The door creaked open like a coffin's hinge.
I froze, one hand still holding Elliot against the metal cabinet, the other curled around a stapler I found on a desk. The silhouette stepped into the archive with the kind of quiet that only came from years of training or the kind of madness that didn't require it.
Armored. Not bulky—streamlined. No insignia. Weapon drawn, a sleek compact rifle with a silencer longer than the barrel itself. A faint glow blinked on their visor like a pulse, scanning the dark in arcs.
The beam licked across the wall, over overturned boxes, scattered pages from that cursed dossier, and then—almost—Elliot's hand.
He trembled. A quake behind his teeth.
I tapped his arm in an attempt to calm him down.
The figure's breath was steady. No tension. No nerves. A professional killer, I thought. One who didn't need adrenaline.
He muttered into a comm, low and clipped. "Archive clear. Moving to sweep corridor four."
Then he backed out. The door hissed—metal meeting metal.
I waited. Three seconds. Five. Ten.
"And just like that..." I murmured, slipping out of the shadows, "the Reaper tiptoes past his appointment. Charming fellow. No punctuality, though."
Elliot collapsed backward against the filing cabinet. "I hate this. I hate this. I hate this."
"You say that now," I said, peeking around the edge of the door. "But you'll thank me when your biography hits the shelves."
We slipped into the hallway.
Dim lights flickered above like dying stars. Red emergency strips pulsed beneath our boots, casting the corridor in a slow, throbbing heartbeat. The air smelled of rust, ozone, and antiseptic failure.
Metal grates clanged softly with every step.
"I'm going to vomit," Elliot muttered, staring down a passage of shadows and silence.
"No no, dear Elliot," I whispered, gliding beside him like a cat in a funeral home. "That would offend the décor."
He shot me a look like I'd just invited him to lick the walls.
"You've fallen for the illusion," I continued, voice low. "This isn't a blacksite. No no. It's a criminal resort spa. Discount packages for aspiring warlords. Massage therapy offered via electroshock."
Elliot groaned, ducking beneath a hanging pipe. "Can we not banter when we're in an active illegal abandoned building?"
"Oh, you're still calling it illegal," I sighed. "That's adorable. Personally, I prefer the term 'unlicensed performance art.'"
We passed a sealed door with a cryo-style window. The inside was pitch black—except for the smear of a handprint on the glass. Red. Still wet.
Elliot swallowed hard. "I—what even is this place?"
I gestured grandly to the corridor. "Exhibit A: No coffee machines. Bureaucrats love their bean water. But this? This is caffeine-free evil. Absolutely freelance psychopaths."
"That file we found," Elliot whispered. "The formatting, the language... it was official. That wasn't some back-alley forgery."
"Dear boy," I said, waltzing around a flickering light, "you've clearly never met a con artist with a government printer. Anyone can make protocols. But real regimes? They leave fingerprints. This place—it's too... tidy."
He didn't argue. Not anymore.
We turned left at a junction where the red lights turned blue. A low hum buzzed beneath the floor. Generators, maybe. Or something worse.
I stopped at a terminal embedded in the wall. Its screen flickered—old and hungry. I slid Camille's pen across the interface. It sparked. The screen jolted to life.
ACTIVE SECURITY PROTOCOL: CAIN
UNIT LOCATION: CELL 7
SURVEILLANCE: INACTIVE
"Cain," I muttered. "Just like the protocol in the file."
Elliot didn't wait for commentary. He was already moving, steps quick and quiet.
"Wait," I hissed, but it was too late.
He ran to the door marked 7. A narrow, reinforced window in the steel frame let through a sliver of darkness.
He pressed his face to the glass, breath fogging it. I joined him—slow, quiet.
Inside, a woman paced barefoot. Mid-to-late twenties. Hair a storm of curls stuck to her face. Eyes like electric wounds. Her hospital gown clung to bruised arms. Old ones. New ones. Her fingers twitched like they'd once held something—something vital—that had been stolen.
She stopped when she saw Elliot.
"That's her," Elliot breathed. "The one from the video. We have to help her."
He looked at the door's access panel. Fingers shaking, after a bit of searching and button pressing, he found the one that opens the door.
Smoke rolled out like fog on a stage. She didn't move. Just stood there, framed in the threshold, watching him like she wasn't sure whether to thank him or bite him.
He stepped forward anyway. "It's okay," he said gently. "We're here to help. I saw what they did to you. We're not with them."
I turned to the terminal by the door. Text flickered across the screen like rot surfacing beneath glass.
PROJECT: CAIN PROTOCOL
MENTAL STABILITY: VARIABLE
ABILITY RETENTION: SUCCESSFUL
RANK CONTAINMENT: FAILED
NOTES: Subject continues to exhibit unstable class replication. Memory bleed occurring. Primary anchor unresponsive.
My chest tightened. I read the next lines aloud, voice barely above a whisper:
"The Cain Protocol is a reactive experimental initiative enacted under the authority of the World President. Its goal: to artificially induce and control multi-job functionality within a subject through psychological fracture, hormonal rewrites, and targeted memory disruption.
Mission purpose: Termination of anomalous entity codename 'Masked Syndicate."
Elliot knelt beside the woman now, helping her stand.
"Previous efforts using trauma-only methods resulted in fatalities or psychic disassociation. Subject 9D is the first to survive replication beyond two concurrent jobs. Current retention: Astronaut C-Rank, Firefighter B-Rank, Strategist (Lv. 2). Attempts to inject detective lineage resulted in recursive hallucination loops."
"Should Subject 9D fail to imprint target location or identity, visual confirmation of Reynard Vale will trigger autonomous hostile engagement. Code Alpha: 'Cain Sees Abel.'"
I stared at what I was reading.
They were trying to recreate my circumstances to beat me.
To turn her into a weapon. One that didn't remember who she was. One that would attack me... on sight.
"Should psychological anchoring fail to resolve, engage emergency failsafe. Terminate subject. Initiate reboot cycle. Wipe support personnel."
My pulse climbed into my throat.
The final line blinked into being, stark and irreversible.
CAIN PROTOCOL – DEEP SEED INITIATED.
She was already standing.
Already staring at me.
Her expression didn't match Elliot's concern or my horror.
"You're....a member of the masked syndicate," she whispered. Not to Elliot. To me.
Then some alarms screamed to life.
Red lights flared like open wounds.
For a moment I looked away from shock as the light shined in my eye.
I turned, just in time to see Elliot stumble back.
The girl took one step forward.
Her eyes shimmered—one gold, one black.
Her voice came layered, distorted. Like three people were speaking through her mouth at once.
"Masked Syndicate," she said.