Chamber 12 was not built for comfort. It was engineered for efficiency—long, grey halls, humming machines, and sterile pods filled with infants suspended in nutrient fluid. The pods blinked with soft blue lights, each child tagged and monitored, their feeding tubes coiled like serpents into their bellies. No lullabies. No cradles. Just silence.
Once a child turned one, the pod doors opened, and cold hands pulled them into the next stage.
There, a room of harsh floors and hard expectations awaited. A teacher—emotionless, pale, dressed in grey—trained them to walk, speak, respond. Children didn't learn words like mother, father, or family. Those were irrelevant. They were not needed.
Most of them were brought in as infants, some barely days old, some with siblings—but no one told them. In the eyes of the researchers, blood relations held no meaning. They were tools. Test subjects.
Some were given data injections, digital code sent directly into the brain to accelerate basic learning. One child walked at three months. Another recited numbers by six. Only the middle and upper castes could afford such downloads. For the lower batches, it wasn't worth the expense—not when most didn't even survive their first exposure to the X-Gene Compound.
It was during the two-hour free period that the change began.
Two guards entered one of the side rooms. Their boots clanged against the floor as they barked out five codes.
"AB-774. T-153. S-309. B-118. Y-291. With us. Now."
The children stirred. Faces turned. Some froze.
Among them, AB-774, the pale boy with white hair and dead, bottomless blue eyes, stood slowly. Blood still stained the corner of his jaw—a mark from a previous test. He didn't speak. Didn't blink.
As the guards marched them through one of the passage halls, they had to pass by a section of Chamber 9, where a few older children were seated against the walls, playing quietly or whispering in their corners.
One boy looked up, eyes narrowing. "Hey... look at that one," he whispered.
Another leaned closer. "Is that blood on his face?"
A third girl stared hard. Her voice dropped to a hush. "He... he looks like the thing from that book... the one from the in the upper shelfs."
"Which one?"
"The Truth of Existence."
There was a pause.
"You mean that old religion text? The one with—"
"Yeah. Demons. He looks like one."
"That's just a story. Demons never existed. No one believes that crap anymore."
"Still… look at his face. Tell me that's not terrifying."
They fell silent as the guards and the children passed by. AB didn't glance at them. He seemed beyond noticing, lost in a silence too heavy for a child.
Before the injection, the five were taken to the decontamination room.
The water hissed down from rusted pipes—cold, sharp, impersonal. They were scrubbed by machines, naked under the glare of harsh white lights. Brushes spun against skin. Cleansing agents stung their eyes. The other children whimpered.
AB didn't move. He stood motionless as the water and chemicals washed the blood from his face.
The guards said nothing. They never did.
Once clean, the children were led into the main research lab. The room was blinding white, metal walls lined with diagnostic arms, oxygen masks, needle trays, and recording screens.
The children were scared. Even T-153, who was known for being defiant, was now trembling.
One of the researchers snapped his gloves. "Let's begin."
T-153 was taken first. Strapped down. Injected.
Seven seconds passed.
His heart exploded.
The boy's chest burst outward like a cracked egg—blood fountained, red vapor hissing as pressure ruptured organs. It splattered the walls, coating one of the monitors. A piece of his rib landed near AB's foot.
The other children screamed. One turned and tried to run, sobbing. "Please! Please let me go! I don't want to die!"
The guards caught him. Held him down.
The injection pierced his neck.
He exploded instantly.
Chunks of muscle sprayed onto the equipment. A slab of flesh hit a researcher's visor with a wet smack.
"Another failure," the man muttered, peeling his gloves off. "I'm not cleaning this. You take over."
AB was next.
The guards moved with the same force as before, strapping him to the table. But there was no resistance. He didn't fight. He didn't even blink.
The needle entered his neck.
And then came the pain.
Boiling blood. Pressure behind the eyes. Fire in the lungs. A scream caught in the throat—but never escaped. His heart pounded hard enough to rattle his ribs.
He felt like he might die.
But he showed nothing.
One researcher leaned over the monitor. "Vitals spiking. No outward manifestation, but internal reaction confirmed."
"That's normal," another replied. "Only a few manifest on first dose. Like Y-271."
They watched him. Waited. But AB's face never changed. Dead calm.
Eventually, the lead assistant nodded.
"Transfer him. He's outgrown Chamber 12."
"Where?"
"Chamber 8. Room 4. There's space."
"Who's in there?"
"That the room one of the new batch was assigned. Who was she again?"
"Y-906."
"Oh yeah, I remember. Assign him there."
AB-774, now a survivor of the first injection, was silent as they unstrapped him.
Still breathing. Still alive.
But something had awakened inside him.