Raku didn't get an hour of rest like the speaker promised.
He got fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of sitting on the cold floor, back against the wall, staring at the spot where he'd almost died and almost killed something else.
His hand throbbed in slow, angry pulses. Every time he flexed his fingers, his knuckles complained. The silence in the room felt too big, like the air was waiting for him to mess up again.
He glanced at his forearm.
Sometime while he'd been half-out, they'd strapped a metal ring there—smooth, dark, as wide as a wristband. Tiny lights blinked along the edge, following his pulse a little too closely.
"Great," he muttered. "Achievement unlocked: wearable tracking device."
Fifteen minutes of that.
Then the door slid open.
Two guards stepped in. Same blank faces, same dead eyes. If they had hobbies, Raku couldn't imagine them.
One jerked his chin. "On your feet. Director wants you in Testing Hall B."
Raku groaned. "If you guys want to kill me, just say it. No need for all this cardio."
They didn't react.
Zero humor. Zero soul.
He pushed himself up anyway. His legs felt like they'd borrowed someone else's muscles and hadn't read the manual.
"Okay," he muttered. "Tough crowd."
They grabbed his arms—firm, not gentle—and marched him into the hallway.
The facility stretched out in both directions: long, metallic, cold. Not hospital clean. Not school clean. A different kind of clean—the kind that said, if you bleed here, we'll wipe it up and pretend you never existed.
Doors lined the corridor. Some had numbers. Some had hazard symbols. Some had thick shutters where windows should've been, bolted down like the building was afraid of what might look back.
Raku's bare feet slapped against the floor. His breath echoed off the walls, mixing with distant humming machines and the soft, constant buzz of electricity.
He tried not to look too hard at the doors.
He failed.
"What is this place?" he asked, mostly to himself. "Bad decision factory?"
No one answered.
They stopped at a thicker door, reinforced with extra bars and a keypad. One guard tapped in a code. The other tightened his grip on Raku's arm.
The door hissed open.
They shoved him inside.
He stumbled forward—and froze.
Because Osio was there.
Sitting on a metal chair in the middle of the room, ankles tied to the legs, wrists bound behind the back, a strip of tape over his mouth. His hair was a mess, one shoe half off, eyes wide and furious.
He looked like someone had paused him in the middle of a bad day.
"Osio?" Raku blurted.
Osio made a sound that was probably meant to be "BRO" but came out as: "MRRPH!"
Raku took a step toward him.
"Stop," a voice said.
Not the ceiling speaker this time.
A thin man in a lab coat turned toward them from a console near the far wall. He had tired eyes, a too-neat beard, and the posture of someone who'd had arguments with coffee and won by staying awake longer.
He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Ah. Subject R," he said. "Good. We're ready."
Raku's shoulders tensed. "Why is my friend tied up?"
"Because he attempted to attack three agents," the scientist said, casual as weather. "With his head."
Osio made a very offended "MMMMMM" noise.
Raku glared at the man. "Untie him. If you're going to torture someone, torture me. I'm the one who punched your gorilla."
"And the officer," the scientist added mildly. "Yes, we've seen the footage."
He tapped something on his tablet. The lights overhead shifted, sharpening, focusing on the center of the room.
"Bring him forward," he told the guards.
They pushed Raku onto a raised platform in front of a massive metal container. The container shook slightly, something inside thudding against the walls.
Raku pointed at it. "If that's another gorilla, I'm filing a complaint. With whoever runs this hell zoo."
No answer.
The ring around his forearm tightened, just a fraction. He hissed through his teeth.
"What is this thing?" he asked, tugging at it. It didn't move. "Fashion statement? Shock collar on easy mode?"
"Stabilization band," the scientist replied. "You're emitting… interesting readings."
"Good for me," Raku said. "Bad for your customer service score."
The scientist ignored him, fingers flying over the tablet.
"Release unit zero-three," he said.
Locks clanked inside the container. Steam hissed out in thin white strands. The front split down the middle and dragged itself open with a deep, mechanical groan.
Something climbed out.
It wasn't a gorilla.
It had too many limbs for a sane creature. Six? Eight? Raku lost count as it unfolded. Its skin looked like dried, cracked mud over muscle, broken in places by sharp bone ridges along its spine and shoulders. Its fingers ended in hooked claws that scraped sparks from the floor.
Its eyes were the worst. Pale, almost glowing, with no clear pupil—just cloudy light staring out of a skull that didn't look like it should belong to anything that ever lived on the surface.
Raku's throat went dry. "Yo. What is that?"
"Anomaly sample," the scientist said, still not looking up. "Recovered from the Hole Sector."
Osio let out a long, muffled scream. Something like: "MMMMMMMM HOW IS THAT LEGAL?!"
The creature sniffed the air.
Its head tilted.
Then it locked onto Raku.
The ring around his forearm pulsed.
Every hair on his body stood up.
Heat and pressure surged through his veins at the same time—like adrenaline, panic, and static electricity all agreed to carpool.
"Begin activation," the scientist murmured.
The anomaly screeched and sprinted toward him, claws gouging the floor.
Raku tried to move. One of the guards still had a hand on his shoulder, slowing him just enough.
The creature leaped.
Raku threw his arms up on instinct.
It hit something invisible.
The impact shook the room. A shockwave rippled outward, knocking dust from the ceiling. The creature flew backward and crashed into the far wall, leaving a long crack in the reinforced panel.
Raku stared at his hands.
He hadn't felt himself cast anything. He hadn't shouted a magic word. He'd just… not wanted to die, harder than he'd ever not wanted anything before.
"Did I…" he breathed, "just do that?"
The scientist finally looked pleased. His smile sharpened.
"Excellent," he said. "Subject R, full activation potential confirmed. Increase output."
Raku shook his head. "No. No 'full' anything. I didn't agree to—"
Alarms cut him off.
Red lights began to flash. A harsh siren wailed through the hallway outside, then inside, vibrating in his bones.
The overhead speaker crackled to life.
"Warning. Sector breach detected. Stabilization failure in lower levels. All personnel initiate emergency protocol."
The floor shuddered under his bare feet.
The anomaly screeched again, louder, angrier. It scrambled up from the cracked wall and charged, this time veering not just for Raku but toward the nearest movement—Osio, rolling his chair closer by sheer force of panic.
"HEY!" Raku shouted. "Turn it off! Turn it—"
The room tilted.
Somewhere beyond the walls, something massive groaned—a deep, tearing sound, like old earth deciding it was done holding still.
The door at the far end of the hall blew inward. A blast of wind tore down the corridor, throwing papers, tools, and one unlucky technician across the floor.
"THE SECTOR IS BREACHING!" someone screamed from outside.
The platform under Raku's feet cracked straight down the middle.
Osio rocked his chair back and forth like a ship in a storm. His muffled screaming hit a higher pitch. He leaned too far and went over, crashing onto his side with a THUD that shook the floor.
Raku slipped on the fallen chair.
The anomaly barreled toward them, half-sliding as the room continued to tilt.
He grabbed the ropes around Osio's chest on reflex.
"Hold on!" he yelled.
Osio made a noise that definitely translated to: "I AM HOLDING ON, YOU IDIOT!"
The floor split.
Not just a crack—an opening. A jagged maw of darkness tore itself through the room, swallowing tiles, equipment, and anything unlucky enough to be standing there.
The guards went first, their shouts vanishing into the roaring below. The anomaly tried to dig its claws in; the stone sheared away anyway, and it plunged into the black.
The platform broke off like a loose tooth.
Raku and Osio went with it.
For one suspended second, they hung in the air—Raku clutching the ropes, Osio tied to his chair, the ring on Raku's arm flickering wildly.
Then gravity remembered its job.
The facility, the tests, the white walls, the shouting scientist—everything dropped away.
They fell.
Not into a tunnel.
Not into another room.
Down into the place the ocean used to be.
Down into the Hole.