The corpse didn't vanish by morning.
Chen Yu half expected it to disappear like a bad dream — maybe carried away in the night, maybe never real at all. But when the sun cut through the tent flaps, painting the floor with slanted gold, the memory of that hiss still crawled in his gut.
They didn't speak of it right away. Survival had taught them that some truths needed time to settle. Rui checked her arrows. Li Wei cleaned his blade. Chen paced like a caged rat, cracking jokes that even he didn't find funny.
When they returned to the spot at sunrise, the body was gone.
Not cleaned. Not buried.
Gone — without blood, without drag marks. Just the faint smell of bleach in the dirt and a piece of tarp shredded clean through. That, and a set of footprints… then claw marks.
"This is a nest," Li Wei muttered, eyes narrowing. "They're not just trading here."
"No," Rui said coldly. "They're feeding."
Mercer met them in the open yard with a plate of roasted scavenge meat and a smile too easy for a man with secrets.
"Sleep well?" he asked, biting into a skewer.
Chen gave him a long look. "Like babies in a blender."
Mercer chuckled. "That's a new one. You're funny, Chen."
"We're done trading jokes," Li Wei said. "Tell us what you know about the West. The Ascendancy. Mutations."
Mercer's smile thinned. "I was hoping you'd stick around longer. But fine. Let's take a walk."
The underground chamber was beneath the stadium — a concrete tunnel accessible only through a hidden hatch inside a rusted shipping crate. As they descended, the air grew colder, damper… and wrong. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. The walls were covered in black plastic sheets.
It smelled like old blood.
"This used to be a holding area," Mercer said, voice low. "A place where the Ascendancy brought their failures."
"Failures?" Rui asked.
"Subjects that didn't evolve. Or evolved too much."
They reached a sealed observation room. Behind the reinforced glass, six steel cells lined the wall. In one, a corpse hung upside down, limbs grotesquely elongated. In another, a half-human creature rocked back and forth, whispering in a forgotten language. One cell was empty… with scratch marks on the inside of the glass.
"They were experimenting with virus strains," Mercer continued. "Trying to direct the mutations. Trying to build something better than human."
"And what happened?" Li Wei asked.
"They lost control."
Chen tapped the glass. "You're keeping them here. Why?"
Mercer looked at him. "Because they're valuable."
Chen's grin vanished.
Mercer didn't blink. "You think this place survives on rat jerky and shotgun shells? No. The real trade is information, tissue samples, mutated blood, reproductive glands, engineered eggs. The future's being auctioned every night — in doses."
Li Wei stepped forward. "You're farming monsters."
"And surviving," Mercer snapped. "You have no idea what's coming. These things you've seen? They're just wave one. You want answers? You'll need to go deeper. I can take you west. To where the storms begin."
"We didn't come here for a tour," Rui said. "We came for the truth."
"You got it."
Chen stared at the creature in Cell 4, which had now risen to its feet — impossibly tall, its bones crackling like dry leaves.
"We're leaving," Li Wei said.
Mercer didn't stop them. He just smiled — a little too calm.
They returned to their tent in silence.
Rui was the first to speak. "He let us see too much."
"I know," Li Wei said.
"You think we're being tracked?" Chen asked.
"We're already tagged," Rui replied.
Chen checked his arms. "With what? I've got no cuts."
Rui tapped her temple. "Microparticles. Maybe from the rain. Maybe from something we touched. It's enough."
Li Wei didn't argue.
They packed fast.
But it was already too late.
That night, when they tried to slip past the gate, they were stopped — not by guards, but by civilians. Men and women, faces blank, eyes glassy. Like puppets waiting for a cue.
Then, without warning, they attacked.
Not screaming. Not snarling. Just silent violence. Coordinated.
Li Wei moved like a storm — blade flashing, knees snapping, elbows breaking bones. Rui fired arrows through throats. Chen fought like a drunk monkey with a wrench, laughing like a man already dead.
They broke through.
Behind them, alarms wailed. Dogs howled. Someone yelled over a loudspeaker: "Subject Three is loose! Lockdown sector four!"
But the trio was gone, into the woods.
Blood on their boots.
Smoke behind them.
Again.
They didn't stop running for two days. Not until the camp was a smear on the horizon and the wind no longer carried the scent of burning plastic.
They collapsed beside a stream, panting.
Chen rolled over, face in the dirt. "Okay, team. Consensus time. We no longer visit stadiums."
Li Wei stared at the sky. "He said something's coming. A bigger wave."
"He said a lot of things," Rui muttered. "What if this isn't just survival anymore?"
Li Wei closed his eyes.
"It never was."