CHAPTER 26 — The Art of Breaking Chains
"That night," Shun whispered, "we stopped being children."
The room was quiet, the kind of silence that made every breath sound too loud. The ceiling lights hummed faintly, flickering like dying fireflies. Shun sat apart from the others, knees drawn to his chest, eyes hollow and heavy with shadows. Some of them slept. Others only pretended. Shun didn't care. The past had its own voice now—broken, whispering, yet too loud to ignore.
"There were four of us," he continued, voice low. "Me, and three teammates. Prisoners. Lab rats. Experiments. Call us what you want. That place was a graveyard wearing the mask of a facility. And we were ghosts waiting to be buried."
They had planned the escape, not out of bravery, but because staying meant rotting away. That night, the chance came. They begged a guard to let them out—to use the washroom. At first, he refused. But persistence has a way of disarming suspicion. Eventually, he relented, unlocking the door and sending Shun and another boy down the dim corridor.
The others waited outside.
Inside, the plan became action. Shun moved like a blade snapping free—silent, sharp, final. His hands clamped around the guard's neck. The other boy lunged for the gun, fighting against the trembling metal. Blood filled the guard's mouth as muffled screams tore from his throat. The remaining two pounced, pinning his legs.
He didn't die.
He simply stopped moving—paralyzed.
"I used a technique they taught me," Shun murmured. "Irony, isn't it? They turned us into weapons. And I used their own tools against them."
They dragged the limp body into the bathroom. Shun pulled off the mask. Beneath it was no monster—only a young man. Barely twenty. Maybe less.
The gun, the mask, the keys—they stripped him bare. Everything else was weight they couldn't carry.
The main corridor was suicide. Too open. Too many cameras. So they climbed. The vent was narrow and rusted, scraping their arms raw as they pulled themselves inside. Shun's hands bled as he wrenched the panel loose. One by one, they crawled into the ducts, swallowed by the metal throat of the building.
Then, through the slits of the vent, they saw it—the surveillance chamber. Rows of glowing monitors lined the walls. Each screen showed pieces of their lives twisted into nightmares: children crying, children breaking, children dying.
A reminder that they were never unseen. Always watched. Always owned.
They pushed forward. The hallway stretched endlessly, like some cruel trick of space. But at last—an exit.
Two guards stood watch.
The plan was desperate, but desperation can masquerade as strategy. One boy broke cover, stumbling into the open, acting hysterical. The guards moved instantly. And in those few seconds, the others struck—fast, savage, animalistic. Flesh tore, bone cracked.
But one guard lived long enough to slam the alarm.
Sirens wailed. Lights flashed red. A voice filled the halls, deep and calm, yet twisted with glee.
"Four subjects attempting escape. Four subjects. Capture immediately."
Shun's voice faltered, eyes distant. "That voice… wasn't surprised. It was excited."
The guards came. Dozens of them.
The four reached the final door. But freedom had a lock—a fingerprint scanner. Shun dragged the paralyzed guard's hand across the panel. The machine chirped, green. The door began to open.
But the hunters were already there.
Electric arcs hissed through the air, blue lightning cutting the dark. Screams rang out. Two of Shun's teammates fell, convulsing, choking on their own breath.
"They told me not to help," Shun whispered. His voice was brittle. "They told me to run. 'Save yourself,' they said. 'We're not machines. We're human.'"
He swallowed hard.
"But they were wrong. Humans break. Machines don't."
So he ran.
Into the trees. Into the dark.
His last teammate didn't follow. Instead, the boy threw stones, shouted, screamed. A sacrifice. A distraction. Shun hid in the brush, watching them drag the boy away. The guards' voices carried through the radios.
"Three secured. One missing. Find the last one. No one escapes."
But Shun ran.
Through the woods. For days. Hunger clawed at his ribs, thirst burned his throat. Sleep came only in flashes, stolen moments where fear was too tired to keep its eyes open. He walked until walking felt like floating, until the forest itself blurred into madness.
And then—
A road.
And beyond it, a city he remembered only in pieces.
Shun stumbled like a ghost through familiar streets until he collapsed at the door of a police station.
"That's the story," he said at last, his voice void of emotion. "I escaped. They didn't."
The silence was unbearable. The others barely breathed.
From the shadows, Tatsuya's voice broke the weight of the story. His tone was steady, low.
"You're not just a fighter, Shun. You're a survivor. But that pain… it's stitched into your skin. Let it rest for tonight. Sleep."
Shun nodded faintly, but his eyes stayed open, empty, staring into the dark.
Sleep would not come.
Not easily.
Not anymore.
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⚡ END OF CHAPTER 26 — The Art of Breaking Chains ⚡
The chains Shun broke were never steel.
They were fear. They were flesh. They were his friends.
And though he escaped the building…
the building never escaped him.
Next Chapter:Rolled Gun