The killing cold shouldn't have left room for thought, but Kane's mind wandered as he kicked through water that could freeze blood solid. The security officer's pearl, his first taste of evolution, had given him the combat foundation. Now he needed more. His gaze caught on a lab coat drifting like a pale ghost in the flood lights' stark beams, its SubTech logo still pristine after ninety-nine years of preservation in this liquid nitrogen hell.

  "Wonder if you saw it coming," Kane muttered through chattering teeth, his words forming frozen bubbles. "When your experiments started—"

  A Lurker erupted from the shadows, its translucent flesh rippling with adapted muscles built for pressure and speed. Kane's borrowed combat instincts recognized the threat, but these creatures had evolved beyond standard training. The knife found purchase in alien anatomy, but the thing's movements spoke of decades spent perfecting underwater warfare.

  The pearl in its chest pulsed like trapped starlight. Kane's fingers closed around crystallized power, tearing it free with a sound like breaking ice. He swallowed without hesitation this time, knowledge burning down his throat like frozen fire.

  His body convulsed as new instincts wrote themselves into his cells. The cold... it didn't fade, but suddenly he understood it. Felt how to move with it, use it, let his muscles adapt to temperatures that should have killed him instantly. Blood leaked from his nose in frozen streams, but now he could feel his body changing to handle the crushing depths.

  "That's one," he gasped, testing new movements that felt like liquid grace. "Just need to—"

  A Siren's sonic pulse caught him in the chest, but this time he felt how the sound waves rippled through water, how they could shred flesh and pulverize bone. He twisted between the deadly pulses, knife finding the sweet spot under its mutated jaw. The pearl came free in a cloud of corrupted blood.

  The second pearl hit harder than the first. His vision fractured as instincts for sound and pressure crashed through his consciousness. More blood, frozen before it could drift away.

  Through waves of pain and transformation, he caught glimpses of the facility's final hours preserved in this underwater tomb. A clipboard floating like autumn leaves. Security badges with smiling faces. A coffee mug reading "World's Best Lab Tech" rimmed with frost.

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  The third pearl came from another Lurker, its hunting instincts merging with his expanded consciousness. By the fourth, something was changing in his muscles, his bones, his very cells. The combat knife creaked in his grip as enhanced strength began to warp the metal. Frozen blood clouded around his face, but the cold had become almost comfortable as his body adapted to survive in this killing zone.

  The fourth Lurker died as the knife finally gave way, the blade snapping as Kane's augmented strength proved too much for military steel. But he didn't need it anymore. His fingers had grown stronger than the blade, hardened by the pearls' power and the killing cold.

  When the fifth creature - a Siren - came for him, Kane let out a sound that had never been human. His hands found its elongated throat, fingers sinking into mutated flesh. With a roar that sent pressure waves through the frigid water, he tore the thing in half, its pearl coming free in a cloud of tissue that froze instantly in the arctic temperatures.

  "Coming for you next, Moby," he snarled through bloody teeth, swallowing the fifth pearl as tissue and power turned to ice in his hands. His voice carried new depths now, shaped for the crushing pressures of the abyss.

  The sixth pearl nearly broke him. Too much knowledge, too much power, too much transformation. His vision whited out as generations of underwater evolution tried to rewrite his DNA all at once. Combat techniques learned over decades in the depths. Pressure adaptations earned through countless mutations. The horror of watching humanity reshape itself into something hungrier, something older.

  Blood and frost mixed on his face as his enhanced vision caught the name tag on that drifting lab coat: Dr. Sarah Chen. Six hours. Just six hours since he'd woken to this nightmare. An entire lifetime of change compressed into a single shift of the world's clock.

  The Leviathan's bulk moved through the water ahead, its mass blotting out the industrial floods. Kane could feel its stolen minds pressing against his consciousness now, testing his defenses, measuring the strength of his transformation. The creature recognized something of itself in him—the hunger, the capacity for change, the willingness to evolve to survive.

  His hands, still covered in frozen gore from the Siren, clenched and unclenched with power that could now shred steel. The cold had become almost an embrace, his adapted flesh turning arctic temperatures into armor instead of death. Six pearls burned in his blood like frozen stars as the hunt entered its next phase.

  "Let's see what else you've got to teach me," Kane whispered to the approaching horror, tasting copper and frost. "I'm a quick study. Just ask your kids."

  Time to show the apex predator that humanity still had some evolution left to do. Time to rise from these darker, colder ashes.