A chilling silence filled the air. The creature stood in the doorway, its glowing, inhuman eyes locked onto Leon. A grotesque smile stretched across its face, revealing jagged, uneven teeth. Its skin pulsed with dark energy, the veins beneath its surface moving unnaturally, as if something was crawling beneath.

  Eric raised his rifle, aiming at the creature’s head. "What the hell is that?"

  Dr. Carter took a sharp breath. "It’s… a Revenant."

  Leon’s eyes narrowed. "Explain. Now."

  "The project I worked on before the outbreak, it was an experiment to create a bio-enhanced super soldier using viral mutations," Carter said, her voice almost a whisper. "The problem was… they didn't stay human."

  The Revenant tilted its head, the eerie glow of its eyes intensifying. It took a step forward, the metal floor groaning under its weight.

  "Leon…" it hissed.

  Then, in an instant, it moved.

  A blur of motion.

  Leon barely had time to react. He rolled aside, the creature’s clawed hand missing him by inches as it smashed into the steel wall, leaving a gaping dent.

  Eric opened fire. The rapid burst of bullets tore through the Revenant’s torso, but the thing didn’t stop.

  It turned its head slowly, as if annoyed, the wounds closing almost instantly.

  "Shit!" Eric cursed.

  Leon’s electricity flared, his instincts kicking in. He launched a crackling bolt at the Revenant’s chest.

  Boom!

  The impact sent the creature staggering back, smoke rising from its body. But then...

  It laughed.

  A deep, guttural laugh that made Leon’s blood run cold.

  "You're stronger than before," the creature rasped. "Good. This will be fun."

  Then, it attacked again.

  Leon barely had time to dodge as the Revenant’s claws slashed across his shoulder, tearing through his jacket but barely missing his flesh. He retaliated with a charged punch, his fist connecting with the creature’s ribs and sending a powerful shockwave through its body.

  The Revenant skidded backward, but it was already recovering.

  Leon’s mind raced. It was fast. Too fast. And its regeneration was insane.

  They needed a plan.

  "Dr. Carter, weaknesses, now!" Leon barked, dodging another swipe.

  Carter’s hands were shaking, but she forced herself to focus. "We never found a way to kill them! But."

  "But?" Leon pressed.

  "They require energy to regenerate," she said quickly. "If you overload its system, you can force it to shut down!"

  Leon gritted his teeth. Then I’ll have to go all out.

  He stepped forward, his aura crackling. Lightning danced across his arms, his power surging as he focused every ounce of energy into a single point.

  The Revenant snarled and lunged.

  Leon met it head-on.

  With a thunderous impact, he drove his charged fist into its chest, releasing a devastating surge of energy.

  The creature screamed.

  Electricity ripped through its body, its limbs twitching violently as Leon poured every volt he had into its core. Sparks flew, the air thick with ozone, the bunker shaking from the sheer force of the attack.

  Then...

  Silence.

  The Revenant collapsed, smoke rising from its twitching form. Its eyes, once burning with hunger, dimmed.

  Leon exhaled sharply, his body aching from the power he had just unleashed.

  Eric cautiously approached, rifle still aimed. "Is it… dead?"

  Dr. Carter shook her head, her eyes still locked on the creature. "Not dead. But it's down for now."

  Leon wiped sweat from his brow. "Then we don’t have much time. We need to move."

  But as they turned to leave, a distorted voice echoed behind them.

  "You can’t run forever, Leon."

  Leon’s blood ran cold. He turned.

  The Revenant’s body was gone.

  Only scorch marks remained where it had fallen.

  A deep sense of unease settled over them.

  This fight was far from over.

  ***

  A chill ran down Leon’s spine as he stared at the empty space where the Revenant had fallen. The scorch marks on the steel floor were the only signs of the battle they had just fought.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "How?" Eric whispered, his rifle still raised, sweeping the room as if expecting the creature to lunge from the shadows.

  Dr. Carter swallowed hard. "It shouldn’t be possible… We overloaded its regeneration. It should be."

  "Dead?" Leon finished. His voice was low, but his eyes were sharp, scanning every corner of the dimly lit corridor. "Then explain where the hell it went."

  A low humming sound filled the air, like static before a thunderstorm. The bunker’s overhead lights flickered, casting eerie shadows on the walls.

  Leon clenched his fists, the electricity inside him reacting to the anomaly. He could feel it, something unnatural was lingering in the space around them. A presence that felt both near and far.

  Then, a whisper...

  "You’re not ready for what’s coming."

  The words didn’t come from the speakers. They didn’t come from any direction at all. It was as if the very air around them had spoken.

  Leon’s jaw tightened. He had fought things that defied logic before, but this was different. This wasn't just strength or speed, this thing had some kind of cognitive ability. It was playing with them.

  "Move," he ordered. "Now."

  Eric didn’t argue. He reloaded his rifle, keeping it at the ready as he took the lead. Dr. Carter, still pale, hurried to Leon’s side as they pressed forward down the corridor.

  The deeper they went, the colder it became. The air carried a strange metallic scent, and the walls looked corroded despite the facility’s high-tech design.

  Eric glanced back. "Why does this place feel… off?"

  Dr. Carter frowned. "This bunker wasn’t just for shelter. Blackwood Facility was conducting experiments here. This place has seen things that shouldn’t exist."

  Leon remained silent, but he could feel it too. The more they walked, the more his instincts screamed that something was wrong.

  Finally, they reached a reinforced door at the end of the hallway. Unlike the others, this one had no keypad, no handle, no way in. It was sealed shut.

  Dr. Carter exhaled. "This should lead to the main research lab. If the Revenant was a product of this place, we need to know what else they were working on."

  Leon stepped forward, placing his hand against the metal. His electricity crackled, seeping into the circuitry of the door. He closed his eyes, feeling the structure, searching for weak points.

  Then...

  A memory flashed.

  Not his own.

  A vision...

  Lab technicians screaming.

  A test subject convulsing, its body twisting unnaturally.

  A voice: “The evolution is incomplete. It’s becoming something else.”

  Static. Blood. Silence.

  Leon stumbled back, gasping for air. His vision blurred, his heart pounding like a war drum.

  "Leon!" Dr. Carter grabbed his arm. "What happened?"

  Leon shook his head, his breathing uneven. "This place… it’s cursed."

  Then...

  The door opened on its own.

  A low, mechanical hiss filled the corridor as the massive steel doors slowly slid apart, revealing a vast laboratory bathed in red emergency lights.

  But what caught Leon’s attention wasn’t the high-tech equipment or the overturned tables.

  It was the containment pods lining the walls.

  Inside each one.

  Human figures, suspended in liquid.

  Their bodies distorted, their eyes open, staring blankly.

  Eric took a step forward. "Jesus Christ…"

  Dr. Carter covered her mouth. "They… they were still running tests even after the outbreak?"

  Leon moved closer to one of the pods, his fists clenched. His reflection stared back at him through the glass, warped by the thick, bubbling fluid inside.

  Then...

  The figure inside twitched.

  Leon froze.

  Then another twitched.

  Then another.

  And then...

  Their eyes shifted toward him.

  A cold, lifeless stare.

  Eric took a step back, his finger hovering over the trigger. "Tell me they’re not still alive…"

  Before Dr. Carter could respond.

  A siren blared.

  A robotic voice echoed through the room:

  "Containment failure imminent. Releasing test subjects in 30 seconds."

  Leon’s blood turned to ice.

  "Run," he ordered.

  But as they turned to flee, the overhead lights flickered violently.

  And behind them.

  The containment pods began to open.

  ***

  Hissing. Gurgling. The sound of liquid draining.

  Leon could hear it all as the containment pods released their nightmarish occupants.

  The red warning lights flashed in sync with the siren, casting eerie shadows as the glass tubes slid open one by one. Thick, viscous fluid spilled onto the floor, pooling around the feet of the grotesque humanoid figures within.

  Their skin was translucent, revealing twisted muscle fibers and veins that pulsed with an unnatural glow. Some had elongated limbs, others bore misshapen faces, and one in particular had a gaping hole in its chest where a heart should have been, yet it still moved.

  Leon’s instincts screamed at him. This wasn’t just a normal experiment gone wrong. These things were designed to evolve beyond human limits.

  "Containment failure imminent. Releasing test subjects in 10 seconds."

  "GO!" Leon shouted, pushing Dr. Carter and Eric forward.

  The three of them bolted down the corridor, their boots splashing through the liquid seeping from the pods. Behind them, the first creature let out a guttural screech, a sound that sent a violent shiver down Leon’s spine.

  Eric turned and fired a burst of rounds, but the bullets barely slowed the monsters down. Instead, one of the creatures twisted its neck unnaturally and lunged, its movements erratic and inhumanly fast.

  Leon reacted on instinct.

  Electricity crackled down his arms, and with a sharp thrust of his hand, a bolt of lightning arced forward, striking the creature square in the chest.

  It convulsed violently, its translucent skin blackening as it spasmed and collapsed in a smoking heap.

  But then...

  It got back up.

  Leon’s stomach dropped. Even after being fried from the inside out, the damn thing kept regenerating.

  "They’re absorbing energy!" Dr. Carter shouted. "We need a different approach!"

  Leon clenched his fists, his mind racing. If electricity wouldn’t stop them, what would?

  More pods cracked open.

  More grotesque figures emerged. Some crawled on all fours, others twisted unnaturally as they pulled themselves free from their prisons.

  The facility’s emergency lighting flickered wildly, and the once-sterile laboratory was quickly turning into a hellscape.

  "Containment breach confirmed. Lockdown commencing."

  The doors at the end of the hall began to close.

  Leon cursed under his breath. If they didn’t make it out now, they’d be trapped in here with the abominations.

  "Eric, suppressing fire! Carter, move!"

  Eric unleashed a hail of bullets, forcing the creatures to hesitate just long enough for the group to break into a full sprint. The bunker’s reinforced door was seconds away from sealing shut.

  Leon didn’t think, he just acted.

  Summoning every ounce of power within him, he thrust both hands forward. Electricity surged from his body, not in an attack, but in a concentrated shockwave.

  The sudden burst of force sent the creatures reeling backward, momentarily disrupting their movements.

  It was all the time they needed.

  Leon dove through the narrowing gap just as the doors slammed shut behind them.

  BOOM!

  Something slammed into the other side with such force that the metal dented outward.

  Then another impact.

  And another.

  The monsters were trying to break through.

  Dr. Carter was gasping for breath. "That… was too close."

  Eric wiped sweat from his brow. "They just keep coming… what the hell were they making here?"

  Leon didn’t answer immediately. He turned, his eyes dark with thought, listening to the relentless pounding on the reinforced doors.

  Then, from somewhere deeper inside the facility, a new sound echoed...

  A slow, mechanical clapping.

  They weren’t alone.

  Leon whipped around, his body tensing.

  A figure emerged from the shadows.

  A man in a tattered lab coat, his face half-covered in cybernetic implants. His remaining human eye glowed with an eerie blue light, while the mechanical half whirred softly.

  His lips curled into a knowing smile.

  "I see you’ve made it this far. Impressive."

  Leon’s breath hitched.

  This wasn’t just some scientist. This was someone who had been waiting for them.

  Eric raised his rifle. "Who the hell are you?"

  The man chuckled, tilting his head.

  "I am the one who started all of this. And, if I’m not mistaken, you just released my greatest creations."

  Leon’s blood ran cold.

  Before he could react...

  The bunker’s lights cut out entirely.

  And in the consuming darkness, the man’s mechanical eye glowed brighter.