Chapter 1
It didn’t have a name anymore. It was just meat, and it knew it was about to expire.
The Deviant scrambled over the wet pavement, its breath coming in wet, ragged hitches. The mutation in its left leg—a second, calcified knee joint—clicked sickeningly with every stride, but it didn’t care. Pain was irrelevant. Survival was the only metric that mattered.
Faster. Move. Move.
It shoved a stack of metal crates over as it ran, the crash echoing like a gunshot in the narrow alley. It didn’t look back. It didn’t need to see the shadow pursuing it to know it was gaining. The air behind it felt heavy, charged with a static pressure that tasted like copper and death.
The Deviant skidded around a corner, claws scrabbling for purchase on the slick concrete, and slammed into a wall.
Brick. Solid, unyielding brick. A dead end.
A low, animalistic whimper tore from its throat. It spun around, back pressing into the cold grit of the wall, eyes wide and trembling. It looked for an opening, a drain, a window—anything. There was nothing. Just the alley, and the darkness stretching out before it.
Then, the darkness moved.
A figure stepped through the steam rising from the vents. It didn’t rush. It didn’t pant. It walked with the terrifying, silent grace of a predator that knows the hunt is already over.
“Please,” the Deviant rasped, the word garbled by its split lip. It raised a shaking, mutated hand. “I… I didn’t know… please—”
The shadow didn’t speak. It just blurred.
The impact was heavy, slamming the Deviant harder against the brick. It tried to scream, but the sound was drowned out by the wet tear of flesh.
A gash opened across its throat, hot and instantaneous.
Blood sprayed across the damp walls, black in the moonlight. The Deviant gagged, choking on the warm liquid filling its windpipe. It clawed at its own neck, eyes bulging, staring into the face of the thing that had caught it.
It saw no mercy there. Only a cold, clinical void.
A hand, large and gloved, clamped onto the top of the Deviant’s skull. Another gripped its jaw.
There was a wet crunch. A sharp crack that echoed louder than the crates.
The world tilted sideways, then vanished
