2026-06-22 12:50:19The iron doors of the Hawthorne Physics Lab didn’t just open; they groaned like a giant with a hangover. Jaxen had managed to bypass the electronic lock by shoving a screwdriver into the manual override, his "Hyper-Awareness" helping him find the exact sweet spot in the wiring without even looking.
"Keep your head on a swivel," Jaxen muttered, his rifle tucked tight into his shoulder. "The air in here is... wrong."
"No kidding," I whispered back, my hand itching for the grip of my machete. The air wasn’t just stagnant; it felt heavy, like it was saturated with something that wanted to crawl under my skin. "The System is pinging like crazy. There’s a Subject nearby. An Architect."
We stepped into the lobby, and I felt like I’d walked into a goddamn horror movie. The walls, once pristine white laboratory tile, were covered in pulsing, black veins—the same crystalline "Black Veins" from the Black Sun terraforming manual. They were glowing with a faint, sickly violet light, thumping in time with a heartbeat I could feel in the soles of my boots.
"Look at the ceiling," Jaxen hissed.
I looked up and almost gagged. Dozens of people—mostly lab techs in shredded white coats—were encased in translucent, amber-like cocoons. They weren’t dead. Their eyes were open, rolling frantically in their sockets, but their bodies were being used as biological batteries for the hive-growth on the walls.
"Welcome! Welcome to the womb of the new world!"
A voice boomed from the intercom system, crackling with static and ego. It was high-pitched, manic, and sounded like someone who had spent way too much time talking to himself in the dark.
"Who the hell is that?" Jaxen barked at the security camera above the desk.
"That would be Subject 009," I said, my eyes narrowing as the blue screen flickered in my peripheral vision. "The Mad Doctor. In my... I mean, in the rumors I heard, he was a genius who cracked the genetic code of the Mist. Too bad he forgot to keep his own sanity in the process."
DING!
Subject 009: Dr. Aris Thorne (Distant Relative / Rival Architect) Threat Level: High Note: He has merged with the Lab's AI. He is the building.My heart did a little somersault. Thorne? Was this prick related to my father? It made sense. The Black Sun loved keeping their twisted experiments in the family.
"Mateo! How wonderful to see you again!" the voice—Aris—cackled through the speakers. "I saw your father's notes on Subject 001. The 'Perfect Vessel.' But look at you, hanging around with a 'Null-Gene' grunt. You're dampening your potential, man! You should be ascending!"
"Lower the defense grid, Aris," I shouted, my voice echoing in the vaulted lobby. "I'm not here for a family reunion. I'm here for my house. And if you don't open the elevator, I'm going to tear those black veins out of the walls one by one."
"So much fire! So much rage!" Aris laughed. "But I have guests! Meet my 'Nurses'!"
From the shadows of the side hallways, three figures emerged. They were Tier 3 Mimics, but they had been modified. Instead of just mimicking voices, they had surgical blades grafted onto their elongated limbs. Their faces were smooth, featureless masks of gray skin, except for a single, vertical mouth that dripped with black ichor.
"Jaxen, back to back!" I yelled.
SYNC BOOST!
Survival Points Spent: 100 SP Mutation Level: 25% - Combat Mode ActiveThe world turned sharp. The violet glow in my eyes flared, and suddenly the "Nurses" weren't moving fast enough. I could see the twitch of their muscles before they lunged.
"I'll take the two on the left!" Jaxen roared, his rifle barking in the confined space. Pop-pop! His aim was perfect, the bullets tearing through the Mimics' lead-heavy hides, but they didn't go down. They just shrieked and kept coming, their bladed arms whistling through the air.
I didn't use a gun. I wanted to feel the weight of the kill. I pulled the machete from the Space Warehouse and met the third Nurse head-on. He swung a three-foot bone-blade at my head, but I ducked, the move feeling oily-smooth. I drove my elbow into his "chest"—which felt like hitting a bag of wet concrete—and followed up with a brutal upward slash.
The machete tore through the gray skin, spraying black goo across my face.
Mutation Level: 28%
Warning: Mutation rising rapidly! Stabilize immediately!The virus in my blood was screaming for more. I felt a surge of pure, predatory joy. I grabbed the Nurse by his featureless face and slammed him into the wall, right into one of the pulsing black veins. The vein hissed, reacting to my Sovereign blood, and started to wither.
"What are you doing in my lab?!" Aris shrieked over the intercom.
"I'm reclaiming it!" I shouted. I turned and saw Jaxen struggling. One of the Mimics had pinned him against the security desk, its bladed limb inches from his throat. Jaxen was holding it back with the butt of his rifle, his face turning purple from the effort.
"Get off him, you bastard!" I screamed.
I didn't run. I blinked. It was a short-range burst of speed that felt like folding space. I appeared behind the Mimic and drove my machete straight through its back, the steel point emerging from its chest. I twisted the blade, and the creature dissolved into a puddle of foul-smelling sludge.
Jaxen slumped against the desk, gasping for air. He looked at me, his blue eyes wide with a mix of gratitude and genuine terror. "Mateo... your skin. It's turning..."
I looked at my arms. Faint, violet lines were spider-webbing under my skin, glowing like neon. My Mutation Meter was at 29.9%. One more step and I'd lose the ability to speak.
I grabbed Jaxen’s hand, lacing my fingers with his.
CRITICAL SYNC!
Heartbeat Synchronization: 200% Mutation Level: Dropping... 15%... 12%... Stabilized.The violet lines faded. The "static" in my brain quieted down, replaced by the steady, comforting thrum of Jaxen's Null-Gene. We stood there for a second, both of us covered in black slime, breathing like we'd just run a marathon.
"You okay, 'Commander'?" I asked, my voice finally sounding human again.
"I've had better Tuesdays," Jaxen grunted, wiping blood from a cut on his forehead. He looked at the elevator doors at the back of the lobby. "Is that where he is?"
"The basement level," I said. "Level 4. The 'Sanctum.' That's where the main server and the serum vats are."
"Then let's go finish this," Jaxen said, reloading his rifle. "I'm tired of listening to that prick talk."
As we walked toward the elevator, I looked back at the cocoons on the ceiling. I couldn't save them yet. But I would. Once I took the "throne" from Aris, this wouldn't be a tomb anymore. It would be a fortress.
SP Earned: +300
New Skill Unlocked: 'Sovereign Presence' - Lower-tier mutants will hesitate before attacking."Hey, Jaxen?" I said as the elevator doors hissed open.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for staying. Most guys would've bolted by now."
Jaxen stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for Level 4. He looked at me, and for the first time, a small, grim smile touched his lips. "I'm an 'Anchor,' Mateo. We don't bolt. We hold the line."
The elevator began to descend, dropping us deeper into the heart of the mountain, where the Mad Doctor was waiting to see just how much "Subject 001" had learned about being a King.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
00135
Up close, Red Sun's headquarters looked less like a military installation and more like something grown out of the bones of an older world, concrete bunkers and reinforced steel fencing wrapped around structures that had clearly started life as a research facility before being retrofitted for war.I studied it from the ridge for a long moment, trying to reconcile the sheer scale of the place with everything we'd planned against it over these past two weeks, and felt the plan we'd built so carefully in the safety of the war room suddenly feel much smaller against the reality standing in front of us.We'd spent the better part of the morning working our way down from the ridge, staying low, using what cover the terrain offered, until we reached a position close enough to actually study the perimeter properly through Ruby's salvaged optics."Three layers of defense," Rourke said quietly, passing the scope to Jaxen. "Outer fence, patrol road, then the actual walls.
00134
The strike team gathered at the gate just before dawn, a hundred and twenty fighters drawn from every allied settlement, their breath visible in the cold morning air, weapons checked one final time in the gray predawn light.The fortress behind us stood quiet, most of Haven Ridge still asleep except for the small crowd who'd gathered to see us off, faces I recognized from months of shared survival watching with expressions that mixed hope and fear in equal measure. I searched the crowd briefly for Priya and Ward, found them both near the wall, and let myself hold their steady presence in my mind for the journey ahead.I stood beside Jaxen near the front of the formation, watching the last preparations settle into place, and felt the weight of everything riding on the next several days press down harder than it had at any point during our two weeks of planning."Ready," Jaxen asked quietly, close enough that only I could hear him over the murmur of the gathering
00133
Ruby's workshop had transformed into something resembling an armory over the final days before departure, every surface covered with weapons and gear laid out in careful, methodical rows, each piece checked and rechecked with an intensity that spoke to exactly how much she understood was riding on this mission's success.I watched her work for a while before she noticed me in the doorway, her movements precise and practiced despite the visible exhaustion, every screw tightened, every wire tested twice, the particular focus of someone pouring every ounce of control she had left into the one part of this mission she could actually manage completely."Twelve pulse devices, fully calibrated," she said, walking me through the inventory one final time, her voice steady despite the exhaustion visible in the dark circles under her eyes. "Modified specifically to counter Red Sun's known defensive tech based on everything Rourke could remember about their standard equipment load
00132
The two weeks of preparation moved fast, every day filled with training drills and equipment checks and endless logistics, but Jaxen found ways to steal small pockets of quiet for us anyway, insisting we needed them as much as the fortress needed our leadership.I'd argued with him about it the first few times, certain we couldn't spare even an hour with so much still left to organize before the mission, but he'd been right, the same way he usually was about the things that actually mattered. We needed these small, stolen evenings more than either of us wanted to admit out loud.Tonight he'd led me to the old orchard behind the fortress's northern wall, a small stretch of surviving apple trees that had somehow weathered years of chaos, their branches heavy with fruit nobody had gotten around to harvesting yet."I found this place a few weeks ago," he said, spreading a worn blanket across the grass beneath one of the larger trees. "Thought about telling you soone
00131
The war room felt different this time, crowded with more people than it had ever held before, representatives from every allied settlement gathered around a table that Ruby had extended twice already to accommodate the growing maps and schematics spread across its surface.I stood near the head of the table watching everyone settle into their places, faces I'd only recently learned alongside ones I'd known for months now, all of us bound together by a shared understanding of exactly how much this next mission would cost us if we got any part of it wrong."This is what we're working with," Ruby said, pulling up a detailed layout of Red Sun's central headquarters, pieced together from Rourke's firsthand knowledge and fragments of documentation salvaged from the facility. "Heavily fortified, multiple perimeter checkpoints, and somewhere at the core, the primary activation node for the Global Stabilizer network.""How heavily fortified," Delacroix asked, studying th
00130
I found Ruby in the workshop late one night, long after most of the fortress had gone quiet, hunched over a small, battered photograph she quickly tried to tuck away when she noticed me in the doorway.The rest of the workshop sat dark around her, tools and half finished projects abandoned for the night, just a single lantern casting warm light over the small space where she'd chosen to sit alone with whatever she'd been holding onto."You don't have to hide that," I said gently, stepping inside.She hesitated, then set it back down on the workbench, and I moved closer to see it properly, a faded image of a younger Ruby standing beside an older woman with the same sharp eyes, both of them laughing at something outside the frame."My mother," Ruby said quietly. "Before all of this.""I didn't know you kept photos.""I don't, usually. Too easy to lose things like this, and losing them hurts worse than never having them at all." She traced the
You may also like
Healing God's Heir: Abandoned Son-in-law
Abysalyounglord40.0K viewsReincarnated in another world with a Gunsmithing System
Ashdenroth16.0K viewsWizard Of Cosmos
MadRain30.1K viewsI AM BEYOND HUMAN
South Ashan22.8K viewsNecromancy for the Chronologically Challenge
Azizah119 viewsTide of the Grave
Viiolete145 viewsRise Of The Mirror King
Angelico154 viewsThe Demon King's Customer Service
Ilma30 views