The air in the bunker pulsed with an unsettling stillness. A quiet panic loomed, a growing sense of wrongness that only those who had tampered too long with death could recognize.
Dr. Finn, Herbert Ludwig, Bleu, and Ephraein circled Lukas's body once more. The system was glitched, but desperation drove them to fix it. Lights flickered overhead, casting erratic shadows. Sparks danced like insects across exposed cables, illuminating the room in brief, eerie flashes.
"Vitals are still corrupted!" Finn snapped, darting between terminals, his fingers flying over the keys.
"I can't read any data," Bleu muttered, tapping the flickering monitor, frustration etched on her face.
Herbert hunched near Lukas, Medigun in one hand, syringe in the other. "He is stable, but not awake. That… is the problem," he said, his accent thickening with concern.
Ephraein stood closest to the machine, his hands trembling as he adjusted a dial. His eyes darted across the control panel, a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.
"Maybe if I reroute the bio-cores and—"
BOOM!
The machine erupted, a deafening burst of sparks and smoke. Metal twisted in the air, and a surge of pressure knocked everyone back. The entire lab plunged into darkness.
Emergency solar lights hummed to life—a pale, red-tinted glow barely lighting the ruined room.
Bleu flicked on her flashlight. The beam cut across the floor.
And landed on Lukas.
He was standing upright in the corner, unmoving.
His shirt was soaked in something black—thick and oozing, pulsing slightly as though alive. His head was tilted down. No eyes visible. Just the slow, inhuman drip of the black liquid from his sleeves to the cold floor. Everyone ran.
Pipes burst overhead, releasing scalding steam. Machines exploded violently one after the other, their glass faces shattering into showers of glass and flame. The entire facility trembled as the power grid melted into chaos.
From across the compound, panicked scientists flooded the halls—dozens of white coats now stained with fear.
Among them was Bryan Madrigal.
He wasn't like the others. Brought in by government order. A patient, they said. A threat, they whispered. But Bryan knew the truth.
He didn't belong here.He never had.
His only crime was being unwanted by his own family—signed over to an experimental rehab program so they'd never have to see him again. And now… the walls were cracking.
"THIS IS MY CHANCE!" he shouted, pushing past the others and joining the stampede. His dark eyes wide with adrenaline, hair matted with sweat and steam.
Suddenly—alarm blares.
A voice crackled through the broken speakers:"LOCKDOWN INITIATED. ALL DOORS SEALED. POWER REDISTRIBUTED TO CONTAINMENT."
Bryan skidded to a halt. All the doors ahead slammed shut—one by one.
From the control room above, lit by backup emergency lights, stood Lukas.
Head cocked. Eyes glowing faintly beneath the shadows.
One finger hovering over the control panel. He pressed it.
Click.
A second lockdown engaged. No one was getting out.
Dr. Finn pounded on the metal. "No, no, no—we're sealed in! We're sealed in!"
Ephraein collapsed against the wall, muttering to himself in a daze. "I mirrored him wrongly. I mirrored him wrong. That wasn't me. That wasn't me…"
Herbert calmly loaded a syringe. "We are not safe. We must re-group. Or we die."
Bleu held her flashlight tight, shaking. "What the hell is he?!"
Meanwhile…
Across town, under a warm sun and the clinking of silverware, three familiar faces sat in a quiet restaurant.
Sasha stirred her coffee absently, eyes locked on the TV overhead as a news anchor repeated a strange phrase:"Gallagher Street remains sealed. The morgue's missing body is still unfound. Rumors continue…"
Toff sat beside her, gold-plated Desert Eagles tucked quietly in his jacket. His belt shimmered in gold under his officer uniform, a black leather hat on his head bearing the medal of an eagle—his silent badge of survival and pride.
Opposite them, old but sharp-eyed, sat Sheriff Jasper Wood, a man scarred by knowledge few dared to carry.
"We tracked the break-in," Jasper said, voice low. "Two men entered the morgue. Never identified. Security was wiped, but the guards were paid off."
Toff frowned. "Someone went through a lot of effort to get that body."
"I think it was organized," Sasha added, "but not by Michael. He's long gone…"
Jasper shook his head. "That's what you think. But the world's not kind enough to give us real endings. And the name Harrington still holds weight in cursed places."
Toff crossed his arms. "You're saying someone else tried to bring Lukas back?"
Sasha slowly looked down at her notebook. The one she had filled for her bestselling book. The one that still had an empty page at the end.
"I don't think they tried," she whispered. "I think they succeeded."
The air in the bunker shifted—became heavier. As if the steel walls themselves were inhaling slowly, preparing for something they could not contain.
Bryan Madrigal slumped against a flickering light fixture, panting. His breaths came shallow, his mind racing. Around him, screams echoed as doors slammed one after another, sealing every hallway like a tomb. The metal howled under pressure. Shadows grew longer, and darker.
Somewhere deep within the heart of the bunker, Lukas moved.
He didn't walk so much as drift. His bare feet were silent, though every step left a dark, inky footprint behind. His movements were twitchy, unhuman—jittering forward like an old film reel skipping frames.
The control room's lights flickered as Lukas glanced at the monitors. Through each screen, he watched the chaos unfold—scientists turning on each other, sobbing, screaming, pounding on locked doors. Rats in a steel maze.
Something behind his eyes sparked. But it wasn't recognition. It wasn't memory.
It was hunger.
Back in the lab, Dr. Finn had managed to pull open a side panel using an old crowbar. A tight maintenance tunnel glowed ahead, barely large enough to crawl through.
"This way!" he shouted, waving the others in.
Bleu hesitated. "Where does it lead?"
"Somewhere not here!" he snapped, throwing himself into the tunnel.
Ephraein followed last, shaking violently. His lanky frame twisted through the narrow pipe like a trembling wire.
"I—I don't know who he is," Ephraein muttered as they crawled. "He's not just Lukas. Something else is riding inside him. Wearing him like a skin…"
As they crawled through the tight maintenance tunnel, gasping and panicking, Dr. Finn was the first to enter, leading the way with his crowbar in one hand and a broken comms transmitter in the other.
"Keep moving!" he barked. "It'll take us to Sector 3—near the decontamination hall!" But the tunnel split. Two paths.
Finn turned right without hesitation. The others hesitated—but followed the left path, pulled by the sound of dripping water and light. Finn's path went dark. And silent.
A few moments later, they realized he wasn't with them anymore.
"Dr. Finn?" Bleu called back. "Finn?"
Nothing. Somewhere deep in the right tunnel… a squelch echoed, followed by a sound like something wet being pulled apart. Then silence. Finn never came out.
From behind them, an echo filled the pipe. Scrape. Then silence. Scrape. Scrape.
"Don't turn around," Herbert whispered. "Do not turn around."
They pushed forward.
Suddenly—Bryan slammed into the pipe behind them, face bloody, holding a fire extinguisher. "He's behind me!"
The metal screeched behind him.
A thin tendril of black liquid slithered through the tunnel's crack.
It hissed like steam, crawling forward with intelligent speed.
"Go, go, go!" Bleu screamed, pushing forward.
As they reached the end of the pipe and burst out into another control chamber, Herbert spun, yanked out his Medigun, and aimed it at the tunnel entrance. A glowing blue beam spiraled through the weapon as he waited for the shadow.
Nothing came.
"Did… did we lose it?" Ephraein whispered, his body twitching like a dying moth.
"No," Bryan said, stepping back. "It let us go."
Herbert nodded grimly. "Because it wants to play."
Meanwhile, above the ground, rain had started falling softly outside the restaurant. Gallagher Street was still off-limits to the public, barricaded by rusting fences and "DO NOT ENTER" signs no one paid attention to anymore.
Sasha, Toff, and Jasper sat quietly, the mood having grown cold.
"I saw him once," Jasper finally muttered, staring into his coffee. "Lukas Harrington. Just a boy. At his father's trial. Quiet. Didn't smile. Something… broken."
Toff glanced over. "You saying he was born messed up?"
Jasper shook his head. "No. I'm saying he was made that way."
Sasha leaned forward, voice barely audible. "What if the people who revived him didn't know what they were bringing back? What if Lukas died, but something else came back wearing his skin?"
Toff's hand hovered near his gold-plated pistol. "Then we kill it. Again."
A silence fell between them, broken only by the rain.
Then Jasper spoke again. "If we want answers, we need to find the lab they took him to. I've seen signs—reports of missing power around Sector 12. There's something underground there. Government black site, maybe. Or worse."
Sasha nodded. "Then we go. Tonight."
Toff stood, adjusting his belt. "I'll get the guns."
Back inside the bunker, the power was long gone.
Solar backups barely kept the red emergency lights flickering. Water from the broken pipes dripped down the hallways in rhythmic taps, like a death clock counting down.
The remaining scientists had scattered, some locked in labs, others trying to reboot communications. None were safe.
One man—Dr. Eames, a neurologist—tried to hide in the cryo lab. He locked the door. Sat with his knees pulled to his chest.
He whispered prayers.
Then he heard it.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The soft sound of bare feet on steel. Getting closer. The lights died. When they came back on, Dr. Eames was gone. In his place: a black smear. Like something had melted through flesh and bone.
In the Control Chamber, Bleu, Ephraein, Herbert, and Bryan had regrouped. Dr. Finn hadn't made it—he had vanished in the tunnels.
They stood in the central chamber—the last place with access to the surface if they could power it back up.
"We need to overload the containment grid," Herbert said calmly, adjusting his gloves.
"And blow us all up?" Bleu asked, horrified.
"Yes, or we die slower."
Bryan looked toward the sealed bulkhead. "What if we distract him long enough to reboot the system and open the main door?"
"You volunteering?" Ephraein asked, his tone bitter.
Bryan shrugged. "Maybe I am."
A rumble shook the floor.
They all froze.
Lukas had entered the chamber above. His shadow passed behind the glass.
Ephraein began muttering again, hands trembling. "He's a mirror. He's a mirror. I mirrored wrong. He's a broken reflection…"
Lukas turned his head slowly. He looked through the glass.
And smiled.