The laboratory never slept. Even in the artificial night, its lights glowed cold and sterile. Footsteps echoed across metal walkways. Drones hovered on silent motors. Glass displays blinked with vitals, formulas, numbers—unfeeling, eternal.
But within chamber 8, a storm was quietly unfolding.
N-276 opened his eyes. He had waited for this moment for nearly three years.
They had studied him since birth. Prodded, injected, scanned. But they didn't know everything. They didn't know that his ability—resonance—had evolved.
Not just sensing machines anymore.
He could command them.
He reached a trembling hand toward the scanner by his chamber door. A low vibration pulsed in his palm, invisible and soundless. A frequency mimicked from the ID chip of a passing guard earlier that day. The moment had lasted a breath, but it was enough. Stored in his mind like a code.
The red light on the scanner blinked.
Then turned green.
The lock clicked open.
He stepped into the corridor, heart hammering, every step deliberate. The camera above was already jammed, its feed looping an empty frame of static hallway.
He moved quickly.
T-098 was next. The tank. Bone-reinforced. Silent, sleeping in his dark room like a fortress waiting to wake. N-276 touched the door's console again. Another frequency. Another spark. The lock hissed open.
T-098 blinked, then rose. He didn't ask questions. Just nodded once.
Last was Y-271.
The healer.
The girl's chamber was smaller, lit dimmer than the others. As N-276 opened it, her pale face turned. Eyes wide. Hope and terror all at once.
"It's time," he whispered.
She nodded.
They walked in silence, barefoot over the cold steel. Three children, modified by gene science, broken by injections, carrying a hope that could kill them.
Down the corridor. Past closed doors. Past the sleeping codes that didn't know what was coming.
Y-271 stopped in front of the chamber door. Her breaths came shallow.
She stared at the metal. The lock. The hallway bathed in red emergency light. Somewhere above, a faint alarm continued to blink without sound.
"I…" she whispered. "I'm sorry I can't. If we get caught…"
She took a step back, tears already rising.
"I'm sorry. I can't. It'll be worse than dying."
Then she turned—and ran.
Her door clicked shut behind her.
N-276's shoulders trembled.
T-098 didn't speak.
They stood there in silence, in the dim hallway washed in red light.
She was gone.
She'd made her choice.
They felt betrayed—but they could understand.
One wrong move, one breath too loud, one flicker on a camera feed… and it wouldn't just be over. It would be worse than death. And Y-271 knew it.
There was no time to mourn. No time to scream.
Emotion could come later.
Or never.
The chamber door needed to be forced open manually. N-276 gave one last push of energy to short the lock. Then T-098 took over.
He slammed his fists into the maintenance panel beside the ventilation shaft. Once. Twice. On the third hit, the steel bent. His modified body, dense with calcium and reinforced marrow, broke it open. He tore the vent cover free, and the two crawled in.
No words.
Only the hum of machines. And the distant sound of chaos.
Somewhere in the facility, something had gone wrong.
Lights flickered.
Drones sparked and fell.
Doors refused to lock. Monitors glitched. Sector alarms blinked silently without sound. The system was failing—why, neither of them knew.
But they didn't ask questions.
It was N.
He was using everything he had.
Each time he sent a command to the machines, blood filled his nose. His skull felt like it was cracking apart. But he pushed harder.
It was all or nothing.
They moved.
Through the vents. Every turn memorized. Every camera avoided. Their hands scraped metal. Once, they paused—held their breath as guards ran past below, shouting orders. Confusion. Disarray.
The path led them to the waste shaft.
It was the only way out.
They dropped into it from the last corridor, slipping into the transport cargo bin set to dump failed experiments at dawn. They landed hard—on bodies.
Rot.
Flesh.
Children.
The stench hit first. Then the heat. Then the realization.
They weren't alone in the container.
Failed codes—dead children. Some half-dissolved. Some whole. Limbs twisted, necks broken. Fluids pooled in the corners. The cargo was full.
They couldn't scream.
They couldn't breathe.
They choked, silently vomiting beside corpses. Blood soaked their clothes. One of them sobbed without sound. T-098 reached for the edge—but stopped himself. Movement would alert sensors.
Then came a sliver of light.
A small hole between the stacked bodies. They leaned toward it, saw the faintest silver—outside.
N-276 whispered, "Almost…"
But he never finished.
A sharp pain ignited in his skull.
They collapsed—consciousness ripped away.
When they woke, cold metal burned their backs.
They were chained.
Bright lights burned overhead. Tubes coiled around their arms.
And standing above them—was Kaios.
The lead scientist.
The demon.
Half his face was sealed behind a breathing mask. His one eye bulged wide. The other—milky white. His laugh was twisted, raw, scarred by acid and time.
"You thought you could run?" he rasped. "Children."
He raised a device. A tracker.
"All of you… chipped. From the spine to the skull. You thought freedom was real?"
Then he stepped aside.
Behind him stood Y-271.
Head bowed. Silent.
Kaios laughed harder.
"She told us everything."
Y couldn't speak. She was too weak. Too terrified by Kaios's grotesque presence. She hadn't said anything. She hadn't told them. But no one knew that.
And she couldn't explain.
Because by then, it was already too late.
Kaios leaned in toward N-276.
"And you…"
He tapped the side of the boy's skull.
"You awakened something new, didn't you? Frequencies. Control. I let you run to see it myself. To see if the strain would push you past the edge."
He smiled.
"And you didn't disappoint."
He turned to the assistants.
"Open his head. I want everything in datapod. No need for him to be alive for that."
The screams came next.
Electric pulses through nerves. Injection needles buried under nails. Skin peeled, nerve by nerve. T-098 screamed. N-276 blacked out. Then woke again to more.
Kaios had left the microphone on.
Whether by cruelty or purpose, the entire facility heard it.
Every chamber. Every child.
Every scream.
And every word.
In chamber 12, R-932 sat in perfect silence, his perceptive brain overwhelmed by every frequency, every scream. He covered his ears, but it didn't matter. His mind absorbed emotions like antennae.
Y… why? Not her. Anyone but her…
He saw things others didn't. The twitch of deception. The shift of blame. And yet, for the first time—he doubted even his own senses.
Elsewhere, S-410 and S-411, the telepathic twins, lay curled in opposite corners of their cell.
Their mental link trembled, filled with pain and feedback from the facility's broadcast.
Did she really say it?
I don't know. I don't want to believe it. But she didn't say anything…
She just stood there…
Why didn't she scream? Cry? Prove them wrong?
The silence that followed wasn't disbelief. It was grief.
Because Y-271 was their light. Their hope.
She had healed them when they cried. Shared what little food she had. Gave life force to stop others from bleeding.
She was their angel.
And now she stood behind the monster.
Some of them didn't believe it.
But others… began to wonder.
She didn't defend herself.
She didn't scream.
And in that stillness, something broke.
They wept silently, too afraid to even touch minds again.
But it wasn't the pain that stirred them.
It was the lie.
They think they understand chaos. But this… this is order in disguise.
Let it break.
Let it all burn.
But silence was never peace.
The children of the facility no longer trusted each other.
And in their isolation, a new horror was born:
Doubt.