The old city water treatment plant had formed a natural 'shower' from a ruptured pipe.
Cold, rusty groundwater cascaded down from the pipe at a height of several metres, hitting Karen Vance's shoulders with great force. This was supposed to be his one chance to wash away the blood and regain his humanity after killing, but the sound of the water hitting his back now seemed strangely dull, as though he were striking solid obsidian.
Karen trembled as he reached out with his right hand to touch the back of his neck.
[Biological Alienation – Exoskeleton Proliferation]
His once smooth skin had been completely torn apart. Right in the centre of his spine, a row of razor-sharp, hard, black, fin-like keratinous growths burst forth. Rather than covering the skin, they were extensions growing wildly from the spinous processes of the vertebrae, gleaming with a chilling, deep-sea metallic sheen.
"Ugh... Ah!"
Karen tried to bend down and scoop up a handful of water, but a near-severing pain made his pupils shrink to pinpoints in that instant.
Crunch—crunch—
It was a dull, teeth-grinding scraping sound. His newly grown black fins were squeezing and dislocating against his original human ribs, which bent as his spine underwent a secondary restructuring to adapt to the high-pressure environment of the deep sea. Each vertebra lengthened and thickened, as if a sleeping behemoth were trying to burst out of its narrow human shell.
Due to the 'pulse-induced wave' activated by Silas earlier, the evolutionary process within Karen's body had spiralled out of control.
These black fins were not merely weapons, but bio-energy antennas. As they matured, he could feel his ability to capture information from surrounding organisms increasing exponentially. He could even hear the mechanical sounds of surface missile silos turning through thick concrete walls.
However, he was losing the ability to stand.
His centre of gravity shifted forward and his calf muscles became abnormally bulky, forcing him to walk on his tiptoes. The only way he could alleviate the excruciating pain of his fractured bones was to crawl on all fours like a wild animal or dive like a fish.
Leah stood in the shadows of the shower, watching the contorted figure in the steam.
Water splashed onto the row of newly grown black fins, creating a crisp, metallic clanging sound. She could see the purplish-blue veins bulging on Karen's back to support the fins and the constantly oozing, fluorescent blue tissue fluid.
'Karen, does it hurt?'
Stepping forward and ignoring the cold, murky water, she tightly embraced the broad, somewhat unfamiliar body from behind.
Karen froze. He wanted to push Leah away, worried that her delicate skin would be cut by the sharp fins. However, Leah pressed her face against his cold, black keratin and two clear tears streamed from her golden-purple, heterochromatic eyes.
A miracle had occurred again.
Tears dripped onto the grotesque black fins and the maddening grinding of bones gradually subsided. Leah was using her nearly depleted life force to provide 'biological lubrication' for Karen's crumbling body.
'Don't look back, Karen,' said Lia in an ethereal voice. 'Silas's "rain of fire" has fallen, but I heard... I heard the abyss calling your name.'
Karen raised his head abruptly, his deep blue pupils piercing the mist and concrete. He saw the streak of red light tearing through the sky on the horizon — a light imbued with destructive power.
That was the final judgement of the Sanctuary.
In the boiler room of the old city's water treatment plant, the air was heavy and stifling.
Shirtless, Karen Vance was half-squatting before a shattered mirror. Scattered at her feet were a dozen rolls of high-strength medical restraints, which had been forcibly removed from a medical kit. Originally intended to immobilise the bones of severely wounded soldiers, these Kevlar-coated straps now served as the last shackles to maintain Karen's 'human form'.
'Ugh... ha...'
Karen gritted his teeth, his hands straining violently. The restraints coiled around his broad, deformed chest like venomous snakes, forcibly pressing a row of hard, sharp, black, fin-like keratin back into the gaps between his spine.
Crack.
That was the sound of the keratin layers squeezing against his broken ribs.
In order to prevent his spine from bulging outwards, he had to tighten the restraints beyond human limits, causing them to dig deep into his flesh. The seeping tissue fluid instantly stained the white cloth a strange bluish-purple colour.
[Physiological Compensation – Cannibalistic Desire]
Rather than weakening the Leviathan genes within Karen, this extreme physical pain stimulated a deep-seated survival instinct.
With Silas cutting off all energy and supplies, the intense acid in Karen's stomach was frantically corroding its lining. This hunger was no longer simply a desire to eat, but a powerful craving for similar active proteins specifically.
In his blurred vision, every flake of skin and every drop of sweat in the air emitted an alluring glow, especially the golden-purple fluid flowing through Leah's body. To him, it was the deadliest and sweetest poison in the world.
His second jaw trembled violently under the pressure of the restraints, almost bursting through his skin.
'I can't look at her.'
Karen abruptly turned his head, avoiding Leah's worried gaze.
Trembling, he reached out with his right hand — his completely mutated, barbed claw — and plunged it viciously into his groin.
'Pfft!'
Blue blood streamed down his thigh and merged into the puddles on the ground.
He used the shock he felt from this self-harm to stop the signals from his brain to his mouthparts. Every time he felt the urge to devour Leah, he plunged his grappling hook deeper into his thigh.
'Karen, you're bleeding...' Leah tried to approach him; she could smell Karen's salty ocean scent in the air.
"Stop!" Karen roared like a trapped beast. His eyes were now completely bloodshot and filled with tiny red veins. 'Don't come any closer... I'm afraid of myself now.'
The black fins beneath the restraints seemed to mock his futile resistance.
As the countdown to the missile barrage continued, the keratinous layers absorbed the blood flowing from Karen's self-harm, hardening and becoming more violent. They writhed under the restraints as if trying to pierce his heart and emerge from his chest.
This camouflage had reached its limit. Leaning against the cold, cast-iron canister, Karen felt the excruciating pain of the restraints crushing his ribs, as well as the deep-seated hunger within him that wanted to devour the entire world.
He was an abyss clad in human skin.
Above him, the red streak piercing the night was almost upon him. The devastating blow to the Sanctuary was about to erase this ruin, along with Karen's last, humble disguise.
Sanctuary Central Command, B.R.A. Senior Executive Dining Room.
For Karen Vance, this should have been the most familiar place: a long, streamlined white table, cold minimalist décor and a faint smell of disinfectant in the air. In order to cover up the truth of his disappearance, after settling Leah in, Karen endured the excruciating pain of his broken ribs from the restraints, donned his crisp military uniform and returned to headquarters for a final 'report'.
Inside the dining room, dozens of executives sat silently eating their high-energy synthetic meals.
Karen sat in a corner with a blank grey gel in front of him. He kept his head down, his wide collar concealing the faint outline of his jawline. Only his dark blue eyes, shadowed by his hat brim, anxiously scanned his surroundings.
'Hiss—'
Three metres away, a young logistics liaison officer was clumsily disassembling a canister of concentrated nutrient solution.
Due to corrosion, a sharp burr had formed on the liaison officer's metal edge, causing him to gasp slightly as a two-centimetre-long gash appeared on his right index finger.
For an ordinary person, this would be a trivial accident.
But for Karen, at that moment, it was a sensory nuclear explosion.
[Predator Senses – Overclocked Perception]
Thump, thump, thump.
Not only could Karen hear the gurgling of blood flowing from the capillaries into the wound, she could also hear the faint ionisation of white blood cells upon contact with air.
Drip.
The first drop of bright red blood fell onto the white tabletop. To Karen, the sound was as heavy as thunder and as crisp as shattering crystal; the air itself seemed to change.
The monotonous smell of disinfectant vanished instantly, replaced by an incredibly alluring biological aroma that was warm, salty and fishy.
Karen felt the black restraints tighten around his chest, jolting him violently and almost piercing his lungs. The 'Leviathan' genes within him screamed frantically. 'That's fuel! That's the fuel to repair broken bones! Tear through that thin skin and drink in that surging magma!'
His second jaw twitched beneath his tightly closed lips, producing a faint clattering of teeth.
'Executor Vance, are you all right?' A colleague beside him noticed Karen's unusual state.
Karen didn't answer. His fingertips had already dug deep into the alloy plate at the bottom of the table, leaving five dark indentations; his vision was completely filled with red. To him, the bleeding liaison officer was no longer a colleague, but a steaming, pulsating mass of active protein.
'I... I'm fine.'
Karen squeezed out these three words through clenched teeth, each syllable carrying a chilling emphasis.
He stood up abruptly, the restraints snapping dangerously beneath his uniform at the force of his movement. Bowing his head, he bit down hard on his bleeding tongue, using the excruciating pain of self-harm to suppress his predatory urges.
He strode across the dining room, smashing open the automatic door like a wounded beast, under the questioning gaze of the liaison officer.
'That's just blood...'
Karen leaned against the cold corridor wall, panting heavily.
He realised that the 'back door' Silas had left inside him was fully open. He was no longer the executor who could control his desires; he was becoming a monster that could only survive on blood.
Meanwhile, behind the surveillance cameras at the end of the corridor, Silas sipped red wine and watched Karen's frozen, statue-like struggle in the dining room.
'It will be soon, Karen,' Silas murmured. 'Once you've truly tasted the flavour of your own kind, you'll discover that Leah's blood is the only antidote in this world.'
The Sanctuary Central Hub was the strategic training ground for 'White Funeral'.
The floor was paved with pure white, polished marble and the seamless dome emitted a bright, artificial sunlight. The air was thick with ozone and ambergris, seemingly trying to conceal the impending bloodshed.
Silas Morgan, dressed in a snow-white commander's robe, stood on a suspended observation platform looking down at the executives below. His gaze finally settled on Karen Vance's face, distorted slightly by intense repression.
'Evolution requires pruning, and pruning requires absolute ruthlessness,' Silas's voice echoed softly in the empty hall. 'Today, we will test your resilience as the "Sword of the Sanctuary".'
In the centre of the training ground, a transparent, hemispherical force field slowly rose.
This was the 'Silence Field', not a physical defence device, but a high-frequency infrasonic resonator capable of devastating Adam cells' biorhythms. A squad of armed robots pushed several metal cages to the edge of the force field. Inside the cages were around a dozen "carriers" who had not yet fully mutated. Most still retained human features and some were wearing lower-level work clothes. However, their exposed skin was covered with a thin layer of moss-like, heterochromatic scales.
'Executor Karen Vance, step forward,' commanded Silas, pointing to a trembling girl. 'Begin the exercise. Send her to the 'Annihilation' centre.'
Karen felt a burning pain in her lungs.
Two of the restraints on her back had snapped during the outburst in the dining room earlier, and sharp black fins were pressing against her uniform, almost piercing the fabric. The girl looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears. A biological pheromone called 'fear' permeated the air, frantically tempting the ravenous Leviathan within Karen.
"Go on, Karen." Silas tilted his head from his vantage point and smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. "It's your duty."
Mechanically, Karen stepped forward and grabbed the girl's arm.
In that instant, he could feel the throbbing of the veins beneath her skin, like the beating of a war drum in his ears. Resisting the urge to open his second jaw, he dragged her towards the deadly hemispherical force field.
"Buzz—!"
The moment the girl's fingertips touched the edge of the force field, a violent ultrasonic wave ignited the Adam cells within her and she began to emit a silent scream. Her flesh melted like wax under some kind of high-frequency oscillation and her once beautiful eyes quickly became bloodshot and burst.
"Continue, Vance, don't stop," urged Silas's voice.
Karen stared intently at the destruction before her. He realised that the so-called 'annihilation' wasn't instant death, but prolonged, agonising torture targeting the nervous system. Every cell in the carrier was disintegrating and the pain was transmitted back to Karen's mind through biosensors, creating a terrifying resonance with his own mutated pain.
He watched the girl turn into a pool of greyish-white organic matter.
In that pile of ashes, Karen seemed to see Lia, Barnes and even herself.
'Alright, next,' said Silas, elegantly flipping through the record board. 'Two carriers this time. Karen, don't let me see your hands trembling.'
Karen lowered his head, a destructive glint flashing in his deep blue eyes.
Within the 'annihilation' field, the last pleas of humanity were utterly silenced by high-frequency sound waves.
Karen Vans stood on a pure white marble slab, with a thick layer of snow-like, greyish-white powder at his feet. Just minutes earlier, this powder had belonged to people who had names, memories and a will to live. Now, they were merely carbonised remains stripped of all biological information.
Behind Karen's mask, his breathing became eerily, terrifyingly steady.
He had discovered that, once the number of kills exceeded a certain threshold, the initial piercing guilt began to diminish rapidly and was replaced by a chillingly consistent logic rising from the depths of his spine.
[Leviathan Consciousness – Personality Erosion]
'Look, Karen, these are the "kin" you've been trying to protect.'
A non-human voice, carrying the weight of the deep sea, echoed mockingly in his mind — the Leviathan gene was awakening. It used Karen's thought processes to ridicule the weak who had turned to dust.
In the predator's logic, these carriers, unable to adapt to their environment or evolve through mutation, are merely redundant code in the history of genetic evolution. Their trembling as they beg for mercy and the fear spreading in their pupils are, in Karen's deep blue, rectangular pupils, nothing more than ineffective oscillations before energy depletion.
'Too weak...'
Karen murmured. He was surprised to find himself agreeing with Silas's 'pruning theory' deep down. 'Since they're destined to be extinguished, why make such a jarring noise in the darkness?'
He looked down at his bloodshot hands, etched with blue lines.
Once wielding guns to protect the Sanctuary and provide a safe haven for Leah, these hands now felt a destructive pleasure and a sense of power to easily erase fragile lives. This sense of power was like an addictive drug, rushing through his veins to his brain.
The psychological principles that distinguish humans from monsters were collapsing like a corroded dam.
'Karen, your eyes are now my most satisfying work.' Silas slowly descended from the observation platform, his leather shoes rustling softly on the greyish-white powder. He walked over to her and straightened his collar, which had been askew due to the black fins. 'Can you feel that tranquility? That's the perspective of a god after abandoning useless pity."
Karen looked up abruptly, seeing her own reflection in Silas's cold, silver pupils.
He was no longer a man in uniform.
He was a primal demon with a hunched back, gaping jaws like open wounds and eyes that burned with a ghostly, predatory blue fire. He mocked human fragility and craved more slaughter. Even subconsciously, he calculated the depth of Silas's carotid artery.
"Barnes…" Karen looked at the old hunter pinned in the corner. His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper.
Barnes was looking at him with eyes filled with despair and disgust; the eyes of someone looking at a ghoul in human skin.
Karen realised that he had already killed those carriers, and now he was killing 'Karen Vans' himself.
B.R.A. Executive's exclusive changing area.
Screams from the training field echoed eerily through the ventilation ducts of this enclosed steel space. Cold, white fluorescent lights flickered weakly, illuminating rows of metal lockers.
Avoiding all blind spots of the surveillance cameras, Barnes relied on decades of 'muscle memory' of the building and stopped in front of the locker numbered '00-Achilles'.
This was Karen Vance's locker.
As a veteran guide, Barnes noticed the increasingly strong, salty, predatory scent emanating from Karen. It was no longer an aura that could be suppressed by inhibitors; it was a catastrophe emerging from its cocoon.
'Click.'
Barnes skilfully used a bio-interference device to unlock the lock and the locker door slowly slid open. Inside, several neatly ironed executive uniforms were hanging up. However, some glittering fragments in the shadows at the bottom of the cabinet caught his attention.
Bending down, he picked up the hard objects, his hands trembling.
They were three completely detached obsidian scales.
They were sharper than a blade and their edges were stained with dried blue blood from torn muscle. Even after leaving their host, the scales trembled slightly in Barnes' rough hands, as if sensing the heat of the surrounding creature greedily.
Barnes gripped the scales tightly and the sharp edges immediately cut his palm.
Warm human blood dripped onto the black scales, making a faint, chilling sucking sound.
'What have you become, Karen?'
Barnes closed his eyes and swallowed hard as he remembered the deformed infant in Silas's laboratory twenty years ago. It had been curled up in an amniotic fluid tank and had looked at him with pleading eyes. He had thought that, with training, he could mould this 'monster' into a warrior with its own will.
But now, the violent, bloodthirsty and chilling bio-pulses emanating from his palm told him differently. Karen Vance was no more.
Beneath this shell, however, beat Leviathan's ambition, Silas's nightmare and a genetic tsunami that was about to engulf the entire Sanctuary.
Barnes didn't report it.
Instead, he silently tucked a few scales deep into his tactical backpack. He knew that, once this evidence fell into the hands of the research department, Karen would immediately be sent to the dissection table. Before then, an uncontrollable Karen might tear every creature on this floor to shreds.
Heavy, dragging footsteps sounded outside the locker room door.
Karen had returned.
Barnes leaned against the locker door, the stinging sensation of the black scales still lingering in his palm. He looked up at the enormous, distorted black shadow cast through the crack in the door by her towering back.
The veteran's eyes conveyed a complex mixture of emotions: pity for the younger generation, anger towards the Creator, and a sense of desolation at preparing to end it all himself.
In the lower levels of the Sanctuary was an underground bar called 'The Wreck'.
The air was thick and murky here, like lungs stuffed with oil-soaked cotton. A few tungsten lamps flickered precariously in the dim light, barely surviving. Barnes slammed a bottle of strong synthetic rum, with its label peeled off, onto the greasy wooden table and pushed it towards Karen Vance.
He wore a heavy, waterproof overcoat that covered his entire body, the hood pulled low over his head, and he trembled slightly. The restraints were so tight that he couldn't breathe deeply like a normal person.
'Drink up, kid,' said Barnes, pouring himself a full glass. The pungent liquid slid down his throat and he let out an aged sigh. 'This stuff is made with industrial alcohol, but at least it'll quiet down the "noise" in your head for a while.'
Karen held out his hand.
In the dim light, his fingers, distorted by his transformation, appeared abnormally long and his nails were a deep, sickly blue. As he grasped the cold glass, Barnes could clearly hear a faint 'crack' — the sound of the glass cracking under immense biological pressure.
Karen didn't drink.
His eerie blue eyes, hidden in the shadows, were fixed on the throbbing artery in Barnes's neck like a predator's. In his eyes, Barnes was no longer the stern instructor, but a dark red vortex radiating alluring heat.
'I... am not thirsty,' he said. His voice was like a pebble pulled from the bottom of an abyss, carrying a chilling weight.
Barnes remained silent for a moment, then took out the black scales he had found in the locker room and gently rubbed them between his fingertips. The metallic scraping sound was particularly jarring in the silent booth.
"Karen, do you remember what I told you when you first picked up a gun?" He lowered his voice, leaned forward and his eyes filled with an almost desperate resolve. "I said, 'In this city, you are Silas's blade.' But if the blade breaks, it will be thrown into the furnace."
Karen's breathing quickened and the black fins on his back bulged uneasily beneath his trench coat as if something were about to burst forth.
"If this city is no longer safe, run to the northern wilderness," said Barnes, staring intently into Karen's eyes and enunciating each word clearly.
"The north?" Karen's voice held a hint of doubt.
'There's a strong interference zone left over from the Great Annihilation. The Sanctuary's satellites can't detect it.' Barnes pulled an old compass engraved with latitude and longitude from his pocket and quietly placed it in Karen's cold palm. 'Although it's a dead zone, at least you can survive there like a beast instead of being scrapped like a cog in the machine here.'
Karen gripped the compass tightly.
She knew what Barnes meant: it was the old soldier's last act of mercy, a tiny crack in Silas's tight surveillance network.
But he knew even more clearly that he couldn't escape.
He wasn't just Silas's asset; he was also Leia's guardian. If he fled north, the golden-eyed factor within her would become Silas's sole experimental target. She would be thoroughly dissected, diluted and consumed, ultimately turning into greyish-white powder.
"Barnes… thank you."
Karen stood up; the restraint beneath his trench coat let out a mournful cry before breaking. Without looking at Barnes, he pushed open the door and walked into the endless acid rain outside.
Inside the bar, Barnes looked at the amber liquid swirling in his glass and gave a bitter smile. He knew this might be the last time they drank together. Meanwhile, on the top floor of the skyscraper opposite, Silas was listening to this conversation about 'defection' in real time through the biosensors in Karen's spine.
In the shadows of the water treatment plant, Barnes dragged Karen into a soundproof room filled with discarded filter cartridges. He took out an unlabelled silver metal tube from his pocket. Inside was a concentrated syringe emitting a dark green glow.
'This was stolen from the old "Achilles" lab, codenamed "Acheron".'
His voice was low and heavy with desperation. 'It can forcibly freeze your Adam cells, pushing all those black scales, gill slits and predatory urges back into the depths of your genes. After you take it, you'll become human again. At least for the next 24 hours, Silas's bio-monitoring won't detect your mutation.' Karen took the cold metal tube. He could feel his Leviathan genes tremble and recoil instinctively upon contact with the drug's scent.
[Biological effect: cryometabolic inhibition]
The principle behind this drug is extremely cruel: it deceives the immune system by inducing all cells in the body to enter a feigned 'necrotic state', thereby halting mutation.
Positive effects: Abnormal traits completely revert, sanity is restored to 100% and all biological locations are blocked.
Side effects: Every minute of lucidity comes at the cost of burning the host's internal organs and bone marrow, reducing their life expectancy to less than seven days.
'This is poison.' Karen looked up, her pale blue pupils reflecting Barnes's aged face. 'You're making me kill myself.'
'I'm giving you a choice: to be recycled by Silas as a crazed monster or to give Leah a dignified send-off as a "human".' Barnes pressed Karen's shoulder earnestly. 'The Northern Wasteland is too far, Karen. If you don't take this drug, you won't be able to escape the Sanctuary's scanning range.' Just then, a soft cough came from the rest area next door.
As the approaching missile swarm grew closer, the stabilising factors within Leah became extremely unstable due to fear. Karen looked down at his barbed claws, stained with the blood of his comrades, and touched the restraints digging into his bones beneath his trench coat.
He was reaching his limit.
If he lost his mind during the breakout, Leah might be the first person he tore apart.
'Give her to me.' Karen said calmly, without the slightest hesitation. He abruptly pulled open the sleeve of his left arm, revealing a dense network of blue veins, and precisely inserted the needle into one of them.
A chilling liquid spread rapidly throughout his body via the veins. Karen could clearly hear the desperate cracking of the obsidian scales snapping within him. The black fins on his back began to soften and retract, sinking back into the gaps in his deformed spine. His gill slits slowly closed and tender human skin grew back.
The burning hunger that had tormented him for weeks was instantly replaced by an icy coldness.
He looked down at his hands. The claws had gone and his nails had returned to their normal colour. He once again felt the precision and composure befitting an 'Executor'. However, with each heartbeat came a knife-like emptiness.
'How do you feel?' Barnes asked.
Karen stood up; his back throbbed with pain from the bone remodelling, but his eyes remained as still as a deep pool. He pulled his trench coat tighter and his voice regained its magnetic yet emotionless tone.
'I feel... I'm finally about to be free.'
The 'Acheron' potion was frantically draining the last vestiges of life force from Karen's veins.
On the verge of extreme cold and physiological shock, his consciousness began to flicker violently, like a shattered television signal. He was carrying Leah through an abandoned sewage tunnel leading to the northern wasteland when the rusty pipes before him gradually twisted and stretched, transforming into a dark, boundless deep-sea plain.
The sound of Barnes's panting had been replaced by a low-frequency pulse of radio waves, like whale song.
'You finally heard it, Karen Vans... or should I call you the firstborn son of the Achilles sequence?'
A deep, elegant and ancient voice echoed within Karen's mind.
In that illusory deep sea, he saw a colossal throne constructed from countless shipwrecks and glowing corals. Seated on the throne was a man — Aris Thorne. Rather than wearing restraints or an executor's uniform, his upper body was bare and covered in silver-blue scales. His artistically crafted gills stretched freely in the seawater (or perhaps highly polluted liquid).
"Aris…" Karen thought, 'Silas said you were a cancer to this city.'
'Silas was just a madman trying to raise dragons in a fish tank.' Aris chuckled and extended a hand to Karen across the illusory dimension. 'And you are the most perfectly evolved individual. Your suffering stems from trying to restrain the gods with human morality.'
As the radio waves intensified, Karen could feel the black fins, suppressed by the potion, growing rapidly in her hallucinations and almost obscuring the entire deep sea.
'The Northern Wasteland is not your refuge; it's just another cage.' Aris's figure drew closer; his eyes were devoid of predatory madness and possessed only a chilling calm. 'Ten thousand metres below the Sanctuary lies a kingdom called "Hymn".' 'There, Leah won't need to hide, and you'll no longer need these bloodstained constraints.'
'This is a bio-resonance invitation that transcends physical barriers.'
Using the complex metal network of the sewers and Karen's heightened sensitivity following her mutation, Aris showed her a morbid yet magnificent new world dominated entirely by Adam cells.
'Karen! Wake up!'
Barnes' slap pulled Karen back from his hallucination into reality.
He opened his eyes abruptly and found himself lying in knee-deep sewage, with blue foam overflowing from his mouth and nose due to a drug rejection reaction. Leah knelt beside him, anxiously trying to stabilise his nearly stopped heart with neutralising agents.
'I heard Aris's voice.' Gripping Barnes' collar, Karen's voice was so weak it was almost inaudible: 'He's down there...he's waiting for the "firstborn" to come home.' Barnes's face turned deathly pale. He knew who Aris Thorne was — the most successful and dangerous escaped experimental subject in the history of the Sanctuary. If Karen joined Aris, Barnes would be standing completely against human civilisation.
The Sanctuary Central Hub is the core medical tower of the B.R.A.
Karen Vance's electronic file, which had been displaying red instructions for 'Emergency Intervention' and 'Inhibitor Infusion', instantly changed to 'Observation Only'.
All the medical robots retracted their arms simultaneously, and the expensive serums that could stabilise the gene chain were resealed in the cryogenic safe.
'Since he's already injected himself with Acheron, there's no need for us to waste resources repairing a vessel destined to break.' Silas stood behind the glass wall, tracing the holographic projection of Karen's disintegrating cellular structure with his fingertips. Deep within the sewers, in the most secretive Leviathan Laboratory of the Research Department, dozens of screens were displaying Karen's physiological data in real time.
Core temperature: 32.5°C (continuing to decrease).
Organ failure rate: 42%
Brain compatibility: Undergoing violent fluctuations
The researchers frantically recorded the data. This was no longer a manhunt, but an illegal experiment that was pushing the limits of human endurance. They wanted to see exactly how long the human heart could withstand the Leviathan's instincts once a perfect biological weapon had lost all restraint and been injected with a lethal sedative.
'He's hallucinating,' said one researcher, pointing to Karen's unusually active temporal lobe brainwaves. 'He seems to be resonating with some external frequency. Is it Aris Thorne?'
'Let him make contact,' Silas replied calmly. 'I want to see if two flawed individuals coming together can produce the "ultimate evolution" I want.' Silas then cut off all live-fire authorisation to the manhunt forces.
He issued a puzzling order: surround, but do not kill.
The pursuers drove Karen, Leah and Barnes towards the deadly sewer shaft leading to the abyss step by step, like herding sheep.
Desperate to watch Karen strip away his final shred of humanity, Silas waited to see if, when the medication wore off, she would open her jaws wide in agony at Leah or crawl back to the sanctuary like a dog, begging for salvation.
Deep in the sewers.
Karen leaned against the cold pipe wall. Large sections of his retina had begun to detach, blurring his vision. He could feel the frost within him, 'Acheron', receding and being replaced by a vengeful backlash that was more violent and scorching than ever before.
His spine cracked under the strain and the restraints snapped under the terrifying tension.
"Silas is watching us."
Karen looked up. Though he was almost blind, his newly grown black fins could clearly detect the faint electromagnetic waves emitted by the surveillance cameras.
He understood. This funeral was being watched by the whole of the Sanctuary.
Lia gripped his hand tightly. The golden energy within her pupils grew exceptionally bright as Karen weakened, as if it were about to transform into a lightsaber, piercing through layers of darkness.