Alex’s eyes widened in horror when his girlfriend’s words were cut off and she suddenly disappeared. What replaced her was a blazing figure that took her previous spot right in front of him. There was no explosion this time because the figure that had come crashing down on them wasn’t the object from last time. 

Instead, it was something familiar...the alien that had been chasing after Alex since earlier. This alien was quite persistent because after it had dealt with the soldiers who had come to save Alex, it immediately resumed its hunt for him.

When Alex saw the aflame figure rise from the crater it had created as it stood up and turned to face him, he didn’t feel fear nor terror. Instead, he felt anger and rage welling up inside of him.

“Mukh nich el kahn!”

His mind was in a mess and the only thing he could think about was the rage he felt from this thing killing his girlfriend right in front of his eyes. 

The bench that was just next to him and Claire had been destroyed by the alien’s fall and one of the steel bars that were once the bench’s leg had snapped off and rolled to his feet. Alex didn’t even think twice as he grabbed it and immediately rushed at the monster with a monstrous howl.

“AHHHHHH!”

He roared in anguish and rushed straight at the alien who appeared to be caught a little off guard by him. Alex rushed at the alien in reckless abandon because at the moment, he no longer cared about his life.

He didn’t know if it was because it was in flames or something, but the alien didn’t transform any of its limbs into one of those dangerous weapons from before and it seemed a little bit sluggish.

‘This thing’s injured!’ He thought.

Seeing that it was an opportunity, Alex didn’t hesitate to rush forward and dodge one of the alien’s arm swings. He jumped onto the arm without caring that it was on fire before kicking off of it and jumping towards its torso area.

He latched onto the alien’s shoulder and despite its body being on fire, he stabbed the twisted steel bar in his hand right into its face.

“GIYAAAHHHH!”

The alien let loose an ear-piercing shriek that immediately ruptured Alex’s eardrums. He felt something warm flow out of his ears but he didn’t care. Just like how he didn’t care about the arm he was using to grab hold of the monster’s body being burnt to a crisp.

He kept a firm hold on this creature but it was pretty easy since its skin and flesh felt like mud so his hand seeped into it. Even if Alex wanted to let go of it now, he wasn’t going to be able to but it wasn’t like he wanted to do that.

With strength that even he didn’t know he possessed, Alex pulled out the steel bar that he had stabbed into the monster’s head before he plunged it back in again. He did this a few times before aiming at a different area, the center of the creature’s chest where he thought its heart was located─if it had one.

The alien didn’t just let him do as he pleased as it began slamming its arm on his back, breaking his spine and a few other bones but Alex didn’t stop. He tenaciously clung onto the alien’s body and continued to stab the steel pipe repeatedly into the monster’s chest until finally, it fell to its knees.

His body was in immense pain and he felt that a few of his ribs had definitely punctured some of his organs as he was coughing up blood now. 

Not only that, but his entire body was burning, just like the alien. He didn’t know if he had killed it or not, but judging by the way it was now silently on its knees and unmoving, he had most likely completed his mission.

Alex couldn’t move his broken body anymore. He knew that he was about to die now but it was alright. He was going to see Claire soon but felt a little reluctant to die because, after his reckless outrage, he finally remembered that he had a mother, a father, and 2 little siblings he had to find and make sure they were safe.

“Claire...y-you can...rest p-peacefully now...I killed...it…”

The alien’s body began to slowly fall apart and Alex fell to the ground as soon as his stuck arm was free. When he turned to the side, he saw that his hand and forearm that had been submerged inside of the alien’s body had been turned into a mangled mess of flesh and bone that was slowly melting.

“N-No wonder I couldn’t...feel it…”

‘Mom, Dad...Lin, Mimi...I’m sorry. I’ll be going ahead of you. I hope you stay safe and that this...this is all just a sick and horrible nightmare that isn’t real.’

Those were his last thoughts as Alex closed his eyes, getting ready to accept his fate. Even though he was burning, Alex felt his body turn cold but after remembering that he had killed one of those aliens, his lips jerked up into a smirk as he thought, ‘At least I killed one of those bastards and went down fighting.’

While Alex was lying down on the floor, burning to death. The alien he had fatally wounded collapsed on top of him, drenching him in its liquidy physical structure. The flames on his body were put out immediately but Alex couldn’t be happy about this because he was going to die anyway.

The alien’s form had turned a bit amorphous as it couldn’t retain its previous build due to the injuries it had suffered from defeating the company of soldiers that had tried to kill it and the ones that it suffered from Alex’s suicidal attack.

The alien was intelligent and completely capable of thought so when it was dying, it tried to find a way to avoid its impending doom. Its core was only half-destroyed and it could repair that if it had sufficient materials but those materials could only be found back on the rock-like spaceship it had come here on but it was too far away.

Having no other options, the alien turned to the dying young man under it and saw that it could use the dying human’s body. Alex’s core, which was his heart, was slowly failing but his secondary core, the brain, was still functioning perfectly though it was slowly dying as well.

It needed to make a decision right now so it decided to latch onto Alex’s body in order to survive. The alien had devoured a few humans earlier and discovered that a human being had two cores. The main core was the heart and the secondary core, the brain. 

It began using Alex’s secondary core that was intact to repair its own core but it never expected for something else to happen. Something that would change both this alien and Alex’s life altogether.

In the middle of the still-burning park, the body of a naked young man was sprawled on the ground inside of a crater. There were no visible injuries on this person but one side of his body was covered in a layer of viscous black liquid that made him appear grotesque.

This young man was naturally Alex and from his pristine condition, he appeared to be just fine, unlike his earlier condition where he was about to die from being burnt alive. His fingers began twitching before suddenly, his body shot up as he let out a shout.

“AHH!”

He looked around panicked as he began touching his body to check his condition.

“W-What’s this? I...I’m alright?”

Alex couldn’t believe what was happening to him right now. Earlier, he was definitely burning and was close to dying but now, he woke up with his body completely fine as if it was all just a dream.

He looked around and noticed that it wasn’t a dream but he couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened to him. His girlfriend had been killed by that alien which he then killed with his own two hands but the alien’s body was nowhere to be found.

When he looked down at his body, it was then he saw that there was something horribly wrong with him and it wasn’t the fact that he was naked.

“W-What the hell is this?!”

Alex looked down on the side of his body that had been covered in a layer of black flowing liquid and began trying to shake and wipe it off, but he was horrified in the next instant when the black liquid on him began to squirm around before transforming into his arm and leg.

“W-What the fuck?!”

His eyes nearly popped out when he saw this and he tried getting up but noticed that the left side of his body was refusing to listen to him. Alex could feel his arms and legs so this meant he wasn’t crippled or paralyzed but they just wouldn’t move no matter how hard he tried to move them.

“What’s wrong with me?”

[Quiet, human, and stop resisting!]

“Huh?”

Alex heard something in his head and it was at that moment his surroundings suddenly changed and he was no longer at the park but in some kind of space that was completely white.

It was all foggy and Alex could barely see anything in front of him. He noticed that his body was floating instead of standing or sitting and it felt a little bizarre. He was still naked but that didn’t matter right now.

What mattered was the fact that his surroundings had suddenly changed abruptly and with everything that had happened to him in such a short period when he hadn’t even completely wrapped his head around everything, Alex felt like he was about to go mad as he was feeling confused, shocked, and scared all at the same time.

“W-Where is this? Where am I?”

[Quiet down, human. The more you struggle, the harder this becomes for the both of us.]

“I-It’s you again! Who are you? Where are you?!”

[I’ve been here...right next to you.]

Alex heard the voice directly next to him and when he looked to the side, he saw that there was no one there so he began looking left and right, up and down but still, he couldn’t find anyone there besides him. 

“W-Where are you?!”

He thought that the voice was only playing tricks on him but he soon understood what that voice meant when it said that he was next to him.

A mirror-like object appeared in front of Alex and in the next instant, his eyes widened in horror when he saw his own reflection. He was a pretty handsome young lad but it wasn’t his face that made him frightened.

In the reflection, he saw that the right side of his body was normal but the left side...that was what brought horror to his face. The left side of Alex’s body was a deformed and grotesque version of himself that appeared to be made up of something that was not his own flesh but some kind of thick black liquid.

It only took him a second before he remembered where he had seen that kind of liquid before.

“Y-You’re that alien!”

[So you finally noticed, human.]

“H-How?! I thought I killed you! And how are you able to speak to me like this? What did you do to me?!”

[What I did, saved us both.]

“You should be dead!”

[If I died then you would have died too.]

“Like hell I care! You killed Claire!”

From the reflection and what had happened earlier, Alex could see that he and the alien had merged together somehow. With the alien being on his left side while the rest of his body was completely normal. 

He should be dead right about now and yet, he wasn’t. He was still alive and kicking but judging by the state he was previously in, the alien had done something to his body and with its abilities, had somehow restored him.

Naturally, the only thing Alex could think of that matched with what was happening right now in front of him, the alien had merged its body with him in order to survive. Thankfully, he was still conscious. Alex didn’t like the thought of an alien controlling his body, what more, the alien that had killed his girlfriend, Claire.

He could tell by what it had said earlier to him, the alien wanted to wrest control of his body, and the only way to do that was to take over his mind.

[Hm, aren’t you pretty sharp.]

The alien spoke up after it began to feel Alex’s resistance. The viscous black liquid on his body began to squirm and wriggle as it started encroaching on the normal side of himself.

“N-No!”

Alex felt that if he let the black liquid which was probably the alien’s body or something, completely envelope the rest of his being, something bad would happen to him so he tried to stop it from accomplishing that.

[Stop resisting, human. You will only make things difficult for the both of us!]

“N-Never! You...You killed Claire! Even if I have to die here all over again, I’ll fucking kill you!”

[Don’t be absurd!]

Alex didn’t know where he found the determination and willpower, but the normal side of his body began to beat back the alien’s black liquid that was encroaching on his normal part and as he was about to completely rid himself of it, the alien suddenly let out a screech before Alex noticed that his surroundings had changed again and he was back in the park.

“W-What the hell?”

The reflection of himself had disappeared and when he looked down on his body, it was normal without the black liquid covering one half of himself. He also noticed that he had regained total control of himself this time so he quickly stood up.

[Fool!]

That previous experience felt unreal but the enraged voice that had suddenly popped up in his head told him that what he just experienced was indeed real.

[You’ve doomed us both, you ingrate!]

“What?”

As if on cue, a loud explosion occurred nearby as something had fallen from the skies and landed nearby. This had happened before so Alex quickly hit the deck and prevented himself from being thrown away by the shockwave of the explosion.