The team moved through the neon-lit crowds of the Rose District, blending in perfectly thanks to the aging serum and their disguises. Every sense was heightened, every shadow suspicious.
"This crowd is too dense," Max murmured into his comms, adjusting his leather jacket. "We're wasting time walking in a pack."
"Agreed," Eren replied, his voice slightly deeper than usual due to the serum. "I'll take the perimeter. You take the alleys. We split up to cover more ground."
"Be careful," Max warned. "Don't engage alone."
"Relax, I'm the fastest thing on two legs," Eren smirked, peeling away from the group.
Twenty minutes later, Eren found himself in a small, synthetic park near the center of the district. He collapsed onto a park bench, rubbing his temples. The sensory overload of the district, combined with the lingering side effects of the serum, was giving him a migraine.
"Stupid neon lights," he muttered, watching a holographic tree shimmer.
After a moment, he slapped his knees and stood up. "Okay, break's over. Find the monster, save the day, go to sleep."
He resumed his patrol, walking down the main strip until he found himself standing in front of 'The Golden Fork'. The restaurant's grand entrance was strangely quiet. The doorman was missing.
"Malina's inside," Eren thought. "Maybe I'll check in, see if she's bored yet."
He pushed open the heavy mahogany doors and stepped inside.
He didn't find a bored Malina. He found a slaughterhouse.
The air was thick with the metallic tang of fresh blood. The elegant dining room was destroyed. Tables were overturned, expensive wine mixed with crimson pools on the floor. Bodies lay everywhere—wealthy patrons in their finest clothes, staff members in their uniforms.
Eren covered his mouth to stop from retching. The violence was brutal; many of the victims had their heads completely crushed, as if squeezed by a giant vise.
"Malina?" Eren whispered, panic rising in his chest.
Movement caught his eye near the back of the room.
Standing in the center of the carnage was a woman in a silver evening gown. She was beautiful, elegant, and completely still. But as she turned toward Eren, the horror became complete.
Her mouth was smeared with blood. She was chewing.
Eren froze. It wasn't a survivor. It was The Mimic.
He immediately grabbed the emergency beacon from his pocket, jamming the button down.
"All units!" Eren screamed into his comms, his voice cracking with terror. "Code Black! I found it! It's at the Golden Fork! Everyone is dead! I repeat, mass casualty event!"
The woman swallowed what was in her mouth and smiled at him.
"I can't fight this thing here," Eren thought frantically. "Too many buildings. Too many places for it to hide."
"I'm luring it to the Southern Outskirts!" Eren shouted into the mic. "Meet me at the scrapyard! Do not come here!"
He looked at the woman—the Guut. His legs were shaking, but he forced a grin onto his older, disguised face.
"Hey!" Eren yelled, waving his arms. "You look hungry! You want me? Huh? You want a taste of the fastest man alive?"
The Guut stopped smiling. Its expression went blank.
"Fast food," the woman whispered.
Then, her skin rippled. The silver dress dissolved into violet shadow. Her bones cracked and shifted, her form expanding, shoulders broadening. In the blink of an eye, the beautiful woman was gone, replaced by a large, muscular man in a blood-soaked suit.
The man roared—a sound that shattered the remaining windows—and lunged.
"Oh, crap!" Eren yelped.
He triggered his speed. ZOOM.
Eren blasted out of the restaurant, a blur of motion. The Guut chased him, moving with terrifying speed, tearing up the pavement as it ran.
"Southern Outskirts! Move! Move!" Jod's voice barked over the comms.
Max, Raina, Jod, Malina (who had been in the kitchen during the attack and missed the initial slaughter), and Edy abandoned their posts. They sprinted toward the edge of the district, where the neon lights faded into the darkness of the industrial scrapyards.
It took them five minutes to reach the rendezvous point.
"I see movement!" Raina shouted, pointing ahead.
They crested a hill of rusted metal and looked down into the clearing.
Max stopped dead in his tracks. The breath left his lungs.
The chase was over.
Eren was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. He was pale, his eyes wide with shock, clutching his thigh.
His right leg was gone from the knee down. The Guut had torn it off.
Thirty minutes earlier.
The transition from the blinding neon glitz of the Rose District to the rusted, industrial graveyard of the Southern Outskirts happened in a blur of motion.
Eren was running at Mach 2. To him, the world was a smear of colors. The wind screamed in his ears, tearing at his tourist disguise. He wasn't running to win a race; he was running to survive.
Behind him, the Mimic was gaining.
It shouldn't have been possible. Eren was a Speedster; the Gold Fluid made him the fastest thing on the ground. But this Guut—this monster wearing the skin of a tuxedo-clad man—was cheating physics. It didn't run with steps; it propelled itself with explosions of shadow-force from its feet, launching itself like a missile, tearing through fences, cars, and concrete walls as if they were made of wet paper.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The heavy, rhythmic impacts of the Guut landing behind him were getting louder.
"Come on, come on!" Eren gritted his teeth, his lungs burning. The Aging Serum was messing with his metabolism. His older body was heavier, his joints stiffer. He wasn't at peak efficiency.
He skidded into the scrapyard—a labyrinth of crushed hover-cars, rusted shipping containers, and mountains of twisted rebar.
"End of the line," Eren gasped, stopping in a clearing surrounded by walls of jagged metal. He spun around, drawing his vibro-daggers. The blades hummed with a high-pitched whine, glowing yellow.
A second later, the Guut crashed into the clearing.
It landed on top of a crushed van, flattening it instantly. The Mimic stood tall, straightening its blood-soaked tie. The disguise was failing slightly; patches of violet shadow were leaking through the skin of its face, and its eyes had turned into burning red slits.
"You run well," the Mimic said, its voice a distortion of the man it had eaten. "Like a rabbit. I enjoy rabbits. They crunch."
"And you talk too much," Eren retorted, his legs trembling slightly. "For an ugly shapeshifter."
The Guut smiled, revealing rows of shark-like teeth. "Then let us skip the conversation."
It lunged.
The fight began with a sonic boom.
The Guut closed the distance in a heartbeat, throwing a punch that would have decapitated Eren. Eren ducked, the wind of the fist ruffling his hair. He vibrated his body, phasing through the Guut's follow-up kick, and slashed his daggers across the creature's ribs.
ZZZT!
The blades cut deep, spraying black ichor. But before Eren could celebrate, the wound hissed and closed. The shadow-flesh knitted together instantly.
"Fast regeneration," Eren analyzed, circling the beast. "I have to cut something off. Head or heart."
Eren engaged the Gold Fluid. He became a golden streak of light, bouncing off the piles of scrap metal. He attacked from all angles—left, right, above, below.
Slash. Stab. Kick. Slash.
He turned the Guut into a pincushion. He severed its tendons, blinded its eyes, and pierced its throat.
But the Mimic was adapting.
When Eren slashed its eyes, eyes opened on its cheeks. When Eren cut its tendons, the shadow solidified into armor to hold the leg together. It wasn't just healing; it was evolving in real-time.
"Is that all?" the Guut laughed, swinging a massive arm that transformed into a spiked mace mid-swing.
Eren barely dodged, the mace crushing a steel beam next to his head. "Okay, that's new."
Eren was getting tired. The serum was wearing off, and the continuous use of high-speed movement was draining his stamina. He needed to end this before he slowed down.
"One big hit," Eren whispered to himself. "Kinetic overload."
He disengaged, sprinting up a mountain of crushed cars to gain elevation. He reached the top, turned, and dove.
"Supersonic Guillotine!" Eren roared.
He accelerated to his maximum velocity, crossing his daggers in front of him. He aimed for the Guut's neck. He was a human bullet, carrying enough force to punch through a tank.
The Guut looked up. It didn't dodge. It didn't block.
It opened.
Just as Eren was about to make contact, the Guut's chest cavity split open like a bear trap, revealing a maw of jagged shadow-teeth and sticky, tar-like tendrils.
Eren's eyes widened. He tried to brake, but his momentum was too great.
He twisted his body in mid-air, narrowly avoiding falling into the mouth on the chest, but the maneuver killed his speed. He tumbled, crashing onto the dirty ground, rolling to a stop at the Guut's feet.
Eren scrambled to stand up, but he was a fraction of a second too slow.
The Guut stepped forward. Its foot—heavy and dense as lead—slammed down onto Eren's left leg, pinning him to the earth.
"AGH!" Eren screamed as his femur cracked.
"Caught you," the Guut whispered, leaning down. Its face was now a swirling vortex of chaos.
Eren frantically stabbed at the Guut's leg with his dagger, but the creature ignored it. It reached down with a massive hand. It didn't grab Eren's throat. It grabbed his right ankle.
Eren looked up, terror flooding his veins. "No... wait..."
The Guut smiled, its teeth impossibly wide. "Make a wish, little rabbit."
The Guut pulled.
It didn't pull quickly. It pulled slowly, with the inexorable, crushing strength of a hydraulic press.
Eren clawed at the dirt, his fingernails breaking against the rusted metal. He engaged his Gold Fluid, trying to vibrate his leg to phase it out of the grip, but the Guut's shadow energy disrupted his frequency. He couldn't phase. He was solid.
"NO! STOP!" Eren shrieked.
The sound of ligaments popping was like gunshots in the quiet scrapyard. The skin stretched. The muscle tore.
The Guut planted its foot on Eren's chest for leverage, and with one final, brutal yank, it tore upward.
RIIIIIIP.
The sound was wet and sickening.
Eren's scream was cut short by pure shock. He stared blankly at the space where his right leg used to be. Blood geysered from the stump, painting the rusted metal beneath him a vivid crimson.
The Guut stood over him, holding the severed limb in its hand like a trophy. It looked at the leg, then back at Eren, and tossed the limb aside into a pile of trash as if it were a piece of garbage.
"Disappointing," the Guut mused, licking blood from its hand. "Not much meat."
Eren's vision began to tunnel. The pain hadn't hit fully yet—his brain was protecting him with shock—but the cold was creeping in. He lay there, gasping for air, watching the monster loom over him, realizing that his speed, his jokes, and his training meant nothing against this level of brutality.
He turned his head to the side, seeing the lights of the approaching team cresting the hill.
"Max..." Eren whispered, his voice barely a breath, before the darkness of unconsciousness began to claw at the edges of his mind.