The survival probability kept blinking in my retina.
[31%.]
That figure demanded my absolute attention. It represented a mathematical sentence, a metric of near-certain death imposed by the algorithm.
"Move," Marcus demanded, breaking my trance.
The underground tunnel convulsed again, releasing a dense rain of dust and gravel over our heads.
"Report on the situation status," I ordered, quickening my pace.
Marcus kept his gaze fixed ahead, ignoring the debris falling around him.
"The tower’s activation wave is in thermal expansion phase. Remaining in this sector guarantees our annihilation beneath the foundations."
I understood the urgency immediately, and we adopted a running formation. Darius led the vanguard, ramming structural obstacles like a human battering ram; every sealed hatch gave way before the brute force of his impacts.
Nadia covered his flank while Maya and Evelyn stayed close to my position. Selena closed the column’s rear. With measured gestures, she raised a hand and plunged the environment into an absolute auditory void. Running under that effect was disorienting; the echo of our footsteps, the rustle of clothing, and the rhythm of our own breathing vanished completely, leaving only a suffocating pressure on our eardrums.
"Marcus," I called, taking advantage of a sound pause. "Justify this focused pursuit of the creatures against me."
The mercenary leader withheld his words for several meters, heightening my tension.
"The monolith requires a biological anchor to stabilize itself in this dimension. It is trying to force a direct connection with a high-compatibility Awakened."
"It’s seeking to assimilate me."
"Exactly."
"Provide the exact reason for my selection."
"That variable escapes my current intelligence." Marcus snapped with cutting dryness. "I lack omniscience, Gabriel. Accept that limitation as soon as possible."
We abandoned the tunnel network and emerged onto the surface. The panorama was devastating. The black obelisk that had emerged hours earlier no longer looked like a simple structure. It was an open wound in reality, a mass of pulsing obsidian piercing the urban fabric, cutting through skyscrapers and avenues. Incandescent cracks ran across the asphalt, pulsing with a scarlet glow that made the atmosphere vibrate around us.
I assessed the perimeter. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of aberrations crowded the intersections. However, anomalous behavior governed the horde: they remained absolutely still, fixing their empty orbits exclusively on my figure. The tower seemed to have frozen the creatures. They no longer charged; they simply watched, as if awaiting an order.
The interface blinked urgently.
[Rupture Attraction: ACTIVE.]
[Synchronization rate: 10%.]
[Warning: The Tower has locked onto your Resonance signature. The purge was averted by the conduit’s destruction, but the Tower has marked you permanently.]
[New status: Beacon. You are now visible to all Resonance-sensitive entities within a 5-kilometer radius.]
My stomach contracted at the sentence.
"Cancel this tracking immediately," I ordered the interface silently.
[Insufficient data to execute the order.]
"Fabulous," I muttered through gritted teeth.
Marcus caught my complaint.
"Report your status."
"The System lacks a cancellation protocol for this tactical beacon."
Marcus let out a harsh laugh.
"Stop delegating your fate to a machine. Your interface supplies tactical intelligence, but survival falls entirely on your instincts."
I stored that lesson in silence, recognizing its crushing truth. Depending blindly on the screen guaranteed my execution the day the data failed. A collective roar shook the remaining windows of the buildings. The tide of monsters broke its lethargy and charged at us.
"Set defensive positions!" Marcus bellowed.
The street disappeared beneath a tsunami of claws and fangs. The first beast closed the distance with lethal acceleration. Darius intercepted the frontal impact. His musculature took on the density of titanium; the brutal collision, capable of crushing a vehicle, barely slid him a few centimeters across the pavement. Immediately afterward, the giant delivered a straight right that sent the creature flying through the air.
"Incursion on the left flank!" Maya alerted.
I pivoted on my heels, raising the metal bar. Three specimens were converging on my position. I dodged the first one’s charge and brought a devastating blow down on the second one’s joint, fracturing its knee. Evelyn neutralized the third by smashing a bottle of flammable chemical over its skull. Nadia took advantage of the flame-engulfed creature’s distraction, touched the bumper of a wrecked car, and propelled it like a missile, crushing the monster against a brick wall.
"Maintain continuous advance!" Nadia ordered.
We quickened our pace. A fiend dropped from a ledge, blocking my path. Maya grabbed me by the vest, pulling me to the ground.
"Cover!" she shouted.
The claws sliced through the air millimeters from my scalp. I used the low momentum to land two sharp sweeps against the monster’s shins, bringing it down. The beasts shared the same structural weakness as the previous ones, but the horde’s volume more than compensated for any individual frailty.
Selena raised both hands, sealing the avenue in her acoustic void. I caught sight of out of the corner of my eye a specimen lethally flanking Evelyn’s position. Unable to warn her verbally, I lunged at her, tackling her to the pavement. The creature’s jaws snapped in the space her neck had occupied fractions of a second earlier. Evelyn locked eyes with me and nodded, silently thanking the intervention.
The sound returned all at once.
A human scream tore through the avenue. One of Marcus’s militiamen lay pinned between two masses of vehicular steel, surrounded by beasts. The rest of the operatives had scattered through the streets, covering the flanks; not all of them would reach the parking garage.
"Covering fire, help!" the soldier shouted desperately.
Marcus stopped short. Darius tensed his muscles, preparing for a kamikaze rescue. The leader assessed the tide of fiends converging on the fallen soldier’s position, calculating the tactical equation in milliseconds.
"Keep moving!" Marcus ruled.
"I request extraction!" the man pleaded.
Marcus clenched his jaw, reaffirming his order.
"Keep moving!"
Darius tried to break formation to save his companion. Marcus gripped his shoulder with vise-like force, stopping his momentum.
"His loss is final, Darius."
The militiaman disappeared beneath a sea of claws and fangs. Marcus resumed the march under a sepulchral silence, granting the fallen man a single farewell glance over his shoulder.
That fleeting expression confirmed that the weight of command was taking its toll on him; he had simply forged the mental armor necessary to sacrifice a piece for the sake of the squad.
We managed to infiltrate an abandoned underground parking garage, using the semidarkness to break the swarm’s line of sight. We halted, forced to recover the oxygen burned during the escape. Evelyn approached my position.
"Take a seat immediately."
"I remain fully operational."
"Gabriel." Her gaze pierced my defenses. "Your damage assessment is extremely reckless."
I yielded to her instruction and leaned against a retaining wall. Evelyn inspected the bandage on my arm, verifying the absence of new bleeding.
"The sutures are holding."
"That’s a tactical relief."
"Keep your euphoria in check."
Maya stood guard beside a structural column while Nadia secured the perimeter of the main ramp. At the other end, Marcus was issuing directives in a low voice to Selena and Darius. Evelyn sat down beside me, taking advantage of the truce.
"Describe the vision you experienced during the core’s absorption."
I held her gaze, absorbing the precision of her analysis.
"I witnessed the metropolis in its optimal state. Civilian population, regular traffic, intact infrastructure. The normality prior to the catastrophe."
"Continue with the anomalous event."
"The sky fractured, giving way to the obelisk."
Evelyn assimilated the piece of intelligence without passing judgment or forcing additional details.
"Keep the rest of the information for when you consider it appropriate to share it."
"You’re skipping the direct interrogation?"
"I prefer to wait until you share the data of your own free will." She sketched a subtle smile. "It fosters a better operational dynamic."
"The gesture is appreciated."
"Don’t get used to this compassionate treatment."
Our brief recovery was cut short by Marcus’s approach.
"We’re facing a catastrophic variable. The tower is accelerating the expansion of its lethal influence radius."
Maya joined the tactical council.
"Provide a measure of its range."
"We lack that metric. Our only viable option is to execute an immediate extraction from the city," Marcus replied.
"We abandon the tower?" I questioned, surprised by his retreat. "That monolith holds the answers to this invasion."
"Our current combat capability guarantees total carnage if we attempt a frontal assault."
"I have accumulated eight percent Adaptation. I need to reach ten percent to survive in its domain. We will begin the search for those resources immediately."
"That mission is suspended." Marcus’s voice turned to steel. "Your only current objective is to keep breathing."
The interface interrupted the debate, projecting a golden cascade of text into my visual field.
[NEW MISSION.]
[Resist the synchronization.]
[Objective: Survive the psychic influence of the Tower.]
[Reward: Adaptation increase.]
[Failure: Imminent brain death.]
[Note: This mission is a direct consequence of the Tower’s lock-on. The synchronization process is attempting to force a deeper connection. You must resist.]
I blinked at the new directive. The interface dictated pure resistance; the offensive was ruled out.
"The tactical picture has just worsened. The tower is canceling my approach. It demands that I withstand its mental invasion."
Marcus adopted an expression of maximum gravity.
"Then the scenario exceeds our worst calculations."
A scarlet pulse burst over the metropolis, shaking the parking garage’s foundations.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
The beasts outside froze their movements in unison. The entire city fell into a tomb-like silence. We advanced cautiously toward the exit to assess the terrain.
Thousands of aberrations remained static, orienting their nightmare faces toward our hiding place. Then they adopted a posture of submission, dropping their knees onto the concrete in perfect synchrony.
An unnatural cold pierced my bones. The crushing pressure of the core surged in my chest, compressing my lungs. My peripheral vision began to fill with static.
[SYNCHRONIZATION INITIATED.]
[Synchronization uses your current Adaptation as a gateway.]
[8%...]
I clenched my jaw, resisting the psychic intrusion.
[9%...]
"Gabriel!" Evelyn’s voice reached me muffled, distant.
I lacked the motor strength to respond. Then a new frequency invaded my senses. It bypassed the radio and the holographic interface; a woman’s voice reverberated directly against the walls of my skull. It was clear, authoritative, and possessed an eerie closeness.
"I finally manage to locate you."
I forced my gaze toward the heights. On the ledge of an adjacent building, silhouetted against the tower’s crimson glow, stood a human figure.
The wind whipped her disheveled blonde hair. She wore a dark tactical jacket, combat pants, and heavy boots. Her bearing projected the absolute lethality of an alpha predator—a huntress forged in the epicenter of this new ecosystem.
The woman threw herself into the void, landing on the roof of a vehicle with flawless shock absorption, defying the physics of her own fall. Upon straightening, she fixed cold, calculating blue eyes directly on mine.
[AWAKENED DETECTED.]
[Threat level: HIGH.]
[Energy compatibility: EXCEPTIONAL.]
[Ability detected: Vector Redirection. This ability allows the user to redirect kinetic and energy vectors. It differs from Nadia’s brute-force Kinetic Impulse Manipulation and Iris’s vibration frequency. Each Awakened develops a unique expression of their Resonance pattern.]
She advanced toward our group with icy confidence. She assessed every threat present with forensic coldness and stopped just a few meters from our position.
"I confirm your identity as Gabriel Bowman."
"I demand that you reveal your identity."
Her eyes scrutinized those present, pausing harshly on the mercenary leader.
"That information remains classified for this squad."
Marcus stepped forward, tense as a bowstring.
"Scarlett," he murmured.
"Freeze your advance immediately, Marcus."
He obeyed the instruction, revealing a prior history of hostilities between them. Scarlett redirected her attention to me, ignoring the rest.
"The monolith has established a link with you. Listen to my directives with millimeter precision. Answering that call will eradicate any possibility of returning to your humanity."
"Justify that absolute certainty."
Scarlett held the silence, allowing a glimpse of genuine terror to cross her gaze before burying it beneath her steel mask.
"I myself fell into that trap in the past."
[SYNCHRONIZATION: 10%.]
Scarlett fixed her pupils on the pulsing obelisk.
"If we fail to stop this process before the metric reaches ten percent..."
A new pulse swept the city.
BOOOOM.
The horde of creatures raised their faces in unison, awaiting the execution order.
"...the entire city will suffer a total biological purge."
I felt the weight of her words. The conduit we had severed at the supermarket had averted the purge. But that was a temporary solution. The Tower was trying again. And this time, it had locked onto me directly.
[SYNCHRONIZATION: 10% — LOCK ACQUIRED.]
[Warning: The purge was averted. The conduit was severed in time. But the Tower has marked you permanently. The synchronization process is now dormant, but it will resume if you approach another Tower.]
Scarlett held my gaze fiercely.
"We have exactly ten minutes to avoid mass annihilation."
I stared at her. Ten minutes. The same window we had at the supermarket. The same deadline. But this time, there was no conduit to sever. This time, the Tower was targeting me directly.
"How do we stop it?" I asked.
Scarlett drew her tactical knife.
"We don’t stop it. We survive it."