In the lower 'Ember Zone' of the Sanctum, the rain was never transparent. It was a thick liquid mixture of industrial coolant, rotting chitinous abrasive powder and organic waste excreted from higher levels. This nauseating, dark-brown liquid dripped from a spider's web of rusty pipes, hitting Karen Vance's oversized raincoat with a dull, peeling sound. She stood in the shadows of the narrow alleyway like a petrified sculpture.
A damp, pungent odour permeated the air — the very essence of urban decay — but it was filtered out by her nostrils. Her olfactory system was morbidly acute due to her "Deep-Sea" genes and could detect the subtlest yet most chilling signal among thousands of stenches: the putrid smell of Adam cells.
It was a cloying sweetness, halfway between a ripe peach and three-day-old raw pork.
'Target locked.' Karen's voice was low and hoarse, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together; this was the result of the tiny ulcers that covered the lining of his throat, caused by long-term inhibitor injections.
A faint blue light shone from the terminal on his wrist — the B.R.A. (Biohazard Management Agency) logo. Barnes's breathing could be heard through the communication channel, accompanied by the crackling of a lighter's grinding wheel.
'Karen, don't get too excited,' Barnes's voice crackled with static. 'The "hounds" from the Investigation Department say this "carrier" is highly evolved; the mutation rate has exceeded the warning line and it could collapse into a "Honkai" at any moment. If possible, retrieve the core organs directly and leave no survivors.'
Karen didn't answer. He opened his mouth slightly, feeling his tongue touch his palate as two rows of sharp, needle-like teeth pressed anxiously against his gums. As the inhibitor's effects wore off, he could feel the "Deep Sea" instinct within him awakening. Like some slippery mollusc, hunger was creeping up his stomach and gnawing at his reason. In his vision, every civilian passing by the alleyway ahead was no longer a living person, but merely a moving piece of flesh.
They were just moving lumps of red flesh, elastic muscle tissue wrapped in cheap fabric, with blood vessels pumping warm liquid and giving off a metallic smell. He bit his tongue hard; the slightly bitter, metallic taste of his own blood brought him a little clarity.
'He's here.' At the end of the alleyway, a figure in a grey robe staggered into the mud. The person walked slowly, their body swaying strangely from side to side, their left shoulder bulging unusually, as if a constantly bouncing football was stuffed under their clothes — the disordered proliferation of Adam cells.
Karen emerged from the shadows, his steps extremely light. The bone structure of his feet subtly adjusted inside his boots as he treaded through the puddles, moving with a rhythm closer to that of a feline, but colder and wetter.
'Number 7-9022, Lyndon Klaus.' Karen read the man's name aloud, her voice echoing in the narrow alley. 'According to the Sanctuary Purification Act, your bioactivity has exceeded the limit. Since you failed to proceed to the Central District for recycling within the stipulated time, I am now authorised to carry out mandatory intervention on you.'
Lyndon stopped and slowly turned his head. Half of his face was covered in purplish-black fleshy growths and a huge, eyelidless eyeball was protruding from his forehead and spinning wildly. "Intervention…?" Lyndon's voice was like a leaky bellows. 'They... they call it "recycling", but they actually want to remove my liver to give the "Pure Ones" above me new lungs, right?' 'That's your honour, Lyndon.' Karen walked towards him expressionlessly. 'Get out of my way! You B.R.A. lackey!" Lyndon let out a piercing scream, followed by a teeth-grinding crack, and the left side of his clothing ripped open. Three dark red tentacles, dripping with viscous slime, erupted from his shoulder blades. Each tentacle was tipped with broken human fingernails and resembled a bloodied dagger — a typical 'Thorn' mutation.
Karen didn't draw his gun because the B.R.A. Execution Department hunters rarely used firearms — metal bullets would damage precious experimental samples. He extended his right hand, his fingers suddenly spreading wide.
His arm muscles began to contort violently and countless snake-like veins surfaced beneath his skin. Accompanied by rapid cracking and reforming sounds, his forearm bones pierced his flesh and hardened and extended in front of his palm, forming a pale, horny barrel with spiralling patterns — a part of his body and a product of his cursed genes.
'Hiss!' Lyndon roared as he lunged, his tentacles whistling through the air. Karen dodged to the side, his movements fluid beyond human comprehension. He could feel the moisture in the air and the heat emanating from Lyndon's body.
That was the instinct of a deep-sea predator.
Karen's eyes turned cold. The bone spear in his hand quivered slightly. There was no boom of gunpowder exploding, only the muffled sound of high-pressure biological fluid spraying out with a "bang". A white bone spike, around 15 centimetres long with a barbed tip, shot out of his hand and pierced Lyndon's thickest tentacle, pinning it to the rusty iron door beside him.
"Ah—!" Lyndon convulsed in pain. No blood flowed from the wound, only a translucent, fluorescent green fluid. Karen gave him no chance to catch his breath, striding forward and grabbing his neck. The instant their skin touched, Karen's hunger suddenly erupted.
'Eat him!' a slick voice screamed from deep within his mind. 'That fresh, mutated protein, brimming with a high concentration of Adam cells... sweeter than any inhibitor! Tear open his throat and feel the heat flood your oesophagus!"
Karen's irises instantly mutated. His pupils vanished, replaced by a massive, chilling blue iridescence that covered his entire eyeball. His fingernails rapidly lengthened and became barbed like scalpels; his breathing became heavy and wet as his lungs craved a stronger, more pungent smell of blood.
"Karen! Abnormal bio-fluid activity detected! Calm down!" Anxious shouts from Barnes came through the communicator while Karen's nails dug deep into Lyndon's neck. He could feel Lyndon's carotid artery throbbing, its rhythm sounding like a death knell in his ears.
Lyndon's mutated eyeball stared desperately at Karen. There was neither justice nor disgust in her eyes, only a pure, transcendent greed. 'You... you... you're not human either...' Lyndon coughed up the last curse from deep in his throat.
Karen froze. She saw tears mixed with acidic mucus sliding down Lyndon's cheeks. At that moment, the balance between humanity and bestiality swayed violently. Karen abruptly closed his eyes, suppressing the urge to bite through Lyndon's trachea. With a powerful thrust of his left hand, he precisely sliced open a tumour on the back of Lyndon's neck — the connection point of the mutated central nervous system.
With a soft cutting sound, Lyndon's tentacles instantly went limp, hanging down like dead snakes. His wildly spinning, mutated eyeball withered rapidly, becoming a greyish-white void. He had lost consciousness. Or rather, the part of him that was 'human' had been completely shattered.
Karen breathed heavily as she slowly put away the bone spear. His exposed bones writhed eerily before retracting beneath his flesh. The wound closed quickly, leaving only a thin, viscous membrane. He pulled a syringe filled with a pale purple liquid from his pocket, trembling as he plunged it into the side of his neck.
The cold liquid flowed into his veins and the burning hunger finally subsided, replaced by waves of weak chill. The rain continued to fall. Karen looked down at her hands, covered in the sticky liquid, and then at the huddled, mangled sample on the ground.
'Mission complete,' he said into the communicator, his voice returning to its deathly stillness. 'Recovery team, you can move in.' A few minutes later, several 'cleaners' in white protective suits with heavy gas masks silently entered the alley.
They skilfully used barbed hooks to grab Lyndon's limbs and dragged him, like a dead dog, onto a black transport vehicle bearing the 'B.R.A.' logo. Barnes stepped out of the vehicle wearing a blackened trench coat and with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips. The old hunter walked up to Karen and patted her on the shoulder.
'Well done, Karen, but your inhibitor dosage is getting higher and higher.' Barnes lowered his voice, a hint of worry flashing in his eyes. 'The way you looked just now reminded me of… never mind.'
"What did you remember?" Karen straightened his raincoat, concealing the signs of his mutation completely.
'I remembered those pigs waiting to be slaughtered in the lab.' Barnes sighed and pulled a sealed, compressed ration from his pocket, handing it to Karen. 'Eat some of this. It's like sawdust, but better than that 'red meat'." Karen took the ration but didn't open it.
Just then, the elegant yet chilling sound of leather shoes tapping on the ground came from the alleyway.
Amidst the chaotic rain, the sound was jarringly abrupt, its rhythm as precise as a metronome. Karen and Barnes turned simultaneously. In the lamplight from the alleyway, a man in a pristine white coat with the buttons fastened to the very edge stood silently. He held a black umbrella, its surface spotless with not a speck of mud on it.
This was Silas Morgan, the chief inspector of the B.R.A. and the man known in the lower districts as the 'Vacuum Reaper'.
He removed his white gloves, revealing long, clean fingers that looked almost sickly. He casually glanced at the ravaged alleyway before finally fixing his gaze on Karen. His gaze was like that of someone scrutinising a precision instrument or a caged pet.
'Karen Vans,' said Silas, his voice flat and even as if every word had been meticulously calculated. 'Your hunt was a bit more "noisy" than I expected.' He slowly raised his right hand, holding a delicate silver metal box between his fingers — the 'Dagon's Annihilation' command box.
Karen could feel the dormant Adam cells within him begin to tremble slightly at the sight of the box; it was a primal fear of some destructive frequency originating from the depths of his genes.
"Be cleaner next time." A faint, cold smile played on Silas's lips. 'I don't like seeing the words "blood" and "gore" in reports. In this city, only absolute order can combat absolute ugliness." He turned and left, his white silhouette starkly visible in the dim embers. Karen stared intently at his retreating figure, feeling a faint stinging sensation return to the skin of her palm. "Order..." He repeated the word softly, his gaze shifting to his feet. He saw a bloodstained rag that had fallen when Lyndon was dragged away. It was being washed away by the torrential rain, gradually revealing the rust-coloured floor tiles beneath. This was the Sanctuary: the upper level a pure dream and the lower level a decaying reality. He was merely an anomaly, walking between the two levels and constantly battling the urge to devour his own kind.
On the middle level of the Sanctuary, on the edge of the 'Central Zone', the air was no longer filled with the cloying sweetness of industrial waste found in the lower levels. Instead, there was a chilling scent of highly concentrated disinfectant and expensive synthetic fragrances in the air. The spotless metal walls lining the streets clearly reflected the pale, lifeless faces of the patrolmen.
Karen Vance stood in the shadow of the crane platform, her body tense beneath her raincoat. According to an internal B.R.A. briefing, a porter belonging to 'Sanctified Logistics' had triggered a bio-monitoring alarm ten minutes earlier; his Adam's cell count had spiked from a normal 0.02% to just below the red line within three seconds.
'He's right there,' came Barnes's voice through the earpiece, tinged with detached indifference. 'That guy's Old Pete. Twenty years of moving crates, always a dutiful 'pure one'. Ironically, isn't it? Right before retirement, his latent genes rebelled.'
Karen looked up, her gaze passing over the crisscrossing crane arms.
Old Pete was huddled behind a pile of silver containers. His body was undergoing an unsettling contortion: his right arm was snapped back at an unnatural angle and his once flat back was bulging rapidly. His grey overalls were being pushed aside to reveal a row of razor-sharp, dark red spines — a classic 'crustacean' mutation.
Old Pete wasn't groaning; rather, he was emitting a high-frequency hum as he frantically clawed at the alloy containers with his mutated, giant, pincer-like right hand. The ear-piercing metallic scraping echoed through the silent central area.
'Don't make too much noise,' added Barnes. 'Silas's patrols are nearby. He hates it when lowlifes dirty his territory the way you do, Karen. Hurry up."
Karen didn't respond. He pulled the hood of his raincoat down and slipped silently into the shadows of the crane area.
The lights here were a cold white, casting a long shadow. As he closed the distance, a violent bioelectric signal akin to his own surged through Karen's brain. His stomach rumbled again, but this time he suppressed the urge with force of will. He needed precision.
Old Pete whirled around. His once ordinary face was now filled with tiny compound eyes reflecting an eerie purple light in the lamplight. He recognised Karen's uniform — the black suit that symbolised harvest and purification.
'No... no...' Old Pete managed to squeeze out some broken words, "I just... just wanted... to go home..."
His body moved involuntarily, his mutated right arm carrying hundreds of kilograms of force as it slammed down onto Karen's head. Karen didn't dodge. Instead, he stepped forward against the wind pressure, revealing the muscles in his left sleeve undergoing a subtle yet intense remodelling process.
There was no dramatic sound like a gun firing bones, only a faint 'click' as bones interlocked.
A slender, sharp spike made of concentrated calcium and bioceramics slid out from inside Karen's forearm, its tip glowing with a ghostly blue light — a high concentration of paralysing neurotoxin. Moving like a predator gliding through the deep sea, Karen precisely tilted his head to avoid Old Pete's massive pincers. He lowered his centre of gravity, his left hand flashing out like lightning.
With a soft 'plop', the sharp object pierced the soft tissue. The bio-spike hadn't pierced Old Pete's heart, but had precisely penetrated the gaps between the layers of his carapace, severing the mutated, purple carotid artery on the side of his neck, which was still pulsating frantically.
Karen's hands were incredibly steady. He could feel the slightest resistance as the bio-stingers cut through the fibrous tissue. Old Pete's movements froze instantly. His massive, mutated right arm hung suspended in mid-air, just five centimetres from Karen's temple. The purple light in his compound eyes quickly dimmed and the frenzied bioelectric signals receded.
The neurotoxin severed the connection between brain and body in a fraction of a second. Old Pete's body began to soften. He was no longer a threatening monster, but a mass of protein gradually losing its vitality. Karen smoothly lifted the heavy body and gently placed it on the cold floor.
No blood splattered because, as Karen severed the artery, the barbs on the bio-stingers simultaneously locked the ends of the blood vessel together — an act of extreme gentleness and extreme cruelty. Old Pete watched in painless numbness as his life energy was precisely sealed within his body until he was completely cold.
"Perfect anatomical practice." A pleasant, yet chilling, voice sounded behind him. Karen didn't turn around. He slowly retracted the biological spikes from his sleeve. The sharp spikes were washed clean of blood by the strong acid secreted under his skin as they retracted, leaving no trace.
Silas Morgan stood three metres away, now dressed in a more tailored dark grey suit and still holding the black umbrella, untouched by the dust kicked up during the earlier fight.
'Executive Vance, your skills are becoming increasingly refined.' Silas approached, examining Old Pete's corpse closely. 'The carapace remains intact and the blood vessel incisions are precise to the millimetre. As a 'tool' of the B.R.A., you have indeed displayed a certain... artistry."
Silas extended his white-gloved hand and gestured towards Old Pete's neck. 'But art comes at a price. You teetered on the edge of suppressant failure for 3.2 seconds. I could feel your heart rate surging and the 'impurities' within you craving flesh and blood.'
Karen turned to meet Silas's unfathomable eyes. 'It's a physiological reaction, Inspector. As long as the result is as you wish.'
'No, what I seek is not "as I wish", but "absolute purity".' Silas gracefully walked around the corpse, his leather shoes tapping the ground in perfect rhythm. 'This mutated trash — even a single drop of its blood spilling onto the streets of the Central District — is a desecration of order. You did well; you didn't let the filth spill out."
Silas suddenly stopped, his gaze fixed on Karen's cuff as if he could see through the fabric to the deformed skin beneath.
'Your body harbours many secret organs, doesn't it? Those ugly yet efficient killing tools evolved to adapt to the high pressure of the deep sea. Have you ever considered, Karen, that when you kill these mutants, you are actually killing your reflection in the mirror?"
'I only kill mission targets,' Karen replied coldly.
Silas smiled, his face bearing a smile like an arc etched on a precision instrument.
"I truly hope you can maintain your sanity, but don't forget that I'm the one holding your 'key'. If you begin to rust or develop excessive 'self-awareness', I will personally initiate 'vacuum decay', after which not even dust will remain in this world.'
He waved his hand and several silent, floating harvesters descended from the sky and began dismantling and recycling Old Pete's corpse. 'The next mission is already in your terminal. This time it's not a trivial transport mission, but an old friend is going to wreak havoc in the 'Ember Zone'. Go, and don't disappoint me, my pet.' After Silas left, Karen stood there for a long time, feeling a faint burning sensation on the skin beneath his sleeve. That execution wasn't just a mission; it felt more like a repressed outburst. Although he hadn't devoured Old Pete, he had indeed felt twisted pleasure when he pierced the other's neck.
That was the instinct of the 'Deepsea Species': the innate desire to control, hunt and assimilate the weak. He looked at his hands. In the dim light, they appeared pale and powerless, but if he desired, they could instantly transform into claws capable of tearing through steel. "Hey, Karen," came Barnes' voice through the earpiece again. The old hunter's tone was low. 'Is that bastard Silas causing you trouble again? Don't take it to heart. He sees everyone as bacteria under a microscope."
'I'm fine,' Karen replied in a low voice. 'Barnes, get me some coordinates. The place where Old Pete collapsed. Before he died, he said he wanted to go home."
"Home? In the middle layer? Mutants don't have homes, only recycling centres." Barnes sighed. 'But since you've brought it up, old Pete used to live on Fishbone Street in the lower layer. It's Awakened territory now, a complete mess. You wouldn't be thinking of…'
Karen turned off the communicator and touched the inhibitor in his pocket. The pale purple liquid inside was almost gone. With each battle, he knew that the Adam cells within him were frantically iterating in an irreversible evolution. It was like the spines that had grown on Old Pete's back — once it started, it could only lead to destruction. He needed the truth, not just about the pharmaceutical company's conspiracy, but also about himself.
Not just about the pharmaceutical company's conspiracy, but about himself too. The nerve tendrils that Aris Thorne had grafted into his brain throbbed as if guiding him towards a forgotten abyss. He pulled his hood tighter and disappeared into the shadows of the crane area. Behind him, the floating collector had finished its work. The ground was astonishingly clean; the last trace of Old Pete's existence had been wiped away by the neutralising agent, as if he had never existed.