Night falls. The capital does not sleep, yet it does not breathe. High tech towers stand still like colossal blocks of steel. LED billboards continue to flicker through the cold mist, reflecting on the train tracks that have ceased operation after midnight.
Wind sweeps through the iron streets. The automatic loudspeaker broadcasts the final bulletin of the day: "Temperature drops to 12 degrees. Air pollution level is high. Recommendation" then cuts off.
No one knows that in just a few minutes, this sky will no longer be artificial blue, but crimson with fire. Beneath the ground, 42 meters below the street.
An abandoned building. No signboard, no cameras. Only a cold steel door, opened by fingerprint and blood. The elevator slides down like free fall. At the end lies the Van Sinh Laboratory.
Pale green fluorescent light scans across the metal floor. Frost from the freezing system coats the glass. Twelve bio-chambers stand in a row. Inside each, thick azure liquid bubbles slowly, as if breathing.
"Temperature stable."
"Artificial muscle cells activated."
"Neural signals… connected."
The lid of the first chamber bursts open. Cold mist floods out, white as snow. A skeletal hand of metal beneath translucent skin. Fingers tremble lightly, as if learning to belong to this world. Its eyes open. Pupils glow red like embers.
Above ground, the city still lives. Though it is 00:21. A high rise apartment in the inner district. Glass windows reflect the red lights of a passing bullet train. In the ground floor security room, a middle aged man sits with arms crossed before the surveillance monitors.
The coffee cup has gone cold. Outside, wind whistles through the cracks, carrying mist and the rusty scent of train tracks. Across the street, a bread stall remains open. A woman in gloves drizzles sauce onto the last loaf of the day.
Her small child sleeps slumped on a plastic chair, head resting against a backpack. She looks up at the sky. No stars. Only the blinking light of a surveillance drone gliding past. A self driving taxi hums across the road, wheels whispering dry and cold.
On the sidewalk, a delivery rider bows his head to his phone, muttering:
"Still getting orders at this hour…"
The wind tosses his hair aside. The city keeps moving, yet no one realizes this shell of peace is only temporary. Beneath the ground. Van Sinh Laboratory.
The second chamber… opens.
The third chamber… opens.
More than ten entities rise, bodies bare, half flesh, half machine. Artificial skin not yet clinging to metal joints.
Some eyes remain shut. Some blaze red. A faint sound echoes through the system: "Neural circuits synchronized at 87%." A man in a silver mask steps forward. His long cloak brushes the floor, each step clanking cold.
He gazes at the twelve creatures like a painter admiring an unfinished canvas.
"Activate Project Fire Guidance."
"Priority target: the data center. Spread information chaos. Cut satellite links."
"If discovered…" he pauses, "let them chase. We need time for Entity Thirteen."*
A steel door slowly rises. Warm air from outside collides with the laboratory's frost, forming a thin mist like grave smoke. The creatures surge out.
Metal claws strike the pavement. Sparks scatter each time they touch the rails.
00:37. Hoa Lac.
The national data center still glows. Inside, dozens of night-shift engineers sit before rows of screens, eyes fixed on streams of green code. A young woman types while yawning, reaching for her water bottle.
White light reflects in her weary eyes. Outside the glass, a shadow slips past. No one sees in time. BOOM!
The western wall explodes. Cold air from servers meets fire, shrieking like tortured steel. The operator collapses, ears ringing. Screens die one by one, leaving only the red blaze of fire alarms.
A creature over two meters tall stands amidst smoke. Its crimson eyes scan humans without emotion. It tilts its head, as if analyzing data, then roars like a jet engine igniting.
The first plasma burst fires. The sky above Hoa Lac erupts. Flames reflect on the glass of inner-city towers. A few sleepless residents squint from balconies, mistaking it for lightning.
Until the ground trembles. BOOM… BOOM… VMMMMM! Apartment windows rattle violently. The guard's coffee spills across the tiles. The child at the bread stall jolts awake, crying in terror.
A cat bolts across the street, self-driving headlights flashing in its golden eyes. Above, warning lights on communication towers all shift to red.
"Emergency alert. Hoa Lac under attack. Immediate evacuation required. All mobile forces prepare for combat."
The voice echoes through loudspeakers, piercing every street, subway station, and toll booth. Surveillance drones shift formation. White beams streak skyward.
Inside the data center, fire and smoke engulf. Engineers flee, slipping on shattered glass. One man clutches a secure hard drive, shouting through the explosions:
"This is national data, it must not be lost!"
He never finishes. The monster seizes him, hurls him against the wall like a doll. The massive servers collapse. LED panels die one by one, as though someone is ripping the city's soul from the cables beneath the earth.
00:40.
From the highways, headlights veer toward the suburbs. Citizens panic, livestreaming on social networks, text scrolling across screens:
"Hoa Lac really exploded!!!"
"Someone saw something not human!"
"Net's too slow… anyone hear gunfire?"
A mother drags her son into the apartment shelter. The steel door slams shut. All lights shift to dim red.
Beneath the ground, in Van Sinh Laboratory, the final door closes. The creatures that departed leave only frost and the breath of machines. The silver masked man still stands.
He stares at the giant screen where the city quakes like a pierced heart.
"Good. Chaos has begun."
"Prepare to awaken Entity Thirteen."
In the darkness at the end of the corridor, a larger, deeper chamber drips fluid into the body of something still asleep.