"What have you done?"
The hunchbacked old man shouted at the second-youngest man in the room, who was visibly shaking, sweat rolling down his face.
"It... it... was him! He put me up to this, saying Uche hadn't bled once since he started this job. So, he told me to do this."
The second-youngest man stammered, pointing shakily at one of the middle-aged men operating the large circular saw.
"Idiot! I only asked you to find a way to injure him so he could bleed. After all, he's the only one who hasn't gotten a wound since starting this job, but you've gone too far."
The middle-aged man argued, a hint of worry creeping onto his face.
"Take him to the hospital, now!"
The old man shouted as Uche continued screaming in pain.
But just as they moved towards him, Uche stopped screaming. He picked up his severed arm with his other hand, took a few steps back toward the exit, and, with tears rolling down his face, said,
"No need to take me to the hospital. I guess it's my last day here."
Suddenly, tiny blood-red tentacles emerged from the stump, creeping toward his severed arm. The tendrils, like a swarm of bloody worms, wrapped around the dismembered limb, pulling it toward the stump. Uche screamed in agony once more, but when the screams subsided, his arm was reattached, seamlessly.
Everyone backed away, expressions of fear clearly written on their faces, lips trembling as they struggled to find the right words. The old man, however, was the only one who didn't react in fear. Instead, his eyes were wide with a single word escaping his mouth:
"Connect."
"Connect?"
Everyone echoed, turning their heads toward the old man. Before they could turn back, Uche had already bolted from the workshop.
"Get him! He must not escape—he's a walking vault full of gold!"
The old man shouted as Uche disappeared out of the room.
---
Monster
---
Connect
---
Monster
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Connect
---
A young man was walking down a quiet street at night, with only a few pedestrians around and cars sporadically passing by. The man, dressed in a black hoodie and pants, with headphones on his head, whistling away as he walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets, his head down, and a short brown guitar strapped to his back.
Just as he reached a three-way intersection and prepared to make a left turn, a small white bus suddenly zoomed forward and screeched to a stop in front of him, blocking his path. He took two steps back as the bus door slid open, revealing a middle-aged man sitting alone on a bench inside. The man had raven-black hair, glowing skin, and large murdering eyes, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips as he smiled at the hooded young man.
"Wow, those lovely eyes... I want them."
The man said as he jumped down from the bus, staring intently.
"I want those eyes."
Before the young man could react or flee, something struck him from behind. In the next instant, he blacked out.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in an unknown location. His eyes were missing, and his abdomen had been sliced open. It all happened so fast after he woke. His body healed within a minute, but a strange sensation pulled him toward his missing eyes. He could also hear a trembling voice, terrified, screaming for help and calling for guards.
He managed to retrieve one of his eyes before the guards arrived, forcing him to escape through a window of a 21-story building. His leg broke in the fall, but it healed within a minute, allowing him to keep running.
---
Uche jolted awake in his room, clutching his head after experiencing a string of nightmares. An eye patch covered his left eye, and terror flickered across his face as he recalled the nightmare's content. Though, it wasn't really a nightmare—just the resurfacing memories of the horrors he'd been through.
He touched the black eye patch and sighed.
"Ah, another one added to the collection."
Uche always had these nightmares after surviving a new life-or-death situation. Each time, all the traumatic memories would rush back, up to the most recent one.
It had all started when he was five, when he first discovered his body's strange ability to heal itself from nearly any injury, like some kind of immortal. Although the power seemed incredible, the sight wasn't. His friends always saw him as a monster.
He didn't understand what was wrong with him back then and constantly asked his grandmother—whom he lived with—but she would always tell him not to get hurt or to learn to protect himself. This troubled him because people around him, at school and at home, treated him like an outcast. His friends were always terrified of him.
Another strange thing he didn't understand was the intense hunger he felt in his stomach whenever he sustained a serious injury. It was as if all his energy had been drained. Whenever this happened, his grandmother would feed him countless servings of cooked meat. He never understood why.
Eventually, Uche couldn't take it anymore. He realized that his grandmother knew something about his condition but was keeping it from him. He threatened to leave home if she didn't tell him the truth. To his surprise, she was fine with it. His grandmother didn't protest, leaving Uche no choice but to follow through on his threat.
That was where he made a grave mistake.
Living outside his grandmother's care was a living nightmare. Not only were people terrified of him because of his unnatural body, but others sought him out for that very reason. He was forced to live his life in hiding.
The one thing he'd learned from his grandmother's advice was to protect himself and avoid getting hurt. Whenever people discovered his body's capabilities, they reacted in one of two ways: sheer horror, fear, and hatred, labeling him a monster and running away, or the opposite—admiration, jealousy, and greed. This latter group, though small in number, would call him "Connect" and chase after him.
He never understood the second reaction—until he started researching the term "Connect."
His research revealed that "Connect" referred to an urban legend of a race of evolved humans, immortals. These people, few in number, had extraordinary healing abilities. At one point, about fifty of them or so, had coexisted with humans, but tensions arose because humans wanted to experiment on them to achieve immortality, but these people disagree to be used as a lab rat and war was on the verge of breaking out between the two races.
But the humans did their best not to go against them, although, the humans outnumbered them in terms of population, but they were wary of them as little as they might be, not only did they know next to nothing about them and found no way to kill them, but they also wished to experiment on them.
Eventually, the Connect people vanished without a trace, just as they have appeared, without an origin.
Learning this, Uche realized he was in big trouble. He knew nothing about the Connects, their strange powers, or how he became one. He was certain it wasn't in his bloodline. Both his parents had died when he was born—his mother during childbirth and his father in a car accident soon after, he never saw them for once. If they had been Connects, neither would have died so easily.
Now, Uche's biggest concern was the lab he had recently escaped from. The old man there had called him a Connect, and Uche knew they likely had CCTV footage of him. If his identity were exposed, it would be disastrous.
His only hope was that the traffickers wouldn't share the footage. They couldn't afford to, lest they be arrested for their illegal activities. But they would also want to keep Uche for themselves, as an endless supply of organs.
"Am I going to have to run again? Damn, I just moved in less than six months ago."
Uche knew the traffickers would be after him soon.
As he mulled over his next move, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his empty eye socket, right beneath the eye patch.
"Arghh!"
He yelped, pressing his palm over the patch as something strange began happening to him.