"That's a man, not a ghost!" Big Brother Zhang's voice bellowed, shattering the stagnant silence. He pressed himself against the glass wall, narrowing his eyes as he scrutinized the shape stumbling through the dark.
The words worked like a magic spell. The guards, who had been shivering like cornered rats, suddenly found their spines and crowded behind Zhang to peer through the glass. In the sickly, flickering light of the casino's frontage—lights that were a sorry patchwork, pulsing with the uneven rhythm of bad hearts—a shape moved with an agonizing slowness. It was a human wreck, a walking skeleton wrapped in a mat so old and rotted it looked like part of the landscape. His white hair was a bird's nest of filth, with one central clump coiled into a jagged horn atop his head.
"Just a crazy bastard!" Zhang growled with a jagged, sarcastic grin. "Whose daddy is this? Go on, toss that piece of trash into the river. Where the hell did he crawl out from?"
With the fear of the supernatural gone, the guards shared an ugly laugh. Tie Shou Tai and Shan Lang Biao snatched up their war-gear and moved with focused, urgent haste.
Up on the second floor, Lu Wen and Darin watched from the shadows of the hall, caught in the gears of their own helplessness., They saw the two shadows in black—one massive, one slight—stalking toward the old man like predators toward a broken animal.
Lu Wen felt a cold lead of worry settle in his gut. He wanted to do something, but he was just a scrawny tech grunt, more meat for the machine than a man with any real power.,, "Old man... why the hell did you come back? I fed you already," he groaned softly.
Down on the gravel, the scene was a nightmare. Tie Shou Tai, that massive wall of meat, jabbed the barrel of his Type 56 rifle (56式自动步枪) —that Chinese-made engine of war—into the old man's head. He used the cold blue steel to poke and prod at the man's skull with a predatory intensity. It was a lucky thing the bayonet stayed folded; otherwise, the old man's head would have been opened right then and there like a dropped pumpkin.
The ex-Muay Thai pro held back his hands for a second, just staring at the wreck of a man while clamping a palm over his nose.
"God, you old bastard! You smell like a week-old corpse! How many years has it been since you touched a bar of soap?" one guard barked. But a cold prickle of unease crossed his face when the old man didn't flinch. Truth be told, the strange creature didn't even look at them. His eyes—milky, jaundice-yellow, and as empty as a washed blackboard—were fixed on the casino entrance in a vacant, faraway stare.
Suddenly, both grunts jumped as the old man's jaw unhinged. A sound issued from that dark hole: 'Waaa... Waaa... Haccch!'
Once the shock drained away, the two guards exchanged a look and exploded into an ugly, booming laughter.
"The baby! Ha-ha-ha! The goddamn baby ghost scaring everyone at night... it's just this crazy old fossil! Ha-ha-ha!"
Inside the lobby, the other grunts doubled over, laughing until they were purple at the thought of being terrified by a ghost story that turned out to be a man. Big Brother Zhang and his shadows joined in the chorus. Only Ge Ming, the human stork, just let out a sharp, liquid snort—'Heh!'—his face a jagged scrawl of a grin.
"Shoot the bastard and drag him to the water!" Big Brother Zhang bellowed, stepping through the glass doors with focused, urgent haste.
Up on the second floor, Lu Wen heard the order as clear as a bell. He wanted to scream, to tell them the old man was just a broken, mindless cripple and to just chase him away, but the words died in a throat filled with dry wool. He was just a scrawny tech grunt caught in the gears of a machine that didn't know pity., Darin pulled him into a tight, panicky embrace, terrified that a single sound would draw the predators' eyes toward them and bring the hurting down on their heads.
Tie Shou Tai, that massive wall of meat, heard the boss's command and lunged. He jacked his boot high and drove it forward with all his strength, aiming to kick the old man's carcass flying through the air.
But the machine misfired. The old man, with his hooked, scavenger-bird nose, shifted just a fraction—a movement as fluid and silent as smoke. He dodged the boot, and from beneath the rotted straw mat that was his bird's nest of a coat, a hand shot out., It was a skeletal thing, thin as a dry twig. It clamped onto Tie Shou Tai's ankle with a grip like a steel trap, and slow—agonizingly slow—he turned his face toward the guard, those empty, yellow eyes staring back with the cold weight of a nightmare becoming real.
The massive wall of meat felt a cold lead of certainty in his gut: this wasn't a man anymore. The old fossil possessed a strength that was fundamentally wrong with the world, a physical recoil of a reality gone sideways. Tie Shou Tai's neck hairs stood up like a row of frozen soldiers, a chill crawling down his spine as the old man tilted his head and offered a jagged, nightmare rictus of a grin.
"Let go, you crazy bastard!" Tie Shou Tai bellowed, his voice a dry, shivering rattle. The grip on his ankle was a steel trap—a strength that belonged in a slaughterhouse, not in human bone. "LET GO!" The guard screamed at the top of his lungs, the sound cracking the stagnant air of the casino yard. He squeezed the trigger of his rifle, and the engine of war went to work. Ka-blam-blam-blam! The reports were liquid whipcracks, booming and echoing like the clapping of giant hands against the silence.
The ex-Muay Thai pro broke free, the recoil of the rifle driving him backward until he tumbled onto the gravel. But the walking skeleton didn't drop. He only stumbled back a few paces, his face a roadmap of idiot indifference. His eyes remained vacant, two abyssal pits ringed with yellow fire. But his chest—his chest was a ruin of holes, and from those raw pink pits, something began to weep. It was a thick, black mucus, bubbling out in slow, oily gouts.
'The blood... Jesus, it's black!' the guard stammered, his face ashy-pale.
But it wasn't blood. It wasn't any fluid known to the machinery of man. It was scales. Hard, midnight scales.
The metamorphosis took hold. Across the old man's scrawny chest, the black scales bubbled up like boiling tar, covering the bone and raw meat. The rotted straw mat he called a coat split and stretched, unfolding into something that looked like the leathery, prehistoric wings of a griffin. His face jerked toward the moon, his jaw unhinging as his mouth and nose elongated into a heavy, gray scavenger-bird beak. Gray hair sprouted in coarse, oily mats along his joints. The eyes—no longer empty—flashed with a hard, amber fire, a stare so cold it felt like a sliver of ice cutting straight into the meat of the soul. His limbs jacked out, fingers and toes stretching into needle-sharp talons, with wet, webbed membranes between them like some amphibian demon. And that bird's nest of hair on his skull? It coiled and hardened into a jagged, ivory horn, sharp as a spear-tip, twitching with its own independent, malevolent life.
The old man was gone, replaced by a feathered engine of nightmare—a horned scavenger bird of prehistoric proportions. It tilted its head back and let out a shriek that sounded like a baby being processed in a slaughterhouse, a high-voltage sound of pure agony that didn't just rattle the ears; it was a sliver of ice cutting straight into the meat of the soul. The sound made the heart perform fantastic rubber acrobatics and the blood stop dead in its tracks as if the world itself had ceased to breathe.
"Shoot the bastard! Shoot him!" Big Brother Zhang bellowed, his voice a hard scrawl of irritation as he yanked a Norinco QBZ-97 from his waistband.
The words worked like a magic spell; his grunts snatched up their war-gear and the yard erupted into a riot of focused, urgent haste. The engine of war went to work, ka-blam-blam-blam, the reports echoing across the river like the clapping of giant hands against a stagnant silence.
The building became a killing floor of noise, driving souls from every floor to peer out like frightened ghosts.
Ge Ming, that human stork in stained whites, abandoned the front and went charging up the stairs to the second floor, huddling in the shadows with Lu Wen and Darin. For two minutes the military-grade thunder rolled until the silence finally cracked like a dropped plate of porcelain. The creature stumbled back toward the river, a wreckage of a thing, and collapsed face-down on the gravel, silent as a grave.
"Guess you're just more meat for the machine, after all!" Tie Shou Tai bellowed with a jagged grin.The massive wall of meat only just realized that a humiliating warmth had bloomed across his groin—his body's ultimate, liquified surrender to dread. Stung by the shame, he lunged forward, jacking his boot high to stomp the creature's head into the dirt like a dropped pumpkin. He didn't see Shan Lang Biao, the ex-ranger who handled fear like a trade, already backing away like a rat in a drainpipe.
Then, the nightmare unhinged.The creature jerked upright, its eyes flashing with a hard, amber fire—a stare so cold it felt like a sliver of ice cutting straight into the core of the soul. It shrieked again and its skeletal talons slammed into the guard's shoulder, ripping away a triangular hunk of meat. That horn atop its head, sharp as a spear-tip, flicked forward with a lightning-stroke into the nape of his neck. Tie Shou Tai stopped mid-motion, his body locked like an animal in a trap, leaving him with nothing but a dry, shivering rattle of a moan while his life began to drain away in slow, oily gouts.
"Keep shooting!" Zhang bellowed, his voice a hard scrawl of panic as he backed away, retreating behind the human meat-wall of his own men.
Scarface He snatched a Type 56 assault rifle—a heavy, oily engine of war—from one of the guards and charged forward.He didn't give a damn about the men in his way; he just held the trigger and let the lead fly. Bullets punched through the back of one of his own grunts, spraying a fine mist of red before hammering into the feathered nightmare. The creature didn't even flinch. It was like throwing pebbles at a tank.
It stared down at the dead meat in its talons, then let out a shriek that sounded like a baby being processed in a slaughterhouse.In one fluid, bone-cracking motion, it ripped Tie Shou Tai in two—just split him right down the middle like a rotted rag doll. Blood and slick organs geysered out, spattering the gravel in a crimson, chaotic mess. Then it lunged for the man they called Scarface, moving with a focused, urgent haste, its amber eyes burning with the cold fury of a predator whose meal had been spoiled.
Big Brother Zhang bolted for the building, his shadows following in a blind, rat-like scramble.They slammed the doors and hit the override, sending the heavy steel shutters rattling down with a final, metallic chunk that sealed the world out. They left He Feng alone on the killing floor with the shadow-thing.
He Feng let out a thin, shivering rattle of a moan.He started begging, the words spilling out in a frantic, unlovely jumble of prayers and snot. His body gave up then—the ultimate, liquified surrender to dread. He fouled his trousers, the warm, sharp stink of piss and shit joining the acrid smell of the mist. He had carved people up without a second thought, but facing a monster wasn't in his job description; he was just more meat for the gears, and the gears were coming for him.
The air went stagnant with the stench of a week-old corpse and the swampy, fish-oil reek of a scaled abomination.It was a smell that belonged in a charnel pit. The creature jacked him up into the air, its ivory horn flicking forward with a lightning-stroke into the nape of his neck. He Feng stopped thrashing instantly, his head snapping back at a joint-twisting angle, his limbs dangling like a puppet with its strings cut. But he wasn't dead. Not yet. His mouth stayed open, producing a dry, shivering moan that didn't sound like a man at all.
"It's going to eat them alive!" Ge Ming's voice was a dry, shivering rattle behind Lu Wen, snapping the young man's head around to look.
"What are you talking about?" the programmer asked, his voice thin and jagged. His hands, still clutching Darin, were as cold as pond ice—the instinctive physical recoil of a body that has just looked into the mouth of hell.
"It jabs that ivory spike right into the notch between the base of the skull and the first vertebra," the washout med student explained, his touch cold and clinical. He reached out, his fingers finding the hollow at the nape of Lu Wen's neck to show him the kill-zone. "It guts the telegraph lines between the brain and the meat. You feel the world simply wink out—your body turns to lead, a statue that can't even twitch a muscle. But the consciousness? That stays wide awake. And the pain? Oh, you feel every single inch of it while the thing feeds".
Darin crumpled then, her arms wrapping around Lu Wen's legs with the desperate, drowning strength of a woman who had reached the end of her tether. Lu Wen dropped down, his mind screaming over the sound of his own thundering heart. He realized then that fear was a luxury he couldn't afford anymore. The only word left in his head, flashing like a neon sign in a blackout, was RUN!
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