The rain came fast, blurring the edges of Gotham until it all looked like a painting left out too long. Grey on grey. The kind of night where people stayed inside and the city showed its real face.
I moved through the Burnley district like smoke—quiet, coiled. The warehouse Maya had marked was buried between two condemned textile plants, swallowed by rust and time. Fencing curled in on itself, and the lot was half-swallowed by weeds. But the layout matched. Not the front—beneath.
Cadmus never built their secrets in plain view.
I circled twice before finding the side entrance—an old freight lift sunk into the earth, padlocked and buried under a rusted tarp. The lock was digital, half-dead, and clinging to life by cracked circuits. I crouched beside it, wiping away grime with the back of my glove. The panel blinked once—mocking me—and shut down again.
I tried brute force first. Twisting the latch with a makeshift crowbar. No give.
Then I tried patience. A bypass loop from the backup power node I scavenged from a nearby rusted junction box. Still nothing.
Frustration started to mount. I looked over my shoulder—empty street, quiet shadows. But it felt like something was watching. Breathing with the rain.
I slammed my palm against the panel, swearing under my breath.
And then it happened.
My hand started to glow. Not deliberate. Not clean. Golden filaments snaked from my fingertips, not in calm pulses—but shaking. Erratic.
The kinetic energy built, vibrating through the lock. Sparks danced.
With a violent snap, the lock shattered from the inside out—fried components hissing smoke as the latch dropped free.
I stared at my hand, still trembling.
The Artifact wasn't obeying. It was reacting.
I dropped down the shaft, boots catching the rails. Four stories beneath the city's bones.
The sublevel reeked of mildew and coolant. Bare pipes hissed above flickering lights, and the hum of ancient machines murmured somewhere behind the walls—steady and low, like something breathing in its sleep.
It wasn't abandoned. It was dormant.
I moved slow, each step cautious, measured. Every breath felt like it echoed too loud. Gunmetal walls stretched in both directions, lined with mesh doors, most sealed, some barely ajar. Each was stamped with a serial number that meant nothing to me—no Cadmus designation I recognized. This place predated protocol. It was pre-system. Built when oversight was just a rumor.
I stopped at one open room. The light above it flickered weakly, casting shadows that crawled along the walls.
Inside, fluid tanks lined the space. Empty. Cracked. Many covered in grime, but a few bore the sheen of recent use. Scratch marks inside some of the glass tubes reached all the way up to the tops, deep and erratic.
Subject housing. Not containment.
This wasn't a vault. It was a womb.
The kind of place that didn't just store experiments.
It made them.
And from the looks of it—it tried to keep them.
I paused, gaze tracing over the cracked glass tanks and deep claw marks etched into the metal floor. Some were old. Some were disturbingly fresh—still flaking rust and something darker. I knelt beside one of the larger tubes, brushing my fingers across the base. Blackened fingerprints smudged the metal. Pressed hard. Recent.
Someone had been here. Hours ago, maybe less.
I looked around, suddenly aware of how exposed I was. Every hiss from the walls sounded closer. Every flicker of light carried weight.
A glint caught my eye—movement in the tank glass. I turned fast.
A reflection. Mine.
But something about it was wrong. Off. The posture was too rigid, the tilt of the head slightly unnatural. Like I was looking at a version of myself held too long under water.
I blinked.
It was gone.
"No," I muttered, backing up a step. My breath felt heavier now. The air thicker.
I lifted my arms, staring at the faint scars where the Artifact embedded itself. Willing them to flare. Anything.
Nothing.
My jaw tightened.
I clenched both fists, gritting against the silence.
"Come on."
Still nothing.
No warmth. No light. Just a hollow throb beneath the skin.
I cursed low under my breath, barely above a whisper. Not fear. Frustration.
The Artifact wasn't responding—not because it couldn't.
Because it wouldn't.
And suddenly, the corridor felt tighter. The ceiling lower. Like the whole place had shrunk around me while I wasn't looking.
Like something in the dark had been waiting for me to feel small.
And then I saw it—just beneath the flickering light ahead—scratches in the floor. Boot scuffs. A trail.
The reinforced door at the far end was slightly ajar. Light bled out across the hall, soft and steady—too steady. Artificial. Staged.
Someone was already here.
I took a step forward, then paused. The air felt off—pressurized, like the moment before a power grid fails. My pulse ticked up. I scanned the edges of the hallway, noting a subtle drag mark by the wall, a smudge of what could've been oil... or blood. Faint impressions in the dust that weren't mine.
I kept moving. Slower now. Each footstep a calculated risk.
The corridor stretched longer than it should have, the shadows creeping like something just out of sync with the light.
Unease crawled up my spine, tightening around the base of my neck.
Someone was already here.
I reached the door, exhaled slow, and pushed it open with two fingers.
I slipped inside.
The chamber looked like a research suite—rows of desks, monitors, data nodes blinking in low-power mode. In the center was a figure hunched over a terminal, face obscured by a hooded coat, hands flying across the interface.
I stepped closer. Quiet. Careful.
"Not much of a ghost if you breathe that loud," the voice said—flat, tired. Young.
The figure turned.
It wasn't a Cadmus agent. Not a soldier.
It was a kid.
Late teens, maybe twenty. Grease-smudged hands, thick goggles perched over his forehead. Wires ran from his jacket into the console like veins. His eyes flicked to me, wide but not panicked.
"You're him," he said. "Subject K-07: Golden Monarch."
I didn't confirm it. Didn't need to.
He leaned back. "Took you long enough."
"Who are you?"
"Name's Finch. Used to be a tech intern before Helix folded in on itself. They left me behind. Figured I'd die with the rest of it."
I frowned, stepping a little closer. "What do you mean, 'die with the rest of it'? What happened here?"
Finch didn't look at me at first. He just stared at the console, like the screens held pieces of something he hadn't figured out how to bury yet.
"Near the end," he said slowly, "they lost control of some of the subjects. Not physically—mentally. Memory leaks, feedback loops, behavioral fractures. Some snapped. Some... didn't survive."
He paused, jaw working. "The upper brass pulled out. Sealed the sublevels. Thought whatever was left would rot. Me included."
"So why are you still here?"
He finally looked at me. "Because I didn't know what was real anymore. Not the files. Not the memories. And I figured if someone ever came back—someone like you—maybe it'd finally make sense."
"You stayed?"
"Someone had to watch the garbage float. Someone had to keep the lights on in case one of you came home."
He gestured toward the console.
"It's all still here. Fragmented, sure. But Helix didn't wipe everything. You wanna see what they really did?"
I hesitated, then nodded.
He keyed in a command. Monitors lit up—flickering, crackling with static.
Video files. Test logs. Names.
Then: images.
Me. Younger. Strapped to a chair. Screaming. Not out of pain—recognition. I was remembering something that hadn't happened yet.
Other subjects. Faces I didn't know, but felt like I should. One flashed across the screen and my stomach dropped.
Kaelyn.
Finch didn't notice the change in my expression, or pretended not to.
"They mapped memory like a network. Fed us pieces of each other's lives to overwrite trauma. Said it would build unity. Said it would stabilize us."
I looked at my hands. They didn't feel like mine.
"Why show me this now?"
Finch stood. His voice dropped lower.
"Because someone else is coming. Someone who wants this buried again. And they're not as patient as I am."
Before I could speak, the lights flickered. Then cut out.
Emergency red bathed the room.
The sound of metal scraping echoed through the corridor.
Finch turned pale. "They found us."
I moved without thinking.
In one motion, I grabbed the front of his coat and hurled him behind the central console. He hit the ground hard, grunting as he slid beneath the metal lip just as the lights snapped red. "Stay down," I snapped.
The moment the door burst open, I was already airborne.
Three figures in black entered—no insignia, helmets sealed, rifles raised.
I hit the first one mid-jump, drove him into the opposite wall. Bones cracked. The others opened fire.
Rounds hissed past my shoulder. One clipped my thigh—hot, but glancing.
The Artifact responded.
Energy surged through my limbs, golden circuits lighting my skin. I swung hard, catching the second assailant across the chest. His armor buckled, and he dropped.
The third fired a charge round. It hit me square in the chest.
Pain bloomed. My back slammed into the console, sparks exploding around Finch.
"Get down!" I yelled, rolling forward. The sphere in my pocket flared.
I didn't think. I let it in.
Power roared through me—controlled, refined. My strike landed like a war drum.
The last soldier crumpled, helmet sparking, eyes wide behind the cracked visor.
Silence returned. Labored. Uneven.
Finch crawled out from under the desk.
"...Holy shit."
I didn't answer. I was already moving, hauling the bodies toward the far room, scanning their armor for transmitters.
They weren't recon.
They were cleanup.
And we were now on a timer.
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at [email protected]/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.