Days bled into one another within the tungsten box. Time was measured not by the sun, but by the slow, grinding progress of their confinement and the relentless, soul-crushing sound of Wolfen's voice saying, "Checkmate."
He had beaten the three of them—Maya, Derek, and Jordan—at chess two hundred and one times. The first hundred had been instructional. The second hundred were a form of psychological warfare. The two hundred and first was just pure, unadulterated spite.
On the two hundred and second day (or so it felt), Wolfen finally grew bored of his own supremacy. He abandoned the chessboard, slid down the wall, and began methodically dissecting an MRE with the enthusiasm of a surgeon performing an autopsy on a sponge.
Their only contact with the outside world was the soft shff sound of food being slid through the narrow slot at the bottom of the door. Maya's designated meat brick would appear, and she would stare at it with a look of such profound, existential despair that it could have curdled fresh milk.
But the one who suffered most was Eva. Strapped to the vertical slab, muzzled and bound in the heavy canvas, she was a statue of silent misery. She hadn't looked at any of them, hadn't made a sound. Her eyes were fixed on some middle distance only she could see, a wasteland of memory.
Maya, whose own patience had been worn thinner than the broth in their MREs, finally snapped. She couldn't stand the sight of Eva like that. She walked over, her voice soft.
"Eva? Can you hear me?"
There was no response. Not a flicker.
Frustrated, Maya's hands went to the heavy straps, her fingers digging into the tough material, her enhanced strength straining to tear them apart.
"I wouldn't," Wolfen said, not looking up from his reconstituted potatoes. "Those are rated to contain something twice her strength. You'll dislocate your shoulders before you stretch the canvas."
Maya growled in frustration but let her hands fall. Wolfen gestured to the floor beside him. "Sit. Tell me. What exactly happened in that lab? What did she see?"
So, Maya sat. With Derek and Jordan listening in grim silence, she told him. She didn't spare a single, horrifying detail. She described the pulsating, formless biomass, the misplaced eyes, the slack mouth. She described Eva's soul-shattering collapse, the animalistic screams, and the final, gruesome feast as the other failed experiments consumed what was left of Alina.
When she finished, the tungsten walls seemed to press in closer. The air was thick with shared horror.
Wolfen let out a long, slow sigh. It was a sound of weary recognition. "You know," he said, his voice quiet, "you can compare Eva to me now."
Maya frowned. "What do you mean, Wolfen?"
"In terms of suffering. Pain. Loss. The absolute evisceration of everything you are. She's… comparable."
Maya's voice was barely a whisper. "What happened to you?"
Wolfen's gaze became distant, focusing on a memory locked deep behind his pale eyes. For a single, breathtaking moment, it seemed he might actually answer. But then, the shutters came down. He deftly changed the subject, a maneuver so smooth it was almost imperceptible. Eva, from her slab, noticed the shift. Her eyes, for the first time in days, flickered with a spark of awareness.
"You know," Wolfen continued, as if discussing the weather, "Eva is going to be like that for a while. And then, after some time, the grief will curdle. It will stop being pain and start being fuel. She will want nothing but revenge. And then, I'm going to have to step in. And she won't listen to me." He sighed again, a theatrical, world-weary sound. "This is from my personal experience."
He leaned his head back against the cold wall. "Life is like a matchstick. When it's lit on fire, you are born. And as it burns, it slowly turns to ash. So does your life. And eventually, you're dead. You'll die quick, and no one will care about it. Because why would they?"
"You're wrong, Wolfen," Maya cut in, her voice firm. "About the last bit. You have friends who care about you."
Wolfen chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "Friends," he mused, "are the reason some people die." The thought hung in the air, dark and unexamined. Hmm.
He then clapped his hands together, the sound unnaturally loud in the small space. "So! Who wants to lose at chess again?"
The response was a unified, vehement shout that echoed off the impenetrable walls.
"NO ONE!"