The hum of machinery filled the darkened room. Along with it, a horrible cacophony, a droning so loud and piercing it would give the worst headache to anyone listening to it. The only sources of light in that small space came from the fifteen old CRT televisions arranged in a perfect grid: five across, three down. 

In the center of the room, facing the wall of televisions, sat a chair that had seen far too many subjects. The brick-red leather upholstery was cracked and peeling, like old scabs being pulled from unhealed wounds. Dark stains marked the armrests, the kind that no amount of cleaning could fully remove. In that chair sat a nine year old boy who looked more like a broken doll than a child.

Subject 354.

Naran's feet dangled limply above the floor, his back resting on the chair. His light chestnut hair, styled in a crude bowl cut, framed his pale face, while his grey eyes, identical to those of his brother Temüjin's in both color and shape, stared vacantly at the flashing lights in the wall of screens before him. Those same eyes were dull and lifeless, like frosted glass. The images flickering across the televisions made no sense to his brain—a chaos of black-and-white and colored footage, flashing too quickly for any normal mind to process. Faces morphed into landscapes, symbols twisted into abstract patterns, all bleeding together in a nauseating dance.

His body was held in place by worn leather straps that bit into his wrists and ankles. The leather was stiff with age and other substances better left uncontemplated. 

The right sleeve of his coal grey button-up shirt was rolled up, and an IV line snaked into his arm, delivering its mysterious cocktail of chemicals directly into his bloodstream. A thick, black cable was directly connected to the back of his neck, its insertion point slightly swollen and pulsing faintly with each shallow breath.

Whatever they had given him—ketamine, he'd heard them say—had turned his body into a prison of flesh and bone. He could only watch, trapped inside himself, as the world dissolved into meaningless patterns of light and shadow that were making his brain hurt.

High above, behind a rectangular observation window set in the wall, two men watched him. The taller of the two stood with the rigid posture of someone accustomed to authority. Someone that had seen this countless of times.

Vitaly Petrovich Kuznetsov. One of the many senior researchers in the facility. His black hair, streaked with grey at the temples, matched the coldness in his honey brown eyes. Every movement he made was precise, calculated, as if conserving energy for something more important.

Beside him, seated at a cluttered desk covered in controls and monitors, sat his younger assistant, Nikolai—or Kolya, as his colleagues affectionately called him. The younger doctor’s nervous hands never seemed to rest, constantly hovering over various switches and buttons as if afraid of missing some crucial moment. His eyes darted between the EEG display showing Naran's brainwave activity and the boy himself, obvious unease written across his features. It wasn’t easy. Never was.

The Sensory Overload Test. One of the more crucial tests in the project, used to study the brain’s reaction to enormous stimuli and eventually find a way to isolate some of its enhancing abilities activated by the stimuli.

All, for it to trigger… something.

"He's been like this for more than an hour, Dr. Kuznetsov," Kolya's voice trembled slightly as his fingers danced over the controls. "No movement, no physical reaction. He just kept looking at the images."

Vitaly's response came flat and clinical, devoid of any emotion. "That's expected. He's currently pretty close to a K-hole. The dose of ketamine we administered is keeping him dissociated. His instincts are suppressed, but his sensory output is still active."

Inside his chemical prison, Naran tried to make sense of their words. K-hole? Dissociated?

All of these terms were unknown to him, even after years of hearing them. He wanted to ask what they meant, wanted to beg them to stop, wanted to just crawl away, but his lips wouldn't move, nor his body.

Kolya shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "So... that means—"

"It means the baseline is working," Vitaly cut him off sharply. "This is exactly where we want him. The brain will be filled with enough sensorial information for us to try and activate a BP episode."

A BP episode.

Something deep within Naran recognized those words, setting off alarm bells in the small part of his mind still capable of fear. Breaking Point—that's what BP meant.

It was another one of those tests, yet again. This was the fifth time in less than two weeks. Or was it the sixth?

Naran didn’t even know at this point. The thought drifted through his mind like smoke, impossible to grasp. Time had lost all meaning in this room. The only thing that remained were the fragmented memories, the blur of flickering screens and needle pricks.

But right there, right now? He just wanted to place his hands on his ears, duck somewhere. He wanted silence. And he wanted his brother.

Too much noise, too many lights, too many colors. And yet he couldn’t do a single thing about it–not stimming, not moving, not screaming. He could only watch.

Kolya exhaled sharply, his eyes fixed on Naran's lifeless-looking form. "Doesn't look like it's working. He looks... dead. It scares me."

The doctor didn't answer immediately, his gaze locked on Naran's limp frame as if trying to peer inside his skull. When he finally spoke, his voice carried no emotion: "He's alive and well, the Memetic Transmitters on the TVs are doing the rest. Quit whining about it."

Alive…? What do they… Naran wondered distantly. Who… Who am I again? I forgot…

Every second that passed when he asked himself these kinds of questions, he felt like his brain was slowly cracking like glass. Questions that a child should never even think about.

The images on the screens continued their relentless assault on his senses. Sometimes he thought he caught glimpses of familiar faces—his brother, his friends inside the facility. But they always twisted into something else before he could be sure, morphing into abstract patterns or grotesque parodies of themselves.

"Doctor... Why are we still doing this?" Kolya asked, voice thick with barely suppressed horror. "I mean… I read the reports and I know you tried a couple of times already the last few weeks. There were no actual results, back then."

The doctor stepped closer to the glass, his arms crossed tightly against his chest. His reflection showed a man consumed by determination, or perhaps desperation. "Actually, quite the contrary. Him and the other two subjects came close to a Breaking Point last week. Closer than any subject we've had in months."

Even amidst the haze of the drugs, Naran knew who they meant. He saw them right when he was taken in that room that day. And three days before. And before again.

He had heard their screams through the walls, just as they had undoubtedly heard his. 

Three children, three subjects, three experiments. 

Three abominations, three Chimeras. 

Those were some of the names they used with all the subjects. Maybe they were never children in the first place.

All of this, to reach a goal toward some mysterious threshold that the adults called a Breaking Point.

The tension in the observation room grew heavier as Kolya's hands trembled over the controls. "And we're pushing them harder now?"

Vitaly's voice hardened like steel. "This is the best chance we've had. We need to push further if we're going to get results. We can't miss an opportunity like this. We may finally find a way to understand this whole shitshow. Maybe even find a way to reverse engineer what they did at MAYAK."

Kolya hesitated, his unease visibly growing as he glanced between the monitors and the small figure below. His voice quavered slightly when he spoke. "At what cost though? Are we sure this is the right way?"

The doctor exhales, his patience wearing thin. He turned to his colleague. “The world is in shambles, Kolya,” he said, his voice cold. “This is how we fix it. The pain of a few for the well-being of many. We have to do it. I don’t like it either.”

Figures. That sounded like bullshit, Kolya was slightly younger than him, but wasn’t stupid, nor dimwitted. The younger doctor clenched his jaw, unable to argue but clearly struggling. His gaze dropped to the controls, his shoulders slumping slightly.

"Have you already administered the Vyvanse dose?" Vitaly's question cut through the tension like a knife.

Kolya nodded, his movements jerky and uncertain. "Yeah... it should've already been absorbed by the subject's body by now."

Another drug. Another chemical. Always more drugs.

Naran still doesn’t know what the word ‘drugs’ means, nor what they are. He just knows they fill his body, and those of the other subjects, with them, for God knows what reason. 

He had long since lost count of how many of those things they had pumped into his system, both in that moment and in his whole life. Each one brought its own unique flavor of suffering—some made his heart race until he thought it would burst, others made his skin feel like it was crawling with insects.

Vitaly stepped forward, his sharp eyes scanning the IV levels on the monitor with practiced precision. When he spoke next, his voice was flat, devoid of emotion: "Push seven milligrams of Veleminol-2."

The words sent a ripple of horror through the observation room. 

Kolya froze, his head snapping toward Vitaly as if he'd been struck. "S-Seven? Dr. Kuznetsov, for a child his size, three milligrams is–"

"Do it.”

"Sir, that's more than double the recommended dose for a child his age! If something goes wrong–" Kolya's protest came out as a desperate plea.

"Do it, for fucks sake!" Vitaly's composure cracked, anger bleeding through his clinical façade. "We're too close to waste this opportunity!"

Kolya swallowed hard, his hands trembling as he typed the command into the console. His voice came out barely above a whisper "If this goes too far, it's on you."

The IV line hummed faintly as the dose of Veleminol-2 flowed into Naran's bloodstream. At first, there was no visible change in his condition. His body remained limp, his vacant grey eyes fixed on the flickering chaos of the televisions. He looked like a broken marionette, strings cut and limbs askew.

It burns…

The thought came with crystal clarity, cutting through the ketamine haze like a hot knife. The warmth in his veins had transformed into liquid fire, racing through his body with increasing intensity. Every heartbeat sent fresh waves of agony coursing through his system. 

Twenty excruciating minutes crawled by. Naran's breathing shifted first – subtle changes that grew more pronounced with each passing moment. What began as steady, shallow breaths became irregular gasps that grew increasingly erratic. His chest began to rise sharply, muscles twitching involuntarily beneath his skin.

Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop please please—

The mantra repeated in his mind, but his lips still wouldn't move to form the words. The fire in his veins had spread to every cell, every nerve ending. It felt like his blood had been replaced with molten metal, burning him from the inside out.

Please please PLEASE PLEASE MAKE IT STOP, IT BURNS, IT HURTS

The thought kept repeating itself like a broken vinyl. It hurt. It felt as if someone was pouring hot water inside this throat. And slowly, the effects of the ketamine disappeared.

“Vitals are fluctuating,” Kolya whispered, his eyes darting to the monitors. “Brainwaves spiking.”

Without warning, the child’s body arched violently against the restraints. His arms pulled against the leather straps with inhuman strength, his head jerking back as his mouth finally opened in a raw, guttural scream.

"It hurts! IT HURTS! PLEASE!"

The sound that tore from his throat barely resembles human speech. It was primal, animalistic—the cry of a creature being torn apart from the inside. His wrists and ankles ground against the leather straps, skin tearing as he thrashed mindlessly in the chair. Blood began to seep from the wounds, painting the cracked red upholstery with fresh stains.

His eyes, now bloodshot and veined, darted frantically around the room as he jerked his head violently from side to side. Saliva foamed at the corners of his mouth as his screams morphed into low, animalistic growls.

"Help me! Stop it-- PLEASE STOP IT!"

The pleas kept going for a minute. A painful and terrible minute.

He heard it again: that lullaby, that voice, that broken song. Singing to him. A soothing voice that turned glitchy and fragmented, words not coming out completely.

His voice cracked and broke, dissolving into a strained gasp. For a brief, merciful moment, his body slumped forward as though consciousness might finally flee. But then, with a shuddering gasp that seemed to start in his very soul, he snapped back into motion. His body convulsed with renewed violence, shaking and snarling like a rabid animal.

In the observation room, the EEG monitor spat out readings like a seismograph during an earthquake. The jagged lines on the screen fluctuated wildly, dancing patterns of electrical activity that bore no resemblance to normal human brainwaves. It was inhuman, it was… beyond comprehension. Kolya leaned forward in his chair, his breathing quickening to match the frantic beeping of the monitors.

"Dr. Kuznetsov, look at this!" Panic edged into his voice as he gestured at the readings. "His brainwaves are completely erratic!"

Vitaly remained unmoved, his stance rigid as he watched through the glass. If anything, there was a glint of satisfaction in his cold eyes. It was working, as planned. He just needed results now.

"This is what we need to see. It's not one of his seizures or meltdowns. So that's a start."

Kolya's face had gone pale, disbelief etched into every feature as he watched blood continue to seep from Naran's self-inflicted wounds. "H-He's bleeding. His wrists, his ankles– he's going to tear himself apart!"

"The injuries are superficial. He's nowhere near critical." Vitaly's clinical detachment seemed to finally snap something in his assistant. Kolya slammed his hand against the desk, his voice rising with desperate anger.

"You don't know that! Look at him—this is insane!"

Vitaly finally turned his gaze from the window, fixing Kolya with a look that could freeze hell itself. "This is progress. We're closer to a full Breaking Point than we've ever been."

In the testing room below, Naran's convulsions had taken on a terrifying rhythm. His body thrashed against the restraints with such force that the metal chair creaked beneath him. Blood from his torn wrists painted macabre patterns on the floor, each droplet marking another second of his torment.