High above the clouds, having summoned the lightning, Heracles soared upward at a speed that defied reality.
No wings. Just his body, the air, and raw momentum.
The earth receded beneath him. The clouds tore apart as he passed through them. Higher. Beyond it all. He was faster than anything in this world, hurtling upward as if to shatter the very firmament of the Earth.
Then, he hit it.
It wasn't a normal collision. There was no visible wall, yet it was there.
A barrier.
Completely invisible, as transparent as the air itself, but its solidity was like nothing he had ever encountered. The shockwave rippled out in every direction. The surrounding clouds scattered. The very sky seemed to tremble.
Heracles was recoiling violently. He began to fall at a maddening speed.
It was colorless, formless, yet harder than divine marble. It was as if a cage had been placed around the world specifically to imprison him. The force of the impact hurled him back with a thunderous echo. The barrier itself had rejected him.
Heracles' eyes widened in shock. His recoil turned into a literal freefall, the ground rushing up to meet him at a velocity he couldn't control.
BOOM.
He slammed into the earth in the middle of a wide, black path. The impact carved a massive crater. Dust and snow erupted into the air.
As the haze slowly cleared, Heracles struggled to his knees, his breath coming in heavy, ragged gasps.
Curse that barrier. If I could just break it...
Then, he heard something approaching. He snapped his head up, his gaze sharp and lethal.
Before him stretched a wide road—flat, black, and strange—looking like a river of solid stone. And upon that road, something was coming.
A massive metallic beast, charging at high speed, emitting a strange, guttural roar.
"What... what is this?!" His eyes narrowed.
It was approaching fast—a large semi-truck carrying a heavy load. Heracles assumed it was a monster of some kind.
"Whatever you are, I won't let you stop me. I will crush you, and then I will crush that barrier!"
He stood his ground, bracing for combat.
The driver—a man in his forties—was cruising down the frozen highway, listening to the radio. He glanced at the clock on his dashboard. "Two more hours until I arrive," he muttered.
Then, he spotted something unusual. Dust on the road.
And then... out of the haze, he saw him.
A man. Naked.
A naked man was standing right in the middle of the highway!
The driver's eyes bulged in shock. "My God!"
He slammed on the brakes with all his might. The truck skidded on the ice, tires screaming, but it was too fast, too heavy. It wouldn't stop in time.
The collision was inevitable.
BANG!
The sound echoed through the frozen wasteland.
But... the metal front of the truck didn't just dent; it crumpled in on itself like wet paper. The windshield shattered into a million pieces. Steam hissed from the destroyed engine.
And Heracles...
He stood exactly where he had been. He hadn't budged a single centimeter. He looked at the mangled truck with genuine confusion.
What... what is this weak beast? Heracles wondered. I thought it was dangerous, but it collapsed so easily.
The driver—suspended by his seatbelt—stared through the shattered window, his eyes unable to process the sight.
"This... this is impossible..." the driver whispered, his voice trembling.
Heracles saw the man inside the "beast"—the driver—scrambling out of the door. The driver emerged, staggering, nearly collapsing. Then he saw the "man" up close.
The naked man. No wounds. No blood. Not even a single scratch.
The driver began to scream in that strange language, pointing at him in terror.
"Что ты такое?! Ты... ты монстр!" (What are you?! You... you're a monster!)
Heracles still didn't understand the words, but he understood the tone. Fear. Raw terror.
"What is the matter with you?" Heracles said in Ancient Greek. "I just saved your life from this thing—"
The driver recoiled, then turned and ran, screaming at the top of his lungs. In his hand, he held a small object—a mobile phone—pressing buttons with a shaking hand. He was calling the police, hysterical in Russian: "There's a monster in the shape of a naked man on the Northern Highway! He crushed my truck with his body!"
Heracles stared at him as he disappeared. The people of this world act strangely.
Though slightly distracted by the encounter, he raised his head back to the grey sky.
"Know this, Gaia," he said, his voice calm but laced with a simmering fury. "I will never stop."
He summoned the lightning once more. The clouds gathered. The blinding white bolt descended.
Heracles ascended again. This time, speed wasn't enough. His body began to radiate a brilliant golden light. His hair turned a luminous gold, signaling that he was attacking with everything he had. His hands were thrust forward, his chest out. He intended to pierce the impossible with his very shoulders if his hands failed.
He reached the barrier. He pushed.
This time, he didn't recoil immediately. He felt it. He felt the barrier from the other side—something like the surface of water when you press against it, but infinitely more rigid.
It began to vibrate, but it did not break. He pushed harder. The barrier shuddered under his palms as if it were in pain—as if it were a living entity, not a silent surface.
It's weakening. I must push further!
Then, the tattoos ignited.
It wasn't a faint glow this time. A dark red, the color of clotted blood, surged from the lines etched into his skin all at once. The markings on his chest began to move.
The crimson lines pulsed. They writhed. They shifted under his skin as if they weren't mere ink, but living creatures imprisoned within him, finally remembering their purpose. They branched out from his chest and shoulders toward his arms, reaching the hands he had pressed against the barrier.
And they made contact.
They interacted—but not as Heracles expected.
The barrier didn't break. It didn't weaken. Instead, as the tattoos touched it, Heracles felt something leaking.
His strength.
His power was being drained the moment the tattoos and the barrier met. Not only that, but the markings on his arms were retreating back into his chest. They converged, intensifying directly over his heart. Red lines coiled around his heart from the outside, like a tightening fist that left no room for resistance.
Then, they squeezed.
He felt it. He felt his heart being crushed. An agonizing pain wrung him from the inside. He tried to move his hands—he couldn't. He tried to pull back—the tattoos around his heart squeezed tighter.
His power drained like water from a shattered vase. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't hold onto it. It slipped through his fingers and was sucked into the barrier, which swallowed it in absolute silence.
Seconds passed. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. And still, the tattoos constricted.
Then, the barrier pushed back.
One massive, singular shove—using the very power it had stolen from him. It hurled Heracles downward.
Faster than sound. Faster than anything.
BOOOOM.
An explosion. Not a mere impact. The asphalt cracked in widening concentric circles from the point of impact. Fissures spread across the highway in every direction. A cloud of dust, snow, and pulverized stone billowed outward. It was as if a multi-ton meteor had specifically chosen this road.
The dust settled slowly. At the bottom of the wide, deep crater...
Heracles lay face down. Motionless.
The tattoos on his chest faded slowly, the dark crimson receding back into a quiet black, as if they had finished their task and returned to a state of waiting.
Silence filled the crater. Only the biting wind passed over him.
And a pulse. Faint. But there.
[Secret-7 Facility — Siberia, Russia]
Deep in the frozen forest behind the jagged snowy peaks lay Secret-7. A place whose existence was unknown to almost everyone. Even within the Russian government, only a select few were aware of it.
The hallways were long and cold, lit by harsh, white fluorescent lights that showed no mercy to the eyes. Concrete walls. Steel doors. Surveillance cameras in every corner. The rhythmic thud of military boots echoed through the corridors. Thirty floors—most of them deep underground.
But the final basement level... was different from everything above it.
The ceiling rose twenty meters high. The area was nearly the size of a football field. And in the center...
Twenty giant glass tubes.
Each tube was four meters tall, a meter and a half in diameter, filled with a glowing green liquid that illuminated the dark room with an eerie, cold light.
And inside each tube... were people.
Naked. Still. Their eyes closed. Thin red hoses were embedded in their flesh, pumping something into their blood.
Colonel Petrovich approached Tube Number Three. A man in his mid-forties with sharp green eyes like a sniper's, slightly tanned skin, and a face that revealed nothing. He stared at the thing floating inside the tube in a long, heavy silence.
A man. Completely naked. His body was gaunt, as if he hadn't eaten in months. Long white hair floated around him in the green fluid. But his body... it was distorted in a way that was unsettling to the eye.
Strange protrusions pulsed under the skin—as if something were trying to claw its way out from the inside. Black veins branched from his chest toward his neck, his face, and his hands. His eyes were closed, but beneath the lids... there was movement. Rapid movement.
As if he were dreaming of something you didn't want to know.
"Experimental Subject Number Three."
The voice came from behind the Colonel. He didn't turn immediately, letting the silence stretch for a moment. Then, he turned slowly.
Dr. Alexei Volkov—a man in his late thirties with thick glasses hiding exhausted eyes and a white lab coat stained with strange brown spots—approached, holding an electronic tablet with a slightly trembling hand.
"The report," the Colonel said, his voice dry.
"The condition has been unstable lately, sir," the Doctor began, his tone a failed attempt to mask his anxiety. "The drugs we developed weren't sufficiently refined. This led to..."
"Stop."
The Doctor went silent instantly. The Colonel walked slowly back to Tube Number Three. He stood before it, hands behind his back, staring at the pale, floating face behind the thick glass.
"How many have survived so far?"
The Doctor hesitated. One second. Two. "Only Subject Number Three, sir. So far."
The Colonel cursed aloud, the sound echoing in the vast, empty chamber. "All this money. All these months." He turned toward the Doctor slowly. "And the success rate is still zero."
"We are trying, sir. The interaction between the drug and the human body is far more complex than—"
"Listen to me carefully, Doctor," the Colonel interrupted in a terrifyingly calm tone. "You will not leave this place. You will not see the sun. You will not breathe free air... until you give me what I want."
The Doctor dared to speak: "Sir, this isn't something that follows a schedule. Biological experiments need—"
"Your daughter."
The Doctor stopped dead.
"How is she?" the Colonel continued with cold indifference. "Lost her mother last year, didn't she? It would be a tragedy if..."
"Your orders, sir," the Doctor whispered, his voice choked.
The Colonel smiled—a smile that never reached his eyes. "The full details will be on your desk this week."
The Colonel walked slowly between the other tubes, hands behind his back, peering at every sleeping face behind the glass.
"We aren't conducting experiments, Doctor," he said without turning, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. "We are forging weapons. Weapons the likes of which the world has never seen."
He paused before Tube Number Seven. Stared for a moment. Then continued his walk.
"And this... is a patriotic duty."
But when he reached the end of the row, he stopped. He looked at the ten empty tubes on the other side. Empty.
"When will these be filled?" he asked.
"We need new subjects, sir. The voluntary conscripts have run out. And we cannot continue to—"
"I didn't ask you about the problems," the Colonel snapped. "I asked about the timeline."
The Doctor fell silent. "Two months, sir. At most."
The Colonel looked at the empty tubes one last time. Then he turned and walked toward the massive steel door.
"One month," he said before exiting. "You have one month."
The door slammed shut behind him.
Dr. Volkov remained alone in the vast room. Alone with the twenty tubes. With the sleeping bodies. With the pulsing red hoses.
He looked at Tube Number Three. At the white-haired man floating behind the glass.
Beneath the eyelids... that rapid movement continued.
"His vitals are weakening again," the Doctor whispered in despair.
To be continued...