Years before the fall.
They were never called The Ascendancy back then.
In official records, they didn't exist at all.
A cluster of privately-funded biotech firms, black site laboratories, and ghost departments buried deep in government infrastructure — their mission was simple: transcend human limits before the coming collapse.
Because they knew something the public didn't.
Earth's immune system was failing.
Between climate breakdown, genetic mutations in livestock, resistant super-viruses, and atmospheric decay, they predicted the end in models — not decades away, but years. And no world government wanted to admit it.
So they commissioned something darker:
The Emergent Salvation Initiative.
In thirty-two facilities across China, India, Germany, and the U.S., children were taken. Some orphaned. Some bought. Others simply disappeared.
They were called Ghost Batch, Black Synthesis, Project Ashwake, and other names that sounded poetic in scientific reports but horrifying in practice.
The goal?
Engineer the next phase of humanity before the first phase died.
Faster minds. Regenerative cells. Enhanced resistance to neuro-pathogens.
But the most ambitious project — the one housed deep beneath a mountain in western Sichuan — was something else entirely:
Cross-species neural adaptability.
The ability to think like animals. To survive like viruses. To reprogram the brain like a parasite.
To be human… and not.
The Beginning of the End
They didn't lose control all at once.
At first, it was just whispers in the labs:
One Subject refusing orders.
Another waking from sedation with knowledge of things she shouldn't know.
Animals bred for cognitive testing showing signs of language comprehension.
Then a virus emerged in Batch 8.
It was supposed to be contained. It wasn't even airborne — until they tried to kill it.
A failed incineration attempt at Facility Zero-Three caused a chain reaction.
The containment seal ruptured.
The virus adapted.
It bonded with synthetic neuro-tissue. Spread on dust particles. Entered the lungs of a research team member in transit.
Within five weeks, it had mutated five times. By then, the public was noticing.
Strange symptoms.
Hallucinations.
Violent outbreaks.
People talking in codes. Laughing while mutilating others. Hearing voices.
It wasn't long before cities were burning.
The government tried to deny it, of course. But once the infected began evolving — once people saw wolves with fingers, deer walking upright, birds mimicking human voices — panic overrode censorship.
And The Ascendancy?
They went dark.
Pulled their personnel underground. Enforced internal martial law.
But it was too late.
One of their own Ghosts had escaped.
The Fall of Control
They called her Subject 0107.
Not Rui. Not a girl. Not a person.
She was a glitch in their system — the first Ghost to remember.
Rui didn't just escape. She carried part of their research inside her.
Not just data.
A living fragment of the engineered neural pathogen.
They called it Red Whisper.
The virus wasn't meant to kill. It was meant to overwrite.
Rui's mind was proof that it worked — too well.
And when she ran, it began leaking from her — mutating in ways they hadn't modeled.
Into rain.
Into air.
Into birds.
Into wolves.
Into the wind.
The first signs of the Blood Rain came three years after the collapse.
It fell across regions in pulsing waves — not everywhere at once, but like a heartbeat.
Thick. Dark. Metallic.
People said it whispered when it landed.
Those exposed didn't die.
They changed.
Some lost their minds. Others gained something new. A third eye. A second voice. A hunger that never left.
And the zombies?
They weren't like the ones from stories.
Some still talked.
Some ran.
Some remembered their names.
And worse — some evolved beyond the need to eat flesh.
They began building.
Now.
Back in the present, The Ascendancy was no longer science.
It was a cult.
A broken cabal of the original researchers, soldiers, and believers.
Their goal wasn't to save the world anymore.
It was to reclaim their legacy.
To retrieve their creations.
To collect the Ghosts.
Especially the ones who had survived too long — like Subject 0107.
They were no longer in control of the infection.
They were trying to stop it…
And every attempt made it worse.
Floods of cleansing agents poisoned rivers.
Targeted purges drove survivors into wilderness where the virus mutated with animals.
Satellite strikes turned forests into radioactive pits that birthed new forms of life entirely.
And yet, deep in their bunkers, The Ascendancy still believed they could reverse the evolution.
All they needed was the source.
The one who ran.
The one who whispered numbers in her sleep.
Back in the mountains, as Li Wei studied Rui by the firelight, he knew — even without understanding it all — that she was more than a victim.
She was the fracture point.
And they were all caught inside the storm she left behind.
The road had no name.
It wasn't even a road anymore — just a cracked, moss-ridden stretch of mountain path flanked by skeletal trees and fog that hung like rotting silk. Old signposts, half-collapsed, jutted out of the ground at broken angles. The characters had long faded. Even Chen Yu, usually chatty, said nothing now. His jokes shriveled in his throat.
Rui walked with her arms wrapped tight around herself, hood up. She hadn't spoken since the last town — not since they saw the hanging bodies along the highway, strung up like warnings. Their blood had turned black from exposure to the rain.
It had been days since the last proper meal.
Weeks since they'd seen other survivors who didn't try to kill them.
And then they saw the tower.
No taller than four stories, made of reinforced steel and concrete. Overgrown with ivy. Half its face had collapsed from what looked like an old missile strike. A rusted symbol remained visible on the exposed side — a broken helix inside an inverted triangle.
Li Wei's breath hitched.
He had seen that symbol before.
In Rui's nightmares.
She'd once whispered about a room with a silver ceiling. With needles that spoke. With voices that came from walls. With a red light that blinked like a heartbeat. She'd said the blinking hurt.
He didn't know whether it was real.
But now, as they stared at the structure hidden by the mountain's curve, Li Wei felt something ancient stir in the back of his skull.
A warning.
"This place…," Chen Yu muttered. "I don't like this place, man. Gives me military bio-horror vibes."
"No one asked," Li Wei replied softly, but not cruelly. His eyes were locked on Rui.
She was shivering.
Not from cold.
From recognition.
Inside the Forgotten Facility
The main gate had been torn off years ago, perhaps by scavengers. The metal creaked as Li Wei pushed it aside. Darkness swallowed them.
No smell of rot.
No corpses.
Only dust, silence, and…
a faint, low hum.
Rui's steps slowed. Her small hand reached for Li Wei's sleeve. He let her grip it.
"This used to be my… dream," she whispered. "Or maybe… I died here. I don't remember."
Chen Yu turned on his flashlight.
That was when they saw the walls.
Floor to ceiling — not just pipes and wires. There were photographs. Rows of them. Some printed. Some hand-drawn. All of children.
Numbers underneath each.
Most had their faces scratched out.
The air was thick with old formaldehyde and something electric, like ozone before lightning strikes.
Deeper in, they found what looked like a lab chamber split open from the inside. A containment pod, the glass shattered, blood smeared across it in long, child-sized handprints.
Words written in blood:
"WE ARE WHAT YOU MADE US"
"THE VIRUS ONLY REVEALS"
"RUI REMEMBERS"
That last line was written over and over again on the floor.
Rui collapsed to her knees, shaking. Her voice was a whisper.
"This is where they made me forget."
The Basement
They didn't want to go down.
But the stairs beckoned. Cold air flowed upward, carrying something metallic and wet.
Li Wei led, knife in hand. Chen Yu followed, covering his back.
It wasn't just a lab down there.
It was a crèche.
Rows of rusted beds. IV tubes hanging like vines. Claw marks on the walls. Dolls tied up by their limbs and strung from the ceiling — as if the children here had learned violence as a language before they ever spoke.
And then… the door.
Still sealed. An electric keypad blinking red and green, as if some power still flowed beneath the ground.
Chen Yu leaned in. "Either this opens to a freezer full of dead scientists… or something that ate them."
Li Wei looked at Rui.
She nodded once, pale and still.
He typed her subject number.
0107
The door clicked.
And slid open.
The Thing Inside
The smell hit them first.
Like rotting meat dipped in acid.
Then the sound — wet, sliding, like muscle against metal.
The room beyond wasn't lit, but their flashlights found movement. Something large. Crouched. Not quite human.
It was breathing.
No, not breathing — mimicking breath.
It turned toward them, slowly. Its face was a collage of others — eyes that weren't symmetrical. A jaw too wide. Flesh that pulsed with veins filled with black light.
It spoke.
Not in words.
In Rui's voice.
"Did you come back to finish me, sister?"
Rui didn't move.
The thing stood.
It had Rui's height. Rui's frame. But it was not Rui.
It was what would've happened if she hadn't escaped.
Another Ghost.
Left behind.
Twisted into something new by years of isolation, mutation, and hunger.
"I remember the pain," it said, eyes glowing. "You were always the favorite."
Li Wei raised his knife.
The creature's lips curled. "Go ahead, protector. Cut me. I've bled every day since she left me behind."
Chen Yu had a gun in his hand now. "I vote we skip the family reunion and burn this place."
"Too late," it said.
Then it screamed.
And the walls screamed back.
The chamber erupted in chaos. Lights exploded. The floor cracked. Hidden compartments burst open with claws and limbs. Other prototypes, half-dead, crawled out like forgotten nightmares.
Li Wei grabbed Rui and ran. Chen Yu fired round after round, shouting curses in Mandarin and English.
As they reached the surface, Rui twisted in Li Wei's arms.
"She's still my sister," she said through tears. "Even now."
Li Wei didn't respond.
The tower behind them imploded.
Whether by self-destruct or something else — they never knew.
But one thing was certain:
The Ascendancy's ghosts were not dead.
Some had evolved.
Some were still waiting.
And some, like Rui's sister… had learned to hate the light.