Smoke still curled in the ruined chamber, the air thick with the sharp tang of burning wiring and blood. Fires sputtered against the cracked walls, and the metal beams above groaned under their own weight. Somewhere, water from a broken pipe gurgled, mixing with the scorched earth.
And at the center of it all, lying amidst the rubble like the wreckage of some catastrophic storm, was Liu Xian. Barely breathing. Unmoving. His clothes were torn and charred, his body streaked with soot and blood, but somehow—against all odds—he was still fucking alive.
Standing over him was a figure who seemed like he had crawled straight out of a nightmare.
The head scientist.
Dr. Omicron-7.
Red hair, messy and wild like a mane of bloody flames. An eye patch, old and cracked, covered his right eye; deep scars peeked out from beneath it, crawling up into his hairline and down the side of his gaunt cheek. His single exposed eye was a sickly yellow color, almost glowing, and gleaming with manic glee. His lab coat was bloodstained and torn, hanging off him like a ghost's shroud, and his boots crunched broken glass underfoot without a care.
To put it bluntly, he looked every bit the fucking lunatic he was known to be.
"Marvelous," he breathed, voice dripping with euphoria as he stared at the devastation like it was the most beautiful painting he'd ever seen.
"Absolutely... marvelous."
The cleaning crew, who had been silently moving the broken bodies of the dead scientists into black bags, flinched at the sound of his voice. They froze in place, stiffening like deer before a predator. Everyone knew better than to attract attention from him.
Dr. Yuna, standing near the shattered remnants of a monitoring station, said nothing. She simply pressed her bleeding hands tighter against her lab coat, trying to ignore the blood slowly dripping from her palms onto the scorched floor.
The madman was just getting started.
"This is amazing, can't you see?!" the red-haired scientist roared suddenly, spinning toward the cleaning crew with a wide, almost childlike grin. His teeth were crooked and stained, and his voice cracked with pure mania.
The nearest cleaner dropped the body he was carrying, the heavy thud echoing in the half-collapsed room. His hands shook uncontrollably.
Dr. Omicron-7 spread his arms wide, as if he were about to embrace the chaos itself.
"Dr. Yuna!" he barked, turning back toward her so fast it was almost a snarl. His one eye gleamed brightly. "Do you know what this means?!"
Yuna said nothing. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. She knew better than to speak—Omicron-7 wasn't actually asking a question. He loved the sound of his own voice far too much to want a real answer.
"We have a subject," Omicron-7 continued, pacing around the unconscious Liu Xian like a starving wolf, "that subconsciously made its own familiar! By absorbing three—count them, three!—different elements at once!" He cackled, throwing his head back and laughing like the madman he was.
"A prodigy! A goddamn prodigy!"
His voice bounced off the broken walls, and the cleaning crew went back to work silently, keeping their heads down, praying they wouldn't be noticed again.
Dr. Yuna could only clench her bleeding fists tighter. She stared at Omicron-7, her face emotionless, even though inside she was seething with a thousand unspoken thoughts. This fucking monster, she thought bitterly. How unlucky can this boy be to attract the attention of this absolute monster.
But she didn't dare voice it.
Omicron-7 was still moving—now stalking closer to Liu Xian, crouching down beside his broken body.
With slow, deliberate movement or should I say 'cruelty', he reached out and gripped the boy's neck in one long-fingered hand.
And squeezed.
"Do it again," Omicron-7 hissed, leaning in so close that the man's sour breath washed over Liu Xian's face. His eye burned with unholy excitement. "Show me that raw, unfiltered electric mana! Show me your fire, boy!"
He squeezed harder, fingers digging into Liu Xian's throat. The unconscious boy twitched weakly under his grip, his chest struggling to rise against the brutal pressure.
Blood vessels began to burst in Liu's cheeks, turning them a sickly purple.
His body, already battered from the overload, shivered helplessly—but there was no magnificent surge of power this time. Only the ugly reality of human fragility.
"Sir!" Dr. Yuna shouted, unable to hold herself back any longer. Her voice was sharp, cutting through the madness.
Omicron-7's head snapped toward her, his yellow eye wide, wild.
For a terrifying moment, it seemed like he might strike her too.
Then he laughed—a harsh, barking sound—and released Liu Xian, letting the boy's limp body slump against the floor with a heavy, wet-sounding thud.
"Right," Omicron-7 said, his voice mockingly thoughtful. "I might end up killing him if I keep doing that."
He pushed himself to his feet, brushing dust and blood off his ruined lab coat as if nothing had happened.
The entire room seemed to exhale in relief.
Omicron-7 stared down at Liu Xian's crumpled form for a long, lingering moment. His mouth curled into a grin that could have split his face in half.
"So fragile," he murmured. "And yet so much power. Fascinating."
Behind him, the AI crackled to life again, its tone mechanical and detached.
"Containment breach repaired. Initiating emergency stabilization procedures."
Small drones buzzed out of hidden compartments in the walls, spraying foam onto the still-burning wreckage and injecting medical nanites into Liu Xian's bloodstream via tiny syringes embedded in their frames.
Omicron-7 didn't even glance at them.
He was lost in thought now, pacing in tight circles, muttering to himself.
"Need to accelerate the experiments... if we can break him properly... if we can mold him properly..."
Dr. Yuna wiped her bloody hands against her coat again, trying not to retch from the stench of burned flesh that still hung heavy in the air. Her eyes flickered toward Liu Xian, battered and broken but still alive.
Such an unfortunate boy, she thought.
Because deep down, she knew: if someone didn't intervene soon, Omicron-7 would break the boy beyond repair.
And he would enjoy every second of it.