*
Manhattan at night had already become a chessboard of hell. Alex Mercer cut through the ruins between collapsed buildings. Behind him—footsteps rang out, bones clanging like metal as they gave chase.
Quadruple-jointed limbs. Twisted muscles. A lifeform that seemed to have failed somewhere between man and beast.
Hunter.
The monster came charging after him, its claws striking the asphalt and leaving fine cracks behind.
Alex glanced back and let out a low breath.
"Hah... You are seriously relentless."
He deliberately slowed down. Baiting it. It was the only option available to him now. He planned to draw the Hunter to the military base and bury them all there.
As he leaped onto a rooftop, he was already calculating the route in his head: the remaining distance to the military base, its layout, obstacles along the way, troop deployment.
And—
That was when it happened.
The wind twisted.
No—not the wind. He heard the sound of the very grain of the world being torn apart.
A low-frequency wave unique to the virus spread through the city’s skeleton, as if the air itself were howling, as if the buildings’ concrete were resonating.
Alex’s body instinctively froze.
That wave... he could never forget it.
A viral pulse born from a certain emotion. A vibration that blossomed not from creation, but solely from destruction and loss.
It was not hunger.
Not hunting.
Not flight.
This was—a scream.
And that scream shook the entire city.
"...What is this?"
The words were less a monologue than a breath.
Even the Hunters hesitated at the pulse. A sound like a cry, whether of pain or terror, spilled from the monsters’ throats.
Alex narrowed his eyes and traced the direction of the wave.
South.
The GenTek building.
Ripples were surging out from the precise spot where an enormous mass of virus had torn its way out into the city.
This... was not a mere infected creature running wild. There was an individual there. Something enormous had just awakened.
Alex realized that this pulse was unlike any enemy he had ever faced.
No. It was a more primal, more raw emotion.
"Who the hell snapped at the GenTek building...?"
He muttered. More precisely, what had snapped.
Then the pulse swept across the city once again.
This time it was sharper, soaked more deeply in rage.
At that moment—a building in the distance twisted red, then collapsed as though it had exploded. The shock spread through the air like lightning.
A chill ran down Alex’s forehead.
"Damn... This is more than just an overload."
This was no simple berserker.
It had a will.
The being’s scream brushed faintly against Alex’s senses.
‘I’m going to destroy everything.’
Not a voice, but murderous intent heard as a pulse. It belonged to a being impossibly young, yet shattered beyond despair.
Alex clenched his jaw.
"...I don’t know who it is, but they must be another victim of GenTek."
The Hunter’s claws rang out as it began pursuing him again. But Alex no longer looked back.
He turned toward that pulse.
"Fine. I’ll drag you to the military base first."
The Hunter’s howl erupted behind him. Above the city, several more explosions like red lightning went off.
Alex thought:
This city is falling apart at the hands of two monsters at once.
And with footsteps as sharp as the sound of breaking bones, he drew ever closer to that rampaging being.
*
The downtown district was bright despite the night—but that light did not belong to humanity.
Traffic lights had been ripped free and floated in the air, while street trees, twisted up by their roots, were embedded in building walls. The roads spread red like hot blood, and all that could be heard from every direction were the shrieks of tearing metal and the cries of grinding stone.
And at its center—
There stood a being with white hair blowing wildly like a storm.
Minazuki Kiria.
The shadow of the boy he had once been was already losing all meaning. Biomass pouring from him devoured the entire downtown like red lightning.
The instant he stepped forward, the asphalt swelled like a wave, and three streetlights snapped one after another with a screech.
"■■■■■■■■────────!!!"
That cry was not a voice, but the sound of emotion itself bursting apart.
Sorrow.
Despair.
Rage.
Loss.
Betrayal.
And—destruction.
The virus coursing through the boy’s body amplified every one of those emotions and vomited them out as destruction.
When Kiria brushed past a building, its entire wall tore away like scraps of paper. Office desks, documents, and fragments of glass scattered into the sky like a storm.
He was no longer human. He was becoming the very direction of rage itself.
Vehicles in the city flipped over as they skidded away from him, while a truck rolled upside down along the road before red tentacle-like biomass pierced it and blew it to pieces.
Neon signs along the streets burned out beneath the red waves, and billboards ripped loose and fell as if screaming.
"■■■... More... more..."
The instant biomass dripping from Kiria’s fingertips touched a building wall—
Kwooooom!!!!
An entire floor blew away. Pulverized concrete spread through the air like rain.
The boy’s movements were erratic.
Staggering.
Swaying.
Yet in the next instant, his body would launch forward with a sharpness no adult could keep up with. Whenever his emotions surged, red ripples spread beneath his feet.
—And everything those ripples touched began to lose its shape.
Cars were split in two,
buses bent with heavy groans,
even bags abandoned by civilians—
an unbelievable sight, melting away in midair.
Kiria reached out meaninglessly toward everything that entered his sight.
With one gesture—
An entire street collapsed.
Fragments of buildings that had crumbled in a chain reaction rained from the sky.
He ran while sensing the shadow of his father.
A scent already gone.
A body temperature already extinguished.
A person who would never return.
Yet his senses were cruel.
The scent of his father’s blood kept pulling him toward the GenTek building.
"■■Father■■... Father... Why... why aren’t■ you here...!?"
The wave that was like his voice shattered every window in the city.
Even hundreds of meters away, shards of glass burst upward like fireworks, and the entire street was showered in silver rain.
At some point, a massive fissure opened beneath Kiria’s feet.
Biomass climbed through the crack, destroying the foundations of nearby buildings. A twenty-story building toppled to one side like a scrap of paper pushed by the wind.
The ground shook,
the sky turned red,
and Kiria kept moving forward through it all.
There was only one place he looked toward.
GenTek.
The last place his father had been.
The place his mother vanished.
And the place where all his despair began.
"■■■Everyone...!"
His eyes glowed red. Biomass explosively surged out of his body.
"All of■ you... ■break apart■■■■────!!!"
Right then—
A new vibration that shook the entire downtown approached from behind.
A Hunter’s roar.
But Kiria did not turn around.
He was already consumed by a greater instinct.
The young monster swallowed by rage did not have enough emotion left even to distinguish whether what approached him was ally or enemy.
At that moment, two Hunters burst from a side alley and lunged at Kiria.
Then—
An explosive wave erupted from the boy’s body.
The two Hunters were sent flying into the third floor of a nearby building and did not move again.
Kiria never once looked back.
There was only one emotion left in him—shamefully honest, impossibly cruel.
Over the ruined downtown... he ran without end, toward nothing but destruction.
The city trembled like an echo after its screams had ended. Red fragments constantly surged up between the buildings, and the earth quaked as though a colossal heart were beating beneath it.
At the center of all those waves was the rampaging Minazuki Kiria.
And there was one being who was the first to receive those waves with his entire body.
Alex Mercer.
*
While drawing a pack of Hunters toward the military base, Alex felt a strange silence spreading through the heart of the city.
"...What is this presence?"
It was neither the distinctive scent of a virus nor the beastlike hostility of a Hunter. It was sharper, deeper, and above all...
More despairing.
It was as though every individual cell were crying out like a child who had lost his mother, tearing through the fabric of the air.
And at the heart of that storm—a white-haired boy was charging through a tempest of red biomass with the momentum of a twisted monster.
"...That’s not human."
Before Alex could even finish that thought, the boy caught sight of him.
Kiria’s reddened eyes flashed toward Alex.
There was no language.
Only—
Indiscriminate hatred for every living thing.
In that instant, Alex instinctively understood.
That being could not even recognize him. The entire city was its enemy, and everything it encountered was merely a target to destroy.
Red ripples rose from Kiria’s feet.
And—
The city exploded.
Kwooooom!!!!!
The moment Kiria stomped down, the asphalt exploded and red pillars shot upward. The shock wave hurled Alex away.
Rubble poured from his body as he slammed into a building wall.
"Tch... That’s an absurd amount of power."
But his recovery was quick. Alex was on his feet again in no time.
Kiria charged him without a sound.
Dozens of red afterimages trailed behind him, and his speed was so extreme that human vision could barely even register it.
Alex reinforced his arm to block—but—
Crack!
With a single collision, the bones in his arm broke. The air exploded, flipping over three nearby cars.
A short breath escaped Alex’s mouth.
"This... isn’t an ordinary enemy..."
Before he could finish, Kiria’s fist came crashing down again.
The impact was like the city itself sinking. The outer wall of a building caved in, and every window on the street shattered at once.
Alex’s body gouged through the ground and was shoved back dozens of meters.
Kiria howled like a beast.
"■■■■■■■■───────────!!!"
That voice was the sound of pain too immense for a single boy to bear, tearing its way out of him.
Alex understood instinctively.
This boy had lost someone. And he was far too young to endure the void left behind.
But now—there could be no conversation.
Kiria was no longer in a state where he could understand words.
When he sensed Alex move, Kiria swung his arm.
At that instant—red spikes erupted from the road.
Pillars of biomass like massive tentacles whipped mercilessly toward Alex.
*
Mercer immediately sprang into action, counterattacking on pure survival instinct.
A blade formed along his arm, its dark crimson edge flashing.
"Sorry, but... I have to calm you down."
The blade he swung cut shallowly across Kiria’s shoulder.
But—
The boy could not even feel pain.
Instead, the stimulus triggered another explosion.
A red wave burst from Kiria’s body like lightning.
Krrrrrrrrash!!!
The entire street shook. The ground buckled upward, pillars shattered, and two nearby buildings collapsed at the same time.
From within the red ripples, Kiria threw himself at Alex once more.
Having completely lost all reason.
Alex Mercer instinctively knew this battle was not over.
"...Damn. Is there any way to stop that kid?"
Before the dust on the street could settle, the silhouette of rampaging Kiria spread red across the air.
And in the heart of the city, the two monsters collided once more.
The roars of beasts and the metallic crash of their collision rang out as they tore through midnight Manhattan.
*
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