The smoke wasn't just black. It was tinted with green and yellow chemical vapors, the aftermath of exploding test tanks. The screams of escaping prisoners began to fade into the distance, leaving behind only the sound of heavy, organized footsteps.

  The Special Security Squad had arrived.

  They weren't ordinary guards. They wore heavy white armor resistant to energy attacks, carrying weapons ranging from chemical foam sprayers for immobilization to lethal firearms.

  "Sector B, secured. Sector C, clearing in progress," the commander's voice came over the radio. "Orders are clear: any specimen outside its containment is considered compromised. Immediate neutralization."

  The squad advanced through the burning corridor.

  At the end of the hallway, amidst the chemical fog, someone was walking slowly, against the flow of the escapees.

  He wasn't running. He was dragging his feet wearily, like a sick patient walking toward his bed.

  He was a young man with dull, brittle snow-white hair, wearing a black jacket and gray trousers. His extremely pale skin was so transparent that a web of blue veins and faint glowing lines was visible beneath it.

  "Halt!" shouted one of the soldiers, aiming his weapon at the young man. "Return to your cell immediately!"

  The young man stopped.

  He raised his head slowly. His sunken eyes shone with a perpetual "feverish" glint. He didn't look at the weapons. He looked past them.

  "The storage..." the young man whispered in a hoarse, dry voice.

  "You're a failed star... just go back to your room and you will..." the commander spoke.

  "Where is... the crystal storage?" the young man continued, ignoring him.

  "Level One Neutralization!" the commander ordered.

  Three soldiers fired simultaneously. Not bullets, but nets of rapidly hardening solid foam.

  The young man didn't move to dodge.

  Instead, a sickening tearing sound came from his right shoulder.

  Through the pale skin, a long, sharp bone pierced through, looking like a spearhead made of gray organic matter. It wasn't natural bone; it was coated in a sticky layer of toxins.

  The bone moved with terrifying speed, slicing the nets in mid-air before they could touch him.

  "What the...?" A soldier took a step back.

  "I need... treatment..." the young man said, taking a step forward.

  Another protrusion burst from his thigh, then from his back. They weren't just bones. They were "living weapons." Organic knives, long needles, and even something resembling a whip of dead flesh sprouted from his sickly body.

  The cancer inside him was killing his cells, and the crystal in his heart was recycling death into a weapon.

  "Open fire! Live ammunition!" the commander screamed.

  Bullets rained down.

  The rounds pierced the young man's body. His frame shook, and blood splattered. But he didn't fall.

  The shimmering crystal inside his chest pulsed powerfully. The holes made by the bullets didn't just heal; they began to expel small "projectiles."

  "Reaction..." the young man muttered. "I have... too many cells."

  His body unleashed a volley of tiny "bone needles" in all directions.

  The needles struck the soldiers' armor. Some shattered, but others found their way into the gaps—the neck, the wrists, the joints.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Argh!" one soldier cried out, dropping to his knees, clutching his neck where a small needle had embedded itself.

  "Just a scratch! Keep..." the commander started to yell, but stopped when he saw what was happening to his soldier.

  The injured soldier didn't die from poison immediately.

  His skin began to ripple.

  "Sir... my hand...!" the soldier screamed in terror, looking at his hand.

  The site of the wound began to change. The infected cells were mutating. Sharp bony protrusions started to emerge from the soldier's arm, tearing his suit from the inside. The infection wasn't a virus; it was an "organic conversion." His body began producing weapons against itself.

  "A monster ..." another soldier whispered, backing away.

  "You..." the commander narrowed his eyes as he looked at the young man.

  "The way..." the young man said, passing by the terrified soldiers. The organic weapons covering his body moved and undulated like independent entities, protecting him from any approach. "I don't want... to hurt you... I want... treatment."

  No one dared to fire again. The fear of turning into a "monstrosity" was stronger than the fear of military punishment.

  The young man reached the end of the corridor, where the "Medical Storage" was located.

  The door was already destroyed. The flames ignited by the other failed star were consuming the room.

  The young man stood before the fire, his eyes reflecting the blaze.

  "No..."

  He rushed inside, indifferent to the fire that began to burn his skin (which the crystal immediately regenerated).

  He searched among the shattered shelves. The melted glass. The charred equipment.

  He found one partially intact metal canister. He opened it with fingers whose nails had become knives.

  Empty.

  The canister fell from his hand.

  "None..."

  He looked around. The fire was eating everything. The laboratory, which he believed was his "sanatorium" for treatment, had turned into an incinerator.

  He felt a sharp pain in his chest. The crystal pulsed, demanding fuel, demanding continuance. That disease gnawing at his lungs, and the crystal repairing them, in an endless cycle of torment.

  "Elias..." the young man whispered, still believing the mad scientist was his savior. "You promised me... you would fix me."

  He walked out of the burning room, his body emitting the smoke of roasting flesh and regeneration.

  In the corridor, his foot stumbled over something soft.

  He looked down. It was a scientist in a half-burnt white coat, crawling with difficulty, clutching his open abdomen.

  The scientist raised his eyes, his pupils dilating in horror when he recognized the pale face above him.

  "Valens...?" the scientist whispered in a bloody, choked voice. "You... the failed star... how did you get out?"

  Valens stopped. He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to remember this man's face among the hundreds who had injected him with toxins.

  "I am not failed..." Valens said in a quiet voice, while the tumors in his neck moved under the skin as if breathing. "I am just... not finished yet. Where is Elias? Where are the crystals?"

  "Elias...?" The scientist let out a short, hysterical laugh that ended in a bloody cough. "That madman... left... left us all to burn... left you to burn, you idiot... he's the one who put the tumor in you... he's the one who..."

  The scientist didn't finish his sentence.

  A long bony tail that had suddenly sprouted from Valens' wrist moved, piercing the scientist's skull with a swift, precise motion.

  "Don't lie..." Valens whispered, pulling back the contaminated bone. "Elias is trying to fix me. You are the ones who failed."

  He stepped over the scientist's corpse and continued walking. The pain in his chest was increasing. The malignant tissues were multiplying, but not faster than the crystal's current ability to repair. But he needed a new dose.

  There was nothing left for him here.

  He reached the exit that Hengen had used.

  He stepped out into the open air on the "Third Island." He looked at the lights of a distant island, at the "Fourth Island."

  "Not there..." the young man muttered, his eyes shining with a sickly determination. "Below... there must be more... more crystals."

  He began walking toward the train station. He wasn't a fugitive. He was a patient looking for a cure.

  A sick monster, carrying an infection that turned humans into weapons, had unleashed itself onto the streets of Neomera, searching for a remedy that would only bring more pain.

  Behind him, more security personnel stood.

  "Should we engage?" a member asked.

  "Let him go. He'll be disposed of at the Energy Island. Now let's help those inside," his colleague replied. "He'll know the difference between monsters and just a freak."

  The reinforcement squad began entering the building.

  After minutes of walking.

  "Valens" stopped in the shadows before entering the station platform.

  He looked at his hands. The bony claws had partially retracted, but the skin was still torn, and the crystal in his chest glowed with a sickly blue light piercing through his tattered shirt.

  "I can't... go in like this..."

  He saw the corpse of a researcher lying near a waste container, a victim of the stampede or the fire. Valens pulled the long gray coat off the body. It was stained with blood, but large enough.

  He put it on, turning the collar up to cover his neck and jaw, and hid his deformed hands in the deep pockets.

  Now, he didn't look like a monster anymore. He just looked like another "survivor," injured and broken, fleeing a disaster.

  He walked onto the train platform on the "Third Island."

  The place was nearly empty... it was late at night and most guards were busy with the laboratory.

  But there was one person standing, waiting for the train in complete silence.

  A boy wearing a long gray coat, his gray-white hair tied in a small braid, standing with a straight back as if waiting for a school bus, not an escape train from a disaster zone.

  Valens stopped beside him.

  He smelled the scent of ozone and burning emanating from the boy, but he didn't care. His mind was screaming one word only: crystals.

  "You..." Hengen said without turning around, his calm voice cutting through the whistle of the wind. "From the lab...?"

  Valens raised his sunken eyes slowly. The glow in his eyes was unfocused.

  "You... the one who opened the door..." Valens' voice was like sandpaper.

  "Me?.. No, that was someone else," Hengen corrected, then turned to see Valens trembling, not from cold, but from his internal cellular war. Hengen noticed how Valens tightened the coat to hide the glow in his chest. "You look bad."

  Valens pressed on his chest, over his heart. "There's nothing here... I need to go... down."

  Hengen smiled a cynical smile.

  "Down? Do you mean the Blue Cat Hospital?.. If so, you need to steal some money.. but if you're new, treatment is free."

  The train arrived.

  The door opened. The two entered. Hengen sat at one end, and Valens at the other, panting and curling into himself.

  The train moved through the tunnel, heading toward the central separating station: the "Energy and Factory Island."

  Here lay the real test.

  The train stopped.

  The two stepped down onto the wide platform of the Energy Island.

  The atmosphere here was different. No chaos. Just the sound of giant generators, and the smell of pure electricity.

  And in front of the transit gate leading to the trains heading to the Central Island, stood a "man with sunglasses."

  They passed by a statue whose dark chrome metallic structure reflected the station's dim lights.

  Valens froze. He felt the crystal in his chest pulse with fear, as if realizing the presence of a metallic predator.

  "Don't do anything stupid," Hengen whispered as he passed by him, his steps confident. "It's programmed to search for active threats... and registered fugitives. You? You're not registered as a fugitive yet. You're just an Esper like the rest."

  Hengen advanced first but didn't stop. He walked while looking at the man with sunglasses. "I didn't know you entered."

  "Do I need to tell you?" Hengen asked without stopping.

  The man didn't reply, shifting his gaze toward Valens.

  "And you?"

  "Valens," Valens answered.

  "He's with me," Hengen said, smiling.

  The man with sunglasses sighed.

  Then he waved his hand. "Doesn't matter. You can leave," the man said with boredom, watching them as they left, then took out his phone and sent a message. "I don't know how he entered again without us knowing, but my mission is just to report, nothing more.”