The wind moaned softly through the trader camp, rattling loose metal sheets and fluttering drying clothes. Most of Haven Reach slept peacefully.
But not Rui.
Not Li Wei.
Not Chen Yu.
They crouched behind the overgrown side of the chapel, cloaked in shadows. Rui's expression was sharp with focus; her blade gleamed dully beneath the moonlight. Li Wei stood beside her in silence, while Chen Yu fiddled nervously with a handmade stun trap.
"You know," Chen Yu whispered, "if I die down there, I want a big funeral. Fireworks. Zombie mariachi band."
Rui glanced at him. "You're not going to die."
"That's what they all say in horror stories."
She looked away. "Tevin's still alive. I know it."
Li Wei didn't speak. He had heard the boy's cries—just once, faintly, when he pressed his ear to the chapel floor earlier that evening.
They weren't cries of pain.
They were cries of fear.
A deep, primal fear.
Now, they moved.
The hatch at the back of the chapel was rusted, but not locked.
Li Wei lifted it silently.
A foul breath of chemical rot and decay wafted out, making Chen Yu gag.
"Holy… did someone die in there and ferment?"
They climbed down a narrow ladder into the dark. Rui went first, then Li Wei. Chen Yu came last, muttering about tetanus and curses.
The tunnel was man-made—reinforced concrete walls, wiring overhead. It twisted left, then dropped steeply downwards. Light flickered faintly ahead.
And then…
They stepped into a hallway.
Bright. Sterile. Lined with shattered glass and twisted IV stands.
"This isn't a shelter," Rui murmured. "It's a… lab.
The walls were covered in peeling signs. Faded labels read:
"GHOST-BETA SECTOR"
"NUTRIENT INFUSION CORRIDOR"
"TESTING ROOM B-13"
"Ghost Batch," Chen Yu said. "That's what they called you, right?"
Rui nodded slowly.
She moved toward one of the windows. Inside the sealed chamber was a tank—or what remained of it. Something large had shattered the glass from inside. The floor was covered in claw marks, and the walls had deep grooves—like something had tried to climb out.
Then she saw the symbol.
A mark carved into metal above the door: a black sun surrounded by twelve spires.
"…I've seen that before," Rui whispered. "In my dreams."
Suddenly, the silence broke.
A scream echoed from the far end of the hallway—sharp, young, unmistakably Tevin's.
They ran.
Down corridors laced with blood trails, past rooms that smelled like rot and memory. They reached a massive chamber—a circular room with broken equipment, surgical lights hanging like dead flowers.
At the center, Tevin was strapped to a metal slab.
He wasn't alone.
Hovering over him was a creature unlike anything they had seen.
Its body was humanoid but grotesquely elongated, skin pale and paper-thin, pulsing with veins that glowed faint blue. Its head was split vertically, jawbones exposed like mandibles, and it was feeding from a tube running into the boy's neck.
Chen Yu didn't think.
He shot it in the back with a homemade bolt.
The creature shrieked—high-pitched and insectile—and flung itself backward.
Rui dashed forward, slicing through the restraints. Tevin sobbed, clutching her. Li Wei stepped between them and the monster as it reoriented, its pale arms twitching, twitching—
Then the lights exploded.
Darkness.
A hum began to rise—deep and pulsing.
From the walls.
From the floor.
From inside their bones.
Chen Yu stumbled back, holding his head. "What—what is this?!"
The sound wasn't sound anymore. It was code. A frequency that rattled neurons.
Li Wei dropped to one knee. His veins lit faintly gold beneath his skin. His pupils dilated. His breathing slowed.
Rui screamed.
And then it stopped.
The lights flickered on.
The monster was gone. Tevin was unconscious but breathing. But the world had changed.
Li Wei rose—calm. Too calm.
Rui stared at him. His hair hovered slightly, as if touched by static. Something shimmered across his palm when he moved.
"You…" she whispered. "You changed."
He nodded.
"I felt something," he said. "A signal. Inside me. Like it was waking up."
Chen Yu rubbed his temples. "So… Li Wei gets powers now? What about me? Do I get cool zombie-fighting fire fists or something?"
Then he sneezed—loudly.
The wall beside him vibrated.
…okay. That's new.
They carried Tevin back up. Rui wrapped him in her cloak. No one noticed their return—most of the camp was still asleep.
Back in their shelter, Chen Yu was pacing.
"This place… Haven Reach… it wasn't built over an old lab. It is the lab. They built around it. They're still using it."
Li Wei nodded. "And the people who run it know."
Rui sat beside the boy. Her eyes were distant. "What were they trying to create?"
Li Wei's voice was low.
"Weapons. Survivors. Monsters.
And maybe now… gods.
Later that evening, Chen Yu explored the remaining terminal files while Rui slept restlessly and Li Wei stood guard outside.
He tapped into audio logs—most corrupted, but some playable.
"Day 109. Subject 0107 has developed early-stage sensory fusion—visual hallucinations tied to seismic frequencies. She dreams in earthquake patterns. Her screams can trigger rats into spasms. This is promising."
"Day 151. Two handlers missing. We suspect Subject 0103 breached containment again. It speaks in the voice of its twin, even though the twin died three months ago."
"Day 206. Project 'Ascendancy' has requested results. They don't understand. The virus isn't mutating randomly. It's… remembering."
Chen Yu blinked.
"Okay, what the hell."
He turned off the console and leaned back, muttering to himself, "Who writes this creepy sci-fi garbage in real life?
The next morning, the trio gathered in a small breakroom turned sleeping chamber. They ate quietly—canned beans, stale crackers, and water purified from broken lab filters.
Outside, low winds howled.
Inside, silence pressed on them.
Rui finally spoke. "We shouldn't have come here."
Li Wei looked at her. "You knew?"
She nodded. "This was where I was made. Not born—made."
Chen Yu tossed a can aside. "You mean experimented on?"
"No," she said quietly. "Before that. I don't remember a mother. I don't remember being a baby. My first memory was a metal cradle and the smell of bleach."
Li Wei was silent for a long time. Then:
"You're not a mistake, Rui. Whatever they made, they failed to kill your heart."
Rui blinked fast, looking away. "You think I still have one?"
Chen Yu grinned. "Sure. Just hidden under some trauma, caffeine, and mild psychopathy."
They continued exploring. On the lowest level, they found a circular chamber with a locked glass cylinder.
Inside: something not dead.
A fetus, swollen, floating in black fluid. Its face was not human—but not completely inhuman either. It had rows of sealed eyelids and bones that hadn't decided what they wanted to become.
It twitched.
The cylinder pulsed once with red light.
Then the lights went out.
Chen Yu stepped back. "Nope. Absolutely not. Burn this place."
The fetus opened one eyelid.
A single slit pupil stared out… and smiled.
They fled the lab within the hour.
As they ascended toward the surface, Li Wei heard it again:
Not a voice. Not a sound.
A presence, ancient and aware. Watching from the deep.
Above ground, the wind carried a strange chill.
Rui said nothing. Her hands trembled.
Chen Yu walked behind them, unusually quiet.
All three knew something had changed.
The power inside them wasn't just growing—it was choosing.
As they set camp far from Hollow Ridge, Rui noticed something stalking the treeline.
Not a zombie.
Not a beast.
Something between.
The deer had too many joints. Its ribs pulsed with glowing fungal veins. It sniffed the air, then sprinted—too fast, too silent—into the trees.
The virus was no longer just killing.
It was creating.
That night, Rui dreamed of glass tanks and whispered lullabies.
Chen Yu dreamed of fire and laughing faces that wouldn't stop.
Li Wei… didn't sleep at all.
He stood watch, golden light pulsing faintly under his skin.
The world is no longer post-apocalyptic.
It's evolving into something else.