The lab's ultraviolet sterilizing lamp hissed overhead as I stared at the data pulsating on the gene sequencer, cold sweat sliding down my spine and into my white coat. Spiral strands of DNA were replicating themselves in the screen, and bizarre black tentacles were growing out of the ends of the 23rd pair of chromosomes.
"Lin Mo, come and look at this!" Professor Qin's voice exploded in Lab B4. The old man's withered fingers poked at the electron microscope screen, the quantum cloud mapping of the meteorite sample was boiling over, and the fractal patterns made up of those phosphorescent particles were actually exactly the same as the genetic mapping extracted from my blood three days ago.
The alarm suddenly burst into ear-piercing chirps, and I held onto the console to keep from falling. The meteorite fragments in the thermostat erupted with a demonic purple light, and the pneumatic lock of the safety door exploded with sparks one after another. The cancer cell samples floating in the culture fluid proliferated wildly, crashing in flesh-colored waves against the bulletproof glass.
"Take the data disk and go through the emergency exit!" My father crashed through the lab door, his motor oil-stained palm pressed against my shoulder. The man who always said he was working late at the auto shop still had the fluorescent slime of some creature stuck to his combat boots at the moment.
My mother's silhouette shimmered at the end of the hallway, and with a wave of her hand the concrete wall rumbled like a living thing, trapping the pursuing security guard in the amber-colored substance. This was a mother I'd never seen before - the earthy halo that flowed from her fingertips actually gave the reinforced concrete a Play-Doh-like texture.
The building suddenly tilted forty-five degrees and I crashed through the glass curtain wall into the atrium. As I fell, I saw an unforgettable sight: six columns of magma-like light ripping through the clouds, and a swarm of meteorites slamming into the city with their bluish tails. The closest one smashed through the roof of the CDC, its dark red claws protruding from the crater, the sound of scales rubbing against metal grating on one's teeth.
"Run!" My father flung me toward the safe exit, his right arm erupting in greenish-white arcs of electricity. Mother slapped her hands to the ground, and the tiles in a ten-meter radius instantly sanded and wrapped around the hideous body that emerged from the flames.
The monster looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex had been stuffed into a nuclear reactor-a three-meter-tall body covered in obsidian-like scale armor, spinal spines piercing through the epidermis to form a crown of burning bone, and six compound eyes flowing with a lava-like luster. Instead of flames, it opened its mouth and spat out a plasma beam that directly distorted the air.
The thunder snake my father swung out collided with the plasma beam, and the wave of air toppled the entire floor. I fumbled with the half-used scalpel in the rubble and realized that my palm was oozing a black substance. The slime-like substance engulfed the surrounding steel and concrete, and the wristwatch detector showed radiation levels soaring to 380 times the lethal dose.
"Remember, you can outlive everyone..." My mother's voice mingled with the roar of the collapsing building. I saw that her legs were crystallizing, and those earthy energies were reversing their flow back into the monster - the beast was actually absorbing superpowers!
The bloody hole in my father's chest spewed out blood tinged with electric sparks, and he used his last strength to throw me toward the ventilation duct. The moment the monster's barb-covered tongue curled around my mother's waist, a sharp pain like a branding iron burning suddenly came to the back of my neck. Meteorite fragments had somehow embedded themselves in the cervical vertebrae, and a waterfall of silver data streams exploded on my retina:
[Genetic lock lifted]
[High-energy life form detected]
[Devouring protocol activated]
My body acted before my consciousness, and I pounced on the monster with movements that were too fast to be human. Black lines spread from the back of my neck to my right arm, and the moment I pressed my palm against the monster's wound, my entire arm disintegrated into billions of nanometer-sized black threads that were rooted into its body.
An indescribable feeling of fullness filled every blood vessel, and I saw the monster's terrified compound eyes reflecting its own glowing eyes - the left eye as blue as a supernova, the right eye as black as the void. Its wail faded, and its three-ton body collapsed into a grayish-white calcified mass under my palm.
[Lava Lizard gene analysis complete]
[Base Attribute Bonus: Strength +15/Agility +9/Endurance +23]
[Mental Pollution Index: 7%]
Beastly roars rose and fell from outside the ruins, and black shadows with a wingspan of twenty meters hovered over the burning city. I knelt at the spot where my parents had disappeared, my fingertips touching a half-burnt work badge - 'Deep Blue Program Phase III Researcher' was printed under my father's picture, and 'Director of the Alien Inhibition Section' was labeled next to my mother's name.
The beam of a tactical flashlight suddenly pierced through the smoke, and a squad of men in black tactical uniforms surrounded me. The leader, Scarface, raised his detector, and the red letters on the screen stung my eyes: [Threat Level: Ω].
"Special intake object number 9527," the sound of his pulling the bolt was extraordinarily crisp, "According to Article 7 of the Calamity Emergency Response Law, you have ten seconds to give up resistance."
I looked to the black substance that had re-coalesced in my palm as the explosions and screams of the distant TV station made a symphony of hell. As the first anesthetic round hits my chest, I let the hungry black threads burrow through my skin.