Time fragmented when the beast took control.
Raze was aware of what was happening — distantly, through filters that reduced his consciousness to an observer of his own actions. The predator that had been growing inside him since his first core consumed took the body, the abilities, the accumulated power, and used them with efficiency his human mind had never achieved.
The artificial aberrants died first.
The coordination that had been their advantage became their weakness. They expected patterns, calculations, predictable responses. The beast gave them chaos — attacks that served no tactical purpose except violence, movements that defied strategic logic, raw aggression that consumed everything in its path.
One artificial unit fell. Then three. Then all of them, their engineered bodies torn apart by something that didn't care about optimal outcomes, only about domination.
The hunter strike team tried to retreat. The beast didn't allow retreat.
It pursued with the relentless patience of an apex predator that had scented blood. It caught them one by one, consuming cores that dropped, integrating power without pause for assessment or strategy.
**[CORES CONSUMED: 8]**
**[SKILLS ABSORBED: Multiple (uncontrolled integration)]**
**[HUMAN PURITY: 49% → 44%]**
**[WARNING: Beast state prolonged. Personality integration at risk.]**
The numbers meant nothing to the beast. It continued hunting because hunting was what it did. The hunger that had been an advisor became the whole of its existence — consume, grow, dominate. Everything else was noise.
Some hunters escaped. They fled in directions the beast didn't bother to pursue, not because they weren't prey, but because other prey was closer.
Civilians in the zone. Workers from the nearby industrial area who'd been caught by the combat. People who had nothing to do with the war, who'd simply been in the wrong place when a monster lost control.
The beast turned toward them.
---
Raze fought.
Not with his body. That was controlled, responding to drives he couldn't override. But somewhere in the fragmented landscape of his consciousness, he clawed against the predator that had taken his identity.
*These are not threats. These are not food. These are people.*
The beast didn't listen. Didn't understand the distinction. All it saw was prey that wasn't fighting back, easy consumption to add to the power it was accumulating.
*STOP.*
The command carried every fragment of will Raze still possessed. Every human value he'd preserved through months of development. Every memory of what he'd wanted to become before consumption began changing him.
The beast paused.
Not stopped — it couldn't be fully stopped, not while he was below the threshold. But the pause was enough for Raze to claw back partial control, to redirect the predator's attention from the civilians to something else.
The logistics hub. The original target. Infrastructure rather than people.
*There. Attack that. Consume that.*
The beast didn't care what it destroyed, only that destruction continued. It turned toward the hub, abandoning the fleeing civilians, and vented its rage on structures instead of lives.
Steel screamed. Concrete shattered. The logistics hub became debris in minutes, the beast tearing through it with strength that exceeded anything Raze had consciously accessed.
When nothing remained to destroy, the beast finally began to quiet.
---
Control returned slowly.
Raze found himself kneeling in the rubble of the logistics hub, surrounded by devastation that he'd caused while not fully present. His body ached from exertion that exceeded safe limits. His mind felt hollow, scraped clean by the predator that had worn his flesh.
The hunger was satisfied. Thoroughly, completely satisfied in a way it had never been before.
*We are stronger now. So much stronger.*
"I almost killed civilians. Again."
*You stopped us. You retained enough to redirect.*
"Barely. By millimeters." Raze looked at his hands, covered in dust and traces of blood that might have been his own. "I'm losing myself."
*You're becoming more of what we are. That's not loss — it's transformation.*
The words echoed The Alpha's philosophy. The Crystal Stalker's acceptance of consumption as growth. The Sanctuary's utilitarian approach to aberrant development.
But Raze wasn't sure he wanted what they were offering.
---
The Sanctuary teams found him an hour later.
The primary strike had succeeded — while Raze's engagement drew attention and his beast state destroyed the hub, the other teams had achieved their objectives. Replication program infrastructure was crippled. Months of operational capacity eliminated.
Strategic success. Personal catastrophe.
"You went feral," the team leader said, assessing the destruction. "Full beast state. We tracked your signature during the engagement — you lost conscious control for nearly twenty minutes."
"I know."
"Did you hurt anyone? The preliminary reports mention civilian activity in the area."
"I redirected before reaching them. But it was close."
The team leader's expression was complex — professional concern mixed with something that might have been fear. Aberrants who went feral were dangerous to everyone, including allies.
"The Alpha will want a full debrief. Your control protocols clearly failed."
"They didn't fail. They were exceeded." Raze stood, testing muscles that protested the movement. "The artificial aberrants were designed specifically for this engagement. Director Morrow deployed them to test their effectiveness against me."
"And their effectiveness?"
"They pushed me past the threshold. Created conditions where beast state was the only survival option." Raze met the team leader's eyes. "It wasn't an accident. Morrow knew what would happen if he cornered me effectively enough."
The implications were clear. The Association had discovered how to trigger feral states in natural aberrants. If they could replicate that tactic consistently, every aberrant in the Sanctuary was at risk.
"We need to get you back. The Alpha needs this intelligence immediately."
Raze nodded and followed the team toward extraction.
His body was stronger than before — the cores consumed during the beast state had integrated with brutal efficiency. His abilities had expanded in directions he hadn't consciously chosen.
But his humanity was thinner.
Forty-four percent. Each point represented choices he wouldn't get back. Each consumed core pushed him further from the person he'd been when all this started.
At some point, there wouldn't be enough left to call himself human at all.
That point felt closer than ever.
