The world swam back into focus through a film of pain and disorientation. Eva's first conscious sensation was the cold, hard floor beneath her. The second was the absence of the crippling, breath-stealing agony in her ribs. The pain was still there, a deep, resonant ache, but it was… manageable. The feeling of bones grinding against each other was gone.
She opened her eyes.
Kneeling directly in front of her, so close she could see the faint, almost invisible scars on his face, was Wolfen. And he was smiling. It wasn't a smile of warmth or reassurance. It was the smile of a master chess player who has just moved his queen into a position that won't pay off for another twenty moves—a smile of immense, terrifying patience and foresight. He was plotting something for the far future, and she had just become a piece on his board.
In his hand was a now-empty pneumatic injector, its chamber gleaming dully under the emergency lights.
A cold dread, colder than any pain, washed over her. She scrambled backward, pushing herself up against the wall, her body responding with a fluid strength that felt alien. Rage, hot and pure, cut through the last of her confusion.
"What did you do?" she snarled, her voice hoarse but steady. Her hands clenched into fists, her body coiling, ready to fight this new threat despite the lingering ache.
Wolfen's smile widened, a predator's baring of teeth. He seemed to drink in her anger, to savor it. "My blood," he said, his voice a low, intimate rumble.
Two words. Two words that shattered Eva's entire worldview.
My blood.
It wasn't a stimulant. It wasn't a medicine. It was him. A part of his essence, his impossible biology, was now circulating within her, hijacking her systems, rewriting her from the inside out. The implications were a vertiginous spiral: what had he made her? What was she becoming? Was her will still her own? The violation was absolute, a psychic rape that dwarfed the physical torture of the Architects.
Her rage turned to a stunned, icy shock. She could only stare at him, her mind reeling, unable to form a single coherent thought.
"Hmm," Wolfen mused, his head tilting as he clinically assessed her. "You're looking alright now. Though your healing really isn't that good. Took almost thirty seconds." He said it with the mild disappointment of a craftsman criticizing subpar materials.
It was only then that Eva noticed the discarded, empty blood-bag on the floor beside him. It was thick and heavy, the plastic opaque and stained a deep, violent crimson on the inside. His blood. A massive dose. Her eyes dropped to her own body. The deep gashes were closed, leaving only angry red lines. The shattered ribs were knit. The debilitating weakness was gone, replaced by a thrumming, unfamiliar power. She felt… repaired. Forcibly. Perfectly.
From further down the corridor, the sounds of the cataclysmic battle between Maya and Zane intensified—the screech of tearing metal, the wet thud of impacts, the guttural snarls of two apex predators.
Wolfen's gaze flickered toward the noise, his smile finally fading into a mask of cold, focused intent. He stood, his movements radiating a contained, world-ending energy.
"Help the others," he commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument. He began to walk, not with haste, but with the inevitability of a landslide.
He paused as he passed her, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more terrifying than a shout.
"The zombie is mine."
And then he was gone, striding down the corridor toward the clashing titans, leaving Eva alone with a body that was no longer entirely her own, a mind in chaos, and a command that felt less like a suggestion and more like a genetic imperative she was now physically incapable of disobeying.