[Panel/Text Concept: The screen is bathed in a harsh, flickering golden glow that casts long, unnatural shadows against the ancient stone pillars.]

David didn't scream.

The sound died completely in his throat as his whole body went entirely rigid. The white-hot pain from the Church's artifact didn't stay in his chest—it violently surged downward, flooding into his right arm and shoulder like liquid fire.

SNAP. CRUNCH.

David looked down at his arm in pure, unadulterated terror.

His skin was tearing open. Lines of pulsing, golden digital code forced their way through his muscles, glowing brightly against the dark, freezing stone walls. The bones in his fingers cracked, shifting and elongating as his flesh violently flickered and glitched between solid tissue and raw, grey static.

He couldn't feel his fingers anymore. He could only hear a loud, oppressive electronic hum vibrating through his veins.

"What..." David choked out, cradling the heavy, glowing mass against his chest. "What did you do to me?"

Garcia backed away a single step, his eyes wide as he stared at the shifting code. The regret on his face was heavy, but his voice remained steady. "I saved your life, kid. But I told you... there’s no going back from what the artifact does."

[Vertical Space: Long scroll to emphasize a sudden, violent intrusion]

BOOM!

The heavy stone doors at the far end of the catacombs blew apart in a blinding cloud of dust and debris.

Three Syndicate sweep soldiers stepped through the smoke, their pitch-black tactical visors reflecting the golden light of David’s arm. The weapons in their hands hummed to life.

"Target acquired," the lead soldier's radio crackled. "It's an anomalous entity. Deploy the containment mesh!"

A heavy, pressurized cylinder fired from the lead soldier's rifle. In mid-air, it burst open into a wide, crackling net of blue energy designed to neutralize glitched code.

David didn't think. Panic and survival instinct took over. He threw his mutated right hand up to shield his face.

ZAP-CRACKLE.

The energy net didn't trap him. The moment the blue mesh touched his glowing, golden fingers, the Syndicate's technology violently short-circuited. The blue light dissolved instantly into a cloud of harmless, grey ash.

The soldiers froze. "The net didn't hold! It's corroding our metrics—"

David lunged forward. He didn't even mean to strike, but his mutated arm moved with a frightening, autonomous speed his own eyes could barely track. He swung his hand out defensively.

His glitched fingers passed straight through the lead soldier’s heavy tactical chest plate as if it were nothing but thin air.

POP-STATIC.

The soldier let out a muffled gasp as lines of golden code surged into his armor, short-circuiting his entire life-support system in a fraction of a second. He collapsed forward into the dust, completely motionless.

The remaining two soldiers scrambled backward into the dark hallway, their boots clicking frantically against the stone.

"Fall back! Fall back to Sector 4! The target is highly volatile!" they screamed into their radios, their voices fading as they sprinted away.

The catacombs fell completely silent again.

[Vertical Space: The panel darkens as David falls to his knees]

David collapsed onto the cold linoleum, his chest heaving as the golden light on his arm began to pulse slowly, burning his veins with a dull, throbbing ache. He stared at his hand—at the missing skin, the floating blocks of digital code, and the raw power he didn't want.

He was alive. But looking down at the monstrous thing attached to his shoulder, he knew he wasn't entirely human anymore.

Garcia walked over, kneeling down in the dust beside him. He reached out, hesitantly placing a hand on David's uninjured shoulder.

"They're running back to Base Shalot," Garcia muttered quietly, staring down the dark corridor where the soldiers had fled. "They're going to tell Bunik what happened. We have to move before they lock the whole sector down."