Chapter 1252: Story 1252: The Serum Split
The chamber lit up with flashing red as containnt protocols failed. Subject H-13—no longer contained—walked calmly beside Juno and Shade through the white halls of the forgotten lab.
Alarms echoed above them, but none approached. Machines shut down as they passed. Lights dimd. The entire facility seed to obey him.
“What is this place really?” Juno asked, eyeing rows of sealed doors labeled GEN-SERUM, CLONE BANK, NEUROMAP STATION.
H-13 answered without speaking. Instead, he pointed.
Room 7: “Serum Vault A – Split Protocol”
Inside, they found a room filled with vials suspended in magnetic columns. Red on one side. Blue on the other. At the center: a steel table with two injection guns and a blinking console.
File: PROJECT SPLIT
Summary:
“VIREX failed to find a single cure. So they made two.”
“Red: Aggression suppressant. Blue: Neural stabilizer.”
“Individually incomplete. Together: unstable. Each alters the infected—but with opposing outcos.”
Juno narrowed her eyes. “They split the cure on purpose?”
Shade nodded grimly. “To control who got what.”
Suddenly, the console flickered to a live file. Surveillance footage from months ago. A lab tech, pleading on cara:
“You can’t administer both. It breaks the host. It tears their identity. But they’re doing it anyway. To test loyalty. To see who rembers what pain feels like.”
Then static.
Then silence.
Then… a recording of Juno.
A childhood mory.
Her, in a hospital bed. Crying. Screaming for her brother.
She stepped back, shaken. “How do they have this?”
H-13 answered softly, aloud this ti: “The cure works through mory absorption. They used you. Your trauma… beca their prototype.”
Shade stepped toward the vials. “So which one do we take? Red or blue?”
Juno stared at both. “Neither.”
But H-13 moved to the table. He lifted both vials—red in one hand, blue in the other.
“Together,” he said. “I survive them both. I show them what balance looks like.”
“You said it splits identity,” Shade warned.
“I am already many,” H-13 replied. “Let choose which self survives.”
Before they could stop him, he loaded both vials into one injector.
And pulled the trigger.
He convulsed.
Eyes glowing. Veins turning violet.
Then—he collapsed.
The room dimd.
Monitors surged with overlapping data. Heart rate: unstable. Neural pattern: rewriting. mory index: expanding.
Juno fell to her knees beside him.
He opened his eyes.
Inside them—everyone.
Her brother. The scientist from the recording. The Sibling’s scream. Even Shade’s voice echoed faintly in his speech.
“I… see them all now,” he whispered. “Every life they broke.”
“Are you okay?” Juno asked.
He stood, taller sohow.
“I’m not okay,” he said. “I’m complete.”
Suddenly—sirens outside. Footsteps. Real ones.
VIREX had found the lab again.
H-13 smiled, turning to the door.
“They’ll regret splitting .”
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