The text hovered in my field of view, a pop-up that wouldn’t go away.
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋
The first time it popped up I’d dismissed it out of hand, but when it came back, it did so with a vengeance. The popup twitched and deformed, screeching up at my eyes and into my brain. The question might have been posed as three simple words, but it felt as if something was trying to claw its way through my skull.
“What the fudge did you do to my augs!?” I croaked out, barely holding on to the frame of the door.
“I forced it to loop a bad online request. It’s trying to… oh shit.” Doctor Moreau hurried closer, grabbing my hands to look at them. “Your hands are swollen. This must be some sort of allergic reaction to the anesthesia. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“What?”
“If they call an ambulance they might check your ID, see I’m not a VIP anymore. Just because the systems won’t ping us doesn’t mean someone can’t connect two and two.” Grabbing my hand, she pulled me out of the container. “I can do a tracheostomy if things get bad, but it’d be a whole lot better if we get out before your throat swells shut.”
My eyes widened. “WHAT!?”
“Let’s not draw more attention than we need to, shall we?” She began to drag me out through the maze of containers while I tumbled.
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋
It was as if the message had physically punched me in the face. I barely managed to retain my balance, clutching at my head with my free hand. I tried to ping my neuralink to close all popups, but it just sent back a confirmation it already had. An attempt to scan my system got me an annoyed look from Moreau and an angry-face emoji on my screen.
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋
I’ve been in my fair share of scuffles, sort of comes with the territory. Orphan pod-sleeper with a scholarship in a fancy school? Sooner or later someone on either side of the fence would get the idea in their head that I was a problem they could solve. This felt like someone with aug-arms was trying to punch through my forehead and reach through to grab my spine.
The pop-up came with this insistence, this feeling of something or someone trying to coerce my brain into answering.
“Just hold out, once we’re on the elevator we can deal with this.” Moreau hissed through gritted teeth.
The sound of her shoes squeaking against polished floors boomed through the growing migraine. The tingling in my arms was worsening into a bone-deep numbness, they were swelling, constrained within my ever tighter jacket and shirt.
Mercifully, I could still breathe, no tightness in my throat just yet.
Actually, I could breathe perfectly fine. My head might be about to explode and splatter the corridor in red, but at least I could smell the chemicals that’d been used to clean the floors. Scents in the air were becoming more… not more intense but sharper, deeper. Moreau reeked of adrenaline and fear, barely contained under a cheap deodorant I faintly recognized.
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋
I winced, gritting my teeth. “I bthinging?” My tongue felt wrong in my mouth, not swollen but also not the right shape either. I coughed, my throat felt like sandpaper. “Wathah.”
Moreau froze, looking at me. Her heartbeat redoubled, eyes wide, face slightly pale. She turned away just as fast, looking around the corridor. I could almost see the calculus breaking out in her head, the distance remaining to the elevator versus the distance to the nearest first-aid kit.
“Just hold on.” She tugged harder this time, the powerwalk now bordered on a light jog.
The instant she spotted someone, she slowed down, just barely enough to only look annoyed and in a hurry rather than desperate and in a rush. I tried to keep pace, but I kept stumbling, feeling my feet uncomfortably tight inside my shoes. The headache wasn’t getting any better, and-
A labcoat wearing scientist approached, I recognized them from the AK01 group. “Doctor, what-”
“Sorry, something urgent came up.” Moreau butted in.
My eyes locked on the water-bottle the man was holding. I covered my mouth as I coughed again, and Moreau caught on.
“Do you mind? I think Axel inhaled some dust or something.”
“Certainly, go right ahead. I’ll just-” He didn’t even finish the sentence in the time that I’d snatched the bottle off of his hands, meaty fingers fiddling to open it before I started to chug it down. “Wowza, poor guy must be famished. Is he alright?”
“Just peachy. Look, I’d rather not waste either of our times, so let’s talk later?"
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋
I nearly choked.
My mind swam with thousands of images. Memories of cheap, fully AI-generated cartoons flushed out, hours upon hours of monsters. Monsters eating trucks. Monsters at the gates. Monsters rising up from the sea and eating up the stereotypical factory workers. Every movie and every series would start with the same outline: Monsters show up and they start killing things. I loved watching those movies as a kid, sitting on my father’s lap while he pointed out the parts that weren’t real. How we laughed at the corny exaggerated special effects…
I shook my head, trying to focus on the present. We were walking again, and I was putting one foot ahead of the other.
What sort of neuralink virus was this? It was hard to believe Moreau hadn’t been the one to put it there. Maybe she was infected and her systems were just too well-built for the malware to pose an inconvenience. I really should’ve just stayed in bed and spent the time jailbreaking my augs once midnight had hit.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I stumbled again, shoes too tight, toes curling, swollen. I was also a little sweaty, the tingling hadn’t exactly abated, whatever was wrong with my neuralink was mixing with this weird reaction in all the wrong ways. It was as if I was frozen in that moment in time right before a sneeze, it was making my neck stiff and my nose itchy.
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋
I grimaced, swiping away the popup even as my vision swam in a rain of sparks. The question demanded an answer, it spoke beyond the confines of those three words and sought to plunder my skull empty. There, somewhere deep within me, I felt myself trying to form an answer.
If only to be rid of this mother of all migraines.
The pop-up tried to pull more images of monsters out of my childhood, of that time in my life where the threat they posed was imaginary and hypothetical. Instead, I steered my focus beyond that, to the anger, to the years spent looking up every single thing that a human could wield that could kill monsters.
Every monster had a weapons platform that could kill it.
W̸͒͗ͣha̸̫͍̤̺̮̯̋̄͡t ̷̢̞̳͍ͩ̃ͮ̀̿͛̅ͪ̕͡is̵̶͚͇̝͇̤̦̰͒ͦ̉̏̿͌ͭ̄̽ š̛̹̭̫͈͈͇͐̆̓̓̃͗̈́̌̆͝͞tŗ̱̳̙ͤ̈͑͑̊̀͐̉ͦ́̚͝ͅen̸̷̯͔̤͇̱͊͛̊͆ͭ͠gt̢̧̬̎̌̂͞h?ͅ
The question was the same, but the tone had shifted, a mocking question, now. It mocked me, it laughed at me. It pointed at the singular image of a monster standing upon a very familiar platoon of dead humans. Before I could even think, the image shifted. It turned into a newsreel, a factory burning to the ground, a monster tearing through the wreckage.
Both of these images were well known to me, they’d been burned into my memory.
The pop-up didn’t speak, didn’t say a word, yet it seemed to laugh. If humans were so strong, then why had these monsters taken so much from me? It even pulled out a memory of a book I’d read, of how humans could barely handle a D-class, and a C was far too much for us, only a meguca being able to handle them.
Gritting my teeth I would’ve refused the point out of sheer stubbornness, but my gaze caught on Moreau, and I remembered the AK01. It was a ready answer, one I clung to, pulling it to the forefront of my mind.
My thoughts screamed out at the pop-up in some twisted sense of sadistic glee. Humans could take anything the monsters dished out and use it to kill them right back.
I honestly did not know what was going on, but after everything today, an allergic-induced hallucination felt like the perfect cherry on top to bring everything to a close.
W̿h̠a̱t͟ ̳i͞s̱ ̿s͞t̄r̿e̠ṉg͞ṯh͟?̳
The text was… Warning me? Angry? What?
DING
We were standing in front of the elevator doors. I barely remembered how we got here, or the past few minutes for that matter. My clothes felt like they’d shrunk two sizes, the tingling was gone, numbness having reached my bones. Glancing at Moreau, I realized she was looking at me, face full of concern, her lips moving but not a word making it through the ringing in my ears.
The elevator doors opened, and my nose was flooded with a smell, pungent, putrid, and sickly.
There at the center of the elevator was a loaded cage on top of a motorized flat-bed. The container was a construct of heavy composite metal at least a foot thick, ridges and bolts lined up the sides and top of the container, reinforcements that were also bolted down onto the hauler. The only part of the box that had any open space was the front, with bars as thick as my forearm was long.
There was a monster in the cage.
It looked like it’d been plucked straight out of a textbook:
> F-Class, Carnage-Type. Codename: Hell-kitty.
A creature shaped like a tiger that’d been melded with a shredder. Its dark body was coated with wicked curved blades put down haphazardly. Like every other monster, its features were deformed, bloated, twisted, its shoulders prominent and muscular, its paws with more claws, its fangs too large for its mouth. The thing even had four tails, each one tipped with a wicked blade and bolted down to the cage itself.
Every part of the monster was chained down, restrained, and tightly held in place. The creature couldn’t even open its mouth, even as it kept futilely struggling to break free.
Then, our eyes met.
Time stopped.
Suddenly, I wasn’t in a laboratory anymore, I stood in a jungle of orange leaves and green skies. Where mountains floated overhead, uncaring for gravity, cascades of purple water rising up into the clouds. Three moons hung beyond the horizon, a red sun peeking in between the trio of celestial spheres. A warm humid breeze blew across my face, carrying with it a thousand different scents, each one distinct, unique… and powerful.
“Axel?” Blinking at Moreau’s voice, the illusion broke.
Yet I felt like I hadn’t quite escaped it, the strange earthy scent still lingered, clinging to me like honey. I tried to breathe in, but my jaw was all wrong, my body was all wrong. Clothes were drenched in sweat and too tight, bones too numb, head full of fire.
The monster bared its fangs through the steel muzzle and hissed, its whole body going rigid, its putrid scent carrying with it a hint of… fear?
I took half a step forward, a stumble more than any actual intention to get closer.
With that, the calm broke, and the monster began to thrash with renewed vigor. The stench of fear turned to one of terror, mixed in with fury and aggression. My nostrils flared and eyes widened, seeing as the monster’s violent attempt to break free became desperate.
Then, the blades on the monster began to glow a searing red, burning into the metal.
Every hair on my body stood on end, a shiver of danger running down my spine.
Moreau seemed to realize something was wrong, that a Hell-Kitty should not be able to do what it was currently doing. She’d lunged for the alarm.
Sparks were starting to fly where metal met monster, steel shrieking and breaking, the creature growing, snarling, and its thrashing growing in power. More and more blades were breaking out of its body, tearing through its fur and adding to the unholy mesh of red-hot blender and fur.
Meanwhile, lights overhead turned blinking orange alarms, a siren blaring out.
I’d been unable to move a single step. I vaguely realized Moreau was trying to pull me away, but I couldn’t look away from the monster, barely able to move. My body felt too heavy to move, transfixed by the monster as more tails began to sprout out of its back, it kept growing in size and straining the chains until they began to break one by one.
The monster swung its extra tails, creating a criss-crossing of red-hot lines upon the metal, chipping away at it as the cage became ever more brittle. The monster, somehow, had evolved, transformed in a way that shouldn’t have been able to.
E-Class, Carnage-Type & Fire-Type. Codename: Hell-cat.
The handling between an F and an E class monsters were worlds apart. My gaze tore from the monster, realizing how unprepared everyone was to deal with this threat.
Scientists were still rushing off, seeking the safety of the panic rooms, Moreau meanwhile had let go of me and plugged herself into a terminal a few paces away from the elevator. They were too slow, too many of them would be unable to get to safety in time.
What is strength?
Like the ring of a bell, the words came with naked intent, an offer. What did I want?
A surge of certainty rushed through me, anger and fear mixed into a jumble of thoughts. The monster wanted me dead, and I didn’t want to die. But with the notion of survival came something else, something deeper.
I also wanted it dead.
The pop-up laughed without a voice or a sound, satisfaction oozed out of it as the text flickered and expanded, encompassing the whole of my vision, branding the singular word into place.
G͔̖̱̣̫͒͝R̥͓͛̓͒̓̄A̷̗̍ͪ͋̚͝N͖̥̲͒ͥ͂͜T͎̱͎̓̂̓ͯẼ̷̵̖̀͒͢D̬͕̖̬̋̍̈́