The whole facility hummed – lights, walls, nerves. A constant tone, sterile and sharp, drilling into the back of Victor's skull like an unanswered question.

The intake corridor stretched ahead – polished concrete, reinforced steel doors set at even intervals, wireglass observation panels too narrow to see through without bending. Everything gleamed. Not from care. From disinfectant. The place didn't smell like sweat or rot. It smelled like bleach and static.

They stripped him under the glare.

Cold metal benches. A drain in the floor. Cameras behind matte-glass domes. No words. No questions. Two guards worked in tandem – one cutting away his clothes, the other hosing him down with a high-pressure jet. The water stung against the split along his ribs. Blood swirled toward the drain.

He didn't flinch.

They dried him like an object. Towel. Powder. Disinfectant spray. Then the uniform – a one-piece grey coverall, coarse against his skin, serial code stencilled in stark white down the spine.

Patient–C.117

The last thing was the collar.

It wasn't metal. Some kind of synthetic composite – soft to the touch, but rigid once sealed. As it locked into place, Victor felt the lines deploy – a dozen thin silver filaments that threaded out from the collar, down beneath the fabric, weaving into his spine like veins made of code.

Orderlines.

They twitched once. A pulse against the base of his neck.

The guard spoke. Flat. Clipped. Like reading from a menu.

"No speech without permission. No standing without prompt. No eye contact with staff. Infractions trigger compliance correction. Repeat compliance failure escalates to level two deterrents. Do you understand?"

Victor looked at the floor. Said nothing.

The collar jolted. Not pain. Worse. His stomach turned inside out. A wave of chemical nausea pulsed through his chest, up his throat. He coughed once – dry – then steadied.

Another jolt. This one smaller. Just enough to remind him that the rules didn't need speech. They needed obedience.

He stared straight ahead now. Breathing even.

His cheek was already purple from the beating outside the van. Ribs bruised. Knuckles raw. But the swelling had started to go down. Too fast. Flesh knitting quietly beneath the skin, bones whispering back into place.

The guards hadn't noticed yet.

Good.

Let them think he was human.

The corridor ended in a reinforced chamber. Five chairs. One terminal. A final scanner passed over him – retinal, fingerprint, bioelectric. Then the inner door hissed open.

They shoved him forward.

Still no words. Still no resistance.

But his eyes moved.

Counting steps. Gauging angles. Watching badge IDs and hand gestures. Mapping every corridor turn, every delay between door locks, every twitch of surveillance lens.

The pain doesn't matter. The patterns do.

He didn't need freedom yet.

He needed a crack.

And every system – even the perfect ones – had one.

…………………

The halls weren't haunted. Just humming.

Industrial concrete, darker now. Fewer lights. No artifice of welcome. The walls vibrated faintly – some distant generator humming through the spine of the prison. The scent followed Victor like a second skin: antiseptic, copper, old bleach layered over older blood. The kind of clean that meant something had been scrubbed too late.

He was flanked by two Enforcers in mirrored visors. Neither spoke. Neither looked at him. Not once.

Every five metres: a sealed steel door, no handles, no markings. No windows. Every one sound-dampened and silent. The lights above buzzed a fraction off from each other – just enough to make the corridor feel wrong. Like time had a hitch in its breath.

Cellblock 18A.

Victor's door slid open with a hiss.

2.5 metres by 2.5 metres.

Steel walls. A single drain in the floor. No toilet. No sink. No bed.

A thin recessed light-strip burned above. Constant. No dim. No cycle. No dark. It buzzed, same as the others. Not loud. Just enough to itch behind the eyes.

The back wall glistened slightly – some moisture always gathering. The floor was damp. Not wet. Just wrong.

These cells didn't hold people for long.

Victor felt it almost immediately – beneath the silence, beneath the hum. This wasn't long-term containment. No cameras. No schedules. No reinforcement. Just containment. A pause between places.

Temporary.

He ran his thumb along the wall behind him. Smooth. No scratches. No initials. No carvings.

Too clean. Too blank.

Whatever came before him – if there was anyone – they didn't last long enough to leave marks.

This wasn't a prison. Not really. It was an obedience funnel.

And eventually, everyone moved on.

Up the ladder. Or down the drain.

The door closed behind him. Not metal. Glass. Shatterproof, tinted one-way. From here, Victor could see the corridor stretching back to the central spine. But no one could see in. Like being buried in an aquarium.

He didn't test the door.

He didn't need to.

He could tear it apart if he wanted. Not with finesse but force. Glass cracked under pressure. Seals warped. Hinges sheared.

He couldn't hit like Alyssa – not yet – but he'd tested his strength at over ten tons. Maybe fifteen in full Chimera. Enough to bring down a city gate.

The question wasn't if he could break out. It was when. And what waited on the other side.

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He sat. Back against cold steel. Knees loose. Hands folded. Breathing shallow.

The pain in his ribs had dulled already. Cheekbone less swollen. Skin along his knuckles scabbing over, then reabsorbing the blood. Healing too fast. Even without the chimera form.

The collar flickered once. A static twitch.

But it didn't stop it.

Victor stared at his palm. Dragged a fingernail across it. Split the skin. Watched the red rise.

Then watched it seal.

Six seconds.

His heart rate didn't change.

The chimera wasn't transforming. But it was there. A whisper behind his thoughts. Not words – impulses. Subtle.

Observe the apex predator. Do not display dominance too early. Endure. Wait. Strike once.

Victor tilted his head back against the wall. Let his eyes wander.

Across the cellblock, three other cells angled into view – barely visible from his. Just enough, if you were watching.

One inmate huddled low, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking constantly. She moved like a metronome. Left, right, left, right. Never faster. Never slower.

The second stood facing the far wall. Perfectly still. For minutes. Hours, maybe. Never turned. Never blinked. Not even to eat – if there was food.

The third was thinner than either. A man. Twitchy. Hands fluttering like broken birds. Lips moving, silent. Over and over again. Some phrase repeated endlessly. A prayer? A code?

Then – a glitch. For half a second, the man's eyes snapped to Victor's. Clear. Aware. Not broken. Just… waiting.

Then he went back to twitching.

Victor filed that away. One more variable. One more crack.

Victor watched them. They didn't look back.

This wasn't madness. Not yet.

This was what happened when you weren't allowed to break.

You dissolved.

And Victor…

Victor was still testing the edge.

…………………

The first thing he smelled was bleach.

Then metal. Sterilised. Sharp.

Victor's eyelids cracked open as the sedative wore off. His limbs didn't move. Restraints – padded, medical-grade – held his arms and legs in place. The ceiling above him gleamed white, smooth and seamless. No lights. Just glow. The air buzzed like a sleeping engine.

He wasn't in a cell anymore.

White walls. Surgical arms mounted to the ceiling. An overhead rail system. Everything gleamed with clinical precision. No dust. No rust. No soul.

A technician moved into view – white coat, respirator, tablet flicking through diagnostic overlays. Behind them, two others adjusted the positioning arms. One muttered, "Pulse strong. Halo response still suppressed."

The first one tapped the screen. "Draw three vials. Blood first, then soul flux."

A hiss. A needle slid into Victor's forearm – not pain, but something colder. Thicker. Like it wasn't just taking blood.

He didn't move.

Couldn't afford to.

The readings lit up in real time. One of the techs whistled low. "Holy shit. Look at that resonance spike. This one's not for the pods…"

The second technician nodded once, voice flat. "This one's for the vault."

Victor didn't blink. But inside, he pulled tighter. Sucked the power down deeper. Suppressed it harder.

Don't give them anything.

"Combat-grade," the woman continued. "If we're lucky, he'll burn slow. If not—" She didn't finish the sentence.

"Healing rate?"

"Triple baseline. No mutagenic rupture yet."

Victor shifted his eyes – just a flicker. Past the corner of the table.

Storage units lined the walls. Rows of cryo-pallets. Each one held a body.

Most looked recent.

Too recent.

Not a single corpse was bloated. No rot. No purge fluid. No rigor. They were pristine. Like mannequins shelved mid-sentence.

Next to them – piles of folded clothes. Shirts. Coats. Civilian uniforms. Dozens of sets. Maybe hundreds.

Too many.

Far too many for the number of bodies.

Victor stared.

Where were the rest?

He couldn't smell decay. Couldn't hear the buzz of insects. Just bleach. Just hum.

As if the people hadn't died at all.

As if they'd been… emptied.

One of the technicians leaned in. "Test complete. Prep for secondary evaluation."

Victor closed his eyes again.

He was already calculating. Timing sedation. Monitoring the staff rotation. Watching how the room cooled during downtime and where the door seals locked.

This wasn't a hospital.

It was a lab.

And he was being graded. For harvest.

…………………

The restraints rolled smoothly on magnetised tracks. Victor's table glided across the threshold into a new kind of nightmare.

The Battery Ward.

It was massive – a cathedral of suffering. Dozens of human-shaped pods filled the chamber, lining the walls in neat rows like industrial storage. Each one glowed faint green from within, thick with translucent gel. People floated inside. Some twitched. Some gurgled in their sleep. Others just stared – mouths slack, eyes wide, pupils pinholes.

Tubes ran from each pod – psychic tubing, not metal – strands of light and memory, hooked directly into each prisoner's head, spinal cord, or chest. The cords converged upward into a single vein – thick, pulsing, black-veined with sickly light – slithering through the ceiling like an umbilical.

Victor smelled it now. Not blood. Not chemicals. Aura.

Raw and volatile, like ozone and burnt copper. A soul-drenched reek.

One of the pods let out a high, wet hiss. Its sides began to deform – not burst, not crack, but melt. The figure inside twitched violently, then stilled. Their face contorted once – rapture or agony, it was impossible to tell – before dissolving into foam. A surge of light travelled up the tube, joining the artery above.

Behind a glass panel on the far wall, Enforcers watched the process.

"Sector E extraction complete," one intoned.

"Five percent recharge," said another.

A soft chime. Approval.

Victor's breath slowed. He tracked everything. Every light. Every rhythm. Every heartbeat of the machine. His limbs were tense – not from fear, but calculation.

Then he saw it.

The vault.

Set into the back wall – sealed by blacksteel blast doors at least two metres thick. Cables as wide as tree trunks fed into its frame. Warning glyphs flickered. Emergency lights blinked in rhythm with something beneath. It wasn't just locked – it was afraid of what it held back.

One door bore a label:

CORE INTAKE – PRIMARY ENERGY CONTAINMENT

Victor's gut twisted.

Not because of the pods. Not because of the readings. But because the techs escorting him weren't turning. His restraints weren't guiding him left or right.

They were pushing him forward.

Toward the vault.

He'd heard whispers back at Grimm's. About a place where Contractors went and didn't return. A vault buried under Prague. A room that wasn't a room – just a mouth with no name. He hadn't believed it.

Until now.

The table slowed. A retinal scanner engaged. Green light sliced the air.

One of the staff murmured, "Clearance accepted. Subject 117: Contractor-grade. Vault absorption confirmed."

Vault absorption.

Victor's jaw flexed. Every muscle in his body tensed, preparing to rupture the restraints. He could feel his chimera rising now – not transformation, but pressure. Rage. Instinct. Survive.

A final alert chimed.

And the blast doors began to open.

…………………

The restraints clamped tight around Victor's wrists hissed. Then, slowly, began to move.

The trolley slid along a recessed track – silent, automated – away from the battery ward and toward the vault. The walls changed. Steel gave way to something older. Stone, blackened with heat. Mottled veins ran through the surface, pulsing faintly like infected arteries. The air thickened. Grew wet.

Victor didn't struggle. Not yet. His eyes did the work.

The vault door loomed ahead – three metres thick, sealed with layered sigils and emergency clamps. As they approached, the entire wall shuddered. Something behind it… moved.

A klaxon chirped.

The door didn't open in full. Just cracked. Enough for heat to bleed out – thick, humid, metallic. The smell hit first: blood, bile, formaldehyde, and something sweeter. Wrongly sweet. Like rotting sugar.

Victor was wheeled to the edge of a wide grated platform. Ten metres below, the pit yawned open.

The kind of fall that wouldn't kill you – but it would break legs, rupture organs. Leave you helpless. It was engineered for that. Just enough to ensure the flesh got in without too much fight.

He stared.

And the thing stared back.

"Fuck," Victor muttered. "It's a fucking meat monster."

The words slipped out before he could stop them – not fear, not awe. Just raw, unfiltered disgust.

The meat monster was not a creature. It was many. Tens of thousands – bodies melded, twisted, sewn and melted together with psychic stitching. Arms grew from thighs. Spines looped into horns. Tongues dangled like vines. Some faces still breathed, still blinked. Eyes embedded in bellies. Ribcages opened like mouths. A child's hand gripped a stranger's leg as if pleading for help.

And the thing writhed.

It undulated in slow pulses, every movement causing the floor to vibrate. Its mass was the size of a cathedral – not still, but shifting. Sloshing. A tumour with direction. At its centre: a pulsing node of glistening red flesh. It beat slowly. Too slowly. Like a dying heart dragged back into motion.

Tendrils sprouted from its flanks – thick, slick cords of organic muscle and hair. They pierced the pit walls, the ceiling, disappearing into the stone above. Feeding something. Or perhaps being fed.

Victor's stomach twisted. Not from fear. From rage.

This wasn't a monster. It was a graveyard in motion.

The platform clanked beneath him. His restraints hissed. One by one, they retracted – ankles, wrists, chest – unfastened with surgical precision.

No guards stood nearby. No cheers. No warnings.

Just the edge.

Then a mechanical voice. Flat. Dispassionate.

"Subject C.117. Prepared for integration."

And the floor tilted.

Victor dropped.

Ten metres of freefall – no time to brace.

He hit hard.

His ankle cracked. His side buckled. Nothing fatal – just enough to make the climb impossible. By design.

The floor wasn't stone. It gave. A surface of old flesh, congealed and soft. It gripped him, slick and warm. Beneath him, the mass stirred. A hundred moans echoed at once – not screams. Whispers. Murmurs. Begging. Apologising.

Then it moved.

The meat monster rose.

A ridge of bodies slithered forward – dragging bone spurs, dragging broken feet, dragging itself. One face on its flank smiled. Another cried. Another opened its mouth and said his name.

"Victor."

He didn't move.

Not yet.

The horror crawled forward – looming, slouching, hungry.

And Victor crouched. Eyes cold.

The fuse wasn't fire. It was instinct. And it had just reached the bone.

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