Part 2: Bone and Wire
The corridor beyond the cryo-chamber pulsed with an artificial heartbeat, lights blinking in triplets, dim and dying. Emergency power. Ventilation groaned somewhere deep in the walls, the sound like a beast too large for its cage.
Kairo limped into it, dragging one foot behind him. Sparks trailed from the heel, his synthetic tendon had snapped and was knitting itself back together like thread reweaving muscle. It hurt. But pain was no longer something to resist.
It was proof.
He leaned against the wall, bare steel, ice-cold. His skin left a burned imprint wherever it made contact. The temperature regulation in his body was gone, the systems meant to keep him stable were no longer syncing. The bio-reactive plating under his skin twitched like it wanted to break free.
His breathing slowed, but not because he wanted it to. Something else was regulating his pulse, Kairo turned his head and looked down.
A long gash across his left ribs had opened fully now. Beneath the skin, there was no muscle. No anymore, instead, there are thick, pulsing fiber strands that resemble cables, soaked in blood. He pressed his fingers to the wound, the skin reacted, tried to close, but failed. The strands contracted like a heart spasm and he grunted through clenched teeth.
He forced himself onward.
Ten meters down, The hallway opened into a maintenance corridor filled with wiring conduits, utility panels, and coolant lines. All the hidden guts of the facility, he knew this floor, but not because they had told him, he had been walked down it, blindfolded, once. And his memory was better than their systems guessed.
He approached the steel bulkhead at the end, a scanner lit up.
GENETIC MARKER: INACTIVE
CLEARANCE: REVOKED
ACCESS: DENIED
Kairo didn't slow down.
He raised his right hand, fingers trembling, and slammed it palm-first against the panel.
A wave of pressure pulsed outward, creating a distortion, that felt like the air was trembling.
The scanner sparked, then melted. The lock hissed open a second later with a confused tone.
"Still works," he whispered hoarsely. "Sort of."
The door slid open slowly, revealing a long corridor, a checkpoint zone. Half the lights were out. The rest flickered erratically, motion sensors blinked green along the ceiling, and three ceiling mounted turrets rotated into position.
Whir. Click.
IDENTIFY.
IDENTIFY.
IDENT—
"Asset Kairo-7," he said softly, stepping forward with open hands.
The turrets scanned.
They paused.
Then: TERMINATED
The whirring stopped for a breathless second.
Then the guns screamed.
Muzzle flares lit up the hall, the first volley clipped his shoulder and spun him backward, into the wall. Sparks burst from the impact site. Flesh tore. Kairo gritted his teeth as anger surged alongside his panic.
He rolled. Bullets shattered the ground where he'd been.
Something shifted in his spine.
He reached into the pain.
The energy obeyed this time.
He threw out both arms and a shockwave rippled outward from his chest like a concussive drumbeat. It wasn't fire, it wasn't kinetic, it was something else, a distortion field that bent both air and metal.
Two of the turrets buckled inward like tin cans. The third fired wildly, severed from its bracket, still attached to a swinging cable.
He sprinted forward now, fast enough to break bone underfoot. His joints weren't ready, didn't matter.
He slammed into the door at the end of the hallway just as the final bullets ricocheted around his head.
CRACK
The door gave.
And Kairo was through it.
He hit the floor hard, rolling into darkness. For a moment, everything stopped. Just the sound of his ragged breath, the fizz of smoke curling off his arms, and the silent flicker of dead security monitors all around him.
It was a control room. One he recognized.
The Kill Room was above him now, three floors up. He remembered the floor plan, every hallway, every test chamber, every room where they broke him open and stitched him back together.
The room he now lay in… this was where they watched.
The observation ring.
And it was empty.
He stood, his shoulder ached, Something ground inside it, like shrapnel caught in cartilage. He didn't stop moving.
He stepped toward the control console, brushing past a busted chair, shattered glass underfoot. One screen still worked, barely. Static, then footage. Old surveillance, cycling on a loop.
There he was, weeks ago.
Strapped to a table, eyes open but blank. Limbs locked in place by magnetic bolts, a man in a lab coat speaking off-screen.
"…instability increasing. Emotional bleed confirmed. Asset Kairo-7 is no longer purely responsive. Memory residue is contaminating control schema."
And then—
Her.
On the next screen, she appeared.
Sera.
Younger than he remembered, but only just. Her wrists were bruised from restraints, her mouth was moving, saying something. The feed had no sound.
But Kairo didn't need sound. He remembered what she said.
"Kairo. Kairo. Don't—don't let them turn you into this."
And in that moment, the footage paused.
The screen glitching, his reflection stared back at him now.
Half-metal. Half-man.
He raised a hand to the glass, his fingertips burned where they touched it.
Behind him, smoke drifted from the hallway. The turret system, still trying to reset, sputtered its dying warnings.
Kairo clenched his jaw. Something inside him had settled. Not healed, but focused.
This wasn't pain anymore.
It was fuel.
He turned to the steel wall beside the monitor, placed a palm against it, and pressed down. The heat from his hand scorched through the paint, down to raw alloy. His fingers dug in—and carved.
With slow, deliberate force, he etched three words into the metal:
FAILED ASSET = HUNTER
He stepped back, admired it. Let it speak for him.
Let it warn them.
They would see it.
They would remember what they built.
And they would know he wasn't coming back for answers.
He was coming for every one of them.