[Synchronizing...]
[1%... 78%... 99%...]
Aaron watched in breathless suspense as the counter flickered, the numbers burning into his retinas.
The moment the synchronization hit 100%, the world vanished behind a curtain of unprecedented agony.
It began in his eyes.
A searing, white-hot itch flared behind his lids, as if his very sockets were being filled with molten lead.
They transformed rapidly.
When his lids finally snapped open, his eyes were no longer human.
The eyeballs had turned a pristine, blinding white, etched with black inscriptions of infinity that interlocked into a chain-like loop, forming the boundary of the iris.
Within that loop, the color of his iris pulsated with a rhythmic, ethereal life, alternating from blood-red to deep cerulean, then to shimmering gold and emerald green in a perpetual, hypnotic cycle.
The mutation spread.
