Through the arctic murk, Kane watched death approach with cathedral-like grandeur. The Leviathan coiled its immense form through the fractured lighting - crimson emergency strips fought against piercing white beams that cut through the water like frozen columns. In this nightmare strobe, the creature's movement took on a stuttering, dream-like quality, each pulse of light revealing a new configuration of its impossible anatomy.
The six pearls pulsing in his blood had changed more than just his muscles and reflexes. Each one added to the crackling synaptic energy coursing through his brain, power that should have been enough to restore his neural interface. Yet Aria remained silent, as if the flood of new neural patterns needed time to stabilize.
Its attack came in layers. The obvious thrust of its massive head was just the beginning - a feint designed to mask the real threat. Kane twisted away from the initial strike, but the real danger came from the pressure wave that followed. The creature had learned to weaponize water itself, turning the very medium they fought in into a killing tool.
Kane felt his enhanced muscles strain against the crushing force. Without Aria's guidance, he had to rely on borrowed instincts and what his new senses could tell him. The pearls in his blood hummed with recognition as similar ones in the Leviathan's flesh pulsed in patterns that suggested complex thought.
Through transparent sections of the creature's hide, he watched its massive brain process data. Faces pressed against the skin from within, their expressions changing in waves as absorbed minds contributed to the hunt. Each pearl in its flesh acted like a processor, hundreds of stolen consciousnesses working in concert to solve the puzzle of his destruction.
"Nice try," Kane snarled through gritted teeth, using the pressure wave itself to propel himself along the chamber's curved wall. "But I've gotten better at—"
The Leviathan's counter-attack cut his taunt short. Its flesh rippled as secondary hunting appendages - tentacle-like structures grown from mutated human arms - erupted from its flanks. Each one moved with terrible purpose, tipped with fingers that had evolved into barbed hooks perfectly adapted for snagging prey.
Kane dove deeper, feeling the arctic water try to crystallize his blood. The cold that should have killed him instead felt invigorating now, his adapted cells turning lethal temperatures into armor. Above him, the appendages twisted through the water like living spears, their movements suggesting years of refined hunting techniques.
He barely evaded the first three strikes, their hooked tips catching nothing but frozen water. The fourth grazed his shoulder, and even that light touch left deep gouges that quickly sealed with pearlescent light. His enhanced healing had become almost instantaneous - another gift from Pierce's modifications.
The Leviathan's titanic form suddenly blocked out the overhead beams, casting the chamber into bloody darkness lit only by emergency strips and the cruel glow of its countless pearls. Kane found himself studying those pearls, noting how they pulsed in synchronized patterns. The creature wasn't just attacking randomly - it was processing combat data through a distributed network of stolen minds.
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"Getting tired yet?" he called out, his voice carrying new harmonics tuned for the crushing depths. "Or do all those borrowed brains need a coffee break?"
The creature's response came not in sound but in action. Its enormous frame contorted in ways that violated physics, meat and bone flowing like clay as it reshaped itself. What had been a vaguely whale-like form became something else - a geometry of flesh that spoke of hunger refined through generations of evolution.
With each pearl he'd absorbed, Kane had felt the synaptic electricity in his brain intensify. Now, as his neurons fired in combat-driven overdrive, that power surged through his neural pathways. He felt almost pleased with himself as he slipped between two massive tentacles, his enhanced body moving with predatory grace. He was learning the creature's patterns, starting to anticipate—
〘 ! 〙 COMBAT ALERT 〘 ! 〙
"DODGE!"
Aria's voice crashed through his neural interface, powered by the desperate surge of synaptic electricity as six pearls worth of neural energy blazed through his enhanced nervous system. Pure reflex threw him sideways as a hidden appendage - camouflaged against the chamber's dark water - nearly took his head off. The attack had been perfectly masked, timed, and executed. If not for that warning...
"Thanks for dropping in," Kane muttered, but the interface had already gone dark again, the synaptic surge fading as his neural patterns sought new equilibrium with the absorbed pearls. He was alone again with the horror he'd been too cocky to spot.
The near miss taught him something crucial - the Leviathan wasn't just strong, it was clever. Those hundreds of absorbed minds weren't just processing power, they were experience. Military tacticians, security officers, researchers who understood human psychology - all working together to predict his movements.
Each pearl he consumed added to the electrical storm in his brain. Soon, maybe, there would be enough synaptic power to bring Aria back fully. But for now, he faced this nightmare alone.
Blood from his healed shoulder wound drifted in the water, freezing into crimson crystals that caught the emergency lighting like cruel confetti. The Leviathan's next attack would be worse. It had taken his measure now, understood his capabilities. Those hundreds of minds would find a way through his defenses.
Time to change the game.
Kane's gaze fixed on that massive pearl near what had once been the creature's heart - the first one, maybe, the one that had started its evolution. His enhanced vision picked out how other pearls seemed to defer to it, their patterns rippling outward from its pulses like a biological computer network.
"Come on then," he whispered, feeling the cold strength of his own absorbed knowledge. "Show me what else you've learned in ninety-nine years."
The water began to vibrate with subsonic frequencies as the Leviathan prepared its next assault. Through the crimson pulses and white beams, Kane watched death reshape itself once more. Aria's brief warning - powered by nothing more than his own enhanced synaptic electricity - proved the neural interface could still function. But until he absorbed more power, until his brain adapted further to these evolutionary changes, he was on his own.
The hunt was evolving. And with each pearl, with each surge of neural energy, Kane's body moved closer to whatever threshold would bring his silent partner back online. He just had to survive long enough to reach it.