Kane floated in the arctic water, marveling at how quickly his body had adapted. The deep gashes across his ribs from the security station fight had sealed completely, leaving only pale lines that pulsed with the same pearlescent glow as his neural implant. Even the shoulder he'd dislocated fleeing the apex felt stronger now, enhanced muscles knitting themselves into something denser, more resilient. Pierce's modified virus was turning his flesh into living armor - something engineered to survive this sunless hell.

The six freshly absorbed pearls radiated cold power through his veins like trapped souls, each one pushing his evolution further. Where the security officer's original combat knowledge had given him foundation, these new adaptations coursed through his cells with predatory intent. His muscles coiled with serpentine efficiency through water cold enough to kill, pressure adaptations letting him operate at depths that should have crushed his lungs.

Through the competing lights - stark industrial floods fighting crimson emergency strips - Kane watched the Leviathan's grotesque mass arrange itself. The creature's titanic form displaced water with terrible purpose, each movement sending pressure waves strong enough to pulverize concrete. Its flesh undulated with internal movement as stolen minds calculated attack patterns, faces pressing against transparent skin sections in endless waves of horror and ecstasy.

"Just you and me now, Moby," Kane called out, his voice carrying new harmonics adapted for the crushing depths. "No more backup dancers."

The Leviathan's response sent vibrations through the water that made his bones resonate. Its evolved vocal structures - dozens of mutated throats arranged in horrible harmony - produced sounds that spoke of hunger refined through a century of patient evolution. Each note carried fragments of stolen voices, human screams twisted into something ancient and wrong.

Kane felt the creature testing his defenses, stolen minds pressing against his consciousness like teeth probing for weakness. Six pearls worth of adapted knowledge fought back, but the Leviathan's presence overwhelmed his senses. Where he had absorbed six sets of evolutionary knowledge, the creature had consumed hundreds. Its massive brain, visible through transparent bone, writhed with thoughts gathered across ninety-nine years of patient hunting.

"Five hundred and ninety-four years," Kane muttered, doing the math that might spell his death. "That's how much evolutionary experience you've got packed in that twisted head of yours. Six against five hundred and ninety-four." He barked out a laugh that sent frozen bubbles spiraling through the water. "Good thing I was never great at odds."

The Leviathan struck first, its thirty meters of corrupted flesh surging forward with impossible speed. Kane felt the attack coming through pressure changes in the water, his borrowed instincts screaming warnings a heartbeat before that cathedral-sized head would have pulverized him. He twisted aside, enhanced muscles propelling him through the killing cold as teeth large enough to shear through battleship armor snapped shut where he'd been floating.

The near miss sent him tumbling through the frigid water, but his body responded with inherited precision. Where once he would have flailed helplessly, now his limbs moved with deadly grace, each motion calculated and purposeful. The cold had become almost welcoming, his adapted flesh turning arctic temperatures into a weapon instead of hindrance.

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"Too slow," Kane taunted, feeling how sound twisted differently through the pressurized depths. "All those minds and you still can't catch one guy? Maybe you should have eaten some cheetahs instead of scientists."

The creature's massive eye tracked him, pupil contracting in the harsh flood lights. Through its transparent skull, Kane watched neural patterns ripple through its evolved brain - hundreds of absorbed minds coordinating, learning, adapting to his movements. The hunt was just beginning.

This time the attack came from below, the Leviathan's behemoth frame moving with the predatory grace of something that had mastered the three-dimensional battlefield of underwater combat. Its colossal shape blocked out the emergency lights as it rose, creating a wall of corrupted flesh studded with pearls that gleamed like trapped fragments of consciousness.

Kane kicked hard, enhanced muscles straining as he shot upward. The creature's jaws closed with titanic force, but instead of trying to evade, he used the pressure wave from its attack to propel himself higher. His fingers found purchase on its slick skin, newly hardened nails digging into flesh that should have been impenetrable.

The Leviathan's hide rippled beneath his grip as faces pressed outward, trying to swallow him into their shared prison. Kane pulled himself along its mountainous frame, feeling the creature's biological electricity through his palms. Each pearl he passed sang to something hungry in his blood, promising power if he could just tear them free.

"Sorry about this," he growled, plunging his hand into transparent flesh where a particularly large pearl pulsed beneath the surface. "But I'm gonna need to make a withdrawal."

The creature's roar of fury sent pressure waves through the killing cold, harmonics threatening to shatter his eardrums. Each frequency carried fragments of human speech - pleas for mercy, tactical commands, children's laughter, all twisted into a symphony of consumption that made his neural implant shriek with feedback.

Before his fingers could close around the pearl, muscular contractions rippled through the Leviathan's grotesque expanse. Kane felt the trap a moment too late as the creature's skin began to fold inward, trying to pull him into its mass like an anemone consuming prey. Faces pressed against him from all sides as the living prison tried to absorb a new consciousness into its collective.

The security officer's combat training screamed warnings, but these were threats no human had been trained to fight. Kane kicked hard, enhanced muscles straining against biological mechanisms that had evolved specifically to trap and consume. His fingers left deep gouges in the creature's flesh as he tore himself free, trailing streamers of corrupted tissue that froze instantly in the arctic water.

"Okay," he gasped, blood clouding around him in frozen crystals. "That was unpleasant."

The Leviathan turned with terrible grace, its serpentine immensity coiling through the water like something birthed from mankind's oldest nightmares. Kane felt its focused attention as hundreds of absorbed consciousnesses coordinated their attack. The hunt was evolving, and his six pearls of borrowed knowledge suddenly felt very small against the creature's century of adapted experience.

Time to find out if Dr. Pierce's modifications were everything the man had hoped. Time to discover if the virus engineered to reshape humanity could stand against something that had transcended flesh itself.

The water around them began to boil with biological electricity as both predators prepared for the next phase of combat. In the competing lights, Kane caught glimpse of more preserved remnants of the facility's final hours - lab coats, clipboards, coffee cups frozen in time. Silent witnesses to whatever fresh horror was about to unfold in these pressurized depths.

The hunt was far from over. And somewhere in the darkness ahead, evolution itself waited to see which path would prove stronger - careful engineering or savage adaptation. Time to rise or die trying.

"Round two?" Kane called out, feeling borrowed power surge through his veins. "Come on then, Moby. Show me what else you've got to teach me about evolution."