Chapter 7: Surveillance and Shadows
The morning after Kael's awakening was anything but quiet.
A black drone hovered over San Cristobal's ravine, its unblinking eye scanning the broken alleyways and scorched tricycle carcasses. It emitted no sound—just the hum of calculated judgment. Somewhere, far from the barrio, men in a dark room watched footage with frozen faces.
Thermal imprint confirmed. Biomass anomalous. Movement inconsistent with local fauna.
Deploy retrieval team. Codename: Lantern Dogs.
Kael moved through the backstreets like a ghost. His hoodie was torn, hands bloodied and scraped. His reflection in a dirty side mirror looked unfamiliar—more angular, more intense. He couldn't meet his own eyes for long.
Codex Neural Sync: Stable.
Heartbeat irregular. Adrenaline elevated. Suggest meditation or neuro-regulation.
"I don't need yoga right now," he muttered.
He ducked into the local sari-sari store and grabbed a bottle of cheap isopropyl alcohol. The old lady behind the counter didn't question the blood. People in the barrio had learned to stop asking questions long ago.
As he left, he felt it—a tremor in his spine. Not fear. Observation.
He looked up.
The drone blinked red once and zipped away.
Codex Alert: Non-civilian surveillance detected. No current threat level assigned.
"What the hell does that mean?" Kael whispered.
It means they've seen you.
He flinched. It wasn't the Codex voice.
It was XENOVORAX.
"They will not come alone. They will bring teeth. Blades. Fire."
"I can hide—"
"They will find you. They always do."
Kael pressed himself into a shadowed alcove and steadied his breath. His instincts were screaming. He could almost feel his skin trying to harden, as if preparing for battle even when his mind wasn't ready.
He was changing. Even his fear had claws now.
40 kilometers east—in a forgotten military depot marked as decommissioned—a team geared in adaptive armor checked their weapons. Not standard-issue. These were designed for hybrid-class engagements.
One of the soldiers removed his helmet. Colonel Decker. Skin like scorched leather. Voice like crushed gravel.
"Mission is live. Objective is retrieval. Hostile OR asset—we bring it in. If it resists—"
He raised a dart-rifle loaded with glowing blue serum.
"—we silence it."
A younger operative raised a hand. "Sir, what if it's one of ours?"
Decker stared. "Then we put it down faster."
Back in the barrio, Kael heard it again.
A hum—not from a drone, but something beneath his feet.
Codex Detection: Ground-level seismic disturbance. Multiple bipeds approaching.
Five targets. Armed. Human.
"Lantern Dogs," XENOVORAX growled.
Kael's legs moved before he ordered them to. Instinct again. He climbed the rooftops like muscle memory wasn't his alone anymore. His feet landed silently on rusted aluminum. He crouched beside an old antenna and watched.
Five men, matte black armor. One of them sniffed the air. Sniffed.
Hybrid-sensory modifications detected, Codex noted. One or more may be pre-merged.
Kael's eyes widened.
"They're like me?"
No.
They're failed copies.
The team spread out. The leader—a woman with red-tinted goggles—spoke softly into a mic.
"Target thermal ghosting eastward. Possible rooftop traversal."
She pointed directly at Kael's hiding place.
He ducked just in time. A dart embedded in the antenna with a wet hiss. The metal curled inward like it had been eaten.
Venomous neurotoxin confirmed. Paralytic strain. Codex suggests evasion.
Kael didn't wait.
He ran.
He leapt over walls, slid down rain-slicked tiles, tore through laundry lines. His skin itched—no, shifted—underneath his clothes. Like armor trying to breach through sweat and skin.
"Let me fight," XENOVORAX hissed.
"No."
"They will not spare you. They know what you are becoming."
"I said NO!"
He jumped from a rooftop, landed hard behind a cement wall, and rolled into a drainage tunnel.
Silence.
Mud. Rats. Water trickling.
Breathing—his own—and something else.
Kael turned.
A child. No older than nine. Dirt-smudged face. Holding a flashlight and a mango.
"Kuya…" she whispered. "Are you the monster they're looking for?"
Kael froze.
He didn't answer.
He just smiled, gently, and put a finger to his lips.
The girl nodded. "Okay. I'll hide you."
Codex Sync: Host stress levels lowering. Neural empathy response detected.
Potential future ally: psychological imprint forming.
Kael sat in the dark as the girl offered her tiny corner in the tunnels.
He had survived for now.
But the hunt had begun.
And something else was watching—not the government, not the drone.
Something ancient, deep beneath the lake.
Its eyes opened.
And its memory stirred.