In the observation room adjacent to where Ethan sleeps, Michael watches his son through reinforced glass. For once, the boy looks peaceful, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm while green lines dance across black monitors, painting his vitals in electronic constellations.
"Fascinating," Dr. Krazinsky murmurs, studying a tablet displaying Ethan's brain patterns with the intensity of someone who's just discovered their favorite show is getting another season. "Look at these delta waves. I've never seen anything quite like it."
Michael tears his gaze from his son. "What do you mean?"
"His brain activity..." Krazinsky swipes through several screens like he's searching for the perfect Instagram filter. "It's as if he's operating on multiple frequencies simultaneously. One pattern is typical of deep sleep, but beneath that..." He enlarges a particular waveform that pulses like a second heartbeat. "There's something else. A secondary consciousness."
"English, Roger."
Krazinsky moves to where Ethan's blood samples spin in a centrifuge, his eyes fever-bright. "Your son's DNA contains something remarkable. A code within the code. We've seen it before, in others like him."
"Others?" Michael's voice sharpens with the edge of every parent who's ever heard there might be something 'special' about their kid.
"I think it's time I show you something." Krazinsky's eyes gleam with barely contained excitement. "Something I've only shared with a handful of people in fifteen years of research." He glances at Ethan's sleeping form. "He'll be out for hours. Come with me."
The corridor they take is different - older, with concrete walls instead of sterile white, like someone switched architects halfway through from "modern medical" to "vintage dungeon." Security checkpoints become more frequent, each requiring Krazinsky's keycard and retinal scan. The air grows colder as they descend, carrying the weight of secrets and probably several OSHA violations.
"I've known about them for years," Krazinsky says as they walk. "The meta-humans. Living myths. When the university board called me delusional, I was already working with military contacts who knew the truth."
The final security door is heavy steel marked with red warnings that probably don't cover half of what's actually down here. When it opens, Michael's breath catches.
The chamber beyond stretches into shadow, lined with cells fronted by transparent barriers that gleam like polished ice. Inside them...
"My God," Michael whispers.
A woman sits cross-legged in the first cell, her amber eyes tracking them with predatory focus. Next door, a teenage boy's proportions are wrong - shoulders too broad, hands too large, face caught between human and something else entirely. Each cell holds its own nightmare, a museum of mutations that shouldn't exist.
"Ferals," Krazinsky explains, voice taking on a manic edge. "Rogues who've lost their packs or never had them. The military brings them to me. Safer than regular prisons, wouldn't you say?"
Before Michael can process the horror of what he's seeing, a klaxon pierces the air. Red emergency lights pulse, making the cells' occupants look like they're bathing in blood.
The explosion hits like a physical wave, knocking them to the ground. Through ringing ears, Michael hears glass shatter - or whatever material the cell barriers are made of.
Seven massive figures emerge from the smoke. They're dressed in leather and chrome like a biker gang from hell, but their proportions are wrong, inhuman. Their leader towers at seven feet, grinning down with timber wolf teeth.
"Evening, Doc," the giant rumbles. "Hope we're not interrupting anything important."
Everything happens fast after that. The giant's companions systematically destroy the cells with the efficiency of someone who's done this before. Prisoners flee past them, some on two legs, others already shifting into something else entirely. The giant lifts Krazinsky by the throat when he protests.
"Tell me, Doctor," he says conversationally, as if they're discussing the weather and not the liberation of supernatural prisoners, "my people reported a new arrival upstairs. Young man. Powerful. Recently transformed." His nostrils flare. "I can smell his blood from here."
Michael's heart stops. "Ethan," he whispers.
The giant's head snaps toward him, eyes glowing like hot coals in the red light. "Ethan?" Something changes in his expression. "Take me to him."
Security forces pour down the stairwell, rifles raised. But bullets mean nothing to these creatures. The giant's companions tear through the armed men like paper, the air filling with screams and inhuman snarls.
Michael runs for the stairs, but a hand catches him, slamming him into concrete. Something cracks in his chest with a sound like stepping on bubble wrap, if bubble wrap could break ribs.
"Stay down," the giant growls. "This doesn't have to get messier than it already is."
Through the haze of pain, Michael watches the giant stride toward the medical wing. Toward his son. The creature moves with the confidence of someone who knows they're the apex predator in any room.
"Get them out!" the giant barks to his companions. "All of them! Burn everything else!"
The last thing Michael sees before darkness takes him is the giant's silhouette disappearing up the stairs, while around him, the facility burns.
When consciousness returns, Michael drags himself up, each breath a knife through his cracked ribs. Through the smoke and chaos, he spots Krazinsky stirring against the wall, a dark streak marking where he'd slid down.
"Roger!" He staggers over, hauling the dazed scientist to his feet. "The control room. Now!"
Understanding flashes in Krazinsky's bloody face. They stumble toward the emergency stairwell, using each other for support. Behind them, destruction echoes through the facility - shattering glass, crumpling metal, roars that sound less human with each passing second.
The control room is three floors up, every step pure agony. The thought of Ethan drives them forward, their ragged breathing keeping time with the pulsing emergency lights. They reach the security door just as an inhuman howl shakes the building's foundation.
"He's found the med wing," Krazinsky gasps, fumbling with his keycard. The door slides open and they practically fall inside.
Banks of monitors line the walls, showing feeds from throughout the facility. On one screen, they watch the giant trying to break into Ethan's room, his massive fists denting the reinforced door like it's made of tin.
Krazinsky's fingers fly over the keyboard. "Initiating emergency protocols," he mutters, blood dripping onto the keys. "Complete lockdown of all critical areas."
Heavy blast shields descend over the med wing's windows and doors. The giant's roar of frustration makes the monitors vibrate in their mounts.
"That won't hold him forever," Krazinsky says, wiping his face and leaving a crimson smear. "But it'll buy us time until—"
The control room door explodes inward. The giant fills the doorway, his features distorted with rage. Up close, his skin seems to ripple, as if something else lives just beneath the surface.
"Override it," he snarls at Krazinsky. "Now."
"I can't," Krazinsky says, and for once his academic enthusiasm is gone, replaced by cold hatred. "Emergency protocols can only be deactivated from outside the facility. You're wasting your time."
The giant moves faster than Michael's eyes can track. His hand closes around Krazinsky's throat, lifting him off the ground once more. "You think you can keep him from us? He belongs with his own kind!"
"Damien!" A sharp voice cuts through the chaos. Another figure appears in the doorway, leather splattered with something dark and wet. "Two Moon Shadow Humvees just crossed the perimeter. Three minutes."
The giant – Damien – curses violently. "We're not ready for that fight. Not yet." He slams Krazinsky into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. "Load up the others. Burn everything else to the ground."
"But the boy—"
"Will have to wait." Damien's eyes burn with promised violence. "Moon Shadow can keep him for now. We'll get another chance."
He drops Krazinsky and turns to leave, then pauses. "Oh, and Doctor?" His grin is all fangs. "Consider this your retirement party."
Michael sees Damien's companion toss something into the room – something that hisses and spits green flames. Then the world dissolves into fire and smoke, and the last coherent thought Michael has is that he's failed to protect his son from monsters after all – both the ones in the cells, and the ones in lab coats.
***
The first sensation that filters through Ethan's drug-hazed consciousness is noise - a piercing mechanical wail that burrows into his skull like a Skrillex track on steroids. His eyes crack open to strobing red emergency lights that turn the medical bay into something straight out of a survival horror game, each pulse revealing a new nightmare.
The observation window that was pristine when he lost consciousness is now a fractured spiderweb of cracks, dark arterial sprays painting abstract patterns across the reinforced glass. In the strobing light, the blood looks almost black, glistening wetly with each flash. Beyond the ruined window, the observation room is a scene of violent chaos - chairs overturned, papers scattered like dead leaves, tablets lying with their screens shattered and sparking weakly.
"Hello?" The word scrapes past his dry throat, barely audible over the relentless klaxon. His tongue feels thick, clumsy. Whatever sedative Krazinsky gave him still clouds his thoughts, making reality feel like a badly buffering video stream. "Dad? Dr. Krazinsky? Anyone?"
The alarm screams back at him, its pitch modulating in a way that makes his teeth ache. Somewhere deeper in the facility, he hears crashes and what might be gunfire, but it's all distorted by the drugs and the overwhelming noise. His brain keeps trying to categorize the sounds - explosion, combat, something that might be a roar but definitely isn't human - but nothing quite fits into normal categories anymore.
Ethan pushes himself out of the sleep pod, his legs nearly buckling as they take his weight. The floor seems to tilt beneath him as he staggers to the door, his reflection fragmenting in the brushed steel surface - pale face, dilated pupils, hair plastered to his forehead with cold sweat.
The metal is cool against his palm as he pushes, then pounds against it. The door doesn't budge. Not even a millimeter. He throws his shoulder against it, again and again, each impact sending jarring pain through his bones. The power that let him tear through his front door like paper seems buried under layers of chemical fog, just out of reach.
"Hey!" His voice grows stronger, edged with panic. "Let me out! Someone! Anyone!"
Nothing but the wail of the alarm, the stuttering emergency lights, and now the distant sound of explosions that send tremors through the building's foundation. The smell of smoke grows stronger, carrying other odors - burning plastic, chemical fires, and underneath it all, the metallic tang of blood.
Ethan slides down against the door, the metal cool against his back through the thin hospital gown they'd given him. He presses his palms against his ears, but he can't block out the cacophony. Can't escape the strobing crimson that turns the inside of his eyelids into a light show of blood and shadow.
Another explosion rocks the building, closer this time. Something crashes in the hallway outside. And Ethan waits, trapped in his sterile cage, while the world burns around him. His own harsh breathing echoes off the walls, counterpoint to the relentless scream of the alarm, as he wonders if anyone is coming back for him at all.