(POV Dr. Nicco)
00:03:17 GMT | Sigma Isolation Chamber
The red emergency light pulsed softly—like a heart refusing to die. Each flicker split the cold air with a faint metallic whisper, as if the room itself were praying for mercy.
I stood in the center. No longer a laboratory—more an altar for sins that had lost their God. The metal walls echoed my breath again and again, the sound looping like an apology from someone who no longer knew to whom they were sorry.
Something moved in the corner.
Not human. Not machine.
Just the remainder of someone who once bore the title "principal subject."
The white linen dragging across the concrete left a damp, iron-scented trail. Dion—once the name algorithms adored and gala dinners toasted—crawled out from the Final Stage. His body trembled, but what had broken wasn't muscle; it was his faith in moral gravity.
His eyes found mine, searching for oxygen—yet all he found was himself, stripped of position, stripped of the symbolic skin he once wore. In his pupils, Josh still pulsed—like a wound refusing to dry.
A drop of blood traced his temple. Not from violence. His body was simply tired of storing guilt it couldn't spell. Dignity—the last currency of his kind—shattered soundlessly. Control leaked onto the floor, mingling with tears too frightened to fall all the way down.
I said nothing.
The pen in my hand felt heavier than a weapon. The sheet before me grew damp—not from condensation, but something resembling compassion, though it wasn't.
"Someone…" His voice rasped, like sand grinding between teeth.
"P—please help me."
I didn't look up.
A tiny click from the pen's tip sliced through the air—the only definite sound in a world that had lost all certainty.
"Fascinating," I murmured, quietly but firm.
"Empathy, Dion. In certain species, it only blooms once their own skin begins to peel."
"Now you understand the truest form of victimhood: a reflection you can't erase."
The static monitors flickered back to life. Blue light seeped across the walls, shaping a silhouette too precise to be human.
The Benefactor.
"Congratulations, Doctor," the voice said, calm as rain over a steel grave.
"One batch complete. What's the damage?"
I stepped closer, pressing the pen's cold tip to my temple—like the end of a prayer that would never reach heaven.
"Total loss, Patron."
"His narcissistic structure collapsed. He survived—but only as proof that God favors experiments that fail beautifully."
I exhaled.
A small smile—not of triumph, but of assurance that the world still knew how to crack gracefully.
"Let's see," I whispered,
"how long the survivors can resist before devouring themselves."
One by one, the lab lights dimmed, leaving only my reflection on the observation glass. But that reflection didn't stay still.
I stopped writing.
The face behind the glass kept staring back—yet its pen kept moving.
"Dr. Nicco," it said softly, voice eerily like mine.
"Stop writing the report. You've become the data."
A fine crack splintered across the glass—from the inside. A single drop of blood slid down the line—no one could tell whose it was.
Behind me, the monitors lit up without command, displaying one name:
SUBJECT D-4: DION TAN — LONDON BRANCH
I stared at the screen.
And the screen… stared back.
—To be Continued—