The eel meat was tough and rubbery, but packed with so much nutrition that Kai felt energy flooding in with every bite. His body processed the calories like a furnace, converting them into fuel for growth.
Information bloomed with it. Not words—understanding. The eel's hunting patterns. How it sensed vibrations through water. How it masked its thermal signature by staying perfectly still, matching ambient temperature.
Smart. Terrifyingly smart for a "fish-thing."
This integration felt different. Less overwhelming. More… negotiable.
GENETIC MEMORY ABSORBED: EEL CLASS PREDATORADAPTATION AVAILABLE: ENHANCED WATER NAVIGATION — INTEGRATE?ALTERNATIVE ADAPTATION: PRESSURE-SENSE SENSITIVITY — INTEGRATE?
Two options. Two paths.
Water navigation: powerful in rivers and pools, but specialized.
Pressure-sense: the world through stone.
"Pressure-sense," he decided. "Definitely pressure-sense."
PRESSURE-SENSE SENSITIVITY: INTEGRATE
The world exploded.
One moment his senses were normal. The next, he could feel everything—every vibration, every movement, every living thing in the tunnel system announcing itself through pressure waves in rock.
Too much.
Way too much.
The Devin-part screamed: too much too much make it stop!
The World Cat mind sorted the flood—filtering, prioritizing, teaching him to tune to a single thread while letting the rest fall into background hum.
Panic eased. The symphony resolved.
He felt life pulsing everywhere: beetles ticking along a far wall, water stitching patterns into a cavern below, heavy footfalls pacing above. It was beautiful.
"Holy—" Kai caught himself and laughed. "This is incredible."
Yeah, the Devin-voice admitted, quieter but present. That's actually amazing.
For the first time, both halves agreed.
That night, Kai tried to remember his mother's face.
He should know. Eighteen years. Night shifts at the hospital. Love stated plainly. But when he reached for the image, it slid away like water through claws.
Facts remained. The feeling didn't.
It was like looking at a photograph of a stranger—someone important to a person named Devin who used to exist.
The Devin-voice wailed, grief raw and frantic.
The World Cat mind registered the noise as inefficient and moved on.
"I was supposed to save you with the lottery money," he whispered. "I was supposed to fix everything."
The words felt like lines from a play he'd never seen.
He curled on his ledge and tried to cry. His new body didn't oblige. Tears weren't how it cleared grief. The human part screamed silently. The World Cat part dimmed the alarm.
How long before Devin faded to nothing but data?
Something new was happening.
It began as a low pressure in his abdomen. Not pain—insistence. A vessel filling, a system priming.
He ignored it. There were hunts to run, tunnels to map, scavengers to warn off.
The pressure built. Slowly. Steadily.
Day 15 since emergence.
Genetic memory supplied context he did not want.
Breeding.
His body was preparing for breeding—not biological gestation, the memory hinted, but a blueprinting process that would lead to external pods.
"Oh no," he said. "Absolutely not. We're not doing that."
Biology disagreed. Urges he'd never known rose like tide. Instincts with nothing to do with Devin and everything to do with World Cat drives.
He'd been alive barely two weeks. Still learning to survive. Creating life felt impossibly premature.
But the animal logic was clean: growth, reproduction, expansion. Territory claimed. Anchor established. Next step obvious.
"This is insane," he muttered, pacing. "I can't create life. I don't even know what I am yet."
The pressure kept building.
Day 16 since emergence.
Sleep fled. The urge swamped rational thought. His body didn't care about objections. It had an imperative.
The worst part? Genetic memory showed him how.
He could design the offspring. Choose traits. Encode capabilities before the pods ever formed.
Not random breeding. Deliberate creation.
"That's playing god," the Devin-voice whispered. "That's wrong."
Strategically, it was perfect—specialists for roles, efficiency by design.
It was also monstrous.
Day 17 since emergence
The notification arrived like a verdict:
EVENT: FIRST ADAPTIVE CYCLE COMPLETETHRESHOLD REACHED: BREEDING CAPABILITY ACHIEVEDNEXT STAGE OPTIONS:• CONTINUE SOLO DEVELOPMENT (no breeding; increased personal power)• INITIATE BREEDING CYCLE (requires significant energy investment)• ESTABLISH SECONDARY COLONY EXPANSION (branching population structure)
Solo development: clean, simple, safe—also limited.
Breeding: building something larger than himself—also designing consciousness, determining roles.
The Devin-voice screamed. Don't do it. That's slavery. That's creating sentient beings to serve you.
The World Cat mind was calm. That's survival. Strategy. Tools to ensure the colony thrives.
"Colony," he said softly. Not just me. A colony.
He could create specialists. Perfect tools for specific jobs. Effective. Efficient.
No choice for them.
Pressure mounted—biological, inexorable. He realized something terrible.
He was going to do it.
Not because it was right. Not because Devin accepted it. Because his body would force the threshold, and if forced, better to shape than to fail.
"I'm becoming something I don't recognize," he whispered.
We already are, the Devin-voice answered, almost gone.
Outside, the caverns pulsed with life: predators hunting, prey fleeing, the old dance under new stone.
Kai—who had been Devin Crowe exactly seventeen days ago—made a choice that would change everything.
He would breed.He would design.He would become an architect of consciousness.
The human part wept for what that meant.
The World Cat part began planning.