Part 5: Exit Wound
Kairo stood in the charred remains of the control room, surrounded by flickering shadows and the sharp scent of burnt circuitry. The console was damaged beyond repair, the security cameras were dead. His message "FAILED ASSET = HUNTER" still glowed faintly on the wall, the scorched alloy around the words pulsing from residual heat.
He turned from it with slow deliberation, the moment he moved, his legs gave out.
He crashed to one knee, palm bracing against the floor. He should've hit cold steel, but instead, he burned it. His skin seared the plating, The surface beneath him was bubbling and warping, hissing as it shifted.
He gritted his teeth as another wave rolled through his chest—a bioelectric pulse that spasmed across his muscles like lightning striking underwater.
His body was coming apart.
Or worse—coming online.
He looked down. His abdomen was twitching with movement beneath, not just muscles contracting, but growing larger. Tendrils of reactive fiber twitched, threading outward, trying to repair the damage to his spine, to anchor themselves deeper into his nervous system. A blue glow spread beneath his skin, outlining bone and organ with a sickening internal light.
His breath grew ragged.
A low whine hummed in his skull, like a tuning fork buried in his brainstem. His vision doubled, then sharpened beyond normal parameters. He could see individual cracks in the walls, the carbon trail of his own heat signatures etched across the floor.
Another convulsion bent him in half.
Blood, thick and dark—spilled from his mouth, it hit the ground and sizzled.
Not blood.
Too black.
Too volatile.
It ate through the metal like acid, he wiped his mouth, looked at the smear on his forearm, he didn't know what he was turning into,
but it wasn't a man anymore.
An alarm finally sounded from deeper within the facility. It was late and malfunctioning. The echo of a system trying to respond to something it had never been programmed for.
An asset that hunted back.
He staggered forward, each step a battle against the foreign rhythm now controlling his flesh, his nerves burned like wires wrapped in flame.
He limped toward the emergency sub-access door, locked.
Rusted shut.
He gripped the handle, heat poured from his palm.
The metal screamed—then bent like wax. He ripped the door open, sparks falling like fireflies around him.
Beyond it, a tight maintenance crawlspace.
No lights.
Pipes hissed above, it smelled of coolant and mildew and something older, Forgotten.
Kairo ducked into it.
Every movement sent pain blooming through his chest, his skin peeled along his back where the wall scraped exposed bio-reactive plating. Still, he crawled—one hand in front of the other, dragging his half-ruined body through a coffin sized shaft lined with wires and dust.
Behind him, the control room caught fire, the flame danced across the sparking console, caught a ruptured fuel line, then a power conduit. The wall exploded inward, tearing a gash across the hallway.
Kairo kept moving.
Somewhere in the blackness ahead, light blinked—green.
Exit.
His vision blurred, then stabilized. The blue glow in his eyes flickered. Faded, returned.
He reached the panel beside the exit hatch, it required a retinal scan.
He gave it his broken eye.
The lens dilated, recognized the internal pattern, and then shorted out with a soft click. The door cracked open, just enough to pull.
He shoved it.
Moonlight spilled in.
Cold, pale, silver blue.
He hauled himself through the hatch and out into desert air.
The ground beneath him was rough, composed of gravel, rock, and sand—but it felt like oxygen. The stars above didn't blink. Just stared, silent, uncaring.
He crawled a few feet from the hatch and collapsed on his side, breathing hard.
His hand twitched. He forced it still.
Far below, behind him, the facility groaned. The fire had reached the primary energy coil. The pressure built.
The mountain rumbled.
Then, a soundless detonation.
The earth shuddered, a plume of black smoke burst from the hidden entrance he had just crawled from, flames licking skyward for just a second before disappearing back into the wound they'd erupted from.
He didn't look back, he just lay there, watching the stars.
His mouth moved.
No one around to hear, just the wind.
"One down."
Then his body convulsed again—every nerve screaming, every implant firing at once.
And Kairo-7 passed out in the sand, steaming blood beneath him, as the first ghost of Project Paragon died screaming in fire.