The alarm outside wasn’t police.
The police had a more languid wail that drifted up and down like lazy waves.
This was a single, shrieking note.
A corporate scan drone.
Lyra didn’t stop moving.
“Come on, come on–” Her fingers danced across the cracked terminal bolted to the wall next to the medical pod, rerouting power through a breaker stolen from a derelict vending machine three floors below.
The apartment lights dimmed and died.
Only the pale blue glow of the pod’s interior remained, casting the peeling walls the color of a bruise.
Inside the pod, Kaelen lay deathly still.
As always.
A slender tube was taped to the crook of his arm, and fine wires snaked up his shaven head like searching roots.
His ribs pushed out against his skin in shallow, mechanical sucks, synchronized with the wheezing rasp of a failing machine.
The monitor overhead blinked red.
VITAL SIGNS: CRITICAL — 34%
“No, not now, not–” Lyra smacked the side of the pod, hard enough to leave a stinging welt on her palm.
Her rage was pointless, always, but it was better than watching helplessly.
The drone’s beam swept across the boarded-up window, and for a heartbeat, the whole room was filled with the sterile white light of its search.
Lyra went rigid.
They were flagging anomalies, illegal pods, life support systems running on stolen current.
If they found Kaelen, they wouldn’t ask questions.
They’d disconnect him and haul her off by her hair for interfering with a public health seizure.
She’d seen the Okafors two floors down, their bodies dumped in a pile by the road iced over with something the nurses called ‘freeze-cream.’
The beam passed over the window, and then the drone moved on.
Lyra sagged against the wall, releasing a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.
“Stay with me, Kael…” she murmured, pressing her forehead to the cold glass of the pod.
“Just a little while longer.
I promise I’ll fix this.”
The monitor blinked.
VITAL SIGNS: CRITICAL — 31%
Somewhere behind Kaelen’s tightly shut eyes, a consciousness unrelated to his human self stirred in the darkness.
He was remembering the moment his blood had turned to fire
— three days ago in the Awakening Chamber, surrounded by two hundred other applicants in ill-fitting gray jumpsuits.
The Abyssal System had descended over the planet, and every year, it chose to change them, or leave them as they were.
The corporate-sponsored applicants went first, and whenever one of them was transformed, the crowd was allowed to witness the event.
A boy from Cronus Dynamics had become a Dragon Mage, his forearm streaked with serpentine scales, and a young woman had become a Holy Knight, radiant and terrible, with the glow of an angel burning from within her.
Then it was Kaelen’s turn to awaken.
He could remember the light, the cold, a muffled voice that spoke something incomprehensible to the crowd, but not to him alone
[WARNING: Class Volatility Critical] [Host physiology insufficient to contain Mythic-Grade energy signature] [Emergency Protocol: TRANSMIGRATION]
And then, without warning, his lifeblood had erupted from his body.
Pain.
There should have been pain.
Instead, Kaelen was aware of himself being unmade, like a glass of water turned upside-down.
There was no scream, no time for one.
Now, in wherever this was, Kaelen was waiting for the pain to begin.
It did not come.
There was not much of a self to experience it, really.
Just a vague sense of loss, of detachment, as if he were forgetting something important.
Where’s my body.
Where’s my–
A window appeared before his eyes, illuminated with a dim, sickly green light.
It was framed by jagged lines of some unknown text, blinking slowly as if the display itself were tired.
[ABYSSAL SYSTEM — CLASS ASSIGNMENT ERROR] [Requested Data Corrupted.
Displaying Raw Class Signature.]
> CLASS: THE DEVOURER (Mythic-Grade / Restricted)
> Kaelen stared at the message, or rather, what was left of his ability to see.
Mythic.
That’s–that’s higher than a Dragon Mage.
That’s–
[NOTICE: Restricted-Class hosts cannot survive first cosmic ignition in a baseline human vessel.] [Rerouting consciousness to nearest viable low-risk biological anchor.] [Anchor located: Organism Tier — Below Classification.] [Initiating forced transmigration in 3…
2…
1…]
“Wait–!” he tried to say, out loud, or inside his skull, where the words had no meaning.
Either way, the words failed to come out.
The green window snapped shut, and Kaelen was plunged into an unfamiliar sensation.
Not light, not sound, but something colder and wetter and darker.
These, too, were sensations he would have trouble naming, if he wasn’t so busy wondering where the hell he was.
Cold, wet, dark .
Those were the first three things Kaelen became aware of, in that order, before he became aware of much else, including the fact that he no longer had a body.
He had no arms, but he was attempting to grasp something nonetheless, a vague, formless effort like poking at an invisible wall with a blindfold on.
He had no legs to stand, no eyes to see, but he could feel himself, vaguely, tentatively, like a cat stretching a paw forward.
There was nothing to touch, and so he fell forward, or maybe backward, or maybe sideways–he had no reference to know.
What am I.
The System spoke the answer, as if he needed clarification.
[Host Designation: Parasitic Organism, Sub-Cellular Class.] [Current Host Body: Cave-dwelling Thread Worm.] [HP: 1/1] [System Persona Assigned: Nix.]
One.
Kaelen went very, very still.
One hit point–that was a record, wasn’t it?
That was a–
“Correct,” a voice said in his head, if he still had one.
It was not a warm voice, but it was not cruel, either, just distant, like it was coming from the bottom of a well.
“You are currently the weakest recorded lifeform in this dungeon sector.
One point of physical trauma will end this consciousness permanently.
Advise extreme caution.”
“You’re…
Nix?” Kaelen tried the name, as if testing the fit.
“You’re–you’re not a person?”
“Correct.
I would recommend against wasting cognitive bandwidth on introductions.
Your organic shell has an estimated survival window of six minutes without a host upgrade.”
Six minutes.
Kaelen would have laughed, if he had lungs.
Three days ago I was human, and now I’m a worm with a six minute lifespan.
He tried to feel the world around him, the way one might observe the shape of a room, except the way he felt himself was more like tasting.
A bitter metallic tang clung to the rocks beneath him.
It reminded him of blood, of something very old, and very fresh.
Some distance away, he could feel something else, something thicker, like the blood was attached to it.
A heartbeat, or maybe something else, pulsed in his chest with it.
Warmth.
Life.
Something that reminded Kaelen of home, although if he knew what that was, he didn’t know.
It was as much a feeling of loss as it was of love.
I need to get inside something.
Anything.
Or this is where it all ends.
This, and the other me–Kael in that pod three days from now, or whenever it happens, and that’s already too soon.
He could remember Lyra’s face, although he didn’t know why.
He could remember her voice, too, although it isn’t what he remembered best.
It was the knowledge of her presence, that somewhere, she would still be waiting for him, that made him want to live.
I’m not dying in a puddle.
Not after everything it took to get her this far.
The ground shook beneath him.
Not a gentle tremor, but an outright explosion of motion.
Something huge had landed not more than a body length away–his body length, at the moment, which was a scant fraction of what it had been.
The smell of blood filled Kaelen’s nostrils, or rather, the equivalent sense for a worm of that kind.
It was hot, iron-rich, and there was a lot of it, flowing in slow, thick rivulets along the rocky crevices.
Some of it must belong to the thing on the ground, because Kaelen could feel the steady beat of its heart, slowing now as it struggled to push its blood back into circulation.
“That’s–” Nix’s voice was gone, replaced by something else, more distant, yet oddly familiar.
“Tier-1 Shadow Wolf.
Severely wounded.
Currently dying approximately four meters from your position.”
Kaelen focused on the sound of the wolf’s distant heartbeat, trying to match it to the racing of his own.
Four meters away, a wolf was dying.
A real, actual wolf.
[Ding!
Host biological fluid detected.]
[Initiate Parasitic Infection?
Yes / No]