The three of them moved through the sterile corridors like ghosts, Selene leading with an unnerving familiarity of the facility's layout. Every alarm blaring, every red light flashing, seemed to feed her determination rather than hinder it.
"Vorlag never expected you to free me," Selene said as they ascended a service ladder. "He thought the family threat would be enough to control you."
Jerry kept pace, his mind racing faster than his body. "Our parents - are they really here?"
"Two levels below us," Selene confirmed, her voice tight. "But we can't reach them until we stop the dispersal. The control room is our priority."
Laura brought up the rear, her breathing steady despite the chaos. "How much time?"
"Seven minutes," Selene answered without looking back. "The control room should be just through-"
She stopped abruptly at the landing, pressing herself against the wall. Jerry peered around the corner and understood her hesitation. The corridor ahead was littered with bodies - both guards and what appeared to be escaped test subjects. Among them stood a familiar figure, leaning heavily against the wall, clutching a bleeding arm.
"Kael?" Jerry stepped out cautiously.
The bully from the Academy looked up, his usual arrogance replaced by stark terror. "Ghost? What in the Blood Matron's name are you doing here?"
"The same as you, apparently," Jerry said, taking in the scene. "Surviving."
Kael barked a harsh laugh. "Surviving? I was stationed here as punishment after the Bullpen incident. Then the damned experiments broke loose." He gestured weakly at the bodies around them. "They're not just escaping - they're hunting us."
Selene stepped forward, her silver eyes scanning Kael with clinical detachment. "He's telling the truth. The earlier generations... they weren't as stable as we are. The isolation drove them mad."
As if summoned by her words, a figure dropped from the ventilation shaft above - a vampire whose skin had taken on a crystalline quality, shimmering with dangerous energy. His eyes held no recognition, only primal rage.
"Brother," Selene said softly, but the creature only hissed, raising hands that crackled with power.
Jerry moved without thinking, placing himself between the unstable vampire and the others. "We're not your enemies."
The response was a blast of energy that would have vaporized a normal vampire. Jerry absorbed it, feeling the power surge through him in a wave of agony and ecstasy. For a moment, he understood this broken creature - the pain of being different, the rage of being caged, the desperate need for connection.
"He's like us," Jerry gasped, struggling to contain the energy. "But something's wrong with him."
"He's one of the first attempts," Selene explained, her voice filled with unexpected sorrow. "Our parents couldn't stabilize the mutation. They had to... abandon the early subjects."
The crystalline vampire shrieked, the sound tearing through the corridor. More figures began emerging from the shadows - each visibly mutated, each radiating madness and power. They were Jerry's family, twisted and broken by the same experiments that created him.
Kael stared in horror. "What are these things?"
"Our legacy," Jerry whispered, the truth settling like a stone in his stomach. His parents hadn't just created him and Selene - they had created an entire generation of failed experiments, then left them to rot.
Laura touched his arm, her voice urgent. "Jerry, the countdown. We have five minutes."
He looked from the advancing mutants to the control room door just beyond them. They could fight their way through, but these were his blood, his family, however broken. Yet thousands would die if he didn't stop the plague.
Selene seemed to read his conflict. "I can handle them. Get to the control room."
Before Jerry could protest, she stepped forward, her own silver energy flaring. The unstable vampires hesitated, recognizing something in her that called to their fractured minds.
"Go!" Selene commanded, her voice taking on an authority that surprised them all.
Jerry made the hardest choice of his life. He grabbed Kael's uninjured arm and pulled him toward the control room, Laura covering their retreat. The last thing he saw was Selene standing alone against their maddened siblings, a silver beacon in the crimson-lit corridor.
The control room was chaos - technicians frantically trying to override the dispersal system, guards forming a defensive perimeter. They took one look at Jerry's glowing silver eyes and opened fire.
But Jerry was done holding back. He moved through them like a storm, every touch disabling a guard, every glance absorbing information from the consoles. He didn't need to break the systems - he understood them, could feel their workings in his blood.
"Three minutes!" Laura called, taking cover behind a console as guards continued firing.
Kael, despite his injury, provided covering fire with a stolen weapon. "Whatever you're going to do, do it fast, Ghost!"
Jerry reached the main console, his hands flying across the controls with impossible speed. The system resisted him, but he pushed deeper, feeling the code, the machinery, the very essence of the technology. And then he found it - not just the dispersal system, but something else. Records. Experiments. His own creation.
He saw it all in flashes: his parents' early work, the failed subjects, the Council's corruption, and the truth about Vorlag. The captain wasn't just following orders - he was trying to create an army of perfected vampires, using Jerry and Selene as templates.
"Jerry!" Laura's voice cut through his trance. "One minute!"
He made his choice. Instead of just stopping the dispersal, he repurposed it. The plague strain would still be released, but modified - a cure instead of a weapon, targeting the genetic markers of the Council's elite rather than humans or ordinary vampires.
The countdown reached zero.
Silence fell. Then, slowly, alarms began flashing across the city-wide monitoring system. But they weren't disaster alarms - they were medical alerts. The "plague" was spreading, but it was healing, not killing.
Jerry slumped against the console, drained. He'd done it. He'd stopped the genocide.
But as he looked up at the monitoring screens, he saw Vorlag's face appear on every display in the room. The captain didn't look angry - he looked pleased.
"Excellent work, Jerry," Vorlag's voice echoed through the control room. "You've just eliminated the Council's leadership in one stroke. The old order is finished."
Laura stared at the screens in horror. "What have we done?"
"You've given me exactly what I wanted," Vorlag said smoothly. "A clean slate to build a new society. And you've proven that you're the perfect weapon to help me maintain it."
Jerry's blood ran cold as he realized the truth: he hadn't thwarted Vorlag's plan. He had completed it.
"And as for your sister," Vorlag added, his smile cruel. "She put up quite a fight. But don't worry - I'll make sure her sacrifice wasn't in vain."
The screens went dark, leaving Jerry standing in the silent control room, surrounded by the consequences of his choices. He had saved thousands, but he might have doomed millions. He had found his family, but he might have lost them forever.
The hunter had become the pawn, the savior had become the destroyer, and the boy who wanted to change the world had just handed it to his greatest enemy on a silver platter.