The facial scanner by the elevator to the restricted underground area pinged. A message blinked:
ACCESS GRANTED.
Then the scanner blinked again—as red droplets smeared across its lens.
Joonas dropped the object he'd used to gain entry: Dr Annie's severed head. It rolled to the side with a soft, wet thump, her lifeless eyes frozen mid-blink. The elevator doors hissed closed, descending into the underground part of the facility.
After a short while, the elevator doors slid open, but Joonas froze.
Screams.
They echoed down the dim corridor, but they weren't quite human anymore—some pitched impossibly high, others rumbled deep and guttural, layered with static and broken syllables, as if twisted through a broken speaker.
"What the fuck is this place?" Joonas muttered under his breath.
He stepped cautiously into the corridor. The flickering overhead lights sputtered erratically, casting long shadows that danced unnervingly around him.
Then it hit him.
The sickening stench of Vira—twisted, corrupted, and raw. It pulsed through the air, heavy and repulsive.
Joonas's lip curled.
"Sami didn't mention anything about Aberrants. This is definitely their repulsive Vira," he growled, teeth clenched tight.
He kept walking, his eye tracking the corridor, sharp and deliberate. With every step, the cries grew louder—more distorted.
He stopped at the first reinforced door, its faded signage barely legible, peeled away by time and damp. Then, without hesitation, he kicked it open.
The air rushed out—cold, sterile, and wrong.
It was a large chamber. Harsh ceiling lights buzzed above, some flickering in nervous stutters. Three steel tables stood in the center, their surfaces scarred and rusted. Dried blood crusted around the edges, and thick metal restraints jutted from the sides, stained and strained—designed not just to hold, but to break resistance.
In the far corner, a surgical cart leaned against the wall, its wheels rust-locked. Scalpels, bone saws, and needles lay scattered across its surface, all tarnished and darkened with dried matter.
The floor told its own story. Bloody smears trailed toward a drainage grate in the center. Small handprints—tiny, frantic—pressed into the grime near the walls, as if someone had tried to climb out, or crawl away.
"Oi…Sami. You are seeing this too, right?" Joonas spoke to himself, voice low, eyes scanning the room.
"This is some real butcher shop shit…" he muttered, almost like a joke—but his grin didn't reach his eyes this time.
He turned and stepped out, letting the door hang open behind him.
Then he moved on.
He drove his heel into the next door. Another bloodstained chamber—almost identical to the first.
Then the next. And the next. And the next.
Each one opened into the same nightmare: cold light, surgical steel, blood-slicked floors.
Until the sixth.
He stopped for a moment, hand hovering just above the panel.
Then slammed it open.
The air hissed—pressurized and cold, with the sterile reek of antiseptic and something else, something rotting beneath the surface.
Rows of massive cylinders lined the chamber, tall and humming. Each one filled with murky green fluid that pulsed faintly, as if alive.
Inside the first was a floating heart, suspended like a grotesque ornament.
The second—lungs.
A third held a cluster of eyes, wide and staring, pupils dilated and bobbing gently with every ripple.
Joonas tilted his head.
"Ah. A fuckin' candy store," he whispered.
He moved slowly now, almost reverently. Each cylinder offered something new. A brain, still connected to twitching nerves. A hand clenched in a silent, permanent fist. Half a face. A spine curled like a sleeping serpent.
Then he paused.
One tank wasn't murky.
It was clear.
And there was something—someone—inside.
But not alive.
The body floated in the cylinder, slumped forward. Skin pale, lips blue, but strangely intact. It looked like decay had started—black veins crawling up the neck, part of the jaw eaten away—but then halted, frozen in an unfinished state. As if even death had been interrupted.
Joonas stepped closer and placed his hand against the glass, fingertips leaving faint streaks on the condensation.
"Ahh," he murmured with a crooked grin. "This is clearly a Viran."
He glanced around again—really looked this time.
Each organ. Each twitching nerve. Each suspended fragment. All humming with residual energy. Each one pulsing faintly with Vira.
His grin widened, more teeth now.
"In fact…" he said, voice low and thoughtful, "these are all fuckin' Viran parts."
He clicked his tongue once—sharp.
"Tsk. Well. Let's hope the girl you want me to save is still alive," he muttered, already turning from the tank.
He didn't look back.
Just walked back into the corridor, footsteps soft against the floor.
A new hallway branched off the main one—wider, more reinforced, with heavy walls and thick glass panels darkened from the inside.
Just before the curve, a massive steel door loomed like a vault. Above it, a flickering red sign buzzed with half-dead light—letters stuttering in and out of clarity:
SUBJECT CONTAINMENT III
Joonas didn't pause to read it twice.
He just kicked it open.
The metal groaned, hinges screaming in protest as the door slammed against the wall.
Inside—rows and rows of empty cells.
The first few were different—larger. Built more like holding labs than cages. Each one had a surgical table bolted to the ground, restraints fanned out like limbs. The tables were stained. The metal was dented in places—like something had thrashed, hard.
Joonas clicked his tongue again. "Getting creative, huh…"
He kept walking.
The cells further back were simpler. Colder. Bare. Just four walls and a grated floor. No windows. No lights. Just enough space for a person to sit, stand… or collapse.
Some had dried markings etched into the walls—scratch marks, symbols, fragments of words scratched in with fingernails or broken bone.
He stopped at one with the number 17 scorched above the door.
Inside, a small shape was slumped in the corner. Back pressed to the wall. Hands clamped tightly over her ears.
She wasn't crying anymore. She looked like she had run out of tears hours ago—maybe longer. Her eyes were swollen, her clothes torn and stained. But she was breathing. Still breathing.
Joonas raised a hand and knocked once—sharp and deliberate—against the glass door.
The sound made her flinch.
Slowly, hesitantly, she lifted her head.
Their eyes met.
Joonas tilted his head, gaze flicking over her pale face, the streaks of dirt, the bruises along her arm. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a phone, and brought up a picture.
He zoomed in. Looked at the photo. Then looked at her again.
His smile returned—slight, crooked, unreadable.
"Praise the gods, Sami…"
He let the phone drop to his side.
"Looks like she's still alive."
***
Anya sat slumped in the cell. She couldn't tell how long she'd been there.
Everything hurt.
Her ribs ached from the blow back at the garage. Her skin burned from the countless injections she'd endured over the past hours. Her eyes throbbed from crying—too long, too hard.
A deep ache pulsed with every breath. She tried not to breathe too loudly—afraid they'd hear her. Afraid they'd come back.
So she pressed her hands to her ears, trying to shut the world out.
But then… something shifted.
A shadow moved in her cell. She felt it before she saw it—a stillness that slid over her skin like a cold cloth.
She looked up, slow and afraid.
Her chest fluttered when her eyes landed on the figure in front of her.
Sami.
She rose unsteadily, knees trembling, heart pulling her forward. She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him—but her feet didn't move.
Something was wrong.
Her eyes searched his face.
'Is this… Sami?
Why does he look like that?'
She took a slow step back, her heel scraping softly against the floor.
That was his face. Sami's face. The same pale hair, the same shape of his mouth—but something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
The way he smiled held no warmth. No familiarity.
His eyes were too calm—eerily calm—and yet, they scared her.
His fingers twitched constantly, like the hands of someone unhinged.
Blood clung to his wrists in thick, glossy smears, trailing down his hands like melted wax. It soaked into his sleeves. It dripped from his fingertips.
He was soaked in it.
This wasn't the boy she knew.
This wasn't Sami.
This was something else entirely.
She was still panicking when he stepped forward and raised a hand.
The glass walls of the cell trembled—then shattered all at once.
But instead of exploding outward, the shards recoiled, pulling away from her in a controlled sweep.
They gathered behind him like a wave suspended in midair, then fell in a soft clatter to the floor.
Not a single piece touched her.
Then he extended his hand toward Anya.
"Let's go."
She looked at his hand, hesitated for a bit, then took it carefully—still trembling. She winced as her ribs throbbed with the motion.
Together, they began walking.
As they came back out into the corridor, a chamber came into view off the side—sealed by reinforced glass.
Joonas paused.
From within came inhuman cries. He could feel it. The repulsive Vira radiated from this wing of the corridor.
Anya gripped his hand tightly.
He looked at her, then back at the reinforced glass.
"Stay close to me, girl."
Anya's fingers tightened around his.
He glanced down at their hands—then sighed.
His gaze returned to the glass.
With a flick of his wrist, the surface rippled—then fractured like ice.
It shattered inward, revealing the horrors it had hidden.
He took a step forward, then looked in.
Inside, dozens of children huddled behind rusted bars. The room reeked of metal, rot, and something chemical—sharp enough to sting the nose. Dim lights flickered overhead, casting long, fractured shadows across the stained floor.
The cries hit him first.
They weren't just screams—they were fractured, broken things.
Some were high and shrill, trembling with panic.
Others were low, guttural, barely human.
A few sounded like they were trying to form words—cut off halfway, caught in throats that no longer knew how to speak.
But worst of all were the ones who made no sound at all.
Their bodies were mutilated—bent and fused in ways that defied nature. Spines jutted out at odd angles. Limbs stretched too long or too thin, like rubber pulled past breaking.
One child was curled in a corner, her skin so translucent he could see her bones pulsing faintly beneath—every breath a visible ripple of pain.
Another sat against the bars, twitching as strange tumors along her neck pulsed open like gills, then sealed again with a sickening wet sound.
Some didn't move at all.
Some stared with wide, glass-dull eyes—eyes that didn't blink, didn't flinch.
Eyes that looked right through him.
Like they were already gone.
Anya pressed herself into his side, trembling.
Joonas didn't speak at first.
He just stared, lips slightly parted, as if the air itself had turned rancid.
Then, slowly, he shook his head—almost in admiration.
A crooked smile crept across his face.
"Ahh… Sami, Sami, Sami," he murmured, voice low and sing-song. "What've we stumbled into, huh? A fucking graveyard—with a pulse?"
He let the words hang in the air like smoke.
His eyes drifted back to the children—if they could still be called that.
Then to the rusted cages.
Then to the blood-streaked floor where something had been dragged.
"Human aberrants," he whispered, half to himself. "Now that… that shouldn't be possible."
He tilted his head, then gave a low whistle—half in awe.
"Looks like someone's been playing god in here."