I wasn't sure how long I'd been in Cadmus.
Time didn't move here. It decomposed. It bled. The only way to tell one day from the next was the ache in my bones and the taste of blood in my mouth. There were no clocks, no sun, no sound but the flickering fluorescent lights overhead and the whirr of air ducts that pumped in recycled air just cold enough to keep us uncomfortable. The walls were white. Too white. The kind of white that erased things—memories, faces, pain.
Except I didn't forget.
The screams started early. At first, they were muffled—distant, like someone screaming into a pillow across a long hallway. But the longer I was there, the closer they got. Sometimes they started slow, ragged, like someone waking up in the middle of surgery. Other times, they were explosive—bloodcurdling howls that echoed through the vents like something inhuman was clawing its way through the metal.
Eventually, I stopped pretending they weren't coming from people.
Sometimes they dragged me through the corridors for new rounds of testing. I tried not to look at the other cells. Tried. But some things don't let you look away.
There was a woman who sat perfectly still, her arms twitching every few seconds like she was being shocked. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes didn't blink. I passed a kid once—twelve, maybe thirteen—rocking back and forth, his lips sewn shut, eyes so wide it looked like they might split his face. He screamed through his nose. High and sharp.
One guy's skin had turned almost transparent. I could see everything: his heart pounding against his ribs, the slight tremor in his lungs when he exhaled. His eyes locked onto mine as I passed. He mouthed the words, "Kill me."
I tried to scream back at him, but the guards shoved me forward.
They were experiments. Failures. Still alive because Cadmus wanted them that way. I don't think they cared whether we lived or died. They cared whether we proved something.
But I always came back in one piece.
That was my curse.
I remembered everything.
Every needle. Every restraint. Every time they peeled my skin back to see what was underneath. My blood smeared across their perfect, white tables. I remember one technician scribbling vitals as if he were reading a shopping list. I kept my eyes open the whole time. Always. I wanted them to know I was awake.
And Hamilton.
He was always there. Even when he wasn't, he was. His voice carried through every intercom, every corner of the lab. Smooth. Cold. He walked with a kind of quiet confidence that made your skin crawl. He never yelled. Never threatened. He didn't need to.
He was the kind of man who could justify anything.
"Subject Kr-2," he'd say, standing at the foot of the operating table, scribbling in that leather notebook of his. Always that name. Never mine. Not lucas. Not luca like that bastard lou called me. Not Navarro. Names didnt matter to him just like it didnt matter the fact I was a fucking person. Just another number in his long list of test subjects.
"This is for the greater good," he told me once, as they strapped my arms down tighter. "The gods walk among us now. You've seen what they can do. This is how we survive."
I looked him in the eyes. I wanted to burn my hatred into his skull.
"You're not saving the world," I said. "You're building monsters."
He didn't blink. "Perhaps. But better monsters are sometimes necessary."
Then came the crystal.
He treated it like a miracle. Like something sacred. The way a fanatic might hold a piece of the cross or a shard of some ancient relic. Hamilton raised the syringe slowly, letting the lab lights refract through it. The substance inside shimmered like molten glass, except it wasn't. It wasn't fluid or solid. It was both. It writhed. Shifted. Pulsed like it had a heartbeat of its own.
His eyes gleamed behind his glasses. "This," he whispered with reverence, "is the apex of human evolution. A divine correction."
I'd seen him composed. Saw him act cold. But this? This was something else. He looked... awed. Obsessed. Like he believed he was on the brink of becoming immortal just by touching it.
"Nanocrystalline prototype," he murmured, as if repeating scripture. "Not just bonded integration. It's rewriting the human blueprint. A new genesis."
I wanted to spit in his face. Instead, I said, "You won't break me."
He smiled faintly, like a priest hearing a heretic speak.
"We're not trying to break you," he said. "We're trying to build something godlike."
Then he drove the needle into my chest.
It didn't burn at first.
It devoured.
The second the liquid hit my bloodstream, my body convulsed. I couldn't breathe. My heart kicked like it was trying to tear its way out of my ribs. Heat surged through me, molten and savage. My back arched. My mouth opened, and something broke inside my throat from the scream that came out.
Every nerve, every cell, was on fire. My vision turned white. Not from light. From overload. Like my brain was short-circuiting trying to process the pain.
My spine twisted so hard I felt vertebrae grinding. My bones felt like they were being hollowed out and filled with liquid metal. I could feel my cells splitting, mutating, birthing something alien and alive. My muscles jerked uncontrollably, and I slammed against the restraints until I thought they'd rip my limbs clean off.
And through it all, I heard him.
"Remarkable," Hamilton said softly, like he was admiring brushwork on a painting.
Images blistered through my skull. My own face snarling back at me, covered in ash and blood. A field of charred earth. A void that stretched forever. And something rising from it with my eyes.
Then darkness.
When I woke, I wished I hadn't.
The world swam around me, thick and oily. My skin felt wrong—tight in some places, loose in others, like it didn't belong to me. My muscles twitched without permission. Breathing was a chore. My lungs fought the air like it was poison.
Hamilton stood nearby, scrawling notes with one hand, calmly adjusting his glasses with the other.
"Most wouldn't survive that," he said. "You might be our most valuable subject yet."
I wanted to curse him. Tear the words from my throat and make him bleed with them. But all I could do was twitch. My mouth opened. No sound came out. Just air and a rasp.
So I thought.
I thought about how many times he stood over me with that notebook in hand, calling me "Subject Kr-2" like my name was a curse, like my soul had already been scrubbed away. I thought about every time I heard someone scream until their voice cracked, until the only thing left coming out of their mouth was a wet rattle. I thought about the kid with sewn lips. The man who mouthed "kill me" through see-through skin. The ones who never made it out of the rooms they were dragged into.
I thought about what they turned me into.
And what they turned me for.
They wanted a weapon. They wanted control. But all they were making was a fuse. And one day, I'd light it.
Hamilton thought I was a variable. A number. A tool to be sharpened. But I saw the way he looked at me now. Not with cruelty—with awe. With hunger. He saw himself in me. He saw his god made flesh.
So I thought about what it would feel like to wrap my hands around his throat. To feel the breath leave his lungs. To look into his eyes and let him know exactly who I was, what I remembered, and that I never, ever forgot.
One day.
One breath at a time.
He turned at the door like it was just another shift change. "Rest up," he said, almost gently. "The next phase begins tomorrow."
I didn't blink. Didn't flinch.
I stared at the ceiling, listening to my own heartbeat thudding in my ears, slow and deliberate like the prelude to something violent.
I'm not going to die.
I'm going to survive.
And when I do?
He won't just remember me.
He'll beg to forget.
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at [email protected]/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.