But this time felt… different.

A small tremor shook the ground. Just enough to dim the lights and make the machines flicker. A printer seized mid-page and died with a groan. Papers drifted down like wilted petals.

No alarm sounded. No warnings made. Just a collective tightening of the gut. An ancestral instinct clawing up their spines.

Dr. Rhys Stane Moores felt it in his marrow.

He paused mid-keystroke, his hand hovering over the keyboard, every hair on his body standing.

Then the second tremor hit, stronger this time. This time, the floor shook.

He was on his feet the moment the intercom burst to life, a voice struggling to stay calm and maintain normalcy;

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Then—

A hand seized him by the arm. It was tight. Urgent.

It was Dr. Rebecca Harker. She looked pale, her eyes wide with fear. Her lab coat was soaked to the elbows like she'd waded through the storm itself.

"Rhys…" she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear. "Tell me this isn't what I think it is."

He opened his mouth to lie, to shape any word he could that might offer solace.

But the truth came instead:

The halls buzzed with panic.

Guards sprinted past with rifles. Researchers dropped everything. Mugs, clipboards, dignity. The sirens still hadn’t screamed, but they didn’t need to.

Everyone knew.

This was no drill.

The tremors grew angrier with each step toward the control room. Ceiling tiles shivered. Bolts popped. Lights flickered.

Then the sirens finally kicked in—long, low and final.

Ganymede stood at the center of the chaos, sharp and unflinching. Years of command had carved steel into her soul. Her black hair clung to her face like shadow. She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Her gaze was locked on a wall of monitors, each one trembling with chaos.

"A Containment breach."

Her voice was calm. Absolute.

"Cell Block 2. Subject RS-07 has escaped."

Stane's stomach dropped.

He remembered the warnings. The restless debates. The ones who said it shouldn't be moved.

"You can't cage a storm," he muttered.

Ganymede didn't glance his way. But she heard.

"Then you survive it."

The building groaned again. Not from architecture. But from impact.

Something was moving through the facility.

The pipes shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. Whatever it was, it was coming closer.

"Activate emergency protocols ALPHA-9. I want this place in full total lockdown. All sectors—now!"

The response was swift. Doors sealed. Barricades clamped into place. Whole sectors shuttered in seconds.

But it didn’t matter.

It kept coming.

Faster. Louder. Closer.

On the cameras, they caught glimpses of a figure covered in smoke, moving too fast for its size.

A pale face drifted through the fog. It was not wild, nor was it scared. 

It looked focused. Determined.

And the eyes—

The eyes glowed violet. They were bright and strange, like twin stars fallen from their orbit, staring straight into the soul.

One by one, the monitors went black, swallowed by static.

"Oh God," Rebecca whispered. "It's already here."

The hallway outside the control room thundered. Something slammed into the main door, hard enough to make the walls tremble. A second hit followed, bending the reinforced steel inward with a groan of protest. Their weapons lifted, the soldiers braced, fear written plain across their faces. 

Another hit.

Then silence.

A heavy stillness hung in the air.

Then came the smoke.

Black and curling, slipping under the door like something living, crackling faintly with static.

From it, a hand appeared.

Small. Human.

A child's.

A boy stepped through, small against the giant frame but more commanding than an army. He stood like a puppet about to fall, his shoulders drooping, his head tilted to the side.

Then, suddenly. CRRK-CRACK!

They moved. He straightened with a series of sharp, cracking sounds.

Bones shifted, twisted, and snapped into place. They did not heal. Just moved around, like someone breaking sticks in a bowl of water.

He—

No.

It straightened.

And it wore smoke like it had earned it.

There was no expression. There was no pain.

Only eyes that watched.

Watched the members of Foundation scream from inside their skulls.

Ganymede's breath hitched as she finally saw, really saw, what stood before her.

Not the boy. Most definitely not a boy.

What stepped from the smoke had the face of a child, yes. But delicate. Narrow. Not the square-jawed specimen they had catalogued and contained for months.

This one had shoulder-length hair matted with blood. One eye burned with a bright violet glow. The other was torn open with glistening bone exposed, and muscle twitching under the damage.

One arm dragged uselessly behind it. The fingers spasmed like dying insects.

It emerged from the fog—not like a threat. Not even like a god.

Gods demand reverence.

This was worse.

She expected it.

The creature moved through the smoke like a queen reclaiming her throne.

The others didn't see. Not yet. Paralyzed by fear. But Ganymede saw.

The features didn't match. And yet, they did. The bone structure. The shape of the eyes...

A pulse of silence struck her.

Her brain clicked back to the containment logs. The hundreds of surveillance hours. The profile. The subject, she remembered, was infact a boy. A confirmed, catalogued boy.

So what was this?

Ganymede's mouth parted slightly.

She whispered to herself, unheard beneath the whine of sensors and the hiss of venting smoke.

Her voice barely moved past her lips:

"That's not RS-07," she breathed.

The girl's gaze swept the room.

No confusion. No fear.

Only intent.

Stane whispered, stunned:

"He's sizing us up…"

Ganymede spoke without turning.

"She. That's not the one we locked up."

And then—

The girl clenched her fists.

The lights died.

And from the dark…

Came the scream of a hundred rifles.

They fired, but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t fall. She only smiled.

And then they screamed.