096 ERYTHOS MONARCH IS BORN
"Damnit, I need cash now!" Damen snapped.
Then, without warning, the empty cards began to fill—one after another, glowing as their balances climbed.
Damen froze, watching as the display flickered the transfer. By the time he was done, he held over ten million Aurs in stolen credits.
"Thank you very much", Damen said.
Then the monitor flashed again. "You can thank me later, Big Brother."
Damen was shocked. "Someone hacked the system for me?" he thought. "Was it Lander? No… that's impossible. He wouldn't help me steal."
The android nurse reappeared at the doorway. "You can't steal our Aur… you'll be caught."
Damen looked at her, considering. Then he nodded. "You're right."
With a casual sweep of his arm, he crushed her into metallic fragments. A wave of kinetic force followed—a Momentum Collapse that flattened the entire server array.
The Aur Box dimmed and alarms howled.
Damen turned and walked out through the smoke, leaving the server vault behind him.
-----
Stacy Qiltera pushed through the café door like any other customer.
Her body had settled back to its ordinary self after the Blood Butterfly transformation, but the world still seemed oddly muted by her presence despite pictures of her pasted on every screen in the place.
She is a wanted fugitive.
The place was busy with coffee steaming, and plates clinking but no one here looked at her. Waitresses passed as if she were nothing.
"Can't they see me?" she wondered.
She moved to a corner table where an attractive woman in a golden-brown gown sat with one leg crossed. Beside her, a boy in silver clothing and silver hair kept his hands folded on his lap.
The woman looked up with a smile. "Stacy Qiltera — you're here. Sit."
Stacy slid into the seat opposite. "What do you want? How did you get my secret number?"
She'd gotten that number after she fled GenSyn. It was a ghost line, known to no one except the woman before her.
"My name is Sienna. This is my brother, Argent," the woman said, casually polite.
"I don't know you," Stacy said flatly.
Sienna's smile didn't waver. "Oh, but I know your father. Bring him out."
Stacy's breath snagged. "How do you know about my father?"
Sienna shrugged as if it were the simplest thing. "I know everything. Besides, I haven't seen Kaiser in ages."
"But not here. Not in public," Stacy protested.
"Relax. No one will bother you." Something in Sienna's voice made Stacy trust her — or maybe it was desperation that thinned the edges of suspicion.
Without warning, veins erupted from Stacy's chest like roots through soil. A small space opened — a crack in the air — and a head emerged, then a body.
Kaiser stepped into the café, tethering to Stacy by pulsing crimson filaments.
He dusted himself off and adjusted his glasses. When his gaze landed on Sienna he said, "It's you again."
Sienna inclined her head. "Yes. It's me."
Stacy stared at her father. "Do you know her?" she asked.
Kaiser nodded slowly. "Of course. She gave me the blueprints for my experiments. She's the originator of the alien heart and the Genesis Core."
The words landed like a blow. The strange heart in Stacy's chest, the mutation, the Core — it all traced back to this woman.
"Who are you really?" Stacy demanded.
"I am Sienna," she said. "I've come with an invitation. Will you join the Alliance of Psyche?"
"Alliance of Psyche?" Stacy repeated. "What is that?"
"Does it matter? If you help us get out of Melrose City in one piece, and we'll owe you everything," Kaiser replied.
"Of course," Argent said.
Sienna's hand drifted, pointing at two men in white lab coats at the next table, deep in conversation. "They are geniuses like you and your father. Take them. Bind them to your crimson veins. Their intelligence will become yours."
Stacy blinked. "Are you serious? Here in public," she asked.
But she had nothing left to lose so she complied.
Crimson veins shot from her like living threads and burrowed into the two scientists. The café went on around them as if nothing remarkable had happened — cups refilled, phone screens scrolled, conversations continued.
"What should I do with them?" she asked, throat tight.
"Keep them," Sienna said simply.
The scientists were drawn through the spatial crack as if stepping into another dimension. Their forms folded into Stacy; their minds and knowledge sluiced into her like water joining a river.
Kaiser too slid back into her.
"We should give you a name," Sienna said.
Argent leaned forward. "Erythos. The color of blood."
"Erythos Monarch you shall become," Sienna declared.
Stacy Qiltera has become Erythos Monarch, and she tasted the sound of her new name with her tongue. Power was now in her bones.
"Where to next?" Erythos asked, her voice warped and layered with other thoughts.
"To claim a few more geniuses," Sienna said. "You'll need a lab. And more hands. And a throne for what you'll become."
Outside, the city moved with its usual rhythms.
Inside the café, the ordinary noise swallowed the extraordinary as if it had always been meant to be that way.
-----
Something bothered Damen as he emerged from the vault. The upper floors were still strangely quiet, there were no cops, or SIA investigators.
Most of the agents had gone below, into the illegal underground lab, leaving the sanctioned sections above almost deserted.
He spotted another nurse android and seized her arm. "Bring me to the medicine storage facility."
"You are not autho—"
Her protest was cut short as Damen snapped her arm with a sharp twist. The mechanical joint cracked, sparking. The android froze, then obeyed instantly.
She led him down a hallway to a massive, refrigerated chamber.
Damen tore the vault door open and stepped inside. Cold vapor rolled out. Rows upon rows of metal shelves were stacked with cartons, each filled with shimmering elixirs and advanced pharmaceuticals.
"This is a real harvest," he muttered, eyes gleaming. "Worth more than any amount of Aurs."
He brought out his phone and began scanning.
Then he found them.
"GenSyn Strength Elixir — Series G."
Not just a vial—entire cartons were there, each holding three liters of the potent fluid.
Damen grinned. "Hahaha… jackpot."
He raised his hand, with his phone still glowing. "Assimilate."
The cartons rose into the air, trembling as arcs of energy danced between them. Plastic cracked, liquid shimmered—and then the contents vaporized, flowing into him as glowing essence.
He absorbed eight cartons before the light faded, his veins pulsing faintly gold beneath his skin.
He turned to leave, but something caught his eye—a smaller cabinet in the corner, sealed by a digital lock and rimed with frost.
"Damnit," he muttered. "I don't know the bloody password."