The Savage Within

Chapter 18 – Not Done by a Human

The spot where the goat stood was less than fifty meters from Westlake Street.

Inside the same parking lot as before, in that off-road vehicle, Henry Han still sat in the driver’s seat, staring blankly at the phone mounted on the holder. The screen displayed the live feed from the miniature camera strapped to the goat’s back.

They had released the goat around midnight. Now, nearly forty minutes had passed.

Keeping his eyes glued to the screen was tedious and dull. Just as Henry was about to take a short break and turn his gaze toward the window, a familiar figure appeared on the screen.

“Autumn, quick, look! That guy Ethan just showed up!”

Autumn Li, who was browsing the news on her phone in the passenger seat, immediately turned her eyes to the screen.

“What’s he doing here?”

On-screen, Ethan, head lowered, suddenly froze, his gaze locked on the goat, his expression twisted in a strange way.

“Autumn, he—” Henry was stunned as Ethan crept closer to the goat step by step. He couldn’t even finish his sentence.

Ethan looked… wrong. His expression was that of a lecher spotting a beauty, or a starving man staring at a feast. It was unsettling and eerie.

Both Henry and Autumn knew Ethan’s background. A white-collar interior designer, a normal professional. From the conversation they’d had with him, he had seemed perfectly sane. The contrast with what they were seeing now was shocking.

As he drew closer to the goat, his expression became even clearer. Even Autumn couldn’t help but mutter, “Does this guy have some kind of mental illness?”

“Maybe he’s got a split personality—normal by day, a lunatic by night,” Henry suggested.

Just as the two thought Ethan was about to lay hands on the goat, his expression suddenly shifted back to normal. He turned and hurried away as if fleeing.

“Could he really be the one behind those missing pets?” Henry muttered.

“The others, probably not. If it were him, there’d be some trace, some evidence. But Lucky… I’m afraid that one really was him,” Autumn said grimly.

“…”

For a moment, the same thought crossed both their minds.

This guy was a pervert—and dangerous.

So why did Ethan suddenly run away?

It was, of course, because he had spotted the miniature camera.

Although he’d been tempted to scoop the little goat into his arms and take it home, he hadn’t lost all reason.

Just that evening, he’d overheard Mrs. Tsui and her husband talking about missing pets. Now, here was a goat standing alone with a camera strapped to its back. Only an i***t would fail to realize something was off.

“Damn, that camera definitely caught me. I just hope this doesn’t cause a serious misunderstanding.”

With unease churning in his gut, Ethan quickened his pace toward home. He could imagine how strange his expression must have looked on camera. Whoever saw it would no doubt think he was some kind of lunatic.

Back at his rented apartment, Ethan sat for a while before suddenly feeling the urge to use the bathroom.

A glance at the clock: 1:03 a.m.

Nearly six hours had passed since he’d eaten steak. He remembered that when he’d eaten pork knuckles two days ago, he’d needed the bathroom in less than an hour.

So the emergence of this feeding urge really was altering his body.

Though the food lingered longer this time, one thing was the same—it passed through him instantly, done in moments.

By observing, he noted that this time the digestion was much more complete than before.

Ethan booted up his computer, made a few simple notes, then took a shower and prepared for bed.

Before sleeping, he checked his messages. Tina Tong still hadn’t replied. She really was angry.

He tapped her profile and opened her social feed. At around 6 p.m., she had posted a photo—two plates of fancy food, with a caption: “Thank you for keeping me company. I had such a wonderful night.”

“Must be another one of those guys chasing her,” Ethan muttered.

In his mind, if Tina truly liked him, she should have been upset, not posting happily.

The sight left him with a heavy feeling in his chest.

That’s human nature, he thought. No matter what people say, the body tells the truth.

But the difference between humans and beasts lies in restraint. If we only acted on instinct, we’d be nothing more than animals.

What Ethan didn’t know was that Tina hadn’t posted that status herself—May Ma had, typing the caption for her friend.

Unaware of this, Ethan forced his emotions aside, shut off his phone, and went to bed.

Less than three hours later, before dawn, Ethan woke naturally again.

He glanced at the time. 4:01 a.m.—slightly later than yesterday.

He didn’t dwell on the reason, stretched, and got out of bed.

Whether due to the mutation improving his sleep quality or his recovery speed, even with less than three hours of rest, he felt alert and refreshed.

“The feeding urge is still here, but no stronger than before I went to sleep.”

He switched off the AC, opened the window to let in fresh air, and sat on the sofa. After ten minutes, a sudden surge of excitement washed over him. The hunger spiked rapidly—and along with it came an unbearable, bone-deep itching.

“I didn’t feel any itching last night… could it be I’m really about to lose control now?”

As the minutes dragged on, both sensations intensified without relief. Fear gnawed at him.

Half an hour later, his whole body was trembling. He collapsed to the floor on hands and knees.

“Damn it, I’m going to lose control now? It’s almost dawn—I have to hold on!”

He clenched his teeth, fists balled tight, desperately fighting the impulses.

But soon, the searing hunger and relentless itching began to devour his will, driving his body into submission.

He tried the same methods he’d used before to resist his manic episodes, but it was useless. His body refused to obey.

Time crawled by in torment.

At 5:09 a.m., his consciousness blurred, his body spasmed, and he collapsed onto the floor.

Through the floor-to-ceiling window, he saw his back bulge grotesquely, as if something were trying to burst out. Every pore itched with maddening intensity.

As guttural growls tore from his throat, he reached the brink of losing control—

Then, the sun rose.

Whoosh!

His trembling froze. The bulging in his back shrank rapidly before his eyes. The itching ebbed away.

He lay on the floor for a while, relief washing over him like a tide.

“The hunger hasn’t vanished, but it’s under control. Tonight, though… tonight it’ll explode. I’d better be ready before then.”

After twelve minutes and twenty-eight seconds, his strength was fully restored.

Ethan immediately showered, then sat at his computer to record what had just happened.

When he shut down the computer, it was 6:13 a.m.—over two hours before work started.

Dressed, phone in hand, he scrolled through the local news. The feed was full of articles about the string of pet disappearances in Mucu.

He clicked through several.

All the accounts agreed: the cases were bizarre, with no witnesses. Some media outlets even suggested supernatural causes.

That reminded Ethan of the goat he’d seen last night.

If his hunch was right, the goat had been planted by the police.

And if the goat was bait, then the target couldn’t be human.

After all, with a camera strapped to its back, any human culprit would spot the trap immediately.

“Could it be,” Ethan wondered, “that the police think this wasn’t done by a human? If not human… then what?”