Gene didn't go to Fremont. She went down.
The elevator in Sublevel 3 wasn't just hidden; it was entombed. She found it lurking behind a cleverly disguised wall of service panels, a ghost structure absent from every schematic she'd sweated over, even the supposedly infallible maintenance logs.
A sinking fear clenched her belly like a fist.
What secrets was this place so desperate to keep? The only key was a generic technician's pass, a morally gray acquisition from the night before.
She could still smell the cheap whiskey clinging to the plastic, a phantom stench of regret clinging to her fingertips as well.
The pass belonged to a maintenance worker she'd found slumped in a bar booth, a nameless casualty drowned in his oblivion.
He hadn't even registered her presence, let alone the theft of his lifeline. Now, that lifeline was her only hope, and the weight of his lost future pressed down on her as she held it, wondering what horrors awaited on the other side of those steel doors.
The bare metal walls closed in, not just around her body, but tightening around her sanity like an unseen noose.
A harsh, clawing scent filled her nose, a mix of antiseptic and something stranger still: the sharp, metallic charge of frozen lightning, alive with silent energy.
On the surface, it felt sterile, but beneath that calm, her mind sensed a volatile energy barely held at bay.
Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs as she swiped the stolen badge. A low, guttural hum erupted from the bowels of the machine, a primal growl that vibrated through her bones. The doors hissed open, revealing an abyss.
Down. Not just down a few floors, but down into the earth's gullet, farther than any sane architecture should allow. Each meter was a transgression, a descent into madness. The pressure built in her ears, a suffocating blanket.
The silence wasn't mere quiet; it was a vacuum, broken only by the ancient, grinding thrum of the lift's machinery, lowering her into the organization's forbidden heart.
Every revolution of the gears was a countdown, a whispered threat drawing her closer to the literal and metaphorical depths, where secrets festered and nightmares took root.
This wasn't just a descent; it was a plunge into the unknown, a one-way ticket into the belly of the beast.
When the doors finally opened again, it wasn't just silence she stepped into; it was absolute silence, broken only by the faint, high-pitched whine of unseen machinery. The air was frigid, unnaturally still.
The white walls, blinding in their purity, stretched into an infinite, sterile abyss. A merciless, stalking light throbbed faintly, its harsh rays carving the darkness into shadows that slithered like restless spirits.
The corridor wasn't a passage, but a macabre gallery.
Instead of doors, towering sheets of glass lined the way, each a window into a starkly illuminated hell. They weren't just cells; they were meticulously curated dioramas of confinement, each holding secrets that the suffocating silence dared you to uncover.
The air hummed with a silent, electric tension, promising either revelation or madness with every step.
She advanced cautiously, the faint clatter of her boots on concrete slicing through the stillness, eyes locked on the ominous light within the boxes.
The first chamber pulsed with a sinister, stagnant energy. Inside, a nightmarish parody of life hung suspended in a viscous, amber tomb.
It was an Alucard, or what was becoming an Alucard. He was young, barely more than a fledgling, his budding wings clipped, not by steel, but by cruelty. His face was similar to Igor's, his hair barely starting to grow, dark auburn.
The fluid, thick as coagulated blood and glowing with an unnatural inner luminescence, encased him completely. His form, shockingly pale, bordered on translucent, revealing the grotesque network of veins that pulsed beneath his skin.
The translucent limbs, alive with a dark, writhing hunger, gripped his arms and legs like cruel glass shackles, condemning him to a nightmarish purgatory of endless suspension.
His wings, pathetic and incomplete, twitched with a frantic, desperate energy, like dying insects caught in a spider's web. They fluttered against the invisible walls of their prison, a silent scream of embryonic power denied.
But it was the tubes that truly chilled the blood. Metallic tendrils plunged deep into the base of his spine; others snaked around his neck, feeding, draining, changing him.
God knew what vile concoctions coursed through his veins, what abominations were being forced into his very soul. He was no prisoner here. He was a canvas, a sacrifice, a specimen being meticulously, agonizingly, unmade.
The amber glow reflected in his unfocused eyes, turning them into bottomless pits of silent horror. Whatever was being done to him, it was far worse than death.
In another, smaller chamber further down, an older model, bulkier and less defined, was hooked to a web of thick black electrodes. They snaked across its chest, its temples, its limbs. Its mouth had been crudely sewn shut with thick, dark thread.
Yet, horrifyingly, its eyes were open, blinking slowly, watching the empty wall opposite it. It was awake. Fully awake.
Something cold and hard settled in Gene's stomach. This wasn't detention. This was something else. Something far worse.
The corridor stretched before her, a suffocating tunnel of metal and shadow. Each step hammered against the cold floor, a frantic drumbeat urging her onward. Something unseen, malevolent, yanked at her soul, a terrible magnetism drawing her deeper into the labyrinth. Her breath hitched, a ragged gasp in the tomb-like silence. She had to know.
Finally, she reached the end: a control room. A sterile, claustrophobic cube packed with flickering monitors and banks of consoles hummed with barely contained power. Hope, fragile and fleeting, flickered within her.
She typed in the access code, fingers trembling, an obsolete string of numbers and letters pulled from the forbidden archives.
A clearance that should have been useless, a ghost key to a long-dead lock.
Then, the monitor blinked. Grunted a confirmation tone. A green light bloomed on the console.
A muted wave of unease passed over her. It worked. But what doors had she just unlocked? And what horrors lie waiting on the other side?