The pain wasn't new to Dante, but this? This was something else. Something raw, alien.
A low, grinding throb pulsed at the base of his skull, each beat syncing with a sharp tension that tugged at his spine. He stirred slowly, every limb protesting movement as if his bones had been poured full of molten lead. His throat was sandpaper-dry, his breath catching as if it had forgotten how to draw itself. Muscles screamed in unison, like he'd been crushed and rebuilt without care.
Above him, the harsh glare of flickering fluorescent lights painted staccato shadows across the cold, sterile chamber. The room felt more like a mortuary than a hospital—deathly quiet, metal walls sweating cold.
He tried to sit up, only to find thick leather restraints clamped around his wrists and ankles, binding him to a steel gurney. The bite of their pressure dug into his skin, and the veins on his arm were peppered with needle marks—some fresh, others long since bruised.
Memories crashed into him like jagged shards—fractured and incomplete.
He was walking home from university. It was late. The rain had started to fall—a screech of tyres. Men in black suits emerged like shadows. A glint of a needle. Then—blackness.
Until now.
Glass walls framed the room beyond—an observation bay of sorts. Figures in sterile white coats moved with clinical efficiency, tablet screens glowing in their hands. They barely looked at him, but when they did, their gazes were like microscopes—curious, cold, and detached.
The room buzzed softly, and the comms crackled to life, their voices unintentionally delivered straight into his ears.
"Subject 09 remains stable. Neurological acceleration is exceeding expectations. Synaptic pathways are doubling in complexity every twelve hours."
"The Repeater strain has taken. He's replicating the energy signature of multiple sources simultaneously. Begin phase two of the augmentation cycle."
He didn't understand the technical language, but the implication was clear.
They had done something to him. Changed him. Altered him on a cellular level.
And his body knew.
He felt it—something building beneath his skin. A storm trapped inside his veins, surging, rattling its cage. His heart began to race, and monitors beside him shrieked with alarms as his vitals spiked. The lights overhead flickered once, then dimmed as though even the power grid feared what was coming.
"Restrain him—"
But it was too late.
Something within him cracked—no, awakened.
Dante didn't just struggle—he understood. He felt the mechanical tension in the bindings, knew the integrity of the metal, the temperature shifts, and the molecular stress at each junction. His muscles moved with unfamiliar precision, not from memory, but instinct. No one had trained him. He had never fought. And yet his body moved like a veteran of war.
Snap.
The first strap buckled under sudden force.
Sirens wailed in response. The lights bathed the room in blood-red.
"Security to Sector 4! Subject 09 is attempting escape! Lock down all access points!"
The remaining restraints shattered beneath his movements, and he rolled off the gurney just as the security door hissed open. A squad of black-armoured guards poured in, weapons raised. One levelled a pulse rifle at his chest.
"Down on the ground! Now!"
His gaze snapped to the weapon. In an instant, his brain dissected—charge coil, output stabiliser, targeting matrix. He knew its range, its delay between trigger and discharge, and the sound of its capacitor hum.
The guard fired.
Dante moved—fluid, perfect. The blast cut through the air where his head had been a heartbeat earlier, scorching the steel behind him.
Another charged, wielding a high-voltage baton. He struck Dante's ribs, and for a second, pain bloomed.
Then... nothing.
Dante's skin shimmered, faint pulses of light beneath the surface. His nervous system adapted, rerouting pain signals, reinforcing impact zones. The next hit felt like a tap.
He caught the baton mid-swing and, in one seamless motion, drove it into the guard's chest. He convulsed, dropped, and didn't rise again.
No time to think. No time to process.
He ran.
The facility stretched out like a labyrinth, yet the layout unfolded in his mind as he moved—his brain absorbing angles, paths, airflow, and even electrical pulses behind walls. He sprinted through stark corridors, past humming labs and dormant chambers filled with sealed tanks. Sirens echoed overhead. Drones skimmed the halls, scanning for movement—but he stayed one step ahead, sliding through shadow and memory.
Every footstep was too loud. Every second, he expected to be hit. But he wasn't. Not yet.
When he reached the surface, his clothes were burnt and tattered. His lungs begged for air. But adrenaline kept his legs moving, even when they wanted to give out.
The elevator hissed open, revealing a clearing bathed in silver moonlight. A concrete hatch behind him slammed shut with finality as he stumbled forward into the open air.
The cold grass kissed his skin like a forgotten dream.
He fell to his knees.
Above, stars blinked in an indifferent sky, and the wind whispered through the towering silhouettes of the Adirondack trees.
He was free.
But what had they turned him into?
Dante's hands trembled—half from exhaustion, half from whatever energy still stirred within. His reflection in a puddle nearby showed eyes glowing faintly, veins like threads of light beneath his skin.
He didn't know who he was anymore. Not completely.
But one thing burned like a brand behind his ribs:
They would come for him.
And next time, he'd be ready.