CHAPTER SIX: THE PURGE

The wall didn't just break; it evaporated.

One moment, I was strapped to the interrogation chair, the metallic taste of fear in my mouth, watching Dr. Amani type commands into her tablet. The next, the world turned violently sideways.

A concussive shockwave slammed into the room, lifting the heavy steel table off the floor. The reinforced glass of the observation mirror shattered inward, showering the room in a deadly rain of razor-sharp shards. The four guards in their HAZMAT suits were thrown like ragdolls, their bodies crumpling against the padded walls with sickening thuds.

Dust—thick, white drywall dust mixed with the acrid stench of high-grade plastic explosives—filled the air instantly, turning the sterile lab into a grey fog.

My ears rang with a high-pitched whine that drowned out all other sound. I coughed, choking on the particulate matter, straining against the leather straps that still pinned me to the chair.

"Report!" Dr. Amani screamed somewhere in the haze. She had been knocked to the floor, her pristine lab coat now covered in debris and blood from a cut on her forehead. "Security, report! We have a breach in Sector Four!"

There was no answer from the intercom. Only dead static.

Then, came the sound.

THUD. HISS. THUD. HISS.

It was a rhythmic, heavy mechanical noise. It vibrated through the floorboards, shaking my bones. It sounded like a piston engine breathing.

Through the gaping, smoking hole in the wall, a silhouette emerged.

He was a monster. Not of biology, like me, but of iron and hatred.

The man stood nearly seven feet tall, bulked out by a crude, industrial exoskeleton. It wasn't the sleek, polished armor of a superhero movie. It was ugly. It was welded together from scavenged mining equipment, stolen military plating, and exposed hydraulic cables. Thick steel plates covered his chest and legs, painted a dull, matte grey. On his right arm, he wore a massive, piston-driven gauntlet that hummed with magnetic energy. On his left forearm was mounted a sawed-off, drum-fed auto-shotgun.

But it was his face that froze the blood in my veins.

The visor of his helmet was retracted. The left side of his face was a ruin of melted waxy skin—burn scars that twisted his mouth into a permanent, skeletal snarl. His remaining eye was cold, hard flint.

He stepped into the room, crushing a piece of concrete under his steel boot.

"Who are you?" one of the surviving guards yelled, staggering to his feet and raising his rifle. "Freeze! This is a restricted—"

BOOM.

The intruder didn't even slow down. He raised his left arm and fired. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. The guard was lifted off his feet and thrown across the room, his chest armor shattered.

"Filth," the armored man spat. His voice was deep, mechanically amplified to a terrifying bass rumble. "All of you. Filth."

Dr. Amani scrambled backward, her heels slipping on the blood-slicked tiles. Her arrogance was gone, replaced by the primal terror of a prey animal.

"You..." she gasped. "You are Kazi. The Silencer."

"And you are the Breeder," Kazi growled.

He ignored her, turning his attention to me.

I pulled against my restraints, panic surging through my exhausted body. The straps held firm. I was a sitting duck.

Kazi walked toward me. The whirrr-clank of his suit was terrifyingly loud. He stopped inches from my face, the smell of oil and old blood rolling off him. He looked at me with a mixture of disgust and pity.

"Patient Zero," Kazi said, his voice low. "The boy who wouldn't die."

"Please," I rasped, my throat raw. "I didn't do anything."

"You exist," Kazi replied. He raised his piston-fist. "That is enough. I saw the video. I saw you defy nature. You think you are a god? No. You are a cancer. And I am the chemotherapy."

He pulled back his fist to crush my skull.

I squeezed my eyes shut. This is it. I survived the train. I survived the truck. I survived the drill. But I can't survive this.

"NO!"

A blur of white motion shot across the room.

It wasn't a guard. It was the young woman—the junior researcher who had brought me the food earlier. She didn't have a weapon. She had a tablet.

She didn't attack Kazi. She knew she couldn't. Instead, she lunged for the control console on the wall behind me.

"Don't do it, girl!" Kazi roared, swinging his massive arm toward her.

She was fast. Messy, panicked, but fast. Her fingers flew across the emergency keypad.

BEEP-CLICK.

The magnetic locks on my wrists and ankles snapped open. The leather straps loosened.

"Run!" the girl screamed at me.

Kazi’s backhand caught her. The metal plating of his suit clipped her shoulder, sending her spinning into the far wall. She hit hard and crumpled to the floor, her glasses flying off, gasping for air.

But I was free.

Kazi turned back to me, bringing his fist down.

MOVE.

My body reacted before my brain did. The adrenaline—fueled by the high-calorie sludge I had eaten—kicked in. I threw myself to the right, rolling off the chair.

CRUNCH.

Kazi’s fist slammed into the metal chair where my head had been a split second ago. The steel crumpled like aluminum foil. The impact shook the floor, sending a spiderweb of cracks through the tiles.

I scrambled to my feet, my legs wobbling. I was weak, dizzy from the marrow extraction, but the fear was a powerful stimulant.

Kazi ripped his fist free from the mangled chair. He turned to face me, the servos in his neck whining.

"Fast," he noted, his single eye narrowing. "Like a cockroach."

"Leave me alone!" I yelled, backing away toward the hole in the wall.

"There is nowhere to go, boy," Kazi said, stepping over the debris. "I blew the main gate. I blew the generator. The Hive is dying. And you are dying with it."

He charged.

For a man wearing three hundred pounds of steel, he was terrifyingly fast. The hydraulics propelled him forward in a lunging tackle.

I didn't try to block. I couldn't block a tank. I dove low, sliding under his outstretched arm. I felt the wind of his swing pass over my head.

I was at the door. The hallway beyond was filled with smoke and flashing red lights. I could run. I could disappear into the chaos. My legs were ready to carry me ten miles away from here.

But then I heard a whimper.

I looked back. The girl—the young scientist—was trying to crawl away. Dr. Amani had already vanished, fleeing like a coward and leaving her subordinate to die. Kazi was turning around, raising his shotgun arm toward the girl on the floor.

"Collaborator," Kazi grunted, racking the slide of his weapon. "You chose the side of the monsters. You die with them."

She saved me.

The thought stopped me dead in my tracks. She had risked her life to hit that button. She was human, superless, but she had stood up to the monster when no one else would.

I couldn't leave her.

"Hey!" I screamed. "Tin Man!"

Kazi paused, turning his head toward me.

I grabbed a heavy stainless-steel medical tray from a cart. With a grunt of effort, I hurled it at him like a frisbee.

It clanged uselessly off his chest armor.

He laughed. A dark, metallic sound. "Brave. Stupid."

He turned his gun toward me.

I sprinted. Not away from him, but toward the girl.

BOOM.

The shotgun fired. I felt the pellets tear through the air. One of them grazed my ribs, tearing a line of fire across my side. I ignored it. I could already feel the skin knitting together, the heat of regeneration warming my flank.

I reached the girl. She was clutching her shoulder, her eyes wide with terror. She looked at me, stunned.

"Why..." she stammered.

"Can you run?" I asked, grabbing her good arm.

"I... I think so."

"Then run!"

I hauled her to her feet just as Kazi fired again. The shot blew a chunk out of the wall where we had been standing.

We bolted into the hallway.

"Sector 4 is compromised!" a voice blared over the emergency speakers. "Fire suppression system active."

WHOOSH.

Halon gas sprayed from the ceiling vents, creating a thick, suffocating white fog. It burned my eyes, but it was our cover. Kazi couldn't see us.

"This way!" the girl choked out, pulling me to the left. "The service elevators! He'll expect us to go to the main exit!"

We ran. My bare feet slapped against the cold floor. Her lab coat flapped behind her. Behind us, through the fog, we could hear the heavy, rhythmic thudding of Kazi’s suit pursuing us.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

He was coming. And he wasn't going to stop until we were paste.

"Who is that guy?" I panted, my hip throbbing where the drill had been.

"Kazi," she gasped, checking behind us. "Commander Kazi. He used to be Special Forces. Before the... before the Outbreak."

"Outbreak?" I asked, confused.

"Later!" she yelled. She pulled a keycard from her pocket and swiped it at a heavy blast door marked MAINTENANCE ACCESS.

The light turned green. The door hissed open. We stumbled inside a narrow corridor filled with pipes and steam.

She slammed the button to close the door.

Just as the heavy metal slabs were sliding shut, a steel hand grabbed the edge.

CREAAAK.

The metal groaned in protest. Kazi was holding the blast door open with one hand. The servos in his suit whined, fighting the hydraulics of the door. Through the gap, I saw his scarred face and that single, hateful eye staring at me.

He was strong. Stronger than the door. He began to pry it open.

"You can't run forever, Patient Zero!" Kazi roared. "I will find you! I will burn this whole city to ash to find you!"

I looked at the girl. She was terrified, paralyzed.

"Help me!" I yelled at her.

"It won't close!" she cried.

I grabbed the manual override wheel on the door. I poured every ounce of my remaining strength into it. My muscles burned. The heat of my regeneration flared, giving me a sudden burst of power.

"Let... GO!" I screamed.

With a massive shove, I forced the locking mechanism. The door slammed shut with the force of a guillotine.

CRUNCH.

We heard the sickening sound of metal shearing metal. Kazi screamed in rage as the tips of his steel fingers were severed by the blast door.

CLANG. CLANG.

He pounded on the other side, shaking the walls, but the door held.

We slumped against the wall, sliding down to the floor, gasping for air. The corridor was dark, lit only by the red emergency strips on the floor.

I looked at the girl. Her bun had come undone, her hair wild. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, and her shoulder was badly bruised.

She looked at me, trembling. She looked at my side, where the shotgun pellet had grazed me. The wound was already gone, just a faint pink line remaining.

"You're him," she whispered. "The one from the train."

"Yeah," I breathed, wiping sweat from my eyes. "I'm Baraka."

She swallowed hard, adjusting her ruined lab coat. "I'm Eliana. Dr. Eliana Mushi."

"Why did you help me, Eliana?" I asked, leaning my head back against the cold wall. "You work for them. You're one of the bad guys."

She looked down at her hands—hands that were shaking.

"I signed up to cure diseases, Baraka. Not to drill into children. What they were doing to you... what Amani was doing... that isn't science. It's torture."

She looked up, her eyes fierce despite the fear.

"And besides," she added, nodding toward the door where Kazi was still pounding. "I think we have a common enemy now."

"Yeah," I said, pushing myself up. "The guy in the tank suit."

"We aren't safe yet," Eliana said, standing up and wincing. "Kazi isn't alone. He brought a crew of mercenaries. And the Government security teams are regrouping. We are stuck in the middle of a war zone."

"So how do we get out?"

She pointed down the dark, steamy corridor.

"The waste disposal chutes," she said grimly. "It leads to the drainage system under the Njiro River. It smells terrible, and it's full of toxic runoff."

I looked at her. I smiled, a grim, humorless smile.

"I survived a train crash and a semi-trailer today," I said. "I think I can handle a little sewage."

"Then let's go," she said.

We ran into the dark, leaving the banging of the Iron Hunter behind us. But I knew, deep down, that the sound of those heavy footsteps would haunt me for the rest of my life.

The hunt had officially begun.