The world smelled of iodine, copper, and despair.
Varian sat in the iron recliner, his wrists and ankles bound by leather straps that had been worn smooth by the sweat of a thousand children before him. To his left, the machine hummed—a rhythmic, mechanical heartbeat that was the only lullaby he had known for three years.
Whir. Click. Drip.
He didn't look at the tube snaking out of his left arm. He knew what color the liquid inside was. It was a rich, vibrant crimson, flecked with tiny specks of gold. High-grade Ether-blood. The kind that could make a dying beast roar with the strength of a titan.
"Thirty milliliters left, Unit 744," a bored voice droned from the other side of the glass partition. "Don't pass out. If you faint, the auto-defibrillator kicks in. And you know how much that hurts."
Varian didn't answer. He stared at the ceiling, counting the rust spots on the ventilation grate. One hundred and twelve. There were one hundred and twelve spots. He counted them every Tuesday and Friday. It was the only way to keep his mind from snapping.
"Varian," a small whisper came from the chair next to him.
Varian turned his head slowly. The movement made the room spin. In the chair beside him sat Elian. The boy was only eight years old, skin translucent as parchment, his eyes too big for his shrunken face.
"What is it, El?" Varian rasped. His throat felt like he had swallowed sandpaper.
"I... I finished the drawing," Elian whispered, fighting the lethargy of the blood drain. He unclenched his free hand. In his sweaty palm lay a crumpled piece of napkin he had stolen from the nutrient dispensation tray.
On it, drawn in grease and dirt, was a circle. Yellowed with pus from a sore, but clearly a circle.
"It's the Sun," Elian smiled weak, gap-toothed and innocent. "Do you think it really looks like that, Varian? Like a big gold coin?"
Varian felt a pang in his chest that had nothing to do with the needles. They lived in Sector 4—the Subterranean Industrial Belt. The "sky" here was a lattice of rusted iron pipes and geothermal vents. The only light came from flickering neon tubes and the molten slag rivers. None of them had ever seen the Sun.
"It's brighter than that, El," Varian lied softly. "It's so bright that if you look at it, it warms you up from the inside. Like... like drinking hot soup on a cold day."
Elian's eyes widened. "Hot soup? Really?"
"Really. And one day," Varian promised, straining against the leather straps, "we're going to get out of this blood farm. We're going to climb past the Furnace District, past the Noble Shell, and we're going to see it."
It was a lie. Varian knew it. They were Livestock. "Catalyst-Class" humans with mutated blood types tailored to feed the Symbiotes of the elite. They didn't leave Sector 4. They left in body bags when their marrow ran dry.
On the other side of the reinforced glass, Dr. Valerius tapped a stylus against his datapad. He was a man of sharp angles and sterile whites, looking at the children not with malice, but with the cold indifference of a butcher inspecting a side of beef.
Beside the Doctor stood the reason for their suffering.
It was a beast. A Solar Lion.
It was magnificent and terrifying. Standing four meters tall at the shoulder, its fur wasn't hair, but strands of semi-solid light that shifted between gold and white. Its mane was a wreath of superheated plasma, crackling softly. It paced the containment room, its paws leaving scorched prints on the steel floor.
The Lion looked at the glass. It looked at Varian. It didn't see a boy. It saw a juice box.
"The Solar Lion is agitated today," Valerius muttered to his assistant. "Increase the flow rate on Unit 744. The beast needs the Ether-platelets to stabilize its evolution."
"Doctor," the assistant hesitated. "Unit 744's heart rate is already irregular. If we increase the flow, he could go into cardiac arrest."
Valerius didn't look up. "Livestock is replaceable, Jensen. A Monarch-tier evolution is not. Do it."
Varian heard the machine whine. The suction on his arm increased. The cold spread from his elbow to his chest. His vision blurred.
So this is it, he thought, a cold numbness spreading through his limbs. I'm going to die here. Just meat on a hook.
He looked at Elian. The boy had passed out, the napkin with the drawn sun slipping from his fingers to the grimy floor.
I couldn't even save a napkin, Varian thought bitterly. Let alone a person.
Suddenly, the world tilted.
BOOM.
It wasn't a sound; it was a physical blow. The floor heaved upward, throwing the iron chairs against their anchors. The lights in the ceiling shattered, showering the room in sparks and glass.
Varian gasped as the needle was ripped violently from his vein. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc, splattering across the white tile.
"WARNING. SECTOR 4 STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED."
The Ark's AI screamed through the loudspeakers, its voice distorted by static.
"UNAUTHORIZED SEISMIC EVENT DETECTED. CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS FAILING."
Red emergency lights began to stroke, bathing the room in the color of fresh wounds. Dust and smoke billowed from the ventilation shafts.
"What is happening?!" Dr. Valerius screamed, stumbling over his desk.
"The terrorists!" the assistant yelled, clutching a bleeding head wound. "The 'Free Earth' faction—they blew the geothermal pipes!"
CRACK.
The sound of the reinforced glass partition shattering was louder than the explosion. The explosion had warped the door frame, cracking the pressure seal.
The Solar Lion stopped pacing.
It turned its massive head toward the breach. The containment field that kept it docile flickered and died.
A low growl, like the sound of tectonic plates grinding together, filled the room. The beast was free.
"No... no, no, no," Dr. Valerius scrambled backward, pulling a stun-baton from his belt. "Back! Initiate Obedience Protocol 4!"
The Solar Lion didn't care about protocols. It was hungry. And the food was right there.
It didn't lunge at the doctor. It lunged at the source of the smell.
It looked directly at Varian and Elian.
"Run!" Varian screamed, but his voice was a whisper. He tried to unbuckle the straps, but his fingers were numb from blood loss. He was trapped.
The Lion leaped through the shattered glass. It landed in the extraction room, its heat instantly raising the temperature by twenty degrees. The papers on the desk curled and blackened.
Dr. Valerius didn't try to save them. He turned and ran for the emergency exit, shoving his assistant into a rack of chemicals to clear his path.
"Open the door!" Valerius shrieked, hammering on the keypad.
The Lion ignored the fleeing scientists. It walked slowly toward the chairs. It could smell the Ether-blood spilling from Varian's torn vein. It opened its mouth, drool turning to steam as it hit the floor.
Elian woke up. He saw the monster towering over them, its mouth a furnace of spinning teeth.
"Varian?" Elian cried, his voice trembling. "I'm scared."
Varian's mind raced. He had no weapon. No strength. No hope. But he looked at Elian—the boy who just wanted to see the sun—and a primal, vicious anger ignited in his gut.
Not him. You can take me, but not him.
Varian's hand, slick with his own blood, grasped blindly at the debris on the floor. His fingers brushed against something cold and wet.
It wasn't a weapon. It was a shard of a broken canister that had fallen from the overhead storage during the quake. A gray, oily sludge was leaking out of it.
Varian looked at it. It wasn't just oil. It was moving. shivering. It looked like liquid mercury mixed with disease.
[Subject X-99][Status: Failed Morph][Disposal Recommended]
The label on the shard was barely legible.
The Solar Lion roared, raising a paw to crush Elian.
"Hey!" Varian shouted, putting every ounce of his dying strength into his voice. He grabbed the handful of gray sludge and threw it—not at the lion, but at the wall to make a sound.
It was a pathetic distraction.
But as his hand touched the gray sludge, something happened.
Pain.
White-hot, blinding pain shot up his arm, hotter than the Lion's fire. The gray sludge didn't fly out of his hand. It stuck. It burrowed into his pores.
[CRITICAL ALERT.]
A voice spoke inside Varian's head. It wasn't the AI. It was organic, wet, and ancient. It sounded like the rustle of leaves and the grinding of gears.
[Foreign Biological Agent Detected.][System Awakening...][Host: Varian. Blood Type: Ether-Positive (Catalyst Grade).][Symbiote: Unidentified Polymorph (Starving).]
Varian froze. The stories... the legends of the Awakened...
In this world, everyone had a dormant "Interface" in their brain, a relic of the bio-punk ancestors. But it only activated when you touched a Symbiote compatible with your DNA.
Most people spent millions of credits trying to find a compatible beast. Varian had just touched literal garbage.
[Compatibility Analysis: 99.9%][Symbiosis Possible.][Warning: Symbiote is Feral. It requires immediate caloric intake or it will consume the Host's nervous system.]
The Solar Lion swiped.
CRUNCH.
The iron chair beside Varian crumpled like paper.
"Varian!" Elian screamed as he was thrown across the room, hitting the wall with a sickening thud. He didn't move.
Varian stared at Elian's still body. The napkin with the sun drawing lay in a pool of blood.
The world went silent. The fear vanished. The cold vanished. All that was left was the hate.
The Lion turned its gaze back to Varian. It opened its jaws, a ball of concentrated plasma forming in its throat.
You want caloric intake? Varian thought, staring at the gray slime eating into his hand. Fine.
"Take it," Varian snarled, thrusting his bleeding arm toward the Lion. "Take it all!"
He mentally grabbed the "Yes" button in his mind.
[CONTRACT SEALED.]
The gray sludge exploded.
It didn't grow outward. It surged inward, wrapping around Varian's radius and ulna bones, fusing with his marrow. It was agony, the feeling of his arm being dipped in molten lead.
But with the pain came power.
His left arm turned a deep, metallic black. The skin hardened into a chitinous shell. His fingers elongated, the tips sharpening into needle-point claws made of liquid chrome.
[Evolution State: Partial.][Weapon Form: The Butcher's Hook.]
The Solar Lion fired the plasma ball.
Varian didn't cower. Instinct took over—not his instinct, but the beast's. He swung his mutated left arm.
CLANG.
The black metal limb swatted the plasma ball aside like it was a fly. The fire splashed against the wall, melting the steel, but Varian's arm was untouched. The slime had absorbed the heat.
The Lion paused, its golden eyes widening in confusion. The food was fighting back.
Varian stood up. The leather straps snapped like thread against his new strength. He felt lightheaded, starving, like his stomach was eating itself—the Symbiote was burning his body's energy to maintain the form.
He had seconds before he passed out.
"You like eating kids?" Varian whispered. His voice sounded distorted, layered with a metallic screech.
He lunged.
He wasn't a martial artist. He was a desperate boy with a weaponized arm. He tackled the Lion, the sheer weight of the metal limb pinning the beast's head to the floor.
The Lion thrashed, its claws raking Varian's chest, shredding his hospital gown and skin. Pain flared, but Varian didn't let go.
He raised his black claw.
"Eat this."
He drove the claw down.
It didn't just cut. The "Polymorph" quality of the slime allowed it to shift at the molecular level. It bypassed the Lion's energy shield and plunged into the soft tissue of its throat.
Hot, golden blood sprayed over Varian's face.
[Target Neutralized.][Consuming Essence...]
The black arm pulsed. Varian felt a rush of warmth—pure, unfiltered energy—flood from the dying lion into his own veins. The dizziness faded. The wounds on his chest began to knit together, steam rising from his skin.
The Lion twitched once, then dissolved into particles of light, leaving behind only a small, glowing red crystal. A Beast Core.
Varian knelt there, panting, covered in gold and red. The gray metal on his arm liquified, retreating under his skin until it looked like a complex, tribal tattoo of gears wrapping around his wrist.
Silence returned to the room.
Varian scrambled over to the wall. "Elian? El?"
He turned the small boy over.
Elian was pale. There was blood matting his hair. But... his chest was moving. A shallow, ragged breath.
Varian collapsed back against the wall, tears finally cutting through the grime on his face. He looked at his hand—the hand that had just killed a Warrior-Rank beast.
He looked at the open door where the Doctor had fled.
He picked up the napkin with the sun drawing and tucked it into his pocket.
"We're leaving, El," Varian whispered to the unconscious boy. "We're going to see the sun. And if anyone stops us..."
His eyes flashed with a momentary, violet light—the color of the Symbiote within him.
"...I'll eat them."