CHAPTER 257: STATIC IN THE VEINS

I walked.

Or maybe I floated. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. My boots made no sound, even though I knew they should. The blood on the floor should have squelched with every step, but it didn’t. Everything was silent. As if the walls themselves were holding their breath.

I passed the shattered helmet.

A cracked lens still reflected the twisted light from the emergency strobes overhead. It looked like an eye. Watching me. Judging me. But I didn’t turn around.

Not because I didn’t care.

Because I didn’t feel anything.

The body was back there. The pale man—or what was left of him. Just another smear on the floor. Another statistic. Another error in this world. He was gone. His name, whatever it may have been, didn’t matter anymore. Neither did mine.

I tried to breathe. It caught halfway in my chest.

There was blood on my tongue. Not his. Mine. I must’ve bitten down too hard.

Strangely, I liked it. The pain reminded me that I’m still in this skin, that I’m still somewhat human.

I kept walking. The hallways blurred together. Pipes hissed overhead. Lights flickered. A burst valve leaked steam in a rhythmic gasp, like something dying but not allowed to stop.

Every step was heavier than the last. The muscles in my legs felt stiff, rubbery. Like they didn’t belong to me. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I looked down at them and saw the blood. It was drying now, crusting at the knuckles. The red was going black.

I didn’t wipe it off.

I just kept walking.

The next hallway had scorch marks along the ceiling. Bullet holes in the walls. A torn nameplate hung from a snapped screw, still twitching slightly as if something had just passed. But there was no one here.

Only ghosts.

I passed a door. Another. Another. Most were open, but I didn’t look inside. I couldn’t. If I looked, I’d see more faces. More test chambers. More cages. More pieces of people who weren’t lucky enough to make it this far.

And right now, I couldn’t survive knowing I was still alive.

Was killing him really worth it?

One corridor turned sharply, lit only by an overhead panel that buzzed like an insect. The shadows bent unnaturally here, cast long by warped glass and broken lamps. My reflection in a cracked screen startled me.

I didn’t recognize it.

Eyes red. Skin pale. Blood everywhere.

Was that me?

I touched the glass. My fingers left smears. I stared at them. At the tremor that never stopped.

Was this what it meant to end a life? Not in the moment, but after?

Not the roar, not the strike, not the bone giving way. But the aftermath. The silence. The blankness that came like smoke through the cracks, curling around the inside of your ribs and whispering: "This is who you are now."

I let the screen go.

A siren groaned from somewhere deeper in the facility. Not urgent. Not even fresh. Just background noise, like a reminder that nothing here was fixed. Nothing here would ever be.

Eventually, I found a door labeled SECURITY - EAST WING.

The panel beside it blinked red. I didn’t bother with finesse. I slammed my palm against it, channeling what little energy remained through muscle and will. The door groaned open an inch, then another, then hissed and allowed me through.

The room smelled like old copper and ozone. Dead air. Multiple screens lined the wall in front of a half-collapsed desk. Someone had been here. Recently. A chair was still spinning slowly, one leg cracked and leaning at a sharp angle.

I limped toward the console.

My fingers hesitated.

Part of me didn’t want to know what was on the screens.

Part of me was afraid to remember what this was all for.

But the other part—the one that wasn’t hollow yet—reached forward.

Static flickered across most of the displays. But one resolved.

Feed 3B.

It looked like a cafeteria.

Rows of metal tables overturned like dominoes in a storm. Food trays scattered across the tile, their contents long spoiled, crusted like dried blood. The walls bore smudges of soot and shrapnel scars. Overhead lights flickered weakly, casting a sickly yellow haze across the wreckage.

And in the center—

Movement.

Not the kind you see. The kind you feel. The kind that ripples through the air like heat before lightning strikes.

Gunfire flared, but only as punctuation. The real battle wasn’t in the weapons. It was in the collision.

Two figures.

One of them tall, broad-shouldered, unmoving like a monument erected to silence. His frame was armored with brutalist prosthetics—angular joints, metal braces, panels embedded directly into his flesh like he had been welded rather than born. His presence dragged the light toward him like a singularity.

The other—chaos incarnate.

Wild, unrestrained, and utterly alive.

Her hair whipped behind her in tangled streams. A snarl was frozen on her face—not anger, not rage. Something older. Something more primal. A look worn by creatures who have bled and survived, again and again, until the memory of safety becomes myth. Her skin was a map of violence. Every scar was a name. Every bruise, a story.

And she was fighting him.

No, not fighting. Clashing like war-gods in a shattered temple. Every motion was a statement. Every dodge, a sentence. Every strike, a declaration of rage long denied.

He tried to grab her. She slipped under his reach. He brought his hand down and the camera feed distorted briefly—his job title still active. But she moved before it could settle, a blur of instinct and ferocity. A flash of metal. A spray of dust.

My breath caught.

There it was.

The reason.

The anchor.

The others.

They were still out there. Still fighting. Still believing.

The fog in my chest cracked just slightly. A shaft of light through the rot.

I leaned closer to the screen. My fingertips dug into the console.

She gave me a chance to get up and fight.

And I couldn’t afford to be a ghost anymore.