Twenty-three percent. The words burned into his mind.
Delvin forced himself to turn. Slowly. His neck muscles screamed in protest. Every instinct told him to run, but his body felt like it was moving through water.
When he finally saw what stood behind him, his blood turned to ice.
Six full-grown gorillas. Each one massive—easily seven feet tall, shoulders broader than any human's, arms thick as tree trunks. Their eyes gleamed in the moonlight, fixed on him with an intensity that made his stomach drop. Not the eyes of animals. Something else. Something hungry.
The largest one stood in the center, its scarred face twisted into what could only be described as a grin.
Delvin's pulse hammered in his temples. His mouth went dry. "Skylark—"
'Delvin, this is your problem. I will not interfere or help in this instance.' Zauzo's voice cut through his mind, cold and detached.
The words hit him like a physical blow. "What?" Delvin's voice cracked. "Really? You're going to abandon me now? In the middle of this?"
'Oh! So now you remember me as your brother? Sorry, I'm offline.'
Delvin felt Zauzo's presence vanish, retreating into whatever eternal space he hid in when things got dangerous. The absence left a hollow ache in his chest, worse than fear.
"I can't believe this!" Delvin shouted into the void of his mind, his hands clenching into fists. "If I die, you die too!"
Silence. Nothing but the sound of his own ragged breathing and the low, rumbling growls of the gorillas circling closer.
"Well, well." The biggest gorilla's voice was like gravel grinding against metal, deep and wrong. It spoke. The thing actually spoke.
"Another fresh meal delivered right to our doorstep. I guess we'll pile your skull on top of the others, boy. Thank you for coming. We haven't had a sumptuous feast in quite some time."
The other five roared in unison, the sound reverberating through Delvin's bones. They pounded their massive fists against their chests—thud, thud, thud—a war drum that made his heart race faster. Their muscles rippled beneath matted fur. Saliva dripped from bared fangs.
'That's not fair,' Delvin thought desperately, reaching for Skylark since Zauzo had abandoned him. 'Gorillas that can talk?'
[SCANNING... ANALYSIS COMPLETE: ARTIFICIALLY CREATED ORGANISMS. GENETIC MODIFICATIONS DETECTED. THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME]
"Damn it," Delvin muttered, his throat tight. "Artificial gorillas. This is just perfect."
His mind raced, calculating odds, searching for escape routes. The valley walls rose steep on either side. Behind him, nothing but open ground and scattered bones. Ahead, six engineered killing machines that wanted to add him to their collection.
He couldn't outrun them. Not with those legs, those arms built for explosive speed.
Which meant only one option.
Delvin planted his feet in the dust, forcing his trembling legs to steady. He dropped into a fighting stance, fists raised, knees bent. His heart pounded so hard he could feel it in his fingertips.
The six gorillas began to circle him, moving with coordinated precision. Their eyes tracked every twitch, every breath, searching for weakness. The circle tightened. The smell of them—musk and blood and something chemical—made his stomach turn.
"Come on, you ugly bastards!" Delvin shouted, his voice stronger than he felt. He needed to provoke them, needed to see what they could do before they tore him apart. "What are you waiting for? Scared I'll send you to your graves early?"
The leader's eyes narrowed. "Pathetic. You think you have a chance against us?"
The five others roared, and then they moved.
All at once. A coordinated strike.
They rushed forward and leaped, their massive bodies blotting out the stars. Delvin's breath caught. Time seemed to slow. He saw their trajectories, their claws extended, aiming for his neck, his chest, his skull.
He threw himself backward into a flip, his body arcing through the air. The gorillas collided where he'd been standing—a tangle of fur and muscle and frustrated snarls. They crashed into each other with sickening thuds, rolling across the ground.
Delvin landed hard, his ankles screaming in protest. No time to recover. They were already separating, already coming again.
He rolled to the side as a massive fist cratered the earth where his head had been. Dust exploded into his face. He kept rolling, once, twice, three times, feeling the impacts of their strikes missing him by inches.
"This human is proving difficult!" the leader bellowed, its voice echoing off the valley walls. "Plan B formation! Attack!"
The gorillas reorganized instantly, forming a straight line. Delvin's chest heaved, his lungs burning. Sweat stung his eyes.
The middle gorilla broke from the formation with speed that shouldn't have been possible. One moment it was twenty feet away. The next, it was on him, moving faster than his eyes could track. The others roared and beat their chests, the sound building to a crescendo.
Then it happened.
The gorilla's body began to shift mid-charge. Bones cracked and reformed. Fur melted into scales. Wings erupted from its back with wet, tearing sounds. In seconds, the gorilla had become something else entirely—a serpent with leathery wings, its body undulating through the air.
Its jaws opened wide. Blue light gathered in its throat.
"No—" Delvin started.
The creature spat a stream of blue fire.
The flames hit him like a wall of agony. Delvin screamed as the fire engulfed him, clinging to his skin, his clothes, burning with an intensity that made normal fire feel like a candle. The smell of his own singed hair filled his nostrils. His vision went white with pain.
He threw himself to the ground, rolling frantically in the sand and dust, trying to smother the flames. The blue fire wouldn't go out. It spread across his arms, his chest, eating through fabric and skin. Every nerve ending shrieked.
Through the haze of pain, he saw the other four gorillas transforming.
One became a massive black scorpion, its exoskeleton gleaming like polished onyx. Its tail—easily ten feet long—curved over its back, the stinger dripping with venom that hissed when it hit the ground.
Another shifted into a monster lizard, scales rippling across its body, its tail thick as a python.
The transformations were grotesque, accompanied by the sounds of breaking bones and tearing flesh. Delvin's stomach lurched even as he continued to burn.
The scorpion struck first. Its tail whipped forward with blinding speed, the stinger aimed directly at Delvin's face.
He ducked on pure instinct, feeling the wind of its passage ruffle his hair. The stinger embedded itself in the ground with a crack.
"That was close!" Delvin gasped, his voice hoarse from screaming. His lungs felt like they were full of smoke.
The monster lizard was already moving. Delvin threw a desperate punch at its throat, putting everything he had into the strike. His fist connected—
—and the lizard's tail swung around faster than thought, deflecting the blow. The counter-attack came immediately. The tail slammed into Delvin's chest like a battering ram.
The impact drove the air from his lungs. Delvin felt his feet leave the ground. The world spun. He flew backward, tumbling through the air, unable to breathe, unable to think. He hit the ground ten meters away, his body bouncing once before sliding to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Pain exploded through his ribs. Something was broken. Maybe several things.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED. ACTIVATING FIREPROOF PROTOCOL]
Blue energy erupted around Delvin's body, forming a shimmering shield. The flames that had been consuming him sputtered and died, leaving behind charred skin and the acrid smell of burnt flesh. The shield pulsed with each of his labored heartbeats.
He tried to push himself up. His arms shook. His vision swam.
Then he felt it—a sensation like ice and fire simultaneously piercing through his back and erupting from his chest. A razor-thin beam of energy had punched straight through him.
Delvin looked down. He could see the hole. Could see the edges of the wound glowing with residual energy. The pain was beyond anything he'd ever experienced—white-hot and all-consuming, radiating out from the wound until his entire body was nothing but agony.
"Ahhh!" The scream tore from his throat, raw and animal.
Behind him, the huge gorilla lowered its arm, smoke rising from the organic weapon that had grown from its palm. It had made a sneak attack while he was down.
Dark spots danced across Delvin's vision. His legs wouldn't respond. Blood—his blood—pooled beneath him, soaking into the thirsty sand.