The lab smelled like chemicals, rust, and something else—something sharp. Dr. Elias Donovan didn't mind. He never minded the smell, or the noise, or the darkness that seeped in when the lights were too dim.
He was used to it all. But today, the air felt thick, strange. The hum of machinery in the corner almost sounded like it was… breathing. Almost.
He reached into the cabinet and pulled out the ball. His creation. It was smaller than he had imagined when he first started, but it was perfect.
A sleek black sphere, smooth like obsidian, with a faint, jagged edge where the pieces had come together. It glinted in the weak light. Its surface seemed to shift, a motion that might have been imagined, but it wasn't. The ball was alive.
A sound scratched at the back of his mind, something like a low growl, but that was impossible. The lab was silent. The ball was perfectly still. It had been perfect before, but now, as he held it, something felt… off. The ball shifted again, just enough that it caught the light in a different angle, and for a moment, Donovan thought he saw something inside it. Something crawling.
He leaned closer. His breath was shallow. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. The world had no place for a man like him, but he would make his mark. They'd see. They'd all see.
The ball had begun as an experiment, a test for something that would revolutionize power. But it had gone too far. It had evolved beyond his control. It had begun… feeding on itself. On him. On the world.
At first, it had been small. It had been harmless, even beautiful. The energy it gave off was barely noticeable, just a faint warmth when he held it too long. But it grew. Slowly, methodically, until one day it was more than he could keep contained.
The first experiment had been a failure—a test, a prototype—but it had worked. It had worked so well that Donovan didn't dare let anyone else see it. Not until he had perfected it. But perfection was a moving target, and the ball kept changing.
What had once been a marvel had become a curse. It pulsed now, steadily, like a heartbeat. As though it were waiting for something. Or someone. Donovan looked at it again. The way the light hit its surface made him think of eyes, unblinking, staring.
He couldn't stop the thoughts anymore. They came uninvited. Maybe that was the ball's doing, maybe it was his own fragile mind. He didn't know. Didn't care.
Suddenly, a blast of sound filled the room, a high-pitched ringing that set his teeth on edge. His hand shot out, slamming the ball onto the table, but it didn't stop. It grew louder. It buzzed, it cracked, it tore at his sanity.
He shoved his hands to his ears, but the sound was inside his skull, buzzing deep, vibrating in places it shouldn't reach.
He stumbled backward, his legs weak, his mind cracking open under the pressure. The lab seemed to warp around him. His vision blurred, reality splintering.
The ball exploded.
Not in the way he expected. It didn't shatter, didn't explode outward in a violent blast of energy. Instead, it imploded. Collapsing in on itself, drawing everything toward it. The air in the room thickened, swirling, pulling at the edges of his vision, sucking everything inward, a gravitational force that wasn't of this world.
Donovan tried to scream, but no sound came. His body was locked, frozen in place as the world began to fold in on itself.
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Alice had heard about the strange events in Donovan's lab, but she didn't think much of them at first. She knew him well enough. Dr. Elias Donovan was a man of extreme passion, a man obsessed with his work. But something about the rumors unsettled her. And so, here she was, standing outside his building, staring up at the dark windows.
Her fingers twitched, tapping the side of her leg as she waited for a sign—any sign—that she should turn around. She knew it was foolish, that she should have stayed away. But Alice wasn't a coward. Not like the rest of them. She could handle whatever madness Donovan had gotten himself into.
Her phone rang, breaking the silence. She fumbled for it, half-expecting it to be her brother calling to tell her to come home. But when she looked at the screen, it wasn't him.
It was a message from Donovan himself.
"You have to see this."
It was simple. Cryptic. But Alice felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up anyway. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
She took a deep breath, pushing the door open. The lab was silent, and for a moment, she thought she was alone. But then she heard it—the hum of machinery, louder than before, vibrating through the walls. The temperature in the room dropped, sending a chill down her spine.
"Elias?" she called out, stepping deeper into the room.
No response.
She moved toward the far corner of the lab, where she could just make out the shape of a man, slumped against the table. Elias. His face was pale, almost ghostly, and his eyes were wide open, unblinking. His lips were moving, but the words didn't make sense. A low moan escaped him as his fingers twitched in the air, reaching for something that wasn't there.
The ball was on the table. It sat, still, black as midnight, its surface glossy and smooth. It looked ordinary, but something about it made Alice's stomach tighten. She felt an oppressive weight on her chest, the sense that the world had suddenly become much smaller.
She stepped closer, eyes never leaving the ball. It was almost like it was watching her, waiting. But waiting for what?
Without thinking, she reached out and touched it. Her fingers brushed against its surface, and in that moment, everything changed.
The world seemed to collapse. Her ears rang, and the air became heavy. The ball pulsed in her hand, its surface rippling like liquid. The floor beneath her feet groaned as though something was shifting beneath the surface, something ancient, something alive.
Alice yanked her hand back, but it was too late. The pulse had already begun.
She stumbled backward, heart racing as the room around her seemed to stretch. Donovan's body jerked, spasming violently, his mouth opening wide in a soundless scream. His hands reached toward the ball, but they couldn't touch it.
Alice's mind raced. She needed to get out, to leave, to stop this. But she couldn't tear her eyes away from the thing. The ball was growing, shifting, expanding in ways that should have been impossible.
And then she saw it. Tiny cracks spidered across the surface of the ball, glowing faintly from within. The ball had begun to expand, but it was not just growing—it was bleeding. A dark liquid seeped from the cracks, pooling on the table.
Her breath caught in her throat as the liquid began to move, shifting, crawling toward her. She tried to run, but her legs wouldn't cooperate, frozen by some invisible force. Her vision blurred as the blackness crept closer, swirling around her like smoke, like fog. The temperature plummeted, and she couldn't breathe.
Something wrapped around her neck, cold and suffocating. The liquid was alive. It was everywhere.
She reached up, clawing at the tendril choking her, but it was useless. She couldn't fight it. It dragged her toward the table, toward the ball, and her body convulsed as she was forced to look at it—trapped.
The last thing she saw was the black sphere, expanding, eating the world around it, swallowing it whole. And then everything snapped.
In the end, the ball had won.
There was no struggle left.