Sora Williams - May 2121
The lab had once been a marvel. The pride of GeneX. A monument to innovation, ambition, and humanity's boundless desire to master its own future.
Now, it was a grave.
The windows stretched across the far wall, framing the city like a shattered painting. Far below, the streets pulsed with colour and motion, a living world oblivious to the carnage above.
In here, the air was thick with iron and smoke, the stench of something that has died.
Broken equipment and toppled benches littered the once-sterile floor. Holoscreens glitched in and out of life, casting ghostly fragments of data that shimmered before vanishing. A single console still flickered, the GeneX logo glowing faintly beneath a smear of blood and fingerprints.
One of the technicians now slumped against the wall, eyes staring at nothing, her tablet still clutched in a rigid hand. A streak of red painted the floors from one end of the lab to the other, like a brush dragged by a dying hand. The silence is deafening, save for the low hum of dying machines and the soft hiss of sparking wires.
I dared not move. Not a whisper. One sound, one misplaced breath, and it would be over.
My back is pressed against the cold wall, knees drawn to my chest, every muscle locked in silent panic. The concrete digs into my spine, grounding me in a nightmare I can't wake from. My lab coat, once white and crisp, hangs heavy against my skin, soaked with sweat, grime, and something darker. I can feel the sticky warmth of blood near my sleeve, though I don't dare look to see whose it is.
I clutch my wedding ring with trembling fingers until the metal bites into my skin. It's the only thing that still feels real, the only thing that reminds me I'm alive. Everything else, my colleagues, my work, my purpose, lies shattered around me.
For a moment, I close my eyes.
Then... A sound broke the silence.
Footsteps.
Measured. Calm. Deliberate.
He was coming.
Each step was a hollow echo through the wreckage, slow, confident, as though this ruin was his domain. The flickering light caught his silhouette before I saw his face. Broad shoulders, a dark coat torn at the edge, boots streaked with blood. He moved with purpose, not hesitation.
Langford.
He stepped over a fallen technician's body without a glance. The crunch of shattered glass under his heel made me flinch. For a moment, the glow from the windows caught his features, his skin pale beneath grime and shadow, his eyes dark and empty, like glass that reflected nothing back.
He didn't look human anymore. Not like the boy we had known.
His gaze found me instantly. I froze, the air thick in my lungs.
He stopped just a few feet away, then lowered himself to one knee so his face was level with mine. The movement was quiet, deliberate. Predatory.
"Dr. Williams." His voice was low, almost gentle, but there was something beneath it, something hollow and dangerous.
My throat burned. "Ye… yes?"
He studied me. The look wasn't angry. It was tired. Detached. The kind of exhaustion that came from loss, not rage.
"Do you know who I am?"
I nodded. "Langford…"
His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes flickered. He stood slowly, glancing toward the shattered window and the city beyond it.
For a heartbeat, he said nothing. Then, almost to himself, he murmured, "I never meant for it to go this far."
I swallowed hard. "Then why? The blood, the bodies… these people believed in you. GeneX believed in you."
He gave a short, humorless laugh that echoed off the glass. It wasn't amusement, it was grief wearing the mask of madness.
He rubbed a hand over his face, the motion trembling slightly, before letting it fall away. His eyes looked distant, lost somewhere beyond the skyline.
"I didn't want this," he whispered. "But you took him from me."
The words hit harder than a gunshot. My stomach turned cold.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came. The realisation began to dawn, the reason behind all this destruction, the rage that had driven him through thirty floors of steel and security.
Then his eyes snapped back to me, sharp again, present.
"No," he said, voice cold and composed now. "That doesn't matter anymore."
He took a step closer. "Where are the Lunex vials?"
My breath caught.
Those vials, the culmination of years of research, the crown jewel of GeneX's genetic project. They held the power to rewrite life itself. To heal, to destroy, to change the world. Or end it.
He wasn't here to claim the company. He was here to tear it down, piece by piece, until nothing remained.
"I… I don't have access to them anymore," I lied.
Langford exhaled, slow and sharp. The motion of his shoulders was almost human for a second, almost weary. Then his hand went to his side, drawing a gleaming knife from its sheath.
The cold metal caught the flickering light, and I froze in place.
He takes one step forward, then freezes. His face twists, muscles tightening as if some invisible vice is crushing his skull. His hand shoots to his temple, gripping with a force that makes me flinch. I can almost see the rage and pain warring behind his eyes, a storm too violent to contain.
"ENOUGH!" he roars, and the sound tears through the ruined lab like a cannon blast.
I press myself harder against the wall, heart hammering, ears ringing. His voice cracks, I can't tell if he's shouting at me, at the wreckage, or at a voice inside his own head. The uncertainty makes him more dangerous. Unpredictable.
He lets the hand at his temple drop, but his eyes stay locked on me. I can feel the weight of his gaze, a pressure that pins me in place, and every instinct in my body screams that one wrong move, one twitch, and it will be over.
When he speaks again, his tone is low, icy, measured. "Don't treat me like a fool, Dr. Williams."
He advances, the knife held level, blade glinting. "Get me access to the vials. Then I'll let you walk away."
A lie. I know it. But his eyes, those cold, empty eyes, offer no room for pleading.
I close mine, forcing my mind to a single thought, I cannot let this man have what he wants.
When I look up, I force my voice to steady. "I'm afraid I can't help you."
Langford's gaze pins me, unblinking. For a heartbeat, a flicker of something passes across his face, a shadow of a memory buried deep. Then it vanishes, replaced by the cold, hard expression that makes my blood run ice.
"Then you no longer serve any purpose."
The blade comes first. A flash of silver, a sharp, burning pain ripping through my throat. My hands fly up instinctively, but all I can feel is warmth spilling between my fingers. My knees buckle. The cold floor rises to meet me as the world tilts. The lights and shattered glass blur into streaks of gold and silver.
Langford steps back, boots clicking softly against glass and blood. The hum of dying machines fades, leaving only the slow drip of blood somewhere in the wreckage.
I press my cheek to the floor, every breath a ragged struggle. Pain blooms in waves, sharp and consuming. My vision darkens at the edges, the ceiling and walls dissolving into shadows.
I try to tell myself it's over, that the danger has passed, but the silence is worse than the sound. It presses in from all sides, heavy and suffocating, as if the room itself mourns the lives it has swallowed.
Somewhere beyond the shattered windows, the city goes on. Lights flicker and pulse, unaware, indifferent. People move through the streets far below, lives continuing as if nothing has changed. They cannot know. They will never know.
I close my eyes, letting the darkness rise, letting the pain take me. My fingers curl weakly into the shards of broken glass beneath me. The world narrows to cold, sharp edges and the echo of the last thing I saw, Langford's figure retreating into the wreckage, a predator leaving his mark.
The city lights blur into stars, distant and indifferent. And somewhere deep inside, I know that nothing will ever be the same.
Silence swallows everything.