Smoke choked the sky as the distant wail of emergency sirens echoed through the ruined city. Amid the rubble and debris of collapsed buildings, survivors searched desperately—calling out, digging through shattered concrete—hoping to find someone still alive.
Among them was Dave, now separated from Kale. They had split up to cover more ground—staying together would've only narrowed their search radius.
Focused on finding survivors, Dave pushed his senses to their limits—sight, hearing, even smell. Unknowingly, this triggered his strange adaptive growth ability.
At first, all he could hear was the roar of flames and scattered cries—but as he concentrated, those background noises faded. His vision sharpened beyond its normal limits, gaining a hawk-like clarity. The scent of burning metal gave way to new smells—faint, unfamiliar traces he couldn't quite place.
"Someone..."
Then he heard it. Labored breathing. A weak voice—calling out.
Dave spun toward the sound and moved quickly, following the faint breaths. The source was close—trapped beneath a wrecked car.
He glanced around, searching for Kale—but he had wandered too far from the others. There was no one nearby.
No matter.
He could handle this on his own.
Gripping the crumpled ceiling of the car that was inside the ground now, Dave pulled upward. It resisted at first—jammed in place—but as he pushed his muscles harder and gave one final, powerful heave, the metal groaned and lifted.
He could hear the weak breathing coming from inside.
Without hesitation, he grabbed the door and yanked it open. Inside, he found a man—unconscious, likely from a lack of oxygen. The man had fallen into the footwell, beneath the steering wheel. It might've saved him from being crushed, but now the seat and frame were pinning him in.
Dave reached in and carefully pulled the man out, dragging him onto the ground. As soon as he was free, the unconscious man gasped—his chest rising sharply as he sucked in fresh air. His breathing, though still weak, grew steadier and more rhythmic.
Placing him gently on a clearer patch of ground, Dave didn't stop to rest. Another voice was calling out—a faint cry for help that only he seemed able to hear.
" It should be here."
Dave muttered to himself as he pulled aside a large piece of debris. Beneath it, he spotted two figures—a woman cradling a small girl in her arms. The woman's face was smeared with dust and blood, and one of her arms hung limp, badly injured but, thankfully, not broken.
"Please... save us," she whispered, her cloudy eyes barely able to focus on Dave's silhouette.
Dave nodded, his voice calm but firm. "Don't worry. Help is here."
Without hesitation, he jumped down into the shallow pit where they were trapped. The woman was barely holding on, her strength spent from shielding the child. Carefully, Dave scooped both of them into one arm—the girl was unconscious, likely from the lack of air.
Dave climbed back out of the wreckage using one arm only. Despite the weight, it wasn't as hard as he expected. His body was adapting—getting stronger, more capable with each passing moment.
Once out, he didn't waste a second. Scooping up the unconscious man in one arm and the woman and child in the other, Dave turned and made his way back toward the camp.
He was beginning to get used to his strength. Every time he lifted something heavy or moved with effortless speed, it felt a little less foreign.
But as he saw the twisted metal, the collapsed buildings, the red sky—he couldn't ignore the feeling building inside him.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
This place... it didn't seem like his world. And now that he paid closer attention—this body didn't feel like his either.
At first, he hadn't noticed. The rush of action, the haze of confusion... But now, with clarity slowly returning, he checked his body—and found subtle but undeniable differences.
The creases on his palms were wrong. Some lines were missing—others twisted or ended where they shouldn't. He knew his own hands like the back of them. In emergencies, he used to scribble notes there when he didn't have a pad on hand.
With his eidetic memory, something so familiar should have been impossible to forget.
And yet... this wasn't right.
Which left only one bizarre conclusion.
This wasn't his body.
He had been transmigrated. Something most people dismissed as pure fiction had actually happened—to him. He died. He remembered the void. The silence. The cold emptiness. Then waking up here—in the middle of a ruined world.
It was absurd. None of it made sense.
Plus, there was this supernatural ability of his—an unknown force that seemed to push him further every time he hit a limit. When his muscles ached, the exhaustion didn't deepen—it disappeared. As soon as thirst clawed at his throat, it vanished too, like his body had adapted to survive without water for a little longer.
It was strange. Every time he reached the brink, his threshold expanded. It was evolving. Rapidly. Unnaturally.
"I need to research this," Dave muttered, making a mental note. Whatever this ability was, it didn't belong in a normal human body.
"Let's save these people first, then get out of here."
Dave muttered to himself as he made up his mind.
But as he moved forward, a sudden dread washed over him, sending goosebumps across his skin. He could feel it—something was watching him from behind.
"This...!"
His instincts flared. Alarm bells rang in his head, but he didn't turn around. Instead, he kept walking, pretending he hadn't noticed.
He didn't know who—or what—it was. He didn't know if they had been watching him from the beginning, or if they had only just appeared. But one thing was certain: they weren't good news. Even if they didn't mean harm, they weren't normal.
"I have to get out of here," Dave resolved quietly.
***
While Dave felt that distant gaze, 200 kilometers away, beneath what looked like an ordinary public mall, an underground facility buzzed with activity. Figures moved through dimly lit corridors—each one clad in baggy black garments and identical masks that erased any hint of identity.
"Officer Eight, what is the status of Mutant Number 54?"
A commanding voice cut through the silence. The man's tone was distorted—clearly altered, not his real one. But he wasn't speaking to someone awake. In front of him lay a figure in a strange medical bed, their body pierced by a network of tubes. Comatose. Unmoving.
But the answer came not from the body—but from a speaker beside the bed.
" Sir, the mutant is currently attempting to save someone. Based on current observation, I can confirm he is not a Class Five."
The masked man—Field Commander Five—nodded silently at the report.
"Understood. Capture him and bring him in."
"Acknowledged, Sir."
The line went silent with a soft click. The commander looked down at a clipboard filled with rows of numbers—codes, classifications, and statuses.
Checkmarks and red Xs covered the page.
A date was scribbled in the top corner—today's—and beside it, the tally:
678 new mutant detections.
Most of the numbers still left blank. In progress.
Some were marked with a check—captured.
But... a few were crossed out. Terminated.
Whatever they were doing… they were far from finished.
"Hmm… with this many mutants captured—and the dead ones harvested—we can probably assemble five new drones for deployment," Field Commander Five muttered, setting the clipboard aside.
This was all routine now. Hunt. Tag. Harvest. Repeat.
For the time being, their focus remained on acquisition—gathering as many preys as possible for the coming operations. The "preys" being mutants, or rather, what was left of them.
As for Mutant Number 54, Field Commander Five wasn't concerned.
If he wasn't a Class 5, then he wasn't worth fearing.
Dave, unknowingly, had fallen into their net.
His awakening triggered their tracking systems—another flare of mutant DNA lighting up their detection grid. Another fish to catch in this apocalyptic season, where many humans went through trauma and awakened their X-gene.
They didn't care if they were once human, or even still were. To them, mutants were nothing more than prey—to hunt, to capture, and if they resisted, to kill.
They'd earn a good amount of money from the big party either way.
***
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