Pisc bared serrated teeth in a grin.“Aggression.The perfect prey.”
Ichth’s gills flared in anticipation.“We hunt.”
They dove as one.
The instant the water closed over Pisc’s head, the world snapped into crystalline clarity.Every movement became effortless, every sound sharper.His body elongated, muscles expanding as the embedded Mercury modifications throbbed to life.The transformation was not pretty.It was not meant to be.
Pisc and Ichth were built to kill.
Dark water swallowed them both as they pursued the vibrations reverberating along the ocean floor.The sea monster moved erratically, its bioluminescent veins pulsing like a panicked heartbeat.It was just another Discouri variant.Protogenus had engineered it for speed and violence, but not strategy.
Not like Pisc.
He sliced through a school of scattering fish, and collided with the variant in a tangle of limbs and teeth.The creature shrieked underwater.It was an awful, distorted sound that vibrated in the marrow.
Ichth appeared an instant later, latching onto the variant’s leg with enough force to crack bone.Blood clouded the water in thick spirals.Pisc inhaled through his gills, savoring the copper tang.His instincts sharpened to a razor edge.
They were not here to rescue humans on the beach.
They were here to eliminate a threat.
Above them, shadows moved along the shoreline.Gemini Initiative divers were ushering civilians away from the waterline.The closer the humans were, the harder Pisc and Ichth would have to restrain themselves not to attack whatever was in range.
The Dioscuri variant struck Pisc across the jaw with enough force to spin him backward.Bone cracked.Pisc roared underwater, jaws gaping unnaturally wide as he lunged, clamping onto the variant’s shoulder and dragging him into the deep.
Ichth followed, claws raking down the variant’s spine, oblivious to the blood billowing in clouds around them.For a moment, the ocean was only violence.Then green light reflected over the surface of the water.Even from below, Pisc sensed the sickening thrum of its activation.The frequency clawed at his nervous system, threatening to unmake the delicate quantum lattice of their power.
Before it could fire, the seabed shifted.
A quake rippled through the sand as Jeminy’s earth-bending ability ruptured the shoreline from above.A cavern yawned open beneath the weapon, swallowing it whole.The green light flickered and vanished.
Pisc didn’t look toward the disturbance.He only sank his teeth deeper, but the sea monster went suddenly still.Its pupils were blown wide and its body was rigid.Suicide.
Pisc snarled with frustration as the creature died in his grip.
“Coward,” Ichth hissed at it.
Pisc released the corpse and let the body drift.The water around them was vibrating with hunger.
“Another hunt ended too soon,” Pisc muttered, his voice a low growl.
Ichth’s dorsal fin sliced the water beside him.“Then, we wait for the next.”
Pisc’s grin returned, slow and predatory.
***
JEM ROCKE
The earth screamed.Jem felt the tremor before she heard the collapse.
Denver’s mile-high air carried vibrations differently.The quake rattled up through the soles of her boots, humming into her bones like a warning.Chris emerged beside her from behind a toppled city bus, eyes narrowing as a column of dust unfurled in the distance.
“That’s him,” Chris said, adjusting the strap across his chest.“Same seismic signature we tracked earlier.”
Jem exhaled slowly, tuning herself to the ground.Beneath the pavement, the city was a layered concrete, clay, fractured bedrock, and the faint fossils of ancient seabeds.She could read each one like lines of a map.Tonight, all of them were being rewritten by a single rampaging source.
The Dioscuri variant.
