The golden dust from the butterfly settled into Takashi's skin like pollen finding fertile ground.
At first, it was just an itch—barely noticeable against the backdrop of terror and adrenaline. But as they stood on the shrinking beach, trapped between impossible water and an alien jungle, thin golden lines began spreading across his exposed skin like delicate veins of liquid metal.
"Commander," Marcus said quietly, his medic's eye catching the progression immediately. "Your arm."
Takashi looked down and saw the tracery of gold spreading up from where the butterfly dust had landed, following his blood vessels with anatomical precision. His breathing quickened, shallow and rapid.
"It's moving," he whispered, watching the lines branch and spread like a time-lapse video of growing roots. "I can feel it. It's... it's burning. No, it's cold. It's—"
His hands began to shake. The golden veins pulsed with each heartbeat, and suddenly every sensation felt magnified, wrong. Was that tingling in his fingers numbness? Was the slight dizziness from the crash or from whatever toxin was coursing through his system?
"I can't breathe," he gasped, clawing at his collar. "It's in my lungs. I can feel it in my lungs."
"Commander, calm down," Marcus said, stepping closer. "Panic will make it worse. Whatever it is, panic will—"
"Don't tell me to calm down!" Takashi's voice cracked. "You don't have this thing eating you from the inside! I can feel it spreading, I can feel—"
His words were cut off as something emerged from the jungle.
The thing that stepped onto the beach had once been human. The orange jumpsuit was recognizable beneath plates of genuine medieval armor—dented steel that had seen real battle, with scratches and gouges that spoke of desperate fights for survival. A proper knight's helm covered most of its face, but through the visor, they could see one bloodshot human eye staring at them with desperate hunger.
"Help," the armored figure said, its voice muffled by the helmet but unmistakably human. "Please. Need... flesh. To heal. To live."
The armor was crude but functional—scavenged pieces held together with wire and determination. In places where the metal didn't quite fit, they could see infected wounds weeping golden fluid similar to what was spreading through Takashi's arm.
"Don't shoot," Marcus said quietly, but Takashi's hand was already moving to his weapon.
"Are you insane? Look at it!"
But Marcus was already moving forward, hands raised in a gesture of peace. "Hey, we can help you. I'm a medic. I can look at those wounds—"
The creature's response was instantaneous violence.
It charged with surprising speed for something weighed down by armor, and Marcus met it head-on with the kind of brutal efficiency that spoke of extensive hand-to-hand training. He ducked under a wild swing, drove an elbow into the creature's solar plexus where the armor had gaps, then used its momentum to throw it to the sand.
For a moment, it looked like Marcus had it under control. He moved with the practiced precision of someone who'd learned to fight in life-or-death situations, targeting weak points and using leverage to compensate for the creature's armored advantage.
Takashi found himself impressed despite everything. The medic could actually fight.
But the creature's desperation gave it strength beyond reason. As Marcus went for what should have been a finishing chokehold, the armored figure managed to reverse the position, its gauntleted hands wrapping around Marcus's throat with mechanical precision.
Marcus's face began to turn red, his hands scrabbling uselessly against metal gloves.
Takashi raised his sidearm and fired twice into the creature's back.
The bullets struck something that materialized from thin air—a shield that grew like a tumor from the creature's spine, absorbing the rounds with metallic clangs that rang across the beach.
The distraction worked. The creature released Marcus and spun toward Takashi, its attention now focused on the new threat.
Marcus rolled to his feet, gasping, fury blazing in his eyes. "My turn, you bastard."
He launched himself at the creature's back just as it raised its hands toward Takashi. But the armored figure was ready this time. From its right gauntlet, a blade materialized—not grown from flesh but conjured from the same nothingness that had produced the shield. A proper medieval sword, gleaming and sharp.
The creature spun with inhuman speed and drove the blade deep into Marcus's abdomen.
Marcus's eyes went wide with shock and pain. He looked down at the steel protruding from his stomach, then up at Takashi with an expression of profound surprise.
"Oh," he said quietly, and collapsed.
"NO!" Takashi screamed, raising his weapon again. "NO, NO, NO!"
But as he stepped forward, his foot sank into what he'd thought was solid sand. Quicksand. The beach around the creature had become a trap, and he was already ankle-deep in the sucking morass.
The armored figure turned toward him, blade dripping red, hunger burning in its visible eye.
Takashi tried to pull his leg free, but the movement only made him sink faster. Knee-deep now, the sand pulling at him with patient inevitability.
The golden veins in his arm pulsed, spreading up past his shoulder, reaching toward his heart. He could feel them now—not burning or cold, but alive. Growing. Changing him into something else.
Marcus lay motionless on the beach, blood pooling beneath him.
The creature advanced, each step measured and deliberate.
Takashi was waist-deep in the quicksand, his second leg now trapped as well.
Too many problems. Too many variables. Too many ways to die.
The creature raised its materialized sword.
The golden infection reached his chest, spreading like liquid fire through his cardiovascular system.
The quicksand pulled him deeper, up to his ribs now.
Marcus's breathing had stopped.
"HELP!" Takashi screamed to the empty sky, to the alien jungle, to whatever gods might be listening to this impossible hell. "SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
The world stopped.
Not slowed—stopped. The creature frozen mid-strike, Marcus locked in motionless death, even the golden veins in his arm hanging static beneath his skin. The only thing that moved was Takashi's consciousness, pulled into a space that existed between seconds.
He found himself standing in an infinite white void facing a figure that looked... familiar. Same height, same build, but older. Much older. Wearing clothes he didn't recognize and carrying scars he hadn't earned yet.
**"Finally,"** the figure said. **"I was beginning to think you'd never ask."**
Around them, golden numbers floated like a price menu in the air:
**AVAILABLE CREDITS: 1000**
**BASIC ENHANCEMENT PACKAGE**
*- Enhanced Reflexes: 60 Credits*
*- Enhanced Strength: 75 Credits*
*- Enhanced Durability: 80 Credits*
**COMBAT PACKAGE**
*- Weapon Manifestation: 150 Credits*
*- Armor Generation: 120 Credits*
*- Tactical Awareness: 100 Credits*
**PREMIUM SOLUTIONS**
*- Environmental Control: 300 Credits*
*- Reality Adjustment: 500 Credits*
*- Temporal Manipulation: 800 Credits*
**ENTERPRISE - TALK TO SALES**
*For complex multi-threat scenarios requiring custom solutions*
**"What—who are you? What is this?"**
**"I'm your solution provider. You're drowning in problems, and I have exactly what you need."** The figure gestured at the floating menu. **"Choose wisely. The clock is ticking, and my services aren't free."**
**"None of these fit exactly what I need,"** Takashi said desperately. **"I need to get out of quicksand, fight that thing, and somehow save—"**
**"Ah, you need the Enterprise package. Custom solution for multi-variable crisis scenarios."** The figure smiled. **"Let's talk."**
The menu dissolved, replaced by a more detailed interface:
**CRISIS MANAGEMENT SUITE - 250 CREDITS**
*- Enhanced Physical Capabilities*
*- Weapon Manifestation (Duration: 5 minutes)*
*- Environmental Adaptation*
*- Tactical Precognition*
**"This will handle your immediate threats. But remember—"** The figure's expression grew serious. **"Never let your credits hit zero. That's when things get... expensive."**
**"Done. Whatever it costs."**
**"250 credits. Time limit: ten minutes. Try not to waste it."**
The world exploded back into motion.
Takashi felt power flow through him like electricity. His body became light, strong, impossibly coordinated. The quicksand that had been dragging him down now felt like mere water—he stepped out of it as easily as leaving a bathtub.
In his hand materialized a katana that seemed forged from crystallized starlight, beautiful and deadly.
The armored creature turned, sensing the change, but Takashi was already in motion.
What followed wasn't a fight—it was surgery.
The borrowed blade cut through the creature's armor like it was made of paper. Each strike was precise, targeting the joints and gaps with inhuman accuracy. Takashi moved with speed and grace his body had never possessed, flowing around the creature's desperate counterattacks like water around stone.
Within seconds, the thing that had once been a prisoner lay in pieces on the beach, its conjured weapons fading into nothingness.
**CREDITS REMAINING: 750**
The number floated at the edge of his vision like a price tag on his soul.
But death wasn't the end for the creature.
As Takashi watched in horror, its bones began to crack and reform. The spine inverted with sounds like breaking timber. Arms lengthened impossibly, the armor plates shifting and reshaping to accommodate a new anatomy. Legs bent backward at impossible angles until the thing could support itself as a quadruped.
Most disturbing of all, the helmeted head rotated 180 degrees, the human eye now staring at them upside-down from what had become the creature's back.
The reformed monstrosity scuttled away into the jungle like a massive spider, moving faster than anything with that anatomy should have been able to move, its inverted face watching them until it disappeared into the alien foliage.
Takashi stood panting in the aftermath, the crystalline sword already beginning to fade from his grip like morning mist.
"Marcus," he called, turning back to his companion. "Are you—"
He stopped.
Marcus was standing upright, perfectly steady, staring down at his jumpsuit with an expression of profound bewilderment. Where the creature's blade had punctured his abdomen, there was nothing but unmarked fabric and unbroken skin.
"What happened to your wound?" Takashi asked.
Marcus looked up at him with eyes that held a mixture of wonder and terror. "If only I knew."
---
But Marcus did know. Or at least, he remembered.
While bleeding out on the sand, his consciousness had... descended. Into spaces within his body that he'd studied in textbooks but never experienced firsthand.
It had started as a vision—Marcus floating inside his own cardiovascular system, watching blood cells tumble past like microscopic satellites. His medic's brain had catalogued it as a dying hallucination, the mind's final gift to a man whose life had been defined by healing others.
But then he'd seen the wound.
From the inside, it was a catastrophic landscape of torn tissue and severed vessels, cellular chaos spreading outward from the point of impact like ripples in a pond. His conscious mind mapped and triaged the damage automatically: *Intestinal perforation, arterial bleeding, massive tissue trauma—patient will be unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes without immediate surgical intervention.*
At first, he'd been a passive observer, watching his body's desperate attempts at damage control. But gradually, he'd begun to... participate. White blood cells moving away from the injury site? His thoughts reached out and guided them back. Platelets failing to aggregate at a severed artery? He visualized them clustering, forming the foundation for a proper clot.
The pain had started to recede as he worked, directing cellular repair with the focused precision he'd once brought to battlefield surgery. Every platelet, every inflammatory response, every protein synthesis became an instrument in an orchestra he was somehow conducting from within.
He'd watched blood vessels regrow under his mental direction, muscle fibers realign themselves, skin cells multiply and differentiate with surgical precision. The wound had closed from the inside out, layers of tissue knitting together until the injury was not just healed but completely erased.
When he'd opened his eyes on the beach, it was to find his body intact and his mind reeling with the implications.
"I could see it," he said quietly, more to himself than to Takashi. "Every cell. Every chemical process. I could see it all happening, and I could... direct it."
Takashi stared at him, the golden veins still visible beneath his skin. "Direct what?"
Marcus looked down at his hands, feeling the new awareness humming in his bones—a connection to biological processes that should have been automatic and unconscious.
"Everything," he whispered.
Around them, the tide continued to rise, and in the distance, something that sounded like the transformed prisoner was calling to others in a voice like rusted metal grinding against bone.
Marcus: "That wasn't
medicine."
Takashi: "That wasn't me."
The island had given them both gifts.
Now they would learn the price.
---
*End of Chapter 4*