The fist connected before Kaelen had finished considering the option.
Pain bloomed across Corin’s jaw, bright and real, and he staggered back into the alley wall with enough force to crack loose flecks of aged mortar from the brickwork.
For a dazed instant all he could taste was copper.
“Devour Protocol still available, yes still available” Nix said, peacefully by the moment’s chaos.
“Contact established.
Recommend immediate action before secondary strike lands.”
That was the word he had needed to hear.
Kaelen’s body went perfectly still beneath the shock of the hit, his jaw aching in the strange, disconnected way that pain always did when something stronger and crueler than himself was using it.
His mind – his actual mind, not the borrowed form’s thoughtless instinct – was already fixing on the second potential host as he staggered back, gauging the reach between them, calculating how many threads of sensation he might need to slip under the skin to access the nervous tissue and nerve matter within.
They’re touching me.
That should be enough for me to get in, he thought
“Not as slick with that cheek injury as you pretended, are you?” the bulkier of the two men sneered, a broken smile curling through the gap in his teeth as he stepped in to follow up with a second punch
Kaelen let him come, let him close everything down with a grunt and a burst of power until the second fist struck his ribs with enough force to push out the breath in his lungs.
Threads of sensation wormed their way into every pressure point along a length of exposed arm, probing the muscle fibers for weak seams, searching the arteries and veins for an available artery to slip into and ride the pulse.
[Double Parasite Mode Activated.]
[Core Organism Duplication: 1 → 2.]
The sensation was not unpleasant, per se, only vaguely reminiscent of the disorientation on a sensory level he’d been feeling ever since the transmigration – like, experiencing oneself via eyes that have just begun to adjust to a shift in focal length.
One thread slithered up the bulkier man’s knuckles, the heat and damp stickiness of blood already soaking between the broken skin where his punch had already connected.
The other burrowed into his partner’s wrist as the smaller man seized Corin by the collar to lift him into another round, hitching a ride across the fresh blood track left where a cut on Corin’s biceps had caught the rough sleeve of his leather jacket.
“Infection initiated on both targets simultaneously,” Nix noted.
“This is not a standard function,” Kaelen pointed out.
“I’ll still kill the first one before he dies.”
[Caution advised.
Divided concentration poses increased risks for critical failure should the primary or secondary host become aware of their compromised state.]
Understood.
The smaller man reared back a fist, the bulbous end of the first one already swelling with renewed blood flow.
Kaelen’s fingers twitched, the muscle in his palm flexing, and the man’s grip loosened on his collar as his body convulsed, his breath going sharp and rasping.
“Oi – Garrick, what’s-?” the thinner of the two fighters began to draw breath, then sucked in a strangled gasp and froze with wide, disbelieving eyes as the same sensation overtook his own body
[Infection Status: Host A (Garrick) – Infection Progress] 33%[…] 67%[…]
[Infection Status: Host B (Designation Unknown)- Infection Progress] 41%[…]
74%[…]
Corin’s original consciousness, the minuscule remnant of himself that Kaelen had pried free when he first took over this body and buried deep into his subconscious to avoid the notice of prying eyes, shivered with something very like panic as the two men who had been about to kill him went rigid as mannequins, their bodies going still and slack in the center while their limbs jerked uselessly.
Even as his mind reeled at the unexpected turn of events, Kaelen’s fingers twitched involuntarily – and Garrick’s own hands came up of their own volition to brace against the wall, his thick, corded fingers knitting together at the wrist with the precision of a pianist.
The smaller man’s agile fingers found the length of a rope at his belt as naturally as if his arm were attached to Kaelen himself, and the next heartbeat – when neither of the two men whose bodies these were belonged to moved – saw both their bodies shift, without their conscious command, to ensure that no stray passersby need find themselves stumbling into this particular alleyway in the next sixty seconds.
[Ding!
Infection Complete – Host A: Garrick.
Neural Hijack Successful.]
[Ding!
Infection Complete – Host B: Designation Unknown.
Neural Hijack Successful.]
Three bodies.
One consciousness stretching out to occupy all of their bones and sinew like a veil over skin,
“Recommend Immediate Harvest,” Nix suggested.
“Multi-body piloting is not sustainable at your current core development.
Extract value now.”
Kaelen knew exactly what it meant, and a part of him, tucked deeply within the human marrow of what still remained of Corin, flinched from the sound of it.
They came here to break my legs over a debt.
I owe them nothing.
I owe them the chance to die by my hand
He fed.
Not with teeth or claws but with a slow and deliberate drain of life force that ran the length of both of their spines and out again, thinning muscle to sinew, leaching color from skin until their faces were masks of ashen gray.
What Kaelen was taking, a fraction at a time, was not strength exactly but the quality he associated with it, the baseline of what any person considered themselves to be at the deepest core of their being.
When he was done – when both were huddled on the floor before the entrance, their borrowed eyes already rolling back into their skulls – Corin’s stolen gaze fixed upon the two empty husks in the dim light of the mana lanterns.
“Threats neutralized,” Nix announced clinically as Kaelen’s voice escaped his throat, rough but unforced.
Both of the men’s eyes were white now, not from blood or light but from the total emptiness of their sockets, save for the twin glimmers of golden thread that still ran through the marrow of each rib.
Neither would live through the night.
Neither would tell anyone what happened in this alleyway.
That was good enough.
Kaelen forced himself to believe it, to believe not the terrible truth of it but the easier lie, because he was too tired to consider it any other way.
He had a monitor three days away watching the clockwork of his life run down and he needed to think of something else, anything else.
He almost let himself relax as the last tremors of adrenaline drained from his veins.
The System had other ideas.
[Ding!
Core Organism Duplication Detected.]
[Warning: Current Consciousness is fragmented across residual thread matter.
Recommend full reintegration before further host activity.]
[Query: Attempt permanent multi-body operation?
Consciousness fracture potential: Unknown]
Wait.
Kaelen froze, the sensation of the sentence sinking into a spot behind his ribs.
Two bodies at once.
In permanence.
Is that even possible?
Is that even…
something a host can survive?
“Unknown,” Nix replied, and for the first time Kaelen had ever heard in his short life as a free man, the voice at the back of his mind was not absolute, not a certainty.
“No prior host has attempted bifurcation at this evolutionary stage.
You would be the first data point”
Before Kaelen could decide if that was the most terrible fate or the greatest gift to come of this night, a second pane opened in the corner of his eye.
A warm, diffuse light spilled across the floor as one more shadow bloomed in the alley with him.
[Ding!
Rare Evolution Trait Available for Fusion: Venom Gland Synthesis.]
[Effect: Converts Host Biological Waste Matter into a Paralytic Toxin.
Can be deployed via Bite, Thread Connection, or Ranged Secretion.]
[Alternative Trait Locked: Structural Stealth Membrane – Decreases Detection by all Sensory and Magical Wards by an additional 40%]
[Select one.
Fusion is permanent.
Choose carefully.]
Wait.
No, Kaelen swallowed the taste of blood growing in his mouth.
This isn’t right.
The man in the alley had stopped moving; his hand still hovered an inch from Kaelen’s heart, bloodless and shaking.
A heartbeat echoed once in the silence before Kaelen felt it stop.
[Target Eliminated: Host B (Designation Unknown).]
[Primary Thread Stream: Corin] [Secondary Thread: Garrick]
[Target Eliminated: Host B (Designation Unknown).]
Nix’ voice rang through his skull.
“Both targets are exhausted.
Recommend extraction.”
Kaelen drew back his own fingers, while being careful where he leave no blood on the man’s skin.
That was not a chance he could take.