The Platinum Spire - [District 4's Official Headquarters.]
Sector 3
——
The silence in Kaelen's office was thick enough to choke on. Soft jazz played from a vintage speaker in the corner—slow, sultry, and entirely at odds with the tension hanging in the air.
Kaelen stood motionless in front of a towering abstract painting, hands behind his back, eyes narrowed at a single brushstroke as if trying to make sense of the chaos it hinted at.
Behind him, his assistant Selene—a young, pale girl—read from her tablet with trembling hands. Her voice quivered more with each line.
"…Base Seventeen has been… compromised. Total structural collapse. The internal security feeds cut out mid-cycle. When we regained signal, everything was already—gone."
Her throat tightened.
"We estimate full casualties. All guards. All test subjects. Lab heads. We recovered only fragments of bodies. Some… burned beyond recognition. Others were mutilated so brutally…"
She glanced up, hoping for a flicker of reaction. There was none.
"…we couldn't even identify them."
The words curled in the air like smoke from a battlefield. Kaelen didn't move.
"…Everyone?" he asked. His voice was low. Controlled. Almost polite.
"Everyone, sir," Selene replied with a nod.
The room fell quiet again.
Kaelen stood still for a moment, processing the report in silence. Then, without a word, he turned.
Each step was deliberate as he crossed the sleek marble floor, the soft click of his shoes echoing through the vast room. He reached the bar, uncorked a crystal decanter, and poured a measure of amber liquor into a glass—his movements slow, exact, almost clinical.
He took a long sip, then set the glass down with a soft clink. His voice, when it came, was calm. Too calm.
"Base Seventeen."
He didn't look at her.
"That wasn't a throwaway facility. It was one of our most discreet locations. Reinforced. Isolated. It held only human subjects. No living Virans. No high-profile assets."
Now, he turned—cold eyes landing on Selene like a scalpel.
"So why would anyone hit it?"
Selene hesitated, her grip tightening around the tablet. "I—I'm not sure, sir. The logs showed no breach warnings. No unusual activity. It was quiet. Then suddenly… everything went dark."
Kaelen stepped toward her.
He took the tablet from her hands without a word and began scrolling through the images—charred corridors, fractured glass, collapsed infrastructure.
One photo showed a blast door sheared clean through. Another captured a body fused into the floor, half-encased in rippled, blackened glass.
Farther down the sequence, the scenes grew more grotesque: massive glass limbs jutting from the upper levels of the building, sharp and crystalline, like a spider had torn its way out. Entire floors had been punctured from above—impaled in perfect vertical lines.
His expression didn't change. He handed the tablet back to her.
"This wasn't some scrappy human rebellion," he said, voice sharpening. "They don't have the coordination or the firepower to overwhelm a sealed base that fast."
He nodded slightly toward the tablet in her hands.
"They don't leave glass shards embedded in steel."
Selene swallowed hard. "Then… it had to be a Viran."
"Yes," Kaelen muttered, almost to himself. "But what would one of them be doing out there?"
He turned away, pacing now—his fury buried beneath immaculate composure.
'How the fuck did this happen?' he thought, trying to make sense of the report.
Base Seventeen was his smallest black site—designed solely for abducted human subjects. It was a quiet, tightly controlled facility, chosen specifically for its isolation and low risk of exposure. That's what made the attack so illogical.
If one of his larger sites had been hit—those that held Viran children—he might've understood. Virans had ways of tracking their kin, especially through their signatures. But this? This base held only human subjects. Not only that—it was hidden far from the city, buried in obscurity, and held nothing of high value in the eyes of most Virans.
As for the facility's true purpose—the experiments, the forced procedures—that information was tightly regulated, restricted to a select few. There were no leaks, no exposure. Not even the lower staff knew the full extent of what they were doing.
Unless the attacker had precise knowledge of its location and purpose—something that should have been impossible—the breach made no sense at all.
'Viran society is insular. They stay among their own. Only a rare few ever mingle with humans—and even then, we keep our distance from those ones.
Did one of our abductors make a mistake? Did they take a human connected to a Viran?
That should be impossible. The abductors assigned to Base Seventeen have always been careful not to make that mistake.'
He turned to Selene.
"Pull up all the files from the last batch of subjects before we lost them."
Selene nodded quickly, fingers flying across her tablet. A few tense seconds passed before she handed it to him, her hands still trembling.
He took it without a word and began scrolling through the profiles.
The first file read:
[Subject Code: 001
Batch: 3
Name: Marlene Kai
Age: 8
Gender: Female
Citizenship: District 4
Status: Mutated / Deceased
Note: Subject resided with immediate family in Sector 9, District 4. Abducted from a public commercial zone (supermarket) after being lured into a false product demo booth. Parental distraction executed simultaneously via fire alarm interference.
Subject underwent a forced cell transplantation procedure. Mutation onset observed four days post-operation. Status updated to Deceased following terminal physiological destabilization.]
He kept scrolling, profile after profile—until he reached the last.
[Subject Code: 017
Batch: 3
Name: Anya Simon
Age: 9
Gender: Female
Citizenship: District 6
Status: Active / Contained
Note: Subject was relocated from District 6 following its collapse. Initial observation began during hospitalization. All identifying details were acquired from medical logs and Brushveil, an online platform for young illustrators and painters.
Subject entered a private residence under the care of a District 4 human citizen named Marie, posing as a legal adoption. Abduction was executed under false pretenses using data extracted from Brushveil.
Subject is scheduled for forced cell transplantation. Immunosuppressants have been administered. Experimentation is to commence in 48 hours.]
'There's nothing here indicating any of them had a Viran relative,' Kaelen thought as he read.
'All records say they had human parents. And the abductions were done properly—no traces left behind. No trails leading to the base.'
He paused, frowning.
'So how did a Viran find Base Seventeen?
Did a rogue Viran just happen to stumble onto the site?
No… that's impossible.
Unless… they weren't wandering.
Unless they were sent.
Could a human—maybe a family member of one we took—have reached out to the Viran Authority? Asked them to track down their missing relative?
Or... was it something worse?
A leak?
A traitor among the staff? Someone who reported us—directly to a Viran?'
So many thoughts raced through his mind, each one clawing for reason—anything to explain how the base had been found.
'This is bad. No matter how I spin it—it's bad.
Now that the Virans know what we did at that site, they'll definitely send their Investigations Division.
Shit… how the hell am I supposed to explain this to the other District Lords?
They told me to keep this shit private. No one was supposed to know—
least of all the Virans.'
He ran a hand over his mouth, then forced his body still again.
This project—everything he'd built—was known only to the highest Lords of the upper districts. And they had made one thing clear: "Do what you must—but make sure no one ever knows."
Now, he had a crater where his secrets used to be.
He turned back to the assistant—calmer now, but infinitely more dangerous.
"Here's what we're going to do."
His voice was quiet. Calculating.
"We don't know why the Virans attacked the site, so we can't assume the Authority was involved—yet. If they weren't, then we still have time to tighten security and rebuild our incognito measures. But if they were… if they knew about us before the strike—" he paused, "then this project may need to be abandoned entirely."
He angled his head slightly, tone hardening.
"I want every scrap of footage pulled—drones, satellites, thermal maps, everything. We need to find out whether the Viran Authority sent someone to shut us down… or if this was a rogue. One who came for someone inside that lab."
He turned toward the table, voice steady.
"We'll know based on one thing: whether or not they wore a mask."
He moved.
"Either way—now that the base was hit, our secrets are out. If VHQ didn't know before, they will now. We need to move carefully from here on out."
He reached for the glass and lifted it slowly.
"For now—until we know what's what—tell our abductors to slow the intake. Fewer subjects overall. Especially Viran children meant for the other labs."
He turned to her.
"Make sure none of the remaining facilities can be traced back to me. And make sure no one else finds out what happened. Not the media. Not the other Lords."
Selene gave a sharp nod, already tapping commands into the tablet. But her fingers hesitated—just briefly—when he mentioned the Lords. Then she resumed, face blank, voice clipped.
"Understood, sir."