CHAPTER 35: NO HUMANITY

Five of Richard’s squad members lay broken and bleeding across the ruined floor. Owen, Lance, Mark, and Zia writhed in pain, each movement leaving smears of red on the cracked tiles, while Rhea lay motionless, her shallow breathing the only proof that she still clung to life.

Their groans wove through the stagnant air like a chorus of agony, a grim reminder that silence no longer meant peace. The room stank of iron, sweat, and the raw scent of desperation.

Arden was the only one still standing, though "standing" was a mercy of description. His knees trembled beneath him, his fingers slick with blood as he fumbled to treat the wounds that refused to close.

Every press of gauze, every shaky knot of a bandage drew a wince from him, but he kept going. The tremor in his breathing betrayed exhaustion that had long surpassed the limits of endurance.

Richard stood by the shattered window, rifle in hand, eyes scanning the shadows that prowled beyond the fractured glass. The storm outside had long since passed, but its ghost lingered in the air, the faint hum of wind through metal, the dripping of rain through holes in the ceiling.

The building, whatever it used to be, was now nothing but a carcass of civilization. Judging by the rusted medical tables and fragments of patient files littering the floor, it might once have been a hospital. A place meant to heal. Now, it was only a tomb waiting to be sealed.

"Captain," Arden rasped, his voice hoarse from overuse. "We’re running out of antiseptics and morphine. I can’t stabilize them all without proper supplies. There might still be medicine somewhere in the building."

Richard’s gaze shifted toward his fallen comrades, faces he had come to know as brothers and sisters, laughter now replaced by labored gasps. Each heartbeat felt like sand slipping through his fingers.

"List everything you need," he said quietly, with the calm of someone too used to loss.

Arden tore a bloodstained sheet from his notebook, scribbling hastily.

"Painkillers, antibiotics, saline, suture kits, disinfectant, adrenaline, anything intact." He handed it over, his hand shaking.

Richard nodded and handed him a loaded handgun, two extra magazines, and a vial of tranquilizers scavenged from the last outpost.

"If anything happens," he murmured, meeting Arden’s eyes, "you know what to do."

The doctor hesitated, understanding the weight behind the words, then nodded grimly.

Richard took one last look around the room, the flickering light from the portable generator, the faint hum of machinery keeping them tethered to life. Owen’s shallow breathing. Zia’s half-conscious stare. Lance muttering incoherently in fevered dreams. He shut the door behind him and locked it, sealing the fragile sanctuary away from the darkness that waited outside.

The corridor beyond was drowned in silence. His boots echoed softly against the cracked tiles as he moved, flashlight beam cutting through the gloom. The walls were lined with rusted charts and peeling paint, splattered with stains that no time could erase. The deeper he went, the colder it became, not the cold of air conditioning, but the cold of places long forgotten.

He passed a row of hospital beds, their restraints still buckled as if waiting for patients who would never wake. On one headboard, deep claw marks carved a story of panic and pain. The air tasted of mold and rot.

"This place wasn’t abandoned," Richard muttered under his breath. "It was buried."

His radio crackled, static, then nothing. The signal was dying. He adjusted his grip on the rifle and pressed forward, heart hammering in rhythm with his footsteps.

He reached a door labeled MEDICAL STORAGE — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The lock was warped, half-melted, as if someone had tried to destroy evidence rather than preserve it. With a grunt, he forced it open.

The stench hit him like a blow. Inside, the shelves lay toppled, glass and syringes crunching underfoot. Mold crawled up the walls, feeding on time. Yet amidst the wreckage, there were miracles: sealed packs of antibiotics, painkillers still marked sterile, a half-crate of morphine untouched by decay.

Relief washed through him, sharp, fleeting, dangerous.

"Jackpot," he whispered.

He loaded everything he could into his field bag, each item a fragment of hope. But the list Arden had given him was long, and his bag already heavy. He’d have to return.

Then he saw it, a door at the end of the hall, heavy, sealed with rusted bolts. Above it, a metal plaque read...

[BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTATION CHAMBER 04-A]

Something primal in him urged him to turn back, to walk away. But curiosity, or perhaps dread, pulled him forward.

The bolts screeched as he unlatched them, each sound too loud in the suffocating quiet. The door opened with a hiss, releasing a foul breath of decay.

Inside were rows of cylindrical glass pods. Some shattered. Some still glowed faintly with blue liquid that pulsed like veins. Within them floated shapes, small, fragile, wrong.

Children?

Their bodies were twisted echoes of humanity, veins illuminated beneath translucent skin, claws instead of fingernails, small fangs behind parted lips. Some were unfinished, faces half-formed, their existence cut short before nature or science could decide what they were meant to be.

Richard’s stomach churned.

"What the hell is this..." he whispered.

The nearest pod bore a label.

[Subject 218-B — Hybrid: Human + Lupine Genome]

[Parents: Subject 021 / Subject 043 — Phase Two Reproductive Success]

The words clawed into his mind. Reproductive success.

They hadn’t just experimented on soldiers. They had bred them.

Project Tainted Blood wasn’t about enhancing humanity. It was about remaking it.

Richard stumbled backward, bile rising in his throat. His light fell upon one last pod, a little girl with silver hair drifting gently in the blue fluid. And when her eyes opened, they were the same color as his.

His heart stopped.

Then, the chamber lights flared crimson. A mechanical voice echoed through the corridor:

[WARNING: Unauthorized personnel detected. Containment breach protocol initiated.]

"Damn it..."

Richard grabbed the supplies and ran. Alarms wailed, red light flashing through the hall like blood pulsing through a dying vein. His breath came ragged, boots pounding on the tiles as he sprinted back toward the stairwell.

All he could think of was the team, their faces, their pain, their trust. He had to make it back. He had to tell them what he’d seen. Because if they died here, no one would ever know what the Division had done, what they truly were.

Not soldiers.

Not heroes.

Just raw material, shaped and discarded by the hands of men who had forgotten what humanity meant.