CHAPTER 148: THE BUTCHER’S BILL

The lab was covered by an absolute silence.

The flashing red emergency lights made the scene look bloody with pulsing bright spots. The psychic scream was gone. The win felt empty. It felt wrong. They hadn’t beaten a monster. They had killed someone who was suffering.

Draven stood over the spot where Subject Alpha had dissolved. His massive greatsword was covered in a nasty, dark stain. He didn’t dismiss his weapon. Instead, he just stood there, his heavy shoulders slumped. With slow, steady movements, he pulled a cleaning cloth from a pouch on his belt and began to wipe the blade. He worked in a grim, focused silence, his face showing no feelings. There was no glory in this kill.

Jonah finally stood up, his legs shaking. The faint memory of the creature’s pain was still in his mind, a cold feeling that would not leave. He looked at the others on his team. Seraph’s face was serious, her eyes checking the ways out. Vanessa was pale, her hands shaking a little as she tried to breathe normally.

"It’s done," Seraph said, her voice breaking the silence. "We did what we had to do. Now, let’s find out why."

She pointed toward the damaged computer terminals. "Vanessa. See if you can pull anything from their servers. Anything at all. They smashed a lot of equipment, but some of these data banks might have survived."

Vanessa nodded, her scared look changing to one of focus. The technical problem was a good thing to hold onto in all the feelings. "Got it." She moved right away, her boots making a soft sound on the broken glass as she went to the computer that was least broken.

Seraph turned to Draven. "You’re with me. We secure the perimeter. Check every cage, every side room. Make sure there are no more surprises."

Draven finished cleaning his sword, the metal now gleaming under the red lights. He didn’t say a word. He just gave a sharp nod and fell into step behind his captain as they began a serious search of the lab.

That left Jonah alone in the middle of the lab, the image of a sneering face still burned into his memory.

"Wait," he called out..

Vanessa stopped her hand just above the terminal’s interface. She looked back at him, her face showing concern. "What is it?"

"The memory," Jonah said, walking toward her. "When I tried to absorb the essence, I saw something. A fragment. A face."

He described it, the image still vivid and cold in his mind. "He was wearing a surgical mask, like a doctor. I couldn’t see his mouth, but I could see his eyes. They were cold. And he was... making a mean face."

Vanessa turned to him, her brow showing concern. "A face is a clue. But a lot of Bureau scientists are cruel. We need more than that."

Jonah shook his head, trying hard to explain. "It wasn’t just the face," he said, touching his head. "There was something else in the memory. A feeling. Like the blight in the Veridian Province, that same feeling of nature being made into something ugly."

He paused, his eyes widening as another piece of the memory clicked into place.

"And there was a trace," he said, his voice dropping. "Deep inside the creature’s pain, I felt something else. Faint and familiar. It felt like a tiny piece of my own magic, but... corrupted."

Vanessa’s eyes opened wide with understanding. "Your magic? Jonah, wait. The psychic tracer you put on Thorne when he escaped. Is that what you’re feeling?"

Jonah suddenly knew the truth, and it felt like a strong hit. The tracker. A tiny bit of Specter’s power, tied to Thorne’s life. This creature was made from his blood, and Thorne was the one who created it. The connection, however faint and twisted, was there.

"Yes," Jonah said softly, the truth making him feel cold all over. "That’s it. It has to be him.

Vanessa’s face became serious, her fear turning into a cold anger. "Okay," she said. She turned to the computer screen. "We’re not looking for just any scientist. We’re looking for him.

"Her fingers moved very quickly across the keyboard, bypassing the damaged main network and breaking into the personnel server through a maintenance port. She didn’t search for "Project Prometheus." She didn’t search for "doctor."

She typed one name: Thorne.

BING.

A corrupted file appeared on the screen. The title was horribly clear.

Personal Research Log: Dr. Aris Thorne.

"I’ve got him," Vanessa said, her voice grim. "I’ve got the monster."

She opened the computer file. What was inside showed how brilliant, yet how cruel, one person’s mind was. It was what Thorne himself had called it: a "Butcher’s Bill."

It was a clear and detailed step by step description of how they made Subject Alpha. Thorne wrote like a master craftsman talking about his work, but his materials weren’t wood or rock. They were living things.

He made a list of the animals they had caught and cut open while they were still alive. He talked about their body parts as if he was buying them at a market. "Item 23: Claws from a Shadow Cat, for fast movement and sharp cuts." "Item 41: Hard outer shell from an Iron-Skinned Beetle, for lasting a long time." He wrote about putting their flesh together, about attaching robot parts to living bone, all without any feeling, like someone writing a how-to guide.

He wrote about how they took Jonah’s blood and roughly made its energy go into the man-made Genesis Core. He named Jonah’s power "the spark," but he didn’t care about it. For him, it was only another piece, the engine that would turn on his living machine.

Reading it, Jonah felt very sick. Thorne was a creator, like him. But Thorne was a bad version of him. Jonah saw the soul in the power. Thorne only saw things to use.

Vanessa went to the bottom of the record, her face pale. The final entry was dated just yesterday. It was short, and every word was scary.

"Subject Alpha is a flawed but necessary failure," she read aloud, her voice shaking a little. "Its regenerative abilities are unstable, and the psychic feedback is... excessive. However, it has proven the core theory. The spark can be contained, even if not perfectly."

Jonah’s blood ran cold. Failure?

Vanessa’s eyes quickly read the last line. She gasped. "All the information from this test has been sent to the Primary Genesis Facility," she read. "Work on the next version will start right away. Subject Beta will be a success."

What was said hit them very hard.

Primary Genesis Facility.

Subject Beta.

This lab, this whole awful place where things were cut apart, was not the main goal. It was just a first attempt. An early test station. A place for their "broken mistakes."

The true danger, the real center of the Genesis War, was in another place.

And they were already working on the next one.