In the crimson current, the "god of destruction" born from nuclear waste was rising from the ocean depths and swimming straight toward land.
Few people understood the truth of what was happening—except for two "outsiders" who did not belong here.
Beneath the sea, which seemed to hold an endless tide of blood, the colossal body was changing from within as though it had returned to the womb of life. It expanded naturally as it rose from the crushing pressure of the deep, while its biological structures underwent constant "adjustments"—or were torn down and rebuilt altogether.
It was like life at its very beginning: fragile in the extreme, yet filled with infinite possibility.
The steam rising high into the air grew denser, obscuring almost everything within it. Even the camera aboard the helicopter overhead could not get a clear look inside.
Yet the surging drive hidden beneath it, like a volcano on the verge of eruption, was enough to give many who witnessed it up close a growing sense of dread.
The thing moved toward shore. It did not look fast, but it pushed the water aside with ease, sending waves several stories high against the breakwater.
Only when the helicopter risked moving closer could its specialized imaging camera make out the beast lurking in the thick fog. Unknown to humanity until now, it lay on its belly, shaped like a giant tadpole or snake, though something seemed to be pushing outward from either side of its body.
"Whoa—what a huge monster—"
The cameraman's instinctive murmur carried the natural shock of something small confronted by a giant.
Chen Ruiping shook his head too.
"Getting that close to a superorganism powered by nuclear reactions. Damn..."
A distance of a few hundred or even a thousand meters meant little beside a walking, living