The plan was set in motion under a bruised, twilight sky. Derek, Jordan, and Leo moved out with Commander Cross and his most hardened veterans, a grim procession heading north towards the Warden's dam. The air was thick with the unspoken tension of a son fighting alongside a father who saw him as a tool.
But as the squad departed, Wolfen had watched Eva. He saw the subtle tremor in her hands, the way her eyes were perpetually drawn to the south, as if she could see through the curvature of the earth to the Congo Basin. Her focus was split, and a split focus got people killed. It was inefficient.
So, he had paid a visit to Commander Cross. It wasn't a request. It was a surgical application of pressure, a masterclass in manipulation. He didn't speak of sisterly love or personal quests. He spoke of tactical priorities and asset allocation.
"Prime Architect 4 is not a regional administrator like your Warden," Wolfen had said, his voice low and convincing in the command tent. "He is a primary source of the horrors you face. His death would cripple their operations on a continental scale. Sending my entire team against the Warden is overkill. Sending half against Prime 4 is a strategic necessity. We break the head of the snake while you sever its tail."
He painted a picture of Prime 4 as an abstract monster, a mind of pure, unadulterated evil. He appealed to the commander's strategic mind, to his desire for a victory that mattered beyond his personal vengeance. And Marcus Cross, his own judgment clouded by grief and the compelling, cold logic of the man before him, agreed. Maya, Eva, and Wolfen would break off. They would head for the coordinates Prime 5 had provided.
Their insertion into the Kongo Laboratory was unnervingly simple. It was a gaping maw in the earth, hidden by the dense, steaming jungle, its entrance a stark, polished metal orifice that led into a deep, silent descent. There were no grand welcoming parties, no legions of guards. The silence was not peaceful; it was predatory, the quiet of a digestive system after a large meal.
They moved through sterile, white corridors, their footsteps the only sound. The place felt… spent. Empty. They encountered only small, scattered patrols of low-ranking Architects and security guards, who fell to Wolfen's silent, brutal efficiency and Maya's swift, scalding violence with barely a whimper. It was too easy. The air grew thicker, smelling less of antiseptic and more of copper, bile, and something sweetly rotten.
After an hour of navigating the labyrinthine complex, they found him.
The chamber was vast, a circular space that looked less like a lab and more like an abattoir. And in the center of it, standing calmly amidst a scene of unimaginable carnage, was Prime Architect 4.
He was tall, his form clad in the standard white coat, now splattered and soaked in gore that was still wet and glistening under the harsh lights. His mask was not silver or bronze, but a stark, polished black, and it, too, was streaked with blood. At his feet lay the mangled bodies of a dozen other Architects—his own subordinates—their silver masks cracked, their bodies torn apart not with weapons, but with bare hands. The silence in the room was the silence after the scream.
"He was inefficient," Prime 4 said, his synthesized voice a flat, bored monotone, as if commenting on a minor accounting error. He gestured with a blood-slicked hand towards the corpses. "They all were. The project is complete. They were redundant."
His black-masked gaze swept over them, lingering on Eva. "Subject E-01. Your sister's cell is in the adjacent wing. CT-39. You should hurry."
The words were a trigger. All rational thought, all training, evaporated from Eva's mind. There was only the name, the number, a siren call of hope after a decade of despair. She didn't look at Wolfen, didn't think of strategy. She turned and ran, her boots slipping in the blood of the slain Architects as she sprinted for the archway Prime 4 had indicated.
"Maya," Wolfen said, his voice cutting through the horrific scene. "Go with her."
Maya, her own instincts screaming at the wrongness of it all, gave a sharp nod and shot after Eva, a shadow following a desperate ghost.
Now, only Wolfen and Prime 4 remained in the charnel house.
"You orchestrated this," Wolfen stated, his eyes cold.
"Orchestration implies a need for complex actors," Prime 4 replied, tilting his head. "I simply arranged the final pieces. She was always going to run. You were always going to let her. The predator was always going to follow. Predictable."
Then wolfen smiled and said "It's beautifully."
—
Eva ran, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The adjacent wing was a long, stark hallway lined with heavy, sealed doors, each bearing a code and a designation. CT-25… CT-30… CT-35… Her eyes scanned the alphanumeric plates, her breath coming in ragged gasps. CT-39.
She skidded to a halt.
The name was there, etched on a small, digital display beside the door.
ROSTOVA, ALINA
And below it,a single, chilling line of text:
STATUS: CONVERGENCE - STABLE
Tears of relief and terror welled in her eyes. Convergence? What did that mean? It didn't matter. Alina was here. She was alive. She was stable.
With a trembling hand, she slammed the access button. The door hissed open.
The cell was not a room. It was a containment chamber. And in the center of it, suspended in a web of clear, nutrient-fed tubes and glowing filaments, was a thing that should not exist.
It was a massive, pulsating globe of raw, pinkish-grey biomass. It had no defined shape, its form shifting like a monstrous, breathing jelly. Veins of black and sickly yellow pulsed across its surface. One sightless, milky eye was embedded near the top, staring at nothing. Another, smaller one, was sunken into its side. And below them, a vast, slack mouth hung open, dripping a clear, viscous fluid. It was a sculpture of flesh made by a mad god, a thing that had once been human but had been unmade and remade into this… this mass.
Eva's mind shattered.
The hope that had sustained her for ten years, through torture and training and hell, did not just die; it was annihilated. It was replaced by a void so absolute, so profoundly dark, that her body could not contain it. Her knees gave way, hitting the cold floor with a crack she didn't feel. A sound escaped her, not a scream, but a choked, animal whimper. Tears, hot and endless, streamed down her face, mingling with the saliva that dripped uncontrollably from her slack jaw. She was a puppet with its strings cut, her soul vomiting out of her eyes and mouth.
Then, a deep, guttural scream tore from the very core of her being. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony, the sound of a soul being flayed alive.
—
In the central chamber, Prime 4 cocked his head, as if listening to a pleasant melody. "Hmm," he mused. "She should be there by now." He pressed a button on the console of his wrist. "The others were quite hungry."
—
Back in the hallway, the other cell doors, from CT-01 to CT-38, hissed open simultaneously.
Monsters shambled, crawled, and scuttled out. They were a gallery of Prime 4's failures and forced evolutions. One had too many limbs, another had skin that sloughed off like wet paper, a third was a tangle of teeth and tentacles. They were mindless, driven by a base, gnawing hunger.
One of them, a shambling thing with elongated arms, bumped into the catatonic Eva, shoving her aside. They ignored her. They had a single, collective purpose. They converged on CT-39.
They fell upon the pulsating biomass that was Alina Rostova.
The sound was wet, tearing, squelching. They bit, they clawed, they consumed. The massive form shuddered, the slack mouth twitching, a final, silent scream from a consciousness that had been trapped in that horrific form.
Eva's scream cut off. She watched, her mind refusing to process the image. "No…" it was a whisper, a child's plea. "No… please… no… stop it… please stop… NOOOOOOOOOO!"
This scream was different. It was not of grief, but of frantic, desperate denial. She scrambled to her feet, lurching forward, throwing herself at the feeding abominations. "GET AWAY FROM HER!" she shrieked, her hands, capable of shattering stone, beating uselessly against their hides, trying to pull them off.
Maya arrived then, her eyes taking in the scene in a single, horrifying instant: Eva's shattered state, the monsters, and the thing in the center being devoured. She understood. She moved to grab Eva, to pull her back from the frenzy, to protect her from being consumed herself.
"Eva, stop! They'll kill you!" Maya yelled, wrapping her arms around her.
But Eva, in her madness, fought her. "LET GO! THEY'RE EATING HER! THEY'RE EATING MY SISTER!"
The struggle was brief. Maya, stronger, wrenched Eva back, but the damage was done. The last thing Eva saw before Maya pulled her into the hallway was the final, twitching remnant of the biomass being swallowed by a creature with a lamprey-like mouth.
The fight went out of Eva. Maya released her, and she sank back to the floor. The screaming stopped. The tears stopped. Everything stopped.
She sat there, slumped against the wall, her gaze fixed on the bloody, empty floor of the cell. Her eyes were wide, but they saw nothing. Her face was a perfect, terrifying blank. There was no grief, no anger, no pain. There was nothing. The void had won. Alina was gone, not just dead, but erased, consumed. And with her, she had taken the last piece of Eva Rostova's soul.
Inside the cell, Maya stood amidst the gore, her own body trembling with a rage so cold it burned. She looked at the monsters, their hunger sated, now milling about in confusion. And then, she began to kill them. It was not a fight; it was an extermination. She tore them apart with a silent, methodical fury, her claws and fists reducing them to offal, their dying screeches the only sound in the chamber besides the wet impacts of her vengeance.
When it was done, she stood panting in the silence, surrounded by the second helping of carnage she had created that day. She looked back at Eva, who had not moved, who was as still and empty as a discarded doll.
The rescue mission was over. There was no one left to save. Only a hollow woman, a grieving predator, and a monster in a black mask waiting in a room of blood