The first thing Bianca noticed was the smell.
Burning.
Not smoke.
Not fire.
Something worse.
The reinforced doors shook again hard enough to rattle the entire chamber.
Dust drifted slowly from the ceiling lights.
Children flinched instinctively.
One girl near Bianca grabbed another child’s hand so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody breathed loudly.
Even the guards looked nervous now.
That alone terrified Bianca.
People with guns usually acted confident.
These ones looked like they wanted to run.
Another impact slammed into the steel doors.
A visible dent formed near the center.
One of the guards took a step backward before catching himself.
Volkov noticed.
“Hold your position,” she said calmly.
Her voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
Fear already obeyed her.
The distorted laughter echoed again from the hallway outside.
Wet.
Broken.
Like someone trying to remember how humans sounded.
Bianca felt cold crawl slowly down her spine.
The system flickered across her vision.
[ Threat Level Rising ]
[ Survival Probability: 6% ]
“Fantastic,” Bianca whispered weakly.
The little bruised girl beside her glanced over nervously.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Good save.
Probably.
The lights overhead flickered violently.
Then silence fell again.
Heavy silence.
The kind that pressed against your ears.
Something scraped outside the doors.
Slow.
Metal dragging against concrete.
One of the guards swallowed hard enough Bianca actually heard it.
“Why isn’t containment active?”
Volkov didn’t look away from the entrance.
“Because containment failed.”
Then the doors exploded inward.
The sound hit like a bomb.
Metal screamed across the floor as massive chunks of reinforced steel crashed into the chamber.
Children cried out.
Several dropped instantly to the ground covering their heads.
One guard fired immediately.
Gunshots shattered the silence.
Bianca barely saw movement before something slammed into the soldier hard enough to launch him sideways into the wall.
The impact sounded horrible.
The guard didn’t get back up.
The thing standing in the destroyed doorway looked almost human.
Almost.
A teenage boy maybe sixteen years old stood barefoot among twisted metal breathing heavily.
His hospital uniform hung in torn bloody strips from his body.
Surgical scars covered nearly every inch of exposed skin.
Dark veins pulsed beneath his pale flesh like something alive crawled underneath him.
One arm looked larger than the other.
Wrong somehow.
Distorted.
But his eyes—
Bianca immediately wished she hadn’t looked directly at them.
They weren’t glowing.
Weren’t monstrous.
They were just…
empty.
Pitch black from edge to edge.
Like light itself disappeared inside them.
The second guard opened fire.
Bullets struck the boy directly in the chest.
He barely reacted.
Then suddenly— he wasn’t there anymore.
Bianca blinked hard.
A choking sound came from beside the door.
The guard collapsed slowly clutching his throat.
Subject Twelve stood behind him.
Nobody in the room had even seen him move.
Children screamed.
Real panic erupted instantly now.
Several tried backing toward the walls.
Others froze completely.
Volkov remained standing calmly near the center of the room.
“Enough.”
Subject Twelve turned toward her slowly.
For one horrible second Bianca thought he might actually obey.
Then he smiled.
It didn’t look sane.
Blood stained his teeth.
“You said…” he rasped softly, “…if I survived… I could leave.”
His voice sounded ruined.
Like every word physically hurt him.
Volkov’s expression never changed.
“You became unstable.”
The boy stared at her silently.
Then laughed again.
Bianca hated that sound immediately.
There was too much pain inside it.
“I became,” Subject Twelve whispered, “what you made me.”
Then he moved.
The floor shattered beneath his feet.
Bianca barely processed motion before Volkov blocked a strike powerful enough to crack the concrete wall behind her.
The impact shook the chamber violently.
Children crashed sideways.
Bianca hit the floor hard enough to lose her breath.
Her ears rang painfully.
Volkov wasn’t normal.
That realization hit Bianca instantly.
No normal human moved like that.
Subject Twelve attacked again.
Fast.
Too fast.
Volkov twisted sideways smoothly before driving her elbow directly into his ribs.
A sickening crack echoed through the chamber.
The boy staggered backward.
Then smiled wider.
Blood ran slowly from his nose now.
“What the hell…” Bianca whispered.
The system flickered rapidly.
[ Biological Anomaly Confirmed ]
[ Severe Augmentation Detected ]
[ Host Advised To Escape Immediately ]
“Working on it,” Bianca muttered.
Nobody heard her over the chaos.
More guards stormed into the chamber carrying heavier weapons now.
“Contain the subject!”
They opened fire immediately.
This time Subject Twelve screamed.
Not from pain.
Rage.
Pure uncontrolled rage.
The lights overhead exploded all at once.
Darkness swallowed the chamber.
Children panicked instantly.
Gunfire flashed wildly through the dark.
Bianca dropped flat on instinct as bullets ricocheted somewhere nearby.
Someone grabbed her sleeve tightly.
The bruised girl from earlier.
“We need to hide!”
Bianca nodded immediately.
The two crawled toward the far corner of the chamber while screaming echoed around them.
Emergency red lights flickered weakly back online.
Enough to reveal glimpses of chaos.
Bodies on the floor.
Guards shouting desperately.
Children crying quietly against walls.
And in the center of it all—
Volkov and Subject Twelve tearing through the room like monsters wearing human skin.
Concrete cracked beneath every impact.
Steel bent.
A support pillar shattered completely as Subject Twelve hurled Volkov through it.
Dust exploded outward.
The chamber shook violently.
Bianca’s heart pounded hard enough to hurt.
This wasn’t a fight.
This was two weapons colliding.
Volkov stepped from the rubble a second later wiping blood from the corner of her mouth calmly.
For the first time since Bianca woke up— the woman looked annoyed.
Not scared.
Annoyed.
That somehow felt worse.
The small girl beside Bianca trembled violently.
“They never should’ve used the serum on him,” she whispered.
Bianca turned sharply.
“The what now?”
The girl’s eyes widened instantly like she regretted speaking.
Too late.
Subject Twelve suddenly appeared beside another guard.
The man screamed once before crashing violently across the chamber.
Bianca looked away immediately.
She didn’t want to see.
Didn’t want to know.
The room already smelled too much like blood mixed with metal.
Subject Twelve stood breathing heavily near the center of the chamber.
The black veins beneath his skin spread further up his neck now.
Pulsing.
Growing.
Like his body still wasn’t finished changing.
One surviving guard aimed shakily at him.
“Don’t move!”
The boy slowly turned toward him.
Then tilted his head slightly.
“You still think…” he whispered, “…I’m the monster here?”
The guard fired.
Subject Twelve vanished again.
The rifle clattered uselessly onto the floor seconds later.
Several children started crying openly now.
Bianca’s hands shook uncontrollably.
This place created him.
That realization settled heavily in her chest.
The experiments.
The training.
The fear.
This was the end result.
The system flickered again.
[ Emergency Quest Generated ]
[ Escape The Training Sector ]
Reward: Adaptive Instinct Lv.1
Failure Penalty: Death
Bianca stared at the screen briefly.
“…well that’s new.”
The little girl beside her blinked.
“What?”
“Still nothing.”
Definitely losing her mind.
Volkov stepped forward slowly through the ruined chamber.
Calm despite everything around her.
“Subject Twelve,” she said coldly, “return willingly and your suffering ends now.”
The boy stared at her silently.
Then laughed softly again.
Bianca noticed tears mixed with the blood on his face.
“You said that before.”
Something twisted painfully in Bianca’s chest.
Because beneath the monster— he still sounded like a child.
Then Subject Twelve slowly turned toward the terrified children huddled against the walls.
His empty black eyes stopped briefly on Bianca.
She froze instantly.
Those eyes felt wrong.
Too deep.
Like staring into a hole in reality itself.
“You should run,” he whispered.
Then alarms screamed louder throughout the facility.
A mechanical voice echoed overhead.
“Sector lockdown initiated.”
Massive reinforced shutters immediately began slamming down across every visible exit.
Children panicked harder.
“No—!”
“We’re trapped!”
“Please!”
Bianca’s pulse skyrocketed.
The exits were sealing.
Volkov noticed too.
For the first time— her expression changed slightly.
Concern.
Tiny.
But real.
Then Subject Twelve smiled.
And Bianca suddenly realized something horrifying.
He wasn’t trying to escape anymore.
He was trying to destroy the entire facility with everyone still inside it.