The air was heavy enough to chew. It tasted of rusted iron and impending rain. Adam wiped a streak of grease from his forehead, leaving a black smear across his brow. The humidity in the scrapyard was unnatural today. It stuck to his skin like a second layer of clothing.
"Sixty. Take it or leave it."
The fat man slammed three crumpled twenty-dollar bills onto the greasy table, cursing under his breath. "You're robbing me, kid! This alternator is junk!"
"Then go buy a new one for two hundred," Adam said flatly, snatching the cash. He held the bills to the harsh sunlight, checking the watermarks. Real.
He shoved the money into his pocket and pushed the heavy metal part toward the edge of the table. "Pleasure doing business."
He didn't care about the man's curses as he walked away. In this district, feelings didn't pay the rent. Metal did. Adam grabbed a bottle of warm water from a crate. He unscrewed the cap, tilting his head back.
The silence hit first. It wasn't quiet. It was a sudden, violent absence of sound. The seagulls stopped screaming. The distant hum of traffic vanished. Even the wind died instantly.
Adam froze, the water bottle halfway to his mouth. The hairs on his arms stood up. Static electricity crackled against his skin, snapping like tiny rubber bands.
SCREEEEEEEEECH!
A sound tore through the world. It sounded like a sheet of steel the size of a continent being ripped in half. Adam dropped the bottle. He clamped his hands over his ears, but the sound didn't come from outside. It vibrated in his teeth. It rattled his ribcage.
He looked up. The sky wasn't just changing color. It was breaking. A jagged black line, stretching from horizon to horizon, split the blue atmosphere. It didn't look magical. It looked like a physical wound on the universe.
"What the..."
Before Adam could finish, the atmosphere screamed. A shockwave of pressure hammered him into the dirt. It wasn't wind. It was pure atmospheric weight. It felt like the gravity had suddenly doubled.
Adam's knees slammed into the gravel. Shards of metal dug into his jeans. He gasped for air, but his lungs wouldn't expand. The oxygen felt thick, solid.
"Gah—!"
He retched, vomiting bile onto the dusty ground. Pain exploded in his bloodstream. It wasn't a headache. It was everywhere. Every capillary, every vein, every artery felt like it was being pumped full of molten lead.
Adam curled into a ball, his fingers clawing at the dirt. His fingernails broke against the stones. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. Thump. Thump. Thump. Too fast. It was going to burst.
The world began to tilt. The piles of scrap cars around him spun in a nauseating blur. He tried to focus on his hands. They were trembling violently. The veins beneath his skin bulged, turning a dark, bruised purple.
Am I dying? The thought was clinical. Detached.
The screaming sound in the sky intensified, shifting into a low, thrumming bass that shook the ground beneath him. Adam's vision flickered. Dark spots danced in front of his eyes. The edges of his vision turned gray.
Then, the gray vanished. A piercing blue light overlaid his retina. It wasn't a hallucination. It was crisp, sharp, and unmistakably artificial. Text scrolled across his vision, floating in the empty air, unaffected by his blinking.
[ Alert. Planetary Barrier Critical Failure. ] [ Analyzing Host Biological Structure... ]
Adam tried to scream, but only a wheeze escaped his throat. The burning in his blood spiked, searing his nerve endings.
[ Foreign Energy Detected: Alpha-Grade Mutagen. ] [ Host Compatibility: 98%. ] [ Initiating DNA Restructuring Sequence. ]
Adam blinked, trying to clear the digital text from his retina. It wouldn't fade. Then, a scream tore through the scrapyard. It wasn't a scream of fear. It was a scream of agony that warped into something guttural. Something wet.
Adam scrambled backward, his heels digging into the dirt. Ten meters away, Larry—the scrapyard supervisor—was on his knees. He wasn't moving. He was vibrating.
"Larry?" Adam choked out.
Larry's back arched violently. RRRIIIP! The sound of thick canvas tearing echoed. Larry's blue work overalls split down the spine. But it wasn't just the clothes.
Adam watched in horror as knots of muscle, red and raw, ballooned outward from Larry's back. They pulsed like living tumors, expanding with sickening speed. Larry turned his head. His neck popped. A sound like a dry branch snapping. His face was gone. Or rather, the human parts were being pushed aside. His jaw dislocated. It dropped three inches lower than humanly possible, the skin around his cheeks stretching until it became translucent.
There were no pupils in his eyes. Just white, milky orbs devoid of intelligence. "Grrr... aaaah..."
Steam rose from Larry's skin. His body temperature was skyrocketing. This wasn't a zombie. This was a biological overload. A monster born of pure energy.
The creature that used to be Larry slammed its fists into the ground. The concrete cracked. It swiveled its head. The milky eyes locked onto Adam.
BOOM.
Larry launched himself forward. He didn't run. He exploded from his position, kicking up a cloud of dust. Adam's survival instinct screamed louder than his thoughts.
Move!
Adam threw himself to the right. A massive fist smashed into the car door Adam had been leaning against a second ago. The metal crumpled like tin foil. Adam rolled, crashing into a pile of rusted junk.
He was cornered. Behind him was a wall of crushed sedans. In front of him was a seven-foot tall mass of mutating muscle. The creature roared, spitting thick, dark saliva. It prepared to lunge again.
Adam's hands frantically grasped at the pile behind him. His left hand closed around a length of rusted iron pipe. His right hand grabbed a heavy industrial wrench. They were useless. Against that monster, they were toothpicks. But he had no choice. He raised them, preparing to die fighting.
The moment his fingers tightened around both metal objects, the blue text flared in his vision again.
[ Materials Detected: Iron Pipe (Trash) + Steel Wrench (Common). ] [ Compatibility: 100%. ] [ Activate Skill: Merge? ]
Adam didn't think. He didn't speak. His brain was purely reactive. YES!
He slammed the two objects together in front of his chest. FZZZZT!
Pain. It felt like he had shoved his hands into a blast furnace. The heat didn't come from the metal. It came from inside him. It drained directly from his marrow. Adam screamed, but no sound came out.
In his hands, physics broke. The solid iron of the pipe and the steel of the wrench didn't clang together. They liquefied. They turned into a swirling, silver mercury. The metal flowed over his knuckles, hot and heavy.
[ Restructuring... ]
It happened in a heartbeat. The liquid metal extended, hardened, and sharpened. The wrench and pipe were gone. In Adam's right hand, he now held a single, unified object. It was a jagged, meter-long metal spike. It was dark grey, dense, and came to a needle-point tip.
Larry lunged. The creature was mid-air, arms wide, jaws unhinged to bite Adam's head off. Adam didn't swing. He braced the spike against his hip and thrust upward.
SHKLK!
The sound of metal piercing meat was sickeningly wet. The spike entered just below the creature's chin. It drove upward, punching through the soft palate and into the brain stem. Momentum carried them both into the pile of scrap.
Adam slammed his back against the rusted cars. The heavy body of the mutant crushed him. The creature twitched once. Twice. Then, it went limp. Dead weight.
Adam shoved the corpse aside, gasping for air. His chest heaved. He looked at the spike in his hand. It was covered in black, oily blood. He looked at his hands. They were trembling, not from fear, but from weakness. A wave of dizziness hit him. It wasn't the concussion. It was hunger.
A voracious, clawing emptiness in his stomach. It felt like his body was eating its own muscles to fuel the fire he had just used. He clutched his abdomen, doubling over.
The blue interface floated calmly above the corpse, indifferent to his suffering.
[ Fusion Successful. ] [ Item Created: Crude Iron Spike (Rank F). ] [ Stats: Sharpness +3, Durability +5. ]
A red warning box flashed underneath, pulsing urgently.
[ WARNING: Caloric Reserve Critical. ] [ Host status: Starvation Mode. ] [ WARNING: Energy Reserves Empty. Skill Activation Disabled. ]
"Damn it..." Adam wheezed. He tried to stand, but his legs felt like they were filled with wet cement. He needed food. Immediately.
Suddenly, the pile of scrap metal to his left shifted.
Clang.
It wasn't the wind. Adam froze. Through the haze of pain and dizziness, he saw movement. Not one figure. Three. They crawled over the crushed cars like spiders, their limbs elongated, their skin pale and steaming just like Larry's.
Three more mutants. Freshly turned.
The leading creature stopped. It sniffed the air, its nostrils flaring. Its milky, soul-less eyes locked onto the corpse of Larry... and then, they snapped to Adam. It smiled, revealing a row of jagged, broken bone-teeth.
Adam's grip on the iron spike loosened. He was starving, paralyzed, and cornered.
[ Alert: Multiple Hostiles Detected. ]
Adam stared at the monsters. A dry, humorless chuckle escaped his bleeding lips. "Well," he whispered, watching them prepare to pounce. "The price just went up."