Chapter 90: Bleached Hunters (Patreon)

"You found them?” The Operator crossed to Catherine. "Where? How far?"

Catherine’s eyes were still yellow, still fixed on something beyond the wall that none of the others could see. She lifted one hand and pointed, slowly, through the concrete, toward something out there in a direction that didn’t mean anything to the Operator yet.

"Far?"

“Five floors up, they’re not moving. But they’re alive. I’m connected to them now.” Catherine’s hand didn’t drop. Her finger stayed pointed at the wall. “They can’t feel other Kanryx. Not out there. Not anywhere.”

She fell silent for a moment. “They think they’re the last.”

“Okay.” The Operator rested a hand on the girl’s back. “Then that’s where we’re headed.”

Dan let out a low, surprised grunt and stumbled forward as if shoved from behind. He clutched his neck. “Something touched me.” He pointed to his throat. “Right here. Something…”

It struck him again, this time across the throat, hard enough to open him up. His new skin held, but the impact lifted him off his feet and threw him across the room, and he crashed into the wall, cracked the concrete, and dropped.  "Cover up!" Dan shouted. "I can't see it, I can't fucking see it!"

Catherine turned her head fast, lifting her nose and tensing her entire body. “There’s something else in here. I can smell it.”

Napoleon's eyes flared yellow. "Operator. Turn on your sense. Now."

She didn't ask why.

[Activating Technological Sense]

The room dropped into gray. The walls, the floor, the people, all of it drained to dead outlines, and the only thing left with any color was energy. The power line, thin and bright, ran to the dead consoles. The faint charge in Napoleon. And standing in the middle of the room, close, too close, a shape seven feet tall, lit red from head to foot, its whole body packed with energy.

Camouflage suit or optical screening?

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” the Operator said. “I can see it.”

A hoarse, deep voice came from the red thing in front of her. “Lord Eron, reporting. She can see me, and she’s with other mutated ones, possibly the same as her.” Whatever Eron said back, none of them could hear it.

"Dan. Lessa. Are you hurt?"

Dan dragged himself up against the wall, one hand clutched to his chest. “It went for my head.” He was breathing hard. “It went straight for my head. If it was the old skin, I’d be dead. It would’ve taken my head off.”

"Understood, my lord. She isn't going anywhere." The thing held two fingers to its ear, keeping the channel open to Eron.

Napoleon moved before she could stop him. He shot off her shoulder straight at the red shape, blades extended, but it was too late. The creature’s arm came up faster, and one of its long nails sliced through Napoleon’s front leg before he could raise his blade. His leg was severed and flew away, causing him to tumble onto the ground, one leg lost.

A hand with long, sharp nails descended toward Napoleon, who lay on the ground, aiming to cut him in half. The Operator stepped in, placing herself between Napoleon and the creature. Her hand shot up to meet the descending wrist, halting it mid-swing. She caught it firmly, cracking his bones under her grip.

“Aaaahh,” the creature screamed.

The energy signature vanished from her Technological Sense, its camouflage shattered.

[Deactivating Technological Sense]

In front of her stood a creature with smooth white skin, red eyes, black teeth, and long nails on both hands. It was naked, and its face was twisted in pain.

Another attack came swiftly as the creature’s free hand slashed toward her face, long nails aimed to open her ear to ear. She remained still. The nails grazed her skin, sliding across without cutting, and the strike did nothing to her. The creature froze, glancing at its hand, then at her face, noting the unbroken skin, and its red eyes widened in surprise.

She glanced back at it with a feeling even colder than hatred. “Is that all you’ve got, you bleached fuck?”

Her other fist came around with everything she had, and it connected. The creature’s head snapped back, and it went limp in her grip, knocked out cold.

She clenched the creature firmly and swiftly looked at Napoleon, who was on the ground, limping and missing a front leg. “You okay, Napoleon?”

“Yes, Operator. I apologize for acting without permission again.” He was already moving toward his severed leg on the floor.

"Lessa, please help him with his leg."

Lessa swiftly crouched down, picked up Napoleon against her chest, retrieved his severed leg from the floor, and moved back toward Catherine.

She turned back to the creature. Her grip on its wrist tightened, and she kept tightening until she felt every bone in its wrist break. The pain woke it up.

“Ahhhhhh, let go of me, bitch!” the creature yelled.

She remained silent, merely gazing into its red eyes. Her expression had shifted from rage to cold hatred, with an undercurrent of something even darker. She leaned in toward its trembling white ear, and her voice was almost a whisper. “Eron. You there? I want you to hear what’s going to happen if you or any of your fucking god-club comes near me.”

She raised her fist.

"No, please d..."

The plea didn’t finish. Her first punch went into its stomach, not the face, not the mouth, because she wanted the sounds coming through clean on whatever channel it had open to Eron. The creature folded forward, and she held it up by the ruined wrist and hit it again in the ribs, hard enough to crack something inside. Another blow to the chest, then one more into the other side of its ribs, then the arms as it tried to raise them to cover itself.

She didn’t rush. Each punch landed with time between them, enough for the scream to rise, peak, and settle before the next one came. Eron would hear every one of them, from start to finish. He would count them. He would know exactly how long it took.

The creature stopped forming words after the first few strikes. What followed wasn’t language but noise, raw, high-pitched, breaking mid-sentence. Blood trickled from places on its white skin that shouldn’t have been bleeding yet. Its legs gave out, but she supported it by the wrist and pressed on.

The screams grew quieter, then stopped altogether. She kept hitting it anyway. Catherine came up to her and put her hands on the Operator’s shoulders as the blows kept landing.

“He has already stopped screaming, Operator. Please stop.”

I’m not losing anyone else, not ever again.

Something landed on her shoulder, and a leg brushed her neck, cold against her skin. Napoleon. “I’m all right. It wasn’t like last time. You can fix me later.”

Dan crouched next to what was left of the creature. It no longer had a shape, just a mess of organs and bone. The Operator kept her eyes off the group, ashamed to look any of them in the eye after what they’d just seen her do.

Dan turned to the Operator with a smile. “You’re covered in blood. So, the way I see it, you’ve got two options. Change your clothes, or walk around like that as a warning to anything thinking about coming near us.” His face softened then, something gentler in it. “Thanks. For keeping us alive and for saving my head. Again. After what Mordran’s head looked like the first time we saw it, there’s not much left that shakes us.”

Lessa stepped in front of the Operator, held out her hand, and said, "Let's not waste any more time here. Let's go."

“Thanks, guys.” The Operator took Lessa’s hand and stood.

You've put together a good team.

I've always had one.

“Napoleon, keep Technological Sense running. Tell me if you see more of those things. You’re not allowed to attack. Stay with Catherine.”

Lessa watched him settle against the girl. “We couldn’t understand a word Napoleon said before. He didn’t understand us either. I’m guessing that’s another thing that came out of wherever you two were.”

“Cat and Napoleon had plenty of time to teach each other languages.”

The Operator wiped the blood from her hands and face as best she could. Then she crouched by the creature and began going through what was left of it.

"What are you looking for?" Catherine asked.

“The camouflage this thing used. If I can figure it out from what’s left of its body, I can analyze it later.” She traced her hands down the legs, the only part that remained intact. “Here. Good.”

[Activating Machine Reading]

Blue threads slid out from each of her fingertips, reaching into the material, ready to pull the whole thing apart down to the last strand. She could learn how it worked. How something turned a seven-foot body into empty air.

But after a few seconds, she stopped, and the threads pulled back into her fingers. Not now.

The idea stayed with her, tempting. If she could build something like this and wear it herself, she could walk through any door, any hall, any place in any world, and nothing would ever see her coming.

“No time to be careful about it.” She started tearing the material free, something that felt like silk under her fingers, half see-through, a faint white.

I'll fix you up later. She folded it and pushed it into a pocket of her backpack.

“Cat, let’s go get the Kanryx.” She looked back at Dan and Lessa. “And you two, I think it’s finally time to put those swords to use, just in case.”

Dan and Lessa drew their swords, clumsy with them, and followed the Operator as she entered the control room.

How does it feel? The strength you came here for, you've finally got it.

“Yeah.” The Operator flexed her hand, the blood on it drying. “I never thought it would take this much.”

[Memory Log: Shadow Library — Year Six]

[Day 2131. Compiling final entries.]

The Shadow Library no longer had the polish Mordran had left it with. After years in it, papers were stuck to every shelf, books left open on the floor, and webs strung across the corners. Chemical notes were scrawled directly on the walls, and crumpled pages were balled up where she’d thrown out ideas that hadn’t worked. And in the middle of it all, Catherine sat with her stingers out, running through the numbers, murmuring the exact measures the Operator had drilled into her over the year.

As she recited them, her stingers kept firing on their own, spitting small doses of compound into the wide jar she'd set out in front of her, one heavier, the next lighter.

“Time to run the test, Cat. We've been in here too long,” the Operator said.

“I just want to be extra careful, okay? Please, don’t push me,” Catherine said, clearly stressed and annoyed. Behind her, Napoleon rocked gently in the web he’d spun between two shelves, one leg dangling as he observed the two of them.

“It’s okay, Cat. If you’re not confident, we won’t do it. I don’t want you injecting those formulas into me if you’re not sure, and I might end up becoming some kind of abomination. But I trust you. Alright?” The Operator crouched and began gathering the notes from the floor. “Prepare yourself. We leave in three days.”

“Wait, please… I know the doses. I’ve studied them a thousand times. I could do it with my eyes closed. But that’s just practice, throwing the doses into the jar. This would be you. If I go too deep or push in too much at once, your body turns into something else, and I’m scared.”

“That won't happen."

“You don’t know that. You’ve got notes and Tera’s tests. That’s it, but now it’d be on me.” Catherine looked up at the Operator. “And it’s two formulas at once, the bones and the agility… Shit.”

What a fine father figure you’ve turned out to be, teaching her words like those.

“Not now, Tera.” The Operator took a deep breath to let the interruption go. “It’s one formula. The bone one, I’ll take care of myself.”

The Operator extended her arm, indicating the scar and the injection point. “Nothing will happen to me, and I promise I won’t let anything happen to you, either. Okay?”

"I don't want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” She pulled a vial from her pocket and uncapped it. “I finished the Bone Densification formula yesterday, using the material from your Cocoon. Once I drink this, you move fast and inject the formula into me so it takes hold. Ready?”

Catherine’s breathing shifted from slow to quick, and she let out a roar. Her stingers snapped into attack position, aimed straight at the Operator. “Let’s do it. But if you transform into something strange, we’ll have to learn to live with it because I’m not going to kill you.”

The Operator smiled, then brought the vial to her lips. “Bottoms up.” She drank.

“Don’t get mad at me if it hurts.”

The stingers went in one after another, quick and clean, each landing where a year of practice had put it. The Operator didn’t feel a thing. She kept her eyes on the scar instead, and after a second the color began to climb within it, filling from the base and running toward the top.

It moved faster than she had expected, the two formulas feeding into each other, and Catherine watched it rise with her.

“It’s working,” the girl said, barely above a whisper. “It’s really working.”

The color kept climbing, past the middle of the scar and still rising, and deep in her arm the Operator felt the first slow pull of it, her body preparing to do whatever it was about to do to itself. The scar filled toward the top, close to ninety now, close to the line where the conversion would start.

BIOENGINEER TRACK · MUTATION

A parallel path that does not depend on the System. She builds compounds from raw biological material and installs them through the mutation scar on her right forearm. The scar fills red during installation and empties when the change is complete.

⚠ All upgrades are permanent.

[INSTALLED] BODY REINFORCEMENT

Stronger connective tissue and dermal layer. Muscle fibers realigned, not strengthened. Bones unchanged. Resistance to blunt force, lacerations, and crushing pressure.

[INSTALLED] MUSCULAR DENSITY ENHANCEMENT

Human muscle protein (actin and myosin) swapped for the stronger Kanryx version. Same size, same weight, no visible change. Strength raised to roughly 10 times her own baseline.▸ STRENGTH: x10 Baseline

▸ No gain to speed or reflexes. Strength only.

[INSTALLED] KINETIC ACCELERATIONSpeeds up the link between nerve and muscle, so the body reacts, moves, and strikes faster without gaining any mass. Reflexes, sprint speed, and strike speed all go up.

[INSTALLED] BONE DENSIFICATIONHardens the skeleton and raises bone density throughout the body. The bones resist fracture under heavy impact, letting her land and take full-power blows without breaking herself.