The air in the "Nuclear Safety Zone" didn't smell like radiation; it smelled like copper and industrial cleaner. Dr. Avery Thorne stood in the center of his underground sanctuary, his hands steady as he calibrated a high-frequency neuro-disrupter. Above ground, the town of Oakhaven rotted in silence—a place where neighbors didn't wave, they watched, waiting for a chance to pick your pockets or slit your throat.
Avery didn't care about the thieves. He had built the nuclear facility as a gargantuan concrete shell to hide his true work: the evolution of the human nervous system. But his greatest failure was currently stalking the woods, and his greatest regret was locked in a small, isolated house three miles away.
The Ghost of Grace
Every time Avery closed his eyes, he saw Grace lying on the kitchen floor. The town whispered he'd dissected his own wife. Even Frankie, his only son, looked at him with eyes full of pure, unadulterated loathing before Avery had been forced to lock him away "for his own protection."
Avery sighed, rubbing his temples. He had sent the senior staff with the usual rations this morning. Frankie needed his routine to manage the panic attacks. It was a cold, clinical love, but it was all Avery had left.
The Third Night
A sharp, rhythmic chirping broke the silence of the lab. It was the emergency silent alarm linked to Frankie's perimeter fence. Avery's heart hammered against his ribs—a rare, organic surge of adrenaline.
"Not tonight," he whispered, grabbing a heavy-duty sedative rifle and a prototype thermal tracker. "Not him."
He drove through the jagged streets of Oakhaven, ignoring a mugging in progress near an alleyway. His mind was on Subject 0-9, the latest monstrosity to crawl out of his vats. It was a mass of fused muscle and redirected synapses, a creature designed to feel no pain, only hunger. And it had been set loose.
The Crimson Room
When Avery kicked in the door to Frankie's isolated home, he wasn't met with a monster. He was met with a silence so thick it felt like drowning.
The living room was a crime scene of desperation. Boxes of tactical gear, barricaded windows, and a black-market pistol lying on the floor. Avery's flashlight swept the room, landing on the walls. They weren't just stained; they were painted.
The lower half of Frankie's body was gone. The upper torso lay slumped against the computer desk, the boy's face frozen in the horrific mask of a final, fatal panic attack. He hadn't been killed by the beast. He had been driven to the edge by the fear of it, ending his own life before the teeth ever touched him.
Avery sank to his knees, the cold concrete biting into his shins. He didn't scream. Scientists don't scream; they observe. He observed the trail of viscera leading out the back window toward the caves near the construction site.
The Man in the Shadows
Avery retreated to his secondary "lair"—an abandoned construction site overlooking the cooling towers. He checked his monitors, his eyes red and hollow. He began loading a chemical cocktail into a pressurized delivery system. He would dissolve Subject 0-9 into a puddle of biological waste.
"He died thinking you were the devil, Avery.
The voice came from the darkness of the rafters. Avery didn't look up. He kept loading the vials.
"I know you're watching," Avery said, his voice a dead rasp. "You messaged him. You broke the containment seal on the Subject. Why?"
A silhouette shifted above. A man, unremarkable in every way except for the glowing screen of a handheld device in his hand. "Because you spent your life trying to control biology, Doctor. I wanted to see what happens when fear becomes the only variable. Frankie was a fascinating study in terror. You, however... you're a study in grief."
Avery looked up then, his eyes catching the light of the facility behind him. "The monster is in the cave. I'm going to end it. And then I'm going to find you."
The mysterious man chuckled, the sound echoing off the rusted steel beams. "The monster isn't in the cave, Avery. It's sitting in this room, holding a chemical sprayer, wondering where it all went wrong.
The thermal tracker on the table suddenly began to beep. Something massive was moving, not in the caves, but directly beneath the construction site. Avery realized too late—the mysterious man hadn't just released the beast; he had baited it here.