Kain let the rusted bayonet drip onto the pan, his eyes narrowing like a cat watching a mouse about to flee.
"'Absorb' is a pretty word for what you're trying to do." He spat on the floor, the saliva mingling with aged grease. "This—" he tapped the orb with his knuckles "—shows what happens when Subjects lose control."
The device projected new images: one of the combat tanks now lay shattered, and the creature that had emerged… Marcus felt his stomach twist.
It was human only in silhouette.
Black flesh twisted like the bark of that dead tree. Six arms ending in polished bone claws. And on its chest, the mark S3 pulsed in dark red.
"Subject THREE," Kain announced like a macabre ringmaster. "The first one who tried to 'sate himself.' Let's go—we need to test that thing inside you."
The glass bottle Kain pulled from his backpack was full of an opalescent black liquid. The sap reacted immediately inside Marcus—his veins darkened, visible even on his face, forming patterns like circuitry.
"Three drops." Kain let the liquid drip into a dented can. "If you stop before drinking it all, maybe you won't turn into that."
Marcus knelt, trembling hands hovering over the can. The smell was intoxicating—cinnamon and raw meat, rust and something alive. The first drop touched his lips.
The colors inverted before his eyes. Kain became a black silhouette, his blue eyes floating like supernatural beacons. The buzz of insects, once constant, dissolved into whispering voices echoing encrypted coordinates, as if the very air were conspiring. And the wind, now thick and oppressive, weighed like stagnant water, every dust particle needling his skin, turning each breath into torment.
"Stop!" Kain struck the back of his neck.
Marcus spat out the unabsorbed sap—it corroded the concrete floor like acid.
"You felt it, didn't you?" Kain gripped his chin hard. "They modified your genetic code so you'd lose control… so they could take over."
Somewhere beneath the city, five figures wearing masks of fused bone watched a screen. On it, Marcus appeared as a pulsing red dot.
"NINE is awakening the Hives," the leader traced a symbol in the air with a gloved finger.
A woman's voice answered from within a cloak of feathers: "Do we send the Reapers or wait?"
The silence lasted three heartbeats. Then the leader raised an artifact that made Kain's orb vibrate from afar.
"Release the Swarm. If he survives…" The eyes behind the mask flared red. "…perhaps he'll be worthy to replace THREE."
Kain's voice cut the air like a blade, but Marcus barely heard it. The taste of the sap still burned on his tongue—metallic and alive, like blood from something that should never have been wounded. His veins throbbed under his skin, the dark "circuits" writhing like restless snakes.
Outside the abandoned warehouse, the wind died.
Not gradually, not like a fading breath—but as if the world had held its own.
Then the noise began.
Not the buzz of insects. The sound of things dragging themselves, wings beating in eerie unison, claws scraping concrete. And beneath it, a rhythmic clicking, as if something massive were speaking in code.
"Fuck." Kain yanked Marcus by the collar, shoving him behind a stack of rusted drums. "They sent the Trackers first."
Marcus still saw the world inverted, colors bleeding like ink in water, but now there were shapes moving in the dark. Elongated figures, taller than a man, limbs bending at wrong angles, poised to skewer anything in their path. Their heads were masks—not bone like the figures on the screen, but black carapace, with grooves glowing blood-red.
One stopped outside the warehouse. Tilted its head.
Click. Click. Click.
"They've caught your scent." Kain drew the bayonet, its rusted blade trembling in his grip. "If you don't control what's inside you now, the next thing leaving this place will be your corpse stitched into a new kind of monster."
"What are they?"
"People who succumbed to the virus. Later turned into things that can track any being emitting the signal."
Marcus's eyes, black as pitch, reflected their slow but oppressive advance. When the five of them encircled Marcus and Kain, they let out a terrible howl—like a war cry.
Marcus swallowed hard. The scent of cinnamon and raw meat still clung to him, but now there was something else—a craving. A hunger.
The Tracker took a step inside.
Then everything moved.
Kain acted first—hurled the dented can against the wall, the black liquid splashing across the floor. The Trackers screeched, a sound that drilled into bone, writhing as if the fluid burned them.
"RUN!"
Marcus didn't think. His body moved on its own, vaulting over debris, his legs driven by something beyond adrenaline. He could feel the Swarm now—not as insects, but as a consciousness: a pulse of shrieking thoughts, a desire to consume, assimilate, transform.
And deep in his chest, something answered.
When he looked back, he saw Kain fighting, his black silhouette dancing between Trackers, the bayonet cracking through carapace with the sound of splintering bone. But more were coming. Too many more.
"We can't stay here. They're just the beginning. Their screams will draw worse things. Bigger things."
As he ran, the mark on Marcus's chest trembled at a frantic pace. Then—
Silence.
And a ghastly voice sounded. From within.
A voice that wasn't a voice, whispering in his mind like static from a dead radio:
"S3… NINE… YOU ARE NEXT. YOU ARE THE END."
And worse—
He understood.