CHAPTER FIVE: THE CALORIC DEBT

Time lost its meaning in the white room.

There were no windows to show the sun rising or setting over Mount Meru. There were no clocks on the padded walls. There was only the hum of the air cycler and the rhythmic blinking of the red light on the security camera above the mirror.

I sat in the metal chair, my limbs heavy, my head swimming with a dizziness that felt like intoxication.

It wasn't fear anymore. It was hunger.

A ravenous, clawing emptiness had opened up in the center of my being. It felt as if a black hole had formed in my stomach and was slowly sucking my organs into it. My hands shook uncontrollably, not from nerves, but from a sudden, violent hypoglycemia.

The Auditor had said it: Do you know how much energy it takes to grow a human bone?

I looked down at my left hand—the hand he had impaled with the combat knife less than an hour ago. The skin was smooth, unblemished, perfect. But looking at it made me feel sick. My body had stolen the energy to fix that wound from somewhere. It had burned through my breakfast, my lunch, and now it was burning through my fat reserves.

I was eating myself alive to stay whole.

Buzz.

The electronic lock on the heavy steel door disengaged with a sharp clack. The door swung open.

The Auditor did not return. Instead, a team entered.

There were four of them. They wore full-body HAZMAT suits, bright orange and bulky, with thick glass visors obscuring their faces. They looked like astronauts exploring a hostile planet. The hostile planet was me.

Behind them walked a woman. She wasn't wearing a suit, just a pristine white lab coat over a grey business skirt. She was tall, with severe features and hair pulled back into a tight bun. She held a tablet in one hand and looked at me with an expression that was terrifyingly clinical.

"Vital signs?" she asked, not speaking to me, but to the air.

"Heart rate 110. BP 90 over 60. Glucose levels critical," a voice crackled from the intercom.

The woman nodded. She stepped closer to the table, staying just out of my reach.

"I am Dr. Amani," she said. Her voice was smooth, educated, devoid of warmth. "I am the Head of Xenobiology for the State Security Department."

"I'm hungry," I whispered. It was the only thought my brain could process.

"I know," Dr. Amani said. She gestured to one of the HAZMAT suits.

The figure stepped forward and placed a metal tray on the table. On it was a grey, nutrient-dense paste in a bowl and a bottle of water.

"Eat," she commanded. "It is a high-calorie protein sludge designed for soldiers in the field. It tastes like wet cardboard, but it has three thousand calories per serving. You need fuel."

One of the guards unlocked my right hand.

I didn't wait. I didn't think about dignity. I grabbed the bowl with trembling fingers and shoveled the grey sludge into my mouth. She was right—it tasted vile, like chalk and fish oil—but my body screamed in gratitude. I devoured it in seconds, scraping the bowl clean, then downed the water in one gulp.

The relief was instant. The shaking stopped. My vision cleared.

"Good," Dr. Amani said, watching the data stream on her tablet. "Metabolic absorption is near-instantaneous. His digestive system is hyper-efficient."

She looked at me, her eyes narrowing behind her rimless glasses.

"Now that you are fueled, Baraka, we can begin."

"Begin what?" I wiped my mouth, the fear returning as the hunger faded.

"The Auditor verified your external healing," she said, tapping the screen. "But surface tissue is easy. Skin and muscle are simple structures. We need to understand the source. We need to see the factory floor."

She nodded to the guards. "Restrain him. Protocol Four."

Before I could react, the four men in suits swarmed me. I fought, kicking out with my legs, but they were strong and heavy. They slammed me back against the chair. My right hand was shackled again. A thick leather strap was tightened across my forehead, pinning my skull to the headrest. Another strap was cinched across my jaw, forcing my mouth open and keeping my head immobile.

I couldn't move an inch. I could only roll my eyes in terror.

One of the men brought a rolling cart into the room. On the cart sat a machine that looked like a large, industrial power drill. But instead of a masonry bit, it was fitted with a long, hollow needle made of diamond-tipped tungsten.

"Bone marrow," Dr. Amani explained calmly, as if giving a lecture. "It is the factory of the blood. It contains the stem cells. If your mutation lies anywhere, Baraka, it lies in the marrow."

She put on a pair of latex gloves.

"We are going to drill into your iliac crest—the hip bone. We will extract a core sample of the marrow. We will also be taking samples of your spinal fluid."

I tried to scream, to beg, but the strap across my jaw reduced my voice to a muffled, panicked grunt.

"Do not waste your energy fighting," she advised. "The tungsten drill spins at ten thousand RPM. It will be over quickly. However..." She paused, checking the setting on the machine. "...I cannot give you anesthesia."

My eyes widened.

"Your metabolism burns through sedatives too fast," she said unapologetically. "And local anesthetic might contaminate the sample. We need the biology raw."

She nodded to the guard holding the drill. "Proceed."

The machine whirred to life. The sound was a high-pitched whine, like a dentist's drill amplified a thousand times.

The guard moved to my side. He placed the tip of the needle against the top of my hip bone, right through my torn school trousers.

Whirrrrrr.

He pushed.

The pain was not like the knife. The knife was sharp, clean. This was a vibration that shook my entire skeleton.

When the drill bit the bone, the world turned white.

"MMMMMPHHHH!"

I screamed against the gag, my body arching against the straps. I felt the diamond tip grinding through the periosteum, the hard outer shell of the bone. It felt like someone was trying to split me in half with a dull axe.

"Steady," Dr. Amani ordered. "Maintain pressure."

The drill pushed deeper. I could hear it inside my own head—the wet, crunching sound of my own body being violated. Tears blinded me. I could feel the cold steel invading the soft, spongy center of my bone.

"Extraction initiated," the guard said.

Then, something changed.

As the needle touched the marrow, a jolt of electricity shot through me. It wasn't pain. It was a defense mechanism. My body realized it was being invaded.

Thump.

My heart gave a massive, singular beat that shook my chest.

"Heart rate spiking!" the voice on the intercom shouted. "200... 220... he's going into fibrillation!"

"Ignore it," Dr. Amani snapped. "Get the sample!"

The guard pushed harder.

But the drill stopped moving.

"Doctor," the guard said, his voice confused inside his helmet. "It’s... it’s stuck."

"Push harder!"

"I am! It won't move!"

I felt it then. A heat, far more intense than the healing of my hand, began to build in my hip. It was boiling. My bone wasn't just healing; it was reacting.

The sound of the drill changed. The high-pitched whine dropped to a struggling growl. Smoke began to rise from the point of entry.

CRACK.

The sound was like a gunshot in the small room.

The guard was thrown backward, stumbling and falling to the floor. He held the drill machine in his hands.

The tungsten needle had snapped.

Half of it was still in the machine. The other half was buried inside my hip.

"What happened?" Dr. Amani yelled, stepping back.

I gasped for air through my nose, sweat pouring down my face. The pain in my hip was excruciating, but then came the pop.

With a wet, sucking sound, my body rejected the foreign object. The broken shard of the tungsten needle was pushed out of my skin, clattering onto the white tile floor covered in a layer of steaming, red mucus.

The hole in my hip sealed itself instantly.

The room went silent, save for the hum of the smoking drill.

Dr. Amani walked over to the broken needle on the floor. She picked it up with a pair of forceps. The diamond tip—one of the hardest substances on earth—was crushed. Warped. As if it had been chewed by a beast.

She looked at me. Her clinical detachment was gone. In its place was pure, unadulterated awe.

"His bone density," she whispered. "It reacted to the stress. It hardened instantly. He didn't just heal the hole... his skeleton became harder than the drill."

She looked up at the mirror.

"Auditor, did you see that?"

A voice came over the speaker. It was The Auditor.

"I saw it."

"He adapts," Dr. Amani said, her voice rising in excitement. "It’s reactive evolution. We attacked the bone, so the bone became impenetrable. If we try to burn him, he will likely become fireproof. If we try to drown him, he will grow gills."

She turned to look at me, and for the first time, I saw lust in her eyes. Not sexual lust, but the lust of a scientist who has found the ultimate specimen.

"He is not just a regenerator," she said. "He is an adapter. He is the ultimate survivor."

I slumped in the chair, exhausted. The hunger was back, clawing at my stomach. I had broken a diamond drill with my hip, and it had cost me everything I had just eaten.

"Get him more food," Dr. Amani ordered. "Get him everything we have in the commissary. And bring the laser cutters. We need to see what happens when we use thermal energy."

"No," I whispered against the gag. "No more."

But they weren't listening. The guards were already moving to reset the equipment. Dr. Amani was typing furiously on her tablet.

Suddenly, a siren began to wail.

It was a low, mournful sound that echoed through the concrete walls of the Hive. The red light above the mirror stopped blinking and turned a solid, angry crimson.

Dr. Amani froze. The guards looked at the door.

"Code Red," the intercom blared. "Perimeter breach in Sector One. Repeat. Perimeter breach. Explosives detected."

The Auditor’s voice came back, but this time, he sounded tense.

"Dr. Amani, secure the asset. Lockdown Protocol immediately."

"What is happening?" Amani yelled at the mirror.

"We are under attack," The Auditor replied. "Heavily armed hostiles. They just blew the main gate."

I lifted my head, feeling a flicker of hope amidst the pain.

Explosives. Heavy weapons.

My father had said, "You think you're the only ones watching?"

The government had taken me. But now, it seemed, the other monsters had arrived to take me back.

The Six were here.