The corridor echoed with the rapid thudding of boots against tiled floors. Williams and Franklin dashed down the hall, followed by Eve and Rika, their flashlights swinging wildly as they navigated the pitch-black labyrinth the hospital had become. A metallic clank somewhere behind them drove them faster. Somewhere in the dark, the hybrid was hunting.
They hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours. The events of the past day, the breach, the power outage, Jonah's disappearance, and the brutal deaths. Had left them exhausted, bloodied, and shaken. But they had found something hopeful. A fire escape near the east wing, still intact, still unsealed.
Or so they thought.
Finn had led the discovery. He'd been checking blueprints they pulled from a secured archive near the administrative office, and he had found the emergency egress schematic. One exit wasn't linked to the central lockdown system, it had been part of an old evacuation plan never decommissioned.
They had to try.
Panting, Franklin reached the heavy metal door and yanked the release lever. It didn't budge.
"Come on!" he growled. "Finn said this was clear!" Williams stepped in. "Move."
Using brute strength, he pulled the latch harder. A hiss of hydraulics, a brief groan of ancient mechanisms... Then a deafening alarm exploded through the corridor.
Red strobe lights blinked to life. A robotic voice rang out from unseen speakers:
"Emergency Containment Protocol Alpha-One Activated.
Breach Imminent. Sealing All Access Points." "What the hell is this?!" Eve screamed.
Finn, catching up, looked horror-struck. "It's… it's a fail- safe. This exit wasn't sealed because it was bait. If anyone tried to escape during breach conditions—"
"—they'd lock down the whole building," Williams finished grimly.
All around them, the hospital responded. Steel shutters dropped over windows, doors clicked and hissed as magnetic seals engaged, lights flickered and died again.
They were sealed in.
Officially trapped.
Edward slammed a nearby wall in frustration, his face pale with fear and fury. "So what now, Einstein? You said that door would work!"
Finn looked devastated. "I didn't know there was a secondary protocol tied to it. It wasn't in the regular plans. This must've been added later, maybe specifically for the hybrid project."
The hybrid.
The mention sent shivers down their spines. It had already claimed the lives of all staff members. It moved through the vents, it tore through steel, and worse, it learned.
Williams clenched his jaw. "We need to move. It's attracted to noise. That alarm—"
"Too late," Rika whispered.
From behind them, a distant, metallic creak echoed, followed by something wet dragging across the tile. The same eerie sound they'd heard many times before it attacked.
It was close.
They ran again. Not toward an exit this time, but deeper into the maze. Into the belly of the beast.
They found temporary safety in the ICU, behind thick glass and reinforced doors. Williams, panting heavily, pushed a rolling cabinet against the main entrance. Eve collapsed onto a patient cot, her breaths shaky and erratic.
"We're sealed in," she murmured. "This whole place is a tomb."
Franklin took a seat near her, his usual cocky grin gone. "Not if we make a new exit."
Finn looked up. "What do you mean?"
Franklin's eyes gleamed. "You said the lab core has enough energy to fry the entire lower structure, right?"
"I said it could destabilize containment if we overloaded it manually. That doesn't mean it's a bomb—"
"But it could be," Franklin insisted. "If we rig it right, maybe we will blow a hole big enough to escape."
Silence filled the room.
Eve sat up. "That's insane."
"Is it?" Franklin asked, looking her in the eye. "Because from where I'm sitting, we either die running, or we die trying to punch our way out."
Williams nodded slowly. "It's a bad plan. But it's a plan."
Edward paced. "How do we even know we can reach the lab core? What if it's sealed? What if that thing is already down there?"
Finn pulled out the map. "There's a secondary service tunnel. The maintenance crew used it for reactor upkeep. It's not on the main hospital grid. We might still access it."
Rika, quiet for most of the discussion, spoke softly. "Then we do it. We make a move before it picks us off one by one."
Outside, the creature stalked silently through the halls.
The hybrid, known as Specimen 7. Had begun to understand patterns, movement, heat, human fear and it no longer saw the students as intruders.
It saw them as prey.
Something inside it remembered pain. Remembered being caged, prodded, tortured. The human parts of its mind cried out for vengeance, and the animal parts only obeyed.
Behind its many eyes, it watched the ICU.
Later that day, the students rotated into quiet watches. Rika and Edward sat beside a cracked window overlooking the now-dark emergency helipad.
Edward tapped his fingers against his knee. "You ever think about what happens if we don't make it?"
Rika shook her head. "No. I can't. If I do, I'll break."
He looked at her, truly looked. "You're tougher than you look."
She gave a soft smile. "So are you." Somewhere distant, they heard the creak again. Rika gripped her flashlight.
They weren't alone.
Later, the group gathered with Finn at the blueprint, forming a plan to reach the core. There was no going back now.
Eve pulled her jacket tighter. Her face had grown colder, more focused. "We set out in pairs. Quiet. No lights unless necessary. We head for the tunnel."
Franklin squeezed her hand. "If anything happens, I want you to run. You don't look back."
She didn't reply. But her silence spoke volumes. The doors behind them rattled.