Chương 5: Chapter 4: The Flesh Of The Blind

The second-floor corridor pulsed red around them. Crimson light swept across broken containment doors, hanging cables, and dark stains on the steel. Then the emergency lamps dimmed, and the shadows swallowed everything again. Through every cycle, the singing continued.

"Smile now... smile now... everyone should smile..." The voice was soft and almost childish. It drifted through pipes and empty chambers, returning thinner each time, like a song being remembered by something that had never been a child. John's hand remained on Z-69's arm.

"Move slowly," he whispered.

"We're inside its resonance zone. One careless step, one loud breath, one heroic impulse, and it will turn us into decorations." Z-69 kept his gaze on the figure at the far end of the hall. It was tall enough to brush the ceiling cables and thin enough to look unfinished. Smooth patches of pale skin had been stitched over a frame that did not belong to any one body. It had no eyes, nose, or ears. Only a mouth stretched too wide across its blank face, filled with rows of neat white teeth. Its head tilted. Listening.

"Explain," Z-69 murmured. John's cybernetic eye narrowed as it focused.

"Anything above twenty decibels can trigger it. Footsteps. Breathing. A heartbeat if you're unlucky."

"Mine?"

"Probably too weak." John's mouth tightened.

"Mine, unfortunately, remains committed to making bad decisions." The creature took one step. Its bare foot touched the floor without a sound. That was the worst part. A thing built to hear everything had learned how not to be heard. Z-69 scanned the corridor. Open cells. Broken glass. Loose panels. A fire-suppression line ran along the ceiling. Dust lay thick enough to reveal any shift in the air. Too many details. Not enough useful ones.

"How fast?"

"Inside ten meters?" John whispered.

"Fast enough that the sound of your mistake arrives after it does." The creature swayed beneath the red light. Its mouth opened.

"Smile... smile..." Dozens of pale filaments rose from its back. At first, Z-69 mistook them for hair. Then the light returned, revealing thin tendons trembling independently in the air. Some were no thicker than wire. Others resembled exposed nerves pulled several feet from the body. They did not touch the walls. They tasted the silence between them. John lowered his voice further.

"U-022. The Eyeless Singer. Sensory mutation branch. One of the better failures."

"Better?"

"It survived."

"That is your standard?"

"In this facility? Often." U-022 glided forward. The movement was too smooth to be walking, more like a wound learning which direction to spread. Its smell reached them next: dried blood, ozone, preservative chemicals, and dead flesh forced into motion by something that had never cared about natural law. The Hunger stirred beneath Z-69's crystal. Interested. He disliked that more than he disliked the creature.

"Can it think?"

"Enough to hunt."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only answer that keeps us alive." Z-69 looked toward the nearest containment cell. Its door hung half-open, torn from one hinge. Inside waited a ruined observation station, several restraint frames, and dried corpses folded into the corners. They had died trying to crawl away. Perhaps not from U-022. The difference felt unimportant. Z-69 raised two fingers, pointed toward the cell, then at himself and John. John understood. A metal disk appeared between his fingers.

It resembled a coin until a tiny light blinked across its surface. A sound lure. Of course he carried one. John counted down with his fingers—three, two, one—then flicked the disk past U-022. It struck the floor behind the creature. Click. The sound was almost nothing to Z-69. To U-022, it was the world screaming. The creature snapped around in one violent motion. Every tendon on its back lashed through the air, and the flesh along its shoulders rippled as though the sound had struck it physically.

John moved first. Z-69 followed. They did not run. They slid, each step controlled to avoid heel impact, breath, or wasted friction. They reached the open cell as U-022 launched toward the lure. The creature crossed the corridor in a pale blur. It hit the wall. Concrete collapsed inward. Steel bent around its hands. The sound lure vanished beneath fingers and teeth without a roar or impact cry—only a wet, compact burst of force. John eased the containment door shut behind them.

The damaged metal settled into place without clicking. Good. The chamber smelled of old rot and dead electronics. Z-69 crouched near the cracked observation window while U-022 slowly straightened outside. Its blank face turned from side to side. Tendons trembled across its back like worms tasting rain. John raised a compact scanner. Blue light passed over the creature, and his expression changed into the look of a starving man studying a meal.

"Beautiful." Z-69 glanced at him.

"You are admiring it."

"I am observing it."

"You called it beautiful."

"Scientifically."

"It is ugly."

"Many beautiful things are." John studied the readings.

"I need a viable sample. Neural tissue would be ideal. One of those sensory tendons would be better."

"You want to cut it."

"Preferably after we make it unable to return the favor." Outside, U-022 stopped singing. The corridor seemed to tighten around the silence. Then the creature spoke.

"You laughed, didn't you?" Its head tilted toward their cell.

"I heard you laughing." John froze. Z-69 did not move. One second passed. Then another. A drop of water gathered on a leaking pipe behind them. U-022's tendons stiffened. The drop swelled, hanging from the rusted edge. If it fell, the sound would be small. Small was enough. Z-69 reached up and caught it between two fingers before it detached. John stared at him. Z-69's expression asked the obvious question. What? John mouthed one word: Show-off. Z-69 let the water run silently along his wrist.

Outside, U-022 resumed its song.

"Smile now... come on... smile..." It drifted away by a few steps. John exhaled through his nose.

"New plan."

"You had an old one?"

"Several. Most required you to be quieter."

"There is no sound in this room."

"And yet your personality remains loud." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. John pointed toward the next junction.

"There's a pressure-testing chamber beyond that turn. It has an old acoustic calibration system. If we lure U-022 inside, I can overload the sensory tissue."

"Sound kills it?"

"Not sound. Resonance." A thin, unpleasant smile appeared on John's face.

"If the whole body hears, the whole body can scream." Z-69 understood enough.

"Risk?"

"The lure may fail. The door may jam. The resonance system may be dead. U-022 may adapt. We may die creatively."

"Acceptable."

"I hate when you say that." U-022 had moved seven or eight meters from the cell. Still close enough to kill them before either could recover from a mistake. John produced a second device from inside his coat. This one was black and narrow, with a tiny speaker at one end.

"You throw. I open the chamber remotely."

"You trust me to throw quietly?"

"I trust you to understand that if you fail, I will complain while dying." Z-69 accepted the lure. It weighed almost nothing, too delicate for hands built to crush steel. The fragility annoyed him. He eased the cell door open by one finger-width. Red light slipped through the gap. U-022 stopped singing. Z-69 waited until every tendon on its back relaxed by a fraction. Then he threw. The device glided through the dead air and landed near the junction with a sound no louder than a fingernail touching glass. Tick.

U-022 vanished. The far end of the corridor erupted as the creature slammed into the junction wall. Pale limbs struck hard enough to bend steel while its teeth scraped across the floor, searching for a sound that had already ended. John opened the door.

"Go." They slipped out and crossed the corridor at the fastest pace silence allowed. Running meant death, so they came as close as possible without giving the floor a rhythm. John's boot scraped once. U-022's head twitched. Z-69 caught the back of John's coat and lifted him over a stretch of broken glass. The old man's boots hovered several centimeters above the floor until Z-69 set him down on clean metal. John glared and mouthed, Never do that again. Z-69 replied, Walk better.

The look on John's face suggested the insult had reached something organic. The pressure chamber waited ahead, its round door half-open beneath faded warnings. ACOUSTIC STRESS TESTING PRESSURE SIMULATION SUBJECT RESTRAINT REQUIRED DO NOT ENTER DURING RESONANCE CYCLE John's cybernetic eye brightened.

"Perfect." Every tendon on U-022's back snapped upright. The creature had heard something. A breath. A heartbeat. Perhaps John's ego moving through the air. Its blank face turned directly toward them. John whispered, "Less perfect." U-022 charged. No wind-up. No roar. Only motion. A pale shape tore down the corridor. Z-69 shoved John toward the control panel and stepped into the open.

"Do not fight it head-on," John hissed.

"I am not." Z-69 lifted a shard of glass from the floor and flicked it into the chamber. Ting. U-022 changed direction so sharply that its limbs skidded across the steel. It threw itself through the open doorway after the sound. John struck the external control. The pressure door began to close. Too slowly. U-022 twisted inside the chamber. Its face snapped toward the shrinking gap, and its body compressed to launch itself back out. It understood the trap. Not fully. Enough. Z-69 moved first.

He stepped into the gap and drove one heel into the creature's chest—not to damage it, but to alter its angle. The impact felt like striking wet stone wrapped in skin. U-022 flew backward. Its tendons lashed through the narrowing doorway, and one coiled around Z-69's forearm. Pain entered his nerves. Not from pressure. From listening. The tendon vibrated against his flesh, transmitting sensation directly into him. For one fraction of a second, he experienced the corridor as U-022 did. Every breath became a blade.

Every structural groan arrived as an impact. John's heartbeat hammered through the floor, while the violet crystal in Z-69's chest sounded like a storm trapped behind glass. He felt dust settling on steel. Too much. Too sharp. Too alive. Z-69 tore the tendon free. A strip of skin came away with it. The pressure door slammed shut. This time, sound no longer mattered. The impact shook the corridor. A heartbeat later, U-022 struck the observation glass from inside and left a crack across its surface.

John stared at it.

"Wonderful." The creature pressed its blank face against the window. Its mouth widened into a smile.

"You laughed." John pulled a cable from his wrist and drove it into the control panel. The old system resisted. Sparks burst over his hand.

"Oh, don't start," he snarled.

"I am in no mood to negotiate with architecture." U-022 tapped the glass once, then twice. The motions were gentle. Curious. Then it punched. The entire corridor shook, and a web of fractures spread across the observation window.

"Faster," Z-69 said.

"I am aware of the decorative murder object in front of us."

"Faster."

"Repeating the word does not improve my processing speed." The panel flashed. ACOUSTIC RESONANCE SYSTEM: DEGRADED PRESSURE SEAL: ACTIVE SAFETY LIMITERS: OFFLINE John smiled.

"Finally. A machine in this place with manners." U-022 drew back for another strike.

"What now?" Z-69 asked.

"Now we teach a creature with too many ears what listening costs." John pressed the confirmation. A low hum entered the chamber. At first, Z-69 heard almost nothing. Then he felt a thin vibration inside his teeth. It spread into the walls, the floor, and the reinforced glass. U-022 froze. Every sensory tendon on its back went rigid. The hum deepened. It did not become louder so much as sharper, slipping beneath ordinary hearing and entering bone. Dust rose from the chamber floor in a trembling layer.

U-022 opened its mouth, but no sound emerged. The resonance climbed. Its tendons began to whip—not searching now, but panicking. They struck the walls, the floor, and each other as the creature drowned in sensation it could not shut out. John watched the readings.

"Neural saturation at thirty percent." U-022 slammed its skull into the observation glass.

"Forty." It clawed at its own skin.

"Fifty." Blood seeped from pores across its body.

"Sixty-five." Z-69's fingers curled. The Hunger stirred beneath his ribs. It did not fear the suffering inside the chamber. It recognized weakness. Food. He pressed one hand over the violet crystal. Not yet. U-022 finally screamed. The sound was thin and almost human. That made it worse. John's hand paused above the control for less than a second. Then he continued.

"Seventy-eight." The scream broke apart. Tendons snapped one by one across U-022's back, striking the walls like severed strings. The flesh around its skull swelled, dark veins rising beneath the pale surface.

"John."

"I see it." The resonance spiked. U-022's skull burst. Blood covered the glass, and the system fell silent. No hum. No scream. No singing. Only the quiet that entered a room after something had suffered enough to stop being dangerous. John disconnected from the panel. His organic hand trembled slightly, so he hid it by reaching for a cigarette.

"Death metal," he said, his voice rough. Z-69 looked at him. John lit the cigarette.

"Literal death. Literal metal. It works on several levels."

"You are proud of that."

"Immensely." Z-69 returned his attention to the blood-smeared window. The crystal in his chest pulsed. Urgent. Insistent. The Hunger did not roar this time. It pulled him toward the chamber with a need deeper than meat or blood. Something inside U-022's ruined body was answering his core. Z-69 approached the door. John's expression sharpened.

"Z-69." Z-69 opened the chamber door.

"Wait." He did not. The chamber smelled of cooked nerves, ruptured tissue, and hot chemicals. U-022's headless body twitched once on the floor, more reflex than life. Z-69 knelt beside it and pushed one hand into what remained of the skull. John stopped in the doorway with his pistol half-raised.

"If you're going feral again, I would appreciate a written warning." Z-69 searched through broken bone and neural tissue until his fingers closed around something solid. He pulled out a translucent core the size of an egg. Faint violet light moved inside it, pulsing with residual Prime Flux. The crystal in his chest answered. John lowered the pistol by a fraction.

"Energy Core."

"What is it?"

"A central conversion node. Stable anomalies often form one to store absorbed energy and recycle it through the body." John frowned at the object.

"A biological battery, if batteries were designed by a drunk god with no ethics committee." The core pulsed again. Z-69 did not understand the science. His body understood the invitation. John lifted one hand.

"I would not recommend—" Z-69 pressed the Energy Core against the violet crystal. Purple light flooded the chamber. The two structures resonated. A deep vibration moved through the floor and up John's repaired spine. The Energy Core softened, then melted into light—not like flesh breaking down, but like a thing recognizing where it belonged and surrendering the argument. It sank into Z-69's chest. Power struck him hard enough to arch his back.

Violet lines spread beneath his skin from sternum to throat, shoulders, arms, and fingertips. Torn muscles closed. Damaged bones shifted into alignment. The injuries left by the elevator and the fight vanished in rapid, ugly pulses. The Hunger receded. Not gone. Never gone. But smaller. For the first time since waking, it became something inside him rather than the only thing inside him. Z-69 clenched one hand. The crystal pulsed once, stable and full.

"I understand." John did not lower his weapon.

"That sentence has killed a great many people." Z-69 studied U-022's corpse. Calculation replaced disgust before disgust had time to form.

"This is how I survive." John's mouth tightened.

"I hunt anomalies. I absorb their cores to restore my body and suppress the Hunger." Z-69 looked over the remaining flesh.

"Then I consume what remains." Silence settled between them. The plan was logical. Efficient. Terrible.

"That way," Z-69 continued, "I do not starve. I do not weaken. I do not become helpless." John stared at him for several seconds before giving a rough chuckle. The sound carried amusement, horror, and something too close to pride.

"Some specialized units consume anomaly tissue," he said.

"There are entire departments studying the effects. But this is the first time I've seen someone look at a dead mutation shaped vaguely like a person and immediately draft a meal plan." Z-69 did not answer.

"Right," John said.

"Zombie. The cannibalism barrier may have skipped installation."

"I want to eat it."

"Of course you do."

"Can you preserve it?" John blinked.

"To eat later?"

"Yes."

"And for research?" Z-69 looked at him. A faint smile appeared on John's face.

"We both know the answer is also yes." He drew a wide-barreled device from beneath his coat. Its grip was made from the same dark alloy as his mechanical arm.

"Weapon?" Z-69 asked.

"Sometimes."

"What does it do?"

"Solves transportation problems." John aimed it at U-022's body. A green scanning beam passed over the corpse, rendering bone, veins, and remaining neural pathways visible for an instant. Then the body began to come apart. Not burning. Not rotting. Disassembling. Flesh dissolved into thousands of green particles that folded inward and vanished into a single point of light. Within seconds, nothing remained except blood on the floor. Z-69 raised one eyebrow.

"Spatial gun," John said. Z-69 waited. The old man sighed.

"It transfers dead matter into secured laboratory storage through a pocket-dimensional channel. Convenient for field collection. It also prevents me from dragging corpses through hostile corridors like a low-budget serial killer."

"It only works on dead matter."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Living things dislike being separated into molecular suggestions and rebuilt by machinery with memory problems." They stared at each other.

"Experience?" Z-69 asked. John took a slow drag from his cigarette.

"Academic curiosity."

"That means yes."

"That means stop asking rude questions." A dry chime echoed down the corridor. The elevator. Auxiliary power had returned. For a moment, a mad old scientist and a newly resurrected super-zombie stood together in the red-lit chamber while the remains of an eyeless anomaly waited somewhere in John's storage for research—and, apparently, dinner. Z-69 looked toward the hall.

"What are we eating tonight?" John narrowed his eye.

"Do not say it."

"Death metal?" John froze, then barked a laugh so rough it became a cough halfway through.

"Humor," he wheezed.

"That's new. Terrible, but new." Z-69 stepped into the corridor. His body felt stronger, and his thoughts no longer drowned beneath the Hunger. It remained with him, but now it had shape. A problem. Not a master. John crushed the cigarette beneath his boot and gestured toward the elevator.

"Shall we continue our ascent? The first floor is waiting." Z-69 flexed his healed fingers. Violet light faded beneath his skin.

"Lead the way, old man." John smiled.

"You have no idea what else is locked up here."

"That is not reassuring."

"It was not meant to be." They walked together into the red-lit dark. Behind them, the pressure chamber stood empty, its walls still trembling with the resonance that had killed U-022. Ahead, the elevator waited to carry them upward. Neither of them noticed the movement inside one of the open cells. Something had watched the blind creature die. Something had heard the resonance. And something had learned.