The sea breeze smelled cleaner here. It wasn't the sterile, recycled chill of a military compound, or the artificial florals that hung in the corridors back at the facility. This was real—salt and wild herbs, sunshine baked into the grass.
And this time, the air didn't carry the stench of fear.
The electric gate clicked open, the jeep humming through without much ceremony. I didn't need an escort, but protocol insisted. I ignored the handler trailing a few steps behind me. He knew better than to speak.
Project WRAITH, abbreviated from something clinical and overcomplicated, like Weaponized Recombinant Anomaly with Integrated Thermal Hulls. As if slapping a clever acronym on a tragedy made it palatable.
The land stretched before me like a painting, nothing like the subterranean cages where they used to be kept. Here, it was open pastures, dense forests, and jagged cliffside edges ringed with iron fencing. Invisible dampeners buzzed softly at the perimeter, enough to hold back a god if needed, though I doubted they'd test it. They had nothing to run toward. No home but this.
I stepped onto the viewing platform nestled just above the treeline. From here, I could see them—silhouettes moving slow and silent beneath the branches, shapes that would've been monstrous to anyone else.
But to me, they were simply alive.
One lay sprawled on its back in the sunlight, long limbs limp, mouth slightly parted as if dreaming. Another crept along the rocks with a kind of lazy grace, its translucent skin shifting in hue with every shift in light.
This was what I'd asked for—no cages, no screaming metal, no sedation. Just grass and sun and silence.
"Perimeter integrity at one hundred percent," the head of security muttered behind me. "No behavioral anomalies logged in the past thirty-six hours."
"I read the report," I said flatly. "Your numbers aren't why I'm here."
He flinched. Good.
I walked further down the ridge, boots crunching softly on the gravel path. No cameras pointed inward. I'd made sure of that. If I couldn't give them freedom, the least I could offer was dignity.
They didn't look up as I passed. Not in fear. Not in recognition. Just... peace. Unbothered. Some stretched out. Some curled near fallen logs. One stood half in shadow, half in sunlight, its back to me, unmoving.
They were nothing like the snarling weapons from the military files.
They were just living.
And they would keep living—until their bodies inevitably burned out.
Thirty years, maybe less. Their systems weren't built for longevity. Heart rates too fast. Neural activity too high. Some had organs that flickered in and out of sync. They had been created for war, not endurance.
Still, it mattered to me that those years—however few—were filled with something other than pain.
"You built them to destroy," I murmured, more to the ghosts of the old Supreme Leader than the creatures themselves. "But they'll die in sunlight. Not steel."
"That was poetic," Nyx said dryly in my mind. "Should I find you a balcony and a wineglass?"
I smirked, tilting my head to watch a WRAITH crouch beside a stream, dipping its long fingers into the water. It drank like an animal, but moved with a solemn grace.
"At least give me credit," I replied inwardly. "They deserve that much."
"They deserve more. But they got you. So I guess that's close enough."
One of the younger ones—if you could call them young—ambled toward the edge of the fence line. It paused as it neared me, only a few meters away now. I stood still, hands at my sides, making no move to threaten or approach.
Its skin rippled from silver to a deep, bruised violet in the shade. Its arms were too long. Its face wrong in ways the human eye didn't like to linger on. But when its gaze swept up to meet mine, I saw no aggression.
Only... awareness.
It didn't blink. None of them ever did.
But it stood there for a long moment, and then—deliberately—it sat.
Like it knew I wouldn't hurt it.
Like it understood, in some small, fractured way, that I had ended the cycle.
I swallowed hard.
Not guilt. Not anymore.
Just grief—for what had been done. For what couldn't be undone.
The sun had begun to sink behind the hills by the time I circled back to the command office. I signed off on the environmental checks, the dietary logs, the fencing reinforcement. I reminded them—again—not to intervene unless strictly necessary.
They were not test subjects.
They were not weapons.
They were not property.
They were mine. To protect. To mourn.
"Send me updates weekly," I told the overseer. "If I hear you've violated the care protocols, you'll be breathing through a tube by the next sunrise."
He paled, stammering a quick, "Yes, ma'am."
Good.
As the helicopter lifted into the air, I stared out the window until the island shrank below us. A green jewel in a blue sea.
A sanctuary. Not a prison.
Nyx was quiet in my head for once, just a low thrum of approval.
And under it all, I could feel the soft pull of the bond—Nine's restless affection flickering like a candle in my chest.
He missed me.
I smiled faintly, letting the warmth of it settle in my bones.