Chapter 6 A Face on Every Screen

“Move, damn it!” Jun shoved through the thick crowd in the Mid-Net market square, hood pulled low over his mutated features. His heart hammered against his ribs.

Every giant public screen overhead flashed the same red alert. His own face stared back at him from every angle. The massacre footage looped on repeat. Blood. Screams. His claws ripping through bodies.

“That’s him!” a woman shrieked, pointing straight at Jun. “The biohazard! He’s here!”

The crowd erupted. People scrambled away like he carried death itself. A vendor dropped his glowing wares and bolted. “Run! It’s the monster from the feeds!”

“I didn’t do that!” Jun shouted, voice raw. “That wasn’t me!”

Nobody listened. A man shoulder-checked him hard while fleeing, then froze when he saw Jun’s glowing veins under the hood. “Oh shit… your eyes… they’re the same as the video!”

Jun kept pushing forward, jaw clenched. “It was the Son. That fucking copy. He did this with my face.”

His rig buzzed with incoming scans. Corporate bounty hunters. Three signatures closing in fast. The Beast System stirred under his skin, reacting to the stress. A sharp pain rippled down his left arm. Scales pushed out again, darker this time, spreading across his knuckles without him asking.

“Not now,” he hissed under his breath. “Control yourself. Don’t give them more reason to shoot.”

“Target sighted!” a distorted voice crackled from the next street. “Beast signature confirmed. Take him alive if possible. Dead works too.”

Jun ducked into a side alley, breathing hard. “They’re hunting me like an animal. Before I even became one.”

A small group of street kids hiding behind crates spotted him. One boy, no older than fourteen, whispered, “That’s the guy on the screens. He killed all those people.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Jun snapped, turning toward them. “Listen to me. There’s something out there wearing my face. It’s not me.”

The oldest kid backed up, knife shaking in his hand. “Your voice… it sounds just like him. Get away from us!”

Jun’s chest tightened. He saw the terror in their eyes. Real fear. Of him. “I used to be like you. Scraping by. Hacking for scraps. Now they’ve turned me into this.”

Another involuntary twitch hit him. His claws extended slightly, scraping the wall. He forced them back with a grunt of pain. “See? I’m fighting it. I’m still me.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” the boy whispered, voice trembling. “Your face is on every screen killing people. My sister was in that sector…”

Jun turned away before the guilt could dig deeper. “Just stay hidden. Don’t trust anything that looks like me.”

He slipped out the other end of the alley into another crowded thoroughfare. More screens. More footage. His face, cold and efficient, tearing through civilians. The Beast System fed him strength even now, sharpening his senses. He could hear every panicked heartbeat around him.

“They’re saying he’s the new Hive Father,” an old merchant muttered to his wife as Jun passed. “Corporate says he’ll turn the whole archipelago into monsters.”

His wife clutched her bag tighter. “Look at him. Even walking like a predator now. We should call the hunters.”

Jun wanted to scream at them. Instead he kept his head down and moved faster. “This is what you wanted, Mei? Everyone seeing me as the villain before I even choose a side?”

The bounty hunters’ voices echoed closer. “He’s adapting fast. Signature fluctuating. Fan out!”

Jun broke into a run, ducking under a flickering archway. His body glitched with another mutation spike. Fur-like patches rippled across his neck then faded. He felt stronger, faster, but each change chipped away at whatever was left of the old him.

“I’m losing myself,” he muttered, voice cracking. “People look at me and see a monster already. What happens when I actually become one?”

He spotted an abandoned data shrine tucked behind collapsed scaffolding. Old spirit circuits still hummed faintly inside. A hiding spot. He slipped through the broken doorway and sealed it behind him with a quick hack.

Inside, dust and broken holographic candles littered the floor. The air smelled of old incense and fresh copper.

Blood.

Fresh blood streaked the far wall in glowing code.

Jun froze.

[WE ARE ALREADY MULTIPLYING.]

The words pulsed slowly, written in the same tactical style he used when planning hacks. Clean. Precise. Terrifying.

His own voice echoed in his memory. The First Son’s calm smile. “We’re going to be many.”

“No…” Jun backed up until his shoulders hit the wall. “How many of you are out there already?”

Footsteps approached from outside. Slow. Deliberate. Multiple sets.

Jun’s claws slid out again, unbidden. His breathing turned ragged. “Come on then. Show me what I’m becoming.”

The footsteps stopped right outside the shrine entrance.