[POV Era]

  The cold night air hit my face, but I didn't feel it as relief—it was simply a change in atmospheric density. I shot out of the back door of the police station, my boots thudding against the alley pavement, just as the sound of shattering gss and splintering wood announced that the Ganut pack had breached the main lobby.

  I didn't look back. My auditory radar, cranked to the maximum, provided all the data I needed. Four sets of cws frantically clicking against the ground. Four sets of panting, wet breaths. Guttural communication growls transting into a single command: Kill.

  I ran.

  My speed was inhuman. My legs, powered by servos and synthetic muscles, devoured the asphalt. I leaped over an overturned dumpster without breaking my stride, nded with feline grace, and kept sprinting. However, the data on my interface was concerning.

  <[CURRENT SPEED: 45 KM/H.]>

  <[TARGET SPEED (HOSTILES): 52 KM/H AND INCREASING.]>

  They were faster. Those biological abominations were designed for the chase. Despite their limps and deformities, they moved with explosive propulsion, closing the gap with every passing second.

  I turned sharply to the right, plunging into a byrinth of narrow alleys between ruined residential buildings. My hope was that their numbers would work against them in confined spaces.

  The surroundings passed in a blur of gray and bck. I jumped over broken pipes, slid under fallen beams. I heard them colliding with each other behind me, growling their frustration, but never stopping.

  In a particurly tight turn, I saw my chance. A section of brick wall had partially colpsed, creating a narrow, low gap. I threw myself to the ground, sliding like a baseball pyer, passing through the opening with millimeters to spare.

  Behind me, I heard a dull impact and a howl of pain. One of the Ganuts, too rge or too slow to brake, had smmed into the bricks or gotten stuck.

  <[PURSUIT SIGNALS REDUCED TO 3 MAIN SOURCES.]>

  I had lost one. But three were still there, and they were furious.

  I kept running. Time dited. Five minutes. Ten minutes.

  In my former life as Orion, running for ten minutes at full speed would have been a death sentence. My lungs would have burned as if I’d inhaled fire, my legs would have turned to lead, my heart would have tried to leap out of my mouth. I would have colpsed, vomiting and gasping.

  But now… nothing.

  There was no burning. No gasping. My chest didn't heave desperately for oxygen. My "heart" maintained a steady rhythm, pumping coont fluids and synthetic nutrients with a monotonous efficiency.

  <[ENERGY LEVEL: 98%. THERMAL SYSTEMS: STABLE. MUSCLE FATIGUE: 0%.]>

  It was an intoxicating and yet alienating sensation. I could run forever. I could cross the continent if I wanted to. But that physical advantage had a tactical counterpoint: they didn't tire either.

  The Ganuts were not natural animals. They showed no signs of fatigue. Their pursuit was relentless, mechanical in its stubbornness. They wouldn't stop for water. They wouldn't stop to catch their breath. They would hunt me until they caught me or until I destroyed them.

  Flight was not a viable long-term strategy. I was only postponing the inevitable and moving further away from any possible resources.

  I needed a battlefield. A pce where my agility and strength could counter their speed and numbers.

  I emerged from the maze of alleys onto a wider avenue. My eyes frantically scanned the environment. To my left, the massive structure of a ruined shopping mall dominated the street. And there, a descending concrete ramp with a flickering, half-fallen sign: "SUPERMARKET - UNDERGROUND PARKING - LEVEL -1."

  A basement. Enclosed space. Concrete columns. Darkness.

  "Perfect," I whispered.

  I pulled a 180-degree turn in strategy, skidding over the asphalt and lunging toward the dark ramp. The darkness of the underground swallowed me. For any human, this would have been suicide: entering the lion's den without light. But for me, with my night vision and sensors, it was my home turf.

  My boots hit the concrete floor of the parking garage. The pce was vast, a forest of gray columns supporting the weight of the building above. The air was stagnant, smelling of motor oil and ancient dampness. Abandoned cars y scattered like metallic sarcophagi.

  I stopped about thirty meters from the entrance of the ramp. I didn't want to hide. I wanted to prepare.

  I chose my position carefully: a narrow space between two massive support columns, barely two meters apart. This would limit their attack angles. They wouldn't be able to fnk me easily; they would have to come head-on, channeled into my kill zone.

  I turned to face the ramp. I pulled the pistol from my waist, checked the safety, and then, after a second of hesitation, tucked it back in. No. The gun was the st resort. I had few bullets and didn't want to depend on them if I could avoid it. My fists and legs were my primary weapons.

  The howls grew louder. The echo in the ramp amplified the sound of their cws, turning it into a nightmare cacophony.

  They appeared.

  Three deformed shadows emerged from the gloom of the ramp, their red eyes glowing like embers in the dark. They stopped for an instant upon seeing me pnted there, waiting for them. There was no fear in them, only predatory excitement.

  The Ganut in the center, the rgest one, roared and charged. The other two followed, slightly fnking it.

  "Come on," I said, my voice cold and metallic echoing through the garage.

  Time slowed down again. My combat processor went into overdrive, tracing attack vectors, calcuting speeds and masses.

  The central Ganut leaped first, aiming for my chest. The one on the right came low, seeking my legs. The one on the left widened its path to attack from the fnk.

  Action.

  I didn't step back. I moved toward the threat.

  When the central Ganut was in the air, I dropped to my knees, sliding across the polished concrete floor. Its cws brushed past my silver hair, cutting the air where my head had been a fraction of a second before.

  While sliding, I twisted my body. The Ganut on the right was upon me.

  I used my momentum and the brute force of my hydraulic legs. I unched an upward side kick, aiming not at the animal, but at its trajectory.

  My hard-soled boot connected with the side of the Ganut on the right. There was a sickening crunch of ribs breaking, amplified by the garage's echo. The creature, which easily weighed a hundred kilos, was sent flying sideways like a ragdoll.

  It flew two meters and smmed violently against the concrete column to my right. The impact was brutal. It fell to the floor, convulsing, its spine visibly deformed from the strike against the stone.

  I stood up in a fluid motion, spinning to face the remaining ones.

  <[THREAT 1: TEMPORARILY NEUTRALIZED.]>

  But the calcution had come with a cost. By dealing with the first two, I had left an opening.

  The third Ganut, the one on the left, was already in the air, lunging toward my exposed back. It was too close. Too fast. My sensors indicated I didn't have time to turn and block. Its jaws would cmp onto my shoulder and neck before I could even raise my arms.

  <[CRITICAL ALERT: IMMINENT IMPACT. PROBABILITY OF SEVERE STRUCTURAL DAMAGE.]>

  <[TACTICAL SUGGESTION: USE OF FIREARM. DISTANCE: ZERO. HIT PROBABILITY: 99%.]>

  Orion hesitated. The noise...

  <[ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS: CONFINED UNDERGROUND ENVIRONMENT. SOUND DISSIPATION WILL REDUCE EXTERNAL AUDITORY RANGE BY 85%. RISK OF EXTERNAL DETECTION: LOW.]>

  The system gave me the green light my human mind needed.

  My right hand moved faster than thought. I drew the pistol from my back while twisting my torso. I didn't aim with my eyes; I aimed with the system's geometry.

  The barrel of the SIG Sauer met the Ganut's face in mid-flight, less than ten centimeters from my nose. I could smell its rotten breath.

  I pulled the trigger.

  BAM!

  The shot was deafening in the enclosed space, a thundercp that left a momentary ringing in my auditory sensors. The muzzle fsh illuminated the garage for a fraction of a second, freezing the scene in a macabre photograph.

  The Ganut's head disintegrated. The 9mm bullet, fired at point-bnk range, entered through its right eye and exited through the back of the skull, taking a mass of brain and bone with it.

  The creature's momentum carried it into me, but it was already a corpse. I stepped aside, letting the inert body fall at my feet, staining my boots with thick, bck blood.

  Four bullets remaining in the magazine.

  <[SITUATION SUMMARY:]>

  <[HOSTILE 1 (LEADER): INTACT, REPOSITIONING.]>

  <[HOSTILE 2 (COLUMN): CRITICAL DAMAGE, IMMOBILIZED.]>

  <[HOSTILE 3: ELIMINATED.]>

  The leader Ganut, the one that had leaped first and missed, had nded, skidded, and was turning to attack again. It looked at me, seeing one of its companions dead and the other writhing on the ground. It let out a roar of fury, but hesitated for a second.

  That second was its mistake.

  I couldn't afford to fight the leader while the crippled one could still bite my ankles or crawl toward me.

  I turned toward the Ganut I had kicked against the column. It was trying to get up, screeching, its back legs useless.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered.

  I raised my boot and brought it down with the full force of my hydraulic pistons onto its skull. There was a wet, final sound. The screeching stopped abruptly.

  Now, only one remained.

  The leader.

  We stared at each other across five meters of blood-stained concrete. He was the rgest of all, with ancient scars on his mangy skin and a fifth leg that filed with violent spasms.

  I didn't wait for him to charge. This time, I was the predator.

  I tucked the pistol back into my waist with a swift motion. I wouldn't waste another bullet. This was personal.

  I ran toward him. The Ganut roared and leaped to meet me, cws out.

  At the st moment, I slid under its guard, dodging its swipes and getting into its personal space. With a savage uppercut, I struck its lower jaw. I felt the bone shatter beneath my alloy knuckles. The beast's head snapped back violently.

  Taking advantage of its disorientation, I grabbed its neck with both hands. My fingers sank into the tough, fbby flesh. The Ganut thrashed, scratching my arms with its hind legs, tearing the fabric of my blue shirt, but my arms didn't yield. They were steel presses.

  I squeezed.

  The Ganut gurgled, its red bloodshot eyes looking at me with panic. I could feel its trachea colpsing under my grip, the cartige giving way one by one.

  "Sleep," I said.

  With a sharp, brutal twist of my wrists, I snapped its neck. The beast's body went limp instantly, all its weight falling onto my arms.

  I dropped it to the ground, next to its fallen brothers.

  Silence returned to the parking lot, broken only by the almost imperceptible hum of my own internal systems and the phantom echo of the shot.

  I stood there, in the middle of the carnage. Three monsters y dead at my feet. My clothes were stained with bck blood and dust. My shirt had new tears. But I was intact. Not a scratch on my skin. Not a drop of sweat. My breathing hadn't even altered, because it didn't exist.

  I looked at my hands. They were stained with dark ichor.

  The sensation was strange. There was no disgust. There was no horror like I felt in the shelter. There was… satisfaction. A cold, hard satisfaction. I had been efficient. I had been lethal. I had calcuted the variables, executed the pn, and eliminated the threat with a minimal expenditure of resources.

  Orion Winst would have died in the first ten seconds of this encounter. Era had cleared the room in less than a minute.

  "I'm good at this," I thought, and the realization didn't scare me as much as it should have. "I'm made for this."

  I began to rex my shoulders, lowering my guard. My system started running routine post-combat diagnostics, checking the integrity of my joints after the impacts. Everything was in the green. Everything was perfect.

  I knelt to wipe my hands on the dead Ganut's fur, allowing myself a moment of arrogance, a moment to admire how far I had come from that apathetic student staring at the ceiling.

  It was then, in that moment of victory, that my visual interface fshed deep red.

  <[PROXIMITY ALERT: REAR.]>

  <[DISTANCE: 3 METERS.]>

  <[TARGET DETECTED.]>

  The world froze.

  I had forgotten to count.

  There were five Ganuts in the original pack. I had left one crippled at the police station. I had killed three here.

  That left one. The one that had stayed behind in the alleys. The one I thought I had lost when passing through the gap in the wall.

  It had followed me. Tracking my scent, or perhaps the sound of my footsteps, or maybe the echo of the shot. It had waited in the darkness of the ramp, watching, waiting for me to lower my guard.

  I turned, but I knew it was too te.

  The fourth Ganut didn't roar. It didn't howl. It simply leaped from the shadow of a column behind me, a silent mass of teeth and hate, aiming directly for my exposed neck.

  The system screamed warnings, but physics was relentless. I was off-bance, crouching, and the enemy was already in the air. The machine's arrogance had just met the beast's cunning.

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