"Hengen"—wearing the body of Dr. Karras—walked down the long corridor of the sub-laboratories. His steps were regular, heavy, and carefully calculated to match the gait of a man burdened by workload and bureaucracy. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his white coat, his shoulders slightly hunched in feigned defeat.

  The air here was unlike anywhere else in Neomera. It wasn’t polluted by smoke, nor sterile with cleanliness. It was saturated with the smell of "silence." A heavy, viscous silence broken only by the faint electric hum of fluorescent lights casting a pale white glow that made faces look corpse-like.

  On both sides stretched a series of thick, soundproof glass walls. They weren’t just windows; they were display screens of a different kind.

  Hengen didn’t see blood splattered on the walls, nor primitive torture tools of iron and fire. What he saw was more refined... and exponentially crueler.

  He stopped for a moment in front of the first room on the right.

  Inside, the room was stark white, empty save for a small table and a chair. A little girl, no older than seven, sat there wearing a simple white dress. Her small hands trembled as she hovered them over a single red button mounted on the table.

  Her eyes, red from silent crying, were fixed in terror on a large screen in front of her, broadcasting a live feed of a kitten trapped in a glass cage slowly filling with water.

  (Emotional Breaking Point Test,) Hengen analyzed coldly, his mind retrieving information he knew about Elias’s current projects. (Forcing the target to destroy what they love by their own hand to break the psychological barrier and generate directed trauma.)

  The girl pressed the button, screaming a scream whose sound didn’t penetrate the insulating glass. The water drained, but the screen immediately displayed another image... her parents.

  Hengen looked away and continued walking. There was no time for pity. Pity here was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

  In the next room, the scene was different. A young man was restrained with fine wires connected to his head and eyelids, preventing him from closing his eyes. A scientist stood before him, reading monotonously from a tablet—words that seemed random and disjointed, yet were designed with surgical precision.

  The young man was screaming and writhing, not from physical pain, but because the words were triggering specific memories... and altering them.

  (Memory rewriting via verbal trauma?) Hengen’s mind recorded the observation stoically. (Elias isn’t content with breaking humans... he loves dismantling them and reassembling them as distorted puzzles.)

  "Karras!"

  A sharp, tense voice came from behind, cutting his train of thought.

  Hengen stopped slowly. He didn’t turn immediately. He took a second to adjust his facial features, relaxing his jaw muscles to paint an expression of fatigue and submission, then turned with a slight slump of his shoulders.

  It was a man taller than him, wearing a coat bearing a "Section Chief" badge, his eyes ringed with dark circles indicating sleepless nights. He was holding a tablet, tapping on it nervously without bothering to look at "Karras."

  "You’re late," the Chief said sharply, his voice charged with tension. "The schedule is falling apart, and Management doesn’t accept excuses."

  The Chief gestured toward Room 6, which was located directly behind Hengen.

  "The subject in Room 6... collapsed faster than expected. The body is rejecting psychological stimuli and has begun self-decomposition. We need to clean up the mess before the next round."

  Hengen turned to look at Room 6.

  What he saw made him clench his fist inside his pocket until "Karras’s" borrowed knuckles turned white.

  A man, his body covered in countless tiny punctures emitting a faint light. He wasn’t bleeding normal blood; instead, a viscous fluid crystallized upon contact with the air. He was breathing with extreme difficulty, his chest rising and falling in painful spasms, as if his lungs had turned into broken glass.

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  Next to the man was a container displaying strange light crystals.

  (Crystals?...) Hengen narrowed his eyes, recognizing the familiar pattern of those crystals piercing the man’s body to keep him alive against his will. (This is "White Lotus" technology... a life-extension project. I thought it was discontinued. Are these remnants? Or do they continue to exchange them? Knowing them, they only trade torture methods amongst themselves as commercial goods.)

  "Move him to the isolation room and use the crystal to stabilize his condition. He’s an important sample, and we can’t lose him now," the Chief ordered coldly, as if talking about a piece of rotten meat that needed to be kept in the fridge.

  "Understood, sir," Karras’s voice came out hoarse, obedient, and broken, perfectly mimicking the tone of an overworked employee. "I’ll do it immediately... but I have an urgent paper report to deliver to the upper office first. Direct orders from Management regarding the incoming shipment."

  The Chief finally looked up from his tablet. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously for a moment, scanning Karras’s familiar face, then sighed with boredom and waved his hand dismissively.

  "Management and paper... always disrupting real work," the Chief grumbled, turning away. "Hurry up with that. I don’t want another delay. Sample 6 won’t last forever."

  "Of course."

  Hengen waited until the Chief disappeared down a side corridor, then turned and resumed walking.

  He didn’t look at Room 6 again. He didn’t look into the eyes of the man silently begging for death.

  (I’m not here to save them,) he reminded himself harshly, his inner voice cold as ice. (I’m here to cut off the head of the snake. If I stop for every victim, if I show an ounce of mercy now, they’ll discover me. Elias will lock the doors, flee... and these people will remain here.)

  Every step required immense effort to maintain the mask of the calm "Karras," while inside, "Hengen" was screaming with the desire to tear everything apart.

  He finally reached the end of the corridor.

  There, far from the muffled screams of experiments and the noise of scientists, the area was eerily quiet. A smooth metal wall, and in its center, a polished silver elevator door with no call button, only an advanced biometric scanner.

  It was the private elevator leading directly to the "Main Office" on the upper floor.

  Hengen took out "Karras’s" ID card from his pocket. He looked at it for a moment.

  (I hope your clearance is enough, you pathetic assistant...)

  He swiped the card in front of the scanner.

  Beep-Beep.

  The harsh red light flashed.

  [ACCESS DENIED. RESTRICTED TO LEVEL A.]

  "That was expected..." Hengen whispered, slowly returning the card to his pocket. He didn’t seem frustrated. "Alright... looks like we’ll resort to the old way."

  He looked around to ensure the corridor was empty. Then, he moved toward the dark corner beside the elevator, completely below the surveillance camera’s angle of view.

  He slowly removed his black glove, revealing a hand whose features began to ripple.

  He placed his palm on the solid metal wall.

  He didn’t push. He didn’t break.

  Instead, something logic-defying happened.

  Hengen’s body began to "melt."

  It wasn’t a bloody melting, but a shift in physical properties. His skin, bones, and even the clothes made of his treated dead cells—all lost their solidity and turned into a dense, viscous liquid, merging with the metal.

  Hengen flowed "into" the wall like a drop of ink falling into water. His human body disappeared, becoming part of the building’s infrastructure.

  He moved through pipes and wires inside the wall, ascending toward the upper floor, bypassing complex security systems that looked for "humans" but not for "liquid" flowing within their structure.

  After minutes of silent, dark ascent, he reached the other side.

  On the upper floor, in front of the luxurious wooden door of the Main Office, the wall began to ripple.

  A grey mass emerged from the surface and began to take shape. It shifted from liquid to gaseous state for a moment to spread out, then condensed with astonishing speed.

  The matter solidified.

  Bones reformed, and skin reappeared. The white coat "Karras" wore rippled, changing color and texture, returning to be Hengen’s signature long grey coat.

  The face changed. Karras vanished, and the short white-grey hair returned, along with the heterochromatic eyes gleaming with sharp intelligence.

  Hengen stood before the office door, cracking his neck left and right to shake off the stiffness of transformation, stretching his fingers that were now back in black gloves.

  Then, he manually tied a small braid at the back of his hair.

  (Infiltrating this way is exhausting and time-consuming... but still effective.)

  He looked at the closed door in front of him. There was no need for disguise anymore. No need for acting.

  "Alright, Elias..." Hengen whispered, a cynical smile appearing on his true face this time. "Official visiting hours are over."

  He reached out and pushed the door.

  When Hengen pushed the door quietly, he was ready for anything.

  But what he found wasn’t an army of guards, nor "Elias" with his provocative smile.

  The room was semi-dark, lit only by the cold blue glow of a cluster of giant screens covering the opposite wall.

  The screens displayed live feeds of several locations:

  The station platform on the "Third Island" (where the assistant had fled).

  The main laboratory gate (where Hengen, disguised as Karras, was denied entry).

  Security checkpoints.

  In front of these screens sat a single security guard, wearing a distinctive tactical uniform, his back to the door. He was tapping his finger nervously on the armrest, his eyes scanning the screens with intense focus.

  "Where did that fake disappear to..." the guard muttered audibly, switching between cameras rapidly. "Thermal scanners aren’t picking up anything at the main gate... Did he retreat? Or is the lab not his target?"

  Hengen froze in place for a moment, his heterochromatic eyes narrowing.

  (Exposed?) Thoughts raced through his mind at lightning speed. (They know I’m a "fake"... How? Did that scientist assistant report me?... No, he was too terrified. Did they detect the biological mimicry? Impossible... usually, the first option is capture if caught.)

  Hengen looked at the guard still searching for him on the screens, unaware that the "Target" was standing directly behind him.

  (I expected them not to know... but it seems Elias isn’t easy.)

  A cynical smile etched onto Hengen’s face.

  (Well... it makes no difference. I’m already here.)

  Hengen moved toward the guard. He made no sound. His steps were as light as air.

  When he was directly behind the chair, Hengen placed his hand on the metal floor for a moment.

  His human hand transformed into a fist with the hardness and density of industrial metal. He had mimicked the solidity of cold steel.

  With a lightning-fast movement, he wrapped his arm around the guard’s neck and placed his heavy metal hand over his mouth, stifling any scream before it was born.

  The guard jerked, trying to reach for his weapon, but Hengen squeezed with his metal hand slightly—just slightly, but enough to make the guard feel his jaw was about to shatter under hydraulic pressure.

  The guard froze.

  "Shhh..." Hengen whispered in the guard’s ear, his voice calm and terrifying. "No need for noise. We’re just watching screens, aren’t we?"

  Hengen slowly turned the chair to face the terrified guard, his hand still clamping over his mouth like a steel vise.

  "Four questions," Hengen said, his eyes gleaming in the blue screen light. "Nod up for 'Yes'. Nod down for 'No'. Any other movement... and I’ll detach your head from your body before you send a single nerve signal to your hand."

  Hengen squeezed tighter with his metal hand.

  "Understood?"

  The guard nodded up frantically.