Status: REJECTED.
The red words blinked over Kael's data screen, like blood dripping onto snow.
"Next!"
The voice was mechanical, impatient. Kael's old wheelchair rattled forward under the push of a soulless attendant. The line of candidates moved like broken dolls under fluorescent lights that buzzed like dying insects.
The testing chamber smelled of metal and old blood. Rows of metallic capsules stood open—pods designed for insertion, evaluation... and disposal.
Kael stared straight ahead, jaw tight, hands limp on the worn armrests. He wasn't supposed to be here. A cripple. A discard. Everyone else in line wore combat uniforms or at least walked on their own damn legs. Kael wore scavenged clothes and the stink of a dead district.
"Next candidate, Kael Idran. Code D-3781. Last chance."
The terminal didn't ask questions. It just opened the pod.
Kael rolled himself forward. No one looked at him. Not even the guards.
They expected him to die.
[00:00:00 — Neural Fusion Attempt Initiated]
He couldn't feel the cold gel, or the injections. Paraplegics lose everything from the waist down, but Kael had long ago learned to feel pain where there was none. The memory of pain. The memory of humiliation.
When the needles plunged into his skull, though—he felt that.
[NANOCORTEX TRANSFER: 3%]
Flashes. Static. Screams. A white room. A burning child. A name erased.
Kael gritted his teeth. His fists clenched.
[NANOCORTEX TRANSFER: 47%]
He heard something.
Breathing.
Not his.
Inside the chamber, something ancient stirred. Not code. Not machinery.Something alive.
[Warning: Foreign Entity Detected][ERROR: Symbiotic Pattern Not in Database][...Connection established.]
He screamed.
Not from pain. From violation.
Something was inside him. Clawing. Binding. Offering.
Survive... whispered a voice. Obey... and I will grant you everything they denied.
[Genetic Override: Successful][Host Accepted: Kael Idran — Status: ACTIVE][Welcome to NEXUS.]
The pod exploded open.
Smoke hissed out. Alarms rang. A soldier shouted. Another one screamed.
Kael stepped out.
No wheelchair.
He stood on two legs that glowed with lines of light. His right arm crackled with unstable energy, black veins pulsing beneath the skin.
The air twisted around him. A visible aura. Pressure. Something no candidate had ever emitted.
"Get down!" someone yelled.
Too late.
Kael's mutated arm snapped forward on instinct. A wave of dark matter erupted from his palm, slamming three guards against the wall.
He didn't aim.He didn't know how.But the thing inside him did.
Arkanis had awakened.
Outside the test facility, black towers stabbed into the sky. Drones hovered like vultures. Screens lit up across the city with one flashing line:
"UNREGISTERED ENTITY DETECTED – LEVEL Ω THREAT"
Kael ran.
His legs obeyed, but they weren't just his. The system guided him, muscles enhanced, nerves rewired. He sprinted faster than he ever thought possible. Faster than he ever thought he'd feel again.
He felt too much.
Pain. Power. Hunger.
A warning flashed in his mind:
[Daily Directive: FEED — Absorb bio-energy within 24 hours or suffer degradation.][Remaining Time: 23:47:32]
He collapsed in an alley miles away.
Chest heaving. Hands shaking. The veins in his arm still glowed, like magma under flesh.
"Wh-what the hell are you?" he whispered.
Survival, said the voice in his skull. You are no longer prey.
Kael clenched his teeth. The world had always hunted him, branded him useless.
Now, he had teeth.
Now, he was a predator.
Hours passed.
Kael found shelter in a derelict warehouse in District 9, near the Edge Wall. A fractured zone, abandoned since the Drone Raids five years ago. Power flickered only from scavenged conduits. Rats the size of dogs scurried under broken tiles.
He sat near a rusted vent, arms wrapped around his knees. The system pulsed quietly inside him, running diagnostics, overlaying symbols on his vision like a HUD.
[HOST STATUS: STABLE][GENETIC MERGE: 72%][THREAT CLASS: Omega-X]
He didn't know what any of it meant.
But he knew what he felt.
Power. Fear. A hunger beneath the skin, deep and inhuman.
You must feed, Arkanis said again. Organic matter. Energy. Neural data.
Kael's stomach twisted.
He had eaten nothing for days.
But this wasn't about food.
He wandered into the streets like a ghost, looking for answers—or something to keep him from going mad. The digital sky panels overhead flickered. Neon signs buzzed. Somewhere, in the clean zones, people lived lives untouched by what he'd become.
He found his first prey in an alleyway near the central pipeline. A scavenger with a neural implant, hunched over an open corpse, stripping tech from the brainstem.
Kael didn't think.
He lunged.
The man turned too slow. Kael's hand grabbed his throat—and the world twisted.
[Biometric Signature Acquired][Neural Harvest: Initiated]
The scream didn't last long.
When it ended, Kael stood there, trembling. Something had been pulled from the man. A stream of glowing data, essence, soul.
And Kael... changed.
[Neural Skill Acquired: Reflex Hack – Tier 1]
His muscles shifted subtly. His eyes refocused. He could see movement differently. Predict it. React faster.
He collapsed again, gasping. Not from guilt.
From addiction.
"Holy shit…" he whispered.
The hunger lessened.
Only slightly.
[Remaining Time: 17:12:04]
It wouldn't be the last.
Across the central zones, inside the halls of one of the major MegaCorps, alarms lit up.
"Sir, we've confirmed it. Subject D-3781 survived the fusion trial."
"Impossible. He was flagged for disposal."
"He merged with something… off-script. Not in the NEXUS library. We believe it's an Omega-grade symbiote. Possibly self-evolving."
Silence.
Then the director spoke.
"Put out a black flag order. No capture. Terminate on sight."
Kael didn't know it yet, but he had just become the most hunted thing on the planet.
He looked at his reflection in a broken screen.
His eye flickered between his human gray... and something red, glowing, alien.
"Then come for me," he muttered.