I peeked into the next room and found a laboratory right out of some mad scientist movie. A giant metal slab sat in the center under a bright light, making the dark blood pooled on its surface glisten. Carts of different tools waited against the walls between the three doorways that lead in different directions.

Cold air blew from somewhere, making me want to shiver. I hadn't been chilly in ages, since the before-times. I didn't like it.

The doorway to the right drew my attention, since the buzz of crystals came from that direction, like an inch along the back of my shoulder. A feminine voice spoke loudly in the room to the left, though there were only two people inside, based on my radar.

Without thinking too hard, I headed to the crystal room. I waved in front of the sensor at the top, and let my stealth fall for just a second before it opened, and I darted inside.

Racks covered the walls to the right with some crystal collars on them, but mostly small little balls of the stuff. My spear rested on a middle shelf.

Yet, that wasn't what caused me to freeze.

The left wall had a line of very familiar tubes. Cold tubes.

Five of them were hooked up to different pipes, and the first glowed with light, but the inside was filled with a dark liquid.

[Artificial Wombs.]

The notification popped up and I dismissed it, shaking my head. My focus went to the crystals as I swallowed, trying to ignore my racing mind. First order of business was my spear, which went on my belt. The collars were next, though only ten lay there on the shelf. I frantically removed the crystal from each, ignoring the notifications that popped up.

The small round balls were next. I touched the first and tried to get a feel for what they did. They were similar to the small explosive bombs I still had stashed in my inventory, but they had an inactive connection to a ring.

Then it clicked.

Implants instead of collars to use less crystal.

My eyes went wide as I smooshed row after row together to steal in one lump for my inventory.

Someone shouted in the lab room, and I moved quicker, feeling two people enter the room. I needed to find a way out of this storage room. The ceiling didn't show any vents, and there weren't any windows.

Melting through the wall, it was.

The only light in the room came from the one tube, and it cast plenty of shadows. Now I just needed to figure out which wall was the safest to go through.

One presence in the other room marched toward the door of the storage room. I dashed between two shut-down cold tubes without a second to spare.

The door slid open and closed behind them as they turned toward the shelves. They looked exactly like Glet, whom I'd freed earlier, except this person didn't have a collar.

[Hed-bound, Forger, Level 51, Prey, Unknown.]

[An OFFENDER has been detected in your area with a bounty. You have been given a temporary boost to stats and abilities.]

[Hed-bound, Forger, Level 51, Prey, Unknown, OFFENDER.]

He paused for a second. It was all I needed to bring the butt of my knife up and slam it into the back of their head.

Hed tumbled to the ground, out cold. I didn't want to stab them since they were so far beneath my level. Yet, I couldn't leave them to wander about. I couldn't sense any crystals about them, so they had to be bound in a different way.

I yanked them farther into the room and stuffed them into a corner.

The other presence remained in the lab, but they were between the table and this door.

Fuck it.

Before yanking on my stealth, I waved in front of the sensor, but it took a moment for the door to open.

The person in the room leaned over the table, muttering under their breath. I barely stepped into the room when the notification popped up.

[Catherine, Genetics Specialist, Level 99, Prey, Unknown.]

"Took you long enough, Hed," she said with a growl. Her hand came out. "We will get this implant in, then test to see how it does. Hopefully, it doesn't blow up again."

She chuckled.

That chuckle. An image flashed through my mind of her laughing in the lab next to Jennifer as I cried from the blood draws. Then it vanished.

My heart pounded as sweat gathered along my forehead. My mind blanked on what to do.

In the center of the metal table rested a familiar creature, though it was missing part of its tail and a leg.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

[Compy, Sedated, Level 58, Prey, Candy.]

"If we can get this to work, we can implant the survivors from her clutch. They'll be useful as a stepping stone to something greater." She shook her head and turned to look at me. Yet, her eyes passed right over my location in her shadow from the bright light. A set of glasses covered her eyes.

She let out a sigh. "Fucking Hed."

Her words hit me like a brick, and realization washed over me. She didn't have a collar, I felt nothing like the sort from her.

The scalpel in her right hand dug into the Compy's head, the wound bleeding freely. She set the knife down, then slammed her left fist into the edge of the table in frustration. Catherine twisted around and took a step to the door, but paused.

A strange feeling echoed up my spine, and light flickered over the glasses.

"Alex," she whispered, now searching the edges of the room.

I crept away to the far side of the table, ducking down with the table blocking the view of me. All of the doors were closed, and I didn't dare try to open one.

How the fuck was my mother here?

Why was she working with the Forgers?

What the fuck!

"I knew you'd come to get your spear," she said, staring around the room. "I hope you didn't hurt Hed too badly, good help is so hard to find."

I needed to leave, no matter what. This wasn't something for me to deal with right now.

Thinking fast, I tossed my spear into my inventory after pulling out my knife. All of the crystal spaces were taken up, but I didn't want to lose it again.

Before I could dart toward the door, something bit into my wrist. Glancing down, I found a small crawling robot with a needle attached to the back of it.

[You have been poisoned.]

[You have been poisoned.]

My mother stepped around the table and smiled at me, clearly seeing through my stealth. Her glasses flickered again.

"I think it's time we had a chat, don't you?" she asked as the edges of my vision trembled.

I fought against it, carefully trying to stay aware of what was going on.

Her fingers clenched around my arm as she easily yanked me toward the door on the left. I stumbled along behind her, acting more incapacitated than I actually was, though her grip strength surprised me.

The door opened up to a sterile silver laboratory with more tables and cages scattered across the room. A metallic scent hung in the air, and dried streaks of blood interrupted the clean stainless steel of the floor. Bright screens with data running across them sat on a desk.

The level of technology in this room reminded me of the ship we'd come on, or at least the spine of it. The drop ships were lower-level tech, since they worked even if something went wrong. Which was a good thing, since something had definitely gone wrong.

Three more tubes filled with a bright green liquid sat off to one side. Something grew inside one of them.

She tossed me at a narrow table that stood upright with metal bands crossing on top of it. My back slammed into the metal, sending a sensation of pain up my spine for a split second before it vanished. The metal bands snapped shut around my body. She smiled at the click of them closing, then tapped on a nearby screen, turning away.

The metal table groaned as it tilted back, my feet leaving the floor as the bottom of the table rose while my head fell. It stopped once I lay flat. Energy washed out of me for a moment as everything in sight wiggled. After blinking a few times, things settled, but a cold temperature rose from the metal table under me, sinking into my armor and my skin.

"Now, where were we," she said, taking a seat on a stool next to the lab table. She picked a probe up and scanned it over my body, holding it over me from my head, then slowly down to my toes.

"Level 73 already, very nice. Though, I quickly passed you once I received the announcement." She smirked, reading the output on her screen. "I couldn't let you show me up. Plus, the benefits of ranking up were worth the work."

"Announcement," I mumbled, acting a little drunk. My mouth felt a little dry. I didn't feel nearly as helpless as I was acting. Hopefully I was as capable as I felt.

"Alex, the First of course!" She snorted, still not even glancing at me. "I can't have my greatest creation doing better than me."

Creation.

The words filled me with dread, and that tiny voice I resisted most of the time wondered if I should have killed her before she even turned around.

"Don't look like that," she grumbled, reading more of the data on the screen. "Shadowstalker, that sounds rare… I'll have to add that to my database."

The small click as she typed on the screen felt like a countdown, reminding me of Kabi outside.

What if he came looking for me?

Not to mention, I didn't want anything of mine in some database, especially since she worked with the enemy. The Forgers might already know that I removed the collars, but anything I kept up my sleeve would help me in the long run.

"If you feel like you will hurl, make sure you turn your head to the side," she suddenly said. "Something in the sedative makes me vomit. You don't want to choke on it."

I couldn't even comprehend this person in front of me. She took her own sedatives?

"Why are you here?" I asked, thinking of the crystal still around my wrist and a way out of here. I'd need to move fast. The cold rising from the table made me feel sleepy, worse than the sedative that my system was slowly removing.

"To continue my work, of course," she said, turning toward the screen on the desk after it beeped. "The Forgers are light years ahead in genetic manipulation than where we were on Earth, but of course they work with different technology than we do. They hadn't focused on genetics, instead using body modification, if you can believe that.

"I'm opening up an entirely new way to look at their cross-breeding program, instead of focusing on cloning." She lifted her head and smiled in my direction. "Hed and Glet are two of my successes. Much easier to grow someone than to cut bits off and merge them into your being."

Her fingers tapped on the screen a few times, which narrowed.

"Of course, they need to learn their place and where they fit in the organization."

The parallels of the Forgers killing something and stealing from them wasn't lost on me. Yet, whatever they were doing was bad enough that the system wanted them hunted down. I didn't violate the rules. Or at least I hadn't so far.

"What about you?"

I needed to keep her talking as I carefully worked the bracelet around my hand to melt through the metal. Getting my knife to my other hand was just as important, but I wasn't there yet.

"I work directly under Dilom, he… he has vision. He showed me the errors of my ways, what I was wasting by trying to stay within the confines of the laws that Earth had." She shook her head rapidly. Then she suddenly paused, like someone hit the mute button. It lasted several seconds, then she continued like nothing happened. "Once I understood, my levels skyrocketed, and my successes like Hed and Glet are one result."

She turned to face me with a smile. "The system has even rewarded me with you showing up to get your little spear. Now that you're here, I can move even faster, using the same principles that I used to create you."

The rune on my chest blazed with a warmth that warned me she truly believed everything she said. It fought against the cold from the table sinking into my body.

Her smile turned deeper as her glasses flashed again.

"Now, let's start at the beginning. I want to know what your traits are…"

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