Day 18: The pressure started as a dull ache that Kai mistook for indigestion.
He'd been feeling off all morning, like something in his lower abdomen had decided to make itself known in the most uncomfortable way possible. At first he thought maybe the beetle he'd eaten last night had gone bad. That would be just his luck, surviving an eel that could bite him in half only to get taken down by spoiled beetle meat.
But as the hours crawled by, the sensation changed. Intensified. Became something he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried.
"This is fine," Kai muttered, pacing the perimeter of his den for what had to be the hundredth time. His claws clicked against stone in an anxious rhythm. "Totally normal. Just my alien body doing weird alien things."
The Devin voice, barely more than a whisper these days, managed to sound panicked anyway. Nothing about this is normal.
"Yeah, well, we stopped doing normal when I woke up with thermal vision and an overwhelming desire to eat things raw."
By evening the pressure had evolved from uncomfortable to genuinely distracting. Kai tried hunting. Managed to track down and kill a salamander similar to his very first prey, but the meat tasted like ash in his mouth and the pressure didn't fade even slightly.
He tried sleeping. That lasted maybe forty minutes before his body jolted him awake with what felt like urgency thrumming through every nerve.
He tried exploring the far reaches of his claimed territory, checking the scent markers he'd left days ago. Still strong. Still warning other creatures that something dangerous lived here now.
None of it helped.
The genetic memory finally supplied context he'd been dreading since the system notification days ago.
Breeding cycle initiated. Reproductive capability active. Biological imperative cannot be denied.
Kai stopped pacing. Stared at nothing. "You've got to be kidding me."
The pressure pulsed in response, as if his own biology was laughing at his objection.
Sleep became impossible.
The pressure had graduated from distracting to all consuming. Kai couldn't focus on anything else. His mind kept circling back to it, examining it from every possible angle, trying to understand what exactly his body was demanding.
And the answer kept coming back the same. Crystal clear and utterly terrifying.
Offspring.
His biology wanted him to create offspring. New life. Conscious beings that would depend on him for survival.
"Absolutely not." Kai said it out loud, firm and final, as if speaking the words could make them true. "We are not doing that. I've been alive in this body for less than three weeks. That's completely insane."
The pressure intensified anyway, like his body was calling him a liar.
"Okay yes, I understand it's not really up for debate at this point." He resumed pacing, more frantic now. "But this is too fast. Way too fast. I barely know what I am yet."
The World Cat consciousness remained frustratingly calm about the whole situation. Not panicking. Not even concerned. Just patiently waiting for Kai to accept what was already inevitable.
You claimed territory. You established yourself as a viable predator. The next step is expansion through reproduction. Fighting it only causes unnecessary suffering.
The Devin voice stirred weakly. But we can't create life just because our biology says so. That's not how this works. You don't just make new conscious beings without thinking it through.
Kai wanted to agree. He really did. But the pressure was building to levels that felt almost painful, and he was starting to understand something terrible.
This wasn't a choice he got to make.
His body was going to force the issue whether his mind was ready or not.
Kai woke to something screaming in his skull.
Not words. Not even coherent thoughts. Just pure overwhelming need that bypassed every rational part of his brain and went straight to his muscles. His body was already moving before consciousness fully caught up, claws finding purchase on stone, heading toward the tunnel exit he'd been carefully avoiding.
The one that sloped upward.
"Wait." Kai tried to slow down, to think about what he was doing. "Where are we going?"
His legs kept moving anyway.
The genetic memory flooded him with images that felt older than language itself. Open sky stretching forever. Wind carrying scents from impossible distances. The surface world that World Cats had once called home before something drove them underground, before extinction nearly claimed them entirely.
You need to see it. You need to understand the full scope of what you're becoming before you create others like yourself.
The command was absolute. Undeniable. Written into his DNA by millions of years of evolution that knew better than his conscious mind what needed to happen next.
Kai's objections died before reaching his throat. His body had decided, and apparently his consciousness was just along for the ride.
The tunnels changed as he climbed. The familiar damp coolness of underground spaces gave way to something drier, thinner. His pressure sense picked up different patterns now. Less water trickling through hidden channels, more air currents that spoke of massive open spaces ahead.
The darkness began to fade.
Not quickly. Not like flipping a switch. But gradually, almost imperceptibly, the absolute blackness of the deep caves gave way to something lighter. His thermal vision started picking up heat patterns that didn't make sense. A massive diffuse source of warmth that was too large, too omnipresent to be any creature.
Sunlight. That had to be sunlight.
The realization sent a spike of fear through him. Sunlight meant surface. Surface meant exposure. Vulnerability. Everything about Kai's instincts screamed that caves were safe and open spaces were death traps.
But his legs kept climbing.
The passage narrowed, became almost vertical in places. Kai's claws found holds that shouldn't have existed, his enhanced strength pulling him upward through spaces that would have been impossible for his human body. The pressure sense guided him, feeling microscopic variations in the stone, understanding exactly where to grip for maximum purchase.
The air grew cold. Painfully cold. Each breath felt like inhaling needles.
And then, suddenly, the tunnel opened.
The transition from underground to surface hit Kai like a physical blow.
One moment he was climbing through a narrow shaft, surrounded by stone on all sides, safe in the familiar embrace of enclosed spaces. The next moment there was nothing above him. Just void. Endless void stretching upward until distance made comprehension impossible.
Sky.
His consciousness fragmented trying to process it.
The openness was wrong on every possible level. His instincts screamed danger, demanding he retreat back into the comforting darkness where ceilings existed and threats could only come from limited directions. But the genetic memory was flooding him with contrary information, with the absolute certainty that this was right, this was home, this was what World Cats were built for.
The light was even worse.
Not the soft glow of bioluminescent fungi or the dim red of thermal vision painting heat in colors. This was raw sunlight, burning and immediate and so bright his visual receptors nearly shut down in protest. He'd been using thermal vision almost exclusively for weeks now. His eyes had forgotten how to handle actual light.
Kai squeezed them shut, pressing himself against the rocky outcrop that concealed the tunnel entrance. Too much. Everything was too much.
The temperature was insane. Not the stable coolness of the caves but wild fluctuations carried by wind that moved with terrifying speed. Cold air rushing past, then warmer pockets, then cold again, all of it changing faster than he could adapt.
And the noise. Gods, the noise.
Not the gentle drips and echoes of underground spaces but a constant roar of sensation. Wind howling past rock formations. The rustle of vegetation he couldn't see. The distant sounds of creatures moving across open ground. All of it hitting him simultaneously in a cacophony his brain wasn't equipped to parse.
The Devin voice stirred, recognizing something despite the sensory chaos. Sky. That's the sky. I used to see that every day and never appreciated it.
But Devin's wonder was small now, compressed into insignificance by the World Cat consciousness experiencing something close to religious awe. This was the world their species had dominated once. This was what they'd been designed to conquer before extinction nearly claimed them.
Kai forced his eyes open, squinting against the impossible brightness.
The landscape resolved slowly as his vision adapted. Red sand stretching in rolling dunes toward a horizon he could actually see. Rocky outcrops breaking the monotony like bones jutting through skin. Sparse vegetation that looked nothing like Earth plants, adapted to survive in what was clearly a harsh environment.
And above it all, visible even in daylight, two pale shapes hung in the blue expanse.
Moons. Twin moons.