Chapter Text
Punch.
Dodge.
Shoot.
Kick.
Step.
Kick.
Punch.
Shoot.
“Again!”
Step.
Punch.
Dodge.
Shoot.
Kick.
Step.
Kick.
Punch.
Shoot.
“Again!”
The room beyond the thick glass window was a blur of motion, the steady rhythm of combat drills echoing like a heartbeat in her ears. Every strike was precise. Every move calculated. She was a weapon—conditioned, sharpened, relentless.
But that mission had gone sideways.
The ground had betrayed her, the explosion ripping through her left side with ruthless precision. She tasted metal and dust, but she didn’t scream. Pain was a tool—one she’d learned to ignore.
Strong hands gripped her under the arms, hauling her into the shadows where their extraction team waited. She kept her eyes open, drinking in every detail—the harsh glare of floodlights, the grim faces of her rescuers, the distant rumble of pursuit.
Her mind stayed sharp, cataloguing injuries, calculating next moves. But then there was the absence—the empty weight where her left arm used to be.
The medics worked fast. There was no sympathy in their eyes, only cold efficiency. She’d been told once: feelings slow you down.
Back at the base, sterile and humming with machinery, they laid her on a narrow bed beneath harsh white lights. Everything smelled like antiseptic and metal.
A technician clipped a device to her chest, monitoring her vitals. Another began prepping the arm replacement — a sleek cybernetic prosthetic bristling with wires and nano-circuits.
She felt herself fading, the cold creeping beneath her skin like a shadow stretching out. Her body was breaking, but her mind was still locked in battle mode.
She felt herself fading, the cold creeping beneath her skin like a shadow stretching out. Her body was breaking, but her mind was still locked in battle mode.
One of the doctors murmured, “Merc 16, we’ll put you under. The cryo system will stabilize you. Just for a few months.”
Her eyes didn’t close. Consciousness thinned, but she wasn’t fully gone.
She barely felt the pain anymore. Her consciousness tethered on a thread as they eased her into the cryogenic chamber. The icy mist curled around her like a shroud, seeping into her skin, freezing every nerve, every breath, every thought.
She was supposed to sleep—for months. Just long enough to heal and return stronger.
But she never woke.
She could hear them—voices, footsteps, hurried orders. The beep of machines. The scrape of boots on metal floors.
Then something changed.
The chatter grew frantic. Panic edged into the words.
The alarm echoed through cold steel corridors. Footsteps thundered, heavy and hurried, voices clipped with urgency.
“Containment breach in sector 7!” a voice snapped.
“Evacuate non-essential personnel. Lock down the vaults!” another ordered.
Outside the cryo-chambers, the base was unraveling.
Technicians scrambled to secure critical systems, while guards locked down entrances and prepared for evacuation. The air was thick with tension and fear—a rare crack in the fortress of control.
She lay motionless, the frost creeping over her skin, her mind caught between fading consciousness and fragmented awareness. She could hear the muffled chaos through the thick glass of her pod—shouts, clanging metal, the distant roar of engines.
Her fingers twitched faintly, a ghost of resistance against the cold that gripped her. She wanted to move, to break free, but the cryo-freeze held her like chains made of ice.
“Protocol Alpha-Two,” a calm but firm voice ordered over the intercom.
“Seal the chambers. No one gets in or out.”
The chamber’s hatch hissed closed, locking her in.
The footsteps receded, replaced by an eerie silence that settled over the base as the last personnel evacuated.
Outside, the lights flickered once, twice—then died.
The hum of generators slowed to a low drone before cutting off completely.
Her world shrank to frozen emptiness.
The cold flooded her mind.
And darkness swallowed her whole.
Her heart hammered in her chest.
But she was trapped.
The cold fog thickened, clutching her tighter, seeping into her bones.
Memories blurred. Sounds faded.
Time stretched thin and meaningless.
The cold flooded deeper. A creeping void where memories faded. The pain dulled into nothingness.
And then—the dark.
The facility had once been a hidden fortress of cutting-edge experimentation—a covert outpost buried beneath layers of concrete and steel, known only to a select few.
Its purpose was classified, whispered among the highest echelons of a shadowy organization: to create the perfect operative, blending the limits of human skill with technological enhancements.
Mercenary 16 had been one such project—a mercenary trained from childhood, molded into a weapon. When she lost her arm in a mission gone wrong, the facility’s doctors replaced it with a prototype nanotech limb—a marvel of precision and lethal capability.
Her success would have led them to the next phase: mass production. Children—stolen, forgotten, repurposed—lined the halls in cryo-pods and training cells.
Perfected for violence. Engineered for obedience.
But then everything fell apart.
The organization’s enemies had discovered the base, launching a surprise assault.
Sabotage crippled the power systems. Communications went dark. Panic rippled through the personnel.
Orders came to abandon the facility and erase all traces.
Erase
them
.
Some pods were terminated outright. Others—like hers—were sealed in haste and forgotten in the scramble.
No one returned.
Years turned into decades.
Yet the cryo-chambers—her prison and sanctuary—were left sealed.
Nature began to reclaim the surface, while deep underground, Mere 16 remained suspended in a frozen limbo—half-conscious, trapped between pain and cold.
The echoes of distant footsteps and frantic voices faded into silence, replaced by the slow hum of dormant machines.
And still, she waited.