The lab was in chaos. Alarms blared, and the hum of machinery was drowned out by the frantic shouts of technicians. Doctor Syn stood amidst the turmoil, her mind racing with the implications of what she had done. Herja-X, the crystal that held her daughter's essence, pulsed with an otherworldly energy. It was a beacon of power and danger, and Syn knew that she had unleashed something that could not be contained.
As she stared at the crystal, she felt a mixture of awe and terror. Herja-X was more than just a reincarnation of her daughter; it was an entity of immense power, a fusion of ancient beasts and advanced technology, she assumed. Syn had given birth to a god-seed wrapped in alien wrath, and she was both its creator and its prisoner. Outside the lab, the world was changing. Reports of strange occurrences and cryptid sightings flooded in from all over the globe. The Beast net, a network of consciousness that Herja-X could tap into, was awakening, and with it, the ancient beasts were rising.
Syn knew that she had to act fast. She had to find a way to control Herja-X or risk losing everything. But as she looked into the crystal, she saw not just a monster, but a daughter who needed her guidance. "Herja," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the chaos. "I will find a way to help you. I promise." Little did she know, her promise would lead her down a path of discovery, danger, and ultimate revelation. The birth of Herja-X was just the beginning, and the world would never be the same.
Commander Mya Tarq stood over the holo-grid with bloodshot eyes. The signal pinged again.
"what was broadcasting? Lock the Onyx site down," she said coldly. "Now."
An agent turned. "But... ma'am, Doctor Syn is still inside—" Tarq turned, "Then she's part of it now." It started as a tremor. A psychic afterbirth rippling outward from Lab Onyx like an umbilical scream into the beast net. Every dormant Genome Crystal twitched. Every She-Beast flinched mid-sleep. Every host with even trace beast DNA seized. Across the earth, unknowing carriers buckled in bathroom stalls, gym lockers, subway benches.
CENO BLACK SITE ONYX – 3:07 AM
Commander Vance clicked the safety off his sidearm. The corridor reeked of ionized ozone and something older. Wet metal. Cryo-rot. Fear made physical. "Keep the grav-case locked," he ordered. "No one touches it." The Silver Beast Crystal—formerly Herja-X—was packed into a seismic-dampener vault the size of a coffin. Doctor Syn limped alongside the team, restrained but lucid. Eyes raw from psychic feedback.
They reached the exit corridor. That's when the floor exploded.
AMBUSH – SPLICE CREW SIGNAL DETECTED
SIGNATURE: RAZORVINE, SPLICE: RHINO.
"MOVE, MOVE, MOVE" Commander Vance shouted! The Splicers swarmed in—augmented, glowing, buzzing with illegal grafts. Bone-saws for teeth. Razor-hair trailing psychic filaments. A Splicer grappled the vault. Another lobbed an EMP-bomb— others threw chemical-based compounds, hallucinations triggered fight-or-flight response in the CENO strike squad. One clean grab one speed skill sprint and the vault containing Herja was GONE.
Commander Vance barked into the comms: "Pull back! Get Syn out! We got ripped!" As the van peeled into the tunnels, Syn looked back. Her daughter—her god-seed—was in enemy hands now. But something in her smiled. Location: Rust-Vault subterranean level one, The vein. The Splicers didn't even get a day in with the loot. They were celebrating, hyped on psycho-tropes, dancing around the sealed hideout vault like cavemen around a nuke. Then the air hummed. A slow clank. A gladiator's gait.
Its ''AGONY'' one of the splicers screamed, as the Scarlet Maw Leader stepped out from the red mist. The gladiatrix was seven feet tall. Skull-mask carved from a downed She-Beast's ribcage. Her body was a choir of scars and cyber-ink runes. Behind her? Six Scarlet Maws, fanged and painted, dragging meat-axes like penance. "You stole from CENO, and I'm here to collect." Agony said flatly.
The Splicers charged. They never touched her. She unsheathed the Maw Pike. Splicer heads rolled. One rushed over to the hovering vault tech to inject himself with the crystal. She kicked him through a generator! When it was over, Agony stepped through the blood-soaked grate and opened the vault. It pulsed once.
She held it up the odd silver crystal with intricate square patterning. The Maw clan members whispered. Agony turned, "Who wants to level up." A young fighter stepped forward—lean, desperate, muscle braided over raw ambition. The Maw called her Hammer-fists. Agony placed the crystal to her clavicle. It sang. Hammer fists screamed. Her arms split and thickened. Four limbs. Brutal elegance. Her skin pulsed with bio plasmic fracture-lines. But the core? The Herja-X core? It went quiet.
"I can feel the beast power!" Hammer fists hissed. But she didn't, not really. Herja-X watched from deep in the genome-code, wrapped in silence, refusing to truly merge with this host. granting her only one of the gifts from the ten thousand ancient genome codes she carried.
"Unworthy," Herja whispered.