A soft hiss.

The sound of hydraulics.

Yazmina’s head snapped up as the door unlatched.

Heavy footsteps echoed into the silence.

Then—he stepped inside.

Harley Sawyer.

Cold. Monolithic. Inhuman.

His screen flickered as he regarded her, that singular glowing eye shifting. He didn’t speak immediately, only watching, his head tilting slightly as if he were analyzing every inch of her.

She didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Her pulse was steady. Her breath controlled.

Harley finally broke the silence.

“You’re awake.”

His voice was the same. A hollow, mechanical distortion, yet unmistakably his.

Yazmina stared at him, her red irises gleaming under the dim lighting.

“…How long?”

Her voice was quiet but steady.

Harley didn’t answer right away. Instead, he took a slow step forward. Then another. His metal fingers tapped against his side in a thoughtful rhythm.

“You’ve been unconscious for three days.”

Her throat tightened. Three days.

That wasn’t the answer she truly wanted.

Her fingers curled against the sheets.

“And before that?”

A pause.

Then—

“Seven years.”

A cold weight settled in her chest.

Seven.

Seven years.

The realization struck like a blow, but her expression remained impassive.

She didn’t look away.

Didn’t let him see the way her mind reeled, the way her thoughts fractured and reformed at a dizzying pace.

Seven years had passed.

Everything she had once known—her world, the people she had left behind—were nothing more than echoes now.

Harley watched her.

“Yet, you haven’t aged a day.”

His voice was unreadable, but there was something in it. A quiet fascination, a note of curiosity that made her skin prickle.

She finally moved then. Slowly. Deliberately.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the cot, she placed her feet onto the cold metal floor, her body shifting effortlessly. There was no weakness. No lingering exhaustion. Only strength.

And something else.

Her pale skin had a strange luminescence, smooth and untouched by time. Her crimson irises burned like molten embers, framed by white lashes that cast fleeting shadows over her cheekbones. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders like liquid silk against the sterile white of the hospital gown she had been dressed in.

She was inhuman—yet mesmerizing. A paradox of elegance and danger, wrapped in a body that seemed sculpted by something beyond the realm of mortality.

Harley’s eye flickered.

She didn’t need to see his expression to know he had noticed.

Yazmina exhaled slowly.

“I remember everything.”

Silence.

Then—Harley’s static flickered briefly.

“Good.”

No shock. No hesitation.

He had expected this.

She narrowed her eyes slightly.

“You knew.”

Harley’s head tilted. “Of course.”

Her fingers twitched.

Of course.

Her gaze darkened.

“So?” she asked quietly. “What now?”

Harley’s screen pulsed, his eye narrowing slightly.

Then—

“You tell me.”

His voice wasn’t taunting.

It wasn’t mocking.

It was something else entirely.

Expectation.

A test.

Yazmina exhaled, the breath slow and measured.

She had survived.

She had endured the impossible.

She had survived the Hour of Joy.

The realization settled over her like a chilling whisper, curling around her thoughts with an eerie weight. The factory, the blood, the relentless pursuit of something she barely understood—it had all led to this moment.

A slow smile crept across her lips.

It was beautiful. Ethereal.

Yet haunting.

Her crimson eyes gleamed beneath the dim lighting, the corners of her mouth curving with a quiet, unsettling satisfaction. There was no giddy relief, no trembling gratitude for her survival. Instead, there was certainty. An understanding that went beyond mere endurance.

She hadn't just survived.

She had emerged and changed.

She felt it humming beneath her skin—the unnatural strength, the sharpness of her senses, the way her body no longer felt bound by the same fragile limitations as before. She was something else now. Something more.

But the game was far from over.

---

Yazmina was lying in her bed.

Then she heard a voice.

No—whispers.

Distant, layered, barely audible at first. They slithered through the silence, threading into her mind like echoes from another world.

"Yazmina..."

Her name.

It came from nowhere.

And everywhere.

Her fingers twitched against the sheets.

Suddenly she heard—a movement.

Subtle. Quiet.

But not quiet enough.

Her senses had sharpened ever since she mutated. Sounds were clearer. The air itself felt more alive, charged with a presence that made her skin prickle.

Something—someone—was here.

But she didn’t move.

Didn’t react.

She let her breathing stay slow and steady, feigning sleep even as every muscle in her body coiled, every instinct screaming at her to move.

The presence grew closer.

The air around her shifted, thickening with something unnatural.

Then—a shadow loomed over her.

Her heartbeat remained steady.

Closer.

A hand reached out—

She snapped her eyes open.

And what she saw made her breath hitch.

A towering form.

Him.

The Prototype.

The entity the game had always kept hidden.

The one monster she had never seen in full detail.

Until now.

Her breath caught in her throat.

It was more horrifying than she could have ever imagined.

But at the same time—

It was mesmerizing.

She had spent years wondering what it truly looked like. She had searched, theorized, speculated. The game had never revealed its full form, keeping it obscured in shadows, its true horror left to the imagination.

But now—

Now, it was real.

Standing before her.

Yazmina didn’t move.

She held the Prototype’s gaze, her red irises glowing faintly in the dim room. It didn’t speak. It didn’t shift. It only watched.

Her heart pounded, but not in fear.

The air between them felt thick, charged with something unnatural.

It shouldn’t be here.

It shouldn’t be this close.

But at the same time, it felt like it had always been waiting for her.

As if, in some way—

She had always been meant to meet it.

"You are finally awake."

It resonated from within her skull, layered with distortions and echoes, as if a thousand voices spoke in unison. A choir of something ancient. Something unknowable.

Yazmina’s fingers curled into the sheets, the fabric bunching under her grip.

“…I know,” she murmured.

The Prototype tilted its head.

"You have changed."

The words carried a strange weight, pressing against her bones, wrapping around her mind like chains of static.

Yazmina exhaled slowly, her tails shifting behind her. The nine segmented appendages moved in sync, responding to emotions she hadn’t fully grasped yet. The sensation was foreign. Unnatural. Yet, at the same time—

It felt right.

Like they had always been there.

Like she had simply forgotten them.

Her fingers twitched.

She didn’t know how she had become this.

Didn’t know why.

Hadn’t she been—

Human?

She clenched her jaw. No. That wasn’t right, was it? The thought made her stomach churn. It was as if her mind itself was rejecting the idea, as if the very concept of being human was slipping through her fingers like sand.

She felt… more.

Stronger. Sharper. Her senses stretched beyond what they once were, grasping onto things she never could before. The faintest hum of machinery pulsed through the walls. The slow, methodical clicking of Harley’s systems far beyond this room. The distant, barely-there breathing of something else lurking within the factory’s depths.

It was overwhelming.

But at the same time—

It was intoxicating.

And yet—

This thing.

This entity.

It seemed to know everything.