Timestamp: January 27th, 20XX — 1:23 A.M.
Location: Extraction Path D6, Abandoned Entry Tunnel, South Dakota Sector
Status: Covert Movement toward Sub-Basement Alpha
⸻
The world above had gone still.
Snow fell in silence. But beneath the ice, beneath the rotten fields and forgotten buildings, monsters were still breathing.
Derik moved ahead, boots cutting through black water.
The tunnels under VEX-7 weren't mapped. They weren't supposed to exist. Only one route wasn't sealed — Path D6, a crawlspace used during the original foundation dig for the experimental site.
The air reeked of mold and something deeper.
A cold, sterile death that had no timestamp.
Ash followed closely behind. He hadn't spoken in over an hour. Derik had only said five words since they left the surface:
"We find the cage first."
They knew what it was. The facility logs from the drive called it:
Sub-Basement Alpha: The Hollow Room.
Where Candidate 0 had been kept.
Where Derik's brother had been raised.
Without sound. Without light. Without a name.
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The Descent
The old service elevator was rusted and locked. Derik didn't bother.
He found the old maintenance shaft, gripped the rungs, and started climbing down. Forty-six meters, no safety. Every five meters, a painted mark:
[X] = Failure
[X] = Contained
[X] = Decommissioned
At the final rung, a different mark:
[0]
Derik stared at it for several seconds.
Ash landed behind him, breathing hard.
"Why do they fear him?"
Derik's voice was quiet, but solid.
"Because he wasn't built.
He was born this way."
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The Hollow Room
The corridor to Sub-Basement Alpha was lined with reinforced steel — a vault that had been sealed for ten years.
Derik placed a palm against it. Cold.
The door had no handle. Only a retinal scanner, cracked and flickering.
He took a step back, pulled a small laser cutter from his bag, and whispered to Ash:
"Get behind me. Don't move, no matter what you hear."
"What if he's still inside?"
"Then we'll know what they created… and what they feared."
The cutter whirred. Sparks hissed through the silence. A steel seam split in a perfect vertical line.
The vault door groaned, then cracked open.
And then — nothing.
No sound.
Just darkness.
And heat.
Heat.
Derik narrowed his eyes.
Then he stepped inside.
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Contact
The room was blacker than night. The walls were foam-insulated — soundproof, heat-retaining, sealed.
At the far end was a single cage. Not with bars — but a glass cell, reinforced from the inside, with bite marks still etched into the interior.
Derik stepped forward, his eyes adjusting.
In the corner, unmoving, was a figure.
Naked. Thin. Pale.
But wrong.
His spine arched at an unnatural angle. His arms were longer than average. His body showed scars not from injury — but from scratching his own flesh open in silence.
Ash gasped.
The figure turned its head.
Eyes met Derik's.
Same bone structure. Same jawline.
But dead. Like staring into a mirror that had drowned.
The figure didn't speak. Didn't twitch.
Just watched. Breathing.
Derik stepped closer.
"You're not forgotten."
Nothing.
"They called you zero."
Still nothing.
"But I remember. I remember the blood. The screams above while you were down here."
He knelt. Pressed a hand to the glass.
"You were the first. And they tried to bury you in silence."
And finally…
The figure moved.
Not fast. Not slow.
He crawled forward — bones clicking — until his face was inches from Derik's.
His lips parted.
And he whispered.
A voice made of rust and ruin.
"You're late."
⸻
End of Chapter Eleven
Derik has made contact.
His brother lives.
But something… is wrong.
The Hollow Room didn't just hold a child.
It reshaped one.