The girl was never supposed to jump that high.
She launched—straight over the rusted fence, laughing midair as the warehouse lights
shimmered beneath her. For three glorious seconds, she soared like nothing human. Then
came the landing. Then came the scream.
Her feet had fused to the soles.
Inside the lab, Dr. Tajiyo Zugun didn’t flinch. He just watched from behind the glass, one hand
pressed to the panel. The rabbit DNA remembered how to run. That was the problem. Nature
wasn’t meant to be worn.
But they kept asking for more.
GEAR—Genetically Enhanced Animal Robes—was never meant to be a weapon. In 2085, it
started as a mobility aid. Smart fabric that could borrow traits from living creatures. Wear the
skin, gain the gift. Speed. Strength. Reflexes. That’s what they sold to the public.
What they didn’t say was that your body would pay for every advantage.
The world didn’t care. Nations lined up. And soon, the labs began to rise.
There were seven of them—corporate superpowers cloaked as biotech R&D. Each one
specialized in a different evolutionary domain.
Neo-Pelt, the ocean kings, crafted suits from deep-sea leviathans. Squid, shark, eel, and things
without names. Their agents slipped into water like silk and re-emerged as ghosts. Some never
surfaced at all.
Eclipse Hide, based in the Texan barrens, made gear for cold survival. Test subjects wore
insulated pelts that pulsed with artificial heat. They came back alive… but changed. Obsessed
with warmth. Hungry for it.
Iron Fang, born from New York’s underground, blended avian instincts with canine tenacity.
Their “Homing Pigeon” drones sang lullabies before dropping explosive payloads. It was
elegant. And brutal.
But none of them cared about the fallout.
Outside the lab cities, in the Bronze Zones, underpaid workers stitched and pressed GEAR
they’d never be allowed to wear. Their health wore out by their forties. The toxic dust in the
thread—it ate skin first.
It was a biological arms race. A revolution in slow motion. And Zugun? He watched it all from
the sidelines. The man who sparked it. The man who saw the future in a twitching rabbit's leg.
His last journal entry read like a confession.
“They asked me to make a better shoe.
I made a better leg.
When the first test subject jumped over a wall, she laughed.
When her feet fused with the soles, she screamed.
I should’ve stopped there.
But the rabbit DNA... it remembered how to run.
And I wanted to see how far.”
The world had already leapt.
There was no landing anymore.