The silence in the tent after Prime 5's opening words was absolute, heavier than the tungsten of their former prison. He had bowed, confessed, and now he was weaving a tapestry of a past so horrific it made their own suffering feel like a prelude.
"There was a boy," Prime 5 began, his voice losing its synthetic quality, becoming hauntingly human, "who lived in a small village, nestled in a valley surrounded by ancient, whispering forests. His family was wealthy, old money that shunned the spotlight. He had a father who taught him to whittle, a mother who sang old folk songs while she gardened, and a sister who followed him like a joyful shadow. He had an uncle who would visit with pockets full of strange candies and wild stories."
"He didn't have many friends at the school he rarely attended—he was too far ahead, his mind a hummingbird flitting where others crawled. But he had one. A best friend. A girl with fierce eyes and a laugh that could light up the gloomiest day. Her parents treated him like a second son, their home a second sanctuary."
"The boy," Prime 5 continued, a faint, tragic smile in his voice, "had a simple, pure heart. He believed in one thing, a creed he had carved into the bark of his favorite tree: Help those in need, and all your problems will be solved. He would help the elderly carry their shopping, fix a broken fence for a neighbor, babysit the restless children in the park. He believed goodness was a currency that paid its own dividends. He had no idea of the bankruptcy that awaited him."
The man's shoulders slumped. "For a month, his parents grew distant, their faces etched with a fear he couldn't comprehend. They grounded him for no reason, locking him in his room, their eyes darting towards the windows as if expecting a storm. Then, it came. But it wasn't a storm. It was the Thanatos Plague."
The name hung in the air, a death rattle.
"The boy saw it all from his bedroom window. The world he knew, the world he had tried to mend with small kindnesses, was torn apart. Not by bombs, but by teeth. He saw Mr. Henderson from down the lane, the man whose roof he'd helped patch, tear out Mrs. Gable's throat. He saw the children he'd played with in the park, their small bodies now puppets for a ravenous hunger, turning on their parents. It was a carnival of carnage, a festival of flesh, and he had a front-row seat."
"Then, the monsters broke down the big, oak door of his own home. The sounds from below were unspeakable. His sister burst into his room, her small body trembling, her face a mask of snot and tears. Then his parents stumbled in. His father… his strong, quiet father… was covered in bites, his arm hanging by a thread of tendon. His mother… her eyes were gone. Just… empty, bleeding sockets."
"Somehow, his father, with the last dregs of his will, herded them to a back exit. He shoved the boy and his sister out into the cold air, then slammed the door and locked it from the inside. The last thing the boy saw through the small window in the door was his father, smiling at him, a final, heartbreaking act of love, as a dozen hands pulled him down and began to tear him limb from limb. The last thing he heard was his mother, still alive, screaming as her stomach was torn open and her organs were pulled out and consumed while her heart was still beating."
Prime 5 was trembling now, his story no longer a recitation, but an exorcism. "The boy… froze. The sound of his mother's screams… it broke something in his mind, a fundamental pillar that held up his reality. Then, some primal instinct took over. He grabbed his sister, shoved her into the family car, and drove. He didn't know where to go. There was only one place left. His best friend's house."
"He left his sister sobbing in the passenger seat, the doors locked, and ran inside. The scene was a mirror of his own home. Her parents… they were turned. But not fully. They were still aware, their eyes pleading from faces contorted by hunger. He… he killed them. With a fire poker. He killed the people who had been like a second family to him. He took his best friend, her hand cold and shaking in his, and fled back to the car."
"He drove blindly, into the woods, the only place he could think to go. But the world was already there. An older couple, survivors, pointed hunting rifles at his car, forcing him to stop. In that moment of hesitation, the dead found them. It was chaos. He was separated from them. From his sister. From his best friend."
He paused, the memory a physical weight. "After an hour of running, his lungs on fire, he ran into the same couple. They were cornering a young girl, not his sister, but in his shattered mind, she was everyone. He didn't think. He picked up a heavy stone and… and he brought it down. Again. And again. And again. Until their heads were just… pulp. He had killed to protect. Now he had killed in rage. The boy who helped old ladies with their shopping was gone."
"Months passed. He became a ghost, a feral thing. He killed countless people, not for food, not for supplies, but for information. 'Have you seen a girl?' he would snarl, his voice ragged. 'Have you seen my sister?' He left a trail of bodies, each one a failure, a testament to his growing emptiness."
"Then, one day, he woke up in a lab. In a cell. The Architects had found their perfect specimen: a human soul already hollowed out, ready to be filled with their designs. His experiments began." Prime 5's voice dropped to a whisper. "They were more painful, more gruesome, than all of yours combined. They broke his body and rebuilt it a hundred times. But the most monstrous… the most unforgivable… were the ones they performed on his brain. Every day. Every single day, they would shut it off. Not for a second. For five full minutes. They would induce total, conscious brain death. He would be trapped in the absolute, sensory-deprived void, a prisoner in his own corpse, forced to relive the moment of his mother's screams on an endless loop, with no ability to scream himself. It was a torture designed to shatter a god."
"He was eventually transferred, a broken tool, to be used. They would send him out to kill humans, to kidnap survivors. But his brain was in such bad condition, his psyche so fractured, that he would only kill. He was a weapon with no safety, no aim. They had difficulty controlling him. So, they locked him away again."
"Then, a chance. The hybrids in the facility planned an escape. He helped them, not out of altruism, but out of a final, sputtering ember of the boy's creed: help those in need. They traveled together. Their numbers dwindled. And on that journey… the boy lost his powers. The very things the Architects had grafted onto him, the source of his terrible strength, faded, locked away by trauma or design."
Prime 5 finally looked up, his grey eyes, visible above the cloth, glistening with unshed tears. He looked at each of them in turn.
"Do you know who he is?"
The pieces clicked into place with the force of a thunderclap.
"The boy lost his powers," Maya whispered, her voice trembling.
"Traveling with a group," Jordan added, the realization dawning like a slow, sickening sunrise.
"Wolfen," Eva breathed, the name not an accusation, but a revelation.
Prime 5 nodded slowly. "Yes. The man you know is the grave of that little boy. The birth of a dead man. The lost powers… that is a problem I can fix. I am already working on an antidote for the inhibitor. But the one problem I cannot solve… is the emptiness inside his heart."
He let that truth settle, a stone in the stomach of everyone present.
"Oh," he added, as if remembering a minor, tragic detail, "it just seems that he wants to die as quickly as possible. That is why he manipulates you. Because if you are there with him, he feels a flicker of obligation. A reason, however faint, to not walk into the darkness. If you aren't there… there is a very high chance he would simply lie down and let the world take him. He thinks of himself as a failed son, a failed brother, a failed friend. A failed experiment. He believes his very existence is a monument to his own inadequacy."
"We have to go after him," Jordan said, his voice fierce, looking at the others. The chess games, the casual cruelty, the terrifying power—it was all a mask for a profound, suicidal despair.
"You're right," Derek said, his earlier frustration replaced by a grim determination.
Maya looked at Eva. Eva was staring at the ground, but her fists were clenched, her knuckles white. The story of Wolfen's loss, the systematic annihilation of his entire world and his very self, had not diminished her own pain, but it had placed it in a terrifying new context. Her grief was a deep, personal lake. His was an ocean, and he was drowning in it.
"Yeah," Eva said, her voice hoarse but clear. "We should go."
Prime 5 gave a slow, sad nod. "Wolfen has stayed with you all because, I think, he considers you all family. A strange, broken, dysfunctional family, but family nonetheless." His gaze rested on Eva. "Family who he must, no matter what, annoy and manipulate, because that is the only way he knows how to care. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go."
He stood, and as silently as he had entered, he slipped out of the tent, leaving them alone with the echoing horror of his story.
For a long time, no one spoke. The image of Wolfen—the kind boy, the traumatized survivor, the tortured subject, the empty man—was now seared into their minds.
"Even after all this," Eva finally said, her voice barely audible, "he still smiles. Even if it's a fake smile… he does smile."
It was the most heartbreaking realization of all. The smile was not a sign of happiness, but a final, desperate act of that little boy's creed. A performance of normalcy, a mask to help them, because helping others was the only thing he had left, even when he believed nothing could ever solve the cataclysm inside him.
And so, in the quiet of the tent, surrounded by the ghosts of their own pasts and the terrifying truth of Wolfen's, they began to plan. They weren't just going after a leader or a weapon. They were going to find a lost, broken boy who had been dying for a very, very long time, and somehow, they had to convince him to live.