The air in the lower sectors always carried a taste. It wasn't just the acrid tang of chemical smog belched from the refinery pipes, or the stale scent of too many people crammed into too little space. It was the taste of fear. Of desperation. It was the taste of being at the very bottom of a world that had long since decided you were nothing more than gutter-scrapings.
Fexl Hoshkent knew that taste better than he knew his own name. It was the metallic hint of iron on his tongue, the phantom smell of ozone before a storm that never brought anything but more misery. He kept his head down, his shoulders hunched, making himself a smaller target. His dull, mud-brown eyes, the color of forgotten puddles, were fixed on the cracked and stained pavement. To look up was to invite trouble. To be noticed was to be prey.
The package in his arms felt heavier than its weight. It was a standard delivery—a sealed, reinforced alloy box for a client in Sector 7-G. The system he worked for didn't pay him to ask questions, and he was too smart to want to know the answers. His job was simple: take the package, follow the route, don't be late. His life was a series of these simple, brutal equations. Deliver. Get paid. Eat. Survive. Repeat.
His worn boots scuffed quietly against the damp ground as he ducked into a narrow alley, a supposed shortcut that stank of rotting waste and something else… something coppery. His heart, a tired drum in his chest, gave a nervous thud. Just your imagination, he told himself. Just get through the alley. Almost there.
He was wrong.
The shadows near the wall didn't just deepen. They detached.
Three figures materialized from the gloom, blocking the far end of the alley. Their clothes were as ragged as his, but their eyes held a different kind of emptiness—a hungry, chemically-induced void. Synth-serum addicts. Low-level junkies who'd paid for a single dose of diluted, beast-core power that had fried their nerves and left them craving more. The cheapest, most dangerous kind of awakened.
Fexl froze, his blood turning to ice. He clutched the package tighter, instinctively turning to run, but two more figures slid out behind him, cutting off his retreat. Trapped.
"Just the box, kid," the largest one in front slurred, a faint, sickly yellow glow flickering in his pupils. "No one has to get hurt."
Every instinct screamed at Fexl to hand it over. It wasn't worth his life. The system would dock his pay, maybe fire him, but he'd be alive. But a stubborn, stupid spark of pride—the last ember of a fire that hadn't yet been fully extinguished—made him hesitate for a fatal second.
That was all it took.
The club came out of nowhere, a rusted pipe swung by the thug behind him. It connected with the base of his skull with a crack that echoed louder than thunder in the confined space.
White-hot pain exploded behind his eyes. The world tilted on its axis, colors and sounds blurring into a nauseating smear. The package slipped from his numb fingers, clattering to the ground. He followed it, his knees buckling, the rough, wet concrete rushing up to meet his face.
The taste of iron flooded his mouth—his own blood. Boots connected with his ribs, his back, a relentless storm of blows. He curled into a ball, a silent, broken plea caught in his throat.
Through a haze of agony, he saw the leader pick up the package. The thug grinned, revealing stained, sharpened teeth—a common side effect of the cheap serum. "See? Wasn't so hard."
But the beating didn't stop. They weren't just here for the delivery. They were here for the fun of it. To feel powerful. To prove that even at the bottom, there was someone lower. Him.
This is it, Fexl thought, the thought strangely clear amidst the pain. This is how it ends. In a stinking alley, for a package I didn't even care about.
The air smelled of rain and iron, and for the first time in years, Fexl truly wondered if the storm had finally, actually, come for him.
The leader gave a final, dismissive snort. "Leave the trash for the real beasts."
The world faded to a pinprick of light, then to blackness.
---
He didn't know how long he was out. Seconds. Minutes. An hour.
Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a lightning strike of pure, unadulterated agony. A pain far worse than the beating. It was a burning, a tearing, a feeling of his very DNA being unraveled and rewoven with white-hot wire.
Something was on him. Something heavy and warm and breathing in ragged, wet gusts against his neck.
Fexl's eyes fluttered open. looming over him was a shape of nightmare and muscle. A Wolf, but like no wolf from the old vids. It was monstrously large, its fur a patchwork of mangy grey and exposed, scarred pink flesh. One eye was a milky, blind white, but the other… the other was a blazing, intelligent ember of pure hate. Saliva, thick and reeking of raw meat, dripped from its powerful jaws onto his chest.
It had him pinned. And it was biting him.
Not a mauling. A deliberate, purposeful bite. Its fangs sank deep into his shoulder, and Fexl's body arched off the ground in a silent scream. The pain was beyond anything he could have imagined. It was like being injected with liquid fire.
He felt a foreign presence flood into him through the wound—an ancient, wild, and savagely hungry consciousness. It was trying to overwrite him, to erase Fexl Hoshkent and replace him with a beast of tooth and claw.
No.
The thought was a feeble spark in the inferno of his agony. Not like this. I won't die like this.
He fought. Not with fists, but with will. A primal, desperate struggle for ownership of his own soul. He felt the beast's mind, a whirlwind of base instincts and rage, clashing against the last flickering embers of his identity.
He was losing. The wolf's will was a tidal wave, and his was a crumbling sandcastle.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the pressure vanished.
The great wolf recoiled with a shocked yelp, tearing its teeth from his flesh. It stared down at him, its one good eye wide with something that looked like… confusion. Then fear. It backed away, whimpering, before turning and vanishing into the shadows of the alley with a speed that defied its size.
Fexl lay broken and bleeding, the strange, invasive fire still burning through his veins. He was dying. He knew it. The wound was catastrophic. The blood loss alone…
A cold, detached clarity settled over him. This was the end.
[System Initializing...]
The words appeared in the center of his vision. Not heard. Not imagined. Seen. Crisp, sterile, electric blue text, hovering in the air like a ghost.
[Host DNA compromised. Foreign agent detected: Lycanthropic Viral Strain - Prime Variant.]
Fexl blinked, sure he was hallucinating. The text remained.
[Analyzing...]
[Host vitality critical. Assimilation or Termination required.]
Termination. The word hung in the air, final and absolute.
[Assimilation selected. Binding Host to System.]
A new, different kind of energy surged within him. Not the wild, destructive fire of the beast, but a cool, structured, and immensely powerful flow. It coursed through his veins, targeting his injuries. He felt his shattered bones snap back into place with agonizing precision. The deep gouges in his shoulder knitted themselves together at a visible speed, leaving behind angry red skin and a vicious, silvery scar.
The pain receded, replaced by a sensation so alien it was terrifying. Strength. A thrumming, vibrant power humming in every fiber of his being. His senses dialed up to a blinding intensity. He could smell the individual components of the garbage around him. He could hear the skittering of a rat three alleys over. The dim light of a distant neon sign became as bright as a flashlight beam.
The blue text flickered again, updating.
[Assimilation Complete. Host Stabilized.]
[Welcome, Fexl Hoshkent, to the Omega System.]
[You are the Prime Werewolf. Alpha of None. Omega of Your Own Path.]
[Initial Rank: Omega.]
[System Integration: 100%. Sole User Protocol Engaged.]
Fexl pushed himself up onto his elbows, his body obeying him with a smooth, powerful grace that felt utterly foreign. He stared at his hands. They were still his hands, but the nails were black and sharp. He raised a trembling finger to his face, tracing the new, raised scar that ran from his temple to his jaw.
He looked around the empty, blood-stained alley. The site of his death. The site of his rebirth.
The System interface glowed patiently in his vision, a constant, impossible companion.
He was no longer Fexl Hoshkent, the delivery boy.
He was something else now. Something new. Something with teeth.
And the world, he knew with a cold certainty that chilled him to his core, would soon learn to fear the storm it had created.