Chương 28: The Catalog of Monsters

Ahead, GeneCorp's tower shoved through the skyline. Sleek. Armored. Surgical. Every edge looked sharp enough to demand a permit before you were allowed to bleed on it. At the base, a heap of dead creatures steamed beside a row of open medical vans, each carcass a jigsaw of limbs and teeth she'd need a field guide to insult properly. Men in unmarked gear sorted crates with practiced rhythm, a loading dock crew who'd long stopped asking what they were hauling and accepted the answer was never good.

A few figures stood apart, watching her approach. A few figures stood apart from the rest, watching her approach like they'd been briefed on the truck, but not on her. One of them was clearly in charge. Couldn't have been older than sixteen. Being in charge at that age meant GeneCorp's hiring standards were adventurous. It also meant everyone with actual authority had left the building hours ago.

It was beyond strange—buzzcut like he'd done it himself in a mirror with kitchen scissors and a personal vendetta against symmetry. A GeneCorp hoodie faded and stained, collar ripped down one side. He moved like a kid who never got taught posture, shoulders slouched, head twitching like he hadn't slept.

"Huh, no bodywork?" She scanned him. No visible augments: no seams, no chrome lines, no subtle flaps where skin met something manufactured.

"Vat-baby," she muttered, because he was dragging a crate with one hand that would have taken three men just to budge. His movement carried a twitchy confidence with a single origin—born in a vat, built to outperform. His shoes cost thirty thousand credits, had no laces, were covered in ash, and looked stolen despite being purchased fair and square. The rest of him looked like he slept in a supply closet and fought his way out of it each morning.

A few people flanked him like furniture, waiting for a cue that never came. The ones behind him blended into the background, like props from a job no one bothered to strike. One looked like he'd been recruited for his ability to block sunlight, the sort of bulk that screamed "hired for height, not brains." The other, barely tall enough to reach the top shelf in a supermarket, couldn't have been more than five-foot-nothing in boots.

Kelly clocked them in a second—bruisers, muscle, call-them-whatever, they were background noise, filling space with their unspoken "yes, boss" energy, pretending they had an edge. A rich kid who hated his family and came to watch the world burn to piss them off, maybe.

"Bet they hated him first, so why not make it mutual?" The kid raised a hand before Kelly cut the engine, more twitch than gesture.

"You were supposed to be five minutes out," he said, already pacing.

"Haider said this was coordinated. Quiet. Professional." His eyes tracked across her windshield, then to the rooftops, recalculating something he didn't say out loud. Kelly didn't answer. The kid was already pacing, fingers tapping his side like he was waiting for a drone strike. The neural line clicked alive in her skull. Haider's voice came through, low and calm.

"Their operations chief is present. They're treating this like a real negotiation. Speak like it matters." The signal held for a beat longer, as if he was about to add something and chose not to. The kid ran a hand over the back of his head, pulled at the collar of his hoodie like it itched.

"You didn't bring backup, right?" he asked.

"If this goes sideways, I don't want them thinking it was me." Kelly stepped out, boots pressing into the layers of ash.

"If it goes sideways, you won't have to explain anything." He didn't reply. His gaze kept drifting. Rooftops, windows, motionless frames pretending to be empty. Watching too carefully. Waiting too long.

"We took the long route, Reggie" Haider said, flat as concrete.

"The express lanes were full of burning trucks and something with too many legs eating a sedan. She rerouted through the industrial belt." He paused, then added with the same dead calm used for supply counts.

"If that inconvenienced anyone, they're welcome to file a complaint with whatever's left of city planning." Reggie hadn't even looked at her yet when Kelly said, "You know, I almost died for this meeting. Felt like a deleted scene from Fast & the Famished—monster trucks, actual monsters, same budget." Nothing. No twitch of the brow. Reggie's attention stayed locked on the surrounding rooftops, like she was background static he hadn't figured out how to mute yet. Reggie blinked, expression flat.

"What are you even talking about?" Someone behind him coughed. Not a real cough—more the sound people make when they want you to know they've heard something stupid and are filing it away for later. One of the loaders, mid-forties, half of his jaw replaced with low-end black-market plating, muttered under his breath, "My kid watches something like that. Animated though. With the dog that shoots from the passenger seat." Another one, younger, chewing on a diagnostic stylus like a cigarette, squinted at Kelly.

"That the show where they marry their instructors or blow 'em up?" Kelly didn't answer. She wasn't sure if either of them was joking, which made them officially more entertaining than Reggie. A third voice chimed in from the back, sarcastic and curious in equal measure.

"Wait–are you talking about one of those pre-war netdramas that got archived in the psychological aberrant tier?" Reggie turned and spoke over his shoulder.

"She's joking. Just ignore her." Kelly followed without breaking stride.

"I wasn't joking. It got an industry award. Best Tactical Romance in a Serialized Format. Twice." The group began moving toward the tower, their pace unhurried. A couple of the crew exchanged looks behind Reggie's back. Some were confused. Some amused. None of them seemed confident enough to ask whether anything she had said was real. They passed under the first set of motion-triggered scanners. Dr. Haider's voice came in over Kelly and Reggie's comms, clear and unhurried.

"Reggie, this is Dr. Kelly Voss. Until recently, she was embedded in a competitor's scientific project—dimensional division. She now represents an asset package of strategic intellectual value currently under GeneCorp consideration." Reggie kept walking.

"She's the asset?"

"She's the trade and the inventor. You're walking her in. That makes her your responsibility until internal security takes over." Reggie adjusted the strap of his hoodie and gave a noncommittal nod. The guy with the stylus snorted.

"Man, I thought she was like... a handler or something." Kelly kept walking.

"You're thinking of someone with people skills." No one replied as they reached GeneCorp's surprisingly busy entrance, its revolving doors heavily guarded and filled with as many scanners, scorch marks, and scrambling excited scientists as there were samples being dragged in for study. Kelly stayed a half step behind Reggie, not out of deference but to watch the group. She kept that distance the way other people keep a hand on a door; waiting to see which way things might swing.

Reggie looked over without turning fully.

"You always like this?" Kelly didn't hesitate.

"No. Sometimes I'm worse." No one laughed. She didn't need them to. A display cycled breakfast ads and gymwear spots—some flawless augmented model with a glow—name below the frame, all vowels and soft gold.

"Is that Veyra?" The tall one said, squinting at the screen.

"Didn't they blacklist her after the Jakarta thing?" His partner snorted.

"She's a 30. D-Rank. You don't blacklist that. You just hope the next crater's in a cheaper district." Reggie didn't look up.

"That's not Veyra. That's her sister." The tall one blinked.

"Didn't know she had one."

"She's the one they let speak at forums," Reggie said.

"Smiles right, answers questions, kisses babies, doesn't flatten streets with her alterations." As they passed through a scanner arch, Kelly glanced sideways at Reggie.

"Speaking of which—what's your thing, anyway?" she asked.

"Claws? Bone saws? Internal grenade pouch?" Reggie didn't respond. The scanner flagged her instability again; he passed clean. No visible traits, nothing exposed, which meant his augmentations were either expensive, lethal, or classified enough to stay invisible. She made a note to stand behind him if anything exploded.

"Invisibility to loaded questions." Reggie didn't look at her.

"If I had a real EQ rating, you'd have seen me on a cereal box by now." Reggie rolled a coin across his knuckles as they approached the primary entrance scanner. Then a second coin joined it, floating over his palm in a slow, weightless spiral—unbothered by gravity, skin contact, or anything resembling physics. He didn't look at them as they drifted above the scanner's range. They hovered because he wanted them to. The scanner lit green the moment he stepped through.

It took its standard full-spectrum read, paused, then flashed NO FOREIGN OBJECTS DETECTED in sterile text across its HUD. Internal inventory displayed nothing. No implants. No ports. No embedded equipment. The coins returned above his palm without dropping and the scanner didn't waver. Kelly watched the machine try to reconcile Reggie's impossibly fine application of cheating biomagnetism and fail. The feed blinked twice, cycled diagnostic, registered the deviance and logged his infraction, then passed him anyway.

She followed, and her wristband scanned as a decorative shape-changing harmless piece—because she'd stripped all of its configurations and left only two. One was the wristband, and the other held something she hated to use... a last resort. Then the rest of her stepped through. The alarm barely screamed three octaves too high before glitching into what sounded like canned laughter. Lights flashed. The HUD re-scrambled itself and almost declared her STATISTICALLY UNLIKELY before it abruptly died.

A panel in the ceiling popped open like a dislocated shoulder, and something metallic dropped straight down at terminal velocity. Right at Kelly. Kelly stepped sideways, calm and already moving. The object—heavy, dense, jagged—froze a meter from the floor. Air warped around it. It hovered mid-fall, humming like a live wire in water. Reggie didn't look up and attempted to act as innocent as possible. Kelly did look up. Then she looked straight at him. Kelly walked on.

Water rose from a nearby glass and swirled around her fingers like liquid coins in slow, lazy spirals. She gave the floating junk a light tap with her knuckle and whispered to Reggie.

"Lucky you. You almost found out if your insurance covers organ loss by monomolecular accident." She pouted.

"You should've let it fall. Would've been fun to see if I could cut you in half before it hit." She paused, then turned to him seriously.

"I have some new tricks I'd like to test out. Can you do it again?" Kelly smiled like she was sharing trivia. Reggie gave her a look that said what the hell is wrong with you, then the metal chunk twitched once, then drifted aside and clanged harmlessly to the floor. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Kelly walked on, deciding how best to 'retire' Reggie and survive the fallout with GeneCorp, if it came to it.

EQ levels were designed to ensure public safety classification and civilian threat indexing. Payne? An insane rating of xEQ, and fighting a whole very expensive room that had wanted him very dead. The obsidian merc had been xEQ, and fighting a troll the size of xyz, Reggie's scan pinged him at 5. 0EQ, with a note about the versatility of his abilities—which, considering his apparent physical comparative weakness, didn't make sense.

At least, not until he showed he had more than enough biomagnetic control to do more than jostle pocket change. Yanking a steel shard from the ceiling and stopping it mid-drop with millimeter precision meant that, despite his lack of physical strength, he had a real rating of at least 5. 0—maybe 6. 0 for someone with that kind of versatile genetic ability, if they really knew how to use it. How the hell had he gotten his hands on a genetic weapon augment at that age? That was supposed to be impossible.

Who the hell were his parents? Apparently the only ones enjoying the end of the world were the ones who broke the rules before it started, and were busy breaking whatever rules were left. She wondered how someone like him had managed an acquisition so impossibly clean, who his parents had bribed, and how sad they'd be if she had to chop his arm off on the way out if negotiations tanked. She'd started thinking more seriously about the loop—about what it actually was and what it could be made to do.

Theories she used to dream about didn't feel like jokes anymore. Reggie muttered, "Should've sent Dr. Lindstrom. Why'd Haider drag a nobody into this? And why me, why now? I don't even need to be here—you can call over the net." He shook his head once, the projection of Haider blinking into their neural views as if in response. Reggie frowned, glancing at Kelly, then turning to the holographic projection beside her.

"Wasn't Dr. Lindstrom on the news last week? And that Harding guy—didn't he win a Nobel? You're friends with them, right? So why bring in some rando?"

"Value," Dr. Haider responded firmly.

"Kelly's the VIP because she can do what no one else can. Lindstrom and Harding are occupied with research and replication elsewhere. Every other resource is tied up cracking anomalies on multiple fronts. She's here because her expertise and results are invaluable." They crammed into the lift as Reggie placed a palm on the wall and retrieved something, causing the box to move. The lift was too small and too polished, with mirrors everywhere.

Kelly wondered who the mirrors were for, since anyone on this floor already knew they looked good. Then she realised that was probably why. By the time it reached the top, the doors slid open to a clean, stylish chaos. Labs walled off with bulletproof glass buzzed with scientists in crisp white coats, and a few suits lingered in the background, making quiet calls or nodding at monitors. The whole place had a designer dystopia feel with high gloss and low trust.

Augmented security guards stood silent at every door, each one bulging with enough muscle and worn tech to snap spines without blinking. Around them, the apocalypse was treated less like the end of the world and more like a multi-billion-dollar industry. The scientists moved fast, passing crates marked with hazard symbols and fiddling with devices that glowed in ways Kelly didn't care to understand.

As they walked past a sealed door with enough locking mechanisms to make a bank vault jealous, she noticed her scanner wouldn't stop pinging. They stepped into a wide, open office that somehow managed to be both intimidating and comfortable. The round table in the center was covered in what looked like premium leather, curving into a built-in couch that wrapped halfway around. Two people sat there, hands resting casually on polished wood, but their postures spoke of full awareness.

Behind them, a wall of glass stretched floor to ceiling, revealing the city skyline—and the chaos that came with it. Swarms of creatures drifted among impact-ridden or crumbling buildings, while distant flashes hinted at ongoing firefights. As if on cue, something huge with wings like a shredded parachute swept past, trailing a faint shadow. Nice couch. Bet it's seen more betrayals than a marriage counselor with clearance level, Kelly thought.

The two people sat there with hands resting on polished wood, their calm bought with salaries that came with its own security detail. Behind them, distant firefights flashed and died in a rhythm that matched the hum of the building's climate control. Genecorp had supplied front-row seats to the apocalypse and excellent furniture to watch it from, the two items probably listed on the same inventory sheet.

"This is Haider's contact, Kelly," Reggie said, tilting his head toward her.

"The..." He checked a device embedded in his palm, "soon to be former... Vaughn employee... With exclusive anomalous IP." Reggie gave Kelly a weird look—like the act of ditching Vaughn, the above-the-law, off-world, flag-less monstrosity, meant she was a live grenade someone forgot to disarm. Kelly folded her arms, tilting her head slightly at the passing creature.

"So, if a giant bird flies in here mid-deal, are we barbecuing it, or—""The glass is one-sided," one of the seated facilitators replied calmly.

"Built to withstand a Category 12 earthquake. We'll be fine." They didn't stand, didn't smile, didn't introduce themselves. Which was fair—Kelly figured anyone sitting behind a table that expensive during an apocalypse had already decided their names weren't the important part. One sat with controlled stillness indicating he was a man used to approving weapons licenses, and now did it for genetics. The other looked like he could classify people by posture alone.

Both were old enough to have outlasted at least three boardroom purges and bored enough to think this was just another sales pitch. She didn't waste time pretending they hadn't already guessed what she was.

"You've sequenced everything you could get your hands on," she said, stepping forward.

"The burrower with glass-veined muscle strands, the giant terraforming downtown by pointing, and even that thing that fell out of Hollow Rift—with the spinal geometry that loops like a Möbius strip. I know. I would've tried the same." She rested one hand on the table's edge, casual.

"Let me guess—half of it didn't work, the rest were so pitiful in comparison to the real thing it might as well have spat glitter." Neither of them corrected her.

"Mine didn't." She pulled up a holopanel from her wristband, flicking through controlled screens. No raw data, nothing they could extract without access. Just enough to confirm what she wanted them to know: mutation stability, repeatable gains, systemic persistence.

"I've tested genetic changes that take and work. Full efficacy. Cross-species viability, no degradation. No missing pieces. You give me access to your internal labs, I'll show you why." The one on the left finally spoke, voice dry.

"For what compensation?" Kelly smiled.

"Royalties."

"On anything with my work in it." Gotta make them think she wants the money to really sell this. Then slide in the real goldmine.

"And access to the samples you've collected so far. Your anomalous data." She glanced back at the skyline just in time to catch a lumbering quadruped crush a lesser tower in the distance.

"Otherwise, you can see how well your F and E-ranks handle an A-rank collapse scenario." Something shrieked in the sky—wingspan wide enough to block traffic lanes, shaped like nothing built for atmosphere. Even from here, she saw flashes of light peppering it from below, military grade. It kept moving. She looked back at them.

"But hey. Let me know how long the interns last." The man on the right finally leaned forward, fingers steepled like he was diagnosing a flaw in a prototype.

"Our data... You want to increase your EQ. But you're 3. 8," he said, with the calm finality of someone reading off a warning label.

"You'll need to sign an NDA." He gestured, and Kelly signed it without reading, and the man smirked at what he thought was a foolish lack of diligence.

"And you can only get enough work done to reach the legal limit, so that's just 2. 2 worth of genetic alterations we'll allow to meet the 6. 0 Enhancement Quotient restriction." Kelly blinked once, like she'd missed the part where that was supposed to be a problem.

"That's cool," she said.

"I still want access." She didn't clarify. Let them guess whether it was short-sightedness, long strategy, or something that didn't fit on a readout.

"We'll need a live demonstration," said the one on the right, voice flat with authority that came from too many years signing off weapons and containment specs. He didn't look up. The other leaned in slightly.

"Initial validation in-lab. Then viability. If your results hold, we escalate to controlled deployment." Kelly followed their gaze out the glass. Something enormous with too many legs moved between buildings, its shape wrong for anything that evolved naturally, suspended midair like the clouds were its stepping stones.

"This is a global event of anomalies, localized to Earth. No confirmed source or ownership for the tech, and nothing anyone's admitted to."

"Three D-rank threats landed between here and the southern corridor this morning," the left added.

"Multiple E-rank deployments couldn't contain them. F-rank assets were neutralized before contact. They needed rerouting from orbit and military intervention." Kelly scoffed internally, like that was her problem.

"And there's ongoing chatter about an S-class category of rank being possible," the left added, tone dry.

"Just theory. A terrifying one." He returned his attention to Kelly.

"If you're asking for access, you'll need to prove your value beyond reports and controlled data." Kelly crossed her arms.

"So you want a bar fight with a clipboard."

"We want stress validation," said the man on the right.

"Lab replication. Field pressure. If it breaks, it's useless. If it holds, we scale. We monetize." Kelly smiled without showing teeth—she already knew who'd be cashing the dividend.

"Then it's a good thing I brought something worth the invoice." Dr. Haider's projection flickered into view between them, the same steady frame, same unblinking presence.

"Then we're agreed," he said.

"You'll provide access. She'll provide results. Let's not waste time rehearsing concerns we've already outgrown." His tone didn't rise and was entirely calm, holding pure, clean execution.

"This is a race to be first. We have hours, not days. Start the intake. I'll handle legal." Then he vanished, the deal sealed before anyone had the chance to re-litigate it. They left the office without fanfare, flanked by glass and polished steel, with constant eyes that didn't bother to hide their curiosity. The corridors beyond were crowded—white coats moving with purpose, terminals glowing with cross-section renders of limbs and nerves, gene-flow maps rotating in midair.

Security outnumbered scientists two-to-one. Not just guards—former spec ops with corporate tags and hardware that didn't come cheap. Reggie fell in step beside them, still hooded and still looking like someone who'd wandered in from a food queue outside. As they passed a reinforced checkpoint, one of the guards—heavily geared, definitely not Genecorp issue— tapped a knuckle against his helmet and said, "Still owe me for Prague." Reggie barely broke stride.

"Bill my handler." The guard grunted, the door unlocking with a low click as they passed. Kelly said nothing, but noted the insignia: not Genecorp's, not military. Third-party muscle, paid to forget who walked where. Kelly looked at the guard and spotted gray hair—actual gray, not the biotech silver rinse rich idiots wore, and long-healed scars nobody with a decent healthcare plan would leave visible. They were scars that said he could afford to erase it and chose not to because it meant something.

Her EQ scanner pinged high enough to suggest he'd be a problem, but not high enough to make her reconsider her presence in the building.

"Let me guess," Kelly said as they passed another group of scrambling scientists to reach a large set of blast-proof double doors.

"Even someone from an old augment regiment has a price now? So what's the going rate for an actual war hero and not a grunt—public loyalty clause or free ad time?" Reggie rolled his eyes under the hoodie as Kelly waited for a response.

"Don't tell me you've got the upper echelon on payroll too," Kelly added, eyes on the retinal scanner that logged them and blinked them all through.

"Last I heard, first-gen wouldn't even piss in a civilian building without a flag above the door and a contract under it." The double doors slid open.

"Guess even leftover augment royalty needs a retirement plan?" Reggie snorted.

"Please. Those dickheads only work for themselves and the shiniest camera." He didn't lower his voice.

"My crew clashed with some of their new blood on a job a few months ago. We wouldn't work with them anyway. Too suicidal." Kelly looked over, one brow raised in mild reassessment. The lab doors sealed behind them with a hiss. Everything inside was pristine glass-panel walls, triple-helix projections, busy white-coated bodies, and gene sequencers mounted with surgical arms. The fabricator sat tall in the far corner, matte black and humming softly. That was her goal.

That, and the archive banks—she intended to walk out with all the data they didn't know she needed. Dr. Haider appeared beside her in holographic detail—only visible through her neural phone. His voice stayed private.

"This deal breaks the balance and will change society forever. The second it's viable, the structure holding the big four in check will fracture. I'd advise finalizing the first transfer, proving the tech works, then disappearing off-world before someone talks." Dr. Haider's projection still hovered beside her—synced through her neural phone, visible only to her. Kelly answered without moving her lips, her voice routed clean and silent through the link.

"Pfft. One of the other three's probably got someone in the building already. They'll know the second I finish—doesn't change a thing. I'm in one of the safest buildings in New York, and Genecorp doesn't share. They're not letting their first working breakthrough get cloned, kidnapped, or splattered." She paused.

"Though now I'm wondering—if I get cloned, does the clone loop too? That'd be messed up." Kelly grabbed a lab coat off a hook, twirled it once, then shrugged it on, then she strode into the center of the lab and clapped her hands once. Hard. The sound cracked across sterile glass and halted half a dozen conversations.

"I need the samples I left with security," she said.

"And I want every regenerating strain you've got. Stock, vault, test tank—I don't care. Matter of fact, bring me everything you've scraped off the walls since the sky cracked, and whatever else you've been too scared to test." She rolled her shoulders once, stretched like she was warming up for a boxing match. The two interim leaders nodded to all present, confirming her demands.

"Anything else that's still warm enough to moan if you prod it right," she said, already moving toward the central machine.

"And If it's mutated, moist, and medically questionable, I want it on my table." Two women near the genome stabilizer exchanged a look behind their masks—one let out a snort she didn't catch in time. Scientists just as eager for discovery as she was, and interns either too unlucky or too broke to already be off-world, scrambled to meet her demands. Some moved casually, curious to see what would happen next.

Kelly ignored them, her eyes glued to the treasure trove of genetic augmentation techniques flowing across the screen. As scientists, interns, and a strange, organically constructed biped guided samples towards her, Kelly rolled up her sleeves and printed out the single classified datachip they'd greenlit for demonstration, and everything else on Genecorp she could legally get her hands on. This was it.

They were going to hand her a portion of their entire database—not everything, but whatever they were allowed and they would thank her for the privilege. And Kelly? She was going to demonstrate what they wanted, but she would add in a little something extra. They had given her a limit on how much she could augment herself—regeneration would be first, and then she'd add one more augment from their many samples. Just one. Maybe Mimic flesh, seismic control, the ability to walk on clouds...

Or something she could splice together. Something that would help her fight her way out of here, or die trying. She just had to make the right choice as to what that augment would be.