Blood and frost mixed in the crushing depths as Kane faced the Leviathan's titanic mass. Seven pearls of absorbed power had changed him, each one pushing his evolution further from baseline human. The creature's presence pressed against his consciousness – hundreds of stolen minds working to destroy him. Through water cold enough to crystallize blood, faces pressed against transparent sections of its skin, their expressions changing in waves as absorbed intelligences contributed to the hunt.
"Getting tired yet, Moby?" Kane called out, watching his breath form frozen crystals in the arctic water. "Five hundred minds and you still can't catch one guy?"
The creature's response vibrated through the water with enough force to shatter ice, its massive form coiling through the chamber. Each movement displaced enough water to send waves crashing against the walls. Through its transparent sections, Kane watched its evolved brain process combat data – hundreds of pearls working together to solve the puzzle of his destruction.
That's when he felt it – raw power surging through his enhanced nervous system as something clicked into place. Energy arced between modified cells, and his right hand began to tingle, flesh remembering something it had never known.
▓═══ SYSTEM ALERT ═══▓
〢 SYNAPTIC SURGE DETECTED 〢
〢 NEURAL INTERFACE REBOOTING 〢
〢 PATTERNS ALIGNING 〢
〢 NANITE UPDATE INITIALIZING... 〢
〢 CORRUPTION GAUGE: 3/10 〢
▓════════════════════▓
"Update complete. Nanites fully dispersed. Initiating forced flesh change," Aria's voice suddenly cut through his consciousness, clinical and precise.
"Wait, what? Nanites?" Kane barely got the words out before agony exploded through his hand. The bones cracked audibly, splintering beneath his skin as they began to realign. He watched in horror as his fingers fused together, the joints snapping and reforming. Blood vessels burst and rewove themselves, creating new pathways through rapidly transforming tissue. The skin split in multiple places, leaking pearlescent light as nanomachines forced evolution at an impossible rate.
Each crack of bone echoed through the water as his radius and ulna twisted and merged, restructuring into a support for his new weapon. Tendons snapped like steel cables under strain, immediately regrowing into stronger configurations. The pain should have been unbearable, but somewhere deep in his modified cells, this felt predetermined – as if his body had been waiting for this moment.
"You knew," he gasped through the pain, dodging a massive tentacle even as his hand continued its grotesque transformation. "You knew I had nanites this whole time. What else haven't you told me, Aria?"
The realization hit harder than the physical pain. Every enhancement, every adaptation since waking - none of it had been random. The pearls hadn't just changed him; they'd activated something already waiting in his cells. Something Pierce had put there.
"WHEN?" Kane roared, his voice carrying frequencies that didn't sound human anymore. "WHEN DID HE DO ALL OF THIS TO ME?"
The scream that tore from his throat wasn't human either - a sound of rage and betrayal that merged with something darker, something engineered. The Leviathan actually recoiled as that cry reverberated through the pressurized depths, recognizing perhaps a monster of a different kind. Ice crystals formed and shattered in the water from the sound's intensity.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Focus on survival now. Explanations later," Aria replied tersely as more bones cracked and reformed.
"Is this what you wanted, Pierce?" Kane snarled through clenched teeth, watching his flesh split and reform. "Building your perfect weapon while I slept? How long were you playing god with my body?"
The Leviathan's roar shook the chamber as blood and other fluids froze in clouds around Kane's transformed hand. Where human fingers had been, a flat plane of bone and condensed tissue now extended, its edge gleaming with internal light. Each movement sent fresh waves of pain through newly formed nerve clusters as his brain mapped this impossible new appendage.
╔═══ ANALYSIS ACTIVE ═══╗
〢 ANALYZING BIOLOGICAL MODIFICATION 〢
〢 DETECTING REINFORCED BONE STRUCTURE 〢
〢 TENSILE STRENGTH: EXCEEDING LIMITS 〢
〢 NEURAL INTEGRATION: COMPLETE 〢
〢 CORRUPTION GAUGE: 3/10 - STABLE 〢
╚════════════════════════════╝
"DON'T!" Kane's next cry rattled steel and bone alike. "You knew. This whole time, you knew what he put inside me. What he made me into!"
"Preparation for what?" Kane's scream sent new shock waves through the water, rage burning hotter than the arctic cold around him. "You turned me into this THING without my consent, made me your fucking lab rat, and you want to talk about PREPARATION?" Each word carried more fury than the last, the inhuman frequencies of his altered voice making the metal walls vibrate. "How long, Aria? HOW LONG was Pierce experimenting on me before I even stepped into that pod? Was anything about me still human when I went to sleep?"
The Leviathan moved to attack, but Kane's fury had transcended tactical thinking. His blade-hand struck with savage desperation, shearing through corrupted flesh in brutal arcs that sent frozen gore spinning through the water. Each strike carved deeper than the last, his rage lending strength that even his engineered muscles shouldn't have possessed. Where before he'd fought with precision, now he threw himself at the creature with berserker abandon, caring less about defense than making something else feel as violated as he did.
"Your emotional state is—" Aria began, but Kane cut her off with another inhuman roar.
"SHUT UP!" He slammed his transformed hand into the creature's transparent flesh, watching his blade-edge sink deep into its mass. "I'm done being someone's EXPERIMENT!"
Blood and tissue froze in expanding clouds around them as Kane tore into the Leviathan with unrestrained fury. His blade-hand carved through flesh that should have been impervious, each strike driven by betrayal older than his ninety-nine year sleep. The creature's pearls pulsed with what might have been fear as Kane's attacks grew more savage, more desperate - the movements of something that had discovered its own monstrosity.
The faces trapped in the Leviathan's flesh showed recognition now. Not of tactics or combat skill, but of rage - pure, transformative rage that could reshape flesh and bone. They had become monsters through blind evolution, but Kane's transformation was being forged in the fire of his fury, tempered by a sense of violation that transcended mere survival.
He felt his left hand begin to tingle as new nanites stirred to life, awakened perhaps by the intensity of his rage. More bones cracked and shifted, more flesh split and reformed. But the pain only fed his fury, each new transformation a reminder of how thoroughly he'd been changed without his knowledge or consent.
"Time to show you what engineered evolution looks like," Kane's voice carried tones that had never been human, never been meant for human vocal cords to produce. His second hand began to transform, bones liquefying and reforming into another weapon. "Let's see how your five hundred minds handle someone who's just discovered what he really is!"
The future wasn't just about survival anymore – it was about unleashing every horror Pierce had hidden in his cells, about discovering exactly what kind of monster he'd been built to become. The hunt had evolved into something personal, primal, driven by a rage that could reshape reality itself.
Time to rise, and show the Leviathan what true nightmare looked like.