The door creaked open like a coffin's hinge.
I froze, one hand still holding Elliot against the tal cabinet, the other curled around a stapler I found on a desk. The silhouette stepped into the archive with the kind of quiet that only ca from years of training or the kind of madness that didn't require it.
Armored. Not bulky—streamlined. No insignia. Weapon drawn, a sleek compact rifle with a silencer longer than the barrel itself. A faint glow blinked on their visor like a pulse, scanning the dark in arcs.
Then ca the light.
The beam licked across the wall, over overturned boxes, scattered pages from that cursed dossier, and then—almost—Elliot's hand.
He trembled. A quake behind his teeth.
I tapped his arm in an attempt to calm him down.
The figure's breath was steady. No tension. No nerves. A professional killer, I thought. One who didn't need adrenaline.
He muttered into a comm, low and clipped. "Archive clear. Moving to sweep corridor four."
Then he backed out. The door hissed—tal eting tal.
I waited. Three seconds. Five. Ten.
Then exhaled.
"And just like that..." I murmured, slipping out of the shadows, "the Reaper tiptoes past his appointnt. Charming fellow. No punctuality, though."
Elliot collapsed backward against the filing cabinet. "I hate this. I hate this. I hate this."
"You say that now," I said, peeking around the edge of the door. "But you'll thank when your biography hits the shelves."
We slipped into the hallway.
Dim lights flickered above like dying stars. Red ergency strips pulsed beneath our boots, casting the corridor in a slow, throbbing heartbeat. The air slled of rust, ozone, and antiseptic failure.
tal grates clanged softly with every step.
"I'm going to vomit," Elliot muttered, staring down a passage of shadows and silence.
"No no, dear Elliot," I whispered, gliding beside him like a cat in a funeral ho. "That would offend the décor."
He shot a look like I'd just invited him to lick the walls.
"You've fallen for the illusion," I continued, voice low. "This isn't a blacksite. No no. It's a criminal resort spa. Discount packages for aspiring warlords. Massage therapy offered via electroshock."
Elliot groaned, ducking beneath a hanging pipe. "Can we not banter when we're in an active illegal abandoned building?"
"Oh, you're still calling it illegal," I sighed. "That's adorable. Personally, I prefer the term 'unlicensed performance art.'"
We passed a sealed door with a cryo-style window. The inside was pitch black—except for the sar of a handprint on the glass. Red. Still wet.
Elliot swallowed hard. "I—what even is this place?"
I gestured grandly to the corridor. "Exhibit A: No coffee machines. Bureaucrats love their bean water. But this? This is caffeine-free evil. Absolutely freelance psychopaths."
"That file we found," Elliot whispered. "The formatting, the language... it was official. That wasn't so back-alley forgery."
"Dear boy," I said, waltzing around a flickering light, "you've clearly never t a con artist with a governnt printer. Anyone can make protocols. But real regis? They leave fingerprints. This place—it's too... tidy."
He didn't argue. Not anymore.
We turned left at a junction where the red lights turned blue. A low hum buzzed beneath the floor. Generators, maybe. Or sothing worse.
I stopped at a terminal embedded in the wall. Its screen flickered—old and hungry. I slid Camille's pen across the interface. It sparked. The screen jolted to life.
BACKUP POWER: ONLINE
ACTIVE SECURITY PROTOCOL: CAIN
UNIT LOCATION: CELL 7
SURVEILLANCE: INACTIVE
"Cain," I muttered. "Just like the protocol in the file."
Elliot didn't wait for comntary. He was already moving, steps quick and quiet.
"Wait," I hissed, but it was too late.
He ran to the door marked 7. A narrow, reinforced window in the steel fra let through a sliver of darkness.
He pressed his face to the glass, breath fogging it. I joined him—slow, quiet.
Inside, a woman paced barefoot. Mid-to-late twenties. Hair a storm of curls stuck to her face. Eyes like electric wounds. Her hospital gown clung to bruised arms. Old ones. New ones. Her fingers twitched like they'd once held sothing—sothing vital—that had been stolen.
She stopped when she saw Elliot.
Didn't blink.
Didn't speak.
Just stared.
"That's her," Elliot breathed. "The one from the video. We have to help her."
He looked at the door's access panel. Fingers shaking, after a bit of searching and button pressing, he found the one that opens the door.
"Elliot, don't—"
The lock clicked.
The door hissed.
Then opened.
Smoke rolled out like fog on a stage. She didn't move. Just stood there, frad in the threshold, watching him like she wasn't sure whether to thank him or bite him.
He stepped forward anyway. "It's okay," he said gently. "We're here to help. I saw what they did to you. We're not with them."
I turned to the terminal by the door. Text flickered across the screen like rot surfacing beneath glass.
SUBJECT 9D
PROJECT: CAIN PROTOCOL
STATUS: INCOMPLETE
NTAL STABILITY: VARIABLE
ABILITY RETENTION: SUCCESSFUL
RANK CONTAINNT: FAILED
NOTES: Subject continues to exhibit unstable class replication. mory bleed occurring. Primary anchor unresponsive.
My chest tightened. I read the next lines aloud, voice barely above a whisper:
"The Cain Protocol is a reactive experintal initiative enacted under the authority of the World President. Its goal: to artificially induce and control multi-job functionality within a subject through psychological fracture, hormonal rewrites, and targeted mory disruption.
Mission purpose: Termination of anomalous entity codena 'Masked Syndicate."
Elliot knelt beside the woman now, helping her stand.
"Previous efforts using trauma-only thods resulted in fatalities or psychic disassociation. Subject 9D is the first to survive replication beyond two concurrent jobs. Current retention: Astronaut C-Rank, Firefighter B-Rank, Strategist (Lv. 2). Attempts to inject detective lineage resulted in recursive hallucination loops."
"Should Subject 9D fail to imprint target location or identity, visual confirmation of Reynard Vale will trigger autonomous hostile engagent. Code Alpha: 'Cain Sees Abel.'"
I stared at what I was reading.
Protocol Cain.
They were trying to recreate my circumstances to beat .
To turn her into a weapon. One that didn't rember who she was. One that would attack ... on sight.
"Should psychological anchoring fail to resolve, engage ergency failsafe. Terminate subject. Initiate reboot cycle. Wipe support personnel."
My pulse climbed into my throat.
The final line blinked into being, stark and irreversible.
CAIN PROTOCOL – DEEP SEED INITIATED.
I looked up.
She was already standing.
Already staring at .
Her expression didn't match Elliot's concern or my horror.
She tilted her head.
And smiled.
Not relief.
Recognition.
"You're....a mber of the masked syndicate," she whispered. Not to Elliot. To .
Then so alarms scread to life.
Red lights flared like open wounds.
For a mont I looked away from shock as the light shined in my eye.
I turned, just in ti to see Elliot stumble back.
The girl took one step forward.
Then another.
Her eyes shimred—one gold, one black.
Her voice ca layered, distorted. Like three people were speaking through her mouth at once.
"Masked Syndicate," she said.
Then lunged.
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