This must be the recyg facility. The remains of her siblings floated in capsules lining the walls, kept fresh by the nutrient solution. Brains, legs, well-developed lungs, venom gnds, vocal cords capable of produg sound waves that could destroy walls, and more ans. The picture sent a ripple of cold through her skin. A puzzle colle, a series of impnts, ready to be used to assemble better, stronger, more durable, and deadlier products at a location of the owners’ choosing.

  There were thousands of capsules in here. They stood behind transparent ss in the rooms filled with ice-cold air. Rime covered the steel parts. These ses occupied several floors, rising higher and higher.

  A tube at the ceiling illing a gruesome stream into an acid vat in the ter of this hall. Legs, torsos, and skinless bodies. Anything that did not meet the impossibly high standards went here. The ventition system sucked in the resulting fumes, while the strange liquid passed through the cables leading from the vat and collected into pitch-bck isters at the room’s ers. Filtering devices. The devices spewed gray paste onto the moving lines, and small, elegant meical arms separated it into cubes, f rations for the products. Nothing goes to waste. The humans here were making and remaking them to their liking, sifting for every fw and abusing them for their pleasure. They even made the products feed on their own kin!

  Number One wao speak. How dare you? You will all die. But the sheer inhumanity of this pce choked the words. She had bee a ibal long before she realized it. The pyre e remained, sustained by hatred. These emotions she had experienced before. Love, care for her kihey were all given to the products by these people. They must know them; they certainly showed that they uood fear right now. So why did they do these horrors? Did someone damage them the way they hurt her?

  The monster decided it wasn’t so. She would’ve never hurt that elderly dy who tried to help her. Monsters and people. This might be it. There were some who o be culled. For everyone’s safety, another monster had to set things right when humaoo kind or too weak.

  Whitecoats nervously hid behind the isters or tried to pry open doors leading off the hall. They used psma cutters, a small, pastrument that created a circle of superheated energy at its front. The men and women cut a passageway, and a scream pierced the anxious atmosphere as the first of their number set foot inside and fell back, jerking the ruined limb. Hot air blew from the corridor, frightening the fused people. Not every defense system was offline.

  Their guards fared better, f a barricade that divided the hall in two. Crates, unused capsules, equipment torn from the walls—everything heavy that could be removed was used to assemble the palisade, and the e fiends took up positions on top of it, ready to fire and too worried about attag first and provoking Number One.

  “What is going on?!” She heard Academi’s roar. The man and his bodyguards were across the hall, o the elevator doors. “Why is the mainframe not responding? Where are the bat suits? Where are the troops from above? Emergency repair teams! Turn off the heat and the toxins; the precious personnel are dying, you morons! Ahe system baline; we o tact headquarters.”

  Her cws gouged veins ieel floor, drawing his attentio him uand; let the knowledge that he had lost trol over the situation and his future beloo a mere product settle in. Academi turned, more ahan afraid. He raised his hand, snapped his fingers, and a pain gripped Number One’s entire being, bug her legs. She gasped, clutg her chest, as Academi smiled thinly at the sight of an e fsh beh her skin. Her heart ached, her limbs weakened, and the monster nearly spttered onto the floor. The moment of vulnerability had passed. Each subsequent breath grew stronger. Lig her lips , she rose and fixed her gaze on the man who had detonated a bomb in her chest.

  Their ultimate safety precautiohod had failed. Fool! What an arrogant fool she was! The hints were id bare: why did her kin need a medical facility? They healed fast enough on their own. No, the gover had to put them there to extract the deaths sleeping ihem. Her heart sustained damage, yet it was in one pied healed rapidly. The bst had burned her lungs and torn her veins, but Number One was sure that it wasn’t eveo hinder her. She had made a mistake in believing that she was invulnerable. A mistake she had no iion of repeating.

  “Rid me of this evolutionary cul-de-sac,” Academi growled. “o preserve anything; I’ll e her again from her remains.”

  The e fiend in charge of the defense raised his hand, bellowing orders. His words turned into a shriek as his arm fell, and a cut bisected his body at the waist. The monster was on the barricade, standing amidst the lesser soldiers. Holes appeared is, limbs flew, and spshes of crimson staihe observation windows of the cold ste ses.

  It was a massacre. Taught by the assault on her chest, Number Oook no ces. Her movements were too swift for the e fiends to follow. Where their visual lenses and aim-assist systems tracked her just fihe human bodies could not turn and raise their ons in time. They died in droves, their suits crumpled by the dispced waves of air created by their movements. The monster’s hungry eyes dised those brave enough to try to form a sembnce of an order. She huhem first, trampling several fiends along the way. The force of her strides ripped the power suits, her weight liquidating the bodies inside, often fttening aire side of a guard’s body.

  The fear of her presehe ck of leadership, the inability to track the target had taken its toll on the people, and they panicked, firing blindly everywhere, hitting the c whitecoats. Laser beams bent around power armor, opening holes in the stists. Rockets’ explosions scattered terrified soldiers. The entire barricade shook and colpsed from the explosion of dozens of hastily thrown grenades. It created a rea. Where the suits’ gravity shields could push aside some of the ining shockwaves, the sheer number and iy overloaded those defenses. Stored rockets and grenades on the belts erupted in a series of fiery eruptions, wounding humans, and the poison gas fihe job.

  In the midst of the chaos, Number One danced, her figure shrouded in a crimson mist, wreaking havo everyone arouhe simirity in the screams of dying to those of her own kin ahe mohey didn’t even have the dignity to die as devils; they had to resort to basistincts in vain hopes that it might awaken mer her. It worked. She wanted, she loo stop and talk, to uand them ahem uand her. Number One forced the pity deeper into her chest and turo the vat.

  “We have suffered enough at your hands!” the monster roared, closing in on the bubbling vat. Beams of energy speared the air. Rockets exploded harmlessly at her chest, no longer even deafenihe thick fur fully absorbed the impact, refusing to burn. She tched onto the bottom of the vat, pulling it to the side. “Suffer us now!”

  The brag holding the vat in pce groaned as the moightened her muscles, taking full advantage of the chaning around. Her fingers gouged deep into the steel, creating cracks that ran along the floor as her strength overwhelmed the durability of this unholy tool, tilting it to the left, timeter by timeter. The vat toppled, falling to the side, and the monster jumped on it as the aciditents spilled into the hall.

  A tsunami of death rammed into a wall, c hundreds. Fabrid alloy both melted. The humans emerged, writhing from the searing agony that ate their bodies to the bones. In desperation, they tried to climb higher up the barricade, only to suffocate from the very poisonous gas released by their puter system. The wave stopped, uo break through the hard material of the observation gss, and turned back, c the other part of the hall.

  Above. A familiar voice spoke in Number One’s head. It had a rather meical tone, but she still trusted the voice, lifted her head, and raised her arms in defense.

  Several huons of iron rammed into her, chasing away the darkness with the fshing of its r ehe impact cratered Number Oo the floor with enough force to sio her knees in the solid metal, and she groaned, getting a better look at the ued reinforts.

  It was a walker, a meical suit used by its owners for various purposes. This model resembled a room-sized shelf mounted on four spider-like legs. Two massive ns protruded from the mae’s shoulders, each covered by overpping segmented armor ptes to give the long limbs greater flexibility. Its hands resembled human hands, down to the thumbs. Blue fmes roared from the mae’s engines, spewing smoke. The smooth, gray surface was decorated with painted bumbers, but no pilot was visible. An array of sensors and cameras on the front of the massive body served as ears and eyes for the humaing it from inside, eliminating the need for visual tact.

  It hurt her. The force of this titanic blow reverberated through her bones and ans, hitting her wounded lungs the hardest, f Number Oo strain her body to the limit just to keep this anvil of a fist from throwing her off bance. Her skin cracked from exertion, but there was no fear. Her brain was already w, calg the possible vulnerable spots of her oppo. The monsters running this pce had to die, and as long as there was a single breath in her body, she would tio push towards that goal.

  “A loader, really?” she heard Academi said. The ma close to the elevator, pressing the e’s knob. A force bubble surrounded his ente, defleg the acidic liquid to the side. At his nod, several of his bodyguards began dragging the wounded into the bubble.

  “Hey, boss, how much is this one worth to ya?” the driver asked, his voice magenfold by the mae’s dynamics.

  “Tear her limb from limb and I will grant you a skyscraper, Sergeant,” Academi said dryly.

  “Ow, now that sounds perfey retirement fund…”

  Number One ighe rest of his chatter, fog oask at hand. The mae was tough, with its weight crushing down on her; even she couldn’t toss it aside. She moved a paw up, found a space betweees, and stuck a , cutting wires and breaking pistons. The mae’s middle finger went limp, relieving the pressure.

  “That’s not very nice, Lassie,” the pilot snapped. He pushed the titanic fist, sinking her deeper. A feint. It moved the fist up, opening her for the wide arc of a ing blow to his right limb. “Sit!”

  She weled it. Her legs were stu the floor up to her knees, limiting the monster’s ability to stand on her feet and, in turing her own pressure on the oppo. There was no way the enemy would let her climb out, and Number One wanted nothing to do against the mech’s many legs. As much weight as an arm could bring, a leg could always bring more. The pilot was a fool to give in to his desire to humiliate her instead of going for the kill. The punded on her forearms, oning the monster out of this pitfall. She flew across the room like a falling et.

  The e fiend made her bleed. Where his previous attack had left bruises and torn some of her fur, this one had opened several deep gashes across her arm. The monster ighe wounds, g her paws, movioes to check if she had retained mobility. Everything worked. There was a throbbing ache in every limb, but no worse than the one in her heart. She bear it till the end.

  Success! Now, to capitalize on it. Number One spun in the air, nding her feet on the wall and boung off the reinforced s, which cracked from such a push. The jump brought her to the tube at the ceiling, and she jumped off it, aiming her fall over the mae’s left shoulder. As expected, the pilot raised a mighty limb to catch her, and she grabbed the i middle finger, somersaulting on the wrist while still holding the fihe monster pushed her muscles to their limits, tearing the finger free. Number Ohrew the broken piece at the tube, and the pilot ftte between the walker’s palms, thinking it was Number Orying to get a quie on him.

  The monster dropped off the suit’s back, closing in on the r e its back. The mae nded on the floor, throwing up half-dissolved bodies and wounded with its sheer weight.

  “e out, e out, wherever you are.” The torso made a full turn, dragging the monster ging to the engine along the way. “Be a good test b rat and die already! I don’t have all day…”

  “She is on your back, dolt,” Academi said.

  The engines came back to life, spewing fmes that burned even Number One’s body. She wasn’t invulnerable. That was the hardest thing to remember. The strength in her limbs, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, the urge to kill, the keen senses and the impossibly fast mind all created the illusion of an absolute being. No one is absolute. The monster decided and thrust a paw through an e exploded, leaving cuts all over her body and a nasty burn reag the shoulder, but the mae had lost its bance, flying into the wall. The massive frame smashed through the protective ss, destroying the exhibits, and the crash ihe pilot.

  How much she did not know. But Number One sensed a st of blood at exactly the middle of the metallic chest. Her cws drummed over the frame, pierg the metal, and she climbed to the source of the smell, drooling from a desire to feed. Her fury intensified as the thrashing mae rolled its limb over the ans of her dear kin, trying to free itself from the rubble.

  She sshed at the metal, cutting a thin opening, then slid her fingers inside, widening the entranough to swiorso in, burrowing through rows of cables, wires, pipes, and steel shards toward the pilot’s . Her paws closed on his shoulders, and the man, bleeding from the nose, screamed.

  “Hold yer horses, Lassie; hold on a sec.” He gulped nervously. “A proposition! The way I see it, you got problems with the doc over there, right? Well, I ain’t paid enough to die…”

  “Never should’ve worked here, then.” She pulled him out.

  There was in the . A series of estic straps suspehe pilot in the ter of the , and he operated the mae using every limb, watg the surrounding situation through a dispy in his helmet. She pulled him out, dislog and breaking his limbs, leaving the ruined remains of his arms in the faster than an eye could follow. The crippled pilot arched his back, opening his mouth to scream, and she bit him, dev the man whole in two bites. It tasted like…

  Number Oruggled to find a word. Triumph could’ve sufficed, but something else was happening to her. As the blood of the dead man joined hers and his flesh reached her belly, a jolt rushed through her body. Her bohied, muscles expanded, fangs lengthened. Even her fme-damaged fur returo its bck lushness. Triumph did not cover what was happening to her.

  Reward. The same voice suggested in a whisper, and she accepted it. A reward for defeating a strong oppo. Her transformation wasn’t plete; even the voice wasn’t sure if there per limit to it. The more Number One won and ate, the more of that strange substahe glow, as the whitecoats called it, earing in her body, driving the ge. She faced the hall of the dead and dying; their cries were deafening as the untrolble suit slipped out of the crack, sending the thunderous rumble of a falling building upon its nding. Smells of acid, fear, rage, deg flesh, open wounds, poisonous gas, and assorted chemicals assaulted her nostrils, almost making her head spin. She wao hunt; she wao feed; she wao save the injured or to end their sufferings; she wao apologize or maybe to scream her misery in their faces, but the rage steeled Number One’s resolve, helping the moo focus. It was time to finish the deed.