The descent into the facility was silent.
No witty banter from James.
No idle humming from the twins.
Even Hook, who normally greeted bloodshed with a grin, had her shoulders tense, hook-cestus already clenched around her fingers.
They had found it beneath a forgotten city—an unmarked lab buried deep under collapsed tunnels, scrubbed from every database except a sealed folder Edith had decrypted herself. The mission was simple on paper: investigate a suspected Crimson Sickle hideout.
But the deeper they went, the clearer it became—
This wasn't a Crimson Sickle base.
This was something else.
The air was humid and putrid, thick with copper and chemicals. Pipes dripped. Lights flickered. The corridors were lined with reinforced glass cells—some broken, others still sealed shut.
And inside them?
Children.
Or things that used to be children.
Twisted limbs. Bone growths. Glowing veins. Arcana that screamed without sound.
Kael stepped forward, fists clenched. "What… is this?"
Evan knelt by one of the consoles, his face unusually pale. "Cloning. Genetic acceleration. Forced Arcana grafting."
He didn't need to finish the sentence. The implications were clear.
"Breeding soldiers," Luna whispered. Her voice shook.
Hook stepped toward one of the cracked tanks, where a malformed child clawed softly at the glass. "They were... trying to make their own Vendetta."
"No," Natasha said, her voice ice and steel. "They were trying to make something worse."
Behind them, a guttural snarl echoed down the hall.
From the shadows emerged a creature—seven feet tall, Arcana flaring wildly. It had no face. Just searing, flickering light where eyes should be.
A failed vessel.
It charged.
The team scattered.
Kael ducked under a swipe, launching a jet of flame that barely singed the thing's hide. Hook slammed her weapon into its side, only for it to regenerate mid-swing. Luna and James opened fire from a distance, but the creature didn't slow.
Then the twins moved.
Their bodies blurred, synchronizing into one.
Resonance Form: Complete.
With a blinding burst, the combined form leapt forward, short sword and pistol striking in tandem, moving to a beat no one else could hear.
The creature howled as its limbs began to tear apart, destabilized by the twin's frequency.
"Now!" Natasha shouted.
Kael didn't hesitate. He clenched his fist, summoned the flames of Cruel Sun—not in full, just a fraction—and launched it like a spear.
The creature ignited, flailing, screaming as the hallway lit up in searing gold.
Silence fell again.
Ash drifted like snow.
Kael exhaled, his breath shaky. "What… do we do with the rest?"
They turned toward the still-active chambers.
Some of the children inside were still human. Barely.
Natasha looked at Edith.
Edith stared for a long moment… then gave the order.
"Secure the survivors. Burn the rest."
Later, in the debriefing room…
"They weren't Crimson Sickle," Edith said, eyes narrowed. "This was sanctioned."
"By who?" Khaleed asked, voice sharp.
Edith's silence said everything.
The World Government.
Kael didn't speak.
He was too busy staring at his own reflection in the glass, wondering how close he had come to being just another weapon in a cage.
And how many others like them had never made it out.