The screams had become a part of the bunker's architecture.
For days, they had woven themselves into the walls, the floors, the ventilation shafts—a constant, low thrum of suffering that everyone learned to ignore. Everyone except Eva.
She heard them at night. Heard them when no one else was awake. Heard them through the concrete and the metal and the layers of her own exhaustion. They called to her. Whispered to her. Come see. Come understand. Come find out what lives in the dark.
On the fourth night, she went.
The corridor descended exactly as Wolfen had described it—narrow, dark, swallowing light. Eva walked without hesitation, her bare feet silent on the metal grating, her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She wore only the simple clothes she'd slept in. No weapon. No armor. Nothing but herself.
She reached the door.
The screaming had stopped. In its place was a wet, shuddering sound—the breathing of someone who had been crying for so long they'd forgotten how to stop.
Eva pushed the door open.
The smell hit her first. Copper and rot and something chemical, something burned. Then the sight.
Charybdis hung in her chains, a ruined sculpture of flesh and bone. The cuts had multiplied—hundreds of them now, crisscrossing every inch of visible skin in a pattern that was almost artistic. The spikes remained, buried in her shoulders, her hips, her back. Her chest wound had been reopened, then burned closed again, then reopened. Her face was a mask of dried tears and fresh blood.
She lifted her head as Eva entered. Her eyes—those cold, killer's eyes—were hollow now. Empty of everything except pain.
"You're... not him," she rasped.
Eva walked closer. Stopped a few feet away. Studied her with the same clinical attention Wolfen always brought to these sessions.
"No," she said quietly. "I'm not."
Charybdis's breath hitched. "Then why... why are you here?"
Eva didn't answer immediately. She circled the chained woman, taking in every wound, every mark, every piece of the puzzle that was her suffering. When she spoke, her voice was soft, almost gentle.
"Absolute-Five," she said. "The one you helped trap. The one you helped them imprison."
Charybdis flinched. "I don't—"
"He was too strong, wasn't he?" Eva continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "Stronger than they thought. Stronger than anyone thought. So they built something special. Something just for him."
Charybdis's eyes went wide. "How do you—"
"A prison. In the middle of the South Pole. Guarded by ten Alphas who know nothing else." Eva's voice never changed, never rose above that soft, terrible calm. "That's where they put him, isn't it? That's where he's been all these years. Sleeping. Waiting."
The chains rattled as Charybdis tried to shrink away. "Please—"
"Please what?" Eva stopped circling. Faced her directly. "Please stop? Please have mercy? Please be kind?"
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small knife. It was dull—barely sharp enough to cut rope, let alone flesh. The kind of knife you'd use to open packages, not people.
Charybdis stared at it. Her breath came faster. "What are you going to do?"
Eva looked at the knife. Turned it over in her hands. Considered it.
"I used to wonder," she said, "what it felt like. The thing Wolfen does. The thing that makes him able to walk into rooms like this and stay for hours. I thought it was strength. Or duty. Or maybe just being too old to care anymore."
She stepped closer. The knife caught the dim light.
"But it's not any of those things, is it? It's something else. Something simpler."
She pressed the dull edge against Charybdis's arm. Not hard enough to cut—just enough to feel.
"It's pleasure."
Charybdis shook her head, tears streaming. "No—no, please—"
Eva dragged the knife down her arm. The dull blade didn't break skin—just left a red line, an irritation, a promise of more. Charybdis whimpered.
And Eva blushed.
The color rose in her cheeks, unexpected, unwanted. Her lips parted. A small sound escaped her—not a word, not a gasp. Something else. Something that made Charybdis's eyes go wider, made her body tense against the chains.
Then Eva laughed.
It started quiet—a breath, a chuckle, almost normal. But it grew. Built. Became something else entirely—a high, bright, insane sound that echoed off the bloody walls and came back to them twisted.
Charybdis stared at her, and in that moment, she understood.
This wasn't Wolfen's victim anymore. This wasn't the prisoner of the ancient anomaly, the one who came and hurt her and left. This was something new. Something that had just discovered a part of itself it hadn't known existed.
Something that liked this.
"No," Charybdis whispered. "No, no, no, no—"
Eva stepped forward, the knife raised, her face split by that terrible smile. "Let's see how much you can take."
She cut.
Not deep—just enough to hurt. Just enough to draw a thin line of blood. Charybdis screamed, and Eva's eyes lit up, and she cut again.
And again.
And again.
The screams grew louder. Higher. More desperate. Charybdis thrashed against her chains, the spikes grinding, the wounds reopening, the pain becoming everything. And through it all, Eva laughed—that bright, broken, beautiful laugh—and kept cutting.
"I understand now," Eva murmured, almost to herself. "I finally understand."
Charybdis's eyes rolled back. Her body convulsed. Her mind, pushed past every limit, every breaking point, every possible boundary of human endurance, simply... stopped.
She went still.
Eva stepped back, breathing hard, the knife slipping from her fingers to clatter on the bloody floor. She looked at what she'd done—at the body hanging in the chains, at the fresh cuts layered over the old ones, at the face frozen in an expression of absolute, ultimate terror.
Charybdis was dead.
Not from blood loss. Not from organ failure. Not from any physical cause that could be measured and cataloged. She had died because her mind had finally, completely, irrevocably broken. Because the sight of Eva's smile, of Eva's laugh, of Eva's pleasure in her pain had been more than she could bear.
Eva stood in the silence, alone with the body and the blood and the terrible new knowledge of herself.
Then she turned and walked out.
---
Wolfen found her the next morning.
He came as he always did—at dawn, with the same flat expression, the same deliberate calm. He opened the door, stepped inside, and stopped.
Charybdis hung in her chains. Still. Silent. Dead.
He stood there for a long moment, taking it in. The fresh cuts. The expression on her face—that look of ultimate, soul-destroying terror. The small, dull knife lying in the blood at her feet.
He didn't need to ask who had done this. He already knew.
He turned and walked back the way he'd come, his footsteps echoing in the corridor, leaving the dead woman to her silence and the dark.