The weeks dissolved into a suffocating gray routine. For Artur, each day in the Gym was a replica of the last—a cycle of calculated humiliation and monitored exertion. He was no longer a man; he was a variable in an equation Dr. Thorne was desperately trying to solve. He lifted weights that defied reason, ran on treadmills until the machines smoked, and dodged laser beams with an efficiency that unsettled his observers. His body had become something alien to him, a machine of flesh and bone that refused to break, healing at an unnatural pace, growing stronger with every test.
But his mind… his mind was wearing thin.
He wasn't being trained. He was being dissected alive. Every movement recorded, every heartbeat analyzed, every drop of sweat collected. He was a lab rat—and the maze grew more insulting with each passing day.
The breaking point came on a Tuesday, during a test that distilled everything he despised.
They placed him in the center of the Gym, but this time there were no weights, no drones. Instead, the world around him flickered and reshaped itself. High-fidelity holographic projectors reconstructed 26th Street around him. The artificial sky turned purple. The building facades, rendered in photographic detail, seemed to sweat beneath the sickly light.
It was a simulation.
A digital cage built from his worst memory.
"The objective is to test your threat recognition patterns and tactical response in a simulated—but familiar—environment," Thorne's voice echoed, disembodied and clinical. "The projections cannot harm you. Treat them as you would a real enemy. Begin."
From the holographic wall of a toy store, a shimmering arachnid creature materialized. It was perfect in its unreality, moving with the same nightmare fluidity he remembered. In his hands, they had not given him his axe. Instead, they handed him a heavy polymer replica, embedded with sensors to measure force and angle.
Artur stood still, the plastic axe in his grip feeling like an insult.
He was being asked to fight the ghosts of his demons for the entertainment of scientists behind glass.
"Artur, the test has begun," Thorne prompted.
He looked at the approaching creature. A contempt so deep, so absolute, rose within him that it eclipsed even anger. With a weary exhale, he moved.
He did not fight with the desperate fury of 26th Street.
He moved with cold, brutal efficiency.
He used the replica not as a weapon, but as a pointer—marking weaknesses he now knew by heart. A strike where a leg joint would be. A motion to crush the cluster of eyes. The creature dissolved into pixels. Another appeared. He repeated the process.
A hound.
A slender thing.
One by one, he dismantled them—not as a warrior, but as a slaughterhouse worker on an assembly line.
"Interesting," Thorne's voice noted. "The Asset is no longer employing maximum-force strikes, but precise attacks targeting structural joints. Energy conservation pattern—"
That was it.
That phrase.
The reduction of his survival, his pain, to an "energy conservation pattern."
Artur stopped.
Mid-motion.
The replica hovered inches from "severing" a holographic hound's head.
He simply… stopped.
"Artur, continue the test," Thorne said.
He lowered the plastic axe slowly.
And let it fall.
The dull thud of polymer against rubber was pathetically soft—a hollow sound that echoed the futility of it all.
He turned.
Not toward the next projection, but toward the vast mirrored glass panel spanning the entire wall.
He walked toward it slowly, ignoring the flickering holograms dissolving around him. He stopped a meter away, knowing that dozens of eyes watched him from the other side.
He couldn't see them.
But he could feel them.
He raised his hand and pressed his palm against the cold glass. Not with force. Just contact—a prisoner touching the bars of his cell.
And he waited.
In the observation room, the sudden stillness sent a ripple of unease.
"What is he doing?" a technician asked.
Barros, watching from the back, felt a knot tighten in his stomach.
He knew.
The tension had finally snapped.
"Open a channel to my private observation room," Barros ordered. "And tell security to stand by—but do not enter unless I give the order."
He stepped into a small adjoining room—a concrete box with a single chair and table. This was where the façade of "science" was stripped away.
He sat.
And waited.
Minutes later, the door opened.
Artur entered, escorted by two Praetorian guards. He still wore the gray suit, but something in his posture had changed. He was not a prisoner being led to interrogation.
He was a deposed king entering negotiations—on his own terms.
The guards remained outside.
Artur did not sit.
He walked to the corner where his real axe rested in a containment rack. Slowly, deliberately, he took it in hand. The weight of wood and steel seemed to restore something inside him.
He did not look at Barros.
Instead, he began to clean the blade with a cloth—a methodical, almost meditative act.
"It's over, Barros," Artur said.
His voice was calm. Empty.
And the absence of anger was the most dangerous thing in the room.
Barros remained seated. "What's over, Artur? The test?"
Artur lifted his eyes.
They were tired—but something cold burned deep within them.
"Everything. The tests. The needles. The holograms. The cage." He gestured faintly, encompassing the room, the Gym, the entire facility. "It's over."
He went back to polishing the blade.
"I walked into that hell by choice. Not for me—for a child who was screaming. I fought with everything I had. I bled. I broke. And I survived."
The cloth paused.
"And what was my reward?"
He placed the axe on the table between them. The sound of steel against metal landed like a final punctuation.
"You."
He leaned forward, hands braced against the table.
"You prod me. Measure me. Treat me like some curious specimen that crawled out of a crack in the universe. You throw me into a digital cage and tell me to fight my own nightmares while you scribble notes about how 'efficient' I am."
His voice sharpened, a thread of steel cutting through the calm.
"I am not a specimen. I am not an asset. I am not your weapon."
He straightened, body taut as drawn wire.
"I fought my war. I won it."
A pause.
"And now… I want to go home."
The demand was so simple, so human, it felt undeniable.
Barros listened in silence, letting the weight of those words settle into the room. He did not argue. Did not defend the DAO.
He just listened.
When the silence stretched long enough to ache, he stood.
"You're right, Artur," Barros said quietly. "About everything. We used you. Studied you. Turned you into a resource. We did all of that because we were desperate. Because you are the only thing that has ever worked."
He stepped closer.
"You want to go home. Your forest. Your cabin. Your silence. You think you deserve that peace."
A pause.
"You do."
His expression darkened.
"But you can't have it."
Artur frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the peace you're looking for doesn't exist anymore. Not for you."
Barros met his gaze, unflinching.
"You don't have a home anymore, Artur."
The words landed like a silent blow.
A chill crept through him.
"The testimony from Carla… Thorne's theory… it's all correct," Barros continued. "You're not just a hunter. You're a beacon. Your biology—your… 'reality'—it shines in Thalassoma's darkness."
He took another step.
"Wherever you go, you draw them. They may not know where you are now—but they will look. They will feel you."
He shook his head slightly.
"Your forest won't be a sanctuary. It will be the next battlefield. Your cabin won't be a refuge. It will be a target."
His voice hardened.
"Your forest is just a bigger cage, Artur. And this time, there won't be DAO walls to protect you."
Artur stared at him.
Understanding crept in—slow, terrible—replacing anger with something colder.
Something close to fear.
The freedom he wanted…
…was a death sentence.
Barros delivered the final blow without malice. Just truth.
"With us, locked in here, you have a purpose. You have an enemy to fight. You have a chance."
A beat.
"Alone, in your forest, waiting for them to find you…"
His eyes did not waver.
"You only have a chance to die."