The dark veil of the deep was no longer his cage. It had become a highway, a conduit through which power surged and memory burned.
When Mark opened his eyes once more, they were no longer simply organs of sight; they were instruments of perception, refined and restructured by the crucible of evolution. The ocean's pressure no longer burdened him. If anything, it felt like air might to a lesser creature; irrelevant, passive, ignorable.
His body had changed, and not in subtle ways. Where once he had been a predator cloaked in organic shadows, now he was something far beyond the limits of biology as Earth knew it. His mantle spanned nearly forty meters from top to bottom, a hulking mass of adaptive muscle and protective cartilage that churned effortlessly through the black depths.
Each of his eight tentacles was longer than a school bus, coiling and uncoiling with terrifying force, their suckers lined not only with barbed hooks sharp enough to tear steel, but now also coated with toxin potent enough to kill in mere seconds. His very skin was denser, thicker, a biomechanical armour grown from within; scaled, pliable, resistant to pressure and sharp force alike.
And more than all that, the calling; the strange gravitational pressure on his psyche, had intensified. No longer was it a faint pull at the edge of thought. It now howled in his mind like a beacon pulsing across the abyss, a whisper that had grown teeth.
He had ignored it for days before, but could not any longer.
'Fine,' he thought, his tentacles uncoiling and surging forward with sudden speed, 'Let's see where you want me to go.'
He moved with unnatural velocity, slicing through the thermoclines like a living torpedo, faster than any human submarine or vessel could hope to match. The ocean bent around him, parted at his passing, and left a trail of turbulent wake that stretched for miles.
But he was not alone. A disturbance lay ahead; one not created by tectonic shifts or underwater currents, but something alive.
Mark slowed, his body shifting seamlessly into hunting mode. The darkness parted before him to reveal an immense, reptilian form slithering through the deep, moving along the same invisible line that tugged at his own brain.
The creature was titanic; easily forty meters long, if not more, with skin like plated armour and jaws that could snap a battleship in two.
Yet something about it felt... incomplete.
Its movement lacked purpose. It was not hunting. It was not aware. It was only obeying. But Mark was not like that. He remembered who he was. He remembered his own mind; twisted, broken, reborn through the lens of survival and blood.
He had resisted the call once, and could resist it again. He did not want to follow along with the creature. No, he wanted to consume it.
He moved, his body erupted from the shadows, tentacles lashing out with horrifying precision. The crocodilian monster tried to turn, its spined tail whipping through the water like a battering ram, but it was far too late. Mark's tentacles wrapped around it with bone-crushing force, barbs sinking deep into the plated armour and puncturing flesh beneath.
Venom seeped through the wounds, a cocktail of toxins refined from creatures even this behemoth would have never imagined. The crocodile thrashed violently, its mouth snapping, claws gouging, but Mark was already feeding. His beak tore through the creature's hide, each bite a surgical removal of meat, muscle, and genetic code.
Blood filled the water, a storm of red in the blue-black ocean. In less than two minutes, the beast was dead; its thrashing reduced to lifeless drifting. Mark continued tearing it apart, assimilating everything.
And then, the system stirred.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Crocodylus Gigantus]
[Material Saturation: 100% Achieved. Abilities Eligible for Evolution]
'So that's how it works,' Mark mused darkly as the last shreds of the monster sank around him.
'A creature as saturated as this… even one is enough. No half-measures. No incremental growth. Just full acquisition.'
But something else happened then. Something strange. The pull in his mind grew even stronger, like an electromagnetic surge pulsing directly through his brainstem.
It was no longer an invitation.
It was a summons.
Something had changed at the source. Something had awakened. Mark turned. With a final shiver of his mantle and a flex of his limbs, he surged toward the calling, ascending from the depths toward the chaos above.
Chicago, Illinois
The skyline of Chicago had never looked smaller. George, the massive albino ape, clung to the side of the Energyne tower with immense hands that cracked concrete and twisted steel.
Beside him, an unholy fusion of wolf and porcupine launched itself upward with massive wings and muscle-bound limbs. Its spines shimmered with toxic sheen, and its eyes burned with a hunger that had little to do with food.
The rooftop was nearing. Atop the tower, a high-frequency beacon shrieked through the air, calling every genetically modified creature toward its signal. Energyne had designed the signal as bait, a way to lure their test subjects to one location where they could be terminated or recaptured.
Davis Okoye, former soldier and primatologist, was already at ground level, coordinating with the military to try and save the city while keeping George from being slaughtered. But they were running out of time. Buildings collapsed under the creatures' weight. The military had opened fire more than once; and failed every time.
But then, something else arrived.
At first, it was just a tremor. A sound from beneath the river that cut through the city. Not thunder. Not machinery. Something deeper.
The water exploded, and from beneath the surface, a massive creature emerged, its bulk dwarfing even that of the previously-seen crocodile that the government had tracked for a while in the ocean only to have it vanish.
This, however, was no crocodile. It was darker, smoother, less brute force and more surgical violence. Its tentacles slammed into a nearby support bridge, tearing through reinforced concrete like paper. Eyes like abyssal lamps scanned the battlefield; not for targets, but for prey.
Davis stared, horrified, as the beast coiled itself high enough to be level with the skyscrapers. This new creature was not here for the beacon. It was here for the others. Up above, George and the flying hybrid turned, momentarily confused.
And that was all the opening the beast needed. From within the creature's massive mind, Mark thought, 'This one has wings and spines... that one will have the ape's strength and cognition...'
And then he moved.