Project Zero: Evolution Protocol

Wrong Blood

The fists on the other side of the door didn't slow down.

Cyrus braced his shoulder against the steel anyway, counted to ten, and listened for the lock to c***k. It held. For now.

"Move," he told himself. "You don't live here."

He pushed off the door and went.

The corridor ran thirty meters of bare concrete under flickering red light. Doors lined both sides, each with a narrow wired-glass window, each dark. He checked every one as he passed. Offices. A supply closet. A room stacked floor to ceiling with folded body bags, neat as laundry.

He didn't linger on that one. Jesus Christ.

He slowed at the next window.

A man in a lab coat stood inside, facing the corner, perfectly still. Arms at his sides. Head tilted a little, like a child sent to think about what he'd done.

[BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURE: 1]

[STATE: DORMANT]

Cyrus didn't breathe. Don't wake up, he thought. Don't wake up, you creepy f**k. He took the next ten steps on the outsides of his feet, and the whole time he could feel the back of his neck waiting for the sound of the door.

It never came. The man never turned.

That was somehow worse.

Halfway down, something stung. He glanced at his right hand. The knuckles were split open, blood running down his fingers and dripping off the axe haft in slow, fat drops.

Not all of it was his. He remembered the woman's teeth.

Blue letters bloomed in the corner of his eye.

[BLOOD CONTACT DETECTED]

[ANALYZING]

"Analyzing what?" Cyrus muttered. "Analyzing what, you son of a b***h?" He wiped his hand on his scrubs. The letters didn't care.

At the end of the corridor, a door stood ajar, white light spilling out. A sign above it: MEDICAL / DECON.

He went in fast and low, axe up, and swept the corners. Empty. Clean. Bright after the red. A steel sink, shelves of sealed gauze, a gurney with straps, and against the far wall a terminal with a cracked screen and a cursor blinking like a pulse.

He kicked the door shut and wedged a chair under the handle. Then he turned the tap on and shoved his hand under it.

The blood ran pink down the drain.

A flash hit him, white and sudden. A needle. A strap across his chest. A man's voice, close to his ear, almost kind.

Hold still, Cyrus. You signed for this.

Then it was gone, and he was gripping the sink with his clean hand, breath sawing in and out.

"I signed for what?" he whispered. "Signed for what, you bastard?"

The sink said nothing. Neither did the mirror above it.

He met his own eyes in it. Pale, unshaven, hollowed out. And for half a second, a thin ring of dull gold circled each pupil.

He blinked. It was gone.

And his knuckles closed.

He watched it happen. The split skin crawled together, slow and deliberate, edge to edge, like a zipper drawn by a patient hand. The raw red line faded to a pale seam and then to nothing.

Thirty seconds. Maybe a little more. Long enough to count, and he did.

"Fractured," Cyrus whispered. "Functional." He couldn't finish it. "What the fuck."

His stomach clenched, hard and savage, as if he hadn't eaten in a week. He swallowed bile and spit into the sink.

[ANALYSIS COMPLETE]

The letters came all at once this time, filling the corner of his vision like a window opening.

[ZERO PROTOCOL: STATUS]

Host: Cyrus

Classification: Unregistered Anomaly

Evolution Level: 0

Evolution Points: 0

Mutation Slots: 0/3

Genetic Stability: 94%

Infection Synchronization: 17%

Primary Directive: SURVIVE

Secondary Directive: EVOLVE

[WARNING: REPEATED BIOLOGICAL MODIFICATION MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND NEUROLOGICAL CHANGES.]

Cyrus read it twice. Then he read one line a third time.

"Infection," he said carefully. "I'm infected."

[INFECTION: NOT PRESENT]

"The f**k does that mean?"

[SYNCHRONIZATION: 17%]

"That's not a f*****g answer."

The letters just sat there. Smug, almost. He would have given a month's pay for a system he could punch.

"What are you?" he said.

[ZERO PROTOCOL]

"That's a name, not an answer, asshole. Who built you?"

[DATA UNAVAILABLE]

"Who put you in my head?"

[DATA UNAVAILABLE]

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Evolve. Not heal, not protect. Evolve. Like an order from something that didn't care how he took it.

He checked himself anyway. Neck, shoulders, forearms, calves. He turned his scrubs inside out and checked his ribs, his spine, behind his knees. Teeth had snapped an inch from his face in that room, but nothing had broken skin.

No bite. No scratch. Nothing.

Then a second block of text unrolled beneath the first.

[BLOOD ANALYSIS]

[HUMAN: 83%]

[UNCLASSIFIED: 17%]

[SOURCE OF MODIFICATION: UNKNOWN]

Seventeen percent. The same f*****g number.

Cyrus gripped the edge of the sink. "Fuck." Whatever had been done to him, it wasn't a bite and it wasn't a scratch. It was in the blood. It was in all of it.

"Wrong," he said to the empty room. "My blood is wrong."

Eleven years in uniform. Two blood drives, one gunshot, a dozen physicals. Not once had anyone told him he wasn't entirely himself.

Behind him, the chair scraped. Something hit the door. He spun, axe up. The chair held. The thud came again, and again, patient, steady, from the corridor.

He had maybe two minutes. Maybe less.

He crossed to the terminal and slid the dead tech's keycard through the reader. The cracked screen flickered, hesitated, and woke.

LANTERN SITE: SUBJECT STATUS.

It loaded one line at a time, as if it didn't want to.

SUBJECT 7: VANE, C.

RESPONSE: STABLE

PHASE: 1 COMPLETE

NEXT: RECOVERY

Below it, six more lines, grayed out.

SUBJECT 6: ACCESS DENIED

SUBJECT 5: ACCESS DENIED

SUBJECT 4: ACCESS DENIED

SUBJECT 3: ACCESS DENIED

SUBJECT 2: ACCESS DENIED

SUBJECT 1: ACCESS DENIED

"Seven," Cyrus said.

Six before him. Six who wept for eleven minutes, or took the elevator, or never made it out of the tank. He had stood in that observation room and asked how many, and the voice hadn't answered.

The screen had.

And next to his own name, one word glowed like a medal he hadn't earned. STABLE.

He tried to picture the six. A woman on her knees in the observation room, crying. A man punching the elevator button over and over, whispering please. Somebody in a tank who never opened their eyes.

Every one of them had been somebody's. Every one had gotten a line in a notebook and a gray bar on a screen.

And he was the one who got a gold star. Cyrus felt his jaw clench until it ached.

"Stable." He laughed, and it came out wrong. "Who the f**k decided that?"

He tried the map. It loaded in slow, grudging pieces: LANTERN SITE, SUB-LEVEL 3. A service stair at the far end of this corridor ran up to street level, a loading dock, a gate. Daylight. Maybe forty meters away. Across the top of the display, a red banner: AUTOMATIC LOCKDOWN ARMED.

No timer. Just armed.

Cyrus didn't like the word.

Then the line beneath his name caught his eye. RECOVERY.

Somebody was coming for him, and he'd bet his last good bone it wasn't to say sorry. Somebody had always planned on coming for him. Whoever they were, they weren't here to rescue anybody.

The door thudded. The chair legs shrieked an inch across the tile.

Then, all at once, the pounding stopped.

Not faded. Stopped. Like someone had told them to.

The silence pressed on his ears. His stomach clenched again, hunger wringing him out, and he caught himself staring at the door with something close to appetite. He tore his eyes away.

The blue letters flickered one last time.

[HEREDITARY MARKER DETECTED]

[PARTIAL MATCH ON FILE: 1]

Hereditary. The word hung there. Not a stranger. Not a lab rat. Family.

Cyrus went still.

His thumb found the carabiner on his chest. He hadn't told it to.

"A match to who?"

[ACCESS DENIED]

"Of course it is, you prick."

He stood there, hand wrapped around a cheap green clip he'd never once let himself explain, and felt something old and very quiet start to wake up behind his ribs.

Someone, somewhere in a database, carried his blood.

Then a drop of something hit the terminal screen.

It landed on the words ACCESS DENIED and ran down the glass, slow and black.

Cyrus looked up.

[BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURE: 1]

[DISTANCE: 2 M]

[DIRECTION: ABOVE]

The vent grille over the gurney shuddered.

A screw spun out of its housing and dropped onto the gurney. Then another. Then a third.

They landed an inch apart, in a perfect straight line.