The nature of the enemy (1)

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8:00 a.m

Boston (TD Garden)

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In the span of a single morning, Sergeant Giulia Camaggio's image of her future had drastically changed.

She who, intoxicated by the power the system had given her after gaining 5 small levels, was still imagining herself not so long ago painting the streets of Boston with the blood of monsters to cover the one they had shed, had no such thoughts anymore for many reasons...

2 of them were that now it would amount to wishing her own death and that she had recently come to the conclusion that her former species had no chance of emerging victorious from this conflict, which was by the way one of the most important reasons why she had agreed to betray it when given the opportunity...

Although, now that she had become what she was, she no longer saw her choice as a betrayal or the only alternative she had to stay alive but just the right choice, a choice that any intelligent enough human being would make if given the opportunity to get a glimpse of what it was like to be in her skin right now.

Of course everything wasn't perfect, but the positive points had much more weight than the negative ones and in her case, Giulia saw only one negative point that was really significant; her strength...

After her transformation she became a beta, it was satisfying if she only took into account the fact that before as an awakenee she was unable to defeat a beta without help, but it wasn't if she also took into account the fact that by becoming a monster, Giulia had lost her system, the weapon that went with it and any possibility she knew of gaining power.

Fortunately for her, by becoming a Garache Giulia discovered something much more pleasant than the addictive and exhilarating feeling she felt every time she levelled up; being part of a pack...

Friendship, family... she understood very quickly that these things weren't comparable to the bonds uniting the members of the same pack when she realized that among groups of several dozens of Garaches and Ganipotes she was able to recognize the members of her pack even though she had never seen them before thanks to a reassuring and familiar smell that they all exuded.

These physical changes, not to mention what her body was becoming when she was transforming, it was already something much more disturbing and difficult to cope with than what she experimented as an awakenee, and yet, it was way less disturbing than what was happening to her emotionally...

The love she felt in spite of herself towards the other members of her pack, those strangers, it was beyond comprehension to the point that it was terrifying and what was even more frightening was that it was secondary to the one she had for her pack leader.

Those overwhelming feelings were so strong that she knew with certainty that she would be capable of killing without hesitation her former family that she loved with all her heart when she was still human if she had to do so to save any member of her pack.

'Those instincts, it's scary and beautiful at the same time.' She thought as she lowered her gaze in the direction of the reason for all these changes to examine it for the umpteenth time with admiring eyes; the bite that was in the process of healing on her left wrist and which according to the teeth marks could have been inflicted by a human.

Currently, Giulia was in the exact same room where Lazar, Amandla, Buren and Andrew had their meeting last night...

A faint smile grew on her face because she found what was happening here amusing given the context. Three hours ago she was in this room, in her uniform to report to Buren and now she was doing the same thing, in the same place, in the same clothes but not for the same person.

This time she wasn't in front of an extremely intelligent but weak and cowardly man who didn't hesitate to sacrifice his whole regiment to give himself a chance to escape when he felt that his back was against a wall, but in front of individuals that she found much more respectable...

They were the only 4 Alphas of her new species; 2 Ganipotes and 2 Garaches representing the supreme authority for each pack leader and therefore each Ganipote and Garache and who by their strength and their leadership made sure to limit to the minimum the internal conflicts because although within the same pack there were very rarely problems one couldn't say the same thing between packs.

The least one can say about the Alphas was that their strength was far from negligible. Giulia had seen what they were capable of when her regiment had been crushed and it was no wonder that no one dared to contradict them even though their packs represented only a quarter of the total population of the species.

*MUNCH*

*MUNCH*

The chewing sounds were coming from a Ganipote and a Garache at the back of the room, they were sitting on the floor feeding on the corpses of two of Giulia's former comrades and didn't seem to care about what the other two Alphas were discussing...

Her pack leader having given her a detailed description of all the Alphas to prevent her from making a mistake in their presence, Giulia understood directly who the two Alphas who were having breakfast were.

Arthur and Louise; their values were similar to the point that their packs had a genuinely friendly relationship, which was extremely rare...

Their 2 packs counted nearly 700 members with a proportion of beta higher than the other packs of Alphas, which they justified by the fact that they were more 'faithful to their instincts' than the others, and although Giulia was doubting the validity of this explanation she was more than willing to believe that they were less civilized than the two other Alphas in general considering what they were doing.