dawned on me much later that this was how they controlled their weapons—like a biological USB cable that connected them to their weapons and vehicles.

"How does it reproduce?" one of the operators asked. He was the medic of the platoon, an officer with a medical degree who had decided to help out.

He had a point. There were no visible reproductive organs. No clear sign of gender.

We had done all we could,removed every piece of plating. We discovered that some were add-ons, while others appeared to be natural. All of them were made of the same hard, matter-like substance. Whether these were deliberately crafted or simply ripped from dead crabs was still a matter of speculation. From the situation at the front, we learned that soldiers exposed to its biomatter—whether through its blood coming into contact with their skin or its spores making their way into their lungs—experienced severe reactions. These ranged from hysterical laughing and crying to intense itching and vomiting.

We also learned that crabs don't have traditional blood; instead, they have a fluid similar to hemolymph. This colorless fluid serves a similar role to blood but contains hemocyanin, a copper-based molecule that gives their blood a blue tint when oxygenated. Hemolyumph helps carry nutrients, oxygen, and plays a crucial part in the immune system. It doesn't circulate in veins and arteries like human blood; instead, it's part of an open circulatory system, flowing freely through their body cavity. The exposure to this fluid seemed to trigger unusual and extreme reactions in the soldiers.

I apologized, but for the guys who had been standing around us, watching for hours, my mission was accomplished. I'd have more time to study the body later, but for now, knowing how to kill them more efficiently was all the operators needed to hear. The rest could come later.

"0400," one of the men muttered. A knock echoed on the door, and it swung open as another gasmask-wearing operator peeked in.

"We're ready to proceed," he said to his colleagues.

The officer nodded, and everyone filed out. Curiosity got the better of me, so I peeled off my PPE and followed them into the hallway. Outside the vet clinic, one of the GROMM operators stood, his gasmask off. Blood was dripping from his nose, and he was vomiting into a bucket. The guy looked like he'd taken a beating.

"The fucker's secured alright. Had to cut through the body bag—miracle it didn't break. Secured its limbs one by one, but it still threw punches," he said, his voice ragged. The lieutenant asked if he was okay, and the operator just nodded. His blonde hair was damp with sweat, streaked with the blood from his crushed nose.

"Real pleasure cutting off its arms with a hatchet, I can tell you that."

"HOLD IT DOWN!" one of the men yelled, as a crab, about five feet tall, relentlessly delivered a brutal beating to the men at the end of the animal cage hallway.

They were struggling to secure it to the wall behind them. The creature kicked and thrashed, doing its best to fight back as two men held down each of its limbs.

I had seen one dead just three rooms away, but now, alive and kicking, it was something to behold. Like a kid, I dropped to one knee, peeking past the first cage to get a better look. Two operators stood to my left, both tall and easily twice my weight, even without their high-end gear.

The men fighting with the creature slowly released their grip, their caution evident as they didn't fully trust the straps they'd attached to its limbs, binding it to the cage.

"Okay, go, GO GO!" the lieutenant called out. The men quickly stepped back and took position behind the guy standing next to me. The lieutenant gave the man a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder, signaling him to move. The man lifted his rifle, carefully aiming it at the crab, which was still thrashing violently, desperate to break free and tear through the straps.

He fired a round, and it struck its chest, right where they had found the "heart" earlier. The creature's body went rigid, its eyes wide for a brief moment, then it collapsed. The violent thrashing stopped instantly, and it slumped against the restraints, lifeless. The room went silent except for the echo of the shot still lingering in the air. The shot had done its job, taking the creature down in one swift hit.

The operator put his weapon on safe, lowered it, and let it hang at his side. He caught sight of me, and through the gasmask, the gear, and the millions of euros the army had likely spent on his training, I saw it. That look. Not reassurance, not the satisfaction of a job well done. No, it was something deeper. It was the look of someone who knew the hardest challenge was still ahead.