Fractures and First Fires

The house was silent again.

That heavy, post-chaos kind of silence. Like the world's holding its breath.

I carried Lia to the couch. She was breathing, thankfully. Her pulse slow but steady.

Dr. Vale, however… looked worse. Pale. Shallow breath. Blood staining his coat in shades of guilt and crimson.

"You'll live," I muttered, not out of kindness, but calculation. I needed answers.

The silver-eyed man's words rattled in my skull like marbles in a tin can:

"I built you."

"You're not just an accident."

It wasn't a revelation. It was a sentence.

Victor the rat, loyal little monster, was back on my shoulder. Probably checking for crumbs or checking if I'd died again. Either way, his company helped.

I sat down beside Lia. Waited for her to stir.

I didn't have to wait long.

Her eyes fluttered open, wide with fear and confusion. When she saw me, she grabbed my arm.

"W-what was that? That man—he wasn't—he wasn't normal."

"No," I said. "Neither am I."

She was silent for a moment. Then, quietly:

"Are you going after him?"

"I'm going after me," I said. "Whoever I was. Whatever they turned me into."

An hour later, Vale coughed himself awake, groaned, then muttered a string of words no one would print in a respectable book.

I stood over him.

"Talk."

He blinked. "About what?"

I clenched a fist. "Don't test me, Doc. I've got nothing to lose, and a very punchable face in front of me."

He coughed again. "You think I wanted this? You think I signed up to rebuild a dead man into a Frankenstein with sarcasm issues?"

"Who was that man?" I asked.

Vale's lips tightened. "They called him Specter. Government project gone rogue. Like you. But perfected."

"Perfected?"

"Cleaner. Stronger. And worst of all—loyal. You, on the other hand, kept that annoying moral compass."

Specter.

So that was his name.

Mine was Zane.

Subject Zero.

Which made him… Subject One?

What came next?

How many of us were there?

The pieces were falling into place, but the picture still looked like a Picasso on fire.

"I need files," I told Vale. "Everything you've got. Locations, labs, blueprints, test logs."

"You're not ready," he said.

"Neither was Frankenstein. Look how well that turned out."

Vale sighed, groaned, then pointed to a metal chest under the stairs. "It's all there. But once you open that, there's no going back. You'll remember things you wish stayed buried."

I walked to the chest.

"Too late. I already was buried."

Inside: folders. Dozens. Yellowed pages. Photos of bodies on tables. Some alive. Some not. One face I recognized — mine. The older version. The one before the rot.

And then — at the bottom — a map.

Red X's all over the country. Former labs. Abandoned facilities. Places where people like me were built... or burned.

It wasn't just a map. It was a checklist.

A hit list.

Lia stood beside me, looking at the map. "You're going after them?"

"Yes."

"All of them?"

"Every last ghost."

She looked at me, uncertain. "And if you don't like what you find?"

I glanced at Victor.

"Then I'll keep walking," I said. "Because I'm already dead. Now I just want to know why."