2:13 AM — Zurich Compound, Sublevel 3
There were no guards outside the Echo Room.
Adrian Kael found that… disrespectful.
It meant they still didn't fear him.
He stood in the cold hallway, heart steady, breath controlled. The security cameras had already gone dark—fried by the timed EMP chip he had planted earlier in a maintenance panel. No alerts. No noise.
Just silence.
The kind that usually comes before something dies.
He pulled a small spike from his jacket—coded to override retinal and biometric locks. He pushed it into the control panel beside the reinforced door. A soft hiss followed. Then the door slid open with a whisper.
The room hadn't changed.
Same low hum of the lights. Same steel floors. Same antiseptic stench. There were four chairs still bolted to the ground—restraint cuffs hanging from the arms like broken shackles. One corner held a padded isolation tank. Another corner, a monitor wall displaying biometric feedback graphs and heartbeat signatures.
And in the center: Dr. Elias Varrin.
He wasn't facing Adrian.
He was watching an old tape on the monitor—surveillance footage of Subject E-17 strapped into one of those very chairs, screaming through a gag as red lights pulsed overhead.
He paused the footage as the door closed behind him.
"I knew it would be you," Varrin said, without turning.
Adrian didn't speak.
Not at first.
He moved slowly, precisely—boots silent on the metal floor. Every step calculated.
"I tried to convince myself you died," Varrin continued. "That the system worked. That we were right."
Adrian finally spoke. "You tortured civilians."
Varrin turned, smiling faintly. "Civilians don't get recruited into Echo. We made soldiers—unbreakable ones. You were the proof."
"No," Adrian said flatly. "I was the warning."
He drew his pistol and aimed it square at Varrin's face.
The doctor didn't flinch.
"I implanted something in you, didn't I?" he asked. "During Phase IV. You ever wonder what it was?"
Adrian's eyes narrowed. He had scars—deep, invasive ones. But there was one on the back of his neck he'd never been able to explain. It throbbed sometimes. Buzzed when he got close to certain frequencies.
"You're lying," Adrian said.
"No. I'm telling you what they wouldn't."
Varrin stepped closer—within arm's reach. Insane. Brave. Or both.
"You want vengeance. That's fine. Shoot me. But if you do, you'll never know what they really turned you into."
Adrian didn't lower the gun. But something in his posture changed.
"You think this is about me?" he said. "It's about what you did to her."
That wiped the smile off Varrin's face.
"I remember your daughter," he said slowly. "I didn't know… she was connected to the project. I swear."
"You took my confession," Adrian said, voice cracking like thunder behind ice. "Then you sent the kill order to the strike team. You cleaned the crime scene, burned the tapes, and filed her under 'collateral.'"
"She was never supposed to be there…"
"She was ten."
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was heavier than gunfire.
Adrian holstered the gun.
Then grabbed Varrin by the collar and slammed him into the nearest monitor wall. Glass cracked. Varrin gasped.
"You don't get to die easy," Adrian whispered. "You're going to talk. On record. Every name. Every experiment. Every body. Or I'll open you like a book and read the truth from your bones."
"I'll talk," Varrin gasped. "I will. But you need to know something. You were never meant to leave the blacksite alive. If you're here—it means someone let you out."
That froze Adrian.
He stepped back.
"What did you say?"
"There was a failsafe. No subject survives Phase IV without—" Varrin coughed blood. "Someone let you go, Adrian. And they're not done with you yet."
Adrian's mind spun. The explosion at Blacksite Thorne. The half-open door. The corridor he found unlocked. He always thought it was luck.
But someone had opened that door.
And now he had to ask: Why?
2:41 AM – Outside the Compound
Rhea Calder parked two blocks away in a stolen sedan. Night vision goggles hung around her neck. A silenced pistol sat on her lap.
She hadn't planned on entering the compound.
But now… it felt inevitable.
Adrian Kael was moving faster than she thought. And if what she suspected was true, he wasn't the only ghost walking the city tonight.
She keyed her mic.
"Initiating secondary surveillance route. Target is inside. Status: unstable."
She paused, thinking.
Then added: "Also… unkillable."