Chapter 144

But Victor had no bandwidth for any of that right now. The scene in front of him was too brutal to process. Some bodies had been cut clean in half. Others were torn to pieces, limbs scattered across the floor. What made it worse were the faces — many of the corpses had nothing left where their eyes should have been, just hollow, blood-soaked craters. Their tongues were gone too, replaced by ragged wounds that went straight through to the back of the neck.

"What happened here?" Kaname breathed in sharply.

Victor's brow tightened. He shook his head slowly. An image surfaced in his mind, unbidden — a city overrun by the dead.

But zombies didn't exist in the real world. Edgar's human augmentation program produced subjects who kept their basic cognitive functions. They weren't capable of this kind of slaughter. Not even the most elite augmented units under the Veiled Syndicate would leave a scene like this.

The three of them waded through the blood-soaked floor and stepped into the main hall. The bodies were piled even deeper inside than out.

They were about to press further in when a dull, heavy rhythm of footsteps echoed from the passage ahead. All three went still at once, and in a single fluid motion, they slipped behind the stone pillars on either side of the hall.

The footsteps drew closer.

Figures in bulky hazmat suits came into view. Victor's gaze sharpened. He recognized the patches on their arms — the insignia of Edgar's augmented forces.

"Have you swept everything?" the one in front asked, voice low and flat.

"Boss, we've been through the whole island. No survivors. Not one." his subordinate reported.

The lead figure let out a long breath. "He brought this on himself. Dr. Weber warned him not to use that batch of new serum. He wouldn't listen. And now look at what happened."

Victor stepped out from behind the pillar without a word. His voice cut through the hall like cold iron. "This experiment you're talking about — what do you mean?"

The lead figure spun around. It was A-01 — the same man who had watched Victor wipe out an entire augmented unit in seconds. That fear hadn't faded. It was still buried in his bones.

"It's Shura! Fall back — now!" A-01 shouted, voice cracking with panic.

The dozen or so augmented soldiers broke immediately, sprinting hard into the depths of the passage.

Victor let out a short, cold breath through his nose. Then he launched forward, moving like a bolt loosed from a crossbow. He scooped a broken blade off the ground as he went and sent it spinning with a precise flick of his wrist. It found the last soldier's calf and buried itself there.

The man screamed and hit the floor hard.

A-01 faltered for half a step at the sound. Then he gritted his teeth, killed the urge to look back, and kept running with the others.

Kaname and Mana moved in fast, pinning the fallen soldier to the ground from both sides. Victor walked up, crouched down, and yanked the blade free from the man's leg. Blood surged out immediately.

"Talk. Why are you here? Did you do this?" Victor pressed the blood-slicked blade against the man's throat.

The soldier was shaking all over, teeth chattering from the pain. "It wasn't us! We were just sent in to deal with the aftermath!"

"Deal with the aftermath." Victor's eyes narrowed. "Start from the beginning. Leave anything out, and you won't make it to the end of this conversation."

With death that close, the soldier told them everything.

Romanov, the leader of the Black Sun Cult, had gone to Edgar himself, looking for a way to match Victor's strength. Edgar was curious about certain ancient techniques the cult had preserved, so he agreed to work with them. But Romanov had pushed hard for a highly unstable experimental serum — something that had never been through clinical trials, with an extreme risk profile. Edgar had urged him to go with a safer, proven formula. Romanov refused. He was convinced that only the most radical option could give him any chance against Shura.

Edgar gave in. The moment the serum hit Romanov's bloodstream, he was gone. The power came through — more than anyone had anticipated — but so did the complete loss of reason. What was left wasn't a man anymore. It was something that only knew how to kill. In the space of a few hours, Romanov had slaughtered thousands of cult members across the island on his own.

When Edgar got word, he sent A-01 and a team immediately — to put Romanov down and look for any survivors. They were still technically partners, after all.

"We got there too late." The soldier wheezed through the pain. "By the time we made it to the island, it was already hell. That thing came at us too. We barely managed to drive it back. We have no idea where it's hiding now."

Victor nodded slowly, turning something over in his mind. "One more thing. When we were approaching this area, we ran into a cluster of waterspouts. Was that you?"

The soldier shook his head hard. "No. But this island has a large-scale holographic projection system. It's built to generate hyper-realistic weather illusions across the surrounding waters."

Victor cursed inwardly. That explained how a wall of waterspouts had appeared out of nowhere, in clear defiance of anything natural. Most of them had been nothing but light and smoke. But the one that destroyed the cruise ship — that one had been real, buried inside the illusion where no one would think to look.

"Mr. Ashford, what's the call?" Kaname asked quietly.

Victor spread his hands with a resigned look. "What choice do we have? We're doing Edgar a favor whether we like it or not. Romanov needs to be dealt with before he gets off this island. If that thing makes it to open water, there's no telling how far this goes."

Then Mana's voice cut across the room, tight with alarm. "Look — is that body moving?"

Her face had gone pale. She was pointing at a wrecked corpse not far away, her hand trembling.

Before anyone could respond, the soldier on the floor lurched upright like he'd been shocked and made a frantic break for the exit. Kaname reacted fast, hauling him back down and pinning him. "Stay down. These blades don't care who they cut."

The soldier was in tears now, his whole body shaking. "Get out while you still can. The doctor said the serum carried a highly contagious virus. Everyone killed by the host — after they die, the virus takes over. They get back up. And then they go after anything living until there's nothing left."

Victor felt something drop in his chest. "You're saying every single body in here is going to turn?"

The soldier nodded frantically, wild-eyed. "Worse than undead. They don't have any weak points. Headshots do nothing."

The words were barely out of his mouth when a low, guttural sound rolled out from the far end of the hall. It wasn't human. It was something waking up in the dark.

The moment Kaname's attention slipped, the soldier wrenched free and bolted for the exit, blood still pouring freely from his leg. Victor didn't go after him. His eyes were locked on the darkness at the far end of the hall.

"We move. Now."