The Forest King
Ecosapiens Trilogy, Book 1
By Garret Kane Valentine

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ACT 1

CHAPTER ONE
The Green Guard 

Rei De Floresta's nose felt like a colony of fire ants had been busily excavating a new home deep behind his face. His scent receptors were mutating again, and he could smell something wrong three miles away.

It’s ominous… something… dangerous. Yet… He inhaled. Familiar.

His senses, perpetually dialed to a thousand since birth, screamed at him. Still, after six hours perched high in a Maracuya tree in the Amazon's oppressive heat, even his preternatural instincts had begun to dull.

He pushed the thought aside. Gotta be tough as hell, he thought, recommitting himself to the task. As tough as them. Tougher even. Can't get caught. No matter what. He wanted—needed—to study them, learn all their training. 

The Green Guard would be arriving soon.

He scoffed, I'm way too sneaky anyway. I'll never get caught. After all, it's my third friggen time tailing them, and nobody’s caught so much as a whiff of me.

Guarda Verde, The Green Guard, he mused, recalling with perfect photographic memory the description his father had once given him: a lethal mix of 25 specially-trained, highly sophisticated, and privately-funded indigenous Amerindians and international ex-military protecting what's left of the Amazon rainforest from deforestation and military expansion through force. And that's just their Amazon division. Green Guard operates globally… So damn coo… He stopped short, holding back a sudden urge to sneeze.

That smell again… He winced. He made a final uneasy attempt to pinpoint it, but his mind was swimming. It was getting dark, and the mist-cloaked canopy pressed down on him like a weighted blanket. Crickets erupted into their evening symphony. Rei's tongue scraped across cracked lips. He’d been sweating all day with nothing to drink.

So thirsty.

He fumbled for his cargo pocket, his fingers clumsy with dehydration. The last passionfruit rolled into his palm, its waxy skin promising fleeting relief.

He brought it to his lips and froze. His ears twitched. There was rustling below. He craned his neck. The broad leaves of a palm plant parted, moved by an invisible force.

It's them! His mind screamed. A sudden adrenaline rush caused his hand to spasm, nerves firing uselessly. The passion fruit fell from his grasp.

Time stretched like heated glass. If that fruit hits the ground I’m pulp. His body reacted before his mind caught up, lunging out with desperate fingers. The fruit's hull settled into his palm a heartbeat before disaster.

He sighed through his nostrils and leaned back gently against the tree's trunk, barely registering the sticky warmth of sap that trickled down his nape.

"SAT's out of range," said a disembodied man's voice.

That's Padjre, Rei thought. Although there was often change over with platoons from other regions, he knew every last member’s name—idolized them—but was always too nervous to talk to anyone. They seemed more like gods than people.

"Optics off," commanded a deeper female voice. Portuguese vowels rolled beneath the words.

Rei pressed himself harder against the tree, so hard it felt like he was willing his body to meld with the bark. And that's Jaguara. His heart thundered in his ears. Jaguara was the leader and easily the scariest one of all.

One by one, figures materialized in the clearing. It was like watching ink spill into human-shaped voids.

Mimifauge, he marveled, eyes widening, once again imbibing, trance-like, the teachings of his Doctorate father. Bio-mimetic camouflage: transparent, synthetic, airbrushed colonial organisms whose microscopic neurons communicated as a singular entity. He knew everything about them. He knew a lot about everything, really. Both his parents made sure of that. Too much so, if he had anything to say about it.

Like a cephalopod's color-changing pigment cells, he continued in his finest dad imitation. Each synthetic chromatophore and iridophore altering color, texture, and even heat displacement to blend continuously through the surrounding environment, creating an average illusion of 72 percent invisibility… up from 62 only a few months earlier. He almost giggled but managed to stifle it as Jaguara retook his attention with a commanding gesture, instructing her team to fan out.

She was terrifying in costume—her wide, uncompromising brow painted blood red, a plume of blue feathers encircling her head and draping her shoulders, large wooden hoops elongating her earlobes dangled in defiance of practicality like some ancient war deity, and an enormous automatic rifle slung over her back. She crossed her arms, making her powerful forearms appear even more menacing.

Rei noted that the special goggles they wore—ones that could detect the biomarker isotopes deliberately injected in the Mimiflauge to make everyone visible to each other—were pulled up to her forehead like devil horns. She managed to make everything seem threatening, even the goggles. His fingers mirrored her movements without his consent.

The rest of the team shifted into visibility. Padjre—the giant, Pepe—the technician, Sam—the gentle one… He studied the new touches they'd put on their gear—a few had even come as gifts from him during their brief visits to his home. All manner of flowers, feathers, beads, and war paint sourced from the surrounding forest adorned their helmets, armor, and weapons, all of which paid homage to the Indigenous tribal hunters and warriors that came before them.

They all look incredible…

For a moment, he saw himself part of the team, wrapped in living camouflage, a part of something greater—but the daydream quickly dissipated as Jaguara took position directly beneath his perch.

Too close. Sweat trickled down Rei's spine. He held his breath, lungs burning.

"Where's Vanté?" Jaguara said with a healthy measure of annoyance.

A twig snapped.

"I'm here, Chief. Sorry, forgot to—"

"Like panthers, Vanté," Jaguara growled. "Not elephants."

Vanté's smile flashed in the dimming light, signature white teeth stark against his dark skin.

Rei gripped the tree hard. Vanté’s here? His mind screamed. Why didn't he tell me he was going on patrol? The familiar sting of exclusion burned. I'm fourteen now, only six years younger than him. If he can do it, I can!

The heat of anger flooded Rei's body. His hand throbbed; he was squeezing the branch so hard. He tried to relax it, but he couldn't. He looked at his knuckles, and where pale flesh should have been, mottled brown bark now spread across his skin, creeping up his arm. Thin roots tendriled across his skin like veins, and ultra-thin mycelium threads of moss webbed like patches like hair.

Another mutation. Not again! Panic closed his throat. He clawed at the spreading texture, each frantic movement destabilizing his perch.

His foot slipped.

“Gah!”

The world whirled–a dizzying green, brown, and blue kaleidoscope.

Impact.

Pain lanced through his body as he struck the ground. He blinked, willing his blurred vision to clear and his lungs to remember their function. As his vision steadied, Rei was encircled by several Green Guard members, all glaring down at him. Their expressions ranged from barely contained laughter to absolute fury. Whatever their expression, every one of their guns was trained directly on him.

Jaguara's face entered into view directly above, eclipsing them all. Her synthetic guide bird Espirito landed on her shoulder, tilted its head at him.

Rei tried not to move. To make himself small. Some strange instinct to play possum, as though they would leave him unmolested if he was still enough.

"Rei Dei!" Jaguara said, her teeth closed.

"Don't shoot?" Rei replied, lifting his palms in mock surrender. As he raised his arms, he noticed his left hand had returned to its normal shade and texture.

He’d always had ‘gifts,’ as his mother called them, or ‘epi-evolutions’ as his father did, but whatever the name, their increasingly sudden and unannounced nature was becoming a real issue.

"So much for stalking like panthers," said Vanté.

"I'm sorry," Rei stammered, words tumbling out. "Please don't tell my parents. I promise I'll never—"

“Promises only hide lies.”

Vanté knelt beside the crushed remains of a flower Red had landed on, its fragile, ivory pedals now a mangled mess. "You destroyed a Tiger Orchid, my favorite!"

Rei's eyes darted between them. “I’m sorry!”

Jaguara's face darkened. "Meu Deus! We could have killed you… You know that if anyone discovers you…" She trailed off and extracted a rope from her pack. "You will have to answer for this.”

As Jaguara spun him around, lashing his hands behind his back, Rei's mind raced through potential punishments. The familiar ones–being grounded, losing futebol privileges–seemed trivial now. Real fears gnawed at him: stockades, latrine duty, ration reduction. He'd even seen Jaguara knock a young soldier unconscious for not making his bed.

"Tie him to the tree," she commanded her troop. "Give him time to think. We'll get him on the way back."

“No, wait!" Bile rose in Rei's throat, bitter and insistent. He swallowed hard, willing his breakfast to stay put. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. In and out. In and out. He tried to steady himself, but fear had already taken hold.

As his vision began to tunnel, something shifted. The air around him cooled and calmed, filling his lungs. It overpowered his senses, obliterating all thoughts of punishment.

What's happening? Rei wondered, his panic momentarily forgotten. This change wasn’t in the air; it wasn’t external. It was inside him. The rapid breaths were causing yet another epi-evolution… not again!

The cacophony of jungle sounds—crickets, soldiers' murmurs, Jaguara's commands—fell away. In their place, that earlier scent returned tenfold, all-consuming. His nostrils flared, and scent receptors resumed their torturous burning.

"What is that smell?" Rei said, unable to help himself.

"Silêncio," Jaguara replied as her soldiers pinned him to the tree he'd been hiding in and lashed their rappelling ropes tightly around him.

"Don't you smell it?"

"Not this again," Vanté groaned.

"No, Rei," Jaguara replied curtly. ”We don't smell anything. For the last time, we never smell 'it.' Not the rotten fruit over a kilometer upriver. Not the lingering odor of DMS on a passing flock of birds. We never smell what you do."

"This is different," Rei could hear his voice now, distant and detached. "It's nine o'clock, 2000 meters upwind. It's…"

His voice trembled as he whispered, "It smells like… me."

"Thank you for the warning. I'll keep this in mind,” Jaguara replied. "Vanté, wrap him in your poncho and turn on its Mimiflauge."

Vanté nodded. Without eye contact, he knelt, took a poncho out of his backpack, and fitted it around Rei like tucking a child into bed. He turned on the Mimiflauge by activating an electric pulse, and in an instant, Rei became nothing more than a sliver of adolescent face suspended in the tree trunk.

“I’m sorry about the flower,” Rei whispered.

“I’m sorry too,” Vanté replied, trying to hide his smile.

Vanté turned and walked away, and as quickly as they’d appeared, they disappeared back into the dense wall of foliage. A Tree Viper–Bothrops Taeniatus to be exact–unfurled itself, locking into Rei’s eyes. But Rei didn’t budge. His whole body fell numb, and his head went limp. Because whatever that scent was out there was far more terrifying than any predator, poison, or punishment his parents could ever devise.

The whole jungle fell silent as if holding its breath.

CHAPTER TWO
Eco

Rei curled into a tight ball on his bed, his ear throbbing from where Jaguara had dragged him through the Xingu compound. Green Guard soldiers paused mid-stride with munitions crates, workers froze with forks halfway to their mouths in the mess hall, all eyes fixed on him. The hangar's overhead lights betrayed every grimace, every unshed tear. He was a bit of an attraction in the base after all–the ghostly white boy with strange indentations patterning his skin, child to the brilliant scientists-in-hiding who made all the Green Gaurd’s special equipment.
The notoriety wasn't helping his case.
He scanned his barren room, stripped by his parents' punishment. Gone were his B-24 bomber model, the Lego cities, and his prized VR game PlanetEarth2000, his sole window to the outside world. Their absence amplified his cell's emptiness.
"Porra!" Rei slammed his fist into the pillow until exhaustion forced him to stop. The fabric grew damp with tears.
He could see Green Guard soldiers lounging on their lunch break, their deactivated Mimiflauge gear catching the light above with a rainbow shimmer through his window. He pressed his forehead against the glass.
He watched a synthetic guide bird–a familiar one who often followed him around that he’d taken to calling Jpeg–flutter through clusters of homes, barracks, tents, and catwalks. Its crystalline plume and metalloid feathers glinted past the 3D weapons printing facilities and mess halls. The bird banked past the algae bioreactors with their softly glowing tanks, coming to rest on the brutalist dome dominating the compound's center—his parents' lab. It squatted beneath the hangar's enormous ceiling like a traditional Brazilian Oca hut reimagined in reinforced cement and steel. Stupid guide bird. That's where I should be. With my parents. In the lab. With the Apokatastasis Drive.
"The Apok Drive,” he recanted, using its short form name, bitterness coating his tongue. “A neuromorphic quantum AI bioreactor, capable of generating infinite variations of biomass: the Green Guard's Mimiflauge, the synthetic guide birds they use as scouts, and the uncrackable biological transceivers implanted behind their ears–all of it born from my parents' machine. Green Guard would be nothing without them." His fingers curled against the glass. “And I'm their son! How could they treat me like this?”
His hand turned into a fist. "I don't need anything special, but this is imprisonment! I study. I do what I'm told. I study more." His voice cracked. "How am I supposed to just sit in this–"
The lights flickered, cutting off his words. A deep, resonant hum–the unmistakable sound of the Apokatastasis Drive powering up. Throughout the compound, the algae bioreactors would redirect their energy, feeding the Drive's creation of novel biology.
Rei's heart skipped.
Why’d they turn it on? Nothing was scheduled except… the first Ecosapien! Their life’s work. But it's a week early. Why are they doing it now? Without telling me?
He pressed his ear against the wall, feeling the intensifying vibrations. The Ecosapiens were meant to be revolutionary–a new species designed to repair instead of reproduce. To heal the planet by rewriting the genetic codes of life. They would strengthen and repair ecosystems, restoring and controlling Earth's environment.
His parent's life work. The reason they were in hiding.
His hands shook. Years of helping in the lab, watching every experiment, and offering ideas they actually used. I invented the acronym for the damn catalyst! His mind screamed. SEED, Self-Encoding Evolutionary Device. This is all just as much mine as it's theirs!
The hum grew stronger, each vibration an insult. Rei launched himself off the bed and paced, bare feet slapping against the cold floor. He spun and kicked the wall, immediately regretting it as pain shot through his toe. "Droga! This isn't fair!" He skip-limped to the window, holding his toe, watching the dome that housed the Drive. The lights throughout the compound flickered in rhythm with the increasing vibrations. Even through the concrete, a thousand feet away, his heightened senses detected the sharp, chemical sweetness of the Apok Drive activation. They're starting—right now—without me. I'm not missing this, he thought. I don't care if they lock me up forever. This is mine, too.
He pressed his ear against the door. The corridor beyond contained only distant boot steps on metal grating. Rei counted the footsteps until they faded, then eased the door open.
The hallway stretched before him, flickering with LED lights. He moved silently along the wall, ducking behind a support column as a patrol passed. He darted behind a cargo container, the Drive's scent growing stronger with each step toward the central dome.
A convoy of Green Guard jeeps rumbled past, kicking up dust. He squeezed into an impossibly narrow crevice until they passed.
Twenty yards from the dome's base, partially hidden by tall grass sprouting through cracks in the foundation, sat the metal hatch he'd discovered months ago. My secret entrance, he thought, fingers finding the hidden catch. It opened with a soft click, lost in the Apok Drive's deepening sound.
The tunnel was cramped and jammed with wires. The metallic tang of oil and damp earth mixed with the overwhelming scent of exotic flora. Rei squirmed through it, and the vibrations pushed against his bones, rattling his teeth.
He emerged inside the lab, head poking out through moss, grass, and angular synthetic ferns covering loose floor grating as if we were a zombie. The air was oppressively damp. He stood and looked up, each movement deliberate–his time shadowing the Green Guard paying off. The Apokatastasis Drive rose from the room's center as if a banyan tree had swallowed a volcano made from extruded hexagons–a fever dream made real. A twisting self-contained ecosystem of synthetic biomass yearning upward, its gelatinous core shimmering behind a semipermeable membrane that bathed everything in teal light.
Vines and roots of mixed curves, angles, and textures networked outward, flowing around the Drive's geometric outcroppings. Golden, iridescent flowers with geometric petals burst forth among streaks of bioluminescent moss and geometric lichen that clung to the machine's crevices.
Dust motes danced in the glow, each an intricate snowflake under microscopic inspection. Tiny, chromatic insects scuttled through the verdant growth. Coral-like structures, twisted ferns, and angular mushrooms fused in chaotic harmony.
His mother, Lin, stood transfixed before the machine, face bathed in an ethereal glow. His father worked at the control panel, fingers dancing across multiple keyboards. Neither looked up as Rei ventured further out from the synthetic undergrowth.
At the Drive's core, nestled in webbing of vines and veins, he saw the SEED–no larger than a jelly bean-shimmering in the dense metabolite fluid, geometric bars extruding from its surface in fractal patterns as it absorbed the encoding liquid.
The whole room seemed to breathe in, and Rei held his breath along with it. The Drive was, by design, an input–describe an environmental crisis, and it would output a solution. But no one, not even his parents, truly understood how it reached its conclusions. The Drive's quantum AI–a black box. Feeding it data about an over-hunted species might give you Mimiflauge. Tell it about failing crops; it might design a bacterium to repair them. Sometimes it gave you nothing, or an incomprehensible pile of goop and bones. Ask it how to heal a damaged world; here was its answer, taking shape before him.
They called it an Ecosapien.
At the heart of it all was the SEED–the Self-Encoding Evolutionary Device Rei himself had coined–the catalyst, the embryo from which each creation grew. Suspended in the mineral-rich metabolite fluid, the SEED absorbed data and molecules, guiding the formation of new life according to the Drive's inscrutable calculations.
The SEED pulsed with otherworldly rhythm, its metamorphosis a ballet of biology and circuitry. It grew, split, and pirouetted through the stages of growth in rapid time: a glimmering fetal form, a quicksilver infant, a shimmering adolescent silhouette. Each phase of the beings' development flickered by in an eyeblink yet etched itself into Rei's consciousness.
All sense of time disappeared.
As Rei watched, transfixed by the Apokatastasis Drive's kaleidoscopic dance, he couldn't help but marvel at the Ecosapiens vast possibilities as his parents had once explained them to him. These Ecosapiens would venture into the world, exploring diverse ecosystems and evolving genetic abilities to reshape biology. They would strengthen and heal the environment by reshuffling and altering the base pairs of genomic code with synthetic intelligent molecules.
DNAi.
Rei's mind raced with the possibilities, snippets of overheard conversations between his parents flickering through his thoughts. An Ecosapien might be a floating orb that could traverse any landscape, a fractal coral that could pull up deep water to cool the oceans, or a mycelial network spreading through the Earth's crust to increase nutrient exchange across vast distances. They could produce novel plants that thrive in arid regions, evolve fire-suppressing spores, or even become stationary guardians that release radiant cooling mists or carbon-magnetizing dust.
In theory, an Ecosapien had three modes of operation.
Grow new biology: In Vitro
Change existing biology: Ex Vitro
Change its own biology: Epi-Evolution
How or why it worked in this way–his parents honestly had no idea.
Next, Rei recalled, still watching in a trance, Ecosapiens would communicate and relay data back to the Apok Drive through the Neural Echo–a self-correcting communications network enabled by a bioresonant crystal network of synthetic piezoelectric crystals. Put simply, it was a form of uncrackable biological radio waves–put simpler, it was like telepathy. If any changes triggered new cascades of problems, the Apok Drive would adjust, creating new Ecosapiens to fine-tune the delicate web of interactions between all life and life systems in a continual feedback loop.
It was how the guide birds communicated, and how the Green Guard communicated back.
Suddenly, an eerily alien yet unmistakably human hand erupted through the iridescent membrane. Rei nearly gasped. A human form? That's what the Drive chose? How could that possibly be the most efficient design for–
Before he could finish his thought, the being emerged like a volcanic deity, fighting through magma-like placental goo. On its second attempt, translucent strands snapped, and prismatic residue cascaded off its back as it broke the surface. It fell forward and stood upright, gelatinous fluid sliding off its form.
Is it already complete? Rei thought. He stumbled back, eyes darting to the lab's clock. “But it's only been… Six hours?" His voice rasped with disbelief at how much time had passed. He'd been enraptured. That's… that's impossible. What had seemed like moments–a handful of heartbeats–had devoured a quarter of the day. Rei's lungs burned as he gulped air, suddenly aware he'd been holding his breath until his body forgot respiration's rhythm.
The creature had alabaster, semi-translucent skin without details–no nipples, genitalia, or orifices. Its face was smooth, devoid of eyes, ears, or mouth. Major muscle groups constructed of soft, separated plates rose and fell rhythmically. Each movement revealed flashes of complex inner networks: vein, tendon, branch, and biosynthetic material fused like a cross between root, nervous, and circuitry systems.
Despite being sexless and androgynous, something about its nature, its gentile presence, and soft curves struck Rei as female. Or, at least, not male.
The being's head snapped toward his hiding place. Without eyes, without apparent sensors, it had detected him instantly. His parents turned to follow its attention, faces shifting from wonder to shock as they spotted their son among the synthetic ferns.
"Rei?" His mother's voice pierced the air. "How did you–"
"Through that loose grate, it looks like," his Dad said, craning his neck and pointing to where ferns had overgrown the power access tunnel.
But Rei barely heard their response. The being–Eco–moved toward him—the plates comprising her exterior rippled, opening and closing in waves. From the gaps, vegetation sprouted–flowers bloomed then withered, scattering the floor like seasons in hyper-time.
She moved with purpose now. The plates of her sternum parted, revealing a complex matrix of iridescent webbing, root, and nervous system. Her transparent skin began to fill with a pinkish hue, flowers blooming from within the plates of her body, pulsing and flashing color like when an octopus dreams.
She's epi-evolving right here, right now, right away, Rei realized. But she's not out in nature. She hasn't found anything to change-
Before him now, a single flower bloomed from the opening in her chest–a Tiger Orchid, Vante’s favorite, identical to the one he had crushed the day before when falling out of the tree.
Rei reached for the flower with trembling fingers, his mind reeling. Vante’s flower? How could she know? He looked at his parents. "The growth of the first Ecosapien was scheduled for next week," Rei said. "Why did you rush it?"
Lin and Remy exchanged glances. "After your escape attempt, we detected increased CMC satellite activity," his father began. "We had to accelerate–"
Rei cut him off. "You rushed her creation because you needed someone to watch me—a babysitter, a jail guard. You didn't make her go out and secure the environment. She epi-evolved right here, right now, to secure me.”
"No, to protect you," Lin insisted.
"You made her to be my captor!"
"No, that's not–" Lin started, but Rei was beyond listening.
"I don't want her here!" With a final look of betrayal, Rei stuffed the Tiger Orchid in his pocket and bolted from the research facility, shoving through the heavy metal door as if it were nothing more than flimsy wood. 

CHAPTER THREE
Joule

A few stray antennae and blinking lights—from five thousand feet up and a mile out, that's all Joule could see of the CMC outpost at Volte Grande. The rest of the cement behemoth hid beneath the dense canopy of the Amazon. As the VTOL craft approached, Joule's mind raced through the briefing he'd received back at headquarters. The Green Guard's increased patrols had wreaked havoc on CMC operations across South America. Outposts like this one—designed for large-scale, deep-earth, rare-mineral mining to feed the world's endless hunger for AI systems and to process the infinite flow of climate refugees—were falling like dominoes, and Joule had been dispatched to stem the tide.

"On approach," chirped the pilot's voice in Joule's headset.

Before Joule could answer, an unusual tightness announced where the esophagus met the stomach. I miss my old pilot, he thought. "Copy." He stood from cross-legged to a half crouch in the center of the passenger section of the Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) craft. He was too big to fit comfortably on the chairs, especially in full gear.

The bulky, military-style aircraft slowed above the base and began a direct vertical descent.

Joule's senses remained razor-sharp, often painfully, even at thirty-nine years old. Even from high above, he didn't need his gear's optical zoom to pick out General Tabbert's figure below. The man stood rigid, uniform, crisp, spotless, hands on hips, lips curled in that signature half-sneer. Around him clustered a flock of CMC personnel, their uniforms a jarring blend of Army Ranger utility and DEA agent swagger. The outfits screamed militant and entitled, perfectly reflecting their leader's ethos. Joule's enhanced vision caught every detail, from the polished brass on Tabbert's collar to the nervous twitches of his subordinates.

The transport set down with a thud. The armored door slid open, and a world of information filtered through Joule’s face mask: the damp rot of the jungle, the burn of diesel fuel, the sudden spike of fear in Tabbert’s men seeing his imposing figure as he leaped from the aircraft and landed hard and steady on the dirt floor below.

A second transport landed next, and Joules' team poured out with tactical grace. The first two to emerge carried a rectangular onyx case between them like pallbearers. The rest followed, dressed more like SWAT. Special gear. Special enhancements. And none of the shitty adornments of the CMC garb that only served to snag on branches and thorns and give away your position. Joule had insisted. They were Axion private security, after all. 

“Big entrance for a big shot,” said Tabbert before Joule had reached the usual chit-chat distance. “Didn’t know we needed a babysitter.”

Joule didn’t break pace until he reached this relic of his father’s early attempts at building credible leadership into the enforcement arm of the CMC. Stopping unusually close, he looked at the top of his host’s head. “Tabbert.”

“That’s General Tabbert, Colonel Joule.”

“Standing on ranks, are we?”

“Well, I’m a military man, self-made, boots to brass.” Tabbert stepped out from under Joule’s shadow and walked around him in a slow circle. “You see, that requires a certain amount of dignity, honor, respect for the institution. Of course, I can’t expect you to know all that, you being installed in your position by Daddy.”

“Mhm.” Joule nodded, his face unchanged. Without breaking eye contact with Tabbert, he motioned for his team to bring the case.

“Here you are, your majesty,” replied the man humping the front of the large black box. The ground shook as it landed by Joule’s feet. 

“I didn’t realize you were royal as well,” said Tabbert. “Pince Joule, then. In that case, Prince Joule, why don’t you just leave whatever little gift you’ve brought us here, and you and your boys be about your way?”

A flicker of a smile touched Joule’s lips. He’d never been good at this—banter, chit-chat… bullshit. He turned from Tabbert like a lion might turn from a gazelle it meant to eat later. “Drop this at the command center, Bryce,” he managed gruffly to the man who had delivered the large black box. “I want five men on the perimeter, now.” He turned to the old bag and didn’t have to see Bryce scowl behind his back to know he was. He could smell the rise in blood pressure.

“You heard ‘em!” shouted Bryce. “Onyx team, on me!”

“Perimeter? Why the fuck are you here?” Tabbert pressed. “I told Chain we don’t need any fucking help on our last comms!”

Joule directed the total weight of his attention back to Tabbert, and the aging carryover took a step backward. “You’re right, Tabbert.”

“Right?”

“15 bases around South America were destroyed by Green Guard forces last week alone. You don’t need a babysitter.” Joule nods back to the rectangular command center, where Tabbert’s personal effects are being carried out by Joule’s team.

“What the…”

“You need retirement.”

The vein on Tabbert’s reddening face bulged and pulsed as he stepped back into Joule’s shadow and poked his finger up at his face. “You listen to me, you fucking—”

“You’re excused, General Tabbert.”

“Excused? Excused! I’ve been exterminating these forest cunts since before you were… Before you were…” Tabbert looked up and down the seven-foot frame before him. “However, the goddamned fuck, you were whelped into this world!”

“That so?” Joule nodded calmly. “Bird flies at 0915. That’s in five—”

“I know how to read a fucking clock! I’ll leave this command when I’m goddamned ready! And I don’t need some mutated roid rage freak shooing me like a fucking shoooaaaahhhh!”

With one hand, Joule lifted Tabbert into the air by the back of the neck and began walking casually to the VTOL. “Right again, Commander. No need to tell you anything. Enjoy the flight.” Joule tossed Tabbert violently up into the cabin about six feet off the ground, then gave a quick look to the pilot and slapped the fuselage like the backside of a horse, and the vehicle began liftoff.

Beneath the propeller's hum, Tabbert's moans remained audible as it soared into the great blue expanse. Joule took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He scanned the site in the quiet wake of Tabbert’s departure. It was evident these agents of the Climate Migration Control had seen some gunfights. Tabbert’s team stood around, blank-faced, voided. “They’re scared shitless… Battered like barnacles… They never had a chance against the Green Guard fighters.”

The command center's steel frame loomed against the orange sky. His gaze fixed on the onyx-colored box squatting before HQ's entrance, its white designation SHDWCLVR-1 stark against the dark metal. An unfamiliar chill crept up his spine as the box's contents stirred in his mind. Above, storm clouds gathered, heavy and dark, and the vultures of the Amazon began to circle.

CHAPTER FOUR
Jaguara

The lamp on Rei’s desk flickered, not uncommon at the Xingu compound. The self-contained, secret, joint research and guerilla military operation in the middle of the Amazon had near-infinite energy needs, and the synthetic algae reactor his parents helped build to hide their heat signature wasn't always up to snuff, especially in the early mornings when everyone began charging their equipment for the day's missions and drills.

Since he could remember, Rei had used his flickering desk lamp as a late alarm, prompting him to action before his parents came screaming at him for oversleeping. But this morning, he did not stir. He was already awake, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring into the dim of his room as he had been the entire night.

The lamp flickered once more, drawing Rei's attention. Only then did he realize the light filtering through the sheet draped over his window had transformed. The harsh fluorescent orange cast by outdoor security lights had given way to a silvery sheen—the telltale radiance of the Mimiflage dome catching the first rays of dawn.

“Sister,” he said numbly. “Perfect in every way. Here, so I don’t have to leave.” He looked down at the VR goggles in his lap, the only glimpse he’d ever had of life outside his jungle prison, even if the glimpse they offered was of a different time. The goggles had been sitting there all night and never put on. His eyes scanned without focus over the letters on the goggle’s nameplate: Planet Earth 2030 Simulator. “A game so I don’t have to leave?”

Rei flung the goggles off his lap, watched them crash into the wall, and landed in a heap of clothes. “All I want is to leave!” He closed his eyes tight and threw himself backward onto his bed, his whole body clenched and shaking to keep the rage inside. “How can they—”

Three perfectly measured knocks rapped against metal. Rei stared at the thick military blanket draped over the entrance to his room. His nostrils flared, and his chest rose and fell in tremulous rhythm as he fought the urge to scream at whichever of his parents had dared to visit. “Please. Go. Away,” he managed in a charged but level tone.

His answer was a muted thud outside the doorway, followed by the sound of the object sliding a short distance across the hallway floor. There was a pause, and then careful footsteps disappeared.

Once the hallway was silent again, Rei tiptoed to the doorway and pushed the blanket aside. On the floor was the Orchid Eco attempted to give him the day before, only now its roots were wrapped carefully in canvas, and the flower had fully bloomed.

Rei looked up and down the corridor and found it empty. He squinted back down at the flower, crouched, and carefully picked it up. 

Suddenly, the sound of heavy boots was marching toward him. He slid back into his room, unsure why he was hiding. He peered out the bottom of the window. Silhouettes were filed, and Rei named each one until the final shadow had passed. “Jaguara,” he finished as she passed. He sat back on the bed. He looked at the goggles, his gaze drifting down only a meter, his hiking boots on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"You can't imprison Rei De Floresta, The Forest King," he said, punching his pillow. Rei looked again at the window and smiled for the first time in days.

###

The ozone thickened each minute, a palpable weight settling over the jungle. Rei's nostrils flared, drinking in the electric scent. Storms coming, he thought. Despite the mile-long gap between them, the Green Guard platoon remained firmly in his sight.

My gaze might seem unfocused, even lazy, to an untrained observer, Rei thought. But this was the fruit of a year's worth of nightly training—a hard-won ability to look in two directions simultaneously, like a human chameleon. One eye tracked his careful footsteps while the other remained locked on his quarry. The strain was immense; after the first hour, it felt like an unseen hand had reached into his skull, kneading his optical nerves into a tangled mess.

Amblyopia, he reminded himself. The clinical term his father had hammered into him during countless study lessons. The memory of those grueling sessions flashed through his mind, a mixture of pain and pride. That's the word, Dad. I still remember.

Overhead, the dense canopy wove a living tapestry, dappling the forest floor with ever-shifting shadows. Rei's split gaze darted constantly upward, searching for the telltale glint of Espirito — Jaguara's bio-synthetic guide bird. The creature's flight patterns had become a map, unknowingly leading Rei alongside the platoon he pursued.

Rei slipped beneath a moss-covered log with feline grace, damp bark grazing his back. Another centipede, its obsidian segments gleaming, skittered past his boot. Rei's stomach clenched, irritation flushing hot in his chest. He resisted the urge to crush it, his patience wearing thin.

Sister. What a joke, Rei thought bitterly. How can they pretend this glorified corrections officer is my family? Oh, she's going to heal the environment." When? After my bedtime? His anger simmered, threatening to boil over. I'll show them. I'll show them all—

Suddenly, Jaguara's team halted.
Espirito the guide bird shot ahead, warning them.
"Contact," came the barely audible whisper. The platoon froze as one beneath a curtain of liana vines. Jaguara's translucent arm signaled a halt, distorting the hanging ropes like jellyfish in the air.

Rei aimed both eyes forward, his body utterly still. Through dense foliage, he spotted three CMC soldiers slicing through the undergrowth with machetes, oblivious.

And just like that, the entire Green Guard seemed to vanish altogether, dissipating into the jungle-like mist. Rei could barely determine the outlines as three soldiers detached, stalking the CMC troops with preternatural stealth. They moved like wraiths as if the hapless patrol had become haunted by vengeful forest spirits.

A thunderous crack of lightning split the sky, bathing the jungle in stark, blue-white light. Rei watched the Green Guard strike in that fractional moment, illuminated by nature's fury. Three soft phoot sounds from traditional bamboo blow guns pierced the air, and the plasmid compound-tipped darts found their marks. The CMC soldiers clawed at their necks, gasping as the engineered genes began rewriting their lung tissue. Within seconds, their breathing became labored, faces reddening with effort. Rei had studied this weapon in his father's lab - the microscopic circles of DNA would permanently alter their respiratory system, triggering chronic inflammation and hypersensitivity.

The Green Guard's newest weapon didn't kill; it simply ensured its targets would spend the rest of their lives struggling for breath, permanently unfit for duty.

They'll never serve again, Rei thought in amazement.

Two CMC troops were swiftly bound. But the third—a stocky man with wild eyes—went bronco-mode, coughing, sputtering, and flailing. As he opened his mouth to shout, Pepe, the largest of the Green Guard, moved with surprising agility. His meaty fist connected with the soldier's solar plexus. Pepe hoisted the man up in one fluid motion, bringing him down across his knee. The sickening crack of a spine giving way echoed through the clearing.

Jaguara's head snapped towards Pepe, her eyes flashing with anger and disbelief. "Pepe, you know our rule, kill only when necessary."

The big man merely shrugged, his face impassive.

The sight of the dead body shattered Rei's fantasy of adventure. His anger evaporated, replaced by a sickening realization of his own foolishness. Of the actual danger he was in. Gasping, he scrambled behind a massive tree trunk, pressing his forehead against rough bark. Crap, I made too much noise! He covered his mouth.

His breaths became heavy and rapid. Above, another peal of thunder rumbled. The clouds began to part—the pressure shift carried a familiar odor. They were close to the scent again. Now, the air brought a world of information: burning trees, cement, welding, plastic, sweat, and gunpowder. Smell, touch, taste, sight, and sound blended into blinding synesthesia. Rei could see creaks and bangs and hear the smell of gasoline—butane, pentane, and isopentane.

This was more than deforestation. It was construction, Rei thought. But beneath it all lurked something worse—an eclectic collage of biology reminiscent of himself… It smells like the Apokatastasis Drive! Goosebumps rose on his hairless skin. The urge to warn the platoon overwhelmed him. "Wait, no! The smell—it's back! You can't go!" Rei shouted after them. "I figured it out! It's the Apokatastasis Drive! That's the smell!"

Jaguara whirled, her war paint cracking around eyes gone hard. The Green Guard moved without need for orders, ropes already in hand.
The bark of the great Kopek tree bit into Rei's back as they bound him. He kept his gaze fixed on the canopy while they worked, not fighting as the cold touch of the Mimiflauge poncho settled over him.
Vante, for once, wasn't smiling.
When Rei finally looked down, they were gone, leaving him with nothing but his own breathing and a single bitter thought: she deserves whatever's coming.

###

How dare he put me in this position! To put himself in danger, to risk everything his parents are working toward. She clenched her jaw. He is just a boy, Jaguara.
After three miles of trudging through mud, walls of emerald vegetation dripped with moisture. The bio-synthetic guide bird, Espirito, led Green Guard to their target–a desolate clearing carved from rainforest as if struck by a bomb. Leveled vegetation and char unified in swirling smoke and morning mist.
Jaguara stood at the clearing's center, surveying the destruction. The scent of burning trees triggered a gag of nostalgia for everything she'd lost.
Espirito broke through the mist, landed on her translucent shoulder, and nuzzled her ear. Her anger toward Rei ebbed. From afar, Espírito blended with the ecosystem's natural fauna, but up close, its otherworldly nature revealed itself.
Her Animist ancestors knew all people derived their abilities from deceased animals' spirits–or 'epi-genetics,' as Lin and Remy would say. She'd pondered these synthetic creatures' nature. Lab-made or natural, its life force exists. It's more than machine.
Espirito is alive.
The bird had led her missions for three years. She ruffled its neck, remembering the birds that once fought for her mother's scattered crumbs in their village center. The memory burned like all the rest, reduced to ash by foreign invaders. Her throat constricted.
She glimpsed her mother in Espírito's presence. Its geometric-woven, golden-dusted feathers and crystal plume echoed her mother's Capim Dourado grass necklaces and jade healing stones–worn proudly as village Shaman.
Lin and Remy called the birds Echo Weavers. The name left a sour taste in her mouth. She much preferred Espirito.
Looking back, she could see Rei's forlorn face floating like a deflating balloon. His oversized poncho, his body tied to the Kopek tree, neck craning to watch their departure. Maybe he senses something, like my cancer. Perhaps he sees what I, a shaman of the Xingu tribe, cannot. Something between her eyes urged her to turn back and strike him, while her chest tingled with electricity. Rei's angelic quality–porcelain skin, delicate features, graceful movements–masked something darker, like a cursed doll. As Shaman, she'd seen past lives: wolves, tigers, sharks, frogs, alligators.
But Rei was more dangerous.
She snapped a twig between her teeth.
His warning couldn't dispel this unplaceable dread.
Retreat.
The word echoed. What could Rei know that Espirito hasn't scouted? True, the CMC's perimeter differs from previous targets–our birds can't approach without triggering sentry cannons. But we've overcome worse. We can vanish into the forest if overwhelmed.
Her mind fractured. She craved this revenge, her daily sustenance. Are emotions clouding my judgment? Am I risking my soldiers, my friends? She spat out the twig.
He's just a child. What does he know about a construction site miles away? Jaguara exhaled sharply, raised her hand, opened her palm, then closed it. Through her goggles, her fighters gathered like glowing phantoms.
She gave the signal to move out.

CHAPTER FIVE
The Shadow Cleaver

Desperate for anything to focus on, Rei's gaze locked onto a small puddle at the tree's base. An iridescent beetle paddled across the water's surface, its shell a dazzling kaleidoscope of colors. In that moment of hyper-focused detail, Rei found a lifeline, something beautiful and intricate to anchor himself against the tide of fear threatening to drag him under.

“Grahhh!” Rei struggled against his bindings, as he had for the last hour, then hung limp, exhausted.

“Why did you get yourself caught, you idiot! If I could have just reached Vante… Warned him without Jaguara ever knowing I followed. Now they’re heading into who knows what, and I’m tied to this stupid tree, useless!”
Rei stared at the ground without registering it. Eventually, he summoned the will to look up, and his gaze landed on a rock. Sprouting from its rough surface was a lone, purple flower. He imagined this delicate life fighting through tight fissures, jagged minerals, twisting and turning, blocked in every direction, until suddenly, it emerged into the dappled light of the jungle against all that adversity. He was hypnotized by it. 

Suddenly, Rei’s lids began to swell. He spasmed and jerked his head back and forth, closing his eyes shut as hard as he could, but nothing helped—he couldn't reach up to rub them. It felt like poison ivy-coated sandpaper was being rubbed on them. “Oh no,” he realized, “this is another random mutation.” He knew little about why these changes had been happening with such increasing intensity and regularity. 

His parents promised to explain it all one day. He doubted it. 

He did know his mother had spent countless nights hammering every detail about every organism on Earth into his head. Everything from tigers and tardigrades to the mating habits of swans and the evolutionary histories of deepwater shrimp brimmed in his mind, so he could instantly recall everything about their genetic lineage and code. He often summoned this information when attempting a transformation and suspected it had been placed there for just this reason: to help him imagine the transformative biological possibilities within himself. 

After a good deal of moaning, the burning subsided, and with his lids heavy, red, and swollen, he managed to open them, only now he saw inside the stubborn little plant. A vast spectrum of colorful light appeared. He guessed his eye's cells had adjusted the curvature of his large cornea and lens, increasing the number of photon-sensitive rods and cones inside to that of an eagle's. The world around the flower was dim. The mild pattering of rain had faded. Rei's senses tunneled. He could see the gentle current of the chloroplasts inside its veins gently swimming, splitting, giving it life. 

“This delicate thing found a way to survive.” A smile so wide it hurt split across Rei’s face. "I'm like you!" he shouted at the flower. "I don't care how angry Jaguara gets, how angry my parents get, or how many trees she ties me to."

He blinked. As suddenly as his eyes changed, they reverted to their natural state. His vision returned to its usual depth. His face was wet like he’d been sobbing, only he hadn't. Strange, he thought. The sounds of the surrounding world came rushing back. He wriggled and twisted like a fish in a Xingu fisherman's rough hands, but the ropes wouldn't budge. Expertly knotted. He let out an involuntary wail, and his face went red. He was glad nobody heard it. These transformations didn’t just happen on a whim. But he had to keep trying. There had to be a solution. He felt an electric flash — not a full mutation, but a simple shift. 

Oh, meu deus! Hyper-mobility. Rei realized. Double jointedness.

He breathed deeply and focused on dislocating his shoulder, targeting each independent muscle: the Deltoid, teres major, Infraspinatus, teres minor, and Latissimus. 

Something popped.

He winced. 

He repeated it on his other shoulder. Then his hips: the Gluteus Maximus, Gluteus Medius, Gluteus Minimus. The muscles along his spine. And with a great cry, he flattened himself and shimmy-slid downward like some bizarre slug-person. 

He fell limp on the damp soil, the ropes going lax above him. The Mimiflauge poncho that had been tucked over him like a blanket crumpled to the ground in a pile, garbling the forest floor in a haphazard imitation pattern of leaves and dirt.

Mimiflauge could have worked better when folded on itself.

Prostrate on his back, he scrunched his face into a dense knot. His entire body shook as every nerve ending and ligament inflamed and displaced beyond their limits. Rei filled his lungs repeatedly and began to move each muscle independently. The sounds of bones and tendons were deafening as they wriggled their way back to their proper locations. With surprising speed, he became whole again, and he curled into the fetal position, his face soaked in a salty mixture of sweat and tears.

Using the tree to steady himself, he rose to his feet. He'd deal with whatever damage he'd just inflicted on himself later. He walked over to the flower, gently dug it out from its place in the rock, and placed it beside the synthetic one Eco gave him in a small pouch around his waist, careful to keep its root system intact in a cluster of soil. He spun and limped off, full-tilt, into the green wall of humid vegetation beyond.

Gotta reach them fast. Make them stop. Make them listen.

Everything tunneled. 

Rei worried his heart would explode. 

The limp and pain from his transformation had vanished. There was only the sound of his breath, the burning of muscle, and the quick calculations needed to dodge the oncoming organic obstacles. It felt as if the overexertion was causing his body to recover quicker, even become stronger.

Everything has calmed… Only the sound of my breath remains. I’m a blur, a ghost in the jungle. I see each organic obstacle as they approach. Like they speak to me. Feels almost like they are dodging me. Or maybe it's just adrenaline, he thought as he leaped over a fallen tree with its massive splay of dug-up roots looming over his head. 

Either way, the construction site was coming into view on the horizon, and he needed to hurry. He knew Vanté was the anchor, so luckily, he'd be the first Rei would encounter. And soon, there he was. That unmistakable distortion of Mimiflauge was undoubtedly Vanté’s silhouette. Rei slowed and did his best to control his breath. He snuck up behind him and tapped. 

"Vanté,” he hiss-whispered.

Vanté spun around, gun aimed squarely at Rei's forehead, causing him to fall flat on his rear. "Meu Deus, Rei? What are you doing here?" Vanté replied, deactivating the Mimiflauge over his face.

"You can't go Vanté. It’s too dangerous. You have to warn everyone," Rei said between gasps.

"You’re too late, pequeño diablo. Everyone's in position." Vanté's eyes flickered.

"Come with me."

Rei was surprised at how roughly Vanté yanked him up by the elbow and forced him behind a nearby boulder, pressing him between a patch of orange fungal, sponge-like outcroppings.

"Don’t move," Vanté whisRemyd, pinning him to the rock. His eyes glared like two white marbles through his black warpaint smear.

"But…"

"Enough, Rei, it's too late."

Rei tried to reply, but Vanté covered his mouth.

"Do not move," Vanté repeated. "Do not make a sound." He let go slowly.

What can I do? Rei's mind burned, but at least he was there and not lashed to some distant plant. At least he could keep watch over them. "Wait," Rei reached into his pouch and extracted the flower Eco had left him in both palms. He held it out to Vanté.

Vanté eyed him suspiciously. "Tiger Orchid? My favorite."

"For good luck."

Vanté's white row of teeth flashed. He took it and put it in his cargo pocket, disappearing beneath the Mimiflauge. “See you soon, amigo," Vanté squeezed Rei’s shoulder. Rei squeezed back. "You're getting stronger," Vanté added and disappeared.

The instant Vanté was gone, Rei peered out from behind the boulder like a meerkat and focused on the cloud of dust in the distance. The construction site. His eyes burned and swelled like before, but it wasn't as painful this time, and thankfully, he wasn’t hogtied, so he could rub them. Once the mutation subsided, he could see it all: a skeletal city of scaffolding, cement pouring, giant saws with liquid constantly saturating them, drills splayed like mechanical giraffes eating grass. There were vehicles everywhere, beeping and grumbling, digging into the Earth, spewing wood chips, and flattening all that remained with their enormous wheels. Engineers, contractors, and workers in white with hard hats mixed with armed soldiers who milled about, ran drills and ate in the makeshift mess hall. At the same time, guard towers and a mixture of CMC agents and military personnel surveyed the perimeter tree line at seventy-meter intervals. He could even discern the wobbly outlines of some Green Guard soldiers who now surrounded it. At the center of this frenetic circle of dust and obliterated vegetation, an armored trailer sat peacefully undisturbed in every direction for thirty feet like a beloved bronze monument. The door to the trailer opened slowly, and Rei’s senses all faded back except for his olfactory.

Oh no... the smell... like me... like the Apokatastasis... but... different...

From the darkness inside the trailer, a menacing figure squeezed out and into the bright morning humidity.

He must be over two meters tall. The man's emerald eyes surveyed dispassionately while the organized chaos hummed along in every direction. He yawned and stretched his arms, causing his ornate silk robe — a size too small — to open, revealing the bizarre musculature of his body and face. He wasn't bulking but rather impossibly dense and defined, with layered and complex muscle striations not found in ordinary human anatomy. His skin was like cellophane pulled, taught over every vein and fiber across his altered physiology, so they visibly twitched with each minuscule moment. Is he what I sensed? It… it is like me. But different… maybe it’s not him.

Suddenly, the man stopped, his face dropped, and his head twitched to the side. He shouted something Rei couldn't discern and darted back inside his trailer. Rei knew a mosquito had landed on his face but couldn't be bothered to swat it. He was transfixed and stared deeper into the details of whatever was unfolding, unlike ordinary sight, more like looking through binoculars, seeing something voyeuristic.

Two soldiers trotted out from a cement bunker carrying a rectangular case about the size of a coffin. One soldier left while the other, a particularly handsome man, opened it. It faced the trailer entrance, so its contents were blocked from Rei's line of sight. The handsome soldier extracted a heavy cable from whatever was in it and ran it to the trailer, plugging it into a socket and rotating it, locking it like a firehose.

A horrible-looking figure reappeared from the trailer. 

Is that a demon? Rei panicked. No. It was that same giant that went inside. He's just wearing some protective armor now.

The hulking figure had donned some kind of dark-gray armor over his floral-patterned robe, and small tufts of it stuck out around his hips and neck. The outfit was sleek and plated like a fusion of a medieval knight and feudal samurai, but his face stopped Rei's breathing. It reminded him of a hybrid of various ancient, demonic masks with giant teeth and bulging eyes. The entirety of the gear gave the impression of being both practical and ornate, militant but menacing.

The man calmly trotted down the three steps of his trailer and lifted the object from the case with ease, like a regular person handling a baseball bat. It was sword-like but not quite a sword. About the length and size of a long boat oar, if it had no handle and was all the flat head part. Bigger than Rei by a clear foot. It was the shade and glimmer of obsidian with a rounded blade and handle lined with four oversized rings, one for each finger. The edge appeared dull and harmless but contained the sinister allure of a cursed artifact. The demon-man whispered something to the handsome soldier, who nodded and ran off into the dust in return.

` Alarms sounded. Soldiers began running, yelling.

The demon-man slid his fingers into the rings of the weapon's hilt and held it outright with his right arm. He twisted the handle with his free hand, and it hummed to life, emanating a dull violet glow.

That's it! Rei's spine straightened. That's what I sensed. That rod. The smell was unplaceable yet highly disturbing as if the entire Apokatastasis bioreactor had malfunctioned and rotted all at once. The handsome soldier handed the demon-man an intercom, and he held it up to his demon mask. 

"My name's Commander Joule,” the demon-man said, his voice booming across campus through an array of unseen speakers. His tone concealed a suppressed strength, intentionally mellow and in sharp contrast to his appearance. "I'll make it simple. Surrender now… Or die."

A pregnant pause. 

Then, a deafening roar as the Green Guard opened fire in perfect unison. High-velocity rounds from their state-of-the-art assault rifles erupted vital parts of the soldiers in misty, crimson bursts. Javelin missiles crippled guard towers in earthshaking eruptions. Rei was subconsciously aware of the mayhem, but he'd become fixated on the demon-man, Captain Joule. All sense of self disappeared as if engrossed in a film.

Rei was so honed that beneath all the chaos and his mask, he could still hear Joule sigh with what sounded like disappointment. He watched, unbreathing, as the man named Joule aimed the instrument outright toward the base perimeter where Green Guard's fire was coming from and squeezed down on the first ring. The purple glow intensified slightly, and black electricity crackled along its edge.

What is that?!? Rei's attention shifted as a spherical dimming moved through the moist air at the camp's far end where he aimed. The plants, vines, rocks, soil, and anything in this field all spiraled and twisted into the air as though an invisible whirlpool was floating past, pulling things into it and flinging them away as it went.

A distant Green Guard soldier's Mimiflauge malfunctioned as this field passed over him. He flashed into view in a flurry of confusing colors, lifted into the air, and was bisected, his torso and legs flung in opposite directions. Rei wasn't blinking either. His entire nervous system was frozen. This thing was creating a powerful force, what felt and looked like hellish, unseeable energy ripping through the forest perimeter.

Reality came rushing back like a tsunami. Rei realized he couldn't have taken a breath even if he'd wanted to, as he'd unknowingly pressed himself against the boulder with all his strength. His body felt heavy, and his head swelled. 

He looked back to Joule, who was now steadily aiming the weapon across the horizon. Joule squeezed the second ring. The darkening field increased in size and strength. It seemed like Joule controlled the distance of this field by angling the rod up or down and that he could increase its destructive area with each ring he pressed.

It crushed and threw another fighter at the waist, as though put through a car compactor, tearing up leaves and exploding trees around him as it did. Then another, and another, and another as Joule aimed it blindly, searching for the locations of the hidden Green Guard fighters. The lush tree line was splattered with blood, bones, and organs and glitching Mimiflauge. The scent of iron flooded the atmosphere.

Rei heard a branch snap. He turned. Vanté ran toward him at full speed, his face exposed and twisted. 

"Run, Rei!" he screamed.

Rei reached out to him. He could see a sunbeam passing through the webbing of his fingers as though his whole hand was illuminated with hope. Vanté reached back. Froze just before they could make contact.

“Vante?”

Their eyes locked. Vanté tried to speak. His hands twisted like he was having a seizure. Rei could see the veins pulsing in his neck as he flexed every muscle in his body, fighting. Vanté shook. The air around him dimmed; the dark energy bent the world in one direction at his legs and another at his torso, his body unnaturally twisted at the waist. One hundred and eighty degrees. He fell to the ground, legs up, face down, and was tossed aside. The little flower tumbled out of his pocket. Rei fell to his knees. 

"Vanté…"

The screaming, high-pitched tinnitus flooded his eardrums. The field began to move again, and Rei slowly rose, walking zombie-like, around the backside of the boulder to follow its journey. It was headed for Jaguara. 

“Jaguara, run!”

She was tucked behind a slope of dirt, exchanging fire. Rei could tell she didn't see it, and it was getting close, tearing up the world in an inky, electric spiral as it traversed. She threw down her assault weapon and picked up a 50 cal sniper rifle meant to be mounted on a tripod. She humped it into the air, legs wide, Mimiflauge off, and aimed it squarely at Joule. 

She’s not going to stop…

Rei looked back to Joule, who seemed to already know her intention, like he could sense things how Rei did — could somehow sense better than everyone else. Joule stopped his attack, the vortex vanishing instantly, slammed the weapon straight into the ground, and squeezed all four rings. The world in a five-foot diameter around him bent and dimmed. 

Rei swiveled back to Jaguara, who was now rhythmically firing the high-caliber rounds and screaming as the cannon's kickback jolted her back and forth, moving her entire body with each triggering. His head swung back to Joule like a tennis match – each round that struck his field slid along it, followed by little crackles of black electricity, and exploded into the ground around him.

Jaguara cursed in Portuguese, spitting towards Joule as she reloaded her cannon. Joule raised the blade, carefully aiming at her position.

A familiar tingling sensation spread throughout Rei's body, more intense than ever before. He recognized it as the precursor to physical changes, but it engulfed him entirely this time. The tingling escalated to an itch, then to searing pain, as if he were aflame. Fighting through the agony, Rei staggered towards her. His back arched with a loud pop. He could feel each vertebrae stretching, the bones proliferating, simultaneously tearing and healing the surrounding tissue and tendons. He looked down to his toes as he hobbled. They stretched outward and hooked down like talons. In one fast movement, his hips snapped back, forcing him onto his hands. He was running like a half-monkey, half-man — lopsided. His head cocked up. His hands flattened, the bones separating, and he screamed in pain. 

He never stopped running. Only now, he was on all fours.

Jaguara turned to him, her jaw open. "Rei?”

Her words were cut off. She couldn't move. Rei could see the air around her beginning to dim. In one last flash of white-hot liquid pain, his rear knees inverted into hind quarters, and he knew then he was running as a quadruped. Sliding through the air like a jaguar. Once more, everything tunneled, but more than ever before, all he could see was Jaguara's face twisting as her body slowly began to turn. 

He’s killing her!

He flung himself at her, and they tumbled out of the field, which proceeded to implode into a rapid pulse of tornado-like force, destroying everything it touched instantly after. They slammed into a tree. Rei shook his head, recalibrated, and squatted next to Jaguara, who was slumped against its base, unconscious. She was covered in blood. Where's her right arm? 

Flop. 

It landed next to them. 

"Jaguara, wake up!" Rei shouted. He smacked her in the face with his broadened hand. Her eyes shot open. "Get on my back!" Rei said. She squinted at him, nodded, then wordlessly took a tourniquet from her pocket and tied off her stump. She climbed onto his back, and Rei shot off at full speed back toward home.