On the deck of the Valkyria II, Aylin heard the noise. The infected emerged from the water, scaling the hull with frightening agility. Its long-nailed fingers gripped the metal. Panic froze her blood for a second, but then she saw the knife in her hand. The blade Leon had given her.
She took a deep breath. Don't think. Act.
When the infected got one knee over the gunwale, she lunged. She didn't aim for a chest strike, it was too risky. She aimed low. With a stifled cry, she drove the knife into the back of the creature's knee, apparently severing its tendons.
The infected let out a hoarse roar and fell to its knees on the deck. Driven by a survival instinct, Aylin didn't hesitate. She jumped onto its back, grabbing the worn collar of its shirt and the smooth, wet nape of its neck with one hand, and with the other drove the knife to the base of its skull.
The blade met resistance. Instead of sinking cleanly, it skidded on the bone, causing the infected to shudder and try to turn. She screamed, more from rage than fear, and struck again. And again. The knife tip scraped the skull until, with a third concentrated, desperate blow, it finally penetrated with a low, horrible crack.
The body beneath her gave one last violent spasm and went still.
Aylin knelt, panting, her hands and face spattered with a black, viscous blood. She trembled uncontrollably.
That's when Leon arrived at the depot exit, crowbar in hand, and the first thing he saw was the body on the deck. He saw Aylin, breathing heavily, eyes wide. The knife was still embedded in the infected's skull.
Their eyes met.
"I... I did it," she said, her voice trembling, but laden with something beyond fear. It was surprise and, at the same time, victory.
Leon simply nodded, an almost imperceptible tilt of his head. He lowered the crowbar. He approached, pulled the knife from the infected's skull, wiped the blade on the corpse's pants, and sheathed it. The methodical gesture was his ritual after every fight, but in that moment it carried a different weight. By retrieving the weapon she had used successfully, he validated her action. It was his silent recognition.
She might be useful, Leon thought, for the first time considering the possibility as a fact, not a risk.
But his attention was drawn back to the body. The infected Aylin had killed was intact. And, remembering the bodies with their chests torn open in the depot, a doubt grew in his mind. The System extracted energy automatically from those he eliminated. But what if there was a physical source? Something he had never thought to look for?
"Help me turn him over," Leon requested, pointing at the corpse.
Aylin, still dazed, helped him. Together, they rolled the heavy body. Leon pulled out the knife Aylin had used and made a deep cut in the creature's chest, splitting the sternum. Aylin turned her face away, nauseated.
Inside, beyond deformed, blackened organs, something glowed. Embedded in what had been the heart was a small, irregular crystal, the size of a coin. It had an opaque silver color, with subtle veins of pulsating green. The same color as the energy that appeared when the System collected it from the infected he eliminated.
Leon pried it out with the tip of the knife. The crystal was cold to the touch, but emitted an almost imperceptible vibration.
"What is that?" Aylin whispered, fascinated and horrified.
"I don't know," Leon replied curtly. He pocketed the crystal. It was a crucial discovery. The System wasn't just absorbing abstract energy, but also collecting these physical crystals and transforming them into power. And now he had an intact one.
That, however, could wait.
Before leaving the depot for good, Leon retraced his steps through the already-cleared path. There was no new movement, no sound beyond the distant lapping of water against concrete. The fuel tanks remained intact, lined up against the metal wall exactly where he had found them. The same metal now stained by the dull impact of a skull crushed minutes earlier.
He moved with practiced efficiency, ignoring the ache in his muscles. He connected the hoses and watched the dark stream of diesel flow, its sharp smell filling the hangar as he transferred the fuel into the auxiliary reservoirs.
He filled each container to the limit and sealed the caps tightly to prevent leaks in rough waters. This wasn't just a precaution. One of the immediate problems was now solved. The Valkyria II had more than enough fuel to reach the Institute.
The added weight would cost him a few knots of top speed, but Leon accepted the trade without hesitation. Autonomy was survival.
Only then did he return to the boat.
Back in the relative safety of the cabin, with the Valkyria II again moving toward the Institute, the atmosphere had changed. Aylin was on the deck, trying to clean the black blood from her hands and face with a damp cloth. Leon piloted, his eyes alternating between the horizon and the System readouts.
The silence between them was no longer just charged with distrust. There was the shared weight of an act of violence, of survival clawed out tooth and nail.
After long minutes, Aylin broke the silence. Her voice came from the deck, carried by the salty wind.
"You know… the substance from the rain. In the preliminary tests, it reacted to neural stimuli."
Leon didn't respond, but his fingers tightened slightly on the wheel.
"When we applied electrical currents similar to nerve impulses to contained samples, the substance would reorganize." She paused, as if reliving the discovery. "It formed complex patterns. Fractals, networks… almost like synapses. As if it were processing information."
Leon kept his gaze on the sea ahead, but his mind worked frantically.
"I know it sounds crazy," Aylin continued, her voice a little softer. "But… what if it's not just an alien chemical substance? What if it's something… alive? Conscious, in some primitive way?"
Leon swallowed dryly. The question echoed in the silent cabin before he even asked it:
"You were sure about this before everything started?"
"No. It was just a hypothesis, inconclusive data. That's why I need to go back. The complete data, the experiments, everything is on the Institute's secure servers."
Leon said nothing more. But internally, the puzzle pieces clicked into place with an almost audible snap:
The System only appeared after the rain.
The "Soul Energy" he collects has the same silvery/green coloration as the substance and these crystals.
He isn't just killing monsters. He is absorbing pieces of this… alien consciousness.
And it was now inside him, fueling his abilities, while he also fueled it, like a symbiosis.
He looked at his hand on the wheel. The same hand that absorbed the green light. That dematerialized objects into particles. That now held a pulsating crystal of unknown origin.
Leon did not share any of these thoughts with Aylin. He merely adjusted the course on the console, the route to the Marine Research Institute now illuminated in a soft blue on the screen. Through the cabin glass, dawn began to tinge the horizon with a pale light, slowly revealing the vast gray expanse of the waters. The sea ahead seemed infinite. And upon it, Leon sailed carrying not just a passenger, but a secret that could be the key to survival… or to his own damnation.