The sewage water was cold, thick, and smelled like death, but it was better than the sterile horror of the Cadmus lab. I let the current pull me, my body battered and exhausted. The T-Virus was struggling now, the 5% biomass I had left barely enough to keep me conscious.
My God, I'm hungry.
The hunger was an entity unto itself, a physical weight in my gut that screamed for sustenance. My muscles were twitching, consuming themselves to keep my brain alive. My vision swam in and out of focus.
[Warning: Autophagy at 40%. Host will expire in T-Minus 4 hours without significant biomass intake.]
"Gee, thanks for the countdown," I gasped, pulling myself onto a concrete ledge within a massive pumping station. The machinery here was silent, likely shut down years ago. I lay there, gasping, my human side screaming for food, my viral side screaming for raw meat.
I closed my eyes, activating my Tactile Sensory Array. I could feel the vibrations of the entire sewer network. Rats scurrying, water flowing, the distant thrum of the city above.
And then I felt heartbeats.
A cluster of them, a few hundred yards upstream. Slow, human heartbeats. Vulnerable. Unprotected.
A choice, sharp and immediate, landed in my mind.
My Otaku brain, the one that used to read about heroes and villains, recoiled in horror. They're people, Leo. They're just down on their luck.
My viral side, the T-Virus/Super Soldier Hybrid that was currently eating my own legs to keep me alive, was cold and calculating. They are sustenance. Generic data. Biomass. You need 95% more of this data to survive the next evolution. Their lives or yours.
I pushed myself to my feet. The hunger drove me forward, dragging my heavy, exhausted body through the knee-deep sewage water toward the source of the heartbeats.
I rounded a bend in the tunnel network and found them. A makeshift camp. Cardboard boxes and salvaged tarps created a shelter around a small, burning barrel fire. Three people were huddled around it. An older woman wrapped in a blanket, a man with a grey beard tinkering with a radio, and a younger guy, maybe my age, sleeping soundly.
They were just people trying to survive in a city that wanted them dead.
The smell of the burning wood, the faint scent of canned beans... it made my stomach roar. Every instinct I had, every viral impulse, screamed at me to lunge, to kill, to absorb. I could have all three of them in ten seconds flat. 9% biomass right there. Maybe 10%. It would buy me time.
I stopped in the shadows, watching them. The old woman laughed softly at something the man with the radio said. A human sound. A real sound that had nothing to do with labs, corporations, or caped crusaders.
They didn't do anything to me. They didn't make me this way.
[Autophagy: 55%. Proceed with acquisition, Host.]
"No," I growled, my voice a painful whisper.
They're human. I'm still human. I have to be.
But if I didn't feed, I was going to die in a few hours. I had just escaped Batman and a Cadmus clone. All that effort, all that pain... for what? To starve to death in a sewer because of a moral choice?
I could take them, evolve slightly, and continue my war against the actual monsters. The ends justify the means, right? That's what all the edgy anti-heroes did in the stories I read.
The bearded man looked up, his eyes meeting mine in the dim light of the fire. He didn't scream. He just stared at the gaunt, grey figure emerging from the dark water, eyes flickering red.
"You look hungry, kid," the man said softly, his voice surprisingly kind. He held up a half-eaten can of beans. "Got an extra can here. Ain't much, but it's food."
That single act of kindness hit me harder than Batman's stun harpoon. The T-Virus wanted to kill him for his kindness, for making the choice harder.
"No," I said again, shaking my head. "I can't."
I turned away from the light, away from the warmth, and back into the freezing cold of the deep sewers. I wouldn't kill innocents. Not yet.
[Warning: Host abandoning vital biomass. Autophagy increasing rapidly.]
"Find me the next target," I whispered to the system. "Find me the King of the Sewers. I need a monster."
I felt the vibrations of the other big resident of this underworld. The heavy, dragging steps of something huge and reptilian.
I didn't want to be a monster. But I had a feeling I was about to fight one.