The mist was not a gas that choked, but a thief that stole. It didn't burn the lungs; it simply pulled the world out from under them. Leo's last sight was of the silent man standing, a monolith in the bleary white, and then—nothing.
The awakening was worse.
There was no groggy return to consciousness, no slow blink into awareness. For Derek, it was a switch being flipped. One moment, void. The next, he was lying on a cold, polished slab, his wrists and ankles clamped in soft but unyielding restraints. The room was a perfect, blinding cube of white. No visible doors, no vents, just a seamless, luminous prison.
A voice, the same sterile, genderless tone from before, emanated from the walls themselves.
"Subject D-7. Baseline established. Psychological resilience: moderate. Trauma profile: attachment-based. Experiment 01: Solitude and Perceptual Isolation."
The lights went out, plunging him into an absolute blackness he had never known. The silence was so complete he could hear the blood pulsing in his ears. This was different from the loneliness of the ruins. That was a vast, empty space filled with the memory of sound. This was a solid thing, a pressure on the eardrums, a weight on the soul.
Hours bled into what felt like days. He counted his heartbeats until he lost count. He screamed, just to hear something, and the sound was swallowed by the room, dying inches from his lips. Then, the whispers started.
"You left them, Derek. You always leave them."
It was his mother's voice, frail from the sickness that took her in the early days.
"Why didn't you get the medicine sooner? You were selfish. Out scavenging for yourself."
He squeezed his eyes shut. "It wasn't like that."
"And Zane," a new voice whispered—Jordan's, laced with disappointment. "You let him walk away. You didn't fight for him to stay. You were relieved, weren't you? Relieved the monster was gone so you could play human with the rest of us."
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, hot and shameful. The voices wove a tapestry of his every failure, his every moment of cowardice. They knew his deepest insecurities, the rot he tried to keep buried. They showed him visions: Maya, torn apart by the infected because he was too slow; Leo, bludgeoned to death because Derek froze; Zane, being dissected alive on a steel table, his one human eye fixed on Derek in silent accusation.
"You are the variable of failure," the wall-voice stated calmly. "We are quantifying the point of breakage."
He broke on the third day—or what felt like the third day. He was sobbing, begging for it to stop, promising anything, everything. The lights snapped on. A slot opened in the wall, and a nutrient paste was dispensed. He ate it like an animal, the act itself a new humiliation. The cycle repeated. Darkness. Voices. Light. Food. The parameters of his existence were being ruthlessly simplified. They were stripping him down to his component parts, and he could feel himself coming apart at the seams.
---
Leo woke not to a slab, but to a simulation of his childhood home. He was in his old bedroom. The baseball posters, the worn wooden desk, the smell of his father's cigar smoke lingering in the hall. For a single, heart-stopping second, it was real. Then he saw the cracks in the illusion. The window showed a static, too-perfect blue sky. The sounds from the rest of the house were on a loop.
"Subject L-4. Baseline established. Psychological resilience: high. Trauma profile: authority-based, paternal. Experiment 01: Stress Inoculation and Obedience."
The door to his room swung open. His father stood there, not as the sick, dying man he'd last seen, but in his prime—broad-shouldered, face a mask of stern disapproval, wearing his old military fatigues.
"On your feet, soldier," the simulacrum barked, its voice a perfect, cruel replica.
Leo's instincts, drilled into him from birth, had him standing straight, chin up.
"You are soft, Leonardo. You always were. You surround yourself with weaklings. That talkative girl with her bombs? A distraction. The swordsman with his pride? A liability. They have made you weak."
"They're my friends," Leo growled, his fists clenching.
The figure backhanded him across the face. The pain was startlingly real. "Sentiment is a flaw. We will purge it."
What followed was a brutal regimen of psychological and physical torture disguised as training. The father-figure forced him to run on a treadmill until his muscles screamed, all while listing the ways his "team" would die because of his inadequacy. He was placed in a virtual reality simulator where he had to choose which of his friends to save. Save Maya, and Jordan would be torn apart. Save Derek, and Leo would watch Maya be vaporized by one of her own bombs.
"Your emotion clouds your judgment," the voice intoned. "You must learn to view them as assets. Expendable assets."
The worst was when they brought in a phantom of Zane. "This is not a person," his "father" stated, pointing at the pale, silent figure. "This is a weapon. A flawed one. Demonstrate your understanding. Dismantle it."
Leo was given a blunt metal rod. Zane just looked at him, that familiar, pained understanding in his single human eye.
"I won't," Leo spat.
The punishment was immediate. A searing pain, like electricity, coursed through his nervous system, dropping him to his knees. The simulation showed Maya being tortured, her screams echoing through the white room.
"Compliance ends the suffering. Her suffering."
Gritting his teeth, tears of rage and shame streaming down his face, Leo stood. He walked towards the phantom Zane. He raised the rod. The thing that looked like Zane didn't flinch, only whispered, "Survive, Leo."
Leo brought the rod down on its shoulder, the sound of the impact sickening. He did it again. And again. He was screaming, not in anger, but in self-loathing. He was proving his father right. He was breaking his own code to save someone, and in doing so, he was destroying himself. They weren't testing his strength; they were testing his loyalty, and they were proving it was a weakness they could exploit.
---
Jordan found himself in a vast, dark space, a single spotlight on him. In his hands was his katana. Before him stood an endless series of opponents. They were not infected. They were people. Survivors. Men, women, even older children, their faces etched with fear and desperation.
"Subject J-2. Baseline established. Psychological resilience: very high. Trauma profile: guilt-based, protector complex. Experiment 01: The Trolley Problem, Active Iteration."
A voice echoed around him. "To preserve the few, the many must be sacrificed. Your will is the instrument. Prove your resolve."
The first person, a trembling man holding a plank of wood, charged him. "They have my daughter! They said if I killed you, I'd see her!"
Jordan sidestepped, using the flat of his blade to knock the man unconscious. "I will not kill the innocent."
A shock, violent and paralyzing, shot through him. The spotlight flickered, and for a second, he saw Maya and Derek, restrained, with needles poised above their eyes.
"The next refusal results in permanent ocular damage to Subject M-1."
Another person charged, a woman wielding a pipe. Her eyes were wild with chemically-induced rage. Jordan parried, his movements a dancer's grace, but she was relentless. He knew he could end it with a single, clean strike. To wound her would be a prolonged, messy affair.
"She is already dead. Her mind is gone. You are prolonging her suffering. And theirs."
He saw the phantom needles dip closer to Maya's face. With a guttural cry that tore from the deepest part of his soul, Jordan pivoted and swung. The katana, designed for slicing, cut through the air and the woman's neck with a terrible, final sound. Her body fell. The spotlight remained on him, on the blood staining his pristine blade.
The next opponent was a boy, no older than sixteen.
Jordan's hands trembled. He had taken a life to save a life, and now the calculus of hell demanded he do it again. And again. He fought for what felt like an eternity, his soul eroding with every life he took to save his friends. The Architects were teaching him a horrific lesson: that his desire to protect could be twisted into the engine of his own damnation. He was no longer a protector; he was a reaper, and they held the leash. By the end, he stood in a field of virtual corpses, his katana heavy with invisible blood, his spirit shattered. He had learned to make the hard choice, and the cost was everything he believed himself to be.
---
Maya's experience began deceptively calmly. She awoke in a perfect replica of her father's old chemistry lab. The beakers, the burners, the familiar scent of solvents and old paper. It was a sanctuary.
"Subject M-1. Baseline established. Psychological profile: high intellect, creative problem-solving, emotional core tied to paternal figure. Experiment 01: Guided Application."
A screen lit up on the wall, displaying a complex chemical formula. "Synthesize the compound," the voice instructed.
It was a fascinating challenge. A nerve agent, highly unstable, but the elegance of its structure was beautiful in a terrifying way. She set to work, her hands moving with practiced ease. It was a puzzle, and for a while, she could lose herself in it. When she completed it, a small vial of a clear liquid was produced.
The screen changed. It showed Leo, strapped to a chair, writhing in pain.
"Administer the antidote," the voice said. A second formula appeared. It was a counter-agent.
She worked frantically, her heart pounding. She created the antidote, a milky liquid. A slot opened. "Administer it."
"How?" she asked, desperate.
"Subject L-4 is experiencing simulated cardiac arrest. The compound must be introduced directly into the bloodstream. Intravenously."
A hypodermic needle was dispensed. She filled it, her hands shaking. A panel slid back in the wall, and there was Leo, just as the screen showed, his face pale, gasping for air. There was no time to think. She found a vein and injected the antidote. Leo's breathing evened out instantly. She had saved him. A wave of relief washed over her.
The screen changed. It showed Derek, his skin blistering from a corrosive agent.
"Synthesize the neutralizer."
And so it went. For days, she was the brilliant savior, using her knowledge to fix the horrors the Architects were inflicting on her friends. She was the key, the linchpin. Her intellect was their salvation. It was exhausting, but it was purposeful. She was needed.
Then, the paradigm shifted.
"Experiment 02: Source Code Modification."
She awoke on the cold slab, restrained. The lab was gone. The voice was no longer giving her formulas.
"Your body is a flawed vessel," the voice stated. "Prone to fatigue, emotion, and moral compromise. We will install an upgrade. A biological regulator."
She struggled against the restraints as robotic arms descended from the ceiling. They were cold, precise. One administered a local anesthetic to her lower abdomen. She was numb, but she could feel the pressure, the terrifying sensation of being opened while fully aware.
"No, please! Don't!" she screamed.
She couldn't see, but she could feel the subtle movements inside her. The gentle, horrific shifting of her own organs. They were implanting something. Then, she felt a new sensation—a tiny, squirming, living movement. It was small, worm-like, burrowing deep, finding a home within the very core of her, attaching itself to the lining of her womb.
A primal, utter horror seized her. This was a violation beyond torture, beyond pain. They had planted a parasite inside her. A thing.
"The organism will symbiotically bond with your endocrine and nervous systems," the voice explained, as if discussing a software update. "It will enhance physical resilience, dampen extreme emotional responses, and allow for direct biological monitoring. You are now a closed system. Our system."
They closed her up with a fine, laser-like tool, leaving only a faint, hairline scar. The physical wound was pristine. The psychological one was a festering, screaming abyss. She lay there, sobbing, feeling the faint, alien twitch inside her. Her father had taught her about the beauty of creation, of building things from elements. The Architects had used that same knowledge to desecrate her, to turn her body into their laboratory. She was no longer just Maya; she was a host.
She was no longer Maya. She was the vessel. She was the perfect host. And she was still hungry.
---
The ninety days were not linear. They were a cycle of torture, brief periods of unconsciousness for "assessment," and re-calibration. Derek's solitude was broken by periods of overwhelming sensory overload—blaring lights and sounds. Leo's obedience training was interspersed with scenarios designed to make him rebel, only to be punished more severely. Jordan was forced to spare lives, only to watch his friends suffer as a consequence.
Maya's was the most insidious. The "regulator" inside her began its work. During stress tests, when she would normally panic, a strange calm would descend, feeling artificial and cold. Her reflexes were sharper, but her emotional responses felt muted, as if she were watching herself from a distance. She was becoming more efficient, less human. The thing inside her was weaving itself into her biology, and she could feel her old self being slowly overwritten.
Then, it stopped.
The transition was as abrupt as the first. One moment, Derek was in the black silence, the next, he was collapsing onto a cool, white floor. The light here was different—softer, diffused across a massive, circular chamber. He gasped, his body trembling from disuse and terror.
All around him, people were materializing, blinking into existence as if from thin air. Dozens of them. Then a hundred. More. They were of all ages, all ethnicities, dressed in the same simple grey uniforms. Their faces were a uniform mask of shock, fear, and a deep, profound exhaustion. Some wept quietly. Others stared into space, broken. Many bore faint scars or had the gaunt, haunted look of those who had been pushed to the absolute edge.
Derek scrambled to his knees, his eyes frantically scanning the crowd. He saw Leo, stumbling forward, his usual swagger replaced by a hollowed-out caution. He saw Jordan, who stood with a rigid stillness, his eyes like chips of flint, seeing horrors no one else could.
Then he saw Maya.
She was on her hands and knees a short distance away. She tried to push herself up, but her arms gave way, and she collapsed onto the smooth white floor with a soft cry of weakness. The experiments, the implantation, the constant psychological strain—it had hollowed her out more than any starvation.
Before Derek could move, a figure was there. Eva.
She moved with a fluid, purposeful grace that seemed alien in this place of broken people. She knelt beside Maya, her face, for the first time, showing a flicker of something other than cold knowledge: empathy. She slipped an arm under Maya's shoulders, helping her into a sitting position.
"Easy," Eva murmured, her voice low. "Don't try to move too fast. Your body has been through a storm."
Maya looked up at her, and her eyes were wide with a terror that went beyond pain. "They… they put something… inside me," she whispered, the words barely audible, yet screaming with violation.
Eva's jaw tightened. She gave a short, grim nod. "I know. I'm sorry." Her eyes scanned Maya's face, then flicked down to her abdomen for the briefest second. "The Regulators. I've seen it before."
Derek and the others reached them, forming a shaky, battered circle. Leo put a hand on Derek's shoulder, a gesture of solidarity that felt as fragile as glass.
"You're okay," Leo said, his voice rough. It was a question, not a statement.
"They…" Derek began, but the words wouldn't come. How could he describe the voices? The absolute blackness?
Jordan just looked at Eva. "You. And him." He nodded towards the center of the room.
The silent man stood there, apart from the crowd. He looked exactly as he had in the first cell—unharmed, unaged, untouched by the ninety days of hell. His presence was a calm, unsettling constant in the sea of trauma. His golden eyes swept over the assembled survivors, assessing, cataloging.
"They didn't experiment on you," Jordan stated, his tone flat and accusing.
Eva met his gaze without flinching. "They already have. Extensively. My file is likely closed. Or I am a control subject." She looked at the silent man. "As for him… I don't think they can."
The scale of the room finally dawned on Derek. There were hundreds of them. All survivors, all captured, all put through their own personalized hells. This was the Architects' harvest. This was their breeding ground for whatever came next.
Maya, leaning heavily against Eva, began to shiver uncontrollably. The physical weakness was compounded by the psychological horror of the thing living inside her. She was a prisoner in her own skin.
Eva held her tighter, her voice dropping to a whisper meant for all of them. "The first trials are over. They've collected their data. Now… now they see what we do with it. This is the next phase."
She looked around the vast white room, at the hundreds of broken souls.
"This isn't a prison yard," she said. "It's an arena."
The silent man's eyes finally stopped their scanning and came to rest on their small group. For the first time, he took a step, not towards them, but to a blank section of the wall. He placed his palm against it.
The game had changed. The experiments were over. The real test was just beginning.