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Underscape - Zone W-11
87 Years, 43 Days Post-Singularity
The construction crew's cries lingered in Jin's mind as he walked past their frozen bodies.
At just five years old, his body felt odd—rigid yet fluid, his muscles moving with a newfound awareness after spending thirty-seven years in cryo-stasis. The extreme cold had transformed him on a cellular level, rendering lethal temperatures mere background noise.
He located an emergency exit and began his ascent. Above him, ninety-seven floors of abandoned laboratories loomed, the remnants of Genesis Corporation decaying in silence. He squeezed through ventilation shafts that were too narrow for adults, the emergency lights casting eerie shadows on the rusted walls.
His first encounter with the security drone occurred at Sub-Level 3.
"Stop. Unauthorized personnel detected," it announced, its scanner sweeping across Jin's small frame. "No identification found. Initiating containment protocol."
Electromagnetic nets shot out from the drone, ensnaring Jin. The jolt of 50,000 volts surged through him. Pain flared brightly behind his eyes, overwhelming and blinding. His muscles contracted painfully, and he bit his tongue, causing blood to fill his mouth.
But that wasn't enough. It wouldn't trigger evolution.
Jin grasped the net tightly, feeling the electricity burn his hands and blister his skin. He pulled with all his might, metal digging into his fingers and tendons snapping wetly. In a moment of raw force, the net ripped apart as if it were made of paper.
The drone whirred as it recalibrated its aim. Kinetic rounds, designed to incapacitate, hurtled toward him.
But Jin moved—not faster than one would expect, but with an unsettling precision for a child. He maneuvered around the projectiles, his movements deliberate to avoid any critical hits. One round nicked his shoulder, taking away flesh and exposing bone, while another shattered his left leg with a sickening crack. The impact sent him spinning, but he refused to stop.
The drone fired once more, hitting his chest. Three ribs shattered outward, fragments piercing a lung, and he breathed out a painful gurgle as blood filled his throat.
Yet still not enough.
Reaching the drone, Jin slammed his fist into its central processor. Metal crumpled under his blow, sparks flying and leaving small burns on his face. The drone shuddered, then fell lifeless to the ground.
He collapsed beside it, struggling to breathe through his damaged lung. Blood pooled around him, mingling with oil and hydraulic fluid. His shoulder wound stopped bleeding almost instantly as his flesh began to mend with sickening sounds. His leg bone reformed with audible crunches, and three ribs realigned, sealing his punctured lung in mere moments.
Though his body healed at an impressive rate, it wasn't instantaneous. Evolution demanded death—nothing less would do.
He kept climbing, leaving behind a trail of blood that quickly turned into rust-colored flakes.
Access to the surface was blocked by a magnetic lock that hadn't been touched in twenty years. Jin pressed his hand against the scanner. With a loud groan, the mechanism responded, metal straining until it shattered with a booming crack.
For the first time in forty years, sunlight hit his face. Once, the Genesis Corporation's campus stood here; now, all that remained were ruins stretching up to towering complexes. The air buzzed with energy fields—Spark suppression grids that managed superhuman powers.
Jin realized he needed to go down, not up.
Three blocks away, he found a maintenance access to the old transit system. The tunnel entrance was shut tight, plastered with warning signs: HAZARDOUS AREA. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED. MUTATION RISK.
Perfect.
He forced open the locking mechanism and stepped into the darkness.
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Zone W-11 - Seven Hours Later
The Underscape surrounded him like a toxic, living entity. Jin moved through collapsed tunnels that once carried millions. Bioluminescent moss emitted an eerie green glow, illuminating walls stained with years of grime and dried blood. The air stung his lungs with chemicals that could kill a normal person within minutes.
His body instinctively handled the toxins, cells adjusting to the hostile surroundings—a remnant of his thirty-seven years in cryo-stasis.
Before he spotted them, he heard them—whispers in the distance. Survivors. Those who had managed to live in places where life simply shouldn't thrive.
He chose to steer clear of them.
He came across a section of tunnel that had suffered recent seismic damage. Support beams had given way, creating a maze of jagged metal and shattered concrete. Radiation warnings flickered on rusting screens. This was a place even scavengers avoided.
Jin picked a chamber located forty meters below the main tunnel level. It was shrouded in darkness, devoid of airflow. The radiation levels would be lethal to most humans within hours. His skin tingled as his cells recalibrated, converting harmful energy into something beneficial for him.
He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes—not to sleep, as he'd done enough of that, but to think.
Thirty-seven years in stasis while the world transformed. The Genesis files had mentioned other subjects. Forty-seven had died during his confinement. But there were more experiments. Other children.
Some might still be alive.
Some might have escaped.
That thought offered no comfort. If there were others like him, they would be weapons. Tools. Everything he had vowed not to be.
Bootsteps echoed through the tunnels—multiple figures moving in formation. The sound of combat boots. Military precision. Equipment humming with electromagnetic energy.
Regulators. They're the enforcement branch of whatever government currently oversees the surface.
Jin moved further into the radiation zone. His body absorbed the escalating exposure as his enhanced hearing picked up the search patterns overhead.
"Sector 7-W is clear. No signs of a containment breach."
"Got it. Widening the search area. Whatever got loose from Genesis Corporation is still down here somewhere."
"How about thermal scans?"
"Negative. There's too much interference from the old reactor cores."
Jin listened intently until their footsteps faded away, then he ventured deeper into the levels.
Zone W-11 extended for miles. The remnants of collapsed laboratories contained equipment from before the Singularity. Broken containment units indicated that this place had once been home to hazardous experiments.
In one room, Jin discovered small bones. Bones that belonged to a child. The skeleton was curled up, its rib cage fractured outward, suggesting something had burst free—something that had outgrown its confines.
He studied the remains without flinching. Test subjects that didn't survive whatever Genesis Corporation had attempted to create.
Jin was the one who succeeded.
He should have felt disturbed by this realization, but instead, it clarified everything for him.
He chose the deepest chamber he could find. Here, the radiation levels were deadly on any measure, yet his body processed it like mere background noise. His skin blisters and heals cyclically, cells mutating to withstand the onslaught.
This would be his sanctuary. His laboratory.
Jin gathered materials—scrap metal, broken electronics, organic matter altered by decades of exposure. His intelligence enabled him to grasp the chemical interactions occurring around him.
The Underscape was evolving, not by design but out of necessity. Survival selecting for traits capable of enduring what the surface world had abandoned.
He would learn from it.
He would grow stronger.
And when the moment arrived—when death finally caught up with him—he would return as more than he had been.
Jin positioned himself into a meditative pose and tuned into how his body was responding to the environment. Each breath filtered out toxins. Each heartbeat circulated blood that had adapted. He sensed his cells mutating, adjusting, evolving in reaction to the radiation, chemicals, and darkness.
The process was agonizing. His skin bubbled and blistered, then healed into stronger tissue. His bones ached as they became denser. Blood vessels ruptured and reformed in unusual patterns.
Yet, through everything, Jin stayed aware. Conscious. He analyzed every sensation, every shift, every adaptation.
Above him, life continued on its regulated path. Below, in the forgotten depths where evolution took place without approval, Jin embarked on his true education.
The lesson was straightforward: survive until you die.
Then survive whatever it is that kills you.