The first-person view from Rook's hidden camera was a nail-biting thriller. Arjun watched, his own breath held, as the operative was "rescued" by a black OmniCorp van. He endured a tense, silent ride with two stone-faced agents from the Black Sky Division, his story of a tracker malfunction and a faulty transformer met with cold skepticism.
The van entered the warehouse facility. The camera feed showed the giant freight elevator descending, the light shifting from the weak dawn to the harsh, sterile fluorescence of the subterranean world.
The debriefing with Director Shivraj was a masterclass in controlled tension. Shivraj was a man with the eyes of a serpent and the patience of a glacier. He sat behind a sleek, black desk in a minimalist office on Sub-Level 1, his fingers steepled.
"A transformer, Verma?" Shivraj's voice was soft, almost bored, but it carried a lethal undercurrent. "You lost a fifty-thousand-credit subdermal implant to a power surge?"
"The readings were off the charts, sir," Rook's voice replied, the feed showing a view of Shivraj's impassive face. "I pursued the anomaly. The EM pulse that took out my tracker would have fried any unshielded electronics in a hundred-meter radius. It was a dead end. A municipal infrastructure failure." He sold the lie with the weary frustration of a man who had wasted his night.
Shivraj's eyes narrowed slightly. He tapped a key on his desk. "The grid operator for that sector reports no such event."
Arjun's heart skipped a beat. Shit.
But Rook didn't miss a beat. "With respect, sir, would they? Admitting a transformer nearly exploded in a residential area? The cover-up would be instant. My scanner doesn't lie." He tapped the now-useless device on his belt.
It was a perfect gambit. Appeal to corporate cynicism. Of course the city would lie.
Shivraj held his gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then, he gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. "Dismissed. File a full hardware requisition form. And Verma… next time, call it in before you go dark."
"Yes, sir."
Rook stood, saluted, and left the office. The camera feed showed the corridor outside, his pace steady and measured until he turned a corner. Then, his breathing, picked up by the microphone, became slightly ragged with relief.
"He bought it," Arjun whispered, a wave of tension draining from his shoulders.
"Director Shivraj has initiated a low-priority background check on the municipal grid status. It will yield nothing. The deception appears to be holding for now."
"Now for the hard part," Arjun said, leaning forward. "The package. Rook, you need to get to a ventilation access point. Somewhere low-traffic."
The feed on the hologram showed Rook moving with purpose now. He navigated the maze of corridors, nodding to the occasional white-coated scientist or security guard. He was a known entity here; his presence raised no alarms.
He descended to Sub-Level 2, the "Utilities and Maintenance" floor. It was less pristine here, with exposed piping and the constant hum of climate control systems. He found a supply closet, its door unlocked. Inside, set into the wall, was a grated ventilation cover.
"This is it," Rook's voice whispered, barely audible. "This shaft services the lower levels."
"Do it," Arjun commanded.
On the feed, Rook's hands reached into his pocket and pulled out the robotic rat. It was unnervingly lifelike, even in the dim light of the closet. He held it up to the vent.
"Mission parameters uploaded," Gyan's voice intoned. "Drone is live. initiating infiltration protocol."
The rat's eyes glowed with a faint red light for a nanosecond. Then, it scrambled from Rook's hand, squeezed through the grate with a fluid, silent motion, and vanished into the dark ductwork.
"Package delivered," Rook breathed.
"Get out of there. Act normal," Arjun said.
The feed showed Rook leaving the closet and heading towards the mess hall, his part in the play over. For now.
The hologram display in Arjun's room switched perspectives. It was a dim, shaky, green-tinged night-vision feed. The rat's-eye view. The world was a tight, dusty metal tunnel.
"I have control," Gyan announced. "Beginning navigation to Sub-Level 10. The journey will take approximately twenty-seven minutes via the most direct ductwork route."
What followed was a tense, silent odyssey through the arteries of the beast. The rat-drone moved with uncanny silence and speed, its tiny claws making no sound on the metal. The hologram showed dizzying drops down vertical shafts, tight squeezes through filters, and intersections where other, real rats scurried past, oblivious to the imposter in their midst.
Arjun watched, captivated. It was like watching a live-streamed heist movie from the perspective of the mouse.
The drone descended level by level. The environment changed. The upper-level ducts were dusty and warm. As it went deeper, the metal became cooler, cleaner. The hum of servers grew from a whisper to a pervasive thrum.
"Approaching Sub-Level 10. Scanning for the target data conduit."
The feed showed the drone pressing its nose against a vent cover. Beyond was a pristine, cold corridor. The walls were lined with thick, black cables bundled together like the roots of a monstrous tree.
"Target identified. Primary fiber-optic trunk line for the Astra-Link satellite uplink."
This was it. The moment of truth.
"Can you get to it?" Arjun asked, his voice tight.
"Affirmative. There is an access panel for maintenance approximately three meters from this vent. The drone can exit, deploy the interceptor, and return to the ductwork before the next security patrol passes. Patrol interval: four minutes, twelve seconds."
"Do it. Now."
The vent cover was no obstacle. The rat's nimble fingers—a terrifyingly delicate manipulator tool hidden in its paw—unscrewed the four fasteners with silent, microscopic precision. It pushed the cover aside, slipped out into the hallway, and scurried along the wall, a shadow in the dim light.
It reached the massive bundle of cables. It climbed, finding the specific, humming fiber-optic line. With surgical care, it attached the photonic interceptor—the device no larger than a tick—to the cable. A tiny needle-thin probe extended, piercing the cable's sheath and making contact with the glass fiber within. A tiny green light on the interceptor blinked once.
"Interceptor active and linked. Connection established. We now have a live data feed from the air-gapped server."
A torrent of raw, encrypted data suddenly flooded a new window on the holographic display—a rushing river of ones and zeros.
"Gyan! Can you decipher it?"
"The encryption is multi-layered quantum-key protocol. Standard decryption is impossible. However, the interceptor is not decrypting. It is mirroring. It is copying the raw data stream in real-time. I am storing it for later analysis. We do not need to read it here; we only need to steal it."
It was a digital photocopier. They were stealing the entire library, and they would figure out how to read the books later.
"Task complete. Drone is returning to ductwork."
The rat detached itself, scurried back to the vent, slipped inside, and screwed the cover back into place with identical precision. It melted back into the darkness of the ducts, finding a quiet, dark junction box to nestle in and become just another rodent in the walls. A permanent, undetectable listening post.
Arjun let out a long, shuddering breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. They'd done it. They had a direct tap into the heart of OmniCorp's most secret project.
"Okay," he said, a grin spreading across his face. "Now. Let's see what they're so afraid of. Start analyzing that data. Look for project files. Personnel. Anything about the 'Vishnu' event."
"Acknowledged. Running deep-level pattern analysis on the data stream. Isolating project files tagged 'PROMETHEUS.'"
The hologram became a whirlwind of activity. Code flashed by at light speed. Files were identified, extracted, and decrypted using the system's staggering computational power. One by one, they began to populate a directory.
And then, Gyan found it.
"I have located the primary research log. File: PROMETHEUS_ALPHA_SUBJECT_ONE.mp4"
"Play it," Arjun commanded, his stomach tightening with a sense of dread.
The video opened on a laboratory far more advanced than the one from the previous log. In the center of the room was a reinforced transparent cylinder. Inside stood a man. He was muscular, shirtless, and covered in sensors. His head was shaved. His eyes held a vacant, drugged stare. Dr. Aris, a woman with sharp features and cold, intelligent eyes, stood outside with a tablet.
"Subject One. Former Sergeant Marcus Flynn," she narrated, her voice clinical. "First successful infusion of Prometheus Formula 7.1. Cellular integration is stable. No signs of rejection. Initiating baseline stress test."
A robotic arm extended into the cylinder and administered a small, precise electrical shock to the man's arm.
The man—Flynn—flinched. A red burn appeared on his skin. And then, before their eyes, it began to fade. In less than ten seconds, the skin was smooth and unblemished.
Arjun's own Minor Regeneration talent hummed within him. This was a crude, forced imitation of his own perfect power.
"Enhanced healing confirmed," Dr. Aris said, a note of triumph in her voice. "Proceeding to strength enhancement."
The same robotic arm presented a solid bar of titanium. Flynn gripped it. With a grunt of effort, he began to bend it. The metal groaned, protesting, until it was twisted into a U-shape.
The video cut. The next timestamp was days later.
Flynn was in the cylinder again, but he was different. His muscles were more defined, his veins stood out like cords. His eyes were no longer vacant; they were hyper-alert, flicking around the room with animal intensity.
"Subject is exhibiting signs of heightened aggression and paranoia. Test seven: pain threshold."
This time, the robotic arm held a scalpel. It made a deep, precise cut on Flynn's forearm. Blood welled.
But instead of healing instantly, Flynn screamed. A raw, furious sound. He grabbed his own arm, his eyes wide with panic and rage. The wound didn't close. It… bubbled. The flesh around it swelled, turning a angry purple. Thin, spidery black veins spread out from the cut.
"Abnormal reaction! His system is overcompensating! Administering suppressant!" Dr. Aris's voice was sharp with alarm.
A gas filled the cylinder. Flynn cougged, staggering. The bubbling in his arm subsided, but the black veins remained, a permanent scar of the corruption inside him.
The video cut again. The final segment.
Flynn was huddled in a corner of his cell, now visibly shaking. He was muttering to himself, his eyes wild.
"The whispers…" he mumbled, his voice hoarse. "In the walls… can you hear them? They're always whispering…"
Dr. Aris's voice, off-camera, cold: "The subject is experiencing auditory hallucinations. The formula is interacting with latent psychic potential, a side-effect we did not anticipate. He is becoming unstable. Preparation for termination is advised."
Flynn's head snapped up. He looked directly at the camera, his eyes聚焦ing with a terrifying, lucid hatred.
"They're not hallucinations," he hissed, his voice dropping to a guttural whisper. "They're real. They're in the static. In the light. They're hungry. And you… you've opened the door for them."
Then the video ended.
Arjun sat in stunned silence. The room felt colder. The rabbit was one thing. This was a man. A soldier, broken and twisted, babbling about whispers in the static.
"What… what was he talking about?" Arjun asked, a chill running down his spine.
"The data is inconclusive," Gyan replied. "However, cross-referencing his statements with other project files indicates a anomalous energy reading that accompanies each psychological breakdown. It is a frequency that does not correspond to any known energy type. The project scientists have labeled it 'Background Cognito-Hazardous Resonance' or 'The Whisper.' They consider it noise. An artifact."
"But he didn't," Arjun said, his mind reeling. "He thought it was real."
He looked at the frozen image of Flynn's terrified, hate-filled face. OmniCorp wasn't just creating monsters. They were stumbling blindly in the dark, poking at things they didn't understand, and something was poking back.
The Prometheus Formula wasn't just unstable. It was a key. And it was unlocking a door that was never meant to be opened.
The secret he had stolen wasn't just corporate espionage. It was a warning. And the whisper wasn't just in the walls of that facility.
It was now in his own head.