Project Zero: Evolution Protocol

Cold came first. Then the drowning. Cyrus surfaced into nothing with his mouth full of liquid and a tube jammed down his throat. He clawed at it, ripped it free, and puked something blue-green across the inside of the glass. Glass. He was in a tank. The fluid dragged away beneath him in long, sucking pulls. Overhead, a red light pulsed, slow and patient, like a heartbeat in a dead man's chest. "f**k," he rasped. "f**k. f**k me." His voice belonged to a stranger. Somewhere above him, something heavy hit a wall. Once. Then nothing. No time. Inventory. Head: pounding, but he had his name. Cyrus Vane. Twenty-nine. Arms, legs, fingers, toes, all there. Ribs. He pressed the left side, where he remembered the sound: a wet c***k, like a branch snapping under a boot, and a weight coming down on his chest like the whole building had decided to sit on him. Nothing. No grinding bone. No blood. Just warm, whole skin and a faint raised line. "Fractured," he muttered, out of habit. Then, slower: "Functional. Continue." It wasn't fractured. That was the problem. "What the f**k did they do to me?" he whispered. He shoved the cracked lid with his shoulder and it fell away and shattered. He followed it out and hit the floor on his knees, naked, shaking, glass biting into his skin. The lab swung into focus. A long room. A row of tanks like his, every one of them smashed or empty. A gurney on its side. A dark handprint dragged down the tile toward the floor, like somebody had tried to hold on to something and lost. Another thud overhead. Closer this time. Cyrus moved. Something tapped his ankle as he stood. A plastic tag looped around it, white, barcoded, the kind they hang on a toe in the morgue. His name. Beneath it, one word. DECEASED. "Real f*****g funny," he told the empty room, and tore it off. His dog tags still hung on his chest. Clipped beside them was a small green carabiner, scratched and cheap. His thumb found the worn gate and rubbed it once before his brain caught up. He snatched his hand away like it had been caught stealing. Then he saw the tray beside the tank. Four sets of dog tags, laid out neat, the chains tangled. Someone had put them there carefully. Someone had wanted him to find them. He knew whose they were before he looked. He didn't look. He swept them into his fist and looped the chains over his head with his own. The metal clicked against the carabiner like a small, ugly bell. A locker by the door gave up a technician's scrubs, two sizes too big. He dragged them on and limped to the one console that still glowed, a stubborn amber screen in a bank of dead machines. LANTERN SITE: PERSONNEL STATUS LOG. Rows of names, most struck through in red. At the top, his own. VANE, C. STATUS: DECEASED. Time of death: three days ago. Three days. He grabbed for the last thing he remembered. A windowless briefing room. The Colonel's flat voice saying the word Lantern like it was a prayer. The helicopter, the rotor thudding in his sternum. Mercer telling some stupid story. Laughter. A long white hallway. Then white. A wall of it, smooth as an eggshell, with no seam to get a nail into. Three days dead. Somebody had tagged his foot and left him in a fish tank, the motherfuckers. The headache hit like a thrown brick. Pressure behind his eyes, and then pale blue letters swimming in the corner of his vision, as if someone had written on the inside of his skull: [ZERO PROTOCOL INITIALIZED] Host: Cyrus Primary Directive: SURVIVE He blinked. The letters stayed. He looked left; they followed. "Concussion," he said aloud. He'd seen men see worse. Blood loss, dehydration, fear. Fear could paint anything on the inside of your eyes. SURVIVE pulsed once. "f**k you," Cyrus told it. "I don't take orders from my own head." The red light died. Every lock in the lab let go at once, a bank of heavy clunks that rolled through the walls like a dropped chain. Then the pounding started. It came from the big steel door at the far end of the lab. Not a knock. Something throwing itself against it, hard enough to ring the whole frame. Then something else. Then more. Wet. Fast. Hungry. "s**t," Cyrus breathed. "s**t, s**t, shit." Cyrus backed up a step. His hand found a glass case on the wall and the fire axe inside it, and he put his elbow through the glass without deciding to. A speaker above the console crackled. "Left door, Mr. Vane." The voice was calm. Almost fond. "Stairwell, not the elevator." Cyrus spun. Nobody. Just the black observation window high on the wall, and his own reflection in it, an axe in his fist. "Who the f**k are you?" Silence. The speaker had gone dead. New letters bloomed in the corner of his eye, cold and blue: [BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURES: 9] [DISTANCE: 40 M] [CLOSING] "Nine," Cyrus breathed. "Great. f*****g great." He ran. The left door sat in the corner, a gray slab with a red keypad blinking beside it. He slapped the panel. Denied. He slapped it again. Denied. "Come on, you piece of s**t!" Behind him, steel shrieked. He looked around, wild, and saw the gurney. Saw the dark smear that ran from it. Saw what lay half under it, in the shadow, where the handprint had ended. A technician. Dead a long time. Lab coat torn open, one hand still stretched toward the exit, and a lanyard around his neck with a keycard dangling off the end. "Sorry, pal," Cyrus said, and yanked it. The card slid. The keypad blinked green. The far door gave. Not all the way. Just a seam, two feet wide, peeling open like the lid of a can. Through it came a hand. Too long. Too many knuckles. Gray as old milk, fingers scrabbling at the floor, dragging something wet behind it. Cyrus hit the left door with his shoulder and went through, and slammed it shut behind him. Concrete. A stairwell. Emergency lights ticking amber on every landing, and below him, a long, dark drop. Above him, the door boomed. Boomed again. The hinges screamed. He took the stairs three at a time. "f**k, f**k, fuck." Halfway down, a speaker crackled on the wall beside his head, and the calm voice came again, right in his ear. "Six minutes," it said. "That's faster than the last one." The speaker clicked dead. Above him, the door began to bend.