The station never really slept. Even on slow mornings, when the cases were thin and the chatter of detectives had dulled into a background hum, there was always noise. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly. The vents whispered. The coffee machine let out a wheeze like an old smoker when the last drip of coffee dropped. The smell of leather and starch, sweat and disinfectant clung to the air.
Adrian sat through roll call with the rest of his unit, nodding at the right times, pretending to care about traffic assignments and staffing updates. His body was there, but his mind had been somewhere else since the day before. Since the first time he'd seen…it. Since the first time something impossible had crawled into him.
Every so often he felt it: a hum in his veins. A faint tickle beneath the skin. It was like a swarm of ants invisibly moving in ordered patterns inside of him. No one else noticed, of course. No one else could.
When roll call finally wrapped up, Adrian muttered something about needing to hit the head and slipped out before anyone thought to make small talk. His pulse quickened with every step down the hall. He was half-afraid someone would intercept him before he could get where he was going. He needed a minute alone.
The restroom door creaked on hinges that needed oil. He stepped inside, the echo of his boots ricocheting off ceramic tile. The place was empty. White stalls, a row of sinks, mirrors catching pale light.
Perfect.
Adrian ducked into the far stall and shut the door with more force than intended. The metal latch clicked shut, sounding final, like a lock sealing him into something more than privacy. He sat heavily on the closed toilet seat. Hands pressing into his knees, he tried to calm the hammer of his heart.
He could no longer resist the urge he'd been feeling since assimilation to reach out and interact with the nanobot core, but he'd been exhausted and incredulous until now.
His voice broke..."Alright," he whispered, "Show me what you are."
The answer was immediate:
A chime resonated inside his skull, faint and crystalline. His stomach lurched. It wasn't sound from in the air. It didn't come from anywhere in the bathroom. It was inside of him. Vibrating his body in a way that made him aware of his body in a way he never had been before. And then…
[NANO CORE ONLINE]
Welcome, Subject Zero.
Core Integrity: 1.0
Free Nanobots Assimilated: 1,200.
Words unfurled across his vision like text projected onto the back of his eyes. He blinked hard. They didn't vanish. The glowing letters hung there, stark and undeniable.
Adrian's jaw clenched. He wasn't imagining it. Not a dream, not hallucination.
"Explain yourself," he muttered, half to see if it would respond, half to demand an answer.
The system obeyed instantly. Its words had no inflection, but the precision made it feel almost clinical, like reading a text book.
The Nanobot Core is a dedicated swarm of bound nanobots. Its function is regulation, allocation, and host interface.
Free nanobots: unbound swarms harvested from deceased hosts. Free nanobots may be sacrificed to improve host physiology or to unlock advanced protocols.
Warning: Assimilation requires host death. Nanobots cannot be retrieved from living organisms at this time.
His breath caught. Images flashed through his head: the man from yesterday twitching in the street, the strange particles flowing out of his body, sliding through Adrian's pores like smoke through cloth. He'd felt it, hadn't wanted to believe it. And now the "Core" was calmly confirming.
That guy, the feral man, wasn't just an addict, lunatic or diseased. He was a host somehow. Changed by nanobots. And when Adrien defended himself he didn't just kill the guy, he somehow inherited the thing that had changed him.
He licked dry lips. "What about upgrades?"
The vision shifted again. New text bloomed, brighter this time, each option standing like a column of translucent light in his mind's eye.
Core Pathways Available:
Core Upgrade (Locked; higher thresholds required)StrengthSpeedIntelligenceHealingSensesReplication (Locked)
Adrian stared. Each word wasn't just a word, it carried a weight and had texture. Strength seemed to pulse in his muscles as if daring him to choose it. Speed felt like a whisper at the back of his skull, like wind waiting to rush. Intelligence shimmered sharp and cold, whispering of clarity, strategy, power of thought. Healing glowed warm, steady, promising life and safety. Senses somehow seemed sharper than the rest like something yet to be grasped.
Replication loomed locked and gray, and though he couldn't touch it, it made him uneasy. The word carried a certain heaviness, an implication of multiplication. If nanobots could replicate, what then?
He rubbed his jaw, thinking. This is insane. I should be calling a doctor. I should be calling the CDC, hell, the military. Not sitting here making character sheet choices in a bathroom stall.
And yet, he couldn't look away.
Strength, what good was strength if this turned out to be not real? Speed, how would he test it? Intelligence, would he even notice?
But healing, healing was simple, obvious. If it worked, he'd know immediately. If it didn't, well, then this was all just a sick joke and he could try to scrape his life back together.
His chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. His pulse thudded in his ears. He felt like he was standing on a cliff edge, about to jump.
"Alright," he breathed. "Healing. Do it."
The world flared white.
[Upgrade Initiated.]
Cost: 1,000 free nanobots sacrificed
Free Nanobots: 200
Resilience/Healing: Level 1
Cellular regeneration capacity increased by 15%
Adrian's body seized. Heat flooded his core and spread outward in rippling waves. His muscles clenched involuntarily, teeth grinding hard enough to hurt. It wasn't pain, not exactly, but it wasn't comfortable either. It was a storm tearing through his cells. A tide of static racing under his skin rewriting something fundamental.
He gasped clutching the stall wall. Tingling climbed his spine and flooded his limbs. His vision blurred at the edges, colors bleeding into white.
And then, just as quickly, it stopped.
The heat vanished. The tingling faded. Adrian sat slumped against the cold stall wall, drenched in sweat. His breath came ragged and harsh in the small space.
Slowly, he opened his hands and stared at them. They looked the same. The same lines in his palms. The same old scar on his knuckle from a fight back in high school.
But beneath the skin something was different. His body felt charged, alive, like every nerve had been polished and sharpened. He could feel the blood coursing in his veins, the thrum of his pulse, the micro-tightening of muscles he hadn't consciously moved.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered.
Was it real? Could a body change in seconds? Or was this just a strange mental placebo effect and it was all just really his own adrenaline convincing him?
His heart still hammered, but beneath the fear was a flicker of something else. Excitement. Hope.
If this was true… What else was possible?
The knock on the stall door nearly sent Adrian through the ceiling.
"Adrian? You in here?"
His partner sounded sharp and impatient.
Adrian lurched upright, wiping sweat from his forehead, trying to make his breathing normal. He glanced once more at the ghost-text still floating faintly in the edges of his vision. Numbers. Words. Healing: Level 1. A reality that hadn't existed yesterday.
"Yeah," he croaked, forcing steadiness. "What's up?"
"We got a call. Downtown. Captain says we need to roll now. Department is spread thin today."
"On it." Adrian splashed water on his face at the sink. Cold shock helped to sooth the lingering heat in his veins. He caught his reflection in the mirror. Looked like the same man. Same short blonde hair. Same uniform, crisp from morning ironing. His green eyes were a bit different. They looked too bright. Too awake.
Something else was alive in him now.
McCarthy asked, "you alright? You don't look good." Adrian just mumbled something about breakfast not agreeing with him.
He followed McCarthy out, their boots thudding the tiled hall. The normal chaos of the precinct wrapping around them again. Radios crackled, phones rang, paperwork rustled. Ordinary life. It felt impossibly thin compared to what Adrian had just experienced.
By the time they reached the cruiser, Adrian had stuffed the chaos into the back of his skull. He couldn't explain it, couldn't share it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The call came from one of the older districts, where brick buildings leaned tiredly over alleys that stank of piss and rotting garbage. Their tires splashed through oily puddles, graffiti covered many of the walls.
McCarthy squinted at the notepad balanced on his knee. "Caller says it's a fight. Two men. Says they were…" He hesitated, frowning. "biting each other?"
Adrian's stomach twisted. The Core's words echoed inside his head: Assimilation requires host death. Free nanobots harvested from terminated hosts.
He gripped the wheel tighter. "More junkies," he muttered. "Gotta be."
But his voice didn't convince even himself.
They rolled up slowly. The alley entrance gaped between two rows of townhouses. Shadows pooled thick inside. A metal dumpster rattled as something slammed against it hard enough to bend steel.
McCarthy keyed his radio, voice clipped: "Unit 73 on scene, investigating disturbance." He slipped out of the car, weapon in hand. Adrian followed, every muscle coiled.
Two men appeared grappling with each other against the wall. They didn't look like fighters. They didn't look like anything Adrian could name.
One man lunged forward with a guttural snarl, teeth sinking into the other's shoulder. Blood gushed, spraying the wall. The bitten man didn't scream. He didn't even flinch. He only clawed harder, ripping at flesh with fingernails broken down to bloody stumps. Their bodies slammed against the bricks, animalistic, jerky, almost mechanical in their violence.
"Police!" McCarthy barked,. "Break it up! Now!"
Neither man looked. Neither even paused.
Adrian's chest clenched. It was the same, exactly the same, as the man from yesterday. The same absence of humanity in their eyes, the same blank feral stare.
The nearest one turned suddenly, head jerking toward the officers. His face was smeared crimson, teeth wet with the other man's blood. His pupils were blown wide, almost swallowing the irises. For half a second, Adrian thought the man was going to back down. Instead the man shrieked like a wild animal and charged.
He was too fast. It was too wrong.
Adrian barely had his nightstick raised before the man was on him, weight slamming them both into the wall. His jaws snapped down, teeth crunching through uniform fabric into Adrian's forearm.
Pain exploded. White-hot.
Adrian shouted, instinct driving his arm up, nightstick cracking across the man's temple. Once. Twice. The man snarled but didn't release. Blood gushed down Adrian's arm. He swung again, harder, finally feeling his skull give way. The body went limp. Dead weight. Adrian shoved him off of him with chest heaving. The wound in his arm was bleeding freely.
"Kane!" His partner's cry snapped his head around.
The second feral had tackled McCarthy to the ground. It's claws raking at his uniforms outer vest. It looked like it was trying to dig a hole in his chest to crawl in. All the while it kept snapping it's jaws in a disturbing and unnatural way.
Adrian raised his sidearm. No time to think. No time to hesitate. The shot echoed like thunder in the narrow alley. The round punched clean through the back of the skull, exiting in a spray of blood and bone. The body collapsed forward onto McCarthy, twitching once before going still.
McCarthy shoved it off with a curse, chest heaving. Gagging, spitting and sputtering McCarthy came to his feet. "What the fuck," he gasped. "What the fuck:, what the fuck!?!" All the while wiping blood and brains off his face and chest.
Adrian didn't answer. His attention focused on his wound. His arm burned, blood dripping down to his wrist. The pain was so sharp he almost didn't notice the words overlaying his vision again.
[Free Nanobots detected: 1,982]
Assimilate? [Y/N]
His mouth went dry. He looked at McCarthy, who was bent over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. No way he could see it.
Adrian swallowed. "Yes," he whispered.
The bodies exhaled. At least, that's what it looked like. Wisps of shimmering dust bled from their mouths and wounds, glimmering faintly in the morning light. The streams lifted into the air like smoke before whipping toward Adrian. He stiffened as they sank into his skin, a shudder crawling up his spine.
The Core chimed again.
[Free Nanobots Assimilated]
Total: 2,182.
Adrian hissed. His arm felt on fire for real now, but not from the wound this time. From something else. Something that felt alive. He tugged back his sleeve with shaking fingers, expecting to see shredded flesh and torn muscle. But that's not what he saw at all.
The bite marks were knitting shut slowly. Flesh puckered, closed and smoothed out. The ragged wound shrank while he watched. New pink skin rising where teeth punctures had been just moments ago. Within seconds, the bleeding stopped entirely. All that remained was an angry pink spot, shiny and fresh but already beginning to fade.
His breath came ragged. His vision swam. His heart hammered so hard it hurt.
It's real. It's real. Oh God, it's real.
McCarthy straightened with a groan, muttering curses about "freak junkies" and "this city going to hell." He didn't notice Adrian staring at his arm, wide-eyed. Adrian forced his bloody sleeve back down, swallowing his shock. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, covering the tremor in his voice. "Let's call it in," he said, keeping his tone flat.
McCarthy nodded, already raising his radio. He asked, "are you alright?". Adrian shook his head. He didn't know what he could really say right now. As he stood still in the alley, waiting for McCarthy to call it in, he became acutely aware that his heart was pounding and the taste of iron was still sharp in his mouth.
Thinking about the bodies that lay cooling on the ground now, their legacy pulsed inside him, nanobots writhing and alive. Reshaping everything. His body, his life and his destiny. He just didn't know how much that would be. His arm throbbed with the impossible healing. His mind reeled running ten ways at once. His body buzzed with energy that felt alien and intoxicating.
The area was awash in flashing red and blue lights. Paramedics checked McCarthy for injuries while Adrian went through the motions. He helped bag the scene. He wrote the initial incident report.
About that morning, he gave clipped answers when his sergeant questioned him about the incident. He couldn't mention the bite. He couldn't tell people about an injury that's already healed. On the surface he was handling everything smooth, cool and easy. But inside, his thoughts raged like wildfire. That upgrade had really done something. Already his body was different. Already he'd survived what should have been surgery, stitches and weeks of healing.
His mind kept coming back around to the other enhancement pathways that he had not chosen. Strength, speed, senses, intelligence. Replication being still locked. And Core upgrades that hinted at entire evolutions. The possibilities stretched in every direction, intoxicating and terrifying at once.
By the time his shift ended, Adrian could barely stand the wait. He needed answers. He needed to know just how deep this went.
That night, lying awake in his apartment, the glow of the city leaking through half-drawn blinds, Adrian stared at his healed arm, fingers tracing smooth skin where teeth had pierced hours before.
He'd felt the Core respond. He'd seen the nanobots flow into him. He'd chosen, and his body had changed. It wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't imagination or stress. It was real. He was no longer just Adrian Kane, street cop. Something else lived inside him now. Something with no boundaries he could yet see.
For the first time in years, the weight of his life as an ordinary man cracked open to reveal something he hadn't felt since childhood.
Wonder.
And maybe, just maybe, destiny.