CHAPTER 34: A SACRIFICE

They were never supposed to end up like this.

The ground beneath City E7 pulsed faintly, as if the earth itself were alive and restless. Each footstep from the squad echoed through the hollow skeletons of buildings long abandoned, monuments of glass and steel now claimed by ash, vines, and silence. The air hung heavy with the acrid scent of burnt metal, smoke, and decay, the ghost of a civilization that had died screaming.

Captain Richard Jing led the unit forward through the ruins, their boots crunching over fragments of charred bone and shattered circuitry. The remnants of Division banners fluttered faintly from broken poles, their insignias faded beyond recognition. His men were tired, eyes sunken, nerves frayed, but duty had driven them this far.

That day, however, something inside him finally broke.

They found the missing. Or what remained of them.

Three figures crouched in the ruins, two men and a woman. The survivors’ eyes gleamed faintly in the dim light of the squad’s flashlights, the pupils slit like predators caught between worlds.

Their movements were jerky, twitching as if their bodies fought an internal war between muscle and instinct. Yet behind the feral glaze, there was something heartbreakingly human, fear, confusion, maybe even a plea for salvation.

Lance, ever the cautious one, raised his rifle. "Captain, they’re compromised."

"Wait." Richard lifted a hand, his tone sharp enough to cut through the tension.

Arden, the squad’s medic, hesitated before stepping forward. His scanner beeped erratically as he examined the trembling woman.

"Captain..." His voice wavered. "They’re... not completely gone."

Richard’s jaw tensed. "Vitals?"

"Unstable," Arden muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. "But..."

"But what?"

He paused, staring at the readings in disbelief. "She’s pregnant. About a month along."

The words hung heavy in the air, an accusation against the gods.

"Pregnant?" Lance’s voice cracked with disbelief. "That’s impossible. She’s one of the missing soldiers, right? How could she even..."

"I don’t know," Arden whispered. "But her physiology... It’s changed. Whatever did this to her, it rewrote her from the inside out."

Richard looked at her again, really looked. Her face was twisted in agony, eyes wide with some primal rage she couldn’t control. Her hands clenched and unclenched, fingers tipped with claws that shouldn’t have been there. He saw the tremor of her chest, the pulse in her throat, something inside her was alive, moving. And suddenly, the pieces aligned in his mind with horrifying clarity.

"This mission..." he said quietly, voice rough with the weight of realization. "It was never about rescue."

Lance frowned. "Sir?"

Richard’s gaze swept across the ruins, the faint metallic gleam of abandoned containers half-buried in rubble. "We weren’t sent here to find anyone. We were sent here to replace them."

The squad exchanged uneasy glances.

"What do you mean, Captain?" Arden asked, though the fear in his eyes said he already knew.

Richard kicked aside the debris until a rusted metal crate emerged, its tag catching the light. The words on it made his stomach twist.

[PROJECT: TAINTED BLOOD.]

"They’re experimenting on soldiers," he said, his tone flat.

"What?"

"Top performers. Division’s finest. Splicing human DNA with animal sequences. To make us faster, stronger, harder to kill." His voice hardened. "They sent us here as the next batch."

Arden swallowed hard. "So if it works..."

"We become their perfect soldiers." Richard’s eyes darkened. "And if it fails..."

He turned back toward the woman. She stared at him through eyes that glowed faintly blue, flickering with a light that didn’t belong to any human. Her expression was a war between pain and fury, her body trembling as something beneath her skin moved like a shadow struggling to be born.

"...we become that."

Silence. A long, suffocating silence. The kind that presses against your ribs and makes your own heartbeat sound like thunder.

At last, Richard muttered, "This isn’t survival anymore. This is slaughter disguised as science."

Night fell like a suffocating curtain.

The air was heavy with the scent of smoke and ozone. Their campfire crackled weakly beside the portable generator, its hum the only steady sound in a world gone dead. No insects, no wind, not even the whisper of leaves. It was as though nature itself refused to breathe here.

Richard sat at the edge of the light, his rifle across his lap, eyes scanning the empty horizon. The others were scattered around him in exhausted silence. Lance sat with his back to a broken pillar, half-awake, pretending calm.

Arden hunched over his scanner, replaying data he couldn’t comprehend. Rhea, Owen, and the twins, Mark and Zia, slept huddled close together, their faces hollowed by fatigue and fear.

For a fleeting moment, Richard thought about home, about Ahce. Her voice over the comm, her steady hands on his face before deployment. He wondered if she’d known the truth of Division’s orders. If she had, would she have tried to stop him?

Then he heard it.

A sound.

Soft. Faint. Like claws dragging over concrete.

"Did you hear that?" His voice was barely a whisper.

Lance’s head snapped up, his rifle already rising. "Yeah. East side."

They both turned toward the ruins. For several seconds, there was only the low hiss of the fire. Then, movement, a blur at the edge of sight. Something emerged from the darkness.

The creature’s limbs bent at unnatural angles, skin stretched thin over twitching muscle. Its mouth split open too wide, revealing bone-like teeth that caught the firelight. Its eyes glowed a molten amber.

"CONTACT!"

The gunfire shattered the stillness. Lance’s rifle barked three sharp bursts, tearing through the creature’s chest, but two more appeared from the trees. Then five. Then more.

"WAKE UP! MOVE!" Richard roared.

The camp exploded into chaos.

Mark scrambled for his weapon but was slammed to the ground before he could fire. Blood sprayed as the creature tore into his arm, its claws raking through fabric and flesh alike.

"GET IT OFF HIM!" Richard lunged forward, driving his combat knife into the thing’s neck. The blade hit bone. Black blood gushed hot and foul. It didn’t scream, it just twitched, eyes still locked on him until it fell still.

But there were too many.

"Fall back to the corridor!" he shouted. "Use the debris for cover!"

Lance moved beside him, firing in tight bursts. "They’re surrounding us, Captain!"

"I know!"

They fought through smoke and debris, retreating into the skeletal remains of a lab. Arden dragged the bleeding Mark behind cover while Zia limped, one leg slashed open. The air was thick with gunpowder and screams, the sharp tang of blood mingling with the metallic stench of the ruins.

Then, through the haze, Richard saw her.

The woman. The pregnant survivor.

She stood at the edge of the clearing, half-shrouded in shadow, her eyes now glowing an eerie electric blue. The veins beneath her skin pulsed with light like bioluminescent wires.

She didn’t move. Didn’t attack.

She simply watched.

"Don’t shoot her," Richard ordered, voice low but firm.

"Captain..."

"I said don’t!"

And then, everything stopped.

The creatures froze mid-lunge, claws inches from the squad. A heartbeat later, they began to retreat, melting back into the darkness, their snarls fading into the windless night.

When it was over, only silence remained.

Lance spat on the ground, his hands shaking. "What the hell was that?"

Richard didn’t answer right away. He just stared into the dark where the creatures had vanished. The woman’s glowing eyes were gone now, but her presence lingered, heavy and cold.

"Not monsters," he whispered finally. "They’re soldiers who never came back."

The words chilled them all. And as the firelight flickered weakly over their exhausted faces, the truth settled like a curse.

The real experiment was never waiting for them inside the lab. It had already begun. And they were next.