Chapter 110 Mercy Killings
The desert looked endless from the jet window.
Miles of cracked earth. Rust-colored dunes. Heat shimmering in slow, wavering waves beneath the morning sun.
Nevada felt empty.
But I knew better now.
Empty places were perfect for secrets.
Darius hadn’t spoken much during the flight. He’d worked through encrypted files, coordinated teams, and issued quiet orders. Efficient. Controlled. Focused.
But every now and then, his hand would brush mine where I sat beside him.
Just a small reminder.
When we landed, the air hit like a furnace blast, dry, merciless, blindingly bright. A convoy was already waiting—black SUVs against the pale wasteland.
The warehouse came into view thirty minutes later.
It looked abandoned.
Corrugated metal siding half-rusted. Windows boarded up. A collapsed loading dock sagging like it had given up years ago.
No signage. No vehicles. Nothing but silence and sand.
“Perimeter secured,” Vincent’s voice came through the comms.
Darius stepped out first. I followed.
The heat didn’t bother me.
What churned in my stomach did.
We walked inside.
Dust coated everything. Old crates. Broken pallets. Machinery that hadn’t run in decades.
It smelled like decay.
But beneath that.Metal.Chemicals.
Darius stopped near the back wall.
“Here,” he said quietly.
Two of the blood guards pulled aside a rusted shelving unit.
Underneath?
A reinforced steel hatch. My pulse began to pound. They cut through the lock. The door creaked open. A staircase descended into darkness. Cold air drifted upward. Sterile.Artificial.
Darius looked at me.
“You don’t have to go first.”
“I know.”
But I did anyway.
The lights flickered on automatically as we reached the bottom.
And the world shifted. It wasn’t abandoned. It was pristine. White walls.Polished floors.Clinical.
Monitors lined one wall, frozen on paused footage. Stainless steel counters gleamed beneath harsh overhead lights.
And in the center of the room.
Surgical chairs. Bolted to the floor and strapped with silver restraints. My breathing faltered. Designed to burn.Designed to hold something stronger than a human. There were old, dark, dried stains on the armrests.
My gaze moved slowly across the room.
Screens, dozens of them, mounted in rows. Some displayed security footage of cells.
Some showed recorded procedures. Some showed people. Strapped down.Convulsing.Screaming.
I felt something inside my chest begin to splinter.
Darius stepped closer behind me but didn’t touch me yet.
On the far table were stacks of files covered in a layer of dust. They were organized and categorized.
Genetic sequencing logs.Serum development reports. Compatibility trials. Failure rates.
And then I saw it.
A single black folder was placed separately from the others.
Centered.
Intentional.
My name printed in clean block letters.
LYRA( Subject L-17).
The room went silent in my ears. Not actually silent. But like sound had been sucked away. My hands began to shake. Darius saw it.
He moved instantly.
He stepped in front of me before I even realized I was moving toward the table.
He grabbed my hands before they could reach for anything. Before I could flip tables.Before I could destroy everything in sight.
I squeezed his hands back.
Hard.
As if to test whether he was real.
He didn’t flinch.
“Open it,” I said finally.
He nodded.
But he didn’t release me completely.
One of his hands stayed wrapped around mine as he reached with the other. He opened the file. Pages of data, charts, notes, and Observations.
Subject exhibits dual-shift potential…
Genetic markers stabilized beyond projections…
Emotional catalyst linked to transformation control…
My stomach twisted violently.
Then—
A sound. It was Faint and distant. Then we heard it again it was a scream it wasn't recorded and was coming from the monitors.
Darius’s head snapped toward the hallway at the far end of the lab.
Vincent’s voice crackled through comms.
“Secondary facility located. Active.”
Darius looked at me.
“You stay…..”
“No.”
The word came out steady.
Cold.
Controlled.
“I’m coming.”
He searched my face. Then he nodded.
We moved fast.
Down a secured corridor.Through a reinforced door.And into hell.
The second lab wasn’t pristine. It was chaotic. Smaller.
Cages lined the walls.
Inside them; Bodies, Twisted, Half-shifted.Some had claws but no fur.
Some had elongated limbs that didn’t match their frames. Some had glowing eyes trapped in human faces. They were writhing. Screaming.
Silver cuffs burned into their wrists.
Surgical IV lines pumped something thick and dark into their veins.
On a central table were incomplete serum batches.
Labeled v3.7 — unstable.
v4.2 — cellular rejection.
v5.0 — neural collapse.
My throat closed.
“They’re still using this place,” someone whispered behind us.
One of the cages rattled violently.
Inside was an omega. Young.
Barely older than me.
Her eyes were glowing gold and blue at the same time. Her bones cracked audibly as her body tried to shift into something it couldn’t sustain. Torn between forms that wouldn’t align.
Incomplete.
One of them convulsed violently and slammed into the bars.
Blood smeared across steel.
The omega’s scream rose higher.
It wasn’t rage. It wasn’t aggression. It was agony. My hands stopped shaking. Not because I wasn’t afraid.But because something else took over.
Resolve.
I walked toward the first cage.
Darius followed close behind. I looked at the omega inside. Her eyes met mine. There was recognition there. Not of who I was.
But of what I was. I reached for the lock. Silver burned faintly against my skin. I didn’t flinch. Darius unlocked it fully.
The door creaked open.
She collapsed halfway out. Still convulsing. I took a deep breath and reached for my gun, this would be quicker and more merciful. I pulled the trigger and shot her straight through the head, her head snapped back from the force as she slammed to the ground twitching a few times before going still. I knelt beside her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t look away. “Make sure to clear all of them, it's the least we can do,” I said.
“You heard her!”, Thane shouted to the rest of the blood guards.” Put all of them down.”
The next few minutes the place was filled will gun shots and empty shells hitting the ground.
Then it stopped. The room went silent for one second.No more screaming.No more metal rattling.
Just silence.
But my hands were stained my chest hollow. Darius stepped in front of me slowly. His expression wasn’t pity.
It was reverence. He reached for my face carefully.“You ended their suffering.” he said softly.
“They shouldn’t have suffered at all.”
“No,” he agreed.
Behind us, the blood guards were securing evidence. Confiscating files. Destroying serum batches.
Then back at me.” We will put an end to all of this,” he said quietly.
I believed him.