"Bravo Ashen," Max said. "It looks like you are finally waking up."
My throat felt completely raw. I swallowed dry sand. "I did not want this," I whispered.
Max tilted his head. His eyes shined with absolute satisfaction. He stood amid the ruin of the medical bay and looked completely at ease. "Want has nothing to do with survival."
My mouth opened. I did not tell it to move. "He is right." The voice was mine but the tone was entirely wrong. It was arrogant and steady. It held absolutely no fear.
I stumbled backward. I grabbed my own head with both hands. I squeezed my temples. "Shut up," I said to myself.
My chest vibrated. A deep laugh rolled out of my throat. I was not the one laughing. A heavy iron weight dropped over my nervous system. I was awake and I could see everything but I could not control a single muscle.
The heavy steel doors at the far end of the ruined medical bay hissed open.
A dozen armored soldiers poured into the room. Their heavy boots slammed against the concrete floor in perfect unison. They spread out across the entrance and blocked the only exit. Their rifles snapped up and aimed directly at my chest. They wore full tactical gear. Their faces were completely hidden behind dark visors. They looked exactly like the men who had died in the warehouse.
Max took a few steps backward into the hallway. He leaned his shoulder against the door frame. He watched with a wide grin. He wanted to see a slaughter.
My left arm raised entirely on its own. Blood from the dead handlers dripped from my fingers and splashed onto the white floor tiles.
The first soldier fired his weapon.
I dropped low beneath the bullet trajectory, spun to the side, and launched forward with unnatural speed. Air rushed past my face. I crossed the distance before the soldier could adjust his optical sight, clamped my right hand onto the thick barrel of his rifle, and crushed the solid metal casing flat. The soldier stared through his cracked visor. I ripped the ruined weapon from his hands and drove the heavy stock directly into his reinforced helmet. Glass shattered instantly. He hit the floor and did not move again.
Another soldier charged from the right flank holding a short combat knife aimed directly for my neck. I shot my left hand out, caught his thick wrist mid strike, and squeezed until the bone snapped loudly over the noise of the room. He screamed. I twisted his arm backward and drove his own knife deep into his shoulder.
Warm blood sprayed across my cheek. A massive smile curled my lips.
Gunfire erupted from all directions. The remaining soldiers opened fire at once. The loud noise was deafening. Flashes of bright yellow light lit up the ruined medical bay.
I danced through the absolute chaos, ducking under a line of concentrated bullets, vaulting over a broken medical table, and kicking a soldier directly in the chest. His armor caved inward. He flew backward and crashed into the concrete wall. I felt every single physical impact but I did not control a single movement. I was a helpless passenger trapped behind my own eyes. I watched my fists shatter dark armor. I watched my boots crush ribs and snap limbs.
The soldiers tried to coordinate their attacks. They shouted orders to each other. They tried to surround the perimeter of the room. I anticipated every single tactical shift, moving with ruthless efficiency to grab one soldier by the collar and use him as a kinetic shield against the incoming crossfire. Bullets tore into his Kevlar vest. I threw the dead weight aside, lunged at the shooter, and connected an elbow strictly with his throat. He collapsed instantly.
Max spoke through the intercom system. His voice echoed from a wall speaker above the door. "You will exhaust yourself. Even blades dull."
My head tilted toward the speaker. The violent combat did not even elevate my breathing. My heart rate remained a flat steady rhythm. A cold arrogant smirk stretched across my face.
The surviving soldiers backed away toward the door. They realized their rifles were entirely useless against the speed. They were terrified. They bumped into each other trying to escape.
The skin on my left forearm split open. I braced for a massive wave of pain. There was none. Thick black blood pushed out of my veins. The black liquid turned bright silver the exact second it touched the sterile halogen light of the room. The liquid metal stretched outward and hardened instantly. It formed a long broad blade directly attached to my radius bone. Sparks of silver energy crawled across the razor sharp edge.
My stomach turned violently. I wanted to vomit. I felt sick.
I swung the blade to test the weight and aerodynamic balance, slicing right through a solid steel medical table and cutting it cleanly in half. The heavy pieces crashed to the floor.
The last soldiers scrambled out into the hallway. The heavy steel doors slammed shut behind them.
The room stayed quiet for three seconds. Then the doors slid open again.
Two heavy security drones rolled through the entrance. They were massive machines built entirely of thick steel and dense wires. Red optical sensors scanned the room and locked directly onto my chest. The heavy machine guns mounted on their chassis began to spin with a loud mechanical whine.
I sprinted straight at them while the drones opened fire. Hundreds of bullets tore across the room.
Several rounds hit my chest and stomach. I felt the initial violent tearing of my flesh. The physical kinetic impact pushed my center of gravity backward half a step. But the silver nanites flooded the fresh wounds immediately. The liquid metal pushed the crushed lead bullets right out of my tissue. They hit the floor with quiet metallic clicks. The silver sealed my skin completely before I could even bleed. The pain vanished in less than a second.
A dark silent laugh shook my chest.
I leaped directly over the first drone, cleared the chassis entirely, and brought the silver blade down hard as my boots hit the floor. The sharp metal sheared straight through the thick steel casing and severed the main power lines hidden inside the machine. The drone sparked violently and died immediately. I grabbed the heavy metal chassis with both hands, ripped it off the ground, and hurled it directly at the second machine. They collided with a massive deafening crunch of twisted metal and broken wires. Black smoke poured out of the wreckage.
The room went completely silent again.
We walked out of the ruined medical bay. We stepped into the pristine white corridors of Alpha Division.
Sirens wailed constantly from every overhead speaker. Red emergency lights flashed across the walls and painted the white floors in harsh crimson strobes. Squads of heavily armed soldiers waited at every major intersection. They set up barricades using heavy supply crates. They threw suppression grenades.
I tore right through them, rolling with the blast waves of the explosive grenades to keep moving forward. The silver blade lengthened and sharpened with every single kill. The nanites inside my blood actively adapted to the constant threats. They learned exactly how to destroy things faster and how to keep the host body alive. When bullets managed to strike my chest or shoulders the silver metal immediately formed a thick temporary armor over my skin to deflect the damage. The bullets flattened against the silver scales and fell harmlessly away. I watched my own arm mutate into a perfect instrument of death. I shifted the blade shape to block incoming fire and then extended it to impale a soldier standing ten feet away.
I screamed silently inside my own head. I threw all my mental weight against the invisible cage holding my mind. I demanded control. I begged the cold persona steering my body to stop the slaughter. I reasoned that we could just escape without killing everyone. These were just normal people doing their jobs. Terrified soldiers following bad orders. They were just trying to survive the night.
There was no spoken reply. Just a heavy crushing wave of absolute dominance settling over my thoughts. The cold presence did not care about my guilt or my morality. It only cared about total superiority and survival. It enjoyed proving that their weapons were entirely useless.
We pushed deeper into the facility. We left a long continuous trail of broken armor and shattered weapons behind us. The pristine white walls were painted with dark red splashes and deep structural gouges. Scientists in white coats ran away in pure panic when they saw us coming. They dropped their data pads and screamed. I ignored them entirely, walking right past the terrified researchers crouching behind their desks. I only targeted the soldiers who posed a direct physical threat. An apex predator moving through a forest. Energy was never wasted on harmless prey.
We reached a heavy reinforced steel door at the very end of a long dark hallway. It looked like a maximum security entrance. I did not even slow down. My left arm pulled back. The silver blade glowed brightly. I drove the weapon straight into the center of the solid steel door. The metal shrieked loudly. I twisted my arm, ripped a massive hole right through the center, kicked the ruined pieces inward, and stepped inside.
We entered a dark cell block. The air smelled like stale sweat and old chemicals. Row after row of glass boxes lined the walls. Dim overhead lights illuminated the cells.
Some of the boxes were completely empty. Others held broken people slumped on the floor. They wore ragged clothes. Their eyes were completely vacant. They looked like empty shells. They were the failed experiments. The people who did not survive the integration process.
My head turned sharply to the side. My body forced me to look directly at them. The cold presence wanted me to see this. It wanted me to stop feeling guilty about killing the guards. It wanted me to hate the people running this place.
I walked slowly down the row of silent glass cells. Boots echoed loudly in the quiet block. We passed a man staring blankly at the ceiling. We passed a woman curled into a tight ball in the corner.
My boots stopped moving in front of the very last glass box.
Acid burned the back of my throat. A wave of absolute horror washed over me.
Zack Rivers was chained to the back wall of the cell.
His dark tactical uniform was shredded into useless rags. His face was covered in deep purple and black bruises. One of his eyes was swollen completely shut. Dried blood crusted his jaw and his neck. He was breathing in very shallow ragged gasps. Every single breath sounded like a massive struggle. His arms were pulled tight above his head by heavy metal chains.
I tried to reach out to him. I tried to press my right hand flat against the thick glass barrier.
My arm refused to move. The cold presence held my body completely rigid.
Zack opened his one good eye. He looked slowly through the dirty glass. It took him a few seconds to focus his vision. He stared directly at my face.
"Ashen," Zack rasped. His voice was incredibly weak and brittle. It sounded like cracked stone. "It is you."
I begged my mouth to open. I screamed inside my mind. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I wanted to tell him I was not doing this. I wanted to tell him I had no control over the slaughter outside.
My face just formed a cold empty grin.
Zack coughed hard. A spray of dark blood hit his own chest. He struggled to lift his head slightly higher. "What have they done to you?"
The smile vanished instantly from my lips. My facial muscles went completely slack.
My body hesitated. The constant overwhelming urge to kill simply stopped. The violent forward momentum died completely.
I felt the instinct inside me evaluating Zack. It stared at the broken man chained to the wall. It was confused by him. Zack was the soldier who had pointed a rifle at my head in the warehouse. Zack was the man who had brought me to this terrible place. The instinct expected to feel hatred. It expected to want to kill him.
But Zack had also seen me. He had recognized me. He was the only person in this entire facility who had looked at me and said my actual name instead of calling me a weapon or a project.
Zack leaned his head forward against the heavy chains. He stared right into my silver eyes. He saw the monster standing outside his cell. He saw the blood dripping from my hands.
"Run," he whispered.
His head slumped back against the cold concrete wall. He closed his eye and stopped moving. His chest continued to rise and fall in a very slow rhythm.
My body stood perfectly still. The silver blade on my arm hummed quietly in the dark.
I did not move. I just stood there and watched him breathe.