The sound reached us in layers.
At first, it blended into the city's usual noise. The low hum of filtration towers. The distant whine of drones. The vibration of trains moving beneath concrete veins.
Then it kept going.
[wuuuuum… wuuuuum…]
Too slow to be an alarm.
Too deliberate to be machinery.
People stopped walking.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just one by one, like a crowd forgetting the reason it had been moving in the first place.
I turned toward the source.
Every emergency siren in the district had activated, but they were not synchronized. Some lagged behind by seconds. Others stretched the sound longer than regulation allowed. The pitch dipped and rose as if the system itself was unsure what it was warning us about.
A man near the intersection frowned at his wrist display.
"This isn't evacuation," he muttered. "Code doesn't match."
A woman pulled her child closer. "Then what is it?"
No answer came.
Above us, public screens flickered. The same static as before. This time, it stayed longer.
White noise crawled across the displays. Letters tried to form, failed, rearranged themselves.
BIOLOGICAL IRREGULARITY DETECTED
ORIGIN: UNKNOWN
RESPONSE LEVEL: PENDING
Pending.
That word sank into the street like a dropped glass.
Pending meant no script.
Pending meant humans had not decided what this was yet.
Someone laughed. Too loud. Too fast.
"Hey, calm down. If it was serious, they'd tell us to evacuate."
A few people nodded, relieved by the idea that authority always spoke clearly when things were dangerous.
Then the ground shivered.
Not a quake. Not an impact.
More like a muscle tightening.
I felt it through my shoes, a soft upward pressure that vanished as soon as I noticed it. Conversations faltered. A cyclist lost balance and swore as he caught himself.
"What the hell was that?"
The sirens deepened.
[wuuuuum... wuuuuum...]
Longer now. Heavier.
From somewhere down the block, a sharp cracking sound echoed. Not concrete breaking. Something wetter. Elastic.
[grkk]
People turned as one.
The street ahead began to deform.
The asphalt rippled, subtle at first, like heat distortion. Then it rose. Slowly. Patiently. A smooth bulge pushed upward, stretching the road surface without tearing it.
No debris.
No explosion.
Just growth.
"Oh no," someone whispered.
The bulge pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
With each pulse, faint lines appeared beneath the asphalt, branching and reconnecting like veins under translucent skin.
The smell hit us late.
Warm. Metallic. Sweet in the wrong way.
My stomach clenched.
"This is a joke," a man said, backing away. "This has to be some kind of construction tech."
The street answered him by splitting open.
Not violently. Not yet.
The asphalt parted as if guided by invisible hands, peeling back in thick sheets. Beneath it was no foundation. No pipes.
Only flesh.
A semi-transparent mass pushed upward, glistening under the city lights. Its surface shifted constantly, internal structures rearranging themselves with disturbing purpose.
It was alive.
And impossibly large.
I heard someone retch.
"That's… that's a cell," a voice said. Shaking. Disbelieving.
They were right.
Even without training, the resemblance was unmistakable. A membrane. A nucleus-like core. Organelles drifting like internal machinery.
A single cell.
Standing taller than a bus.
The sirens changed tone again.
Sharper now. Urgent.
Too late.
Police drones arrived first. Three of them. They hovered in a triangular formation, weapons deploying with mechanical clicks.
"Unidentified biological entity," a synthesized voice announced. "Remain calm. Do not approach."
The cell reacted.
It did not roar.
It leaned forward.
Its surface rippled, and a section of its membrane extended outward, thickening, reshaping. The movement was slow, almost lazy, but the intent behind it felt heavy.
Predatory.
The drones fired.
Kinetic rounds vanished on contact, swallowed into the membrane as if the cell were tasting them. Chemical agents sprayed next, dispersing into mist that dissolved before reaching the core.
[fffwh]
No effect.
The cell pulsed again.
Larger.
Someone screamed. Then another. The crowd broke apart, panic finally winning over disbelief. People ran in every direction, shoes slipping on disinfectant-slick pavement.
I tried to move.
My legs refused for half a second too long.
The cell's surface shifted, and something inside it rotated. Structures aligned. The mass leaned toward the nearest cluster of people.
That was when the sound above us changed everything.
A heavy, descending roar. Controlled. Mechanical.
The air compressed.
A shadow swallowed the street.
I looked up just as metal cut through the mist, descending on jets of blue-white flame. The machine's silhouette blocked the pale sky, angular and unmistakably artificial.
An A.C.U.
It landed between us and the cell with a force that rattled windows and knocked me off my feet.
[THUD]
The ground finally cracked.
I lay there, heart pounding, staring up at the towering machine. White armor plates bore scars from previous engagements. Cables flexed like tendons beneath exposed joints.
This was not a savior.
This was a correction.
The sirens cut out.
For the first time since morning, the city went quiet.
Then a voice echoed from the machine, low and distorted, carrying both human strain and mechanical authority.
"Target confirmed."
A pause.
"Initiating Apoptosis Protocol."
The cell pulsed.
As if it understood.