They said pain makes you stronger. They never said what it takes away.
The boy once had a name. A home. A mother's voice humming softly under a fading light. All of that vanished the night they came.
He woke in a room that smelled of metal and bleach. The walls were white, the air cold, and his own reflection unrecognizable behind glass.
They called him Subject 539.
Every day after that was a test. A new needle. A new command. A new way to see how much humanity could be peeled away before a person broke.
They wanted soldiers who could think faster than machines, fight harder than men, and never question orders. They wanted perfection.
He learned. He adapted. He survived. But something inside him refused to die. A single ember of memory — a voice, a story, a promise that once belonged to a boy named Adrian.
The years turned that ember into something sharper. Something that cut.
When they called him a weapon, he smiled. Because they were right. They built one. And one day, it would turn against them.
He didn't know when, or how, or what would be left of him afterward. But he knew this much — the ghosts they created would not rest quietly. And among them, one would walk again.