“Get out of there!” Jackie yelled into her comm mic.

Looking at the display and seeing those creatures staring at Lulu brought a chill to Jackie. It was likely the way an animal felt once a predator locked eyes on it.

Everything in the feed shook as Lulu flipped herself right side up. Right afterward, the world appeared to move up and down, due to Lulu movements.

In the forest, the trees were relatively close together and had thick branches. This alone wouldn't help without the suit each of them wore. The armor was one of the main reasons they could be so confident, the training and resources making up the rest.

“How the hell are they keeping up with me?!” Lulu cried out when she looked back and saw those things keeping pace. “I'm going to blast away those bastards!” She yelled.

“No! You can't!” Jackie said, remembering the reports several hours ago.

Lulu cursed and continued her escape attempt. “Are you sure those reports are accurate?” The doubt was evident in her voice.

“Yeah, Jackie. Those reports must be exaggerated, likely due to the confusion.” Lacy agreed.

Shaking her head, Jackie denied such thoughts. “Some of my contacts have told me that this isn't something that suddenly happened and the stories are likely not exaggerations.”

Lacy and Lulu were both silent as they listened. Lulu's was breathing a little heavily, which could mean that she was concentrating more on her current predicament though she was still trying to follow what Jackie was telling them.

Jackie understood that things couldn't proceed as they currently were, so she made a judgment call. “This is Jackie, I'm going to need support over here!” She contacted Communications.

The person in charge of monitoring her team likely heard the urgency in her words, because the person quickly asked, "This is Phil from Communications. What's the situation? Your team shouldn't be in contact with the modified humans this soon."

It was evident in their tone that they were agitated by Jackie's words, which made her grin bitterly. "Yeah. That's what we believed, too. Our current situation demonstrates that our projections are incorrect. The modified humans also demonstrated behavior outside the models provided to us. Around a mile away from us, a team member has encountered a group of modified humans. Even with her being closer to them, she shouldn't have run into them for quite some time."

"Elaborate on what you mean by 'behavior.' Did your team member cause an Adaption to occur?" Phil asked. There was silence after his question, but she could tell that he was apprehensive about her answer.

"That's a negative on Adaption, though they appear to have gone through several already, prior to engagement. The group utilized predatory tactics and have use of their vocal chords, to draw in prey." Even though she was saying these things, Jackie still couldn't believe their current situation. It only made her think about reading reports about random missing people and animals, initially looking like an isolated fad of copycats until others in the division started to piece everything together into a pattern.

Phil seemed to be talking with others in the background, due to the chatter in the background. Shouts in the background could be heard of others confirming similar things happening, which was even more concerning. In the back of her mind, Jackie was hoping that what Lulu encountered was an outlier event and not indicative to the norm.

"What did they say?" Lacy asked her. "Can they do anything? I'm getting worried about Lulu, she's been trying to escape for a while now."

Jackie merely nodded her head, letting Lacy know that she understood Lacy's concerns.

"We might need to consider disregarding the ban on engagement," Lacy whispered.

Hearing Lacy's words made her sigh. The ban had existed to protect against causing further problems down the road, but it was true that Communications would likely not be able to arrive at a decision before Lulu ran out of steam or reached them.

A panting voice belonging to Lulu interrupted them. "Hey, guys. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but those things are climbing up the trees and are now chasing after me in the trees in addition to the ground. And I'm starting to get tired from jumping between branches. Can I get some assistance here?"

Even with Lulu's calm voice, Jackie understood that Lulu was beginning to worry. The fact that the modified humans were now climbing meant that they had gone through another Adaption. "Phil, you need to quickly provide me with guidance. I'm not losing a member of my team as you guys deliberate about this clusterfuck."

"Just a second. We're trying to gather more information from the other teams." Phil said, sounding distracted.

"Hey! I don't have a second! Those things are now climbing trees, which was the one thing going in my team member's favor!" Jackie yelled at the man.

Instead of replying to her words, Phil yelled at someone, "They've gone through another Adaption!" There were some more muffled yells of surprise from other people in the background. Just as Jackie was going to say something, Phil said, "You have permission to engage."

A flash of confusion went through her mind after hearing his words. "Confirm orders to engage?"

"Go save your team member," Phil said.

Hearing the confirmation was like finding water in a desert after being thirsty for so long.

"Hey, Lulu! How do you feel about eliminating those things?" Jackie grinned at being able to give Lulu good news.

Manic laughter could be heard over the comm before Lulu said, "It's about time! I was getting tired of just running!"

"Just remember, you need to keep running until we can reach you. We don't know what causes an Adaption, so I want to end this as quickly as possible." Jackie tried to reign in Lulu's enthusiasm.

"Copy that...," Lulu said in an annoyed voice.

Turning to face Lacy, Jackie said, "Why don't we go join Lulu for some fun?"

Lacy grinned and said, "We should hurry before Lulu gets impatient to start the party."

Both of them then began to launch themselves in the direction of their fleeing comrade. Deep inside, Jackie was wondering what they were going to do about this new world with the emergence of modified humans.

-----

Claire felt nervous as Gia was arguing with someone about something called modified humans and Adaption.

"What do you mean that we've already had contact with those creatures?! What is the Arachnia Division doing? Are they purposely trying to cause those things to become a bigger headache than they already are?!" Gia continued to yell. "How long do we now have? I need to know the update timetable for those things. There are assets that need to be protected, and I'm not going to fuck this up because of you people!"

Wanting to know what was happening, Claire looked to Jake and asked, "Why is Gia so angry? Did something happen?"

"Um...," Jake began and then looked at Gia.

Gia saw what Jake wanted and just nodded her head, which made Jake look surprised. His expression immediately darkened after receiving permission from Gia.

"I guess things are starting to become bad pretty quickly," Jake muttered as he clenched his fist. Turning to Claire, Jake said, "Kid, how much do you know about what your family does?"

Confused by the sudden question, Claire said, "I know that my parents are doctors that do research and my oldest sister, Abby, helps them out. I don't know exactly what they research though." Seeing Jake grin, Claire asked, "Is that weird?"

Jake shook his head. "No, I'm just surprised to find a family that manages to maintain secrets from close family members and friends. Let's say that I've done work related to catching people talking about things they shouldn't."

"Are my parents and sister in trouble?" Claire asked, worried after hearing Jake's response about catching people.

"No. No. I'm just glad to know that your parents and sister are doing things properly. They are doing work that's very important to Star and Moon and the government, so it's good that they never told you. At the same time, it means that what they are doing is also very dangerous, and unfortunately, it looks like one of our competitors likely found out the hard way." Jake said.

"What did they do?" Claire was getting more curious about what Jake was telling her.

Jake sighed, and continued, "They probably tried to copy something we released in a medical journal and missed an important step which caused the creation of what we call 'modified humans.'" Seeing that he had Claire's full attention, he said, "Modified humans are what we're calling them because we don't know what else to think about them. They look like people but defy common conventions, like not dying after being shot in the chest multiple times."

The blood in her face felt like it was draining away after she heard Jake's words. Hearing about such a thing on top of the way Gia was acting, she slowly began to understand why everyone was so tense.

"Even worse is how they seem to be able to quickly adapt to new scenarios, which is why we call it Adaption. Creative, huh?" Jake chuckled at the name. "That's why we had to quickly move when you and your friend arrived, due to Arachnia Division giving us information about those things getting closer."

"Why are you able to tell me this now?" Claire asked, remember how earlier Gia seemed adamant about not telling Claire anything.

Grimacing, Jake said, "It's likely because things are getting really bad to the point where we might not make it to the place we're taking you guys before running into those creatures. Best case was to keep you in the dark, so you didn't have to know about it since where you're going was designed to both

protect against attacks and contain threats to the rest of the country. The information is also highly classified, so you shouldn't tell other people about this."

"Those assholes in Communications are no help whatsoever!" Gia yelled and slammed her fist against the window.

"What's the situation?" Jake asked, not sounding like he actually wanted to know.

Gia took a moment to calm herself down, before answering, "Somehow those modified humans have gotten faster and now can climb trees. This means that we may have contact soon." Pounding on the ceiling of the vehicle, she yelled, "You hear that?! Keep your eyes peeled and watch both the ground and up in the trees!"

There was the sound of a loud humming noise, and when Claire looked back, she could see the person in the back swiveling the turret around.

"That's just the cannon being activated. It's one of Star and Moon's latest weapons, packing both a heavy punch and increased firing rate. Both of them being important with our current situation." Jake informed Claire.

"Hopefully, we don't trigger an Adaption and make our firepower moot," Gia said softly. "Communications gave permission earlier to the Arachnia Division that they could engage those things, the problem is that at any moment our tactics could be made worthless."

Claire looked at Gia, who appeared exhausted by everything.

"Don't worry about it," Gia said to Claire. "We're going to get you safely..."

A vibration was felt throughout the vehicle as a loud concussive blast was heard, soon followed by similar sounds in front and behind them.