The Authority of God

Monster

Gah!

The fleshy ball swelled to the size of a basketball, its surface covered in cracks. Just as it burst open, an indescribable wave of energy suddenly erupted from it without warning.

Caught off guard, everyone in Laboratory 12 was struck by an excruciating headache. It felt as if something icy and sharp were forcibly drilling into their heads.

"Ah! It hurts!"

"What was that?"

"My head! Damn it!"

They all clutched their heads and cried out in pain.

The sudden headache passed as quickly as it had come. Everyone soon recovered, as if it had all been an illusion and nothing had happened.

But every face showed either lingering shock or deep unease, as if they had been badly frightened.

The chairman of Demville, just as caught off guard as everyone else, bent over like a prawn and groaned through gritted teeth. "Damn it! What the hell just happened?"

In that instant, a strange word involuntarily surfaced in his mind.

A laboratory worker pointed at the incubator and cried, "Something hatched!"

Until now, they had only been able to make out vague images through X-rays. The fleshy ball seemed to interfere with X-rays, making it impossible to get a clear picture.

The images from the ultrasound equipment, held close to the ball's surface, were hardly any better than the incomplete, blurry X-ray images.

With only the limited clues at hand, they had concluded that some unknown life-form was developing inside—not a meaningless tumor with little research value.

The cloudy, blood-red medium inside the incubator's glass tube was being rapidly replaced, turning clear and transparent once more.

The fleshy ball had split apart completely. A monster with a mouthful of fangs was swimming around inside the incubator, swiftly devouring the scraps and shreds that had once made up the