Snow crunched beneath their feet. There was no sound—only the wind and the controlled breathing of thermal suits.
Onagawa. Once a forbidden zone, erased from maps. Today, a technological tomb.
Mayu led the way, followed by a mixed squad: a former human soldier, a clone scout, a cybernetic hybrid with an empty gaze… and Zéro, embodied in a small floating drone.
"Signal location?" whispered the scout.
"Thirty meters underground," replied Zéro. "It pulses every twenty seconds. A living code."
Their descent into the mountain's bowels began. The old metal structures had merged with the rock. Organic cables crawled along the walls like veins. Everything seemed… alive.
"I don't like this," murmured the soldier. "This isn't technology. It's something else."
A creak. Then a mechanical moan.
A figure emerged. Twisted. Deformed. A failed clone. Its skin intermingled with implants. It did not see. It felt.
"It howls without a mouth," breathed the hybrid. "They used them as detectors."
Too late.
An alarm blared—grave. Alive. Like a lament.
Drones emerged from the walls. Not flying ones, but crawling quadrupeds with human faces modeled on their casings.
The battle erupted.
Mayu dodged a thermal blade, pivoted, and took down an enemy with a neural shot. The scout vaulted onto a wall and launched two synchronized mines. Explosion. The walls bled black liquid.
But then, a deeper hum forced everyone to pause.
A figure was descending from the ceiling, suspended by cables. A man? A clone? A machine? It was impossible to say.
The Ninth.
His body was long, gaunt, merged with an interface column. His face… bore several. He blinked with three different visages, projecting stolen memories, the cries of clones, and children's nightmares.
"Mayu," he murmured. "At last."
She leveled her weapon at him. But he laughed.
"You didn't come here to kill me. You came to see… if I were you."
The floor opened up. The team fell, trapped. A hatch closed behind them.
"Welcome to the next phase of the experiment," he concluded.