Chapter 129: The Monster He Made
The Corridors of Redhold were silent.
No marching boots. No drills. No voices.
Just silence, deep and suffocating.
General Michael sat alone in his command chamber. The lights above flickered faintly, buzzing like dying wasps. Before him, laid neatly across the steel table, were the files.
Files he had not looked at in years.
Thick folders marked Classified. Yellowed photographs. Reports stained by age. Signed orders, all carrying the signature: General Michael reed.
He stared at them, unmoving.
The chair creaked as he leaned forward. His hand rested atop the thickest file, stamped with a black insignia long since burned from public memory: Project Godskin.
He opened it.
And there it was.
A photo—grainy, monochrome. A monstrous figure strapped to a table. Limbs like iron beams. Muscles torn and stitched. Its face hidden beneath a mask of tubes and bolts.
The label read:
> Subject: HB-01 — Prototype Soldier
Status: Terminated (Deceased)
Survivability Rate: 2%
Mental Stability: NULL
Michael exhaled through his nose, slow and deep.
He remembered.
---
Years Ago — Before the Fall
Back when the world still made sense. Before cities were dust and men ate men in the streets.
The U.S. government had demanded a solution.
War was endless. Enemies relentless. They needed something more than soldiers—something beyond flesh.
They needed monsters.
And Michael had given them one.
He led the initiative personally. Hundreds of test subjects—soldiers, prisoners, even volunteers. Injected, modified, reprogrammed. DNA spliced with enhanced regenerative factors, adrenal hyperstimulation, and neural overwriting.
Most died screaming.
Some turned on themselves, gouging out their own eyes to silence the voices.
Only one survived.
Subject HB-01.
They called him the Behemoth.
He was eight feet tall. Muscles like steel cables. Bones laced with synthetic carbon. A heart that beat like a war drum.
And he did not stop.
He didn't feel pain. He didn't sleep. He didn't speak.
He just obeyed.
Until one day… he didn't.
The world was already starting to crack. Rumors of infection, collapse. The old orders were slipping.
Then, in a single night, HB-01 broke free.
He tore through the facility like a hurricane of flesh and rage.
No bullets stopped him. Gas didn't work. He moved through fire like it was fog.
He killed everyone.
Doctors. Scientists. Soldiers.
Only Michael survived.
Because he hadn't been there.
He had sent orders remotely that day. Something about protocol, something about risk assessments. It didn't matter.
HB-01 vanished into the wild.
Then the world ended.
And Michael thought the Behemoth had died with it.
He was wrong.
---
Now
Michael lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. Smoke curled from his lips as his eyes drifted to the corner of the room.
Axel's bloodied coat hung there.
Torn. Stained with black-red gore. The scent still lingered—sweat, ash, death.
Michael took another drag.
He hadn't told his son what was in that place. Hadn't warned him that the mission wasn't just a retrieval op. That it wasn't about finding a lost team.
It was about him.
HB-01.
The last ghost of his greatest sin.
And Axel had survived it.
No, Michael thought. He didn't just survive. He killed it. Dragged it home like a beast of burden. Threw it at my feet.
He looked back down at the photo.
The Behemoth's face stared back from the image—lifeless, soulless.
Michael smirked.
"You finally died, old friend," he muttered. "Took a monster to kill you."
He stubbed the cigarette out on the folder's cover.
Then silence again.
But this time, it was heavier.
A whisper in the dark.
A truth he had never dared say aloud.
He stood slowly, walking toward the narrow window that overlooked the compound.
Outside, soldiers went about their routines. But every now and then, one would glance toward the medical bay. Toward him.
Axel.
His son.
Or rather…
The thing he became.
Michael pressed a hand to the glass, fingers twitching.
He remembered Axel's first breath.
How small he'd been. Fragile. Human.
But he'd never stayed that way. Not truly.
Michael had shaped him. Trained him. Thrown him into war after war. Task after task. Mission after mission. Each one more brutal than the last.
He had wanted to break him.
Or perfect him.
He never decided which.
But now—now Axel was something else.
He had endured pain no man should. Walked out of hell carrying death on his back. Looked Michael in the eyes and defied him.
And still survived.
For the first time in decades, Michael felt it.
Fear.
It coiled in his stomach like a quiet serpent.
Not fear of Axel—but fear for the world.
Because Axel wasn't a man anymore.
He was a storm.
A creature of hate, purpose, and unstoppable will.
And Michael had made him.
He returned to the table and sat.
Picked up the file again.
A whisper escaped his lips, not quite a laugh, not quite a prayer.
"The son… the monster… will end everything."
He closed the file.
And smiled.
For the first time in a long time… he smiled.
Not because he was proud.
But because he knew what was coming.
And nothing—no army, no walker, no machine—could stop it now.
Because Axel wasn't just his son anymore.
He was the reckoning.
And the world had no idea what it had waiting in the dark.
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