By dawn, Manhattan believed the night had merely been loud.
The city always rationalized its wounds. Explosions became gang violence. Missing people became statistics.
The tremor that rattled lower Manhattan was blamed on structural fatigue, aging foundations groaning beneath a rotting metropolis the common cover up governments use to calm the masses especially with blackwatch involved.
No one wanted to believe the truth, especially since the truth being a zombie outbreak or that something walked through the dark with the weight of a small mountain folded neatly inside its skin you know.
He moved among them now and he was able to better control his weight when walking by consuming a few scientists and doctors gaining better understanding of bio mass .
Human shaped mountain .
Perfectly, disgustingly human.
His mass twenty thousand tons of compressed biomass was no longer expressed outwardly. He had learned restraint, a skill no tutorial ever taught.
Every atom of excess was folded inward, layered into extradimensional density, muscle wrapped around muscle, bone interlocked with viral lattice.
Infront of the pre upgrade scanners he read as a dark skinned African man in his late twenties. To thermal cameras, he was merely warm thanks to consuming a few animals that can manipulate their body temperature from the local zoo.
To himself, he was a lie wearing a face.
He basically walked down Broadway in borrowed skin , hands in pockets, rain slicking his jacket made from his bio mass .
People brushed past him without pause. A woman apologized when her shoulder bumped his arm.
She did feel the pressure resisting her touch almost falling to the side but was caught by me gently of course.
He smiled back, reflexive, polite but
Inside, he calculated how much she would add to him.
How efficiently her memories would dissolve. How long it would take to erase her existence without disturbing the flow of the sidewalk.
He did not consume her.
Not yet.
Monsters who hunted openly were hunted in return this was his life now, He had learned that lesson during the feeding phase reminds him that plot armor won't protect him and Stealth was not cowardice, it was refinement of his skills.
The virus did not want chaos for its own sake,It wanted survival through dominance and evolution .
So he became very selective.
Predatory.
So at coffee shop near Times Square, he listened.
News screens murmured about escalating infection zones. Blackwatch arrests. A man named Mercer was spoken with confusion, fear, and rumor of him being different from normal people .
He sipped coffee he did not need, lips mimicking function thinking of his next move until 2 Blackwatch agents entered, weapons concealed beneath long coats.
Thanks to my enhanced senses thier heartbeats betrayed them. They were hunting, but they did not know for whom yet.
He followed them when they left at distance not wanting to tip them off,
Down an alley choked with trash and random steam that comes out of nowhere like in those 90s era action movies , he let the mask slip, not visually, but behaviorally. His footsteps stopped making normal sounds getting heavier . Clothes hugging his form too closely. The air thickened as if bracing.
The first agent turned, instincts screaming too late.
His hand went through the man's chest silently, fingers dissolving into needle-thin tendrils that drank flesh and data simultaneously. The scream never formed. Memories poured in, new orders, containment protocols, Blackwatch's fear of what they had unleashed.
The second agent hearing the typical squelch that came with the blacklight absorption process, fired.
The bullets entered his body and broke down. He looked down at the man, eyes still human, expression almost apologetic.
"You should have run," he said gently.
He consumed the second slower out of spite for the gun shots.
When it was done, the alley looked untouched. No blood. No bodies not leaving a trace unlike the game that leaves strains here and there .
To a passer by I looked like Just a man adjusting his coat before stepping back into the flow of the city.
He learned more each night.
How to mimic exhaustion. How to fake panic during an evacuation. How to scream convincingly without cringing when helicopters passed overhead. He saved people occasionally not out of mercy, but camouflage.
But when alone hmhmhm....
When alone, he experimented.
He crushed as many roaches into protein paste as possible to gain their radiation resistance .
He folded steel doors inward with raw strength like paper . He practiced reshaping his biomass not for weapons, but for efficiency. He was becoming stronger.
He was becoming a new entity .
Only after mastering the city did he turn his attention to the narrative threads pulling tight around him. Mercer. Blackwatch. The original plot .
He stood atop a skyscraper at dusk, face still human, eyes reflecting a city that did not yet know it had already lost.
"Now," he whispered, voice deep steady, monstrous intent coiled beneath civility,
"let's see what happens when the plot meets something that doesn't care."
End of the chapter