Arthur watched through tear-blurred vision as his flesh reconstructed itself:

  Blood vessels reconnected first—tiny capillaries finding each other like magnetic attraction, sealing shut. Individual muscle fibers wove back together, bridging the gap, pulling edges closer. Fascia reformed—translucent membrane growing over repaired muscle. Skin cells multiplied impossibly fast—dermis filling in from edges inward, new pink tissue covering everything. Then pigmentation returned, the pink flesh darkening to match surrounding skin.

  Thirty seconds from open wound to perfect skin.

  No scar. No evidence trauma had occurred. As if the cut never existed.

  Arthur gasped. Trembling. The pain was gone but the remained. His nervous system still screaming even though the injury was healed.

  He knew—with absolute certainty—what was coming next.

  "Please." His voice cracked. All pretense of stoicism stripped away. Pure desperation. "Please don't do this. I'll tell you anything you want to know. I'll cooperate. Just don't—"

  "Your cooperation is not required for this examination."

  Spider's tone didn't change. Still that same clinical detachment.

  "And you've already confirmed you don't understand your own abilities. Therefore, interrogation would be inefficient."

  He positioned the scalpel again. Different location—Arthur's left thigh this time.

  "Your body will provide the answers your mind cannot."

  "No—"

  The scalpel cut.

  Arthur screamed again.

  * * *

  The next hours blurred into nightmare.

  Cut. Pain. Energy. Healing. Repeat.

  Spider worked methodically. Mapping Arthur's body like a scientist cataloging specimens. Each incision in a different location. Each one deeper than the last, testing parameters.

  Left thigh. Right shoulder. Lower abdomen. Left side, between ribs.

  Arthur's screams grew hoarse. His vocal cords couldn't sustain that level of stress. The sounds became whimpers, gasps, broken pleas that went unanswered.

  He tried to retreat into his mind. To be somewhere else.

  But pain dragged him back. Again. And again.

  Spider's narration continued throughout, a constant clinical drone:

  "Cut seventeen: Deltoid muscle. Regeneration time: thirty-one seconds. Energy consumption: minimal. Cellular reconstruction: perfect."

  "Cut eighteen: Rectus abdominis. Testing depth tolerance at twelve millimeters. Subject's pain response degrading—early dissociative state observed."

  "Cut nineteen: External oblique. Subject no longer screaming. Psychological coping mechanism engaged."

  By the twentieth cut, Arthur barely reacted.

  His eyes had gone distant. Unfocused. Staring at nothing while tears ran down his temples into his hair.

  His mind was fragmenting, trying to protect him from experiencing this. Trying to be anywhere else. Anyone else.

  But Spider's voice kept pulling him back to the examination theater, to the chair, to the reality of his body being systematically destroyed and rebuilt.

  "Surface tissue analysis complete."

  Spider reviewed data on a tablet held by one manipulator arm while others maintained position around Arthur.

  "Observations: Regeneration rate remarkably consistent. Twenty-eight to thirty-two seconds regardless of location or depth. Energy consumption extraordinarily efficient—approximately point-three percent of total reserves per healing cycle. Cellular reconstruction achieves perfect fidelity. No scarring. No keloid formation. No variance in tissue density. Healed flesh is molecularly identical to undamaged tissue."

  He set down the tablet.

  Selected a different tool.

  The bone saw.

  The whine of its activation filled the room—high-pitched, mechanical, promising worse pain than anything that had come before.

  Arthur's eyes focused again. Horror cutting through dissociation.

  "No. No, please—"

  "Moving to deeper structures," Spider announced. "Muscle tissue analysis, followed by skeletal examination."

  The saw moved toward Arthur's thigh.

  * * *

  This was different.

  The saw bit into muscle, and Arthur felt every fiber separate. Felt the vibration traveling through flesh. Felt his own body coming apart at structural level.

  His scream was primal. Animal. The sound of something being destroyed at a fundamental level.

  His consciousness shattered.

  He wasn't in the chair.

  He was in his apartment. Stella was there. Safe. They were reading comics. Normal. The neon light outside painting—

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He was in Kira's workshop. Before any of this—

  He was with Celina. His sister. Laughing. Human. Before everything changed—

  But the pain kept dragging him back to reality.

  He screamed until his voice gave out entirely.

  "Quadriceps femoris severed completely," Spider narrated. "Subject's pain response indicates extensive nerve damage. Excellent data."

  The syringe arm injected more energy.

  Arthur's leg blazed with nova light. Colors so bright they illuminated the entire theater. His muscle tissue reconstructed—individual fibers growing, weaving, bundling into groups, forming the complex architecture of functional muscle.

  Forty-three seconds from catastrophic damage to complete healing.

  "Remarkable. Muscle tissue regeneration identical to surface tissue. No loss of motor function post-healing. Neural pathways fully reconstructed."

  Spider collected a muscle tissue sample before regeneration completed—inserting a hollow needle, extracting cylindrical core of flesh.

  Arthur barely felt it. Just one more violation among dozens.

  "Sample acquired. Moving to osseous examination."

  The bone saw.

  The sound when it met Arthur's radius was worse than anything that came before.

  High-pitched whine of diamond-tipped blade meeting calcium. Vibration traveling through his entire skeleton. The sensation of his own bone being cut—sawed through, slowly, methodically, all the way through.

  Arthur's mind couldn't process it. Couldn't contain it. His consciousness splintered completely.

  He was begging. Incoherent. "Stop please god stop please I can't I can't please—"

  The saw blade exited the other side of his bone.

  His forearm separated.

  The physical sensation of becoming two pieces. Of losing part of his body. Of his arm ending at a point it shouldn't end.

  Arthur's scream was silent. No air left. No voice left. Just mouth open, body convulsing, restraints groaning as every muscle tried to pull away from what was happening.

  "Bone structure successfully bisected. Examining marrow cavity..."

  Spider's manipulator arms probed the exposed interior of Arthur's severed bone.

  "Standard human bone marrow composition. Red blood cell production centers visible. No mutations or alterations detected."

  The syringe arm injected more energy.

  Arthur's arm blazed white-hot with nova light.

  He watched through eyes that didn't seem connected to his brain anymore.

  Watched bone grow back together—marrow cavity sealing, hard cortical bone forming in crystalline layers, soft blood-producing tissue reforming. The bone structure rebuilt with perfect density, internal architecture recreating itself exactly. Periosteum—the living skin around bone—grew over the surface.

  The break sealed completely.

  Fifty-seven seconds from severed bone to full structural integrity.

  Arthur was crying. Couldn't stop. Body-wracking sobs between gasps for air. Tears and snot and saliva mixing on his face, unable to wipe it away, unable to do anything but lie there and break.

  "Extraordinary."

  Spider's voice carried something new. Not emotion—clinical interest elevated to something approaching excitement.

  "Regeneration extends to skeletal structure. No degradation in healing efficiency across multiple cycles. No rejection of repaired tissue. Energy cost remains stable."

  He set down the bone saw. Reviewed comprehensive data on his tablet.

  "Complete physical analysis confirms: Subject's external structure is entirely human. Standard human DNA sequencing. Standard cellular composition. No mutations detected at tissue, muscle, or bone level."

  His optical implants focused on Arthur's face—tear-streaked, devastated, broken.

  "Yet Subject demonstrates abilities impossible for baseline humans. Energy manipulation. Physical transformation. Accelerated healing that defies biological understanding."

  Spider selected his final tool.

  A long, thin probe. Neural interface connector. Designed to penetrate skull and interface directly with brain tissue.

  He positioned it near Arthur's temple.

  "Hypothesis: The mutation is not biological. It is neurological. Subject's enhanced abilities originate not from physical modification but from . Something in Subject's brain is manifesting as physical transformation."

  Arthur barely heard through his broken state. But certain words penetrated:

  "...brain..."

  Horror cut through his dissociation like ice water.

  "No." His voice was barely audible. Hoarse from screaming. "No. Please. Not that. Anything but that."

  "Your fear response is noted and irrelevant."

  Spider pulled out a surgical drill. Medical-grade. Diamond-tipped bit designed specifically for cranial work.

  "Cranial examination is necessary to confirm hypothesis. Your brain is the only structure I haven't directly analyzed."

  "You'll kill me." Arthur knew it with certainty that transcended logic. "If you cut into my brain I'll—I won't be me anymore. You'll erase everything I am—"

  "Unlikely. Your regeneration will repair any damage. Your cells will survive."

  Spider positioned the drill against Arthur's temple. Right where the neural probe would need to enter.

  "But I won't be ."

  Arthur's silver eyes—contacts long since damaged and useless, irises fully visible now—stared at Spider with desperate clarity.

  "Whatever memories I have left. Whatever makes me Arthur Jones. You'll cut it away and it won't come back. It come back. Memories aren't just tissue. You can't regenerate experiences."

  Spider paused.

  For the first time since the examination began, he hesitated. Those optical implants studied Arthur's face.

  "Your concern has philosophical merit," he said finally. "Neural tissue is more complex than gross physical structure. Memory formation involves synaptic connections, chemical pathways, quantum-level phenomena we don't fully understand. Theoretically, structural regeneration might not restore experiential data."

  He tilted his head slightly. Considering.

  "However—"

  The drill whined to life.

  "—the risk is acceptable for purposes of this investigation."

  The bit moved toward Arthur's skull.

  Arthur's terror transcended conscious thought.

  This wasn't pain. This was . The end of self. The destruction of identity.

  Everything he was—every new memory he'd managed to hold onto, every experience since waking without his past, every moment with Stella and Kira and Celina—about to be cut away. Drilled through. Destroyed.

  Something deeper than fear, more primal than survival instinct, this violation.

  The energy Spider had been feeding him—hours worth of stolen power, stored in his cells—suddenly .

  Arthur's veins lit up.

  But wrong.

  Not the shifting aurora of his normal powers—emerald and violet and cyan dancing beneath his skin.

  Crimson. Pure, burning crimson.

  The light blazing beneath his skin like magma through cracks in volcanic glass. Like the earth itself was splitting apart inside him.

  "Fascinating—"

  Spider began, optical implants zooming in to capture data.

  The restraints .

  Metal shrieking as bolts sheared from their mounts. The forehead strap snapping like string. Wrist cuffs bursting open. Ankle restraints detonating. The chair itself cracking down its center under impossible force.

  Arthur's scream became something else.

  Something inhuman.

  Mechanical shriek layered over animal rage layered over digital static—three sounds that shouldn't coexist, couldn't coexist, but did anyway, creating noise that made everyone behind the one-way mirror flinch back instinctively.

  His body began to change.

  His skin darkened. Not tanning—. Obsidian black spreading from his chest outward like infection, like transformation, like evolution happening in seconds instead of millennia. The black surface segmented, forming plates of insect-like armor. Natural geometry. Perfect angles. Beautiful and terrible.

  Spider backed away, manipulator arms raising defensively.

  "Subject experiencing catastrophic metamorphosis. Defensive transformation protocol activating—"

  Arthur's fingers elongated. Bones cracking audibly as they reformed, lengthening, sharpening. His nails pushed out, became talons of solidified crimson light—like obsidian glass but glowing from within, iridescent, razor-edged.

  His spine arched violently. Something erupted from his back with wet tearing sounds—skeletal frames punching through skin, spreading wide. The beginning of wings. Translucent membrane forming between bone struts. Tattered. Wrong. But functional.

  His face—

  His face disappeared behind forming mask. Smooth black glass spreading across his features like liquid shadow solidifying. Covering nose, mouth, the shape of his skull.

  And then the eyes opened.

  Not two.

  Four.

  Four multifaceted crimson orbs blazing with predatory intelligence and absolutely no recognition.

  The thing that was Arthur stood.

  Seven feet tall. Hunched. Four arms—the original two plus an additional pair that had grown from beneath them. All ending in those scything crimson claws. Wings vibrating at high frequency, creating sound like massive insect. Face completely inhuman. Eyes burning with light that promised only death.

  Spider stared at his creation.

  "Magnificent," he whispered.

  Then the creature moved.

  Faster than Spider's optical implants could track. Faster than mechanical reflexes could respond.

  One taloned hand punched through Spider's thorax, through the cables and pulleys of his manipulator arm system.

  Spider's systems screamed. Alarms blaring. Emergency shutdown protocols failing.

  The creature's second hand found his organic spine. Ripped upward.

  Spider's last thought, as his consciousness fragmented:

  Then the talons found his brain, and thought stopped.

  The creature stood over Spider's bisected body.

  Tilted its head. Studied the corpse with those four burning eyes.

  Then turned toward the one-way mirror.

  Toward the observers.

  Toward prey.

  [End of Chapter Ten]