The walk back was the longest Glen could ever remember. Not in distance, but every step was a struggle carrying the weight of the battle they had just lost. Two team members dead, two team members barely alive; their mission had ended in complete failure.

Teams Artemis and Specter were no more, they had been dismantled easily by one man. It wasn’t even the work of a life time, they had been shattered in a single morning. He had made it look effortless.

Returning they had to sneak their way slowly and carefully through the streets, the world had not stopped for them. Just because of what had been lost didn’t stop monsters from walking the streets. Twenty blocks should have only taken them a could hours to walk. Instead, as they got closer to Skytop the sun was already beginning to set. Glen couldn’t focus on that though, he just replayed the morning over and over again in his head.

That man, Gideon, had picked them apart so easily. With grace and fluidity Glen couldn’t have imagined before having seen it for himself. He had moved like water, calm and flowing from one attack to the next. Glen had believed himself to be at the top of his game, but now he knew just how far he had to go before he was even on the same playing field as that lunatic.

Douglas brought Glen out of his musings with a question, “Hey boss, we’re getting close but we’re traveling down the longer roads now cutting back in towards the center. We’re losing the light, and you know the rampant get more active at night. Do you want to push forward or tuck in for the night?”

With this Glen took a moment to assess his situation, regrounding himself in reality. It had gotten darker; oddly he hadn’t noticed. Now that he was paying closer attention, he saw depth to the shadows he had missed seconds before. His body was moving on instincts it seemed, maybe the adrenaline had heightened his senses. Just like that though it all came crashing back down and he felt exhausting deep in his bones.

“Yeah, you’re right Doug. We could probably make it back, but we’ve already lost too much on this trip. Let’s hunker down and we can make it back first thing tomorrow morning.”

With that the group ducked in to a decrepit building that only had most of its glass shattered out. Douglas and Glen did a quick search of the building but found nothing of danger. The building was smaller for this area of the city, only three stories high. It appeared as though the first floor was a butcher shop pre-fall, but it was picked clean long ago. All the knives had been stolen, and a thick layer of dust settled over the entire ground floor.

What was left of the two teams was assembled in a single bedroom on the third floor. It was bare of any creature comforts with the exception of a rundown mattress, a dresser with a vanity, and surprisingly a closet that still had some clothes pushed hanging in dry bags. If one thing survived the fall off man, it was style.

Everyone spoke amongst themselves, while also somehow not saying anything that mattered after everything they’d seen in the last twenty four hours. Pirah was still going in and out of consciousness, Douglas was certain that she had a concussion. The couple times she did briefly wake up she was completely incoherent rambling on asking if she, “got him.” Everyone was bloodied and battered, but of the survivors she had taken the worst of the beating.

Team Specter was worse for wear than Artemis, half their people dead, and the other half limping. Miles found himself a bathroom on the third floor a little away from the others and let out the tears he had been holding back from the others. Bryan and Jordan were family to him, and they had been taken. Bryan was taken by monsters, he could forgive that. They were mindless killing machines driven by their hunger. What he could not forgive was Jordan’s death. Her life was taken from her with no more thought than snuffing out a candle in the night.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The chill in the small room was eating away at everyone’s fortitude, it was seeping into their bones and draining away everything they had left. Earlier when securing the building they had decided against a fire, even with the windows covered using old blankets it wasn’t worth the risk of the flickering light drawing anything to them. Now though, they realized it was uncharacteristically cold for the season they were in.

With that Miles used a cooking pot and some tinder scavenged from the shop below to get a fire going. The flames were tiny, only producing the slightest hints at warmth, but the light it brought with it raised their spirits through the night.

“I’ll take first watch and stand guard at the stairwell on the second story.” Douglas muttered friendly. “We all took a pounding, but I think I’m holding up the best right now. If I’m being honest, you all look like shit.”

The silence hung in the air for just a couple seconds before Glen, Liz, and Miles all gave a quiet laugh. Pirah snored, loudly... Nobody could argue with that.

The four that remained in the room did their best to get comfortable even in the tight quarters. Pirah had one side of the best facing towards the window, Glen on the other hand had the far side facing the wall. Miles and Liz slept in their modest sleeping bags pulled from their packs, trying to make the best of a crappy situation.

As Glen laid there, he was unable to sleep. He felt a stirring deep within him. At first, it was only metaphorically. He needed to get up and right the wrongs of the world immediately. Then the stirring became more. A vibration coursing through him that was growing stronger by the minute.

He tossed and turned trying to ignore it, then trying to rationalize it as an overactive mind. The vibrating through his body was not stopping, it was accelerating now. He sat up slowly so as not to alarm his sleeping teammates. In the dim light Glen tried to take in his surroundings, and discovered just like before the area around him wasn’t as dark as it should have been. It was as if a much larger raging fire was lighting the room.

Looking around the room frantically panicking he was trying to think of when he had been poisoned, that’s when Glen looked straight in to the purple eyes of the creature across the room from him. No, locked eyes with himself. He was the purple eyed monster staring back from within the vanity mirror. Before he could scream in disbelief his body locked up.

"Assimilation process has begun."

This could not be happening! Glen felt like he was losing his mind. Whatever poison was affecting him, it was causing hallucinations now.

“Due to the large number of foreign nanites of various builds, less than 1% conversion is estimated for successful assimilation.”

His heart was pounding nonstop in his chest, the pain was starting to build and overtake his mind. Was Glen going insane? What was happening to him?

"AI integration at 0.01%"

Glens mind left him now. The burning sensation was all over his entire body. He could feel a writhing and wriggling under his skin. The muscles in his arms and legs began spasming. His body was being wracked as if he was having a seizure.

“Good luck, (User.) The upgrade process will begin in 10…9…8...”

Despite what the message was telling him, Glen was certain that the process had already begun. Between deep breaths, drawn in pain, he caught glimpses of his body, blue and silver lines moving along his veins. A pattern that he could barely comprehend was being drawn over his entire body.

“You have a long road ahead of you on your path, but if you manage to cultivate what grows inside you, you will stand at the pinnacle of man.”

His vision was fading to black, and the voice spoke in to his head reading out the message that had appeared in front of him as a bluescreen hovering in the air inches from his nose. Though it was highly distracting, the box before him was translucent and he could see his team members jumping awake around him as he began to thrash violently in the bed.

“3…2…1…”

Glen fell unconscious, no longer able to stay awake through the devastation the war being waged through his body brought with it. The people around him watched in horror as his body tore itself apart and rebuilt itself from within. Long healed scars opened, and blood oozed out. It ran quickly at first, but the bleeding stopped at an unnatural pace. All the while, Glen was in a deep sleep that protected him from the agony of living through the first step down his new [Path].