The first explosion came from the east wing.
Then the lights went out.
Sirens screamed through the base. Red strobes flashed across steel walls, catching the dust that fell from the ceiling.
> "Breached! They've breached Sector B!"
The creatures had found them.
Not scouts this time—an entire strike group.
---
Seo Kael ran toward the main corridor, boots splashing through water from the burst pipes. The air smelled of ozone and blood.
His wrist-chip pulsed against his skin, scanning his vitals. Useless.
What he needed was the thing inside him—the thing that still refused to wake.
> Come on… not now. Wake up…
He tried again to pull it out—the power Genesis carved into his cells.
For a heartbeat the veins in his arm glowed black-violet, a static hum filled his ears—
—and then nothing.
Like a spark crushed before flame.
---
Ahead, a door ripped open. One of the creatures—long-limbed, head like fractured glass—tore a soldier in half before the man even screamed.
Kael fired. The bullets passed through its chest like mist, the impact barely slowing it down.
Another soldier fell.
Then a scientist—Dr. Eum—caught in the corridor's collapse, pinned under steel and torn apart when the creature lunged.
> "Kael—GO!" someone shouted behind him.
He didn't move. Not yet. He was still trying.
Focusing, begging, dragging at that power buried in his blood.
But it wouldn't answer.
---
The team split under the assault. Four soldiers were dead already, two scientists.
Every death carved a hole in the air—screams cut short, replaced by silence and the sound of claws tearing metal.
Kael's chest burned—not from wounds but from helpless rage.
He felt it sitting there, that ability like a coiled blade, refusing to unsheathe.
> I could save them… I should save them… why won't you let me?
---
A wall burst inward. The shockwave threw them off their feet.
Another soldier was dragged into the dark. His scream echoed down the hallway, then stopped.
Kael finally snapped out of it.
> "Everyone who's still breathing—move! Now!"
He grabbed one of the surviving scientists by the collar and shoved her toward the emergency hatch.
Half the lights were dead, but the escape route still worked.
They ran—stumbling through the narrow tunnels beneath the base, the air thick with smoke and ash.
---
When they finally surfaced miles away, only six remained out of nineteen.
Kael turned back once.
The sky above the old base glowed orange with flame. The wind carried the smell of burning fuel—and the dead.
His hand trembled. He clenched it until it hurt.
> "I couldn't save them…"
"Not yet," he whispered to himself, almost like a promise. "But I will."
---
That night they kept walking toward the coordinates of a secondary safe-house.
No one spoke.
They all knew the silence was filled with names that would never be answered again.
Kael led the way through the dark, a man with power in his veins and nothing to show for it—yet.
---
[End of Chapter 5]