The vibration beneath their feet grew stronger.
Aira felt it in her teeth first a faint buzzing that rattled her jaw, like standing too close to heavy machinery. The ground pulsed once, then again, each tremor deeper than the last.
"Everyone," she said, forcing calm into her voice, "don't move."
Riven laughed under her breath. "Pretty sure it's already moving for us."
The crater floor cracked.
A sharp line split the earth between them, glowing faintly green. Heat rushed out, dry and suffocating, carrying a smell that reminded Aira of burning metal and something… organic.
Lumi covered her mouth. "That's not fire."
The crack widened.
Something pushed up from below.
Zee staggered back as the air distorted, her vision glitching like a corrupted screen. Numbers flashed across her thoughts involuntarily coordinates, pressure readings, energy spikes she didn't understand but somehow recognized.
"It's not debris," she said quickly, panic sharpening her words. "It's a containment breach."
Riven shot her a look. "You just made that up."
"No," Zee snapped. "I didn't."
The ground exploded upward.
Chunks of concrete and steel were hurled into the air as a massive shape forced its way out of the crater. Aira threw her arms up instinctively, bracing for impact,
And the debris stopped.
It slammed into an invisible wall inches from her face.
Kora screamed, arms outstretched, eyes wide as a translucent barrier shimmered into existence around them. The air hummed violently as rubble bounced off the shield and crashed harmlessly to the ground.
"I..I didn't mean to" Kora gasped. "I just…"
The barrier flickered.
Something slammed into it from the other side.
The creature pulled itself free of the crater with a wet, grinding sound.
It was tall, too tall its body bent at angles that made Aira's stomach churn. Black, segmented armor covered most of it, fused directly to pale, sinewy flesh that pulsed faintly with green light. Its head was elongated, featureless except for a vertical slit that opened slowly, revealing rows of translucent teeth.
It inhaled.
The sound was wrong. Too deep. Too deliberate.
Riven's hand clenched into a fist. "Yeah," she muttered. "That's not friendly."
The creature turned its head toward them.
Toward the seven glowing marks.
The slit widened.
"Viable hosts detected," it said.
Its voice wasn't sound it was pressure, forcing meaning directly into their skulls.
Lumi cried out, dropping to her knees. "It's in my head!"
Rhea didn't move. She watched the creature with unsettling focus, her expression unreadable.
"It found us," she said quietly.
The barrier shattered.
Kora screamed as the shield collapsed, the force throwing her backward. Aira barely caught her before she hit the ground.
"Run!" Aira shouted. "Everyone, move!"
They scattered instinctively as the creature lunged forward with terrifying speed. Its arm elongated mid-motion, joints splitting and reforming as a blade of hardened bone snapped into place.
It swung.
The blade tore through the air where Aira had been standing a second earlier, carving a clean trench through concrete and steel.
Riven didn't run.
She stepped forward.
"Hey!" she shouted, anger overriding fear. "Over here!"
The creature turned instantly.
That was a mistake.
Riven felt the burn before she felt the pain.
Her wrist ignited, heat flooding up her arm as the symbol flared violently. She gasped, dropping to one knee as something shifted inside her bones grinding, muscles tightening, skin pulling too tight.
"No,no !" she snarled, teeth clenched.
The world snapped into focus.
Sound sharpened. Time slowed. She could see the creature's movements before it made them, predict the arc of its attack with terrifying clarity.
Riven looked at her hands.
They weren't her hands anymore.
Her fingers had thickened, knuckles reinforced with dark, armored plating that seemed to grow directly from her skin. Veins glowed faintly beneath the surface, pulsing with power that felt barely contained.
"What the hell did you do to me?" she growled.
The creature lunged.
Riven met it head-on.
The impact shook the crater.
Riven's fist connected with the creature's armored chest, and the sound it made was not bone breaking but metal tearing. The force hurled the creature backward several meters, its feet carving trenches into the ground as it skidded to a stop.
Aira stared in disbelief. "Riven!"
"I've got it," Riven snapped, though her heart was pounding. "I think."
The creature rose slowly, armor cracking where Riven had struck it. It tilted its head, studying her.
"GeneShift activation confirmed," it said. "Subject compatibility: high."
Riven felt something twist in her chest. "Stop talking about me like I'm equipment."
She charged again.
Lumi scrambled toward Aira, shaking violently. "I can't…I can't do that," she sobbed. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
"You don't have to," Aira said, gripping her shoulders. "Just stay back."
The creature moved faster than Riven expected.
It feinted left, then struck right, its blade slicing across Riven's side. Pain exploded through her body as she was thrown aside, slamming into the remains of a wall.
Her vision blurred.
The glow on her arm flickered.
"Riven!" Aira shouted.
The creature turned toward the others.
Toward Lumi.
"No," Rhea said softly.
The air around her warped.
Everything went quiet.
Not silent empty.
The creature froze mid-step, its blade inches from Lumi's face. A ripple passed through its body, like a stone dropped into water.
Rhea stood with her hand raised, eyes glowing faintly silver.
"You're too loud," she said calmly. "Be still."
The space around the creature collapsed inward.
Not crushed folded.
With a sound like reality tearing paper, the creature vanished.
The crater floor was suddenly empty.
Lumi collapsed, sobbing.
Aira stared at Rhea in horror. "What… what did you just do?"
Rhea lowered her hand slowly, her expression distant. "I don't know."
Riven groaned, pushing herself up as her transformation faded painfully, armor retracting back into skin. She gasped as the power drained from her, leaving her weak and shaking.
The symbol on her wrist dimmed.
Sirens grew louder in the distance.
Zee swallowed hard. "That thing said 'GeneShift activation,'" she whispered. "Which means… that wasn't the only one."
Aira looked around at the smoking crater, the shattered city, the seven of them standing where they shouldn't exist.
She clenched her fists.
"Then we don't let anyone else find us," she said. "Not aliens. Not the government. No one."
Above them, unseen, something recorded the encounter.
Host survival rate: acceptable.
Behavioral data acquired.
The experiment continued.