Beneath Karnell's already-buried facility, deeper than any of the twelve chambers, beyond the sealed elevators and retina-locked gates that even Kaios Verma couldn't pass with imperial clearance, there was another level—a forgotten floor known only to a handful in the laboratory inner circle.
The Deep Lab.
The elevator that led there didn't hum or ding. It descended in silence, through layers of reinforced alloy, null-magic barriers, and blackstone shielding. There were no lights in the shaft—only darkness and the faint electric pulse of the power lines running through the walls like veins.
The lab itself was a cold, sterile expanse of shadowed machinery and surgical steel. Gray lights hummed faintly above, flickering now and then as if the place resented its own existence. The air was dry, acrid—burnt metal and antiseptic—and it never changed. No windows, no clocks, no time. Just endless white tiles and silver walls that smelled like blood that had been cleaned too many times.
And at the very center of this subterranean tomb was a series of containment cages—thick, glass-paneled cells reinforced with mana-resistant alloy.
Inside these cages were children. Not like the Dominion Project's elite candidates. No, these were mana-null—children from the Earth-realm's lower zones, swept up in silent purges, taken from refugee zones or orphan barracks where no one would notice their disappearance.
They weren't classified. They weren't named.
They were labeled as "Lab Rats"
Eighty percent of Earth's population lacked mana. To the karnell facility, that made them useless in theory. But to Scoff Karios, they were the key to his greatest failure.
The EL-Serum and X-Gene Compound had brought limited success, yes—Z-007 and Q-001 had recently been deemed worthy of transfer to the Citadel for higher militarization and final-stage grooming. The Emperor himself had issued the commendation.
But that wasn't enough.
"Weapons are results. I want reproducibility. I want scale. I want a generation, not anomalies."
That's what he had told Kaios last week before descending again, alone, into the Deep Lab. He wanted not one or two supersoldiers. He wanted battalions. Legions. An army of genetically awakened genetic power that could reshape the borderlines of reality.
But the truth gnawed at him.
Lethality remained above 85%. Sometimes 90%. In some batches, only five of every hundred children survived the full combination of EL-Serum and the first or second phase of X-Gene infusion. He was burning through subjects faster than his own conscience could keep track of—and his conscience had long since withered.
This month, he'd begun a new string of tests. Variant strains. Stabilizers synthesized from corrupted soulstones mined near the Great Border. Extracts from decayed mana cores. Fragments of dragon bone, ground and filtered. Nothing worked.
The children in the cages were always terrified. They were not trained. Not prepared. They screamed. Cried. Pleaded.
Scoff never listened.
The containment room was lined with twelve transparent holding cells, each just large enough to fit a bed and a floor-drain beneath it. The walls were built with sound-absorbent layers, so no matter how loud they screamed during injection, the noise never reached the surface.
The injection room—adjacent—was colder still. Lit by overhead surgical lights that buzzed like dying insects. Three chrome chairs were fixed to the center floor, fitted with clamps for wrists, ankles, and necks. Dried blood stained the leather straps.
Each day, three children were taken. The three always died.
None had survived in the last nine days.
Scoff kept datapod logs. Precise, meticulous data etched into physical ledgers—never digitized. He didn't trust the digital archive team. He believed data should bleed. It should be real. Tangible. Suffered through.
On the far wall, behind a blast-shielded viewport, was the control panel. There, he monitored vitals, reactions, brain patterns. Mana rejection. Tissue degradation. Sometimes they liquefied from the inside. Sometimes they turned rabid before their hearts exploded.
And still he pressed forward.
At the far end of the lab, near the incinerator chute, there was a side chamber he rarely let anyone see. Inside, dozens of glass tubes stood upright—growth vats containing mutated embryos, spliced genetic materials from surviving Dominion children, and one in particular labeled "AB-Clone Cycle 3: Dormant."
Even though AB-774's power had yet to awaken, there was something in his silence that unsettled even the seasoned researchers—a child who bled, broke, and burned without a single cry, whose obedience bordered on inhuman. As Scoff Karios reviewed the latest datapod logs, he muttered to himself, "Pain means nothing to him. No fear. No resistance. Just… quiet. If the genes catch up to that will—he would be a the perfect weapon."
He stared at it sometimes. Not with hope. But with necessity.
"He survived with no scream. No surge. I want to make more like him. I want to make a thousand."
But AB-774 had been an accident. A perfect storm. He knew it. Replicating that anomaly had so far led only to death.
In the last cage, tonight, a boy had survived the serum for twelve minutes before hemorrhaging. That was a record.
Scoff marked the result in his datapod. "Subject lasted longer. Need to modify second phase buffer enzyme. Increase bone marrow saturation pre-dose."
The body would be burned before dawn.
He didn't name the boy. He never had. Naming was dangerous. It suggested meaning. And meaning made death heavier.
In this place, below all light, meaning was a burden they couldn't afford.
As the fluorescent lights buzzed above and the incinerator roared again, Scoff stepped away from the cage room and activated the next batch requisition.
Twelve Lab Rats.
Another cycle would begin tomorrow.
He didn't pray. He didn't hope. He only calculated.
If he could lower lethality from 85% to 70%, he could push for mass trials within the year.
If he could drop it to 50%, he could replace the entire infantry of stella army with awakened children's.
And if he ever dropped it below 30%…
The Stella Empire would never need normal soldiers again.
The next day came heavy, as always—training so relentless it blurred pain into routine. By late afternoon, when the buzz of alarms signaled the start of the two-hour "freedom," the halls of Chamber 5 loosened. Most children slumped back into corners, tending to bruises, sharing scraps of rations, or collapsing in silence.
R-932 didn't collapse. He never did. While others healed, he calculated.
His chamber was one of the smallest—only fourteen surviving children remained after the last injections. Others were either reassigned, transferred, or dead. He preferred it that way. Fewer eyes, fewer distractions.
And O-889.
That one.
A muscle-brained O-Class with delusions of control. Cruel when bored. Arrogant when watched. Dangerous in his stupidity.
R-932 had been thinking about removing him for weeks—quietly, permanently. The idea was still soft, formless.
But today, something sharp formed its edge.
As he wandered past the training bay and into the main corridor of Chamber 5, he turned a corner and noticed D-452—one of his roommates—standing awkwardly near the decontamination room, a faint crust of blood still drying across his forearm. The decon room was a regular part of their routine; each chamber had one tucked in a corner, fitted with low-pressure steam and enzyme washes meant to cleanse residue from mana training and close-quarters sparring.
He slowed his pace.
"Oh hey, we're in the same room," R called out casually, mimicking a warm, familiar tone.
D-452 turned, surprised but not alarmed.
"Oh hey. I remember you."
R gave a subtle nod, glancing at the dried blood.
"Weren't you going to clean yourself?"
The boy scratched the back of his neck, frowning.
"Yeah… but it's locked. I don't know why. Said I'd head to Chamber 6's decon instead."
R-932 narrowed his eyes.
Locked?
That door was never locked. Not since they rebuilt it last winter. It was an old, manual steel slab with a rusted hinge and a crude physical key lock—one of the last remaining analog systems in Karnell. Mostly ignored because it was unnecessary.
And stranger still: no recording drones. No Guards.
That wasn't right.
R stepped closer and crouched near the door. The faintest gap sat beneath the warped metal, and when he leaned in, he saw the latch had been turned from the inside—locked deliberately.
He tilted his head and slowly peered through a cracked sliver in the side panel.
The lights were dim.
Inside the decontamination chamber, Halgen, one of the senior physical instructors, paced slowly. Mid-forties. Old scars split across his lip and cheek like leather pulled too tight. His eyes were empty. His boots echoed over the tiled floor in slow, deliberate thuds.
He stopped at the far wall.
R's eyes narrowed.
A woman was with him—Ciera, one of the new research trainees. Black hair tied messily. Barely twenty. She had arrived only last year, still asking too many questions back then.
Now, her questions were gone. She was pressed against the metal wall, lips parted in a moan, one hand clenched behind Halgen's shoulder. Her uniform was half-off, and Halgen's brutal hands held her hips as he moved rhythmically.
It wasn't gentle.
It wasn't love.
It was power in its rawest, lowest form.
R-932 didn't flinch. He had heard enough during maintenance shifts, listening to careless guard chatter.
He knew what it was. Sex.
And he knew something else too—it was absolutely forbidden.
The rules in Karnell were brutally clear:
physical, or sexual contact between any adult and test subjects.
But the rules didn't stop there.
No adult was permitted sexual relations inside the facility—period. Not with each other. Not with anyone.
The idea was control. Detachment. Cold precision.
Halgen and Ciera had broken all of that.
And no one had seen them.
Except him.
R stepped back slowly from the door, face unreadable. He said nothing to D-452, who was already walking away. Instead, he turned, walking deeper into the shadowed corridor of the chamber, where the recycled air tasted stale and metal-laced.
He wasn't smiling.
But a faint sound slipped from his lips.
A low, breathless laugh.
"O-889," he whispered to himself, "your days are counting."
Because Halgen was the physical training instructor who could pit O-889 against someone strong enough to fight him—maybe even kill him—and would still turn a blind eye when bones cracked and ribs gave way.
And now.
R had leverage.
Not just to remove O-889…
but to ruin him.
He disappeared into the chamber's back corridor, already crafting the next step. A whisper in the right ear. A rumor, placed carefully. Perhaps not even spoken—just hinted at. The kind of idea that spreads like rot through the walls of Karnell.
And somewhere deep beneath his calm face, a slow satisfaction curled in his chest.
He didn't need strength.
He had secret.
And in Karnell, secrets were a weapon stronger than fists.