Chapter 21
The Beginnings
General Michael Vyorn stood still in a slightly chilled room, draped in a full-body hazmat suit, exposed to the sight that left him utterly speechless: a creature unlike any other on the planet lay strewn on the cold, steel table, exposed to the array of figures that stood near and about him. He, among others, was bearing witness to the autopsy of the creature, dissection of its every part, by one of the leading experts in the field, Dr. Sonya Grey. They collectively dubbed the creature a Hexawolf due to its six eyes and a wolf-like appearance, and the more Michael listened about the creature's crude biology, the more rattled he got.
"The creature measures at approximately 2.3 metres long," Dr. Sonya had a soothing, calm, and even voice, as though she was performing just another normal autopsy on an animal that she'd done hundreds of autopsies on rather than a completely new, entirely unique species. "Silver-grey pelt is reminiscent of a Canis lupus. Preliminary examination suggests that the animal's skeletal structure is a strange fusion of canine and hominid characteristics, particularly in the pelvic and lower lumbar regions. My initial theory is that this is what allows the animal to alternate between a quadruped and biped stances with ease.
"The absence of the lower jaw does not appear to be due to the trauma–there are no obvious wounds or tears in the vicinity, and it seems as though this was an evolutionary construction. The upper jaw is elongated and firm and has sharp teeth spaced irregularly–forty-two teeth, to be precise. This number is rather peculiar as wolf species normally do have forty-two teeth, twenty in the upper jaw and twenty-two in the lower, but the Hexawolf has all forty-two of its teeth growing out of the upper jaw. Furthermore, there are visible holes at the bottom of four individual teeth–canines, I prescribe–which suggests either they are used as mechanisms for ejecting or sucking substances.
"The animal's tongue is muscular and tactile, oddly similar to an octopus tentacle. From the video footage provided, it seems to use it to affirm its grip once its upper jaw bites into flesh…" the voice regaled tales of a creature that seemed utterly fantastic, yet also… oddly normal. It had the features that they all heard about, just in an arrangement that they had never seen before. Eventually, Dr. Sonya and her team split open the creature's skull and found something even stranger than all their previous findings.
"Curiously, there are three fist-sized brains inside its cranial cavity. We will have to examine them more closely in order to determine how they interconnect or even if they do interconnect or simply operate independently. I suggest a more detailed analysis on the brains as well as the auxiliary pump organ we have discovered near its heart as well as a micro-analysis of its digestive enzymes."
The room fell silent as Dr. Sonya concluded her initial autopsy of the creature. While a lot of her findings were shallow and almost mundane-sounding, that was perhaps even more terrifying than if they had been beyond extraordinary. The creature, by and large, was a wolf–it shared all its most basic characteristics, as well as overall aesthetic, but it also had additions, of sorts, that don't seem… right.
"How do you explain its acidic saliva, Dr. Sonya?" one of the people in the room asked, prompting the woman deep in her fifties to reply.
"I imagine it is due to the structure of its singular jaw," she replied. "As it can't chew, and its throat cannot expand like in some other animals, it uses the saliva to break down large chunks into a smaller, more digestible form."
"So, it is not used as a weapon?"
"It could be, I suppose, but as I do not know how it all functions, I cannot answer. I'd really like a live specimen to examine."
"We are working on it," General Michael spoke out as he walked up to the creature, observing it cautiously. "I just have one question."
"What is it, General?"
"How can it survive on Earth?" It was a simple question, yet it was the most important question that weighed on his mind. This creature clearly evolved and lived elsewhere–not on Earth. And yet, it seemed perfectly capable of breathing the Earth's air and surviving off of Earth's nutrients.
"... I don't know," the woman replied honestly and with a sigh. "Structurally, it looks like it did evolve here, on Earth. It has lungs that are similar to a wolf's, a heart that clearly pumps oxygenated blood, veins, arteries, and its blood–despite the hue–isn't all that different from a wolf's compositionally. For all intents and purposes, I hypothesise that wherever this creature did evolve, that place is extremely Earth-like."
Michael retreated into his office soon after the autopsy was finished. Dr. Sonya and her team had a whole host of tests to run that would take some time, and he had a whole host of paperwork to fill out and plans to execute. Every day was growing stranger in the new world. Strange alien orb, strange, mutated creatures, and he was even getting reports of strange, spacetime phenomena occurring in several places in the U.S.
A mountain weighed on him, but the pressure itself did not bother him. He did not climb as far as he did in the ranks by behaving meekly under pressure–no, he thrived under it, loved it, enjoyed it. But it was the sort of pressure within which he knew how to operate. This, though, was a newfound one–one that brought a world of new possibilities that he could not account for. He could only sigh and continue requesting more personnel from the Pentagon, despite knowing that every other outpost was likely sending the same requests. Still, he had to try.
**
Tara and Ethan returned about an hour before dawn. They would have returned earlier, but Tara still spent nearly half an hour after travelling through the tunnel just trying to recover. Though she knew that they'd likely end up going through hundreds of those Tunnels in the future and that going through them would make them that much stronger, she dreaded the thought.
Ronald was wide-awake and waiting for them in the kitchen, his eyes bleeding curiosity as they walked in. Neither, however, said much as they were both covered in dried blood and so, one by one, they went to take a shower and rejuvenate however slightly, while Ronald quickly brewed a fresh pot of coffee.
It was almost half an hour later that the three sat down in the living room and Ronald could hear the account of what happened. Tara regaled the tale of going through the Tunnel, first and foremost, and compared it to getting concussed for 80 hours straight, then going on to explain the rest of their journey, as well as the final boss and the rewards they'd reaped.
"... damn. So, it's like a dungeon in a game, huh?" Ronald commented.
"Yup, pretty much," Tara nodded. "Hey, why aren't they called dungeons?" she turned to Ethan who was simply silently sipping away at his coffee.
"Because there ain't no dragons in them."
"..."
"..."
"Boo."
"Lame."
"One of your worst ones yet."
"Eh," Ethan shrugged. "How the hell should I know? You want me to use my butt antenna to speak to my alien overlords and ask them?"
"Make that joke enough times," Tara said. "And we might just start believing that you do have an antenna up your butt."
"Well, as someone with something up your butt, you ought to know," Ethan smirked as Tara groaned.
"All this butt talk isn't good for my colon," Ronald interjected. "So, can we go back to planning for the future? She's already got two abilities up on me. We gotta even the playing field out."
"Don't worry about it," Ethan said dismissively. "I got a gut feeling there's going to be plenty of chances."
"Ah, yes, the ever-elusive gut of Ethan–wait, what's your last name?"
"I'm terribly hurt that–"
"Yeah, yeah, so what is it?"
"... Flynn."
"Ah, yes, the ever-elusive gut of Ethan Flynn," Tara finished the thought.
"Elusive? Yes, that… makes sense. I guess."
"Alright, forget the grumpy grump. This snake thing, was it really eight feet long?" Ronald turned to Tara and the two started to completely ignore Ethan, descending into their own world where every time Tara retold the story, parts of it… started to morph.
On the side, Ethan listened in silence, occasionally smiling. He scarcely believed in serendipity–in fact, one of his silent, taboo thoughts that he never admitted out loud was that the movie was one of the most boring rom-coms he'd ever seen in his life–but he did believe in cosmic coincidence. And it was a cosmic coincidence that he ran into Tara and Ronald that night and not some other two kids. No, wait, there was also that third one…
It was quite strange that they seemed to have forgotten he'd killed their companion that night, but Ethan was no stranger to human memories being glazed over by greed and want. Either way, they were a success. Though he was honest with Tara when he told her why he wasn't recruiting just yet, he also left a very important part out: a vast, vast, vast majority of First Generation Awakened were worthless to him. They were barely better than just top-tier fighters right now, and could not be used in any meaningful capacity.
In fact, there was only one person in the entire city and its vicinity that Ethan knew he absolutely had to recruit, no matter what. Chances were that Tara and Ronald, in his past life, died out here in the mountains–perhaps due to the elements and perhaps due to a Kaynul–and never got the chance to develop. The success chance of people actually becoming something as Awakened was depressingly low–for the First Generation Awakened, at least. The one success story of his hometown was Elijah, a proto-priest of sorts. He died some four years after the Descent, rather tragically, and well before anyone understood the extent of his talents. It would only be about fifteen years later when a Second Generation Awakened with the same Class as him became the world-leading support type that everyone recognised the value that was lost so early on.
Ethan would have to capture him, but it wouldn't be easy. Elijah was like Tara in many ways–just on steroids. He was beyond righteous, ethics-bound, moralist, and went out of his way to save people no matter the circumstances. The reason he died was because he fell into the classic trap of the damsel-in-distress that turned out to be pirates-on-the-hunt. While Tara was righteous, she was also a hypocrite–and she was greedy. Elijah… Elijah wasn't.
He was genuinely good. There was a good reason that the man was remembered for over twenty years after he'd died in a world as memorable as the post-Descent Earth. It truly did feel like something was ripped from the world on that day–his death was viewed as a seminal path toward the absurdly post-apocalyptic world that the Earth would truly become some six-seven years later.
However, where there was a will there was also a way–while truly righteous people were difficult to rope in, once they were in, they were in for life. And Ethan didn't have to lie or cheat or pretend–his goals, in broad strokes, did align with Elijah's principles. The difference was that Ethan's morality bent on… quite a curve, while Elijah's didn't.