Location: District 4 - Sector ?
——
Anya stirred to the sound of screaming.
Not one voice—but dozens. Children. Wailing. Some shrill with panic, others raw and broken, like they'd been screaming for hours and no one ever came.
She winced as the pain returned. Her head throbbed. Every shallow breath sent a pulse through her aching ribs. Her vision blurred at the edges, the world warping in and out of focus like a half-remembered nightmare.
She blinked.
Hard.
Then again.
Slowly, the shapes began to settle—cold metal bars, a pale gray floor, and fluorescent lights humming overhead like trapped flies.
She could tell immediately.
A cell.
She was in a cell.
She forced herself upright, every movement scraping pain along her ribs. Her limbs felt heavy—too heavy. She couldn't tell if it was from drugs… or bruises.
The air smelled sterile. Too clean. Like it was trying to hide something.
Across from her, she could see another cell.
Inside it, a little girl—maybe seven—sat slumped against the wall. Awake. Breathing. But only just.
She looked like something forgotten. Her skin was sunken, her wounds left to fester—untreated, not a single bandage in sight. Her eyes were wide and empty, hollowed out by something that had taken too much for far too long.
Anya's chest began to beat faster. She looked down at herself.
She was now wearing a pale, clinical uniform. So did the other children she could now make out in the rows of nearby cells.
Her mouth parted in confusion. No voice came.
'Where am I?'
Then—fear. Real, quaking fear.
It slammed into her chest, hot and suffocating. A kind of terror that didn't build slowly but detonated all at once. Like her body had only just realized the danger.
'What is this?
Did I do something wrong?'
A pause.
'Why does it hurt?'
Her fingers moved up instinctively to her neck. That's when she felt it—a hard, cold ring around her throat.
A collar.
There was a soft, rhythmic beeping coming from it.
Panicked, she tried to pull at it—
Bzzzt.
The collar jolted and tightened in an instant.
She choked—gasping, eyes bulging as she doubled over, coughing violently.
Pain flared at her throat—a sharp, metallic bite that dug into her skin. A warning.
She stopped. Her hands trembled.
She wanted to speak. To scream.
But words didn't come out of her mouth.
Her anxiety had overwhelmed her.
'Help…
Please… someone… anyone… help me.'
Tears came fast. Hot, silent streaks down her cheeks.
Then, the chamber door creaked open.
Three figures stepped in.
A woman in a lab coat. Two guards dressed in black tactical gear.
One of the guards had a jagged scar running down his cheek and a face that had long since forgotten what softness looked like.
They moved without urgency. Like they'd done this a hundred times before.
The doctor walked straight to the cell across from Anya's—the one with the wounded girl slumped inside.
At the sound of footsteps, the girl flinched and shrank back against the wall.
The woman glanced at her tablet, then pointed casually.
"This one. She's already weak—might as well test the new iteration on her before we burn through viable samples."
The scarred guard unlocked the cell. His shadow filled the doorway.
"Up."
The girl backed away, trembling. Her voice broke.
"Please—please… I can't—I can't take it anymore. Please don't—"
The begging stopped with a thud. The guard's hand struck the side of her neck—just enough to knock her out.
She collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
The guards lifted her limp body without ceremony and disappeared down a corridor that stank of chemicals and old blood.
Anya, who had been watching the entire scene in silence, couldn't move.
Her heart slammed against her ribs like it was trying to escape. She pressed herself into the far corner of the cell, knees pulled to her chest, hands trembling so violently she could barely keep herself upright.
'What is this place?
What are they doing to these children?
Am I next?'
The thoughts came too fast. Her head spun. She wanted to scream—but couldn't. Not even to herself.
The doctor who had given the order to the guards let out a tired sigh as she scrolled through the tablet in her hand.
"What are we missing?" she muttered. "The subjects keep dying… or turning. At this rate, we won't have anything to show before Lord Kaelen returns."
She slipped the tablet under her arm and bit her lip, lost in thought.
Then, slowly—too slowly—she turned toward the cell where Anya sat.
She tilted her head.
Then smiled—brightly, almost sweetly—when her eyes met Anya's.
Like she'd just spotted a new favorite toy.
"Oh," she said, voice light. "You must be from the new batch."
She immediately pulled out her tablet and tapped at it again.
"That's perfect. Wonderful timing. We'll test Project V-17 on you."
She paused, her smile fading into a thoughtful, eerie frown.
"Hopefully, you don't die like the rest."
Anya's back hit the cold metal behind her. She tried to crawl away.
But there was no away.
Nowhere to run.
She curled up tighter, trying to vanish inside herself. Her voice came at last—but it was thin. Cracked.
"Ren… Ren, please help me. I'm scared…"
It was barely audible.
A breath of hope in a place where hope didn't belong.
And then she cried—body shaking, mouth open in a scream that no sound dared to follow.
***
Speed.
Sami had been driving fast for over three hours now. Blistering through long curves and straightaways, the Novus Caldera roared beneath him like a beast trying to outrun its own shadow.
He was definitely going to get a fine when this was over. Maybe two. But that didn't matter now.
What mattered was that the road hadn't changed in hours.
Nothing but hills.
Endless, jagged ridges on either side of the highway like the spine of some ancient, buried thing. The asphalt stretched on without end, the sky bleeding into it. No towns. No lights. Just stone and silence.
Were they even still in District 4?
It was hard to tell. They'd left Sector 9 a while ago, but there hadn't been any signs marking a border—no checkpoint, no notice, nothing. Maybe this was still District 4. Just… a part that didn't have buildings. Just mountains. Just this endless, open road.
Either way, this was too far out. If they'd brought Anya all the way here, it wasn't for anything good. And every minute out here—every second—could mean something worse for her.
Sami's jaw clenched.
'Who the hell were the ones that took Anya?
Is she still alive?
Gods, I hope she is.'
He cast a glance sideways at Ren.
Ren was still. He sat like a sculpture carved in deep water—calm, emotionless, staring ahead with eyes that didn't blink as often as they should. His face was tight, lips pressed in a line, brows drawn in a quiet, brittle worry.
Sami had grown used to that look — especially after years of being friends with Aika.
Water-affinity Virans had strange ways of processing pain.
He could tell that Ren wasn't numb. Not really.
But the affliction that came with his core—the Weight of Stillness—was like a weightless, sinking silence. It controlled how his emotions affected him, and what he was allowed to feel—according to calm.
It didn't allow extremes. Not panic. Not grief. Not in the moment.
Just a slow, sinking awareness.
Like watching yourself drown… and doing nothing to stop it.
Imagine the only family you have left has been kidnapped—
—but the only emotions you're allowed to feel are a brittle worry, a quiet helplessness, and a restless guilt that never quite settles.
Maybe later, when the panic had faded—when he was no longer in the state to feel anything too loud—
Then he might be allowed to feel sadness.
The kind of sadness that can exist with calm.
The kind that lingers. That haunts.
That dwells quietly within—
Silently, but always there.
Sami looked away.
He had his own affliction too.
His Vira came from the earth—and with it, an affliction called the Burden of Stone. A curse as much as a power.
Those like him felt every emotion, but certain emotions didn't come when it mattered. Not when it was fresh.
In other words, Earth Virans processed certain emotions on delay—sometimes minutes, sometimes hours after the moment had passed. And when those emotions hit, they didn't come gently.
They crashed.
And when they did, they came manifold—layered, tangled, and all-consuming.
For Sami, the delay had always been three hours—and when it came, it came threefold.
And now—on this road, with nothing but sky and guilt around him—those three hours were up.
It hit him.
All of it.
The quiet image of Anya's cracked phone still lying on the parking floor. The broken paint box. The scream that never came. The shattered cameras.
His worry flared.
His terror deepened.
And his fury… his fury was consuming him.
His throat tightened.
His grip on the steering wheel turned white-knuckled.
He pressed harder on the accelerator.
The SUV growled louder as they surged forward, still tracking the faint trail of Vira he'd locked onto back in the city.
He didn't speak.
He couldn't.
The emotion was too loud inside him now.
They were far from any patrol zone. Even the grid scanners hadn't pinged them in miles.
Whoever took Anya… they knew what they were doing.
They picked a place no one looked.
A place people forgot.
Sami muttered to himself, barely audible over the wind slipping through the window seams.
"Hold on, Anya. We're coming..."