The compound's routines settled around Lena like a net. Wake with the bell. Line up for rations. Report to assigned labor. Return to dormitory. Lights out. Every hour accounted for, every movement tracked. It should have been comforting, after the chaos of the outside world. But to Lena it felt like a leash tightening around her neck.
And Caleb was still gone.
Every time she asked, the answer was the same: "Secondary testing. Be patient." Dr. Mercer's smile never cracked, but Lena noticed the way guards' hands drifted to their weapons whenever she pressed too hard. The boy avoided her now, parroting phrases she knew weren't his own: "We're safe here. They know what's best. We shouldn't question it."
The more she looked, the more cracks she saw.
Smiles that vanished the moment backs were turned. The way the guards' laughter never reached their eyes. The screams—faint, muffled, but real—that slipped through the walls on still nights.
It was late on the fifth night when Lena decided she couldn't wait any longer.
---
She slipped from her bunk after midnight, when the others were asleep. Her boots were silent on the dormitory floor, her breath shallow. She had memorized the guards' routes over days, watching from the corners of her eyes. Two patrols, fifteen minutes apart. Enough time, if she moved quickly.
The compound was quieter at night, though not silent. Generators hummed, floodlights buzzed, radios crackled faintly from the towers. She kept to the shadows, slipping between storage sheds and barracks until she reached the heavy gates she had noticed days before—the ones leading into the dark sector.
Up close, they loomed even taller, reinforced steel latticed with wire. Two guards stood before them, rifles slung, faces impassive.
Lena ducked behind a stack of crates, heart pounding. There was no way past them—not without distraction. She cursed under her breath, weighing her chances.
Then she heard it again.
A scream.
Faint, but unmistakable.
It rose from behind the gates, raw and broken, the kind of sound that stripped the soul bare. Both guards shifted, eyes flicking toward the steel. One muttered something to the other. For a moment, their focus wavered.
It was enough.
Lena grabbed a shard of glass from the ground and hurled it across the yard. It shattered near the far wall with a sharp crack. Both guards turned instinctively, rifles raising.
She slipped from cover, heart hammering, and pressed herself against the gate.
The lock was a keypad—six digits glowing faintly in the dark. No way she could guess the code. But as she stared, the keypad flickered. For a heartbeat, the numbers blurred, rearranged, until they formed a pattern she recognized.
Her birthday.
She froze, blood running cold.
The whisper tickled her mind. We open doors for you, little one. Why resist?
Her hand trembled. She wanted to turn away, to run back to her bunk and bury herself beneath the sheets. But Caleb was in there. She had no choice.
She pressed the numbers. The keypad chimed softly. The lock clicked.
She slipped inside.
---
The air changed immediately. Warmer, heavier, laced with the stench of disinfectant and blood. The lights here were dimmer, corridors narrow, walls streaked with something that looked too much like rust.
Lena moved silently, ears straining. She passed rooms where figures lay strapped to tables, eyes blank, machines humming beside them. Monitors flickered with unreadable symbols. One room held nothing but rows of empty cots, each marked with a number.
The screams echoed again, closer now.
She followed them down a hall until she reached a wide window of reinforced glass. On the other side lay a chamber glowing with violet light.
She pressed her hand to the glass, breath fogging it.
Inside, people sat strapped to chairs in a circle, machines wired into their skulls. Their mouths opened and closed in unison, chanting words she couldn't hear. At the center of the circle pulsed something like a wound in the air—small, flickering, alive.
A rift.
Lena staggered back, bile rising in her throat. They weren't keeping the rifts out.
They were growing them.
---
A sound made her spin. Footsteps.
She ducked into the shadows as two figures in pale coats passed, pushing a gurney between them. A body lay strapped on it, head covered with a black hood. The body twitched weakly, moaning.
One of the figures muttered, "Batch thirteen's unstable. If this one breaks too—"
"Then we recycle them," the other said coldly. "Plenty more coming through the gates."
Lena bit down hard on her lip to keep from gasping.
She waited until they vanished down the hall, then slipped out of hiding. Her hands shook, rage and terror twisting together. She wanted to scream, to tear the walls down with her bare hands.
But then she remembered Caleb.
She had to find him.
---
She moved deeper, every step pulling her further into the compound's rotten heart. Doors lined the halls, some ajar, some sealed. She glanced through one and nearly retched: a woman sat strapped upright, her skin veined with violet light, her eyes rolling white as a machine pumped something glowing into her veins.
The whisper brushed her ear. See what they make of your kind. See what you truly are.
Lena clutched her knife, whispering back, "Shut up. Just shut up."
At the next door, she froze.
Through the small glass pane she saw him.
Caleb.
Strapped to a chair, sweat pouring down his face, jaw clenched as wires dug into his skin. His eyes flickered open, wild and desperate—and then locked onto hers.
For a moment, the world stilled.
"Lena," he mouthed.
The whisper in her head surged like a tide. He is lost. Leave him. Save yourself.
Her grip on the knife tightened until her knuckles ached.
She would not leave him.
Not now. Not ever.