Chapter Four — Veins of Hunger
1067 Words
The door seals behind her with a soft hiss, and the silence that follows feels louder than any scream.
I stand there, motionless, every muscle locked tight, listening to the echo of her heartbeat fade down the corridor.
Fast. Fragile. Human.
You shouldn’t have let her in.
I drag a breath through my teeth. The air tastes like ozone and blood — faint but maddening. The pulse in my jaw throbs; I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth until the ache subsides.
For years, I’ve perfected restraint.
Routine. Control.
But tonight… she almost shattered it just by standing too close.
Her scent still clings to me — warm skin, electricity, and the faintest trace of fear.
It crawls under my skin like fire.
I turn toward the terminal, the one she touched. The surface hums faintly, the crimson pulse now gone, like it never existed. But I can feel it — the residue of it — buried in the room’s energy, resonating with her.
She felt it too.
That should be impossible. The neural signal embedded in the chamber’s power line isn’t detectable to humans. It wasn’t designed for them.
It was designed for me.
My hand finds the edge of the steel counter; my fingers tighten until the metal groans. A thin crack splits down the side, but I don’t stop until I hear it snap. The sound grounds me — violence always does.
The servers hum on, oblivious.
I move to the control board, typing in the override sequence. The monitors flare to life, washing the lab in cold blue light.
Access logs scroll fast.
Lena Hayes — unauthorized entry.
Override granted — by me.
Of course. My systems respond to instinct now more than logic. When her badge hit the scanner, I let her through.
Why?
Because a part of me wanted her to see.
You’re becoming reckless, Adrian.
The thought cuts sharp. I stare at my reflection in the dark monitor. The man looking back isn’t the one I remember — the one who used to feel clean, human. His eyes are ringed with exhaustion, but the color underneath — that faint glint of crimson — betrays everything.
It’s getting harder to hide. Harder to pretend.
I shut the monitor off. The darkness folds back around me.
The hunger stirs again — that ancient, gnawing ache that’s never truly gone. It coils in my gut like smoke, rising slow.
I press my hand against the wall, steadying myself.
Not her. Anyone but her.
A voice echoes in my memory — cold, clinical.
> “She’s part of the sequence, Vale. If the signal reacted to her, she’s not random.”
I grind my teeth. “She’s human. That’s all.”
> “That’s what we said about the others.”
The others.
I don’t let myself think about them — the faces, the screams, the silence after. The research never stopped. Only changed form.
And now Lena’s in the middle of it.
I move to the security window overlooking the lower level. The city glows faint beneath the storm clouds — veins of light spreading through the night. Somewhere out there, she’s driving home, probably shaking, probably trying to make sense of what she felt.
She won’t. Not yet.
The signal inside her will stay dormant — for now. But the connection is made.
And I can feel it, like a tether stretching between us, humming faintly at the edge of my mind.
I close my eyes, and for a moment, I hear her heartbeat again.
Not memory — real.
Faint. Uneven.
She’s still awake.
Stop it.
I slam the mental door shut, panting. The hum fades.
When I open my eyes again, the crimson light flickers once more in the glass — faint, but there. The energy’s rising.
The experiment isn’t dormant anymore.
And she triggered it.
My reflection shifts — my pupils thin to slits, irises bleeding red for just a heartbeat. I force them back, pressing my palms against the glass until it cracks under the strain.
No one can know. Not the agency. Not her.
The intercom buzzes.
“Dr. Vale?” A voice — tinny, nervous. It’s Rafe, the night tech.
“What?”
“Uh… we’ve got an anomaly in Sector 7. Power fluctuations. Looks like someone accessed the containment line.”
“Someone?”
“Not sure, sir. But the core readings spiked. It’s like… something synced with the system.”
I shut my eyes. She did.
“Leave it,” I say. “It’ll stabilize.”
“But—”
“Now, Rafe.”
The line cuts.
For a long moment, I just stand there, staring at the blood-red glow of the core light. Then I walk to the vault. The keypad recognizes my handprint immediately. The door slides open with a hiss of freezing air.
Inside, the containment pod sits dormant — a glass cylinder filled with faint red fluid. Within it, veins of light pulse slowly, like a sleeping heart.
My chest tightens.
This is where it began. Where I began.
They called it immortality once. Evolution. Salvation.
It’s a curse.
And now, that same pulse that keeps me alive hums inside a human girl who doesn’t understand what she’s become a part of.
I touch the glass — cold, slick — and the liquid inside stirs faintly in response. My pulse quickens.
We’re connected now.
The thought isn’t mine — not entirely. It echoes inside my skull, faint and feminine, like a whisper brushing against my mind.
My hand jerks back.
Lena?
No response. Just silence.
I step away from the pod, the echo of her heartbeat still lodged somewhere deep in my chest. It shouldn’t be possible for her to reach me — not through the containment field, not through distance.
But she has.
And that means the experiment isn’t dormant anymore.
It’s alive.
---
Outside, thunder rolls. The storm finally breaks. Rain batters the glass walls of the lab like a thousand tiny knives. I tilt my head back, closing my eyes, letting the sound drown out the hunger gnawing inside me.
But even through the noise, I can hear her.
Her pulse.
Her breath.
The faint tremor of fear — and something else beneath it.
Don’t come back, Lena.
Because if she does…
I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop myself next time.
---
- Writer
