The chocolate was stale.
It was a fun-size bar, the kind people hand out on Halloween to kids they don't really like. The edges were white and crumbly, and it tasted mostly like wax and artificial sugar.
To Amon, it was the greatest thing he had ever eaten in his entire life.
He sat on the floor of the cell, his back against the cold concrete wall, letting the tiny piece of chocolate melt on his tongue. He didn't chew. Chewing would make it end faster.
The Short One stood by the door, watching him nervously. He kept checking his watch, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
"You have to eat it fast," the assistant whispered, his voice cracking. "Dr. Valper is coming down the hall. If he sees you with that, he'll fire me. Or put me on the table next."
Amon swallowed the last bit of chocolate. He dragged his tongue over his teeth to get the residue. "Thanks," he muttered. It was the first polite thing he'd said to anyone in a month.
The Short One offered a weak, sick-looking smile. "Just... hang in there, kid. He says today is the last test."
"Yeah," Amon said, looking at the floor. "That's what usually happens when you run out of parts."
The heavy steel door swung open, hitting the rubber stopper with a dull thud.
The Tall One walked in. He wasn't carrying a clipboard today. He wasn't pushing a cart. He was holding a lead-lined canister, gripping it with thick rubber gloves that went up to his elbows. He looked annoyed.
"Get him on his feet," the Tall One ordered. "The higher-ups are cutting our funding. They say a weapon that doesn't activate is just a paperweight. So, we skip the remaining trials. We force the activation."
The Short One hurried over, grabbing Amon by the arm and hauling him up. Amon's legs felt like wet noodles. He leaned against the wall to keep from falling over.
"Force it how?" the Short One asked, eyeing the canister.
The Tall One twisted the heavy cap. A hiss of pressurized air escaped, carrying a smell so foul it made Amon's eyes water. It didn't smell like bleach. It smelled like rotting meat and sulfur.
"This is concentrated miasma," the scientist said, pulling a glass syringe the size of a turkey baster from his pocket. He dipped the needle into the canister and pulled back the plunger. The liquid that filled the tube was pitch black. It seemed to eat the fluorescent light around it. "Extracted from a stray devil on the verge of self-destruction. Pure, chaotic corruption."
Amon stared at the black sludge. "Is it grape flavored?"
"If his Bael genetics are truly dormant, this will trigger a complete biological override to purge the poison," the Tall One explained, ignoring Amon completely. "He will manifest the Power of Destruction, or he will melt from the inside out. Either way, we get a conclusive result."
Amon watched him tap the syringe. "Okay, so no grape. Got it."
That is death, the Voice—Ddraig—whispered. The dragon sounded different today. The low, rumbling anger was gone, replaced by a tight, coiled panic. Boy. Listen to me. That isn't a cut. That isn't a burn. That is pure decay. If he puts that in you, my fire cannot heal it.
"Take a number," Amon thought, his internal voice floating away. He felt heavy. He felt ready for a nap.
The Tall One stepped forward. He didn't bother strapping Amon to a table. He just grabbed Amon by the front of his hospital gown, slammed him back against the concrete wall, and jammed the thick needle straight into his chest, right between the ribs.
Amon gasped.
It didn't feel like a needle. It felt like someone had driven an icicle into his heart, and the icicle was made of battery acid.
The plunger went down. The black sludge emptied into his veins.
The Tall One stepped back, pulling the needle out.
Amon's knees buckled. He hit the floor hard, his chin bouncing off the tiles. He couldn't breathe. The cold spread out from his chest, freezing his lungs, his stomach, his throat. His muscles seized, locking up so tight he thought his bones were going to snap under the tension.
He coughed, a violent, hacking sound that tore at his throat.
Liquid splattered onto the white tiles.
It wasn't black. It was bright, violently bright red.
Amon lay on his side, his cheek pressed against the cold floor, staring at the puddle of his own blood. It was so red. It stood out against the sterile white of the room like a siren.
A lock of his own hair fell across his eyes. It was the same color. Red.
Amon stared at the strand of hair, and then at the blood, and his vision started to blur. The edges of the room went fuzzy. The harsh buzzing of the lights faded into a soft, distant hum.
Red, Amon thought.
The color tugged at something buried deep in the back of his mind. A memory he didn't know he had kept.
It wasn't a memory of this lab.
He saw a woman. She was sitting by a window, the sunlight catching her hair. It was the same shade of red as the blood on the floor. She was humming a song he couldn't quite hear, and she reached out with a hand that didn't hold a scalpel or a syringe. She brushed the hair out of his eyes. Her hand was warm. She smelled like laundry detergent and cheap vanilla soap.
Amon couldn't remember her name. He couldn't remember his own original name, really. But he remembered the soap. He remembered the feeling of sitting there and just... existing. Without it hurting.
Mom, he thought. The word felt strange. Foreign.
A violent spasm ripped through his chest, shattering the memory.
The black miasma reached his brain. The white tiles disappeared. The Tall One's shoes disappeared.
Amon fell into the dark.
It was quiet here.
He was floating in a vast, empty ocean of gray water beneath a sky made of static. The pain was gone. The smell of rotting meat was gone. The smell of bleach was gone.
It was just nothing.
Amon floated on his back. He let his arms drift. It was peaceful. It was the best nap he had ever taken.
Is this it? The voice echoed across the gray water. It didn't come from inside his head this time. It came from everywhere.
A massive shadow shifted in the static sky above him. It was a dragon, made of swirling red fire and jagged edges, looking down at him with glowing green eyes. Ddraig didn't look angry. He looked profoundly disappointed.
You're just going to let the light go out? Ddraig asked.
Amon looked up at the dragon. He didn't feel the need to speak out loud. The words just drifted up. "It's quiet here. I like quiet."
It's nothing, Ddraig countered, his voice rumbling like distant thunder. There is no chocolate here, Amon. There is no sky. No video games. No warm showers. Just zero.
Amon closed his eyes. "I'm tired, Dragon. I tried."
Did you?
Amon paused.
You endured, Ddraig said, the red fire above swirling faster, hotter. You sat there and let them cut you. You let them feed you garbage. You let them pump poison into your heart. That isn't trying to live. That's just waiting to die.
The gray water lapped at Amon's ears. It was so cold. It was getting colder.
Ddraig leaned down, the massive, burning head filling Amon's entire field of vision. The heat radiating off the dragon pushed back the cold of the gray ocean.
Tell me, Ddraig demanded, his voice dropping low, shaking the very fabric of the void. Do you wanna live, boy?
Amon thought about the lab. He thought about the bone saw. He thought about the Tall One's cold hands.
He wanted to say no. He wanted to sink into the water and let it end.
But then he thought about the stale chocolate. It tasted like wax, but it was sweet. He thought about the woman with the red hair who smelled like vanilla. He realized he was only seven—or eight, he still wasn't sure—and his entire existence was just a basement that smelled like bleach.
He hadn't even eaten a pizza yet. He hadn't told the Tall One to go to hell.
It was a stupid, petty, exhausting reason to come back. But it was his.
Amon opened his eyes. He looked at the dragon.
".... Yeah," Amon whispered into the void. "..... I wanna try to live."
The dragon's green eyes flared. A terrifying, jagged grin split the beast's jaw.
THEN WAKE UP AND TAKE IT!
The gray ocean shattered like glass.
In the lab, the heart monitor, which had been holding a steady, high-pitched flatline for thirty seconds, suddenly stopped.
The Short One backed away from Amon's lifeless body, covering his mouth. "He's gone, sir. The miasma stopped his heart."
The Tall One clicked his tongue in irritation, picking up his Dictaphone. "Subject Four is deceased. The Bael trait failed to activate under lethal stress. Scrub the room and incinerate the remains. We'll prep Subject Five for tomorrow."
He turned his back on the body.
Thump.
The Tall One stopped. He looked back over his shoulder.
Thump.
It sounded like a bass drum being hit inside a metal shipping container. It was coming from the boy on the floor.
"Sir," the Short One squeaked, pointing a shaking finger at the glass monitor.
The flatline was gone. In its place was a single, massive green spike that went off the top of the screen.
Thump. Amon's hand twitched. The black veins creeping up his neck suddenly stopped. They didn't fade. They turned violently, blindingly gold.
The puddle of red blood on the floor began to bubble.
"Step back," the Tall One ordered, his clinical calm finally fracturing. "Something is happening. Get the restraints!"
It was too late.
Amon stood up.
He didn't stand up normally. His body snapped upwards like a puppet yanked by invisible strings. His head hung low, his red hair falling over his face.
The air in the room grew instantly, suffocatingly heavy. The glass on the heart monitor spider-webbed and exploded. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered wildly, popping one by one, showering the room in sparks.
Amon raised his head.
His eyes were gone. Where his dull, tired irises used to be, there were only twin pools of glowing, toxic green light.
"Subject Four," the Tall One yelled, taking a step back as the immense pressure in the room made his nose start to bleed. "Stand down!"
Amon opened his mouth. A sound came out that wasn't human. It was the sound of a jet turbine mixing with a grinding metal saw. It was a roar of pure, unfiltered exhaustion and rage.
The hospital gown ripped.
A pillar of dark, crimson-black energy erupted from Amon's back, blowing a hole straight through the ceiling tiles. The Bael Power of Destruction, starved and mutated by the dragon's aura, didn't look like magic. It looked like a localized glitch in reality, erasing the air it touched.
The dark energy twisted, hardening instantly into metal as it wrapped around his small frame.
A gauntlet clamped over his left arm, then his right. Spiked, brutal greaves slammed over his legs. A chest plate, glowing with a pulsing green gem in the center, locked over his heart.
This wasn't the heroic, sleek armor of the Red Dragon Emperor. It was jagged. It was asymmetrical. The metal looked like it had been violently welded together in a furnace of hate. Two massive, ragged wings made of pure red energy tore out of the back plate, completely incinerating the metal table behind him.
The Tall One fell to his knees, clutching his chest. He couldn't breathe. The raw gravity of the aura was crushing him against the floor.
The armored figure took a step forward. The heavy metal boot cracked the concrete tiles.
A helmet slammed shut over Amon's face, sealing away the glowing green eyes behind a sharp, V-shaped visor.
A mechanical voice, cold, metallic, and absolutely terrifying, echoed from the jewel on the armor's chest. It didn't sound like a declaration of heroism. It sounded like an execution order.
[BALANCE BREAKER]
....
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