The throne room fell silent.
Darwin's gray eyes, still wide from his defeat, locked onto Subject Zero. The creature stood at the entrance, pale and gaunt, its empty white eyes scanning the destruction. Its aura pressed against everything, cold, hungry, wrong.
Then Darwin laughed.
It started as a wheeze, then a chuckle, then a full-throated roar of desperate, triumphant laughter. Blood still dripped from his wounds, his transformation was shattered, his body was broken but he was smiling.
"You're alive," Darwin gasped. "I thought you were a failure. I thought the fusion rejected itself. But you're alive."
Subject Zero's empty eyes turned toward him. No recognition. No emotion. Just the void.
Darwin crawled.
On his hands and knees, dragging his wounded body across the cracked marble floor, he approached the creature. His crimson liquid, now inert, trailed behind him like a dead serpent's tail.
