The lights above the stained counter flickered intermittently, their buzzing hum interwoven with the dull clinks of empty glasses and half-hearted chatter.
Inside the quiet bar wedged between a half-boarded hardware store and a forgotten pawn shop in southern Nevada, Tom Brody sat hunched over a cloudy tumbler of something amber, his fingers limp and greasy from hours of holding the same drink, his shoulders slumped forward as though the weight of the world had finally succeeded in breaking him.
The beard he hadn't bothered to trim in months drooped down to his collarbone, now tangled with strands of hair that had outgrown any kind of care. His shirt was wrinkled beyond recognition, and his boots hadn't been tied properly in over a week.
His world had become small. This bar, the streets nearby, the crumbling remains of his marriage and the haunting memory of the son he'd been forced to give away because he could no longer look after him.
He downed the rest of the glass in one pull, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, already reaching for the bottle again when the bell above the door gave a soft chime.
She entered like a shadow carried by wind. Slender, poised, and entirely out of place, the girl; no, the woman, approached with an expression of purpose that cut through the staleness of the bar like a razor.
Her face was youthful, too youthful, but there was something older behind her eyes. Her raven-black hair was cut in a neat bob-cut, and the formal stiffness of her steps said more about her upbringing than any words might.
She said nothing as she arrived beside Tom's table.
"Unless you're bringing another drink," Tom muttered without looking, "I'm not interested."
She placed a thin folder on the table before him.
Tom didn't even glance at it, "I said I'm not—"
"Open it," the girl interrupted, her tone low and polite, but with an edge sharper than steel.
Something in her voice, or maybe the dead certainty in her eyes, made Tom pause. His fingers brushed against the folder's matte surface, and, with a sigh of drunken frustration, he cracked it open with one hand.
Silence.
The bar seemed to fade. He turned the first page. His eyes sharpened. He flipped another. His breath caught. Page by page, the haze lifted from his mind, his gaze narrowing and locking onto what he was reading as though he were consuming the words like firewood in a blizzard.
His hand stopped shaking. The alcohol that had fogged his brain was nowhere to be felt. By the end of the file, he was sitting upright, his glass untouched, his expression changed from pity to resolve.
Slowly, he turned toward the girl, who had not moved a single muscle and was still watching him with the stillness of a statue.
"What's your name?" he asked, voice low.
"That's not important," she replied softly.
Tom nodded, understanding, though he didn't know why. His gaze dipped to the folder once more, then back to her.
"Fine," he said at last, rising from the seat with the weight of years still clinging to his joints. "I'm in."
And with that, they left the bar, leaving behind only an empty glass and the ghost of a man who had finally found something worth living for again.
…
The Atlantic churned as a titan stirred below. Mark moved with silent momentum through the depths, trailing bioluminescent pulses from his armoured hide as he honed in on his next target.
Hidden inside an unmarked underwater weapons facility; a relic of Cold War paranoia now rusted to decay, was the second warhead.
It thrummed to him like a song. He reached it without resistance. Nothing the humans had could follow him, not at his speed, not at this depth.
A single bite. An overwhelming surge.
The moment the nuclear core shattered inside his biomass, the cascade began again; less chaotic than before, more like a system designed to welcome the radiation now. His cells no longer buckled under the pressure; they drank it.
Like fire into a furnace, the payload was swallowed whole, and the transformation resumed.
[Critical Radiation Threshold Detected]
[Compatible Traits Amplifying…]
[Trait: Adaptive Radiotrophy has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Abyssal Oxygen Conversion has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Distributed Neural Processing has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Dermal Armor Plating has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Bone Marrow Hyper structure has reached Level 5]
His vision flared as new neural lines branched across his mind like roots seeking water. His armour pulsed, denser and yet lighter, restructured at the subdermal level with reinforced chitin and semi-organic mineral composites.
His thoughts flickered with fluid clarity, every instinct balancing logic, aggression, and strategy. From within his body, cooling glands activated again, streaming jets of heat-dispersing vapor into the surrounding water.
He held position, bracing against the seabed to prevent an unwanted rise to the surface. The water boiled around him for minutes that felt like hours, until finally the internal radiation levels stabilized.
'Stronger again,' Mark thought with satisfaction, although he could feel the strain mounting. Absorbing such immense energy in such short bursts pushed even his evolving body toward the edge of structural failure.
He would need to rest. Briefly. But not for long.
…
Meanwhile, in a secure subterranean command bunker far below the Pentagon, red lights flared on holographic displays. Surveillance drones had tracked Titanus Oodako's second warhead digestion.
"He's absorbed two," said one of the analysts, sweat pouring down his brow.
"At this rate, deplete all our reserves! We would be defenceless to Russia or China! We need to move our nukes!"
"Authorization is ready," another confirmed, "DRRC deployment window opens in six hours. Units stationed at coastal battery sites Beta, Gamma, and Delta are already warming capacitors."
The man at the head of the table, wearing a uniform with no name tag, simply nodded, "Prepare to fire the moment he resurfaces."