Alex awoke with a strangled gasp, his heart hammering against his already bruised ribs.
Not from pain, though that throbbed with a dull insistence, but from a dream—no, a feeling. A phantom sensation of immense strength, of fingers crackling with contained lightning.
It wasn't his. It was… other.
He was still in Dr. Voss's clandestine clinic, the metallic scent of it now familiar.
Voss herself was hunched over a glowing console, muttering about "energy transduction coefficients" and "unprecedented genetic markers."
"You're awake," she said without turning. "The pain medication should be holding. Mostly."
"What… what was that?" Alex managed, his voice raspy. "Felt like I could punch through plasteel."
Voss finally swiveled in her salvaged chair. "Residual energy from the Enforcer's Cores. Your body… it's not just healing, Alex. It's learning. The Absorber Gene, as I theorized. It's active."
She gestured to a diagram on her main screen—a complex double helix intertwined with what looked like pulsing energy circuits.
"Simplified, your genetic code has unique sequences that resonate with Gene Core frequencies. Physical contact, especially under duress like that blow you took, seems to trigger an absorption process. You're copying, integrating, aspects of the Cores you touch."
Alex stared, his mind struggling to process. "So… I have powers now? Just like that?"
"Not 'just like that'," Voss corrected, a stern edge to her voice.
"The Enforcer had a Strength Core and a Static Core. You've likely absorbed a faint echo of both. Temporary, most likely. Weak. But your mutation allows for something more. Prolonged or more… intense contact might lead to stable, even permanent integration. And combination."
Her eyes gleamed. "Imagine, fusing distinct Core abilities into something entirely new."
The concept was staggering, a wish-fulfillment fantasy ripped straight from a banned holodrama. But the throb in his side, the lingering phantom strength, felt terrifyingly real.
Before Alex could voice the thousand questions swirling in his head, a sharp, repeating ping echoed from one of Voss's archaic security sensors. A proximity alert.
Voss's face went grim. "Scrap. They're faster than I thought." She slammed a hand down on a panel, and the already dim lights of the clinic plunged into near-total darkness, save for the emergency red strips along the floor.
"Bounty hunters or a UGF scout team. Someone picked up the energy flare from your… awakening, or my comms got sniffed. Doesn't matter. We need to move. Now."
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through Alex. He was still injured, weak. And now, apparently, a walking genetic anomaly wanted by the most powerful entity in the galaxy.
Voss was already shoving a medkit and a data-chip into a worn satchel. "My main exit is probably watched. There's a service tunnel, rarely used. But we'll have company."
Heavy boot steps crunched on the plasteel grating outside the clinic's hidden entrance. A gruff voice barked, "Sweep the area! Bio-scanners active. We're looking for an energy anomaly and the rogue scientist Voss."
Alex's breath hitched. They were trapped.
Voss pushed a small, snub-nosed energy pistol into his hand. "Can you use this?"
Alex fumbled with it. "Point and shoot, right?" He'd handled scavenged slugthrowers, but energy weapons were rarer, cleaner. More UGF.
The clinic door, a reinforced plasteel slab, hissed and buckled inward under a powerful impact. Two figures in dark, non-descript armor, clearly not official UGF but just as menacing, stormed in. Bounty hunters, Alex guessed, lured by the price undoubtedly already on Voss's head, and now, his too.
One lunged for Voss. The other raised a heavy pulse rifle towards Alex.
Time seemed to slow. Alex saw the rifle barrel tracking him, felt a surge of primal fear. But beneath it, something else. An echo. Not the phantom strength this time, but a sharp, instinctive jolt. The memory of the Enforcer's baton crackling with blue energy.
He didn't think. He reacted.
His hand, the one not holding the pistol, shot out. He wasn't aiming to hit, just to… push. And as he did, a faint blue spark, no bigger than a dying ember, flickered around his knuckles.
It wasn't a blast, not like the Enforcer's. It was more like a static shock, amplified a hundredfold.
The bounty hunter, mid-stride, yelped as the tiny spark leaped from Alex's fingers and struck his rifle. The weapon spasmed, lights flickering, and then went dead with a puff of acrid smoke.
The hunter stared at his useless weapon, then at Alex, his eyes wide with disbelief beneath his visor.
"What in the void—?"
Alex was just as stunned. Had he done that?
Voss, seizing the momentary distraction, slammed the butt of her own pistol into the side of the first bounty hunter's helmet. He crumpled with a grunt.
"Tunnel! Go!" she yelled, already moving towards a dark alcove Alex hadn't noticed before.
The second bounty hunter, recovering, snarled and dropped his rifle, drawing a vibro-knife. He charged Alex.
There was no time for another accidental spark. Alex squeezed the trigger of the pistol Voss had given him.
A sizzling beam of red energy shot out, missing the hunter by a hair but scorching the wall behind him. Close. Too close.
The hunter was on him. Alex stumbled back, pain lancing through his side. He could feel the man's heated breath, see the vicious gleam of the vibrating blade.
This was it. This was how he died. Scavenger. Lab rat. Dead.
But then, another echo. This time, the raw, brutal strength of the UGF Enforcer. Not just a memory, but a surge. His muscles, though battered, felt… denser. More powerful.
As the vibro-knife slashed down, Alex, on pure instinct, brought his arm up. Not just to block, but to shove. He channeled that phantom strength, raw and unrefined.
His forearm met the bounty hunter's, and to Alex's utter astonishment, the armored man was thrown off balance, his attack skittering wide.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't trained. But it was effective.
He scrambled back, Voss screaming his name. He fired the pistol again, wildly. This time, the shot connected with the hunter's leg. The man roared, stumbling.
"Alex, NOW!" Voss had a panel open, revealing a dark, narrow passage reeking of stale air and something else… rust and decay.
Alex didn't need telling twice. He dove into the tunnel, Voss right behind him, slamming the panel shut just as more shouts echoed from the compromised clinic.
They were running, deeper into the metallic guts of Rusthaven, the sounds of pursuit already fading slightly behind them, replaced by the drip of unseen pipes and the scuttling of unseen things.
Alex leaned against the cold, corroded wall, gasping for breath, his hand still tingling from the faint spark, his arm aching from the unaccustomed surge of strength.
He'd done that. He'd actually done that.
Voss, her face pale but resolute in the dim emergency light strip illuminating the tunnel, looked at him. "That was the Static Core echo, and the Strength. Faint, but you channeled them. Instinctively."
Her voice was grim. "This is just the beginning, Alex. They know you're not just some slum scavenger anymore. They'll hunt you relentlessly now. And next time, it won't just be bounty hunters."
The weight of her words settled over him, heavier than any UGF Enforcer. His life as Alex Ren, scavenger, was over. What came next, he had no idea. But it was going to be a fight.