Timus POV - Nivara lab

  I was in a room ripped straight from a nightmare.

  A twisted fusion of an operating theater and a torture chamber.

  Stainless steel gleamed on every surface, lit by a strange green glow. Screens lined the walls, each one flashing with bio-readouts, genetic sequences, pulsing vitals… all information I couldn’t even begin to understand.

  To my right, a tray of tools glinted under the lights. Scalpels. Bone saws. Needles.

  Cruel-looking prongs with jagged edges. Syringes thicker than my thumb. Vials filled with swirling, viscous liquids in colors no sane person would ever want injected into their veins.

  In the far corner, were where the real horrors dwelled.

  Tubes and tanks lined the walls. Thick, cylindrical containment units with fogged glass panels and a constant, low hum. Cables and fluid lines trailed from their bases into the floor, some ending in diagnostic panels that blinked with unreadable data.

  Suspended in the murky fluid were things. Or at least, pieces of them.

  Limbs and organs drifted in chemical stasis, their outlines distorted through the fogged glass. Some were covered in unnatural growths. Tendrils curled like fingers, frozen in place as if reaching for something they would never grasp.

  One tank held what looked like an arm, but it wasn’t fully human. It was thicker than it should have been, with spiny ridges running the length of the forearm. Veins ran beneath the surface, dark and sluggish, still pulsing like it hadn’t realized it was dead yet.

  Figures moved between the tanks, checking readouts and adjusting cables. They wore dark coveralls, stained at the cuffs, with breathing masks strapped tight to their faces. Red goggles covered their eyes, that contained their own light source.

  I couldn’t tell if they were human. Maybe once. Their hands were too smooth, some appeared to be metal, jointed like surgical tools. One crouched near a tank and adjusted a dial while watching the fluid inside change color. Another held a scanner close to the glass, tracking something I couldn’t see.

  One of the figures stepped away from a console and moved toward the tables. That’s when I noticed them.

  The “patients.”

  Shackled to tables. Half-conscious. Tubes snaked into their arms, pumping something dark and viscous through their veins. Their bodies twitched against the restraints with slow, irregular spasms like they were trying to fight it but couldn’t.

  Some of them were human. Others… not so much. At least not anymore.

  Metal grafts jutted from bone. Skin was marked with symbols, carved or burned in, I couldn’t tell. Their eyes glowed faintly under the lights, not with life, but, a twisted power that looked ready to burst forth at any moment.

  Whatever was inside them didn’t belong.

  My stomach twisted, a sick dread settled over me as I took it all in, until something shifted beside me and drew my attention to the right.

  Yuki stood there, arms crossed, in a sleek, skin-tight suit, more runway than battlefield. It struck me again how beautiful she was.

  I shifted, and the cuffs around my wrists dug in, just in case I forgot my ankles and waist were chained too. The gag in my mouth bit down against my tongue, thick and sour, cutting off anything I might’ve said anyway.

  Right. Definitely the time to be thinking about how good she looked. Great priorities.

  Her eyes were locked on the tanks. On what was floating inside.

  But then her gaze shifted.

  Without a word, she stepped closer. Just enough for me to feel the warmth of her body near mine.

  Her fingers reached out and slowly touched the back of my hand, brushing the skin with her thumb.

  I wasn’t sure if she was trying to calm me or herself.

  Then the sound of boots hitting the floor ahead of us.

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  Yuki’s hand snapped back. Her arms crossed tight against her chest. She turned her head away, face blank again.

  Orion walked in, or Alistair Drayke I suppose.

  He looked at me, irritation etched into every line of his face. “Are you done yet?”

  A woman in a lab coat glanced up, her augmented eyes flickering with thin beams of light.

  She was working with some tubes filled with… something. One was a thick, crimson red, swirling like molten metal. The other a silver, iridescent fluid that shimmered as if alive.

  Blood? Plasma?

  Or something worse?

  “Not yet,” she replied, detached. “Synthesizing new sequences is… complex. These genetic patterns contain thousands of configurations. We need to isolate the correct clusters, or we risk causing an entire sequence collapse”

  “Time,” Orion cut her off, his voice low, sharp with barely-contained contempt. “Time is something I don’t have.” He leaned closer, eyes narrowing to slits. “For what I’m paying you, I don’t want to hear ‘complex.’ I want results. Immediately. No more excuses.”

  The scientist swallowed and dropped her gaze, fingers darting over glowing holo-screens covered in intricate gene maps.

  Her team didn’t say a word. They moved faster, mouths tight, hands jittery as they recalibrated instruments and checked numbers that probably didn’t matter.

  Orion turned away and looked at me.

  His gaze locked on like a predator spotting something wounded. He stepped closer, a thin smile curling across his face. Between two fingers, a data shard spun lazily.

  “You’re awake,” he said, every syllable dripping with satisfaction. “Good.”

  He looked around the room and then back at me like I was something under glass.

  “You’ll be happy to hear,” he continued, “that I received a little incident report this morning. Apparently, every last man I had stationed there was slaughtered just after sunrise. Total loss.”

  He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Brutal stuff. Bodies everywhere. No survivors.”

  Then he laughed. A short, sharp sound, like he actually enjoyed it.

  “Honestly, I should be upset,” he said. “But in a way, it saved me the effort. Most of them were liabilities by now anyway. Dead weight. I was planning to liquidate the whole station next quarter.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly, grin sharpening.

  “I do wonder though… who could’ve pulled something like that off? Hmm?” He leaned in a little, tapping the shard against his chin.

  “Someone with clearance. Someone with guts. Maybe even… an old friend of yours?”

  He flicked the data shard in his hand again, then gave Yuki one last glance before turning back to me.

  “Oh and you’ll appreciate this. Valeria made quite the entrance. Punched through Fleet Captain Zhukov upper atmosphere like a goddamn missile. Fried half the city’s comms on the way down. Subtle as ever.”

  He laughed softly, then leaned closer, voice lowering just enough to feel personal.

  “Looks like she and Blackhand are both looking for you. I suppose the Legatus hasn’t given up on his little experiment just yet.”

  He held the shard up between two fingers, letting it spin slowly.

  “We both want the same thing, you know. I just got to you first.”

  He smiled like a man who already knew the outcome.

  “This little sliver of tech? It’s more than a trinket. It’s a copy. A snapshot of everything your mind couldn’t quite lock away. Places. Names. Coordinates. Patterns I don’t even recognize yet.”

  He took a step closer, still smiling.

  “It’ll take time to sift through. But they’ll find what they need. And once they do, well…”

  The smile faded, replaced with something colder.

  “You know… it’s a shame you killed my son,” he murmured, almost too casual. “Otherwise, I would have offered you a job.”

  Orion shrugged, feigning a look of regret. “No hard feelings, though.” His smile turned cold, sharper than any blade. “I forgive you. After all… I can always make another.”

  He stepped out of my line of sight, letting the words settle. Then he turned back, a sinister grin spreading across his face.

  “Maybe I misspoke,” he murmured, voice low, almost thoughtful. “Forgiveness? No. Not quite. Let’s just say… I understand.” He leaned in close, his breath icy against my cheek. “You’ll wish you’d died with the rest of your team, Corvus. Because what’s coming… is going to be so much worse.”

  I didn’t flinch.

  Didn’t blink.

  I just stared him down.

  His smirk twitched.

  Then vanished.

  He stepped back slowly, grabbed a slender metallic tool from the table and came back to stand in front of me.

  “That look,” he said, almost gently. “That stupid look. Like you still think you have some kind of control.”

  “Let me fix that.”

  I thrashed against the restraints, but they didn’t give an inch. The gag was tight in my mouth, sealing the scream that tried to break loose.

  He grabbed my face firmly.

  “A son for an eye,” he whispered. “They can take the rest.”

  Then came the pain.

  White-hot. Crushing. My vision burst with static as the tool tore through flesh and nerve and pressure. I howled into the gag, my body jerking against the metal that held me in place.

  He pulled back and my left eye came with him.

  Agony tore through my skull, white-hot and drilling deep. Blood and something thicker spilled down my cheek, warm at first, then cold. My vision spun sideways like gravity had tilted.

  I gasped through the gag, breath coming short and ragged. My head dropped forward under the weight of it all.

  But I forced it back up. Forced myself to see him.

  With one eye.

  Orion turned the eye in his fingers like it was some kind of prize.

  “I think I’ll keep this,” he said softly. “For the archive.”

  Then, still cradling the eye, he turned to Yuki.

  “Watch him,” he said. “And if you even think about helping him…”

  He let the silence carry the rest.

  Yuki didn’t answer.

  Orion nodded once.

  “Scientists!” he barked, his voice snapping through the air. “Induce the pain protocols. Draw out the ichor. I want every ounce of his power in a vial.”

  That… doesn’t sound good.

  Orion left through the door he came in earlier and the scientists began to move.

  White coats and black visors. Quiet footsteps. Cold instruments gleaming in their hands.

  I looked around for a way out and my eye, my only eye, found Yuki unmoving.

  She just sood there, arms crossed, shoulders tight like a statue.

  But the tears were falling.

  No sobbing or shaking. Just two silent streams running down her face from each eye.

  She didn’t look at me.

  Then the scientists closed in, and the real paint began.