Chapter 17 · Echoes of a Nightmare

"Get away from him!" Lyra's scream ripped through the static of the room, but she was too late.

Vargas didn't walk into the room; he crashed through it. A slab of reinforced concrete exploded inward, sending grey dust and jagged shrapnel flying. He stepped through the smoke, his heavy boots crunching on the debris, eyes locked on Kane with a hunger that made my skin crawl.

I couldn't move. Not because of the dust, but because the image on the screen was still burned into my retinas. The screaming boy. The needles. The way the void energy had peeled back the skin of the subject like wet paper. That boy had been me.

"Look at you," Vargas purred, his voice like grinding stones. "Still glitching. Still shaking. You were meant to be the perfect weapon, Zero. Instead, you're just a broken toy playing house with a scavenger."

He stepped closer, the air around him shimmering with a distorted heat. The power he’d stolen from other specimens pulsed in his veins, visible as jagged black lines beneath his skin.

"I'm not a toy," I spat, though my voice sounded hollow, even to me.