Mercier's smile only widened, a gleam of perverse satisfaction in his eyes as he took a step back, gesturing to the guards. They began to close in, their weapons glinting under the harsh fluorescent lights, prepared to make sure I didn't leave this room alive.
But I didn't care about them. My focus was on Mercier. He was the one who had orchestrated all of this—the torture, the experiments, the corruption that spread from him like rot. And he was the one who had taken Scarlett, Lucy, and even Miller, twisting them into something they'd never wanted to become.
"Enough with the theatrics, Zane," Mercier sneered. "Your past, your friends—it's all gone. You're nothing but a weapon now, a tool in my hands."
His words hit like daggers, each one reminding me of what I had lost. But he underestimated me. He didn't understand that the very things he thought were weaknesses—my memories, my connections—were also my greatest strengths. They were the reason I was still fighting, the reason I'd break myself apart if it meant taking him down with me.
I felt my hand clench around the shard of metal, felt the surge of defiance build. If he wanted to see a weapon, I'd show him one. But it wouldn't be one he could control.
With a sudden burst of energy, I charged, catching the guards off guard. My body moved on instinct—ducking, sidestepping, striking out with the improvised blade in a blur of motion. Each blow landed with a deadly precision that even surprised me. It wasn't like before, when I'd have held back. This time, there was nothing holding me back.
One guard fell, then another. Blood splattered the floor as the others hesitated, unsure of how to approach me.
Mercier's grin faltered, just a fraction, as he took a small step back. "So, you still think you can fight your way out of this? After all we've done to you?"
"I don't think," I growled, advancing. "I know."
With every step forward, the last shreds of fear or hesitation burned away. I was a different kind of weapon, one fueled by resolve instead of control. As Mercier's expression shifted to one of annoyance and, finally, fear, I knew I had the upper hand.
He barked orders at his men, his voice losing its cool edge, but I could see the desperation in his eyes. He hadn't planned on this. He hadn't thought I'd still be able to fight after everything they'd done.
In the midst of the chaos, Scarlett and Lucy came into focus. Scarlett had collapsed to her knees, her face pale and her eyes glazed. But Lucy—she still stood, rigid and unseeing, her body a puppet of Mercier's designs.
"Lucy…" I murmured, a surge of grief crashing over me.
But I didn't have time to let that grief take over. I moved toward her, hoping, praying that some part of her was still there. Some part of her that could hear me.
"Lucy, it's me—V," I said, my voice cracking. "I know you're in there. I know they've tried to turn you into… this. But I'm still here. And I need you to fight. Fight with me, not against me."
For a moment, there was nothing but silence. And then her gaze wavered, just the tiniest bit, as though something inside her was stirring. A crack in the wall Mercier had built around her mind.
But Mercier wasn't going to let go of her that easily.
With a snarl, he slammed his hand onto a control panel, and suddenly Lucy's body jerked, her face twisting in pain. It was as if he'd flipped a switch, erasing whatever flicker of recognition had been there.
"Don't waste your time, Zane," he sneered. "She's not yours anymore. None of them are. They're mine, and you're about to join them."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," I spat back, my fury erupting.
But just then, the room flooded with a blaring red light. An alarm. And over the loudspeaker, a voice crackled: "Attention all personnel. Unauthorized breach detected in Sector 12."
Mercier's face twisted in rage as he barked into his communicator. "What is going on?"
In the confusion, I moved, lunging for Lucy and pulling her out of Mercier's immediate reach. She stumbled, the blankness in her eyes wavering again.
"Lucy, please. I know you're in there. Fight it!" I whispered urgently, my grip tight on her shoulders.
Behind us, a figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the flashing red lights. It was Monroe, battered but standing, gun in hand.
"Thought you could use some backup," he called, his voice strained but steady.
A flicker of hope sparked in me. "Glad to see you're still kicking."
He nodded, taking aim at the guards who rushed forward. Mercier's grip on his control panel tightened, his smug facade cracking.
"This isn't over, Zane!" he hissed.
"No, it isn't," I replied, my gaze locked onto his, every word laced with a promise. "But it will be soon."
A surge of raw, untamed power rose within me, building like a storm I couldn't contain. I raised my hand, and a blast of violet energy tore through me, erupting outward in a wave that shattered walls, obliterated floors, and reduced the entire facility to rubble. The destruction stretched as far as I could see, leaving only the open sky above and fragments of what had once been Mercier's stronghold.
When the dust finally settled, I stood in the silence, with Mercier, still alive but barely. His confidence had drained, replaced by sheer terror as he took in the wreckage around us.
"You…you think you can break free of me?" he rasped, bloodied and broken, taking a stumbling step back. "I made you. I control—"
His words fell flat as I moved forward, that violent energy still coursing through me, ready to be unleashed again if I needed it.
"This ends here, Mercier," I said, my voice calm, colder than I'd ever heard it.
He lunged in a last, desperate attempt, but it was futile. I met his attack head-on, each strike taking him apart piece by piece. His defiance weakened, and with one final blow, I silenced him for good. Mercier's reign, his sick vision—it ended in that moment, crumbling like the facility around us.
As I stood over his still form, silence settled. The rage that had fueled me ebbed, replaced by a hollow ache as I took in the scene. Lucy and Scarlett…they were gone, taken by this nightmare before they even had a chance to dream.
The open sky above felt vast, endless, yet unbearably empty. This mission, this need for revenge—it had brought me here, but now it felt like I was staring into a void. The victory felt meaningless without them here, and for the first time, I had no idea where to go from here.
Standing in the ashes of Mercier's world, I was left alone, with nothing but the weight of what was lost.
I stood there, in the ruins of a life I'd built, then destroyed. The sky above felt almost mocking in its vastness, stretching endlessly over the ashes of what had once been Mercier's twisted kingdom—and over what had once been mine.
Lucy and Scarlett, two lives that had been woven into mine, were gone. Their laughter, their glances, their presence—all of it had been ripped away, leaving a hollow ache that no power or vengeance could fill. I was left with the remnants of Mercier's twisted influence, the bruises of Anderson Silva's betrayal, and the silence of this deserted wasteland.
Alone.
I'd once reveled in solitude. It had been my ally, my tool, a weapon honed for survival and control. But now, standing amid the debris, that solitude felt less like power and more like a cage. My pulse still hummed with the strange energy Mercier had forced into me, the unnatural strength of "Zane," a creation I'd been remade into, a creature of destruction. But even with all that power, I couldn't bring them back.
The world felt empty, yet somehow unbearably heavy. Every step I took echoed through the silence, a reminder of what had been lost and what I'd sacrificed to bring Mercier down.
So I stayed there, unmoving, letting the weight of it all press down on me. Because maybe, in some way, this was where I was always meant to end up—alone, surrounded by the ghosts of choices I couldn't undo, with only the whispers of lost voices to keep me company.
Weeks blurred together in a haze of silent days and starless nights. I stopped feeling the hunger, the thirst, the ache of exhaustion—everything I once thought was essential to survival. Being this… "Weapon" had stripped me of those needs. The strange energy coursing through me never faded, never flickered. It just fueled me, relentlessly. I was alive, but in the most unnatural way, an echo of life without its familiar cadence.
Then, one day, in the endless quiet, the sound of a boat engine shattered the silence.
A figure stood on the bow, and as the vessel drew nearer, I saw Monroe. His face was creased with exhaustion and relief, eyes scanning the ruins as he anchored and stepped onto the shore. For a moment, he simply stared, taking in the aftermath of the facility's destruction, the ashes and shattered concrete.
When his gaze finally settled on me, he didn't flinch. He didn't look away from what I'd become—he seemed to have known, to have braced himself for it.
"V," he said, his voice heavy with something like acceptance. "Let's get you out of here."
I nodded, unsure of how much of V remained in his words, in the way he said my name. I followed him onto the boat, wordless, my movements mechanical, as if anything more would betray just how much I'd lost. But Monroe didn't press. He only gave me a measured look, one that seemed to weigh every scar, every fractured memory I carried.
As we moved out onto the open water, the island fading into a distant speck, the remnants of that silence hung around us. Monroe might not know what to say yet, but he'd found me, and for the first time in weeks, the isolation began to crack, replaced by something I couldn't name.
I was still a weapon, but maybe… there was something left in me worth finding.
Weeks turned into months, and with them came the collapse of everything we once knew. A war of immeasurable destruction unfolded, its battles consuming cities, countries, entire civilizations. When the first nuclear strikes hit, they were like distant tremors on the fringes of my new awareness, echoes of a world slipping away. But the aftermath—the dense clouds of radiation and soot rising into the atmosphere—created something far more sinister.
The world darkened, shrouded in a perpetual dusk. Without the sun's warmth, temperatures plummeted, and soon the first waves of bitter cold set in. Frost crept over the ruins, turning concrete jungles into frozen graveyards. The gas clouds left by the bombings blanketed the planet, blocking out sublight and casting us all into an unending twilight. I called it the New Ice Age—NIA.
Society fractured, the remnants of humanity scattering in the face of nature's final, merciless punishment. The few survivors clung to whatever shelter they could find, huddling around makeshift fires, fighting off both the bitter cold and each other. Only the strong or the brutal survived in this new world, a lawless wasteland where mercy had no place.
A weapon was all that remained of me now. V was a memory, a ghost left behind in a world that no longer existed. In NIA, I became something else—colder, sharper, honed by the cruelty of a world reborn in ice. I wandered through frozen cities and dead forests, a weapon with no mission, no purpose. Just survival.
But as time went on, whispers reached me through the frozen silence—of factions rising, of scattered survivors gathering under new banners. And at their heart, there were rumors of a figure who had helped set this apocalypse into motion. Anderson Silva. And maybe, just maybe, Miller.
With each step I took across the frozen wasteland, my purpose began to sharpen once more.