The thin, grey dawn light over the concrete canyons of the Ilian Grid didn’t last.
Within minutes, the slate-grey toxic smog violently curdled, shifting into a full-blown ash storm that choked the horizon and made their casual clothes freeze against their skin.
But the weather was the least of their concerns.
BOOM!
A deafening, catastrophic shockwave shattered the relative quiet of the railway line.
Before Ambo or Jahek could even register the sound, a massive, jagged concrete boulder—the size of a ruined sedan—came tearing through the thick fog, hurtling directly toward their position on the platform.
“Move!” Asher barked, his peak-human reflexes triggering a microsecond before the impact.
Asher grabbed both rookies by their collars, his sheer physical strength launching them sideways into the gravel just as the boulder pulverized the train platform into a spray of lethal stone shrapnel.
Ambo rolled hard against the iron tracks, his white clogs skidding through the ash.
As he scrambled to his feet, his dark eyes widened under his curly black hair.
Emerging from the smog was a creature that completely shattered his understanding of the infected.
It was a massive, three-meter-tall Abnormal Gen Z.
Its body was a grotesquely buffed and bulked carcass of pure, distorted muscle, its hairless white skin stretched so tightly over its frame that the black veins beneath looked like a web of pulsing iron wires.
Before they could draw their weapons, the monster launched itself forward, its white flesh violently bubbling and shapeshifting as it molded its entire right arm into a massive, heavy hand covered in jagged, bone-like spikes.
“We’ve attracted too much attention!” Jahek surged up, his face turning completely pale as his single missing tooth showed through a grimace of pure terror.
“Captain, this is the worst possible scenario!
We’re completely drained from the Runners!” “Retreat!
Into the discrete alley sectors!” Asher commanded, his wavy snake-sword already drawn, though he kept it defensively level.
“We don’t brawl with a heavy-shifter on open ground!
Move!” They sprinted, their casual footwear tearing through the labyrinth of rusted train hulls, but the Abnormal was relentless.
It cleared the distance with horrifying leaps, its spiked hand pulverizing concrete walls to dust.
Within seconds, the vanguard squad was completely cornered inside a narrow, dead-end concrete grid block.
There was no exit.
The massive, three-meter monstrosity anchored the only opening, its flat white face violently ripping open down the center into a cavernous maw that hissed with ancient decay.
“We have no options left,” Ambo muttered, his layered upper gear—the tattered black cave shirt over his purple oversized jacket—catching the cold wind as his adrenaline surged.
“We fight.” “Listen to me,” Asher whispered rapidly, his predictive eyes tracking the shifting muscles of the monster’s legs as they continuously dodged the spiked hand smashing into the walls.
“Jahek, use your tactical step to bait its left flank.
Ambo, keep your fluid film compressed under your skin to absorb the secondary shockwaves.
The second its guard drops, we launch a preemptive strike on its knees.
We take its mobility, or we die here.” “Got it!” Jahek screamed, ducking beneath a lethal sweep of the spiked fist.
They moved with desperate synchronization.
Mid-fight, while continuously dodging the crushing weight of the monster’s assaults, they waited for the exact right millisecond of timing.
Now!
Jahek executed a flawless, desperate slide to the left, his silver daggers flashing as he drew the creature’s attention.
Ambo lunged from the right, his forearms locally coated in the dense black kinetic film, delivering a precision blow to the creature’s core that threw its balance off.
Simultaneously, Asher moved like a silver phantom, his wavy sword severing the muscles along the monster’s lower ankle.
The preemptive plan worked flawlessly—the massive Abnormal roared, collapsing hard onto its knee.
But the victory lasted for less than a breath.
ROOOOOOOOAR!
The Abnormal let out a bloodcurdling, chest-vibrating roar that echoed miles through the concrete canyons.
Suddenly, with a sickening, wet pop, a massive burst of elongated tendrils violently erupted from the creature’s back.
These weren’t made of dark fluid; they were sickening extensions of its own white flesh, pulsing with thick black veins all over their coiled frameworks.
Asher’s eyes went wide.
His peak-human reflexes recognized the absolute danger of the monster’s massive reach before the rookies could even blink.
In a moment of absolute desperation, When the three-meter Abnormal unleashes its white, vein-choked flesh tendrils, Asher doesn’t think about his own internal stamina pool—he throws his own body entirely into the line of fire, using his legs to violently kick Ambo and Jahek to safety while taking the lethal, bone-shattering impalements straight through his own stomach and kidney.
Even as he collapses into the ash, vomiting blood, his fading eyes look at the kids with a bloody, tragic smile, wheezing for them to run and save themselves.
FLESH-CRACK.
Asher couldn’t dodge.
The white, vein-choked tendrils shot forward like iron spears, violently stabbing straight through his stomach, tearing out his right back kidney and waist area, while a secondary flesh extension drove cleanly through his left leg, pinning him to the stone floor.
“Captain!” Jahek shrieked.
The Abnormal slowly pulled back its white tendrils, letting Asher’s broken, bloody body slump heavily into the grey dust.
The creature didn’t immediately attack again.
Instead, it stood there, its cavernous maw twitching as it looked down at the injured captain and the two helpless rookies, distinctly mocking them, enjoying its absolute control over the situation.
Ambo and Jahek sat on the gravel, their bodies shaking violently.
It had happened too fast—an absolute, unmanifested veteran had been brought down in a single microsecond.
Jahek overcame his paralysis first.
He scrambled across the dirt on his hands and knees, throwing himself onto Asher’s side.
“Captain!
Wake up!
Please, Captain, look at me!
What happened?!” Jahek screamed, frantically forcing Asher to wake up as he tried to stem the flow of blood.
Asher’s eyelids fluttered open, his vision nothing but a dark, flickering blur.
A violent cough racked his chest, a heavy spurt of crimson blood spraying across his side stomach as he threw up blood into the ash.
Jahek was completely terrified, his hands covered in red, his mind spinning into absolute panic as the monster continued to watch them.
Ambo watched the blood pool in the dust.
Something inside his brain violently snapped.
A sudden, blinding burst of raw, unadulterated anger completely engulfed his consciousness, erasing his fear.
With a guttural snarl, he ran directly toward the three-meter Abnormal, his fists bubbling with the oily black mud.
CRACK-CRUNCH!
Suddenly, a massive fracture appeared along the concrete wall right to Ambo’s side.
The structure completely crumbled as a second, towering Abnormal Gen Z violently tore through the stone.
Before Ambo could pivot, the new creature extended an elongated, tentacle-like white arm covered in pulsing black veins, slamming him with immense force and throwing his body straight into the opposite wall, burying him completely under a heavy avalanche of concrete rubble.
Asher’s bleeding head tilted back, his fading eyes locking onto the new arrival.
“That roar…
earlier,” Asher wheezed, his voice ragged.
“It wasn’t a death rattle…
it was calling another one to our direct location…
while releasing those tendrils…” Jahek, hearing this from his captain’s side, felt his entire world collapse into a pale, sweating nightmare.
“What…?
One Abnormal isn’t enough…?
There’s another one?!” “You two…
just run,” Asher whispered, his hand weakly nudging Jahek’s glove.
“Get Ambo out of the rubble…
and get out of here.
I’ll think of something…
to get their attention…” SLAP!
The elongated, vein-pulsing arm of the second Abnormal violently backhanded Asher across the face with immense, blunt force, instantly knocking the captain into complete unconsciousness.
“Captain!” Jahek choked out, but before he could move, the elongated, tentacle-like white arm wrapped tightly around his own neck, violently pulling his body straight up into the air.
Jahek kicked his legs wildly, his throat collapsing as his oxygen supply was cut off.
Desperate to fight back, he frantically dug his hands into his casual pockets, throwing everything he had left—shattered bits of stone, handfuls of abrasive sand, extra pieces of bubble gum, and his silver daggers—blindly at the monster’s face, but the items merely bounced uselessly off its white hide.
His vision began to flicker, heavy black spots dancing across his eyelids as his sight began to turn black from the lack of oxygen.
His left hand weakly gripped the crushing white flesh around his neck, while his right fist clenched tight, his mind screaming in desperation as he reached his breaking point.
He was about to lose consciousness.
But right before his vision slipped into total darkness, his blurring, fading eyes caught the silhouette of a man walking out of the toxic grey fog.
The stranger was tall, exuding an unbothered, terrifyingly calm aura that seemed to freeze the surrounding air.
He wore a loose-fitting, buttoned long-sleeve green shirt, the sleeves casually folded up just around the wrist part, paired with classic khaki trousers.
The man’s face was an absolute blur to Jahek’s dying vision, but as the stranger stopped directly in front of the two three-meter monsters, a single, deep sentence echoed through Jahek’s fading mind before he completely blacked out: “You are visiting my territory…
and you don’t even pay some respect?” The last thing Jahek felt before his mind went entirely black was the crushing white arm around his neck suddenly shivering violently with a deep, primal terror.
Then, there was only silence.