The blue, digital screen hovered in the air, glowing against the gloomy backdrop of the Zui mountain range. I tried to swipe it away with my good hand, the one that wasn't covered in blood, but my fingers passed right through the light.
"LEVEL 1 JINK USER," I read the text aloud, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. "What is a Jink? Is that what you call this?"
I looked down at my palms. A moment ago, a strange, chilly flame had erupted from them. It didn't burn like the fires I knew from camping trips or stovetops. It felt like sticking my hand into a bucket of ice water, a cold chill that numbed the skin, but still consumed the flesh of the beasts like acid.
I clinched my fist. The blue flame sparked again, flickering between my knuckles.
"Cold," I mumbled, staring at it. "It's freezing."
I shook my hand violently, trying to put it out, and the flame vanished as quickly as it came, leaving a trail of grey smoke that smelled like ozone.
My gaze shifted back to Teresa. Her body lay twisted on the dry earth. The monster parts of hethe horns, the massive legs—were starting to dissolve into a black sludge, leaving behind something that looked vaguely like the human friend I used to know. I fell to my knees beside her, ignoring the protest of my own muscles. My body was healed, yes, the system said "Rapid Healing," but the phantom pain of being torn apart was still lingering in my mind like a bad hangover.
"I'm sorry," I choked out. I reached out to close her eyes, but they were already shut. "I didn't want this. You know I didn't want this."
Destroy the Gimda Core.
Her last words played on a loop in my head. Ginta had said the Core was something valuable, something to protect. Teresa, in her dying breath, begged me to destroy it. And then there was the other thing she said.
Someone messed with your memory.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to summon the face of my mother. I wanted to see her smile, the way she looked when she scolded me for not taking my medicine. I concentrated hard, digging through the fog in my brain.
I saw a woman. I saw brown hair. But the face... it was blurry. Like a photo left out in the rain too long. I tried to remember my father's voice. Nothing. Just static.
"What the hell is happening to me?" I slammed my fist into the dirt.
If my memories were fake, or messed with, then who was I really? Was Hajidan even my real name? Was I just a sick boy who got lucky, or was I something else entirely?
"Tasks pending," the mechanical voice spoke again, making me jump. The screen flickered to a new line of text.
[MAIN OBJECTIVE: LOCATE THE HANDLER (Code 012)]
[SIDE QUEST: ABSORB 0/5 BEAST ESSENCE TO STABILIZE CORE.]
"Handler?" I whispered. "Code 012..."
My blood ran cold. That reminds me of Ginard. The tattoo on his neck.
Could he be the 'Handler.'
I looked toward the north, where the dark clouds were swirling around the peaks of the mountain. That was where Ginta went. He left me behind because he thought I was dead weight, or maybe... maybe he left me here to see if I would survive. To see if the 'Core' would activate.
I needed to move. Staying here with a decomposing body and the smell of blood was a dinner bell for every other mutant in a ten-mile radius. I grabbed the sharp branch I had used to kill Teresa, it was a lousy weapon, but it was better than nothing. I started walking towards the direction Ginta took.
The terrain of Zui Camp Mountain was brutal. It was all jagged rocks and steep inclines that would have killed the old Hajidan in ten minutes. My lungs should have been burning. My heart, the weak little muscle that had failed me for eighteen years, should have been fluttering like a dying bird.
But I climbed. I stepped over fallen logs and navigated through thick, thorny bushes, and I didn't even break a sweat. It felt unnatural. It felt like I was driving a car that I didn't know how to operate.
"Is this the Jink power too?" I asked the air. "Infinite stamina? Or am I just running on adrenaline?"
The System didn't answer. It seemed to pick and choose when it wanted to be helpful.
I walked for what felt like an hour. The silence of the forest was heavy, broken only by the crunch of my boots on dead leaves. But then, the wind shifted.
My nose flared as a smell wafted my notrills. It wasn't the metallic tang of blood this time; it was something sulfurous, like rotten eggs and burning rubber.
I crouched down low behind a cluster of boulders.
Ahead of me, in a small clearing, were three of them.
They weren't human mutants. These looked like wolves, but wrong. Their spines were exposed, bone protruding through grey, mange-ridden fur. Their eyes glowed with a sick, yellow light, and their jaws were unhinged, drooling a thick green liquid that sizzled when it hit the grass.
[BEAST TYPE: SCAVENGER HOUNDS. THREAT LEVEL: LOW.]
[RECOMMENDATION: ELIMINATE TO ABSORB ESSENCE.]
The blue text popped up right in my line of sight.
"Threat level low?" I whispered incredulously. "Are you kidding me? Look at the teeth on those things!"