LOCATION: IMPACT SITE, SIBERIAN TUNDRA
TIMESTAMP: T-PLUS 00:05:00
Chaos.
The monstrous eagle-thing—codenamed "Harpy-One" by a frantic GSC—was a blur of obsidian chitin and blood-red light. It didn't fly; it teleported in short, brutal bursts. One second it was on the rock spire, the next it was in the middle of their perimeter.
A rifle cracked. Then another. The sound was deafening, useless.
"Where the hell did it go?!" a soldier screamed, spinning wildly, his rifle tracing empty air.
SHRIEEEEK
The sound came from above. A soldier named Corbin looked up. He had time to widen his eyes before a scythe-talon the size of a bayonet punched through his chest plate like it was paper. The creature lifted him, his boots kicking twice before it flung him like a ragdoll into the mist. His bio-signal flatlined with a sickening electronic beep in their helmets.
"IT'S TOO FAST!" Jinx roared, firing a wild burst at the shadow that had already vanished. "Our eyes can't track it! Fall back! Defensive formation!"
Panic was a live wire in their veins. They were elite soldiers, but they were fighting a ghost, a nightmare made flesh. Another soldier was swiped from his feet by a massive wing, his body cartwheeling through the air with the sound of shattering bone.
They were being hunted. Systematically. And they couldn't even see the hunter.
Private Evans, the one who had screamed moments before, was on his knees, clutching his head. "Make it stop... make the buzzing stop..." he moaned. A splitting headache, born from the energy wave, was threatening to crack his skull open. The world was too loud, too bright, too much.
"Evans, get up!" Jinx yelled, grabbing his shoulder.
That's when it happened.
As the Harpy materialized ten yards away, preparing for another kill, Evans's head snapped up. His eyes flew open. But they weren't his eyes anymore. They weren't the blood-red of the monster. They were blazing with a vibrant, neon-green energy that swirled in his irises like liquid emerald.
He moved without thinking.
He shoved Jinx aside with surprising force just as the Harpy blurred forward. Instead of hitting empty air, Evans dropped into a low crouch, his own combat knife held in a reverse grip.
SCREEEECH—CRUNCH!
The sound was metallic, horrible. The Harpy shrieked in surprise and pain. It reappeared, stumbling back. A deep gash now ran along its chitinous leg, leaking a sizzling, black fluid.
Silence, save for the creature's pained hisses.
Jinx stared, his rifle half-lowered. The entire team stared.
Evans was standing between them and the monster, his body humming with a tension that wasn't entirely his own. His green eyes were locked on the beast, tracking its every twitch.
"Evans...?" Jinx breathed.
Evans didn't look back. A grim, alien smile touched his lips.
"I can see it," he said, his voice a low, resonant hum that vibrated with power. "I can see the... echoes it leaves in the air. I can tell where it's going to be."
The Harpy-One fixed its bloodlust gaze on this new, glowing-eyed threat. It let out a chittering, furious hiss.
It wasn't hunting prey anymore.
It had found a rival.
The Harpy-One, enraged by Evans's defiance, changed tactics. It stopped its teleporting assault and landed heavily on the central spire. It drew in a massive, rattling breath, its chest expanding, the plates of its body separating. A deep, crimson light gathered in its gullet.
"It's charging an energy blast!" Jinx yelled. "Scatter!"
But it was too late. The beam of blood-red energy lanced out, not towards Evans, but towards a cluster of three soldiers who were desperately reloading.
This was it. Death.
A soldier named Riggs screamed—not in terror, but in raw, agonizing transformation. As the blast neared, his body shifted. His A.T.S.S. suit groaned and split at the seams as his form swelled with slabs of granite-like muscle. His skin hardened into a grey, rock-like hide. He crossed his massive arms, and the energy blast shattered against him, scattering harmlessly into the air.
The observation deck at GSC erupted into chaos. "My God! Did you see that?! Bio-readings are off the scale!"
On the ground, it was chaos. It wasn't just Riggs.
Another soldier, Kaito, became a blur of motion, his form flickering at impossible speeds, leaving after-images in his wake.
A third, "Doc" Hendricks, held out a hand, and the very air in front of her solidified into a shimmering wall of force, deflecting a follow-up attack from the shrieking Harpy.
They were all changing. The energy that had washed over the continent wasn't a poison; it was a catalyst, and the stress of battle was the trigger. The Awakening was happening on a larger scale.
But one transformation was more terrifying than the others.
Captain Marcus Crowe, their leader, let out a guttural roar that was no longer human. His body contorted, expanding and twisting. His uniform shredded as dark, scale-like plates erupted across his skin. His fingers elongated into wickedly sharp black claws, and his jaw unhinged, revealing rows of serrated teeth. His eyes burned with a feral, yellow light. He was a nightmare given form, a monster to fight a monster.
The mutated Harpy, sensing a greater threat, forgot the others and launched itself at Crowe.
It never stood a chance.
Crowe moved with blinding, brutal efficiency. He sidestepped the creature's charge, his clawed hand shooting out and catching it by the throat. With a sickening crunch of chitin and bone, he slammed the beast into the ground. He didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one. His other clawed hand rose and fell in a single, devastating arc, tearing through the Harpy's neck.
The monstrous eagle-thing twitched once and was still.
Silence descended, heavier than before. The other mutated soldiers stared, panting, at their captain, this primal engine of destruction.
And then, as quickly as it came, the transformation reversed. The scales receded, the claws retracted, the feral light died in his eyes. Captain Crowe stood there, bare-chested and breathing heavily, looking down at his own normal, human hands, slick with black, alien blood.
On the comms, a young soldier's voice trembled. "Captain... what the hell happened to us?"
Before Crowe could answer, the voice of Dr. Aris Thorne crackled through, not filled with horror, but with a fanatical, breathless awe.
"Don't you see?" Aris whispered, his voice trembling with revelation. "It's not a curse. The readings... the energy wave... it didn't destroy. It rewrote. It elevated."
He paused, and when he spoke again, it was with the gravity of a prophet.
"Captain, it seems Earth has finally been blessed."