The descent through the forest was slow, deliberate. No one spoke, though the tension between them hummed like a taut wire. Every branch that snapped beneath their boots made someone flinch. Every gust of wind stirred thoughts of another trap, another monster born of Dr. Fatal's design.
Elie's limp worsened as they went. Despite her earlier insistence, it was clear the pain was wearing her down. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she leaned heavily on Alix's shoulder. Still, she didn't complain.
"We stop in twenty," Shin finally said, voice low. "Just enough to rest and check the perimeter."
"Copy," Kent replied. He adjusted the strap of his pack and kept his eyes forward. The map had all but disintegrated in his jacket pocket, but the mental imprint he'd memorized was sharp—he didn't need the paper anymore.
Eventually, they emerged into a clearing with a broken-down fence surrounding a long-abandoned apple orchard. The trees had gone wild, twisted and gnarled, but the area offered enough space to rest without risk of ambush.
Evelyn dropped her bag near a crumbling stone wall and exhaled deeply. "This is better than walking until our feet fall off."
Alix helped Elie sit, kneeling beside her. "We should check the bandage."
"I'm fine," Elie muttered, avoiding Kent's glance as he passed her. But her face still burned from the memory of him carrying her, and her silence held more weight than her words.
Shin crouched beside a rusted-out tractor, scanning the tree line. "We need to talk about what we're walking into."
"We don't even know what it is," Evelyn pointed out, tossing him a bottle of water.
"We know it's not nothing," Kent said, catching the bottle before it hit Shin. "Smoke means fire. Fire means fuel. Fuel means people. People means… answers. Or danger."
"Or both," Shin added.
Elie turned her head slowly, voice hoarse. "What if it's just another illusion? Another one of Dr. Fatal's games?"
Kent glanced at her, his expression unreadable. "Then we learn the rules and break them."
A long silence followed. The kind that holds the weight of shared trauma.
Suddenly, a low growl cut through the air.
Everyone froze.
It wasn't human.
Kent slowly stood, scanning the brush. "North side."
Shin unslung the crowbar from his back. "Evelyn. Alix. Keep low."
Another growl—closer now. From the trees emerged a creature hunched over, its skin tight and pale, its mouth splitting wider than it should. Eyes completely black.
Another one of Dr. Fatal's failed creations.
Kent and Shin moved as one.
The fight was brutal but brief—coordinated swings, mutual trust, precise movements. They'd been through worse. The creature dropped to the ground with a final screech, twitching violently before going still.
The orchard fell quiet again.
Alix exhaled. "They're getting bolder."
"They're getting desperate," Shin muttered, wiping the blood from his cheek.
Evelyn looked toward the smoke again, now just visible beyond the next ridge. "Let's not waste the daylight. If that's a safe place—we'll need it. We're not going to make another night out here like this."
Shin nodded.
And so they moved again, this time faster, the weight of the moment pulling them forward.
Not just toward answers.
But toward the unknown world that waited on the other side of the smoke.
The trek to the smoke was silent.
Everyone's footsteps fell into a kind of grim rhythm, the weariness of everything they'd survived etched into each movement. The orchard gave way to rocky terrain and sharp inclines. They were heading upward again—but not for a view. The smoke marked something permanent… something manmade.
It wasn't just the promise of shelter. It was the possibility of finding out how deep Dr. Fatal's grip reached.
Elie leaned against Evelyn as they climbed a narrow ridge, wincing with every shift in weight. She hadn't spoken much since the orchard, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. Maybe the pain. Maybe Kent. Maybe everything.
Shin led at the front, jaw set and eyes never leaving the curling smoke ahead. Kent walked beside him, every so often glancing at the map's remains, but mostly thinking. Calculating. Watching the group.
Finally, they crested the rise—and froze.
The smoke was coming from a massive structure nestled into the cliffside like it had always been there.
A facility.
Old. Rusted. Concrete walls covered in moss and vegetation, like nature itself had tried to forget it. But the smoke—thin, consistent—was billowing from a crooked pipe near the top of the compound.
"That's… not just a building," Evelyn whispered.
"It's a bunker," Kent said. "Military, maybe. Or private science sector."
"Fatal's?" Shin asked.
"Maybe. Or it's what's left of whoever tried to stop him."
They began descending cautiously, sliding down a broken path carved by years of erosion. Trees loomed on either side, branches whispering in the wind like they were keeping secrets.
Halfway down, Alix spoke up. "What if he's in there?"
"Then we end this," Shin said without hesitation.
"But we're not ready," Evelyn countered.
Kent looked back at the group. "We're never going to be ready. That's the thing about men like Fatal. They don't wait for you to catch up. They pull the trigger when you blink."
They reached the bottom. A wide rusted gate hung ajar, chains broken clean through. There were signs of life here. Footprints in the mud—some old, some fresh.
Shin reached for the latch. "If this goes bad—"
"We improvise," Kent finished. "Like we always do."
Inside was dark.
The air was damp and heavy with rot. Broken lab equipment lay strewn across metal tables. Old test chambers with shattered glass. Scratched walls marked with what looked like fingernails.
Evelyn gagged softly. "What happened here?"
"This," Kent said, motioning around, "was a failed phase. A trial he shut down—or didn't have time to complete."
Suddenly, Elie, despite her limp, wandered into a hallway to the left.
"Elie!" Alix called after her.
But Elie didn't stop. She followed a sound, something soft—like a distant hum.
And then she saw it: a panel. Still powered. Still warm.
On it… a name: Project Z.E.V.O.
Elie hesitated.
Then pressed the screen.
It flickered—an image loading. Not a video. A data file. A map.
Multiple locations. All over the country. All with identical facilities, identical codenames. This wasn't the only lab.
There were dozens.
Kent and Shin joined her, scanning the screen. No one said a word.
And then, behind them—another sound.
Footsteps.
Not from one person. From several
Shin turned quickly, weapon raised. Kent stepped forward, shielding Elie instinctively.
Out of the darkness…
Figures emerged.
Clothed in tattered guard uniforms. Eyes sunken. Skin gray.
More failed subjects.
Not monsters. But not human anymore either.
And they were blocking the only exit.
Kent clenched his jaw. "Looks like Fatal didn't leave this place unguarded."
Shin gripped his crowbar tighter. "Then we fight our way out."
And this time, no one argued.
The hallway erupted in chaos.
The failed subjects lunged—sloppy, twitching, but strong. Too strong.
Shin swung his crowbar like a veteran of war, crushing skulls with surgical precision. Kent fought low and fast, disarming a twitching guard-thing and using its own baton to bludgeon it down. Alix and Evelyn stayed behind, guarding Elie—who was still recovering from her limp—until one of the creatures got too close.
It all happened fast.
Elie screamed as sharp claws tore into her wrist, slicing her skin open. The wound instantly sizzled, turning a sickening shade of bright green—almost glowing. She fell back, clutching her arm in horror.
"ELIE!" Evelyn shrieked, kicking the creature off her friend before Shin took it out with a savage blow to the head.
But it was too late. The damage was done.
"Your wrist," Alix breathed, staring at the glow radiating from under Elie's skin. "That's not normal."
"No shit," Elie hissed, her voice shaking.
Then came the second blow
Another failed subject staggered from a side corridor and hurled a metal spike—probably broken debris from the ceiling. It struck Elie square in the shoulder, punching deep into the soft tissue near her collarbone.
She dropped.
"Elie!" Kent was at her side in seconds, barely catching her head before it hit the floor. He stared at the spike lodged in her flesh—it was long, jagged, too deep. Any attempt to pull it would risk tearing a major artery.
"She's in shock," Kent muttered, pressing his hand to her good shoulder. "We can't take this out without proper tools."
"And that glow…" Alix murmured. "What is that?"
Shin's eyes narrowed. "It's like a reaction. Like the serum in the Z.E.V.O. videos. That green coloration… same as the early trials."
Kent cursed under his breath. "We need to move. Now."
Evelyn nodded quickly. "We'll carry her."
"No—don't touch her wrist," Kent said firmly. "We don't know what that green stuff does. Keep her steady by the waist and legs."
Shin finished off the last failed subject with a final, echoing slam.
Blood dripped from his crowbar.
The corridor fell silent again.
They all stared at Elie—now unconscious, breathing rapidly, arm glowing unnaturally, and the metal spike embedded deep in her shoulder.
Whatever was happening to her… wasn't over.
Kent stood up slowly, jaw clenched, scanning the walls. "We need to find an infirmary. A med bay. Something."
Shin nodded. "If this is a research facility, there's got to be one."
Kent looked down at Elie.
Whatever game Dr. Fatal was playing—he was raising the stakes.
The group burst through a dented set of metal doors, panting and frantic. The faded red cross painted on the wall confirmed it—infirmary.
Inside, dust layered every surface. Cabinets were still stocked, if not ransacked. Evelyn and Alix laid Elie down on a gurney while Shin and Kent went to work gathering supplies—gauze, antiseptic, tweezers, and surgical clamps.
"She's burning up," Alix muttered, dabbing sweat from Elie's forehead.
"That wrist wound stopped glowing," Evelyn noted. "But the color… it's still there, under the skin. Like a current."
"Worry about the shoulder first," Kent said, his hands already working to clean the area around the embedded metal shard.
Shin held the tools, silent, focused. He was surprisingly delicate for someone who usually solved problems with a crowbar.
"This part's shallow," Kent murmured, extracting a twisted sliver of metal. "Just broken edge debris. Probably from a support beam."
Elie groaned and twitched. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn't wake.
"Here's another," Shin said, helping guide the clamp toward a deeper splinter.
"Got it." Kent pulled it out with slow, tense precision.
They removed five pieces in total. But one remained—deep, almost fused into the tissue near her scapula.
Kent studied it grimly. "This one's lodged tight. We'll have to go slow."
Elie stirred, her lips trembling. Her breathing sped up.
"It's okay," Alix said softly, taking Elie's hand. "You're safe now."
"No…" Elie murmured, teeth clenched. "It… hurts…"
Shin braced her arm gently. "Just a little more. We've almost got it—"
Then her eyes flew open.
"STOP!"
Elie screamed, lurching up instinctively. Her right hand shot into the air—
—and from across the room, a loose metal tray snapped into the air like a bullet, flying straight toward her.
Everyone shouted in shock—but Elie's hand caught it. Clean. Effortless.
She blinked.
That tray hovered in her hand, trembling slightly but stable. Controlled.
"What the…" Evelyn backed away, her voice caught between awe and fear.
Shin slowly released her arm. "That wasn't random."
Elie stared at the tray. She hadn't grabbed it. She had summoned it.
"Is this… me?" she whispered. Her hand trembled, and the tray lowered gently until it clinked against the gurney. "I didn't think. It just happened."
Kent stared at the tray, then at the metal shard still stuck in her shoulder.
"No," he said slowly. "It's not just you. It's whatever that green reaction did. I think it changed something."
"More than changed," Alix whispered. "It evolved."
Shin crossed his arms. "So now we've got a girl who can control metal… wounded, unstable, and potentially infected with whatever the hell Dr. Fatal put in her."
Elie met their eyes, fear rising behind the sweat and pain.
"I don't want to become one of them," she said softly. "Please don't let me."
"You won't," Kent said, his voice firm.
Everyone fell silent as the implications set in.
This wasn't just about survival anymore.
It was transformation. A side effect. Or a side mission.
And Elie… might be the first of many.