Chapter 5: Level Up
POV: Marc Wayne
The notification blazed across Marc's vision at three in the morning like digital lightning, jerking him from restless sleep with the sensation of electricity coursing through every cell.
[LEVEL UP!]
[CONGRATULATIONS: LEVEL 2 ACHIEVED]
[INITIATING BIOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION...]
[WARNING: ADAPTATION PROCESS CANNOT BE INTERRUPTED]
Heat flooded Marc's body, starting at his core and radiating outward like liquid fire. His muscles contracted and relaxed in rhythmic waves, density increasing as cellular structures rebuilt themselves according to parameters his human mind couldn't comprehend. His bones ached with deep, penetrating pressure as they reinforced and lengthened by millimeters.
"This is wrong," he thought, gripping the edges of his makeshift cot as his body transformed around his consciousness. "Humans don't level up. Humans don't get stronger through arbitrary numerical progression. This is insane."
But insane or not, it was happening. His reflexes sharpened until he could hear his own heartbeat with crystalline clarity. His skin tingled as nerve clusters rewired for faster processing. When he held up his hands, they moved with precision that had never been there before—steadier, more controlled, like the tremor of perpetual anxiety had been surgically removed.
[BIOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION COMPLETE]
[STR: 10 → 12 (+2)]
[DEX: 10 → 12 (+2)]
[VIT: 10 → 13 (+3)]
[5 BONUS POINTS AVAILABLE FOR DISTRIBUTION]
[CURRENT ALLOCATION RECOMMENDED BASED ON SURVIVAL PATTERNS]
Marc stared at the translucent interface floating in his vision, processing the implications. He wasn't just in a game world—he was a game character now. His body operated according to RPG logic, with stats that could be distributed like video game currency. The mathematical certainty of it was terrifying.
"What am I becoming?" The question escaped as a whisper in the pre-dawn darkness of the storage room.
The System didn't answer directly, but new options cascaded across his vision:
[ALLOCATE BONUS POINTS]
[STR: Increase melee damage, carrying capacity]
[DEX: Improve accuracy, reaction time, dodge chance]
[VIT: Enhance health, regeneration, disease resistance]
[INT: Boost tech damage, hacking speed, learning rate]
[Current recommendation: +2 VIT, +2 DEX, +1 INT]
[Reasoning: Prioritize survival and adaptability]
Marc hesitated, his finger hovering over the mental interface. Each point represented a fundamental alteration to who he was as a person. But the logic was inescapable—on Omega, being faster and tougher meant staying alive longer.
He confirmed the allocation and immediately felt the changes: his breathing came easier, his vision sharpened further, and when he experimentally flexed his fingers, the movement carried a fluid grace that belonged to someone who'd never existed before this moment.
[ALLOCATION COMPLETE]
[ACTIVE GENE SLOTS: 2/2 AVAILABLE]
[CURRENT LOADOUT: [Vorcha Regeneration I] [Empty Slot]]
[DATABASE CONTAINS: Batarian Four-Eyed Vision (67% complete - scan incomplete)]
A second gene slot. Marc experimented with the interface, learning he could equip and unequip genetic modifications like changing clothes. The System warned him about adaptation periods and frequent changes, but the empty slot represented possibility—another step away from baseline humanity.
He tested unequipping the Vorcha Regeneration and immediately felt vulnerable, his enhanced constitution dropping back to merely exceptional. The sensation of weakness was so acute he quickly re-equipped the gene, relief flooding through him as his accelerated healing resumed.
"I'm addicted to power I've had for a week," he realized with dark humor. "That's probably not healthy."
A soft knock interrupted his experimentation. Anto's voice carried through the door with careful neutrality: "Marcus? You awake? Heard some noise."
Marc quickly dismissed the System interface. "Yeah, just... restless. Bad dreams."
"Right." The pause suggested Anto didn't believe him but wasn't pressing. "When you're ready, we need to talk. About yesterday. About what you did in that fight."
The memory of combat returned unbidden—the way he'd moved faster than training should have allowed, the regeneration that had kept him standing through wounds that should have dropped him, the growing certainty that he was becoming something other than human.
An hour later, Marc found himself in the alley behind the bar, watching Anto arrange empty bottles as makeshift targets.
"You survived well yesterday," the Turian said without preamble, checking the action on a training pistol. "But you fought like someone who learned combat from entertainment vids. Lots of enthusiasm, no technique."
"I've never been in a real fight before," Marc admitted, which was true enough. Software developers from Seattle didn't typically engage in armed combat.
"Could tell." Anto's mandibles clicked in what might have been amusement. "But you've got good instincts buried under all that panic. Fast learner, too. Saw you processing the fight even while it was happening."
The training began simply—basic stances, how to hold a weapon properly, fundamental principles of leverage and positioning. But as they worked, Marc felt his System absorbing every detail, cataloguing movement patterns and tactical concepts with inhuman efficiency.
[SKILL DEVELOPMENT DETECTED: COMBAT FUNDAMENTALS]
[CURRENT LEVEL: NOVICE 12%]
[TURIAN MILITARY DOCTRINE ANALYSIS: 23% COMPLETE]
[INTEGRATION RECOMMENDATIONS AVAILABLE]
Anto demonstrated a disarming technique, moving with the economical precision of someone who'd made violence a science rather than an art. Marc attempted to copy the movement and succeeded on the third try—a learning speed that made the Turian's eyes narrow with calculation.
"You pick this up fast," Anto observed, adjusting Marc's grip on the practice weapon. "Unnaturally fast. Like your body already knows what to do and your brain just needs to catch up."
The accuracy of that assessment made Marc's skin crawl. His enhanced reflexes and processing speed were turning basic instruction into rapid skill acquisition. He was becoming a weapon, one small lesson at a time.
"Is that a problem?" Marc asked, trying to keep his voice casual.
"Depends." Anto stepped back, studying him with professional assessment. "Cerberus makes monsters that think they're still people. Question is whether you're one of their success stories or one of their failures."
The words hit like a physical blow. Marc wanted to deny it, to insist he was still the same person who'd woken up in that lab a week ago. But his reflection in the bar's grimy windows showed someone else—stronger, faster, more dangerous. Someone who healed from wounds that should have been crippling.
"I'm trying not to be a monster," Marc said finally, the honesty surprising him.
"Good." Anto's voice carried rare warmth. "Monsters don't worry about being monsters. They just are." He handed Marc a different weapon—a knife balanced for throwing. "Show me what you learned about leverage."
The training session lasted three hours. By the end, Marc's Combat Fundamentals had reached Novice 25%, and his movements carried a fluidity that spoke of genuine competence rather than panicked improvisation. But with each successful technique, each perfectly executed throw, he felt himself sliding further from the person he'd been.
[SKILL MILESTONE ACHIEVED: COMBAT FUNDAMENTALS (NOVICE 25%)]
[BONUS UNLOCKED: +1 Accuracy in armed combat]
[BIOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION: 2.3% COMPLETE]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO PEAK HUMAN PERFORMANCE: 47 LEVELS]
The notification made Marc laugh, a sound edged with hysteria. "Forty-seven levels. I'll be an action hero by level fifty, assuming I survive that long."
"What?" Anto asked, but Marc was already composing a message on his omni-tool.
"Thanks for the lesson," he typed to Anto, even though the Turian was standing right there.
The reply came immediately: "Don't thank me. Just stay alive long enough to make it worthwhile."
That night, as Omega's artificial sky cycled toward its approximation of sunset, Marc lay on his cot and tested his new capabilities. His enhanced dexterity made simple tasks effortless—threading a needle in dim light, catching objects without looking, movements that flowed like water rather than the jerky precision of baseline human motor control.
But with each demonstration of his growing inhuman capabilities, the question returned: What am I becoming?
The System offered an answer with characteristic bluntness:
[USER BIOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION: 2.3% COMPLETE]
[CURRENT STATUS: ENHANCED BASELINE HUMAN]
[PROJECTED FINAL STATUS: APEX ADAPTIVE ORGANISM]
[GENETIC DIVERSITY: 1 SPECIES INTEGRATED, 4 SPECIES PARTIALLY CATALOGUED]
[IDENTITY RETENTION: 94.7%]
Identity retention. The System was tracking how much of his original personality remained as he transformed into something else. The clinical precision of it was horrifying and fascinating in equal measure.
"Ninety-four point seven percent," Marc thought. "Still mostly human. Still mostly me."
But he wondered what would happen when that percentage dropped further. At what point would Marcus Wayne cease to exist, replaced by something that wore his memories like a comfortable disguise?
Outside his window, Omega's neon chaos painted shifting patterns on the walls. Somewhere in the station's depths, Cerberus was hunting him. Somewhere else, the Collectors were beginning their harvest of human colonies. And here in a storage room that smelled of alien alcohol and industrial lubricants, a software engineer from Seattle was transforming into something the galaxy had never seen before.
Marc closed his eyes and tried to remember what coffee tasted like, what rain sounded like on a Seattle morning, what it felt like to be fully, completely human.
The memories were already fading, replaced by the sharper, more immediate reality of enhanced senses and impossible strength. He was becoming something new, one gene at a time, one level at a time.
The only question was whether he'd still be human enough to remember why that mattered.
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