I extended a hand toward the lab door, a reinforced slab of metal nearly three feet thick, built to contain things most people didn’t even want to imagine existed. I bent it, twisted it, tearing it from its hinges and sending it crashing to the floor with a resounding clang that shook the room.

  “We probably shouldn’t be releasing… these things. We have no idea what they are, what they’re capable of.” Yuki said quietly, her voice low and tense.

  “Who cares? Nothing in here’s gonna survive out there anyway. Not on this frozen rock.”

  One after another, I reached out, ripping open containment cells, pulling down reinforced doors. Each time, something new staggered, crawled, or slithered from its cell. A twisted, modified human with darkened veins and sunken eyes, a hulking beast with too many arms, a shimmering, scaled creature with glowing eyes. The things they’d kept hidden, the monsters they’d tried to make obedient… were now free.

  They growled, hissed, snarled, but none would touch me. They knew better.

  Farther down the halls, where the scientists had started to run, the creatures were already tearing through them. A technician sprinted past an open door before being dragged back, his cries cut short. Another tried sealing a corridor, only to be slammed into the ceiling by something large and winged. Blood painted the walls in broad, brutal strokes.

  The lab was eating itself alive.

  One of them, a particularly tall and sinewed amalgamation of flesh and scorched stone, stepped forward slowly, gaze locked on Yuki, a low snarl rumbling in its throat as its claws flexed in anticipation.

  “Help,” Yuki said sharply, ducking behind me as the thing closed in.

  I turned and looked at the thing.

  It froze.

  A rasping sound escaped its throat, somewhere between breath and growl. "Ma...ster..." it hissed, barely more than a rattling whisper as it bowed its head, hunched it’s shoulders and stepped back disappearing into the dark.

  Yuki stared, lips parted, eyes wide. "It just called you... master," she said, her eyes flicked to me like she wasn't sure if she was supposed to be afraid.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I took a breath. The air was thick with ozone, blood, antiseptic, and something like burned protein and old decay.

  This lab, these twisted abominations they’d tried to mold into monsters. Now they were free, and the whole place would burn in the chaos they created.

  “Let’s see what their creations can do,” I muttered.

  We continued further into the facility, descending one level after another on a series of grated metal stairs. Lights flickered overhead, reflecting off the glass-paneled walls.

  One room we passed stuck out to me as it was completely empty, save for the red smear of a handprint dragged halfway up the wall and a small medical table bolted to the floor, its surface stained and the restraints shredded. Whatever they had strapped to it couldn’t have been larger than a housecat and whatever it was, it either escaped, or didn’t make it far.

  The hallway curved sharply, more containment rooms branching from it, each now wide open or torn apart from the inside. In one, a lone a half-melted man, limbs fused to the wall, eyes blinking in slow, pained confusion. He turned toward me, barely able to move. Whatever he’d once been, there was nothing left but misery.

  I stepped inside, raised a hand, and ended it with a clean burst of energy to the head.

  The screams of scientists echoed faintly. The monsters were already spreading.

  Yuki stayed a step behind, glancing over her shoulder constantly, one hand holding her pistol tight, the other resting on my shoulder like a nervous child afraid to lose sight of her anchor in the dark.

  “If she’s still alive,” Yuki muttered, more to herself than to me. “After everything they did down here…”

  A final blast door blocked the next section.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  The metal warped, crumpled inward with a screech before tearing away in pieces. I stepped through.

  Overhead, the facility’s alert voice droned on in a sterile monotone:

  “WARNING: Containment breach. Levels one through twelve lockdown in progress. Psionic activity detected in experimental sectors. Emergency purging of classified assets authorized. All remaining personnel advised to evacuate to sublevel cryo-bunkers immediately.”

  I glanced toward Yuki. “Cryo-bunkers?”

  She kept her eyes on the corridor ahead. “Emergency stasis shelters deep underground. Various republic facilities use them."

  I frowned. “Would they survive without power?”

  Yuki shook her head. “Not for long.”

  “Good,” I said.

  I checked every cell in the row. Nothing. Just blood, torn restraints, and empty slabs.

  Astra had to be close. This was the sector the crystal-skinned bastard showed us on the map. If he lied, I was going to drag his shards across a plasma vent.

  We turned the corner, and there was the last door in this section.

  I felt something tighten in my chest, raw and fraying at the edges. Maybe this miserable easter egg hunt was finally over.

  With any luck, she was still alive.

  I clenched my hand into a fist and pulled. The door buckled inward, metal shrieking as it gave way, then collapsed in a heap at my feet.

  The room beyond was dim. Just a toilet, a sink, and a thin mattress on the floor. Unlike the others, this one showed no signs of experiments.

  And there, shackled to the far wall, arms pulled high over her head, blood crusted down one side of her face, still breathing, was Astra.