Chapter 1
Caleb Vance splashed through the grime of the narrow alleyway, his boots kicking up oily water. Above him, exposed wires buzzed and sparked against the peeling walls, casting erratic flashes of blue-white light into the gloom.
The streetlamp overhead was on the fritz—flickering on, dying out, then buzzing back to life. It was hard to believe places like this still existed inside Bastion City, a metropolis known for its bleeding-edge technology. This alley felt like a rotting tooth in a perfect smile, a relic left over from the previous century.
Caleb took a deep, steadying breath, the damp air rattling in his chest. He checked the faded sign of the shop before him and rapped on the steel shutter.
Thud, thud, thud. Tap, tap.
Three heavy, two light. The rhythm of the underground.
Almost immediately, the rolling shutter screeched upward. A middle-aged man with a greasy handlebar mustache peeked out, his eyes darting left and right in paranoia. Before Caleb could say a word, the man grabbed his arm and yanked him inside.
“Don’t take it personally, kid. Careful is my middle name,” the man muttered, slamming the shutter back down.
Caleb nodded silently. A black medical mask covered the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes visible. He blinked slowly, acknowledging Barnaby’s caution. In their line of business, paranoia was just another word for survival.
“Do you have it?” Caleb asked, his voice deliberately lowered to a rasp.
Barnaby grinned, his teeth yellowed. He reached under the clutter of the dimly lit counter and pulled out a sealed glass vial. Inside, a pale blue liquid swirled, emitting a faint, bioluminescent glow.
“Serum from a Supernatural Beast. Fresh as it gets,” Barnaby whispered, holding it up like a holy relic. “I haven’t run the appraisal, so it’s a ‘Blind Box’ deal. You pay your money, you take your chances. No refunds, no returns.”
The merchant paused, his expression turning serious. “But I gotta warn you, kid. Injecting raw serum intravenously... yeah, it might trigger your genetic sequence and make you an Awakened. If you hit the jackpot, you become a god. But the failure rate? It’s high. If you turn into a brain-dead Shambler, don’t come back haunting my shop. I’m just a public servant providing a service.”
A Shambler...
Caleb stared at the blue light. It had been a whole era since supernatural entities emerged on Earth. Governments tried to hide it at first, but now? They didn’t bother. Vampires, Werewolves, Awakened humans—myths had walked off the pages of storybooks and into the streets.
Science had tried to bridge the gap. Humans created “Enhanced Soldiers” by splicing genes, but for every success, there were seven failures. The failures lost their minds, becoming Shamblers—drooling, rotting husks driven only by basic instincts.
But Caleb didn’t have a choice.
He unconsciously touched his neck. Even through the collar of his trench coat, he could feel the two raised, angry puncture wounds.
He still didn’t understand why an A-Class Vampire—specifically Sequence 02037, “The Voracity”—had chosen him, a broke high school orphan, as a juice box. The bite hadn’t just taken blood; it had injected a neurotoxin that paralyzed the immune system. Modern medicine was useless.
He had less than a week before his organs liquefied. The only cure was a divine purification from the Temple, which cost thirty million credits. Caleb had barely scraped together a hundred thousand from years of part-time jobs.
This vial was his Hail Mary. A desperate gamble with a less than 1% success rate.
Back in his tiny studio apartment, Caleb exhaled a breath of cold air, noticing faint ice crystals forming in the moisture. The room was temperature-controlled, yet he felt freezing.
He sat on his narrow bed, placed the serum on the nightstand, and glanced at the suicide note he’d left on the desk. Then, methodically, he shackled his own limbs with heavy industrial chains he’d prepared earlier. If he turned into a monster, he wouldn’t hurt his neighbors.
“System setting: Dial emergency services in twenty-four hours. Send my digital will to the Orphanage Director,” he commanded his smart speaker.
“Director... I’m sorry,” he whispered, recording the audio message.
With everything set, Caleb rolled up his sleeve. He loaded the serum into a pen-injector. He watched the pale blue liquid push into his vein, tracing a cool, burning line up his arm. His eyelids grew heavy instantly.
Caleb didn’t know if he would wake up reborn, or if he would wake up as a monster with a hollowed-out skull. darkness took him.
Across the street, in a darkened room of the opposite apartment building, a surveillance operation was underway.
Slurp.
A woman in a sharp black suit tied her hair back into a ponytail while devouring a cup of instant noodles. She peered through a high-tech scope mounted on the window. The thermal imaging sliced right through Caleb’s curtains.
“Vitals stable. Heart rate dropping,” she mumbled around a mouthful of noodles. “Injection complete. Absorption estimated at three hours.”
“Success probability is below 10% and dropping,” a technician in a white lab coat behind her noted, scribbling on a tablet. “Ma’am, is it really necessary to monitor a civilian like this?”
“Civilian? He’s hardly ordinary,” the woman, Scarlett Moon, replied. “He survived a feeding from ‘The Voracity’ for twenty-four hours without turning. That makes him a rare specimen. I suspect he’s a ‘Dormant’—someone with latent abilities keeping the toxin at bay. We gave the black market dealer a test sample of Lycanthrope serum. It’s the natural antidote to Vampire toxins. If he survives...”
She pushed her glasses up her nose. “He’ll be worth recruiting.”
“Yes, Agent Moon!”
“The Voracity... Sequence 02037. Encryption Level: Top Secret. Threat Level: City-Destroyer,” the technician muttered. “If this kid survives, it’s a damn miracle.”
