Chapter 3 Beast Protocol Activated

Pain tore through Jun like fire in his blood.

“Get it out!” he screamed, clawing at the collar as the living liquid burned deeper into his neck. “Get this fucking thing out of me!”

Torv staggered back, eyes wide. “What the hell is happening to you? Your veins… they’re glowing!”

Jun collapsed forward onto his hands and knees. His bones snapped and shifted under his skin with wet, grinding cracks. He gasped, vomit rising in his throat. “It hurts… make it stop…”

Around them, the remaining contestants froze mid-fight. A woman dropped her makeshift knife. “He’s mutating! The collar did something to him!”

“Kill him before he turns into one of their monsters!” a burly fighter shouted, charging forward with a broken metal pipe raised high.

Torv stepped in front of Jun. “Back off! You saw what he did with the traps. He’s the only reason we’re still breathing!”

“Too late for that,” the fighter snarled. “He’s one of theirs now.”

Jun’s vision flashed red. Something primal surged through his nervous system, flooding him with raw, predatory hunger. His fingers dug into the concrete floor, cracking it. “Stay… away…”

His right arm jerked violently. Muscles swelled and twisted, dark veins pulsing with unnatural blue light beneath the skin. Scales, thin and iridescent like fractured neon, pushed through his forearm with sharp pinpricks of agony.

“Somebody shut him up!” another contestant yelled.

The fighter swung the pipe down hard.

Jun moved without thinking. His mutated arm shot up and caught the pipe mid-swing. The metal bent like cheap plastic in his grip. With a roar that didn’t sound fully human, he shoved forward. The fighter flew backward ten meters and slammed into a group of others, sending them sprawling.

“What the fuck…” Torv whispered, staring.

Jun pushed himself up, chest heaving. Every breath felt like knives in his lungs. “I didn’t ask for this. None of us did. This whole arena is just data for their sick experiments.”

High above in the observation tower, corporate scientists in white coats leaned closer to the glass, pointing and talking rapidly. One of them actually smiled.

“Look at the integration rate,” a scientist’s voice boomed over the speakers, calm and excited. “Far beyond projections. Subject Jun’s neural pattern is perfect.”

“Perfect?” Jun laughed bitterly through the pain, spitting blood. “You bastards picked me. This wasn’t random.”

Another wave hit him. His spine arched as vertebrae realigned with audible pops. He screamed again, the sound echoing across the arena. Clawed tips extended from his fingertips, scraping sparks off the ground.

Contestants scattered in panic.

“He’s going to kill us all!”

“Run!”

Torv grabbed Jun’s shoulder. “You’ve got to control it, man. Or they’ll wipe out everyone here just to watch what you do next.”

Jun’s head snapped toward him, eyes flickering with unnatural light. For a second, something alien stared back at Torv. Then Jun blinked hard. “The barrier… over there. Weak point. I can feel it now.”

He staggered toward the reinforced spirit-metal wall separating the arena from the lower Wild Net access tunnels. His new claws raked across the surface. The metal shrieked and tore like paper. Chunks flew outward.

“No way,” Torv breathed. “That wall was supposed to hold enhanced fighters for hours.”

Corporate alarms blared again, but the scientists in the tower only watched with fascination, tablets glowing in their hands.

“Excellent predatory response,” one noted loudly. “Instinct layer integrating smoothly.”

Jun turned back toward the tower, breathing hard. His gaze locked on Mei. She stood apart from the scientists, face pale, one hand pressed against the glass.

“You did this,” he shouted up at her, voice raw. “Didn’t you? You chose me. Tell me why!”

Mei didn’t answer. She just watched, lips pressed tight.

Rage and betrayal twisted inside him worse than the mutation. “Answer me, Mei!”

Torv pulled at his arm. “We have to go. Now. While they’re still observing.”

Jun ripped through the barrier completely. Twisted rebar and spirit circuits sparked wildly as he forced an opening big enough for both of them. “Come on. Deeper levels. They won’t follow right away.”

They stumbled through into the dimly lit service tunnels that fed into the Wild Net’s mid-layers. Flickering holographic overlays danced across the walls. Jun’s body kept shifting in small, painful bursts. Fur-like patches rippled across his shoulder then faded. His senses sharpened painfully. He could hear the heartbeats of distant survivors still fighting in the arena.

“Why me?” Jun muttered as they ran, voice cracking. “I failed every trial. I’m nothing to them.”

Torv kept glancing back. “Doesn’t matter now. That thing in your blood… it’s changing you fast. You hear anything weird yet?”

Jun slowed, pressing a hand to his temple. Fragmented whispers brushed against his thoughts. Static. Glitches of code. Not words exactly, but feelings. Hunger. Survival. Something ancient stirring.

“It’s… talking to me,” he whispered. “Not words. Just… pieces.”

Torv swallowed hard. “That’s messed up. We need to find a hacker den, get that collar off before…”

A sharper voice cut through the mental noise. Clearer.

Jun stopped dead in the tunnel.

“Jun… keep moving.”

The voice was soft. Intimate. Inside his head.

Mei’s voice.

He whipped around, staring back toward the arena tower now miles behind them through layers of concrete and code. Mei was still up there. He could sense her location somehow, distant and cold.

But she was speaking directly into his mind.

“Jun… keep moving.”

His knees nearly buckled. The betrayal sank deeper, twisting with something far more disturbing. She was in there with him now.