BOOM!!!
The sound didn't just reach Malisa's ears; it vibrated through her teeth, shaking the very foundation of her skull. Her eyes shot open.
With her enhanced sense she knew instantly who that was and her son was in danger.
Malisa lunged out of bed, but the world tilted violently. A wave of extreme dizziness crashed over her, her internal equilibrium recalibrating to the strange gravity of her evolving biology.
She gripped the bedpost, her fingernails digging deep into the wood with a strength she didn't realize she possessed. She waited only a heartbeat for the vertigo to pass, her heart hammering a rhythm that sounded like a war drum in her ears.
Adrenaline, began to pump through her system, helping flushing out some of the weakness.
"DAYMON! DAYMON, HELP ME!"
The second scream from the kitchen acted like a catalyst. It gave her the strength to fight through the nausea.
She stepped out into the hallway, her legs feeling heavy yet coiled like springs. She wasn't moving with her old, graceful gait; she was moving with a purposeful, predatory urgency.
Every step was a battle against the "sickness," but the thought of her children being torn apart acted as a shield against the pain.
Only thought on her mind have to save her kids.
Through the floorboards, she could hear the struggle. She heard the snarling—a deep, guttural sound that no dog should be capable of making. She heard the shattering of glass and the desperate scuffle of sneakers on linoleum. With her enhanced senses, she had a terrifyingly clear picture of the carnage downstairs even before she reached the landing.
By the time she reached the kitchen, the scene was a vision of hell. The stove-top light cast long, flickering shadows against the walls. She saw Daymon on the floor, his forearm clamped in the jaws of a monster that wore the skin of their dog. Midnight was unrecognizable—a humped, muscular beast of oily black fur and glowing eyes. Blood, dark and hot, was everywhere.
Malisa felt a coldness settle over her. She didn't have a weapon, and her body felt like it was made of glass, but it didn't matter. If she had to, she would throw herself into those ivory jaws. She would let the beast take her life an inch at a time if it meant her boys could live longer.
She began to run, her feet barely making a sound on the tile.
As she closed the distance, she saw the beast shift its grip.
Midnight let go of Daymon's shredded arm, his head pulling back to reset. His amber eyes locked onto Daymon's exposed throat.
Something in Malisa snapped.
It wasn't just a mother's instinct; it was the Evolution taking the wheel. She knew she would be too late to stop the bite from connecting.
She didn't just want to stop the dog anymore; she wanted to send it to hell.
Her eyes caught a flash of silver on the floor—the long, serrated carving knife Daymon had dropped.
She didn't break her stride. She scooped the blade up in a fluid motion that felt as natural as breathing and launched herself into the air.
She landed on Midnight's humped back.
Her left hand plunged into the thick, matted fur of his neck, her fingers locking like iron clamps around his spine.
The dog let out a choked, startled sound, his head whipping back, but Malisa was already moving.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't mourn the pet he used to be. She drove the carving knife downward with every ounce of her newly forged strength, plunging the steel blade deep into the dog's left eye.
A sharp, agonized yelp cut through the air, followed by a heavy, final thud.
The monster gave one massive, violent convulsion, its legs kicking out and scraping the cabinets, before it went limp.
Malisa stayed on the beast's back for a moment, her chest heaving, her hands stained with a mixture of dark blood.
As the adrenaline began to recede, she looked down at the creature.
She remembered Midnight as a puppy, chewing on Drake's boots; she remembered him sleeping at the foot of the boys' beds. She remembered all the good times she had with him. Her expression softened, the predatory fire in her eyes dimming into a look of deep, pity.
"Mom?" Ryan whispered from the kitchen doorway.
Malisa turned her head. She looked at Daymon's shredded arm and his bleeding shoulder.
"We need to get you to the hospital," she said, her voice a low, urgent hum that brooked no argument. "Now."
...
Washington D.C.
Inside the Oval Office, the air felt heavy, charged with a static that made the fine hairs on Arthur's arms stand at attention.
He dropped a thick, leather-bound folder onto the Resolute Desk.
"Here it is, Mr. President. The latest field reports. The number of 'Evolved' is climbing exponentially. It's no longer a curve; it's a vertical line."
President Grant didn't look up. He was staring out the window at the distant treeline of the National Mall, where the greenery had taken on a deep, iridescent hue.
"If we don't make the announcement now, we won't have a world left to govern," Arthur pressed, his voice strained. "The infrastructure is failing. We're losing power lines to squirrels with the bone density of steel. The bats... they've changed. Their sonar is interfering with our encrypted signals. We are going dark, sir."
Grant finally turned. He looked older than he had on E.K.D., but his eyes were sharp, reflecting a cold, predatory clarity.
"I am aware. I've been drafting the address for seventy-two hours. Deciding what to reveal and, more importantly, what to bury."
"Sir, I still don't understand the delay," Arthur said, stepping forward. "Why wait this long? If we had told them months ago, when the first anomalies appeared in the Midwest, we could have prepared them. We could have saved millions."
"Saved them?" Grant's voice was a low rasp. "Or simply created a billion tiny gods we couldn't control?"
He walked around the desk, his movements unnervingly fluid. "We needed time to curate our own 'Evolved' elites. We needed a head start. If we had told the public the truth the moment we discovered how evolution works, we would have triggered a gold rush for power. You think the riots were bad? Imagine a riot where every third person can punch through a brick wall."
"But the death toll—"
"Is a filtering process," Grant interrupted coldly. "Not every evolution is a success anyway, Arthur. You've seen the reports. For every 'Super-Human' who can run like the wind or think like a supercomputer, there are ten 'Regressives.' Humans whose higher brain functions have dissolved, leaving only the instinct to thrive and survive. If we had announced this early, we would have had millions of people actively trying to trigger their own change, not knowing if they'd become a genius or a monster."
Arthur looked at the folder—at the photos of "Regressives" being contained in bunkers. They looked like humans, but their eyes were devoid of anything resembling a soul.
"By keeping the truth under wraps, we bought ourselves months," Grant continued. "In that time, we've identified the 'Stable' evolutions. We've brought them into the fold. We've given them a uniform, a salary, and a sense of duty."We are building an army for the New Guard. If we had let the public know that the E.K.D. wasn't a tragedy but an upgrade, they would have stopped listening to us. They would have realized they didn't need us.
"You're talking about a monopoly on human potential," Arthur whispered.
"I'm talking about the survival of the state," Grant replied. "If the average citizen figures out how to progress their evolution—how to accelerate the cellular rewrite—before we have a tier of loyalists at a higher stage of development, then the government becomes obsolete. We cannot have a democracy of apex predators."
Grant picked up a tablet, swiping through live feeds of mandatory screening centers. Millions of people were lined up, thinking they were being tested for a virus. In reality, they were being sorted. The ones with "Good" markers were being flagged for "specialized relocation."
The "Regressives" were being disappeared.
"The Biological Integrity Act wasn't about integrity, Arthur. It was about inventory."
...
Miami, Florida.
The car was a silver streak against the bruised purple of the Florida night. Malisa gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white.
She was speeding past other cars in a blur, weaving through the sparse midnight traffic with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible.
Ever since she had plunged the knife into the beast that used to be Midnight, the crushing weight of the "Fever" had almost entirely evaporated, replaced by a cold, crystalline clarity. She didn't just feel healthy; she felt optimized.
Every curve in the road, every pothole, and every distant movement in the tall grass was visible to her with supernatural sharpness.
In the passenger seat, Ryan clutched a phone, his voice trembling as he spoke to a harried dispatcher at the regional medical center.
"We're ten minutes out! Please, my brother has deep bite punctures... he's losing blood!" Ryan listened, his face pale. He looked over at Daymon, who was slumped in the backseat, his arm and shoulder wrapped in blood-soaked sheets.
"They say they're at capacity, Mom."
"Tell them we're coming anyway," Malisa said, her voice a resonant, low hum that filled the cabin. "Tell them to find a room."
A moment later, Ryan let out a ragged breath. "They just had a discharge... someone that wanted to go home. There's one room left. Room 402. They're holding it for five minutes."
Malisa didn't respond with words. She floored the accelerator. The world outside became a smear of neon-green palms and dark swamp water. She felt the car's limits and pushed past them, her evolved reflexes handling the high-speed maneuvers with ease.
She was just hoping that no police officer would catch her doing this.
When they reached the hospital, the scene was one of controlled chaos. The parking lot was filled with military humvees and people wandering in a daze.
They rushed Daymon through the sliding glass doors, where the air smelled of ozone, copper, and heavy-duty disinfectants.
The medical staff, overworked and wild-eyed, whisked Daymon onto a gurney.
Malisa watched with a detached, sharpened focus as they began to work.
Because of the Evolution, standard anesthetics were proving less effective, but the doctors were adapting.
It took hours. The tally was staggering: forty-two stitches across his forearm and twenty more in the meat of his shoulder.
The teeth had grazed the bone, but by some miracle—or perhaps the burgeoning resilience of his own body—there was no permanent nerve damage.
Malisa sat by Daymon's bed. He was patched up, pale, and sleeping, but he was alive.
Malisa looked at her hands, still stained with the dark blood of the dog, and knew that the family they had been was changing.
They were becoming something new now.