The light never turned off.
It did not dim.
It did not soften.
It did not care whether something beneath it slept.
The light was white and perfect and endless, pouring down from recessed panels in the ceiling like judgment without a face. It erased shadows. It erased comfort. It erased the idea that darkness could ever be kind.
Beneath it, on a slab of alloy colder than stone, lay Subject 100876.
He was small.
Too small for the room built to contain him.
His body fit easily within the restraints—bands of soft-gray composite that wrapped around his torso and limbs with clinical precision. They were not tight. They did not cut. They did not bruise.
They warned.
Every time he shifted, even slightly, the bands hummed. Not loudly. Not threateningly. Just enough to tell him that movement beyond permission would be answered.
So he stayed still.
Black fur covered him from nose to tail, darker than anything else in the room. It did not reflect the light properly. The white glare slid over him and failed to claim him completely, as though even now something about him refused full ownership.
His chest rose.
It fell.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
Sensors embedded in the slab tracked every fraction of motion, every irregularity. Numbers scrolled across glass panels. Heart rate. Neural activity. Thermal output.
The numbers did not like him.
They flickered when he breathed.
They spiked when he dreamed.
They dipped when he woke.
He did not know where he was.
But he knew—deeply, instinctively—that this place was not a den.
The air smelled wrong. Not of earth or fur or blood or rain. It smelled of nothing at all. Filtered. Scrubbed. Dead.
There was no sky. No wind. No night.
Only the light.
And the silence that followed every sound too quickly, swallowing it before it could become real.
He had learned, already, that crying accomplished nothing.
The first time he had whimpered—confused, newly aware, reaching for something that should have answered—the sound had barely left his throat before the room responded.
A sharp tone.
A sudden pressure in his skull.
A cold that sank into his bones.
The world had disciplined him.
So now he lay quiet.
Good.
"Subject is awake."
The voice came from behind the glass.
He did not know what glass was, but he knew the shape of separation. He could sense the space beyond his reach, the unseen watchers who existed just far enough away to be untouchable.
The voice belonged to a woman. Her tone was neutral, practiced. She did not sound afraid.
"She's wrong," another voice replied. Male. Older. "That's not awareness. It's reflex."
A pause.
"Heart rate suggests otherwise."
"Heart rate suggests instability."
The words meant nothing to the pup.
But the way they were spoken did.
He felt it then—an unease not born of fear, but of being assessed.
The way prey knows when it has been seen.
A shape moved beyond the glass.
Tall. Upright. Wrapped in white and gray layers that hid its form and its scent. The pup could not smell them. That frightened him more than anything else.
Every living thing smelled of something.
These did not.
"Run diagnostics again," the tall shape said. "Before injection."
Injection.
The word was not known to him.
But his body reacted anyway.
Something deep inside him tightened. A heat, faint but present, stirred beneath his ribs. Not pain. Not anger.
Readiness.
The black fur along his spine rippled once, then settled.
The sensors noticed.
"Thermal variance," the woman said.
"Minor," the older one replied. "Always minor with this one. He's a dud."
A dud.
The word landed with weight.
Not because it hurt—but because it sealed something.
The slab beneath him shifted.
Barely perceptible. A realignment. He felt the cold change direction, felt gravity subtly adjust his posture. Mechanical arms descended from the ceiling, jointed and precise, carrying instruments that gleamed under the lights.
The pup's ears flattened.
He did not struggle.
He had learned.
One of the arms paused above his foreleg, scanning. A red line passed over black fur, mapping veins invisible to the eye.
Another arm followed, carrying a needle.
It was too large.
The pup's breath hitched.
The heat inside him stirred again, brighter now. A flicker of black flame licked briefly along his paw—gone so fast it could have been imagined.
It was not imagined.
"Hold," the woman said.
The arm froze.
Silence stretched.
"Did you see that?" she asked quietly.
"See what?" the older man replied.
"Nothing," she said after a moment.
The arm resumed its descent.
The needle pierced flesh.
Pain exploded outward, then inward, then everywhere at once.
The pup gasped—a sharp, involuntary sound torn from his chest before he could stop it. The restraints hummed, warning him, but he was already still again, eyes wide, body trembling.
Something cold flooded his veins.
Then something hot.
The heat inside him surged, black fire racing beneath his skin like a living thing searching for an exit. His heart slammed against his ribs. His vision blurred, white light smearing into something unbearable.
He did not understand what was happening.
Only that the world was changing him without asking.
"Magic Water infusion complete," the woman said.
"Proceed."
Another injection.
Then another.
Strength Pills, liquefied. Compounds designed to force growth, to drag muscle and bone forward whether the body consented or not.
The pup's claws dug into the slab.
The restraints hummed louder.
He whimpered despite himself.
Black fire flared at his paws, brighter this time—enough to cast warped shadows on the walls before snapping back into nothingness.
Alarms chirped softly.
"Thermal spike," the woman said again. "That's not normal."
"It never is with this one," the older man replied. "Keep going."
The third phase entered his bloodstream.
Stabilizers.
Chemicals meant to suppress development of self.
They failed.
Spectacularly.
Inside the pup's mind, something pushed back.
Not thought.
Instinct.
A refusal older than the lab, older than Helios-77, older than whatever arrogance had decided to cage him in the first place.
The fire did not erupt.
It withdrew.
Coiled.
Waiting.
The injections ended.
The arms retracted.
The slab locked in place.
The light continued to burn.
"Vitals?" the older man asked.
"Stable," the woman said, confusion threading her voice. "Too stable."
The pup lay panting, chest heaving, eyes unfocused. The heat inside him dimmed, sinking deeper, hiding itself so completely that even the sensors seemed to lose track of it.
A lie of calm settled over the room.
"See?" the older man said. "Dud."
He turned away.
Time passed.
The pup did not know how much.
Time in Helios-77 did not behave like time under a sky.
Eventually, a different human entered the room.
She was smaller. Younger. Her steps were hesitant. She paused just inside the threshold, hands clasped tightly in front of her.
She smelled faintly of fear.
And something else.
Care.
She did not approach immediately.
She simply sat on a low stool near the slab, close enough to be seen.
The pup's breathing slowed.
The heat inside him receded further.
Black fire did not stir.
The sensors noticed.
"Interesting," the woman behind the glass murmured. "Thermals dropping."
"No injection scheduled," the older man said. "She shouldn't be in there."
"But look at him," the woman replied.
They watched.
The pup watched back.
For the first time since waking, the room did not feel entirely empty.
Later, that observation would be logged.
Subject displays reduced instability in presence of non-hostile personnel.
Later still, it would be buried.
Because Helios-77 did not need hope.
It needed results.
And Subject 100876 was running out of time.
The quiet did not mean safety.
In Helios-77, quiet meant that decisions were being made somewhere the subject could not hear.
Subject 100876 lay on the slab, breathing shallow, eyes half-lidded. The woman—the young one who smelled faintly of fear and something warmer—had left. Her absence was immediate. The air felt thinner without her.
The light did not change.
It never did.
Beyond the glass, silhouettes moved. Reflections layered over reflections, white coats blurring together until they seemed like a single many-limbed organism, watching, waiting, judging.
"Run a full behavioral sweep," the older man said. His voice carried the fatigue of someone who had already reached a conclusion and was now simply justifying it. "If the stabilizers don't hold this time, we end it."
End it.
The pup did not know the words, but he knew the tone. His ears twitched. His body stiffened, muscles tightening despite the restraints. The heat inside him stirred again, cautious now, like something wounded that had learned pain came faster than mercy.
Machines descended once more.
The slab tilted, rotating him just enough that gravity pressed differently against his ribs. The sensation was wrong. Disorienting. He whined softly before he could stop himself, a thin sound swallowed almost immediately by the room.
"Neural activity increasing," the woman at the console said. Not the medic. Another one. Colder. Sharper. "Subject is anticipating stress."
"Then let's not keep him waiting."
The next injection was slower.
Deliberate.
The needle slid in with mechanical patience, releasing its contents drop by drop. The serum burned this time—not explosively, but deeply, like embers pressed into flesh and held there.
The pup trembled.
He tried to pull away, but the restraints hummed louder, vibrating through his bones. Panic flared, sharp and sudden. The heat inside him surged in response, black flame licking at his veins, searching desperately for release.
It did not come.
The stabilizers pushed back harder this time.
His vision narrowed. The white light above seemed to stretch endlessly, flattening depth and distance until the world felt impossibly small.
He was alone.
Truly alone.
The realization settled over him with crushing weight—not as a thought, but as certainty. There would be no answer if he cried. No pack would come. No warmth would press against his side.
The world beyond the glass did not care whether he survived.
It only cared whether he worked.
"Heart rate spiking," the woman said. "Thermal variance escalating."
"Push through," the older man replied. "We need to see if it plateaus."
The pup's breathing became ragged. Each inhale felt like pulling air through fire. His claws flexed uselessly against the slab, leaving faint scorch marks that vanished almost immediately as the surface self-repaired.
Black flame leaked from the corners of his eyes, evaporating before it could fall.
A warning tone chimed.
"Containment thresholds approaching," the woman said.
"Good," the older man answered. "Then we finally get an answer."
Time fractured.
The pup lost track of where one moment ended and another began. Pain became constant background noise, no longer sharp enough to demand reaction, but never dull enough to ignore. The heat inside him grew denser, heavier, as though the fire were folding in on itself, compressing, waiting.
Waiting for what?
He did not know.
He only knew that something was being taken from him—something fragile, something new—and that if it was taken completely, he would not survive.
The machines withdrew at last.
The slab returned to its original position.
Silence reclaimed the room.
"Vitals?" the older man asked.
The woman hesitated. Just a fraction of a second too long.
"Erratic," she said finally. "Heart rate unstable. Neural patterns… fragmented."
"Translation?"
"He's not adapting," she said. "He's resisting."
A pause.
"That's not the same thing," the older man replied. "Resistance still means failure."
The word hung in the air like a verdict.
Failure.
The pup's eyes fluttered open wider, though he could not see the people beyond the glass clearly anymore. Shapes blurred together, indistinct and unreachable.
He felt cold.
The heat inside him dimmed, withdrawing deeper than ever before, retreating somewhere the needles could not reach.
A monitor chimed softly.
Then again.
Then flattened.
A long, unbroken tone filled the room.
Silence followed.
The woman at the console swallowed. "We've lost him."
The older man leaned closer to the glass, studying the still form on the slab. The black fur no longer rippled with breath. The chest did not rise.
"Confirm," he said.
Scans passed over the body. Red lines. Blue grids. Numbers scrolling, then freezing.
"No cardiac activity," the woman said. "No neural response."
The tone of inevitability had shifted.
It was no longer approaching.
It had arrived.
"Log it," the older man said. "Subject 100876 expired during sedation. Cause: systemic instability."
He straightened, already disengaging. "Prep for disposal."
The word was spoken with the same weight as cleanup or reset. A necessary step. Nothing more.
The pup lay motionless.
Machines believed him dead.
People believed machines.
No one noticed the faint warmth lingering at the center of his chest, stubborn and patient.
The slab unlocked.
Mechanical arms lifted the small body with careful indifference, wrapping it in translucent containment film. The material sealed around him, cutting off scent, sound, and what little air remained.
For the first time since his awareness began, Subject 100876 felt nothing.
No light.
No pain.
No voices.
Only the deep, coiled silence of something that had decided not to die yet.
The capsule slid onto the rail system with a dull clang.
BIO-ARCANE WASTE
INCINERATION REQUIRED
The label flashed once.
Then the rail engaged.
The capsule began its slow journey downward, away from the lab, away from observation, toward the heart of Helios-77.
Toward the fire that would finish what the needles had started.
The inevitability was complete.
Or so they thought.