(POV Dion)
00:04:30 GMT | Outside the Experiment Building
Dew clung to my skin like breathing ice.
Every inhale felt like shards of glass that never quite made it out of the lungs.
My hands trembled. No longer hands—just tools that had forgotten how to hold the world.I stared at them for a long time, as if something sacred might still be hiding beneath the pores.
Nothing.
Only dust—and a trace of blood that didn't remember its origin.
There was a faint sound in my chest, like dying electricity. I wasn't dead. But my body had stopped being on my side. I forced myself to stand. My knees quivered, dragging what was left of gravity.
So this is what it feels like to live without a reason—not survival, not courage, just the body's stubborn reflex to avoid being a corpse today.
A puddle of rainwater mirrored a face I didn't recognize. The eyes were empty, yet something moved behind them—a flicker of instinct, perhaps,or the final curse of a species that can't stop staring at itself.
"Do you remember?"
That voice.
Josh.
Not a scream—a whisper that grew like fungus in the lungs. I swallowed rust. The voice didn't come from outside. It slipped between breaths, stuck to the walls of my skull. Each word rooted deeper, spreading until I could no longer tell where my own thoughts ended.
The scent of iron, sweat, and broken promises still clung to my skin. I saw them—Raymond, Sheren, Kenji—shadows watching me from the dark.
They didn't speak. But their eyes asked:
"Are you satisfied?"
I wanted to say no, but even regret had become a luxury species couldn't afford.
I pressed my palms to the ground, searching for a pulse. There—a faint tremor, the hum of machinery far below. The world was still running.
Ironic.
When I stopped being human, the system still registered me as "functioning."
I thought I was the victor. Turns out, I was merely a creature who had mastered the art of living among moral corpses. Life wasn't a reward—just an elegant way to delay decay.
"Do you want to live?"
That voice again—closer this time. I laughed, faintly.The blood on my lips moved as if it were laughing too. My last laugh hadn't even finished when something inside my head shifted—
slowly, methodically— as though someone were rearranging my thoughts from the inside.
"Dion," the voice whispered, gentle this time—but it wasn't Josh anymore.
"You've passed the Empathy Phase. Now… let me borrow your mouth for a moment."
My breath caught.I tried to speak—but the voice that came out wasn't mine.
"Batch Two is ready," it said, through my throat.
"London must be cleansed. "
Silence.
The coolant puddle at my feet trembled, reflecting two faces in a single head.
"I'm not a victim," the voice whispered again.
"I'm the next iteration."
Fade out. Heartbeat—
but whose?
—To be Continued—