This must be the recycling facility. The remains of her siblings floated in capsules lining the walls, kept fresh by the nutrient solution. Brains, legs, well-developed lungs, venom glands, vocal cords capable of producing sound waves that could destroy walls, and more organs. The picture sent a ripple of cold through her skin. A puzzle collection, a series of implants, ready to be used to assemble better, stronger, more durable, and deadlier products at a location of the owners’ choosing.

There were thousands of capsules in here. They stood behind transparent screens in the rooms filled with ice-cold air. Rime covered the steel parts. These sections occupied several floors, rising higher and higher.

A tube at the ceiling was spilling a gruesome stream into an acid vat in the center of this hall. Legs, torsos, and skinless bodies. Anything that did not meet the impossibly high standards went here. The ventilation system sucked in the resulting fumes, while the strange liquid passed through the cables leading from the vat and collected into pitch-black canisters at the room’s corners. Filtering devices. The devices spewed gray paste onto the moving lines, and small, elegant mechanical arms separated it into cubes, forming rations for the products. Nothing goes to waste. The humans here were making and remaking them to their liking, sifting for every flaw and abusing them for their pleasure. They even made the products feed on their own kin!

Number One wanted to speak. How dare you? You will all die. But the sheer inhumanity of this place choked the words. She had become a cannibal long before she realized it. The pyre of rage remained, sustained by hatred. These emotions she had experienced before. Love, care for her kin, fear—they were all given to the products by these people. They must know them; they certainly showed that they understood fear right now. So why did they do these horrors? Did someone damage them the way they hurt her?

The monster decided it wasn’t so. She would’ve never hurt that elderly lady who tried to help her. Monsters and people. This might be it. There were some who needed to be culled. For everyone’s safety, another monster had to set things right when humans were too kind or too weak.

Whitecoats nervously hid behind the canisters or tried to pry open doors leading off the hall. They used plasma cutters, a small, compact instrument that created a circle of superheated energy at its front. The men and women cut a passageway, and a scream pierced the anxious atmosphere as the first of their number set foot inside and fell back, jerking the ruined limb. Hot air blew from the corridor, frightening the confused people. Not every defense system was offline.

Their guards fared better, forming a barricade that divided the hall in two. Crates, unused capsules, equipment torn from the walls—everything heavy that could be removed was used to assemble the palisade, and the orange fiends took up positions on top of it, ready to fire and too worried about attacking first and provoking Number One.

“What is going on?!” She heard Academician’s roar. The man and his bodyguards were across the hall, next to the elevator doors. “Why is the mainframe not responding? Where are the combat suits? Where are the troops from above? Emergency repair teams! Turn off the heat and the toxins; the precious personnel are dying, you morons! And get the system back online; we need to contact headquarters.”

Her claws gouged veins in the steel floor, drawing his attention. Let him understand; let the knowledge that he had lost control over the situation and his future belonged to a mere product settle in. Academician turned, more annoyed than afraid. He raised his hand, snapped his fingers, and a pain gripped Number One’s entire being, buckling her legs. She gasped, clutching her chest, as Academician smiled thinly at the sight of an orange flash beneath her skin. Her heart ached, her limbs weakened, and the monster nearly splattered onto the floor. The moment of vulnerability had passed. Each subsequent breath grew stronger. Licking her lips clean, she rose and fixed her gaze on the man who had detonated a bomb in her chest.

Their ultimate safety precaution method had failed. Fool! What an arrogant fool she was! The hints were laid bare: why did her kin need a medical facility? They healed fast enough on their own. No, the government had to put them there to extract the deaths sleeping inside them. Her heart sustained damage, yet it was in one piece and healed rapidly. The blast had burned her lungs and torn her veins, but Number One was sure that it wasn’t even near to hinder her. She had made a mistake in believing that she was invulnerable. A mistake she had no intention of repeating.

“Rid me of this evolutionary cul-de-sac,” Academician growled. “No need to preserve anything; I’ll clone her again from her remains.”

The orange fiend in charge of the defense raised his hand, bellowing orders. His words turned into a shriek as his arm fell, and a cut bisected his body at the waist. The monster was on the barricade, standing amidst the lesser soldiers. Holes appeared in helmets, limbs flew, and splashes of crimson stained the observation windows of the cold storage sections.

It was a massacre. Taught by the assault on her chest, Number One took no chances. Her movements were too swift for the orange fiends to follow. Where their visual lenses and aim-assist systems tracked her just fine, the human bodies could not turn and raise their weapons in time. They died in droves, their suits crumpled by the displaced waves of air created by their movements. The monster’s hungry eyes discerned those brave enough to try to form a semblance of an order. She hunted them first, trampling several fiends along the way. The force of her strides ripped the power suits, her weight liquidating the bodies inside, often flattening an entire side of a guard’s body.

The fear of her presence, the lack of leadership, the inability to track the target had taken its toll on the people, and they panicked, firing blindly everywhere, hitting the covering whitecoats. Laser beams bent around power armor, opening holes in the scientists. Rockets’ explosions scattered terrified soldiers. The entire barricade shook and collapsed from the explosion of dozens of hastily thrown grenades. It created a chain reaction. Where the suits’ gravity shields could push aside some of the incoming shockwaves, the sheer number and intensity overloaded those defenses. Stored rockets and grenades on the belts erupted in a series of fiery eruptions, wounding humans, and the poison gas finished the job.

In the midst of the chaos, Number One danced, her figure shrouded in a crimson mist, wreaking havoc on everyone around her. The similarity in the screams of dying to those of her own kin angered the monster. They didn’t even have the dignity to die as devils; they had to resort to basic instincts in vain hopes that it might awaken mercy in her. It worked. She wanted, she longed to stop and talk, to understand them and help them understand her. Number One forced the pity deeper into her chest and turned to the vat.

“We have suffered enough at your hands!” the monster roared, closing in on the bubbling vat. Beams of energy speared the air. Rockets exploded harmlessly at her chest, no longer even deafening her. The thick fur fully absorbed the impact, refusing to burn. She latched onto the bottom of the vat, pulling it to the side. “Suffer us now!”

The bracing holding the vat in place groaned as the monster tightened her muscles, taking full advantage of the chaos reigning around. Her fingers gouged deep into the steel, creating cracks that ran along the floor as her strength overwhelmed the durability of this unholy tool, tilting it to the left, centimeter by centimeter. The vat toppled, falling to the side, and the monster jumped on it as the acidic contents spilled into the hall.

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A tsunami of death rammed into a wall, covering hundreds. Fabric and alloy both melted. The humans emerged, writhing from the searing agony that ate their bodies to the bones. In desperation, they tried to climb higher up the barricade, only to suffocate from the very poisonous gas released by their computer system. The wave stopped, unable to break through the hard material of the observation glass, and turned back, covering the other part of the hall.

Above. A familiar voice spoke in Number One’s head. It had a rather mechanical tone, but she still trusted the voice, lifted her head, and raised her arms in defense.

Several hundred tons of iron rammed into her, chasing away the darkness with the flashing of its roaring engines. The impact cratered Number One into the floor with enough force to sink her to her knees in the solid metal, and she groaned, getting a better look at the unexpected reinforcements.

It was a walker, a mechanical suit used by its owners for various purposes. This model resembled a room-sized shelf mounted on four spider-like legs. Two massive columns protruded from the machine’s shoulders, each covered by overlapping segmented armor plates to give the long limbs greater flexibility. Its hands resembled human hands, down to the thumbs. Blue flames roared from the machine’s engines, spewing smoke. The smooth, gray surface was decorated with painted black numbers, but no pilot cabin was visible. An array of sensors and cameras on the front of the massive body served as ears and eyes for the human operating it from inside, eliminating the need for visual contact.

It hurt her. The force of this titanic blow reverberated through her bones and organs, hitting her wounded lungs the hardest, forcing Number One to strain her body to the limit just to keep this anvil of a fist from throwing her off balance. Her skin cracked from exertion, but there was no fear. Her brain was already working, calculating the possible vulnerable spots of her opponent. The monsters running this place had to die, and as long as there was a single breath in her body, she would continue to push towards that goal.

“A loader, really?” she heard Academician said. The man kept close to the elevator, pressing the cane’s knob. A force bubble surrounded his entourage, deflecting the acidic liquid to the side. At his nod, several of his bodyguards began dragging the wounded into the bubble.

“Hey, boss, how much is this one worth to ya?” the driver asked, his voice magnified tenfold by the machine’s dynamics.

“Tear her limb from limb and I will grant you a skyscraper, Sergeant,” Academician said dryly.

“Ow, now that sounds perfect for my retirement fund…”

Number One ignored the rest of his chatter, focusing on the task at hand. The machine was tough, with its weight crushing down on her; even she couldn’t toss it aside. She moved a paw up, found a space between the plates, and stuck a claw in, cutting wires and breaking pistons. The machine’s middle finger went limp, relieving the pressure.

“That’s not very nice, Lassie,” the pilot snapped. He pushed the titanic fist, sinking her deeper. A feint. It moved the fist up, opening her for the wide arc of a coming blow to his right limb. “Sit!”

She welcomed it. Her legs were stuck in the floor up to her knees, limiting the monster’s ability to stand on her feet and, in turn, exerting her own pressure on the opponent. There was no way the enemy would let her climb out, and Number One wanted nothing to do against the mech’s many legs. As much weight as an arm could bring, a leg could always bring more. The pilot was a fool to give in to his desire to humiliate her instead of going for the kill. The punch landed on her forearms, cannoning the monster out of this pitfall. She flew across the room like a falling comet.

The orange fiend made her bleed. Where his previous attack had left bruises and torn some of her fur, this one had opened several deep gashes across her arm. The monster ignored the wounds, clenching her paws, moving her toes to check if she had retained mobility. Everything worked. There was a throbbing ache in every limb, but no worse than the one in her heart. She can bear it till the end.

Success! Now, to capitalize on it. Number One spun in the air, landing her feet on the wall and bouncing off the reinforced screen, which cracked from such a push. The jump brought her to the tube at the ceiling, and she jumped off it, aiming her fall over the machine’s left shoulder. As expected, the pilot raised a mighty limb to catch her, and she grabbed the inert middle finger, somersaulting on the wrist while still holding the finger. The monster pushed her muscles to their limits, tearing the finger free. Number One threw the broken piece at the tube, and the pilot flattened it between the walker’s palms, thinking it was Number One trying to get a quick one on him.

The monster dropped off the suit’s back, closing in on the roaring engines at its back. The machine landed on the floor, throwing up half-dissolved bodies and wounded with its sheer weight.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The torso made a full turn, dragging the monster clinging to the engine along the way. “Be a good test lab rat and die already! I don’t have all day…”

“She is on your back, dolt,” Academician said.

The engines came back to life, spewing flames that burned even Number One’s body. She wasn’t invulnerable. That was the hardest thing to remember. The strength in her limbs, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, the urge to kill, the keen senses and the impossibly fast mind all created the illusion of an absolute being. No one is absolute. The monster decided and thrust a paw through an engine. It exploded, leaving cuts all over her body and a nasty burn reaching the shoulder, but the machine had lost its balance, flying into the wall. The massive frame smashed through the protective screens, destroying the exhibits, and the crash injured the pilot.

How much she did not know. But Number One sensed a scent of blood at exactly the middle of the metallic chest. Her claws drummed over the frame, piercing the metal, and she climbed to the source of the smell, drooling from a desire to feed. Her fury intensified as the thrashing machine rolled its limb over the organs of her dear kin, trying to free itself from the rubble.

She slashed at the metal, cutting a thin opening, then slid her fingers inside, widening the entrance enough to swing her torso in, burrowing through rows of cables, wires, pipes, and steel shards toward the pilot’s cabin. Her paws closed on his shoulders, and the man, bleeding from the nose, screamed.

“Hold yer horses, Lassie; hold on a sec.” He gulped nervously. “A proposition! The way I see it, you got problems with the doc over there, right? Well, I ain’t paid enough to die…”

“Never should’ve worked here, then.” She pulled him out.

There was no seat in the cabin. A series of elastic straps suspended the pilot in the center of the cabin, and he operated the machine using every limb, watching the surrounding situation through a display in his helmet. She pulled him out, dislocating and breaking his limbs, leaving the ruined remains of his arms in the cabin faster than an eye could follow. The crippled pilot arched his back, opening his mouth to scream, and she bit him, devouring the man whole in two bites. It tasted like…

Number One struggled to find a word. Triumph could’ve sufficed, but something else was happening to her. As the blood of the dead man joined hers and his flesh reached her belly, a jolt rushed through her body. Her bones thickened, muscles expanded, fangs lengthened. Even her flame-damaged fur returned to its black lushness. Triumph did not cover what was happening to her.

Reward. The same voice suggested in a whisper, and she accepted it. A reward for defeating a strong opponent. Her transformation wasn’t complete; even the voice wasn’t sure if there was an upper limit to it. The more Number One won and ate, the more of that strange substance, the glow, as the whitecoats called it, was appearing in her body, driving the change. She faced the hall of the dead and dying; their cries were deafening as the uncontrollable suit slipped out of the crack, sending the thunderous rumble of a falling building upon its landing. Smells of acid, fear, rage, decaying flesh, open wounds, poisonous gas, and assorted chemicals assaulted her nostrils, almost making her head spin. She wanted to hunt; she wanted to feed; she wanted to save the injured or to end their sufferings; she wanted to apologize or maybe to scream her misery in their faces, but the rage steeled Number One’s resolve, helping the monster to focus. It was time to finish the deed.