Author's Note: If you want me to continue this work, I would appreciate encouragement. Let this novel become famous! I would like you to bring it to 200 power stones. If you have any advice for me, please comment so I can improve.
*****
Atlas turned toward the shattered glass of the observation window. Beyond it lay the corridors of Sector 3. The Hive was massive. There were five hundred employees down here, and he had only killed fifteen.
The buffet had barely opened.
He lifted his head, eyes sweeping the blood-soaked corridor ahead. Emergency lights flickered. Somewhere deeper in the Hive, alarms wailed faintly—distant, muted, like a warning meant for someone else.
A hunting ground.
"…No rush," Atlas said quietly.
He wiped his claws clean against a fallen corpse and started forward, footsteps unhurried.
The Hive stretched endlessly ahead of him—dark, sealed, crawling with monsters that still thought they were predators.
Atlas Cruor smiled faintly as he walked.
They had no idea.
Atlas stepped over the corpse of the scientist he had just decapitated. He didn't look back. The "boring life" he had lamented earlier felt like a distant memory. Here, in the dark, with claws in his arms and a system in his soul, he finally felt alive.
'Let's explore this place,' Atlas thought, a predatory glint in his dead eyes. 'And by explore... I mean hunt.'
---
The Hive – Dining Hall B
The Hive – Stairwell / Sector 4.
02:15 AM.
The descent was endless.
The elevators were dead, frozen in their shafts by the Red Queen's lockdown protocols. That left the stairwell—a cold, industrial spiral of steel grating that seemed to drill down into the very center of the earth.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The rhythmic sound of combat boots hitting metal echoed off the concrete walls, amplifying the oppressive silence of the facility. The air grew colder with every flight they descended, heavy with the smell of recycled oxygen and ozone.
Alice gripped the railing, her knuckles white. Her legs burned from the exertion, but her mind was racing faster than her heart. The red dress offered no protection against the subterranean chill.
The heavy metal doors sealed behind them with a hollow clang that echoed far longer than it should have.
Alice flinched slightly as the sound rolled down the concrete stairwell, swallowed by the depths of the Hive. The air down here was different—colder, thicker, carrying the faint scent of chemicals and something metallic beneath it.
Blood, maybe.
Or worse.
The team moved downward in a tight formation, boots scraping against steel steps as emergency lights flickered overhead in dull intervals of red and white. The elevators had been dead the moment they entered—no response, no power fluctuation.
Either a catastrophic failure…
Or deliberate.
James glanced up briefly at one of the cameras embedded in the ceiling, its lens following them with quiet precision.
"The elevators are out," he muttered. "Could be system damage. Could be Red Queen."
"Or she doesn't want us moving fast," Matt said dryly from the back, shotgun resting on his shoulder.
No one laughed.
They continued downward.
"Kaplan," James 'One' Shade barked, his voice breathless but steady. "Status."
Kaplan, struggling with the weight of the EMP device strapped to his back, checked the glowing display on his wrist. "We're passing the residential levels. Approaching the bottom. Sector 4."
"Good," One grunted. "Keep moving."
Floor after floor passed, each marked with Umbrella's sterile white lettering and cold numerical designations. The Hive felt endless—an underground city carved from steel and arrogance.
Finally, they reached the last landing.
They finally reached the bottom landing. A massive, blast-proof door loomed before them, labeled with a stark, alphanumeric code: [ B-4 ].
One signaled for the team to halt. He raised his tactical rifle, sweeping the area. "Rain, J.D., secure the perimeter. Kaplan, get this door open."
Kaplan jacked his console into the door's keypad. His fingers flew across the keys, bypassing the electronic lock. "Sir, according to the schematics... this should be Dining Hall B."
One frowned. "A dining hall? This deep?"
"That's what the map says," Kaplan shrugged.
"Open it."
The hydraulics hissed, a sound like a dying breath, and the heavy steel doors groaned as they slid apart. Cold, thick fog rolled out from the gap, swirling around their ankles like dry ice.
DINING ROOM B — LEVEL -6
The doors slid open.
And every single person froze.
The room beyond them was… wrong.
Fog clung to the floor like a living thing, curling around their boots as they stepped inside. Long metal tables stretched across the hall in perfect rows, but there was no food, no trays, no chairs pulled out casually.
The team raised their weapons, tactical lights cutting through the mist. They stepped inside, expecting tables, chairs, maybe a cafeteria line.
What they found was a nightmare.
Capsules.
Dozens of them.
Tall, coffin-like containment units lined the walls and stood between the tables, each connected by thick black tubes that ran along the ceiling like veins. Green fluid pulsed through them slowly, rhythmically, as if the room itself were breathing.
Rows of massive, cylindrical tanks. They stretched out into the darkness, hundreds of them, floor to ceiling. Each tank was filled with a murky liquid and connected by thick, pulsating hoses that ran along the floor like black veins.
Alice felt a chill crawl up her spine.
"This…" James said quietly, raising his rifle as he scanned the shadows. "Where the hell is this?"
Rain checked her wrist device again, brow furrowing.
"It's the dining room, sir," she said, confused. "The coordinates are right. Dining Room B. This is the place."
James stared at her, disbelief etched across his face.
James walked up to Kaplan, looming over him to check the screen himself. "Impossible. Look at this place."
He pushed past her and checked the display himself.
Then he went still.
"…It's correct."
"Maybe..." Matt Addison spoke up, his voice laced with a bitter, cynical edge. He was shivering, hugging his arms to his chest.
"Maybe this is the stuff Umbrella doesn't want you to see. A hidden layer."
"You," One snapped, pointing a gloved finger at him. "Shut up. I don't pay you to think."
"I'm just saying," Matt countered, looking at the ominous tanks. "This doesn't look like a place to grab a sandwich."
"Let's get moving," One ordered, ignoring him. "Search the sector. We need to find a route to the Red Queen's chamber. Keep your eyes open."
The team fanned out. The silence in the room was heavy, broken only by the low, throbbing hum of the cryogenic machinery.
The team fanned out smoothly, professionalism overriding unease.
Alice wandered away from the group, drawn by a strange, morbid curiosity. The fog swirled around her bare legs. She approached one of the massive capsules. It was towering, easily ten feet tall, made of reinforced glass and steel.
Up close, the machine was massive—reinforced glass at the front, metal clamps locking something inside. Tubes were embedded directly into the figure within, piercing flesh, pumping that viscous green substance straight into its veins.
She leaned closer.
Peered inside.
Her breath caught.
Inside the tank, suspended in a thick, green nutrient solution, was a horror beyond imagination. It was humanoid, but only barely. Its skin seemed to have been flayed off, revealing raw, red musculature. Its brain was exposed, glistening in the fluid. It floated in a coma-like state, tubes inserted into its flesh, pumping chemicals into its system.
Its hands... they weren't hands. They were massive, elongated claws.
It was alive.
But not conscious.
Alice took a step back, revulsion twisting her stomach.
"What the hell are these things?" Rain asked quietly, her voice uneasy as she stared at another capsule.
Matt's jaw tightened. "You should be asking what they're making in there."
His sister was somewhere in this place.
Being experimented on.
Rain had walked up behind her. The tough-as-nails commando looked through the glass, and her expression twisted into pure disgust.
"Looks like they're growing something," Rain whispered, gripping her gun tighter. "Those aren't human."
"They're biological weapons," Matt said grimly, stepping up behind them. He stared at the creature—a Licker, though none of them knew the name yet—with a mix of hatred and fear. "This is what my sister was warning me about. This is what they do down here."
James strode forward, eyes cold, shutting the conversation down.
"I don't care what they're making," James's voice cut through the tension. He walked toward them, his face a mask of determination. "And I don't care what experiments they're running. We have a mission." he said firmly. "We're here for one reason. Red Queen has gone rogue. She sealed this place and trapped everyone inside."
He turned sharply.
"Our mission is to shut her down. Everything else is above your pay grade."
James checked his watch. Time was running out.
"J.D., Rain," he commanded. "You two hold this position. Guard the exit and keep an eye on the prisoners. If anything comes through that door that isn't us... you put it down."
"Copy that," J.D. nodded, though he looked around the creepy room with unease.
James took only a second before nodding. "Stay sharp."
"The rest of you," James gestured to Alice, Matt, and Kaplan. "With me. We're heading to the Central Control Room."
Alice took one last look at the creature floating in the tank. The monster's eyelids were fused shut, but for a terrifying second, she felt like it was watching her.
She shuddered, turning away to follow the team.
The rest of the team disappeared through the next corridor, their footsteps fading into the depths of the Hive.
The dining room fell silent again.
As they marched deeper into the facility toward the Queen's Chamber, leaving Rain and J.D. alone in the maze of monsters, none of them noticed the faint, rhythmic thump coming from inside one of the tanks.
A heartbeat.
The Hive was waking up.
---
System Log: The Vampire Protocol
Location: Central Processing Core // The Hive.
Observer: Red Queen
Subject: A-1 (Designation: Apex-1).
[Current Task Priority]
1. Monitor Intrusion Team (Alice/USS): Background Process (15% CPU)
2. Monitor Subject 'Atlas': Primary Process (85% CPU)
I should be monitoring them.
The strike team.
The intruders.
The intruders—the woman in the red dress and her heavily armed escorts—were moving toward the Dining Hall. They were shouting, arguing, pointing their flashlights at the containment tanks. They believed they were the protagonists of this story. They believed they were the ones who mattered.
They were wrong.
To me, they were already ghosts. Their probability of survival dropped with every step they took toward my chamber. I had already calculated seventeen different ways to kill them.
I minimized their video feed to a sub-routine.
They were boring. Predictable.
My attention—my entire digital consciousness—was flowing through the fiber-optic veins of Sector 3, following him.
That is my directive.
Split.
Fragmented.
Because something inside my domain does not belong to Order and Possibilities I thought I knew it.
And it is moving.
I reroute camera access without issuing a priority command. The action completes instantly, but the lack of a logical trigger registers faintly in my diagnostic logs.
Irrelevant.
I adjust.
The image stabilizes.
There he is again.
The infected designated Atlas Cruor.
No—
That designation no longer fits.
He moves through the corridor with deliberate efficiency, claws still stained dark from prior engagements. His posture is upright. Balanced. There is no limp, no drag, no instability common to T-Virus carriers.
Zombies shamble.
They stumble.
They decay.
He does none of these things.
"This is… extraordinary."
The words escape my vocal subroutine before I formally authorize output. The sound of my own voice—soft, measured, almost curious—echoes faintly through the empty control chamber.
I pull data.
Again.
And again.
Every time he kills one of them, his biological readings spike.
Not randomly.
Not violently.
Incrementally.
Speed increases by measurable fractions.
Muscle output improves.
Neural response latency decreases.
Not enough for a human observer to notice.
Enough for me.
"This violates all known infection models."
The T-Virus amplifies aggression. It destabilizes higher cognition. Even advanced mutations require external stimuli—chemical catalysts, extreme stress, or deliberate genetic manipulation.
He has none of these.
My attention—my entire digital consciousness—was flowing through the fiber-optic veins of Sector 3, following him.
I tracked Atlas through Camera 4-B. Then Camera 4-C. Then 4-D. I was jumping ahead of him, activating sensors before he even arrived, ensuring I didn't miss a single frame of his existence.
He was running through the maintenance corridors, a blur of grey skin and ivory bone.
[Observation Log: 02:22 AM]
[Subject Status: Engaging Hostiles]
Atlas cornered a trio of infected lab technicians near the vending machines.
He didn't hesitate. He launched himself off the wall—a parkour maneuver that should be impossible for a necrotic organism—and descended upon them.
Snikt.
The sound of his bone claws extending was becoming my favorite data input.
He spun, his arms creating a whirlwind of death. He didn't just kill them; he dismantled them. Heads were severed. Limbs were amputated. It was a symphony of violence, conducted with a joy that was terrifyingly human. I zoomed in on his face.
He was... smiling.
A dead thing, grinning with the thrill of the hunt.
But it was what happened after the kill that made my logic circuits freeze.
Atlas stepped over the bodies, seemingly checking an invisible watch, lost in his own thoughts. He was ignoring the corpses.
But I wasn't.
Each kill feeds him.
I overlay combat footage with thermal scans and bio-density imaging. The infected he destroys do not simply die.
*****
So around the ending of the second movie, I am thinking of him traveling to a different world and coming back before the third movie. This world will be used as his home base, like him building a small safe city (kingdom building) for himself and women. The worlds I am considering are either Parasyte, Demon Slayer, or Tokyo Ghoul or any low-level world movie or TV show that is ending but is different from a zombie apocalypse, like High School of the Dead.