The sun had yet to rise over the smouldering wreckage of Chicago, and the makeshift military command centre erected on the city's outskirts had become a chaos of screens, radios, and panicked shouts.
The air reeked of burnt insulation, scorched concrete, and blood. Soldiers moved with frantic urgency, barking status updates and triage orders into open channels, while officers pored over casualty reports so staggering that many refused to read them aloud.
The devastation was on a scale previously unimaginable in modern American history. Whole blocks had vanished beneath the weight of monsters. Bridges had collapsed. Skyscrapers had fallen like dominos. And among it all, civilians; tens of thousands of them, had been caught in the crossfire, their lives crushed beneath steel and silence.
But then the doors slammed open. Heavy military boots pounded against the concrete as a new group of soldiers entered without preamble or request for clearance. Their uniforms bore no insignia recognizable to the current command, but their movements were crisp, purposeful, and radiated authority that demanded submission.
They were followed immediately by a procession of figures dressed head to toe in pristine white biohazard suits, moving with the calm detachment of researchers who had seen far too many horrors to be surprised by fresh catastrophe. Every one of them carried boxes and reinforced briefcases emblazoned with the same emblem; a black stylized 'M' superimposed on a golden crown, MONARCH.
The general in charge of the site, a battle-hardened veteran named General Langford, rose from his chair with a face like thunder. He did not appreciate being overridden, especially not without notice or authorization.
"Who the hell are you people?" he demanded, his voice booming over the clamour.
One of the new soldiers stepped forward, a tall African-American woman with a short-cropped haircut, stern eyes, and the kind of bearing that had been forged through decades of command. She wore an olive uniform without rank markings but carried herself with enough iron discipline to silence the room.
She gave a sharp salute, "Colonel Diane Foster. I am acting field commander for Project Monarch, appointed by joint authorization from Homeland Security and the Department of Defence. My people are now assuming full operational control of this site."
Langford's jaw clenched, his fist curling slightly at his side, "The hell you are. This is a joint military-humanitarian zone under my jurisdiction. You can't just walk in and—"
Colonel Foster did not interrupt him with words, but with motion. She stepped forward and handed him a sealed black folder. Inside were orders; typed, stamped, signed, and sealed with more clearances than Langford had ever seen stacked in one place.
Her voice did not rise, it remained steady and professional, "These are executive directives. The contents are not up for debate."
Langford's eyes flicked to the screen beside him; one of many scattered around the room, where a constantly updating body count was visible. The number had just passed 21,000.
For a moment, he said nothing. Then his shoulders sagged slightly, the weight of command finally cracking the armour of resistance. With a heavy sigh, he signed the document at the bottom, muttering a curse under his breath.
"You win this one, Colonel," he said, before turning to his officers, "Clear out. Pull our people back. The site's no longer ours."
The original command team began filing out in silence, their faces drawn and hollow.
Foster gave them no acknowledgment. Her attention was already shifting to the team moving in behind her, who were now opening cases, laying out strange devices, and erecting mobile terminals.
One of the men, clearly not military, wore no lab coat like the others. His features were unmistakably East Asian, his jaw shadowed with stubble and his expression contemplative. He glanced toward Foster as he lifted a tablet from one of the black cases.
"The octopus," he said, almost absently, "The one from the ocean. It is not dead."
Foster crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, "Dr. Serizawa, do you have confirmation?"
"Yes," Serizawa replied, nodding once, "Satellite telemetry captured its movement away from the city shortly after the conflict ended. It took the bodies of the other two creatures and dragged them into the lake. We believe it fed."
Foster's expression darkened, though she betrayed no emotion beyond cold calculation, "So we're not dealing with three monsters anymore. Just one. And it's a clean-up operation now."
"Hardly clean-up," Serizawa murmured, "The organism is not merely a mutation. It is an Apex."
The other scientists in the room turned at that word. Apex; a term used internally within Monarch for creatures that operated at the highest level of the evolutionary hierarchy. Beings not merely superior but dominant by biological imperative.
"He didn't just kill the other two," Serizawa continued, "He is consuming them. Absorbing them. Evolving further. He is adapting in real time."
Foster narrowed her eyes, "Then we classify him. Assign him a name. What do you propose?"
Serizawa looked down at his screen, then back up. His eyes were solemn, "Oodako. The name given in 1954 reports from the Pacific. He matches the profile. Giant cephalopod, deep-sea origin, aggressive tendencies, regenerative properties, and now; post-rampage, confirmed Apex behaviour."
She gave a slow nod, "Then it's official. Titanus Oodako is now a Class-A threat. We prepare containment protocols. And alert the central council. They'll want full reports within the hour."
…
Meanwhile, in a reinforced private security shelter just outside the city's central district, the remnants of Energyne corporate leadership were collapsing under their own weight.
Inside the high-security vault, the only surviving Wyden sibling; Claire, sat with her arms folded across her chest, her face bloodied but expression defiant.
Her brother, Brett, had not been so lucky. He had died screaming as debris from their building impaled him like an insect on a pin. She had barely escaped with her life, though she was beginning to wonder whether that had been a gift or a curse.
The doors to the room opened, and once again the black-crowned 'M' walked through, this time accompanied by a cluster of stone-faced federal agents and began seizing everything.
"You can't be serious," Claire spat, rising to her feet, "This company has government contracts. You can't just steal our work."
One of the agents stepped forward and placed a document on the table. It was thick, official, and printed with the language of finality, "Under Executive Order 775-HQ, all Energyne assets; intellectual, financial, technological, have been repossessed into Monarch's operational structure. Your patents, your property, your research labs; all now fall under our jurisdiction."
"This is theft," Claire hissed, her voice cracking.
"This is containment," came the reply.
Outside the shelter, the Energyne logo was already being torn down from the outer walls. In its place, trucks and helicopters bearing the Monarch insignia arrived one after another, offloading equipment and uploading everything else.
Servers were stripped. Vaults were emptied. Even the company's satellites were being re-tasked remotely by black-ops engineers on secure links.
Energyne did not fall in flames. It was swallowed, quietly and completely, by an organization that operated in the spaces between governments, the shadowy cracks where real power made its nest.
And Claire Wyden; who had dreamed of rewriting evolution, was left with nothing. No legacy. No company. Not even freedom. Only silence, and the knowledge that somewhere, in the depths of a newly bloodied sea, the world's next nightmare was still evolving.