The hallway smelled like burnt metal and electricity. Steel doors were broken and bent, hanging off their hinges and buried in rubble. Sirens wailed like injured animals. Medics rushed through the smoke, pushing stretchers and shouting into radios. Blood streaked the floor, mixed with extinguisher foam and leaking coolant.
Chief Aomorii stood in the middle of it all. Her arms were crossed, her face unreadable. Her uniform was covered in ash, but she stood straight and calm, in control. Deputy Haturii stood right next to her, talking quietly into his comm, his eyes sharp and always moving.
It was then two figures emerged from the haze, approaching fast.
Orenji skidded to a stop, breathing hard. "We came as soon as we heard."
Yukira stormed in after, eyes glowing a not-at-all-subtle angry green. "What the hell happened here?"
She was fire incarnate: tense, sharp, and already mentally reenacting the boss fight she missed.
Orenji, meanwhile, was already scanning for exits, counting damage, and probably worrying about how badly this mission would hurt their Academy scores. Because of course, there was a grading system for chaos.
Haturii didn't bother with pleasantries. He pointed.
"An anomaly broke containment."
Yukira's gaze sharpened. "What classification?"
"Category 2," he said, grim as a narrator doing a last-time recap.
"Volatile-Class," Orenji echoed. "Creatures with unpredictable behavior. That's bad, but not this level of bad. Right?"
"No," Aomorii said. "It's worse. Volatile usually means erratic, unstable, but oftentimes containable with the right protocols in place. This one broke pattern."
She gestured to a half-collapsed corridor where reinforced alloy had been peeled back like paper. "The structural damage alone—it's bordering on the Cataclysmic."
"Cataclysmic-Class anomalies are capable of leveling entire districts." Yukira muttered, clearly remembering every textbook she ever skimmed five minutes before a test.
Orenji's face paled. "And if it continues to grow…"
Before the silence could deepen, a new presence cut through it like a razor through silk. Ganymede, the Regional Director of the ARGUS Foundation, strode toward them, followed by Dr. Rhys Stane. She walked like someone who'd never known defeat and didn't plan to. Her long coat flared behind her, spotless despite the chaos, her heels clicking against the scorched floor in perfect rhythm.
"Chief," she said, nodding once. "Status report?"
Aomorii briefed her quickly. Ganymede listened, jaw tight.
Then her eyes landed on Yukira and Orenji.
"These ones? These are the assets the Academy sent?" she asked, dry as sand.
"We're Drift Program candidates," Yukira shot back. "Top of our year."
The Argus Drift Program or ADP is a government-sanctioned project run by the Argus Foundation. It's designed to train and regulate individuals who had awakened supernatural abilities.
Such awakenings were rare, but not unheard of. These individuals, while appearing fully human, were biologically considered the next step in human evolution. They were known as 'Half-borns'. Not entirely human, not quite monsters, either. These were survivors of the monsterization process who held onto their sanity, but not without consequence.
In this world, unresolved emotions like fear, anger, grief can become dangerous. When left unchecked, they grow, mutate, and turn people into grotesque transformations.
But some resisted that descent.
The few who did retain fragments of their former selves gained special abilities that were shaped by the emotions they struggled with.
Young or recently awakened Half-borns were often taken to Argus-controlled facilities, dressed up as schools or clinics. But these places aren't what they seem. Promises of education, care, and purpose masked a harsher truth. The Drift Program wasn't about helping them. It was about controlling them.
"You're children." Ganymede muttered.
"And yet, here we are standing in a crater you yourself failed to contain."
Orenji winced. "Yukira…"
Ganymede raised an eyebrow, but didn't rise to the bait. Veteran move. "Haturii, walk with me. Bring the hotheads."
As they followed her into a reinforced briefing room, the lights buzzed faintly. Half the grid had been drained by the breach. Screens flickered to life, pulling up a containment profile labeled RS-07. The walls were covered in steel, thick with shielding tech, and yet the tension inside felt like walking into a war council moments before the first shot.
"It broke containment two hours ago," Ganymede began. "Breached three security zones in under ninety seconds. Our highest-level dampeners failed. It absorbed the EMP countermeasure and redirected it."
She tapped a screen. A seismic graph spiked off the charts.
"That... was new."
Orenji's eyes narrowed. "It's adapting."
"Fast," Ganymede confirmed. "This isn't just a Volatile-Class breach anymore. It's Cataclysmic, bare minimum."
"Thing's got main villain pacing." Orenji chuckled, though unregarded by anyone in the room.
A new display appeared. A quarantine category projection, pulsing red.
"And if our estimates are correct in terms of anomaly classifications, it's on track to breach the Quarantine threshold within 48 hours."
Yukira's expression flattened. "Which would force the Foundation to lock down an entire city. No entry points. No exit."
"No hope," added Orenji, probably wishing he'd brought snacks.
"And if the anomaly persists beyond Quarantine boundaries as we know it…" Ganymede paused, then tapped once more.
A new file opened stamped OMEGA.
They were in all-caps. All-bad. And styled in red like every end-of-season cliffhanger.
The glow bathed their faces in silent dread.
"Extinction protocol," Orenji whispered. "Full total annihilation."
Humanity didn't bounce back from that.
Orenji looked around. No one's theme music played. That's how serious it got.
Ganymede continued. "Which is why we're initiating a full-scale recovery operation. You two, like it or not, are part of it now."
Yukira scoffed. "You didn't even want us here."
"I still don't," Ganymede replied, with the emotional range of a brick. "But we're out of options."
"Wow. Great vote of confidence," Yukira muttered.
Orenji leaned toward her, lowering his voice to a calm, steady murmur. "Let it go."
"But I am letting it go."
"You're never letting it go."
She opened her mouth to argue. So he did what every exasperated partner does in tense, possibly world-ending moments.
He clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Let. It. Go."
She bit him. Not hard. But at the right level amount to be petty.
"Every damn time," he muttered, nursing his hand like this wasn't their fifth mission with surprise dental engagement.
The tension between them hung thick in the air when Haturii cleared his throat, breaking their charged exchange.
"Can I speak with you in private?"
His voice was measured but carried an unmistakable edge of urgency.
Orenji blinked. "What? Why? Wait, I'm not in trouble, am I?"
Yukira rolled her eyes and elbowed him. "Come on, genius," she grumbled, yanking his collar like a dogwalker and pulling him against his will. "It's less soul-crushing over there than it is in here anyway."
As the door clicked shut behind them, Yukira tossed a casual middle finger over her shoulder.
Ganymede didn't blink. Aomorii's lip twitched. Possibly respect. Possibly gas.
Outside, the hum of auxiliary generators filled the silence.
"Hey," Orenji dropped the bombshell. It didn't surprise Yukira the slightest. "I didn't understand half of what they said until they mentioned Omega. I'm not dumb, right?"
"Don't push your luck," Yukira replied, her arms crossed.
They stood in the hallway too young to be anyone's first choice, too stubborn to back down.
And somewhere, the world kept moving, unaware that something had already begun.
< Chapter Two > Fin.