Chapter Text
They move silently. Dodging around corners, unseen. Their footfalls never quite touch the ground. They move in silence and fade within the shadows. A city, abandoned for more than ten years. Wind worries at loose plastic and broken signs, a dry whisper that never quite becomes sound. Missing posters plastered to walls. A child’s face. Sun-bleached. Torn. The paper curls, edges brittle beneath old glue. Ignored. Grass overgrown, weeds cracking through stone, roots splitting sidewalks like bones forced apart, the concrete stained dark where moisture never dries. They move from building to building. Collecting anything with even the smallest hint of death attached to it. Rusted nails, orange with decay, rough and flaking against gloved palms. Flaking paint that tastes of metal in the air. A smear too old to be blood—brown, matte, crusted into the wall. Not much. Everything seems to have been cleaned. Thoroughly.
Too thoroughly.
They move through the city, building by building. Finally, a home that is far different from the rest. Abandoned. Two stories. Fortified—at least, it used to be. Steel plates warped, edges buckled like overheated bone. Windows replaced with opaque composite, light dying against it without reflection. What looks like a laboratory bolted on above the home, its edges fused poorly, seams bubbled and uneven, like it was added in a hurry. They enter, splitting up. Kitchen. Living room. Upstairs bedrooms. The air is stale but wrong—no dust motes drifting, no soft grit underfoot. No pictures. No dust patterns where furniture once sat. No dishes. No rot. A carcass of a home. Hollowed and scrubbed until nothing remains.
They move higher. To the laboratory.
Nothing. Except a faint tinge of death, barely clinging to the air, thin enough to miss if they weren’t hungry for it. Not a laboratory. No benches. No stains. An op center. Surgical lights. Drain grooves cut into the floor, clean channels that catch the light. Everything sterilized to a shine that hurts to look at, white glare burning the eye. They move back downstairs.
A door.
It goes down.
They move silently as the smell of rot creeps in. Sweet. Wet. Old. It coats the back of the throat, lingers in the sinuses. This. This is a laboratory. Though everything is wiped clean. Beakers crystal clear, cold to the touch. Tools sharpened, polished, aligned by size and purpose. The air hums faintly, a low vibration felt more than heard, like something never fully powered down.
They search around a device. Circular. A portal, shattered. Metal warped outward as if something forced its way through from the wrong side. Death radiates from the broken pieces. Thick. Sticky. It clings to them, strings faintly when pulled away. Small patches of green splattered beneath jagged fragments, hidden from sight. Dried in some places, cracked and darkened. Still tacky in others, yielding under pressure. They collect.
A floor hatch. Metal, seamless with the surrounding laboratory. Cold. Heavy. They break the lock. It screams briefly before snapping, the sound sharp and brief, swallowed immediately by the walls. A ladder descends into a basement carved directly into bedrock. The stone breathes damp. They drop down, landing silently. They pause.
Glass.
A pane separates them from the other side of the room. Reinforced. Layered. Scored with stress fractures that spiderweb under the light. Concrete walls press in on all sides, close and unforgiving. An access corridor. Triple-sealed doors. The room beyond is approximately twenty by twenty feet. Fourteen feet tall. Designed for containment.
Inside the glass, a table. Semi-reclined. Strapped.
A boy.
Wrists. Ankles. Chest. Thighs. Carbon-fiber cuffs cinched tight enough to bite into skin. Red. Raw. Beginning to split, edges glossy with fresh weep. Wires burrow into him, taped down, stapled in some places—metal biting flesh, tiny halos of blood dried black around each point. Brainwave monitors. Vital signs. Two other machines reading frequencies they don’t recognize. Closed-loop wiring circles the room, siphoning the green substance from the air, from the walls, from him—feeding it back into his bloodstream through thick needles sunk deep into veins that no longer flinch. His chest rises shallowly, uneven.
Behind his head and upper spine, a halo of metal. Glowing green. Anchored into the occipital ridge. C1 to C3. Bolted. Fused. Bone shaved down to make it fit, pale dust ground into the seams. It hums softly, a vibration that rattles teeth, vibrating death into the room in steady pulses.
They crave it.
They collect it.
They give it back to their masters.
The boy has black hair, matted slightly at the nape. Pale skin. Lips slightly blue, cracked. Too still. Almost a corpse. Warmth barely lingers when they draw near.
They move to the doors. One of them begins disconnecting wires. The others wait, watching the machines scream silently as numbers drop and spike, lights strobing against unblinking glass. Door one complete. They move inside. The door seals behind them. Jets spray their bodies. Chemical. Burning. Sterilizing. It beads and runs off them in rivulets. They do not react.
Second door.
They move inside. The door closes. They wait. The third door hesitates. The air thickens, pressure changing.
Then opens itself.
They enter.
The death is overwhelming here. The boy radiates it in pulses. Thick. Wet. Mouthwatering pulses. It seeps from his pores, slick and luminous. From the places where metal meets bone, where flesh has grown angry and wrong around implants. They move swiftly. Machines ripped free, cords tearing loose with dull snaps. Needles yanked out, blood following in thin, quiet arcs that patter against the floor. Restraints cracked open. Flesh tears where it has healed around cuffs, reopening with soft, sticky sounds. Still, the boy does not wake.
They remove and remove and remove.
They lift him. His body is light. Too light. Bones sharp beneath skin, heat fading fast against their grip.
They begin their trek back home.