The word was a crack of thunder, cutting through the suffocating pressure that emanated from Eva.
"TRANSFORM!" Wolfen roared from the ground, his voice raw with a urgency that bordered on panic.
It was the trigger. Eva, the Alpha, the entity of pure, shattered grief, moved. She was a blur of scarlet and black, closing the distance to Maya in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Her clawed hand, wreathed in that horrifying red-black scale, swiped out.
Maya's body reacted before her mind could. The instinct to survive, the monster within her, screamed in unison with Wolfen. But something else fought back—the decade of training, the hard-won control. The result was a catastrophic compromise. Her legs and arms scaled over, her talons unsheathed, and a partial carapace of obsidian spread across her chest and the side of her head. It was enough to grant her speed and strength, but not enough to become the massive, unstoppable predator. She was a half-drawn sword.
It didn't matter.
Eva's blow connected. The impact wasn't just physical; it was a concussive wave of psionic fury. The air thumped. Maya was lifted off her feet and sent flying backward as if launched from a cannon, crashing through the twisted wreckage of the lab's entrance in an explosion of shattered concrete and rebar.
For eleven minutes, it was a slaughter. Maya, fighting with a desperate, controlled partial-transformation, was utterly outclassed. She was faster than any of them had ever seen her, her movements a blur, but Eva was a constant. Every block Maya made shattered her own bones. Every dodge was a hair's breadth from evisceration. Eva wasn't just fighting; she was dismantling, her attacks precise, brutal, and fueled by an infinite well of agony. Maya was a ragdoll in a hurricane, her body being systematically broken.
It was then that the headlights of the jeeps sliced through the dust and darkness. The vehicles skidded to a halt, and Leo, Derek, and Jordan leaped out, taking in the scene in a single, horrifying instant: Wolfen, powerless on the ground; Maya, being brutally beaten; and Eva, a nightmare creature they barely recognized.
"Eva, stop!" Leo yelled, charging forward.
It was a futile gesture. Eva didn't even turn. As Leo lunged, she simply backhanded him. The blow caught him in the chest, and the sound was like a sledgehammer hitting a side of beef. His Umbralite breastplate cracked, and he was thrown back into Derek, both of them tumbling to the ground in a heap. Jordan, moving with his katana raised, fared no better. Eva sidestepped his lightning-fast strike, grabbed his wrist, and flung him like a discus into the side of a jeep, the metal door buckling around him.
"IDIOTS!" Wolfen's voice was a ragged scream from the dirt. "LOW! GET LOW, ALL OF YOU!"
Marcus, his soldier's instincts overriding his shock, understood. "DOWN! EVERYONE, GET DOWN AND PULL BACK!" he bellowed at his men. The soldiers, witnessing the one-sided annihilation, needed no further encouragement. They hit the dirt and began a frantic, low crawl away from the epicenter of the violence.
Wolfen's eyes, burning with frustration, locked onto the three hybrids struggling to their feet. "YOU MORONS! YOU'RE NOT HUMANS WITH SWORDS ANYMORE! YOU'RE HYBRIDS! USE YOUR ABILITIES!"
The shout was a key, unlocking doors they had been training to open for a decade.
Derek was the first. He let out a guttural roar, and the air around him seemed to thicken. A faint, crimson aura flickered to life around his body. "Carnage!" he snarled. It was an ability born of his protective fury, a state that didn't just enhance him, but multiplied his base capabilities. His speed, strength, and durability exploded, the multiplier ticking up in his mind—x3… x5… x7… x9! He became a blur of amplified violence, charging Eva with fists that could now crater steel.
Jordan rose from the dented jeep, a low, unnerving chuckle escaping his lips. It was the Smiling Devil. His mouth stretched into a grotesquely wide grin, his teeth elongating into sharp, predatory points. But the true weapon manifested in his free hand. A blade of pure, white-hot energy, sharp and jagged, erupted from his knuckles, humming with psionic power. In his other hand, the Umbralite katana seemed to drink the light around it. He became a whirlwind of opposing forces—light and darkness, a grinning reaper.
Leo didn't shout a name. He simply let go. His Hybrid Instincts, honed over a decade of Wolfen's brutal tutelage, took over. His senses expanded; he could smell the ozone of Eva's power, hear the micro-tears in her muscles, see the subtle shift in her weight before she moved. He was no longer a man fighting a monster; he was a predator analyzing another predator.
And Maya, pushing herself up from the rubble, her body a tapestry of bruises and cuts, reached for her final, desperate card. "Blood Monster," she whispered. It was a forbidden technique, one that forced her circulatory system into overdrive, flooding her muscles with oxygen and power at a catastrophic cost. Her veins bulged, pulsing with black blood. For two to four seconds, she would be a conduit of pure, unrestrained force. She launched herself forward, a temporary comet of destruction.
The four of them attacked as one, a coordinated assault of multiplied strength, psionic blades, feral instinct, and temporary, overwhelming power.
And it wasn't enough.
Eva was an Alpha. She was a class of being they could not comprehend. She moved through their combined assault like a scythe through wheat. She caught Derek's Carnage-fueled punch and used his own multiplied momentum to slam him into the ground. She parried Jordan's energy blade with her own claws, the impact creating a shockwave that staggered him, and her other hand slapped the Umbralite katana aside as if it were a toy. She predicted Leo's instinct-driven attacks and countered with blows he couldn't see coming. And when Maya, in her two-second window of absolute power, got a clean hit on her back, Eva simply absorbed the impact, turned, and drove an elbow into Maya's face that sent her spinning to the ground, unconscious and critically wounded.
One by one, they fell. Derek's Carnage state faded, leaving him exhausted and broken. Jordan' Smiling Devil grin was wiped away by a blow that shattered his energy blade and several ribs. Leo's instincts told him only one thing: Run. You cannot win.
Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of distant fires and Eva's ragged, multi-tonal breathing. She stood amidst the wreckage of her friends, her body radiating a heat that warped the air. Slowly, she turned.
Her completely black eyes, pools of infinite grief and rage, fixed on the one person left.
Wolfen.
She began to walk towards him, each step deliberate, heavy with the weight of a world destroyed. The Alpha had dealt with the distractions. Now, it was time to confront the one who had brought her to this place of ultimate loss.