Sitting cross-legged in the center of one of the isolation floor, one could see a figure facing the transparent wall, that figure was Klaus.
He was dressed in a plain, coarse grey linen tunic and trousers. His posture was perfectly upright, his hands resting lightly on his knees with his palms facing upward in a classic meditative pose. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow, steady, and almost imperceptible.
To an outside observer, he appeared completely whole.
His skin was pristine, with a few faded scars and burn marks, from the endless medical procedures he had endured. Yet beneath that flawless exterior lay a deep, lingering echo of agony.
All he could think of were screams of despair springing from within him. Each time he closes his eyes to lay to rest the brutal memory of being strapped to steel dissection tables, how much wraiths he appeared visibly during the process just as his blood siphoned off in endless liters made the physical sensation of trauma feel like a permanent, maddening illusion of something more than pain that throbbed just beneath the surface of his skin.
Official records within the agency claimed Klaus was locked in isolation for hesitating during the previous field mission—a disciplinary measure for a compromised operative. But that narrative was a decite made to cover for the Scarlet team.
The true reason Dr. Maru had recommended his absolute containment traced back to a silent, terrifying incident that occurred just before the mission commenced.
Before the deployment, during a private confrontation in the upper research offices, Klaus had unleashed a latent, unrecorded aspect of his ability. Without touching a weapon or blowing things out of proportion not even a single drop of spilled blood was seen after he had unleashed such ability.
Klaus had focused his power on Mr. Bingley. In a matter of seconds, he had unraveled Bingley's physical structure at a molecular level, reducing the man's entire body into a pile of grey sand, more like sand containing decayed biological matter bringing a seemingly painless end to Bingley's existence as a human being in a single, ominous instant.
The event would have triggered a total security lockdown had Dr. Maru not stepped in. Having long found Mr. Bingley's administrative presence a tedious, arrogant headache, Dr. Maru had quietly used her own dark magic to erase the residual ash, bind the remaining spiritual ley lines, and cast Bingley's lingering essence out beyond the walls of the living.
Just like that the act of murder was concealed with the claim that Bingley had simply been reassigned to an overseas division, replaced seamlessly by Michael Sam and later on through tedious fabrication, Bingley was reported to have met his end in enemies territory.
Standing now before the glass chamber, Dr. Maru stared at Klaus's serene, meditating form. She found it equal parts intriguing and thoroughly annoying that despite the years of cataloging his traits, Klaus still harbored hidden, highly dangerous abilities that defied standard superhuman classification.
That discovery had driven her to push his body far past its previous limits. Over the last two months, she had subjected Klaus to double the volume of biological extractions and nerve-mapping procedures she had ever performed during his early captivity.
Day and night, her hands with surgical needles had pierced his flesh, drawing massive quantities of genetic material to get the purest form of origin of his ability. Even so with all these his body evolved uniquely and created catalyst that allowed his body to reconstruct tissues while degrading physical matters which was near it.
The clear, iridescent serum she had just handed to Scarlet for Detective Quive's injection was the direct product of those agonizing extractions. By synthesizing Klaus's extracted genes and pure blood with the raw European compounds sent from France and England, she had successfully engineered a new, highly stable batch of the miracle serum—a formulation capable of forced cellular reconstruction without the immediate risk of violent, monstrous mutation.
Dr. Maru stepped closer to the glass, her white coat rustling softly. She tapped her fingernail against the tempered pane—a quiet, sharp *clink* that echoed through the isolation intercom.
Klaus did not flinch. His eyelids remained closed, his chest rising and falling in that slow at a pace of deep meditation.
"You look remarkably peaceful for someone whose been at death's door several times," Dr. Maru said, her voice transmitted through the internal speaker system, smooth and laced with quiet arrogance.
Klaus's lips moved slightly, a faint, almost unnoticeable ferocious grin escaping him, but he did not break his posture.
"You can play the stoic martyr all you wish," Dr. Maru continued, walking along the length of the glass window. "Your sacrifice is proving exceptionally useful. The batch I extracted from your marrow yesterday is already on its way to Ohio. It will patch up the broken detective, stabilize the field trials, and lay the foundation for the next phase of our human existence project. You are building our new world, draft by draft, humans would take a step closer to become perfect."
She paused at the edge of the glass, looking down at her digital clipboard as the monitor displayed Klaus's active bio-vitals: perfect heart rate, stable brainwaves, zero physical anomalies.
"Rest well while you can," Dr. Maru added softly, turning her back to the glass chamber as she prepared to return to her office desk. "Once the preliminary feedback from Quive's injection clears the system, we begin the third round of marrow extractions. We have a great deal of work ahead of us."
Behind the glass, as Dr. Maru's footsteps receded down the sterile hallway, Klaus's eyes slowly opened. His irises glowed with a faint, cold, lightless silver hue—reflecting off the flawless glass.
" Imperfections is the beauty of life, why seek perfection to satisfy your greedy curiosity " he thought while the mark of a crow head slowly appeared on his chest like a tattoo.