The Biomedical Core detonated into motion.
Concrete fractured beneath the creature's charge, tiles erupting like brittle bones under a sledgehammer's kiss. Frost exploded off the observation glass in needle-sharp bursts, razor shards skittering across blood-slick steel.
The air thickened with ozone burn and copper tang. Ray's nostrils flared instinctively as he stepped into the kill-zone, body coiling as a firewall between abomination and the women behind him.
The creature moved with his precision.
Not scrapling frenzy.
Not hulk brute force.
This one remembered.
Its opening strike whipped low. Claws arced for Ray's knees with a pulverizing vector he'd used a hundred times in sims. He vaulted the trajectory, twisting midair. Boots gouged white-hot sparks from the exam table as he landed predator-crouched.
The creature tracked flawlessly.
No lag.
No telegraph.
Elongated fingers flexed with muscle memory stolen from his neural maps.
Lysandra fired.
Three rounds cracked stale air. Surgical. 9mm hollowpoints chewed shoulder and chest. Flesh parted too cleanly, too vascular. Onyx blood jetted, hissing acidic against walls, filling the room with vinegar rot.
The creature accelerated through the hits.
"Atlanta, '17," it rasped. Voice like gravel dragged over glass through shredded cords.
"You snapped his neck clean. Left the girl screaming. Same angle."
Lyra's breath seized. A wet choke.
"It… knows you," she whispered. Smoke-terror threading her voice.
Ray's pulse didn't spike.
His eyes dissected. Deltoid preload. Quad tension. An 87% match in strike prediction. His stance dropped lethal.
"Lysandra. Lead its corrections. Fire the intercept."
She swallowed bile. Grip iron.
"Copy."
The creature lunged. Arms splayed in a grotesque hug, trajectory mirroring Ray's own disarms from KRG-9 protocols.
He ghosted left at 0.8 seconds. Piston-elbow cratered its ribcage. Collision boomed like ordnance. Five ribs vaporized in a wet crunch.
The creature stutter-stepped.
Then grinned.
Lips peeled back, exposing bone-needle teeth.
"Nostalgic," it purred.
"Your first kill. Adrenaline spike 240%. Heart rate mine now."
The entity ignited in Ray's skull.
〈Clone integrity 82%. Combat heuristics stolen. No killswitch. TERMINATE IMMEDIATE.〉
Ray's motor cortex glitched half a beat. Fist twitching, involuntary.
He seized its wrist. Judo-redirect hurled 280 pounds into the toppled med-table. Metal screamed. Vials detonated. Hypochlorite pooled, eating tile with sulfur reek. Vapors stung eyes raw.
Lyra yelped as the bench buckled. Scalpels rained.
"Ray...!"
"Vector clear," he snapped. Eyes locked on wreckage.
The creature surged vertical. Spine pop-pop-pop realigned. Left cheek flayed to mandible gleam. Intelligence feralized its gaze.
"You bunker the weak," it observed. Head cocked with Ray's exact diagnostic tilt.
"Lyra's pulse 140. Lysandra's cortisol peaking. Inefficient."
Lysandra's jaw welded shut.
"Eat shit, copycat."
She advanced. Double-tap shredded its knee. Exact intercept. Cartilage pulped. Leg folded like bad origami.
Ray blurred the gap.
Vise-clamped collarbone. Skull pistoned into console wall. Sparks nova-blasted. Screens vomited static-screams.
The creature retched oil-thick phlegm.
"Prime vessel," it gargled.
"Protocol Zero. I am… Continuation."
A claw lashed from blindspot.
His signature feint.
Ray registered late.
"RAY... FLANK!" Lyra screamed.
Talons parted tactical weave. Flesh opened in fire-caress. Hot arterial sheeted his hip. Ray rolled kinetic bleedoff, ribs flexing but intact.
Lysandra's voice shredded.
"You're gushing... fuck, Ray!"
"Artery sealed," he grunted. Vertical again in 1.2 seconds. Crimson pooled at his boots.
The creature hauled upright. Limbs spasmed. Regen stuttered. Obsidian eyes locked Ray's, hunger bleeding through.
"They etched you first," it breathed.
"Perfection template. I am… what follows."
Lyra's whisper fractured.
"Ray… it's you…"
Truth coiled barbed around his brainstem.
The creature hobbled forward.
"Brother."
The syllable detonated. Depleted uranium dense. Psyche-contaminating.
The room vacuumed silent for one beat.
Lysandra surged. Barricade between them. Pistol kissed its optic.
"Bait rejected," she said.
"You're code gone feral."
Ray's gaze traced her spine-rigid posture. Then the thing.
"Logged."
The creature's face twitched. Confusion algorithm.
"Then unleash," it goaded.
"No leash. No mercy. Like Tampa op."
Ray erased distance.
Fist nuked its jaw. Dental shrapnel sprayed wet. The creature pinwheeled. Stasis pod shattered in a diamond blizzard.
Ray advanced. Inexorable.
"You're not continuation," he stated.
"You're error log."
Throat-lift. Feet dangling. 280 pounds of deadweight.
Claws raked his forearm. Familiar grip pressure.
"We supersede," it bubbled.
"Evolve your flaws..."
Ray cratered it downward.
Impact moonshot fractured the floor. Fissures raced. Systems fried in hydraulic squelch. Boot heel pulverized sternum.
Wet finality.
Silence crashed. Terminal gravity.
Ray loomed over slurry. Respirations metronomic. Blood dripping metronomic.
He pivoted.
Lyra stood catatonic-pale. Eyes vitreous. Tears carving grime-rivers down her face.
Lysandra's stare drilled corpse to Ray. Pupils dilated, possessive for a microsecond.
"You glitched," she tight-roped.
"Brother hit home."
Ray smeared knuckles crimson.
"0.47 seconds analysis. Mission-kill achieved."
Distant multi-rumbles. Nest awakening.
Lysandra spat venom.
"Contagion spread. Whole hive's up."
Ray ghosted to Lyra. Kneel. Radial pulse check. 148 to 132. Respirations shallow but patent. Bandage integrity green.
"Focus mine," he murmured. Thumb ghosting her jaw.
She knotted fists in his tac-vest. Anchoring.
"Don't… ever…"
Lysandra cataloged everything. Ray's decel for Lyra. Vocal timbre velvet-downshift. Her molars ground. Fingers twitched near holster.
"Flank evisceration," she clipped.
"Bench. Execute."
Ray tensioned to rise.
"NOW, Ray." She stepped too close. Gunpowder-sweat invaded his zone.
"You're no martyr."
Gaze-lock. Assessment matrix.
He complied.
Bench-edge sink.
Lysandra ripped the medkit. Gauze slammed the laceration with clinical rage. Fingers brushed his obliques. Iron control. Thumbnail dug, imperceptible.
"Wired suicidal," she hissed intimate.
"Every. Damn. Time."
Ray didn't flinch.
"Core directive."
Her breath ghosted his ear.
"Override it. For us."
Lyra watched. Pulse not fear, but territorial throb. Her grip tightened. Claiming.
Ray held Lysandra's inferno-stare 2.1secs.
"Recompile initiated."
Vents cyclone-shredded.
Lysandra snapped tactical.
"Exfil alpha. Reinforcements ninety seconds."
Ray weight-tested. Wound weaving. Hypersonic cellular knit.
Lysandra inhaled sharp. Eyes tracing the impossible.
"That's not human," she breathed. Half accusation. Half awe.
Silence.
He scooped Lyra piggy. Arms vise neck, her breath hot ear-caress.
"Secure."
"Forever," she murmured. Lips brushing trapezius.
Lysandra vanguard... pistol sweeping abyss.
They ghosted Core, crunching blasphemy remnants.
Deeper facility: ancient core uncoiled.
Awake. Hunting.
Orbital grid: TARGET ACQUIRED.
RAY-0. IDENTITY: ANOMALY.
THREAT: CIVILIZATIONAL.
Ray's implant glitched... unauthorized ping.
〈Integration... commencing.〉
The hunt was no longer theirs.
It was his.