The air in the submerged laboratory was stale, thick with the smell of recycled oxygen and desperation. The constant, low hum of the filtration system, a background reassurance previously, now resonated like a death knell. Dr. Elara Veyne shut the lid on a medical cooler with a hollow clang that resonated through the closed space.“That’s the last of the broad-spectrum antivirals,” she said, her voice tight. She didn’t look at Ken. She didn’t need to. “The last of the coagulants went an hour ago. We’re down to basic analgesics and hope. And hope is in short supply.”Ken Ardent scrubbed a hand across his face, grime and exhaustion embedded in his skin. His little group of altered scientists—his family—worked around him with a grim, wordless efficiency. Their mutations, once a source of horror and shame, were now their only tools: souped-up metabolisms fighting off infections, dermal plating sealing minor wounds, photoreceptive eyes allowing them to work in the low-power dusk. But tools

The laboratory was a grave. The triumphant elation of the raid had turned to a sour, bitter despair. Ken scowled at the pile of medical equipment—a king's ransom of a hundred other diseases—a hundred other plagues— piled higher than their needs.Elara labored over Liese, her movements uncontrolled now. She was giving a mixture of broad-spectrum care, but it was a question of attempting to hold a tsunami back with a broom. Liese's breathing was rapid, shallow rattle."Her systems are crashing," Elara intoned, her voice hollow. "Multi-organ failure. Viral load is too high. Her modified metabolism is burning her out from the inside." She looked at Ken, her eyes radiating. "There's nothing I can do."Markus turned away, thumping his fist on the wall. "I told you. I told you it was a suicide run for nothing!"It wasn't for nothing!" somebody shouted. It was Sophia. She stood in the doorway of her small sleeping quarters, her face pale, her eyes huge. She had listened to everything. "You tr

Time became strange and tight in the lab. The air was clean, the equipment whirred like machinery, but the mood was denser than the poisoned water outside the windows. Lieze stood silently vigilant, a statue of gleaming potential, as Elara ministered to a stunned, rage-filled Markus."Tapped into my nervous system," Markus groaned, slapping his own chest where she had touched him. "Full-system reboot. I've never had anything like it." He stared at Liese with venom. "We need to put her down. She's a tool.""She's Liese," Ken growled, though he was fighting the same revulsion. "She's sick. We just don't know the disease yet.""That's not a disease, Ken. That's conquest.".Her reply was cut off by Liese. She didn't move, but the main monitor flickered. It showed a map of Amsterdam superimposed with thick, live streams of the spread of the Morrison Virus. Death tolls. Quarantine breaches. Red was strangling the city."The pathogen increases. Efficiency is decreasing." she declared, her vo

Markus entered through the service pipe and a man was torn. Outside, he remained the same duty-conscious lieutenant: stoic, tired, fretful. Within him, a chilling new heart of deceit had already begun to rev.He found Ken staring at a blank screen, his shoulders slumping in discouragement."Any change?" Markus inquired, his voice diplomatically neutral.Ken shook his head but didn't get up. "The cold bath is lowering the fever. It's not killing it. It's just… giving her a nicer death." He turned to him, his own eyes bloodshot from exhaustion and guilt. "You were right, Markus. It was a suicide flight. I killed people for nothing."This was the start. The crack in Ken's shield. De Vries's instructions had been clear: *Isolate him. Play on his uncertainties. Leave him exposed.*"We were all wrong," Markus stated, placing his hand against the console to Ken's side. A gesture of solidarity. A lie. "We thought we could fight this as a war. Maybe… maybe we need to start thinking about survi

The journey to Directorate HQ was a blur of harsh light and cold metal. Ken, Elara, and Sophia were shoved into the rear of an armored truck, their wrists locked by smart-cuffs that hummed with a barely sufficient charge. The truck's interior was bare and stank of ozone and fear.Sophia was silent now, numbness paralyzing her sobs. She crouched between Ken and Elara, shuddering in a small body. Ken kept his head bent low, his mind racing over De Vries's furious words. *The drive is empty.* Elara's caution was the only glimmer of hope in the crushing darkness. She had saved the research. But she had made their immediate future infinitely worse.The vehicle skidded to a halt. The back doors exploded open and the cold, brutalist mass of a Directorate interrogation block towered over them. They were pulled in and marched through shining, antiseptic-white corridors, past cells whose walls were energy fields instead of bars.De Vries sat waiting for them in a bright, white observation room