Leaving the main control room, we navigated down a long, rust-stained metallic corridor until we reached a heavy ballistic glass door marked: Bio-Engineering Archive.

  The harsh beam of my flashlight swept into the room, instantly illuminating the scene.

  Even Jasta and Selena—two people intimately familiar with the brutal, casual slaughter of the wasteland—simultaneously drew a sharp breath.

  It was a horrifying, suffocating gallery of biological specimens.

  Lining both sides of the long corridor were hundreds of three-meter-tall cylindrical glass suspension tanks. After two millennia, the preservative fluid inside had degraded into a murky, viscous yellow. But through the cloudy liquid, the suspended contents remained sickeningly clear.

  Floating inside were countless shattered skeletons, grotesquely mangled organs, and grotesquely mutated embryonic specimens.

  I stepped closer to one of the tanks, aiming my flashlight.

  Suspended in the fluid was a failed biological splice: a human skull grafted horrifically onto the massive, heavily muscled spinal column of a wolf. In the adjacent tank floated a colossal bear clone, its sheer mass completely disproportionate to its severely atrophied, shriveled limbs.

  And at the absolute far end of the archive, coiled inside a massive containment vessel, was the ten-meter-long skeletal structure of a colossal reptile. Artificial nutrient tubes were fused directly into its spine, and the rudimentary bone spurs of massive wings jutted from its back.

  It was an early-stage embryonic prototype of a dragon.

  Selena’s breathing turned ragged.

  Like she was possessed, she walked unsteadily toward one of the tanks and froze. Floating inside was a human fetus. A pair of avian wings had been brutally, surgically sutured to its back. The fetus’s face was locked in an expression of absolute, twisted agony, as if silently screaming against the cruelty of its creator.

  Pressing her trembling fingers against the freezing glass, Selena couldn't stop shaking. Her silver eyes reflected the absolute, catastrophic collapse of her entire religious foundation.

  “What is this... some kind of bloody sacrificial altar to an evil god? Why are so many deformed souls imprisoned here?”

  “No. This isn't a sacrificial altar.”

  Stepping up beside her, I used my sleeve to wipe the thick layer of dust off the glass, revealing a row of English nameplates bolted to the base.

  “This is the Creator’s laboratory.”

  I walked to the main terminal in the center of the hall and signaled Mykra to hotwire the backup power.

  Accompanied by the agonizing, grinding screech of an ancient hard drive spinning up, Mykra’s fingers flew across the dust-caked mechanical keyboard.

  Within seconds, he cracked the encryption on a brutally clinical, highly classified experimental log written entirely in Earth English, projecting it as a hologram in the center of the room.

  I scanned the cold, mechanical jargon. In a flat, emotionless voice, I translated the cruel, two-thousand-year-old truth for the 'indigenous' natives of the wasteland:

  [Subject Series Alpha: Mythological Beast Replication Initiative]

  I pointed at the colossal skeletal dragon embryo.

  “Those interstellar colonists who called themselves gods literally extracted the concept of a 'dragon' from Earth’s mythology. Using absolute apex-level gene-splicing technology, combined with the high-dimensional magical radiation of this planet, they forcefully 'printed' this perfect biological weapon in a petri dish.”

  Looking at the completely stunned faces of my crew, I mercilessly punctured the greatest source of terror on this continent.

  “The dragon isn't some naturally evolved ancient divine beast. It isn't the guardian of the earth. It is a highly engineered [Maximum Output Stress-Tester].”

  “Its sole operational parameter is to probe the absolute energy limits of this dimension. The second the indigenous population—you people—abuses magic to the point where the foundational physical code of this world is about to crash, the [Sweeper Protocol] hardwired into the dragon’s brain automatically executes. It wakes up, incinerates every single mutated anomaly with high-dimensional radioactive fire, and initiates a ruthless, physical hard reset.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The archive plunged into a dead, suffocating silence. Only the faint hum of the holographic projector remained.

  Swiping the screen, I pulled up the next file: Subject Series Beta: Directed Mutation Labor Force.

  The hologram shifted, displaying the anatomical schematics of the first-generation Wolf-kin, Bear-kin, and Fox-kin. The diagrams were densely annotated with gene-splicing insertion points and surgically excised sectors of the cerebral cortex.

  “Bear-kin: Intelligence intentionally throttled. Muscle fiber density and skeletal mass are artificially multiplied. Designed exclusively for heavy logistical transport and physical labor.”

  “Wolf-kin: Spliced with pack-mentality genetics and inherent bloodlust protocols. Deployed for perimeter security and riot suppression.”

  “And you, Jasta...”

  I glanced at the pale-faced fox. “Fox-kin: Prefrontal cortex and low-light optical sensors specifically enhanced. Engineered to serve as precision sensory arrays and localized computational units.”

  I looked around at these lives—beings who had bled, fought, and died on the wasteland for centuries, desperately clinging to survival and their so-called 'noble bloodlines.' “

  You aren't a gift from nature. You aren't the chosen people of the gods. You are nothing more than mass-produced biological consumables.” “The colonists manufactured you to survive the extreme radioactive fallout of this planet, to replace machinery, and to do the dirty work they didn't want to get their hands on.”

  Finally, I turned to the trembling, hollow-eyed Selena, delivering the absolute fatal strike.

  “As for you, Selena. The Storm-kin who dominated the sky? You are nothing more than humans forcefully spliced with avian genetics so the colonists could monitor high-altitude radioactive air currents. You are Scout Drones.”

  “Your proud, untouchable 'Sky Bloodline' is just a heavily modified string of meteorological sensor code.”

  Selena clamped her hands over her face. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto the dust-covered floor.

  She let out a choked, agonizing sob. Centuries of absolute, fanatical devotion to divine authority were ground into dust beneath the cold, merciless weight of these archives.

  Amidst this suffocating collapse of faith, I suddenly thought of Zayla.

  What about the Cat-kin?

  For generations, they had guarded ancient legends like ghosts. They possessed the absolute highest agility and spatial awareness on the continent. What was their original operational parameter?

  I swiped through the database, finally locating the Cat-kin archive.

  The holographic photo displayed a tall, slender first-generation half-beast with distinct feline ears and incredibly sharp, calculating eyes.

  He stood perfectly straight, wearing an incredibly ancient but perfectly tailored E.D.E.N. security uniform. And clipped to his tactical belt was the exact same metallic key currently hanging against my chest!

  The adjacent file read:

  [Subject Beta-04: Feline Composite.]

  [Designation: High-Tier Security / Agile Escort. Granted partial physical defense clearance for Class-C Sectors.]

  So, the Cat-kin had been the most loyal gatekeepers of the “Creators” for two thousand years. That perfectly explained why Zayla’s key carried such insanely high hardware clearance.

  VMMMMMM—!

  Just as everyone was silently processing this massive, brutal data dump, an incredibly faint, yet highly penetrating physical tremor rippled through the entire subterranean archive.

  Inside the suspension tanks, the murky preservative fluid rippled, causing the shattered specimens to sway as if they were about to wake up.

  It was the exact same tremor I had felt standing in the Skyreach municipal hall. It was the heartbeat of the ancient dragon, the ultimate “antivirus software” buried deep within the earth's core.

  If the seismic wave was transmitting this far west to the Old Capital, it meant the physical suppression exerted by Bunker 04 was critically failing. The dragon’s subconscious was metastasizing across the continent like a cancer.

  “Snap out of it.”

  I cut through the heavy silence.

  “We need to secure a patch and haul it back to Skyreach immediately. Otherwise, we all get formatted by the system.”

  Surprisingly, Jasta was the first to reboot from the massive psychological shock.

  He forcefully slapped his scorched silk robes. The absolute shock in his fox eyes rapidly faded, reigniting with the signature cunning and ruthlessly pragmatic greed of a merchant.

  Jasta scanned the room, licking his lips as he eyed the rusted, yet highly advanced relic hardware.

  “Creators or colonists, I don't care. Since this was their primary laboratory, I guarantee they left behind more than just a few vats of pickled bones.”

  He turned his head, staring down the corridor at a heavy, armor-plated blast door painted with faded yellow-and-black hazard stripes.

  “Why don't we run a deeper audit? Let’s see if those ‘gods’ left behind any weapons or blueprints they didn't have time to pack.”

  I shot Jasta an appreciative look. When everything went to hell, Jasta could always strip away the noise and lock onto the core objective.

  I threw a hand signal to Mykra.

  The shadow geek instantly understood the assignment. He jammed his custom shadow probe directly into the terminal of the armored door leading deeper into the facility.

  A few seconds later, Mykra looked up, his expression highly conflicted.

  “Boss. Good news: The base-level logic on this door isn't hard-locked. The clearance on that Cat-kin key around your neck is exactly high enough to bypass it. The sub-level below is designated Sec. 01 Tactical Resource Reserve.

  He swallowed hard, pointing a trembling finger at a faintly pulsing red dot on his monitor, accompanied by a harsh warning chime.

  “The bad news... System diagnostics indicate that at the absolute lowest level of the reserve, there is a heavy, automated annihilation platform. It is still hardwired to a backup nuclear power supply, currently in low-power stasis.”

  Mykra stared at the rapidly climbing energy readout on the screen, his voice pulling tight. “That seismic tremor we just felt? It seems to have tripped its wake-up protocol.”

  I glanced at Brad. The big guy just grinned, racking the heavy charging handle on his portable steam autocannon.

  Drawing my revolver, I walked up to the armored door and slotted the key into the console.

  “Let’s go down and take a look.”