The weeks that followed brought no peace—only an uneasy silence. Artur was no longer the specimen to be prodded and measured in the Gymnasium. After the council's vote, he was transferred to a different containment wing, quieter. A room that looked less like a cell and more like a waiting room for the end of the world. There were no more tests, no needles, no holograms. Only time, stretching into a dense, suffocating monotony, and the constant presence of his axe, always within reach, its blade and walnut haft polished with the care of a monk tending a sacred relic.
His body had changed. The scars on his forearm, leg, and ribs had vanished, leaving behind no marks—only skin that seemed tougher, subtly different in texture, like well-worked leather. He was heavier, not with fat, but with muscle and bone. When he moved through the confined space of the room, he did so with deliberate quiet, a coiled spring of steel, aware that any sudden motion could snap the bolted furniture from the floor. Thorne's "Aggressive Immunity," or whatever it was that ran through his blood, had finished its work of reconstruction. He was no longer a man patched together.
He was a weapon, forged.
He waited. He didn't know for what, but the stillness wasn't peace—it was anticipation. Like a predator waiting for the wind to shift before the hunt begins.
The change came with the soft click of an electronic lock. The door opened, and Agent Barros stepped in. Alone. He carried no guards, no tablet filled with data. Just a reinforced laptop and a look that bore the weight of a war that hadn't yet begun.
Artur rose from the floor, where he had been sitting with his back against the wall. He picked up the axe, the motion fluid, instinctive.
"You're released, Artur," Barros said, voice flat, stopping at a safe distance.
The word released was so strange, so alien in that place, that it took Artur a moment to process it. Freedom. The forest. The cabin. The images surfaced in his mind, but they felt like photographs from a past life—faded, distant. He felt no surge of relief. Only a deep, gnawing suspicion.
"Free to go where?" he asked, voice rough from disuse.
"Wherever you want," Barros replied. "The decision's been made. We can't keep you here anymore." He gestured toward the open door. "But first, I want you to see something."
Barros set the laptop on the room's only table and opened it. Artur stepped closer, the axe hanging in his right hand. He saw a stark interface and a dark video window. DAO – PSYCHIC PROBE – EVIDENCE FILE 7B.
"You survived Street 26," Barros said, without taking his eyes off Artur. "You saw them, fought them. But you fought the latest version. The updated one. To understand what we're up against, you need to see where they came from. You need to see the prototype."
He hit play.
The screen came alive, and Artur was pulled into another man's nightmare. The image was a chaos of grainy pixels and washed-out color—the first-person view of someone running desperately down a hospital corridor. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered like a strobe, casting shadows that danced like demons. The sound was muffled, dominated by the man's ragged breathing and the thunder of his heartbeat, captured by the Probe—a drum of pure panic.
Artur watched, face unreadable. He recognized the low hum, the resonance of the Cage. Recognized the purple sky through a shattered window. He wasn't watching a recording.
He was looking through the eyes of a ghost.
He saw the man hide in the supply room. Saw the terror when the arachnid creature appeared on the ceiling. But he didn't flinch. He observed with cold, analytical focus. His mind, now attuned to the logic of that hell, dissected the scene.
The attack was fast, brutal, unrefined. A frenzy. The creature in the hallway showed no tactics, only overwhelming hunger. The one that struck from the ceiling used vertical ambush, yes—but it was a predator's trick, not a soldier's maneuver. Instinct, not strategy.
When the screen dissolved into static, the final image of the creature's jaws burned into his vision, Artur nodded slowly.
"It's them," he said. The confirmation was a fact, not an exclamation.
"Exactly the same?" Barros asked. The crucial question.
Artur turned from the laptop. His eyes—eyes that had witnessed real carnage—met Barros's. There was depth in them now, a dark wisdom born of violence that sent a chill through the seasoned agent.
"No." His voice was low, almost a whisper, but each word cut like obsidian. "These were stupid. Frenzied. Like starving stray dogs, attacking the first thing that moved. No discipline. Just hunger."
He paused, the weight of what came next filling the room.
"The ones I faced… they were different. Smarter. They used bait. They communicated. They flanked. They tested me, learned my movements, adapted in the middle of the fight. They weren't just hungry."
He leaned forward slightly, and Barros felt as if the temperature in the room had dropped several degrees.
"They were hunting. They learned. They were better."
The truth struck Barros not like a blow, but like the slow advance of a glacier—inevitable, crushing. The simulation theory, Thorne's analysis—everything solidified into a terrible reality. The enemy wasn't a plague.
It was an army.
An army in accelerated training, using human lives as sparring partners.
He closed the laptop, the click sealing the moment. He looked at Artur—not as a specimen, not as a weapon, but as the only other person in the room who understood the war that was coming.
"You're free to go back to your forest, Artur," Barros said, voice heavy. "No more guards. No locked doors. The main gate is open. But understand this…"
He stepped closer, the last trace of authority giving way to something else. Something real.
"Out of everyone on this planet—every scientist, every general, every agent—you're the only one who walked into that cage, killed the tigers, and walked out alive. You know how they think. You know how they bleed."
He stopped in front of him, and for the first time, the difference in size and mass between them felt irrelevant. They were two soldiers—one from a world of rules, the other from a world without any.
"You're not a victim anymore, Artur. You're the only one who knows how to hunt them."
The path out of the DAO complex was a journey in reverse—from darkness into light. Artur walked through steel corridors, axe in hand. The guards he passed stepped aside instinctively, making way not out of protocol, but primal fear. He was the wolf walking through the kennel, and the watchdogs knew it.
The final door hissed open, and sunlight struck him with physical force. He raised a hand—not to shield himself, but to feel the warmth, a sensation he hadn't known for weeks. The city air wrapped around him, an assault of smells: exhaust, street food, perfume, garbage. The sound was a cacophony—traffic, voices, life. Thousands of people, moving, living, utterly unaware of the silent war being waged on their behalf. Unaware of the man who stood as their only, reluctant champion.
Artur stepped out of the DAO building and stopped on the sidewalk.
He was a figure from another time, another place. A giant of muscle and unseen scars, holding an Iron Age tool amid the glass and steel jungle of the twenty-first century. People passed him, sidestepping, casting curious or uneasy glances—but no one recognized him. He was anonymous.
A ghost.
He didn't look at faces. Didn't look at cars. His gaze—trained by a lifetime of observation and sharpened by a night in hell—moved differently.
He studied the alley across the street not as a passage, but as a funnel—a perfect choke point for an ambush. He looked at rooftops not for architecture, but for sightlines, observation posts, vertical attack routes. He noted sewer grates not as infrastructure, but as emergence points. His mind mapped terrain, assessed weaknesses, planned counterattacks.
Barros was wrong.
He wasn't the only one who knew how to hunt them.
He was the only one who now saw the entire world the way they did.
A hunting ground.
The peace, the solitude, the silence of his forest… those were luxuries of a life that no longer existed. He was no longer a hermit seeking peace.
He was a predator without territory.
Or perhaps, he realized with cold, desolate clarity, the entire world was now his territory.
The city rushed on around him—indifferent, fragile.
And Artur, standing in the current of humanity, the axe a familiar and terrible weight in his hand, knew with a certainty that settled into his bones—
Peace was over. Forever.