Linkon City had become a war zone.
Nana moved through the chaos with mechanical efficiency, packing supplies into a tactical bag with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. Weapons. Ammunition. Medical supplies. Food rations. Water. Everything they might need for what was coming next.
Because it wasn't over. Wouldn't be over for a long time.
Around her apartment—the same small space that had felt safe just days ago—evidence of the battle spreading through the city was impossible to ignore. Through her window, she could see fires burning in the downtown district. Smoke rising in thick columns against the dawn sky. Helicopters circling overhead—some military, some news crews documenting the disaster in real time.
The screaming had become constant. A background noise that Nana's brain had learned to filter out because if she listened to every scream, every cry for help, every terrified voice calling for someone who wasn't coming—she'd go insane.
People were fleeing by any means available. The airport was still functional despite last night's attack, planes taking off in constant rotation. The harbor was packed with boats—private vessels, commercial ships, anything that could carry people away from the city. The highways were gridlocked with traffic stretching for kilometers, families abandoning their cars and walking when the roads became impassable.
And through it all, the creatures hunted.
Soldiers fought at makeshift checkpoints. Hunters deployed in teams across the city, trying to establish safe zones for civilian evacuation. The government had declared martial law an hour ago, mobilizing every resource they had.
It wasn't enough. Would never be enough.
Because the facility had been creating these creatures for eleven years. Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. All of them now loose in a city that had no idea how to fight what it couldn't understand.
Zayne appeared in her doorway. He was wearing hunter tactical gear now—borrowed from the association stockpile, armor that fit him reasonably well despite being designed for someone else. His face was drawn with exhaustion, frost still clinging to his hair, but his eyes were alert.
Alert and haunted by what they'd seen in the past twelve hours.
"The hunter association is coordinating with the military," he said quietly. "They're establishing evacuation corridors in each district. Asking for all available hunters to volunteer for protection detail."
"How many hunters answered the call?"
"About sixty percent. The rest either evacuated with their families or..." He trailed off. Didn't need to finish. Or they were dead. Killed by creatures they'd never been trained to fight.
Nana zipped her bag closed. "We need to go back to the facility."
Zayne had been expecting this. She could see it in the way he didn't argue, didn't question, just nodded with grim understanding.
"The creatures are still coming from there," Nana continued, her voice flat. Clinical. The same detached tone her mother had used when discussing data. "Even with the fire. Even with the explosion. Something inside is still drawing them. Still creating them, or releasing them, or—I don't know. But we can't stop the attack on the city until we stop whatever's happening at the source."
"The military tried to destroy it."
"They failed." Nana shouldered her bag and grabbed her weapons. "Or they didn't try hard enough. Either way, we need to make sure. Need to go down there and confirm that every last creature is dead. Every last cylinder is destroyed. Every last piece of their nightmare is ash."
Zayne studied her face. "You want to see it for yourself."
"Yes."
"Your parents are probably—"
"I know." Nana's voice didn't waver. "I know what we're going to find down there. But I need to see it. Need to know it's really over. That they can't—that no one can ever—"
She couldn't finish. Zayne crossed the room and pulled her into a hug—gentle despite the ice that still clung to him, despite the enhanced strength that now made him dangerous in ways he was still learning to control.
"Okay," he said simply. "We'll go. We'll make sure. Together."
.
.
.
.
.
The forest was still burning when they arrived.
Not the wild, out-of-control fire that had consumed the facility itself—this was the aftermath. Smoldering wreckage. Smoke rising from the crater where the iron door had been. The acrid smell of chemicals and burnt plastic and something worse. Something organic.
Bodies, Nana's brain supplied. The smell of bodies burning.
A military perimeter had been established around the crater. Soldiers in hazmat suits were documenting the scene, taking samples, cordoning off areas with yellow tape. A few hunter teams were present too—investigating, mapping, trying to understand the scope of what had been hidden beneath their feet.
When they saw Nana and Zayne approaching, weapons were raised immediately. Then lowered just as quickly when someone recognized them.
"Specimen 21," one of the hunters breathed. A young woman Nana vaguely recognized from training exercises. "They said you were—we thought you were dead. When the facility—"
"Not dead," Nana said flatly. "Just enhanced. Like they planned. Now let us through. We need to see what's left."
The hunter team leader—a grizzled man named Marcus who Nana had worked with on several missions—stepped forward. "It's not safe down there. The fire is still active in some sections. Structural integrity is compromised. We've lost two soldiers already to collapses."
"I don't care about safe," Nana replied. "The creatures are still coming from somewhere down there. We need to find the source and destroy it. Are you going to help or get in my way?"
Marcus looked at Zayne—at the frost spreading from his boots, at the obvious enhancement modifications that showed in the way he moved, the way he held himself. Looked back at Nana with an expression that was equal parts respect and horror.
"Alright," he said finally. "But we're coming with you. Safety in numbers."
They descended into the facility's remains together. Six hunters plus Nana and Zayne, moving carefully through corridors that had been partially collapsed by the explosion, that were still smoldering in places, that reeked of death and chemicals and burned flesh.
The destruction was absolute.
Every room they passed had been consumed by fire. Equipment melted into unrecognizable slag. Walls cracked and blackened. Bodies—so many bodies—burned beyond recognition, curled into fetal positions by the heat, scattered throughout the facility like discarded dolls.
Scientists. Soldiers. Support staff. All of them killed by the very creatures they'd created, or by the fire that had been meant to eliminate the evidence, or by the explosion that had sealed their fate.
Nana felt nothing looking at them. Should have felt something—these were human beings who had died terrified and in agony. But every time her conscience tried to stir, she remembered the monitors. The gladiator ring. The casual way they'd discussed her emotional trauma as data points.
They'd earned this. Maybe not all of them—maybe some had been innocent, just doing their jobs, unaware of the full scope of what they were participating in. But most of them had known. Had chosen to be here. Had chosen to build nightmares and watch people suffer and call it science.
So Nana felt nothing except a grim satisfaction that at least they couldn't do it anymore.
Zayne stopped walking.
They'd reached what had been the creature production floor. The massive chamber where glass cylinders had grown hybrids and vampires and demons by the hundreds. Where Nana had seen the nightmares being manufactured like products on an assembly line.
The cylinders were destroyed. Shattered by the fire's heat, by the explosion, by the desperate attempts of the creatures inside to escape. Amber liquid had spilled across the floor, congealing into sticky pools that reflected the emergency lighting in sick yellows and oranges.
And among the wreckage—preserved somehow despite the destruction around them—were bodies.
Not burned like the others. These were intact. Frozen in glass fragments or half-submerged in the congealed amber, their faces visible, their expressions peaceful in death.
The specimens that hadn't been released. The creatures that had died when their cylinders failed, that had been boiled alive in the amber liquid as the temperature spiked, that had suffocated or burned or simply stopped functioning when the systems maintaining them failed.
Zayne was staring at one cylinder in particular. Or what was left of it.
The glass was mostly intact on this one—miracle of engineering or just dumb luck. And inside, floating in amber that had turned cloudy with heat damage, was a body.
His body.
Version 05. The Zayne that Nana had known in Avalon. The one who had been bitten in the tunnel. The one she'd mercy-killed with a blade through his heart. The one her parents had preserved like a trophy.
He was gone now. The heat had damaged the preservation—his face was distorted, features bloated and discolored by the temperature change. The vampire bite on his neck was still visible, but everything else was wrong. Corrupted. Made grotesque by the very attempt to preserve it.
Nana watched Zayne stare at his own corpse and saw something shift in his expression. Not horror—he'd moved past horror somewhere in the past twenty-four hours. This was something else. Recognition, maybe. Or acceptance.
He was looking at what he could have been. What he had been, in a timeline that had been erased from his memory but preserved in amber.
"I died," he said quietly. "Multiple times. Different ways. And they kept me. Studied me. Used me."
"Yes."
"But I'm not him." Zayne turned away from the cylinder. "I'm not any of those versions. I'm me. Version 06. The one who escaped. The one they tried to reset. The one who fell in love with you all over again without knowing why."
"Yes," Nana repeated.
"And they tried to turn me into a weapon anyway."
"Yes."
Zayne's hands clenched. Frost spread from his fists in angry waves. "Then let's make sure they can never do it to anyone else."
They moved deeper into the facility. Through corridors Nana had run through during her escape. Past the gladiator ring where they'd fought together. Past the containment cells where she'd been held.
And finally, to the monitoring room.
The heart of the operation. The room where all the data had been collected. Where the scientists had watched Avalon play out on thousands of screens. Where every death and rebirth and moment of suffering had been recorded and catalogued and analyzed.
The room was destroyed. The monitors were shattered. The servers were melted slag. The explosion and fire had been thorough—nothing remained that could be salvaged. Nothing that could be used as evidence of what had been done here.
Except the people.
Nana found them in the corner of the monitoring room, huddled together. Trying to shield each other from the heat. From the smoke. From the inevitable.
Her parents.
They were barely recognizable. The fire had consumed most of their bodies, leaving behind charred remains that only vaguely suggested human form. But Nana knew. Could tell from their position—the way they'd held each other in those final moments. The way they'd died together, trapped in the facility they'd built.
Her mother's tablet was melted to her chest, fused to her body by the heat. Her father's hands were wrapped around her mother's shoulders, protective even in death.
They'd spent twenty-one years using Nana as a specimen. Had injected her with enhancement serum when she was three years old. Had monitored her entire life. Had thrown her into Avalon to gather data. Had treated her emotional trauma as research material.
Had been her parents.
Nana fell to her knees in front of their remains.
She should feel something. Rage or grief or satisfaction or anything. They'd earned their fate—had built a nightmare and been consumed by it. Had created monsters and been killed by them. Poetic justice in its purest form.
But they'd also packed her lunches. Had attended her hunter graduation. Had kissed her forehead before missions. Had pretended—or maybe had genuinely tried—to love the weapon they'd created.
The tears came without warning. Not gentle crying—ugly, choking sobs that tore from her throat with the same violence as everything else in her life. Grief and rage and loss and relief all tangled together until she couldn't tell which emotion was which.
Zayne knelt beside her. Pulled her against his chest. Let her cry while frost spread across the floor around them, cooling the heat, turning the ash to ice.
"They were monsters," Nana managed between sobs. "They did terrible things. They deserve this. I should be happy they're dead."
"But they were still your parents," Zayne finished quietly. "And you're allowed to grieve them even if you also hated them. Feelings don't have to make sense."
Behind them, the hunter team maintained a respectful distance. Giving them space. Giving them time.
Eventually, the tears stopped. Nana pulled away from Zayne and wiped her face, leaving streaks of ash and soot across her cheeks. She looked at her parents' remains one last time.
"I hope it was quick," she said. "I hope they didn't suffer too much. Not because they deserved mercy. Just because... I don't want to be the kind of person who enjoys suffering. Even when the people suffering earned it."
"You're not," Zayne assured her. "You're not that person. You never will be."
They stood. Nana shouldered her pack and turned away from the bodies.
"Is there anything else down here we need to check?" Marcus asked gently.
Nana shook her head. "No. This was the control center. Everything else branches from here. If this is destroyed—if the servers are gone and the data is lost and the people who ran it are dead—then it's over. The facility is finished."
"Then why are the creatures still coming?"
Good question. Nana had been wondering the same thing. If the facility was destroyed, if the production floor was shut down, if everything was offline—where were the new creatures coming from?
She thought about it. About the layout of the facility. About what she'd seen during her time here.
"The holding areas," she said suddenly. "There were storage sections. Places where they kept creatures that had already been produced but not yet deployed to Avalon. Thousands of them in stasis, waiting to be released."
"And the explosion freed them," Zayne finished.
"Not freed. Damaged the stasis systems. Woke them up gradually instead of all at once. They've been emerging slowly from the wreckage, drawn to the sounds of the city, to the prey above ground."
Marcus swore. "How many are we talking about?"
"I don't know. I never saw the full storage capacity. But if they've been running this program for eleven years..." Nana did the math in her head and felt sick. "Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands."
The number hung in the air like a death sentence.
Tens of thousands of enhanced creatures. All of them now loose in Linkon City. All of them hunting.
"We need to clear the storage areas," Nana said. "Kill everything that's still alive down here before it can make it to the surface. Then we can focus on hunting down what's already escaped."
The team moved through the facility's remains with new urgency. Through corridors that led to sections Nana had never seen during her imprisonment. Storage areas carved deep into the bedrock, lined with thousands of containment units—most of them damaged by the explosion, many of them already empty.
They killed everything they found. Every hybrid that was still breathing. Every vampire that was weakly moving. Every demon that hadn't yet died from its injuries.
Zayne used his ice arrows—precise, lethal shots that ended each creature without suffering. Nana fought alongside him when numbers required it, when a creature was still strong enough to pose a threat.
The hunter team worked efficiently, professionally, documenting each kill, mapping the storage areas, making sure nothing was missed.
It took hours. By the time they emerged from the facility, the sun was setting on Linkon City's second day under siege.
Nana stood at the edge of the crater and looked at the ruins of everything her parents had built. Everything they'd sacrificed for. Everything they'd done.
Ash. All of it reduced to ash.
"Is it over?" Marcus asked quietly.
"Down here? Yes." Nana's voice was hollow. "Up there?" She gestured toward the city, toward the smoke and fires and distant sounds of battle. "Not even close."
Zayne took her hand. His skin was ice-cold but his grip was steady.
"Then we keep fighting," he said. "We hunt down every creature that escaped. We save everyone we can. We do what they made us to do."
"We fight monsters."
"We are the monsters," Zayne corrected gently. "Enhanced. Modified. Built to be weapons. But we're also the only ones who can stop what was created here. So we use what they gave us. Use it to protect people instead of gather data."
Nana looked at him—at the man who had been turned into a specimen against his will, who had every right to be angry and traumatized and broken by what had been done to him.
Who was choosing to fight anyway. Choosing to save people. Choosing to be more than what he'd been built to be.
"Okay," she said. "We fight. We save everyone we can. We stop this."
Together, they turned toward the city.
Toward the fires and the screaming and the battle that was still raging.
Toward the nightmare that had come home.
And they walked into it willingly. Two weapons made by the government. Two specimens enhanced beyond human limits. Two people who had been broken and rebuilt and used.
Who were choosing now to use their strength for something better.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.