The warm current that had erupted inside Axel Vance continued sweeping through his body, washing away the exhaustion accumulated from days of relentless training. His muscles tightened as if every fiber had suddenly become denser, while even his bones seemed stronger than they had been moments earlier. At the same time, the translucent system panel appeared before his eyes.
Name: Axel Vance
Physique: 1.5
Psionic Power: 1
Specialization: Prisoner Fitness Lv. 3 (MAX)
Effect: Physique +0.5
[Specialization has reached maximum level.]
[Ability Acquired: Adaptive Resistance]
Adaptive Resistance: Through continuous tempering, your body and will have become significantly tougher. When exposed to damage, you can gradually develop a minor resistance against similar harm.
Axel stared at the new information with obvious excitement. The Physique bonus had jumped from 0.2 to 0.5, raising his total Physique to 1.5, which meant his body had already moved noticeably beyond normal human limits. More importantly, reaching the maximum level had awarded him an entirely new ability.
Adaptive Resistance.
Axel could not see anything physically different about himself, but he could feel a subtle change deeper than muscle or bone. It was almost as if an invisible layer of armor had formed around both his body and mind, giving him a strange sense of durability he had never possessed before. If the chanting inside the walls returned, perhaps resisting its mental pressure would no longer be so difficult.
The ability also gave Axel much greater confidence about surviving ordinary physical danger. Even if another full-scale riot erupted upstairs, he doubted the average inmate could threaten him easily anymore. Before he could examine the changes more carefully, however, a heavy sound suddenly came from the cell across the corridor.
Thud.
Axel instantly turned toward the reinforced glass. The event he had been expecting for the past two days had finally happened. The Big Guy had fallen straight from the edge of his bed and crashed heavily onto the concrete floor.
His enormous body remained completely still.
For several seconds, nobody reacted. Then one inmate screamed, another began laughing wildly, and several more prisoners started shouting without even knowing what had happened. The sudden death became an excuse for everyone in the underground wing to release the fear, pressure, and madness that had been building inside them.
"Dead! He’s fucking dead!" someone yelled from farther down the corridor. Another prisoner burst into hysterical laughter and shouted something unintelligible while pounding on his glass. Within moments, the entire maximum-security wing echoed with screams and deranged voices.
Axel remained silent and watched everything carefully. Most of these men had killed people themselves, but that did not mean they were comfortable watching death arrive without explanation. Some looked genuinely frightened, while others hid their fear behind laughter and exaggerated madness.
The commotion eventually attracted the corrections officers.
Two guards entered Big Guy’s cell after performing the required security procedures. They checked his condition, exchanged disgusted looks, and eventually dragged the corpse onto a transport stretcher. Their movements were so practiced that Axel immediately understood this was far from the first body they had removed from the underground wing.
Axel quietly kept track of the time. From the moment Big Guy hit the floor until the body was finally taken away, nearly an hour had passed. With that kind of response time, it was no surprise that prisoners had been dying here for months without anyone identifying the real cause.
The prison administration had been treating each death like another routine problem rather than part of a larger pattern. It had taken someone from outside the normal system to notice that the victims were deteriorating in almost the same way. Axel had finally found the connection Holden wanted, although explaining it would be another matter entirely.
Not long after Big Guy’s body disappeared, two more corrections officers stopped outside Axel’s cell. They unlocked the door, placed him in restraints, and ordered him into the corridor without explaining anything. Axel already knew where they were taking him.
As he stepped outside, he deliberately glanced toward the cell beside his own. Until now, the concrete wall between them had prevented him from seeing the man he had been speaking with for the past few days. This was his first opportunity to get a clear look at Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Axel immediately recognized the composed features from the films he remembered, although this Hannibal was noticeably younger. There was nothing wild or visibly insane about him; he simply stood behind the reinforced glass with perfect posture and a faint, almost pleasant smile. Somehow, that calm expression felt far more threatening than the screaming inmates surrounding them.
A normal man wearing that smile might have seemed friendly. On Hannibal, it gave Axel the distinct impression that he had become the subject of some private experiment. The psychiatrist raised one finger and lightly tapped the glass.
Tap.
Tap.
Hannibal’s eyes remained fixed on Axel as his lips silently formed several words.
See you later.
Axel narrowed his eyes but said nothing. The guards pulled him forward, and within seconds Hannibal disappeared behind him as they continued through the security doors. Axel had a feeling the man had not chosen those words casually.
"Officer Vance, how were your first few days downstairs?" Warden Holden asked the moment Axel entered his office. He did not bother with small talk this time and immediately leaned forward behind his desk. "Tell me you found something useful."
Axel sat across from him and gave Holden a complete account of what had happened. He described the sounds inside the walls, the layered chanting, the animalistic noises mixed into it, Hannibal’s claim that the phenomenon had begun several months earlier, and the gradual mental deterioration of the prisoners exposed to it. Finally, he explained Big Guy’s condition and death.
Holden stared at him without speaking.
For several seconds, the warden appeared convinced that Axel had finally lost his mind.
"You’re telling me..." Holden slowly began, his voice noticeably strained. "There are voices coming from inside the walls, and somehow those voices are driving prisoners to death?"
Axel nodded. "That’s what the evidence points to."
Holden had been holding a cigar between his fingers, but his attention was so completely focused on Axel that he failed to notice a piece of ash falling onto his shirt. He only reacted when the smell of scorched fabric reached his nose, forcing him to curse and hurriedly brush it away. Even then, disbelief remained written across his face.
"So we inspect the entire underground structure," Axel said firmly. "Open the service areas, check every ventilation line, examine the walls, and compare what’s actually there with the original construction plans. Something is happening behind those cells."
To Axel’s surprise, Holden did not immediately agree.
Instead, the warden took a long drag from his cigar and forced himself to calm down. He slowly exhaled before leaning back in his chair. "Officer Vance, that sounds reasonable if you’re thinking like a cop."
Axel frowned. "I am a cop."
"That’s exactly the problem."
Holden rose from his chair and walked toward the office window. From there, he could see several sections of the prison complex spreading across the grounds. He remained silent for a moment before speaking again.
"Every problem in a place like this eventually becomes a money problem," Holden said. "Why do you think I asked your department to send someone undercover instead of hiring engineers, investigators, contractors, and federal consultants? Because I wanted this handled quietly and cheaply."
Axel’s expression hardened.
Holden turned around. "Now you’re telling me the entire underground wing might have some serious structural problem. What exactly do you expect me to do with that information?"
"Investigate it."
"And when we start tearing into walls that haven’t been touched in decades?"
Axel fell silent.
Holden pointed toward the floor. "That underground section was built years ago, and almost nothing substantial has been renovated since. If I order a full inspection and they discover structural failures, unauthorized modifications, contaminated materials, or God knows what else, suddenly the entire wing becomes an official liability."
He took another step toward Axel. "Then the state gets involved. Inspectors show up, reporters start asking questions, lawyers start circling, and somebody has to explain why inmates were being housed there in the first place."
Holden tapped his own chest. "Guess whose name ends up on that paperwork."
Axel opened his mouth but found himself unable to offer a convincing answer. His entire investigation had been built around the assumption that Holden would support whatever steps were necessary once the cause of the deaths became clearer. Apparently, he had underestimated how far the warden’s desire to avoid trouble actually went.
Holden noticed Axel’s silence and softened his tone slightly. "That doesn’t mean what you found is useless. You proved something important."
Axel looked at him.
"The underground wing is the problem."
Holden returned to his desk and sat down. "You need to stop thinking only in terms of catching a killer. Ask yourself what the real purpose of this operation was."
Axel almost answered automatically, but stopped.
Finding whoever was killing the prisoners?
No.
After everything Holden had just said, that clearly was not what the warden cared about most.
Axel slowly understood. "Finding the security flaw."
Holden smiled.
"Exactly."
He pointed his cigar toward Axel. "You were sent down there because I needed to know whether the deaths came from some vulnerability inside that wing. Now we know they do."
Axel leaned back slightly.
Holden continued, "So why spend a fortune tearing the place apart? I transfer the prisoners to other secure facilities, shut down the underground wing, and the problem disappears."
Axel considered that solution.
It was crude.
But it made sense.
If something inside the underground section was killing prisoners, then removing every prisoner from that environment would at least stop the deaths. Nobody actually needed to understand the supernatural truth if the dangerous area could simply be abandoned.
As for Axel, his part of the operation was finished.
The thought immediately improved his mood. He could finally leave this prison, collect Holden’s promised $100,000, and hold the warden to his promise of helping him earn two promotions within the next two years. Whatever was chanting inside those walls could become someone else’s problem.
"Fine," Axel said. "I understand."
"That’s the spirit."
Holden smiled with visible satisfaction and reached for the telephone on his desk. "I’ll make the arrangements right now. Your undercover career officially ends today."
Axel felt his shoulders finally relax.
Then the floor moved.
It was subtle at first.
A faint vibration traveled beneath Axel’s shoes, almost too weak to notice. He immediately placed one hand against the wall and looked toward Holden.
"Did you feel that?"
Holden glanced up from the phone. "Feel what?"
"The floor moved."
Holden stared at him for a second before laughing. "Vance, you’ve spent too many days underground. Your balance is probably still adjusting."
Axel frowned.
"Trust me," Holden continued with an amused wave. "People come out of confined underground spaces and sometimes feel like things are still moving. Give yourself a little—"
The entire office suddenly lurched.
BOOM!
The second tremor was several times stronger than the first.
A framed painting fell from the wall and shattered across the floor. Dust and small chunks of plaster dropped from the ceiling while furniture shifted violently across the room. Holden’s amusement disappeared instantly.
"Earthquake!"
His face went pale, and he immediately rushed toward the office door.
Axel grabbed him before he could reach it. "Don’t run into the hallway while the building’s shaking!"
Holden looked around wildly.
Axel pulled him toward the small private bathroom connected to the office. It was an interior space away from the large window and exterior wall, giving them better protection from flying glass and falling objects than the open office. "Move!"
That finally snapped Holden out of his panic.
The two men stumbled into the bathroom just as another violent tremor passed through the building. Holden slammed the door behind them, and both barely had time to brace themselves before the shaking intensified again.
This time, it was nothing like the earlier tremors.
The entire world seemed to tilt beneath their feet.
Axel lost any clear sense of direction as the building twisted and shook around them. He and Holden were violently thrown off balance, slammed against the walls, and then crashed onto the floor while the deafening roar of shifting concrete filled the air.
For several seconds, Axel could not tell which direction was up.
Dust drifted from the ceiling.
Something shattered outside.
Holden shouted something that Axel could not hear.
Then, beneath the thunderous noise of the earthquake, another sound reached him.
Axel’s blood ran cold.
He recognized it immediately.
The chanting had returned.
Only this time...
It was no longer a whisper.
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