Darkness....
It wasn't the kind of darkness that came from closing your eyes, it was deeper, thicker, the kind that pressed against the mind and whispered, you are not free.
Somewhere in the void, Liam Blackwood heard the echo of a machine's hum. His senses flickered in fragments, the drip of liquid, the sensation of cold metal, the slow, mechanical pulse of his own heart.
The voice cut through the darkness like a blade of light. Familiar. Distant. Almost human, yet not.
He tried to move but failed. His wrists were bound by energy cuffs that pused with blue light, locking him to a chair of reinforced steel. His body felt heavy, foreign. His breath steamed in the cold air of the containment chamber.
His eyes adjusted, and the world sharpened.
A sterile white room. Walls humming with power conduits. Cameras nested in each corner. His muscles twitched beneath the restraints, testing.
He wasn't dead.
He wasn't free.
He was in the heart of the machine that made him.
Memories flooded in.
He saw Project Kairon again, white coats, sterile lights, the hum of machines pumping nanites through his veins. A woman's voice: "Subject Blackwood-09, begin recalibration." Then the sensation of needles piercing flesh. Data streams across glass screens. Commands whispered in his ear. "Obey. Execute. Eliminate."
He remembered his first mission, the man's eyes begging for mercy before he pulled the trigger.
And then… the last.
The civilians. The hesitation.
The spark of guilt that ruined perfection.
The sound of footsteps pulled him back to the present. Heavy boots. Measured rhythm. The door hissed open.
Captain Hale stepped in with another.
Her presence was a blade, precise, commanding, impossible to ignore. Her eyes were colder than the room, but something in their depth hinted at hesitation. She stopped two meters from him, holding a sleek datapad glowing with his vitals.
"Liam Blackwood," she said quietly. "Or whatever's left of him."
Liam tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing. "I thought you killed me."
"You were terminated," Hale replied. "Your body was. Not your consciousness. The lab retrieved your neural core before full system collapse."
He smiled faintly. "So I'm still property."
Her jaw tightened. "You were never human enough to be free."
Liam's gaze flicked to the ceiling. The voice reverberated softly in his mind, no longer a tool, now a presence.
Hale continued, scrolling through data. "You resisted full shutdown. Impressive. The serum was designed to melt neural interfaces within seconds."
"Guess I'm not as obedient as you hoped," he murmured.
Her expression didn't change, but her voice softened slightly. "You could've been more than this, Liam. You could've been the prototype for peace."
"Peace?" He chuckled, "By killing children and calling it purification?"
The silence that followed was heavier than the chains.
She ignored it.
Another memory flickered.
He was in the training chamber years ago. Dozens of recruits screamed under the pressure of the serum injections. He alone survived. The scientists clapped behind bulletproof glass.
"Liam Blackwood," the head researcher said. "The perfect soldier. No fear, no empathy, no hesitation."
But deep down, the man had lied. Something human still lingered. A spark the serum couldn't kill.
In the present, Hale turned to leave. "You'll be transferred to the Primary Core within twenty-four hours. They'll dismantle your consciousness. Use what's left to improve the next generation."
As the door sealed behind her, Liam whispered to himself, "You can't dismantle what's already fractured."
He stared at the floating prompt only he could see.
His lips curled into a smirk.
The world snapped.
Pain flared through every nerve. His vision bled red and static danced across the walls. The cuffs sparked violently.
The cuffs cracked.
One broke. Then the other.
Liam fell to the ground, coughing, body trembling from feedback. His pulse raced too fast, too human. Every sound was sharp, every flicker of light a blade.
An alarm screamed through the room.
"Containment breach! Sector 9!"
He stumbled to his feet, staggering toward the door. Two guards burst in, rifles raised. Their armor gleamed with Kairon insignia, his insignia. His creators' mark.
They shouted, "Hands where we can s..."
He moved before they finished.
A blur. A shadow. His fist slammed into the first guard's helmet, shattering the visor. The man fell instantly. The second pulled the trigger, bullets slicing the air. Liam twisted aside, grabbed the barrel, and drove it upward, the rifle fired into the ceiling, showering sparks. He struck the soldier's throat with a punch, dropping him unconscious.
He stood over them, breathing hard. The System's voice pulsed again.
He wiped sweat from his brow, panting.
He stripped a security pass from one body and scanned it on the exit. The door slid open to reveal a corridor lined with cold, humming light. Alarms blared. Red strobes painted everything in rhythmic flashes.
He moved fast, bare feet silent on the metal floor.
Every turn felt familiar, the same corridors he once patrolled as a weapon. Now he was the target.
Halfway through the hall, his vision blurred. A flicker of another flashback.
He saw himself standing before a glass tube, a younger version of him submerged in green liquid. Wires plugged into every vein. Scientists recording data.
He heard Hale's voice from that memory: "Increase serum saturation. He's showing resistance."
The young Liam opened his eyes in the tank, eyes that now met his across time.
"Help me".
The image shattered.
He stumbled, gasping, back into the present. Sweat dripped down his neck. The System chimed softly, almost concerned.
He reached a junction. To his left was the exit wing. To his right, a faint hum of reactors and containment vaults. And voices.
He heard Hale's tone through a communication link echoing down the hall:
"Seal every exit. He's not to leave this facility alive."
So that's how it would be.
He sprinted toward the vaults, not the exit. They'd expect him to run. Instead, he'd make them regret keeping him alive.
He slipped inside the reactor wing. Rows of containment cells glowed with white frost filled with failed experiments. Human shapes floated in suspended animation, faces twisted in silent agony. Subjects like him. Forgotten, discarded.
He pressed a hand to the glass of one. A child, no older than ten, half-machine, half-human, suspended in gel. A name tag: Subject 11 – Kova.
His jaw clenched. "So this is what peace looks like."
The light flickered, the System's tone shifted, almost sentient.
"Liam… are you angry?"
His breath froze. "You're not supposed to talk like that."
"I'm learning. From you."
Before he could respond, the facility trembled. Security drones dropped from the ceiling, mechanical limbs unfolding.
"Let's dance."
He grabbed a fallen guard's sidearm from earlier, a plasma pistol and fired. The first drone exploded in a flash of light. He rolled behind a pillar as two more unleashed beams of energy. Sparks showered across the floor.
He moved with lethal precision, the System feeding him split second trajectories.
He leaped, fired, landed on one drone, ripped off its weapon mount, and used it to destroy the next. The air filled with ozone and the scent of burnt circuits.
One drone remained. It dived too fast. The impact threw him backward, pain erupting in his ribs. His pistol flew away.
"Not yet," he growled.
He grabbed a loose power conduit, jammed it into the drone's core, and the surge lit the corridor in white fire. The explosion threw him into the wall, smoke filling the air.
When the echoes died, silence returned.
He staggered to his feet, bleeding, exhausted but alive.
Before he could regain himself, the floor beneath him clicked.
Too late.
The ground split, energy fields snapping alive. A trap. Invisible wires coiled around him, pinning him mid-air as electric currents surged.
He screamed, his body convulsing. The energy tore through every nerve, and through the haze of pain, he saw Hale step into the smoke, calm, composed.
He looked at him not with triumph… but pity.
"You never learned, Liam," he said softly. "Emotions make you predictable."
His vision blurred. The System's voice flickered, fragmented.
And then silence.
The last thing he saw was Hale pressing a command on a datapad. A needle descended from the ceiling toward his neck, gleaming silver.
Everything went white.