Far beneath the fractured tides of the freshwater lake now tainted with the blood and limbs of monsters, Mark floated in a shifting cradle of red darkness. The world around him had grown eerily quiet, broken only by the distant groans of crushed steel beams settling beneath the muck and the fading electric tremors of the city's dying grid.
The cold depths welcomed him like an old friend, and the corpses that floated beside him; mangled, broken, and still faintly warm, were offerings from a battle already written into the stone of history.
He had not simply killed them. He had dominated them.
One by one, Mark extended his great barbed appendages, coiling them like solemn funeral wrappings around the broken forms of the porcupine wolf and the white-furred behemoth that had once stood on two legs and beat its chest with the pride of a god.
They did not resist. They could not.
Their life had ended on the surface, but their essence would serve a higher function in the realm below. The wolf's bristled hide cracked beneath the pressure of his beak-like jaws, and with slow, reverent motion, he devoured the twisted flesh, severed organs, and twitching remnants of bone.
Mark took his time. Every mouthful was a page added to the evolving codex of his being. Every gulp fed not just his hunger, but his metamorphosis. Every molecule was broken down, recorded, and stored.
And when he turned to the white ape, to George; once intelligent, he gave not a single moment of hesitation. Mark tore through the carcass in silence, his massive body gently rolling in the slow tides of the abyss, and as the last of the flesh dissolved within him, a familiar warmth returned; not hunger, but the sensation of unlocking something greater.
The system responded, a pulse of strange biological electricity flickering along his flesh, and one by one, the potential of his future body was unveiled.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Crocodylus Gigantus]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Breath Retention (Level 3): User will be capable of holding breath for hours without discomfort, allowing ambush tactics and deep-sea lurking behaviour to be optimized.]
[Dual Respiratory Adaptation (Level 2): User will be able to breathe atmospheric oxygen via repurposed gill-filtration organs, functioning both underwater and on land.]
[Dermal Armor Plating (Level 2): Thickened bony plates will form beneath the skin in reinforced bands, drastically reducing damage from blunt and piercing force.]
[Beak-Tusks (Level 1): Hardened tusks will emerge around the beak, forming a natural shearing cage capable of crushing stone and tearing through dense armour.]
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Lupus Porcospina]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Kinetic Quill Expulsion (Level 3): User will be able to fire extended barbs with explosive force; barbs regenerate over time or can be reabsorbed for structural efficiency.]
[Surface Morphic Adaptation (Level 2): Skin layers will be able to shift, merge, or stretch into new structures at will, including creating membrane flaps between limbs or tentacles.]
[Prey Ensnarement Flaps (Level 1): Integrated skin flaps can be inflated or expanded underwater to create low-pressure zones that trap smaller organisms with hydraulic force.]
[Thermal Shock Gland (Level 1): User will be able to rapidly increase internal pressure in the dermis to release barbs in a shotgun pattern from all points of the body simultaneously.]
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Gorilla Albino (Mutated)]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Cognitive Node Expansion (Level 2): Distributed neural clusters will grow more intricate, enabling greater control over multi-limb coordination and autonomous muscle groups.]
[Muscle Mass Density (Level 2): User's musculature will become significantly denser and more explosive, increasing power at the cost of minor mobility reduction on land.]
[Hydro-dermal Cooling (Level 1): User will be able to exude thin layers of body-fluid onto the skin to release excess heat in high-stress scenarios.]
[Self-Circulated Cooling (Level 1): In the absence of external water, internal fluids can be diverted to achieve temporary cooling, albeit at the expense of hydration.]
Mark read the message in the depths of his own consciousness, though no screen displayed it, no voice spoke it aloud. It was an understanding; a communion between predator and process, between flesh and function.
He had known this moment would come the moment his tendrils pierced the porcupine's soft underbelly and tasted the electric zing of blood rich in altered genes. A flickering pulse of satisfaction coursed through his body.
Not pride nor joy. Just completion.
His current form; a chimera of shark and squid and salamander, was merely a midpoint. Now, with the power of a crocodile's armoured might, a wolf's barbed rage, and an ape's cunning fury, the next stage of his evolution loomed not as a choice, but as a certainty.
He coiled inward, drifting like a dying star collapsing in on itself. The abyss welcomed him.
And he slept once again.
…
Elsewhere, across the ocean and many miles away, hidden beneath layers of steel, barbed wire, and scientific arrogance, something older was stirring. The containment zone designated Janjira; once a model of nuclear safety and now a mausoleum for a thousand lies, had begun to tremble.
Screens flickered with frantic telemetry. Seismic sensors screamed warnings. Magnetic interference spiked to absurd levels. Lights failed. Alarms faltered. Men and women in orange jumpsuits and helmets ran from their stations like ants scrambling from a kicked anthill.
Dr. Vivienne Graham turned from her monitor just as the shaking grew too violent to ignore, "It's waking up," she whispered, as though saying the words might silence the truth.
Inside the massive egg-shaped cocoon, once assumed inert and fossilized, the walls had split open. A single, jagged claw pushed free, trailing sparks and scorched fluid as it reached skyward.
Something had survived the radiation. Something had waited for decades.
The massive creature now writhing out of its prison was not of this world, nor was it some by-product of human error. It had simply slumbered and now it hungered.
Men ran. Walls cracked. Steel buckled.
And before the hour was done, the western sky was lit not by dawn, but by the flaming husk of a military transport destroyed mid-air by an unseen predator. The world, already wounded, was not being given time to heal.
For in the oceans, something vast twisted with purpose. And in the skies above Japan, the first MUTO had taken wing.