At Site-Stonehaven, the ARGUS Foundation stood cold and forgotten, like a prison full of secrets. Its thick walls weren't meant to keep things out, but to trap something inside.
Outside, a storm howled. Wind bent the trees, and rain slammed the windows like claws. But the silence inside felt worse.
Heavy. Watching.
Like the whole building was holding its breath.
Deep below, in the dark lower levels, something began to wake.
The Foundation had survived countless breaches before. It had caged things that shouldn't exist. Beaten creatures that broke every rule.
But this time felt… different.
A small tremor shook the ground. Just enough to dim the lights and make the machines flicker.
A printer choked, then died. Papers drifted to the floor like leaves. The staff glanced at each other, nervous.
No alarm. No warning.
Just a deep feeling that something was wrong.
Dr. Rhys Stane Moores felt it before he saw anything.
He froze at his desk, his fingers above the keys. Holding his breath.
Then the second tremor hit, stronger this time. The floor shook.
The lights above flickered red. A pulse. A sign.
He was on his feet the moment the intercom burst to life.
A voice struggling to stay calm;
"All personnel, report to designated stations. Containment teams, standby for potential breach. Repeat—containment teams, standby."
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Then—
A hand seized his arm. Tight. Urgent.
It was Dr. Rebecca Harker. She looked pale, her eyes wide with fear. Her lab coat was soaked at the sleeves.
"Rhys…" she whispered. "Tell me this isn't what I think it is."
He opened his mouth to lie, to shape any word he could that might offer solace.
But the truth came instead:
"We need to get to the control room. Now."
The halls buzzed with quiet panic. Security teams ran past. Researchers left their stations. The sirens hadn't gone full blast yet, but everyone knew:
This wasn't a drill.
By the time they got to the control center, the tremors were full-on quakes.
Metal groaned. Screens flickered. The red emergency lights blinked like a dying heartbeat.
Then the sirens finally screamed—long, low and final.
Too late.
Ganymede stood at the helm. Still as iron.
Her black hair curtained her face, sharpened by tension and carved from resolve. Her eyes were locked on a wall of monitors, each one trembling with chaos.
"A Containment breach."
Her voice was calm. Absolute.
"Cell Block 2. Subject RS-07 has escaped."
Stane's stomach dropped.
He remembered the warnings. The restless debates. The ones who said it shouldn't be moved.
"You can't cage a storm," he muttered.
Ganymede didn't glance his way.
But she heard.
"Then you survive it."
A low, inhuman groan echoed through the walls.
It wasn't mechanical. Neither seismic.
Alive.
As if something massive was dragging itself through the bones of the facility.
"Activate emergency protocols ALPHA-9. I want this place in full total lockdown. All sectors—now!"
The response was swift. Steel gates slammed down across the site. Doors sealed. Barricades snapped into place.
But it kept coming.
Faster. Louder. Closer.
On the cameras, they caught glimpses.
A figure, wreathed in smoke, moving too fast for its size.
A pale face drifted through the fog. It was not wild, not scared.
It looked focused. Determined.
And the eyes—
The eyes burned like molten coins. They were unblinking. Wrong.
One by one, the monitors went black, swallowed by static.
"Oh God," Rebecca whispered. "It's already here."
The hallway outside the control room thundered. Something slammed into the control room door. Then again, this time hard enough to bend the reinforced steel. Their weapons lifted, the soldiers braced, fear written plain across their faces.
Another hit.
Then stillness.
Smoke seeped in under the door. Black and curling, alive with static.
From it, a hand appeared.
Small. Human.
A child's.
A boy stepped through, small against the giant frame but more commanding than an army.
He stood like a puppet about to fall, his shoulders drooping, his head tilted to the side.
Then, suddenly, he straightened with a series of sharp, cracking sounds.
Bones shifted. Twisted. Snapped into place.
Not healed. Just moved around, like someone breaking sticks in a bowl of water.
He walked like he was in a trance, limbs jerking in strange, unnatural ways.
His joints turned too smoothly, too perfectly.
Each step he took like something being born all over again. Wrong, but alive.
Smoke clung to his feet as he entered fully, coiling up his legs like it worshipped him.
There was no expression. No pain.
Only eyes that watched.
Watched them scream inside their skulls.
Ganymede's breath hitched as she finally saw, really saw, what stood before her.
Not the boy. Most definitely not a boy.
What stepped from the smoke had the face of a child, yes. But delicate. Narrow. Not the square-jawed specimen they had catalogued and contained for months.
This one had shoulder-length hair matted with blood. One eye burned bright yellow. The other was torn open with glistening bone exposed, and muscle twitching under the damage.
One arm hung ruined. Their shattered fingers twitching.
She stepped forward. Slow and calm. Like she had all the time in the world.
The others didn't see. Not yet. Paralyzed by fear. But Ganymede saw.
A pulse of silence struck her.
Her brain clicked back to the containment logs. The hundreds of surveillance hours. The profiles. The subject, she remembered, was infact a boy. A confirmed, catalogued boy.
So what was this?
Ganymede's mouth parted slightly.
She whispered to herself, unheard beneath the whine of sensors and the hiss of venting smoke.
This… this was—
Her voice barely moved past her lips:
"That's not RS-07"
The girl's gaze swept the room.
No confusion. No fear.
Just calculation.
Stane whispered, stunned:
"He's sizing us up…"
Ganymede spoke without turning.
"She. That's not the one we locked up."
And then—
The girl's fists clenched.
The lights died.
The air thickened.
Black, crackling Taiji energy rose around her like living smoke.
Then, as if on cue, the room exploded with gunfire.