The lab was untouched since he'd fled. Dust thick enough to drown in. Screens flickered with corrupted data loops. Specimen jars floated in viscous fluid, their contents warped and twitching in the dim light. Yui stepped close to one tank, her breath fogging the glass.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Nothing alive," Ren answered, dragging her back.
The creature inside the jar had too many eyes. Its skin was blotched violet, webbed with black veins. *Subject Gamma-7.* One of the earliest attempts to rewrite the Argwan genome—before weaponization became the directive. Before he realized healing wasn't profitable, and monsters made better patents than people.
Takeda's laughter still echoed in his ears from those days. *You're an artist, Director. Shame your canvas is corpses.*
He pulled his old lab coat from a hook. It was yellowed, the GHU insignia cracked. Yui ran a finger across the embroidered serpent.
"You worked here?" she asked.
"Once."
"With Mama?"
A lump caught in his throat. "Before."
She didn't push. Just nodded and took his hand again. He didn't tell her what Aiko had never known: that this place had been built with lies and blood, that the serum keeping Yui alive had been stabilized with fragments of his own DNA—and the failed screams of Gamma-7.
The deeper tunnels narrowed. Pipes tangled overhead like veins. The air turned metallic, each breath like inhaling rust. Yui's footsteps echoed too loud against the grated floor, like gunshots in a graveyard.
Then—voices.
"—containment breach in Sector 9—"
"—specimen is hostile—terminate if necessary—"
The voices crackled through a shattered intercom panel, its lights long dead. Ghosts of a catastrophe replaying themselves like a broken record. Static wrapped around the words, but fear pulsed in them still.
Yui tilted her head. "They're scared," she murmured.
"Who?"
"The people in the walls."
Ren followed her gaze to a corroded vent shaft. Something caught the light inside—metal, green and rusted. A hairpin. His breath froze.
Sora's.
He'd given it to her days before she vanished—before the Hollowing made her dig her own grave beneath their home. That same pin had clattered down the hallway as she disappeared, soil already stuck beneath her fingernails.
He dropped to his knees and vomited, bile splashing across his boots.
"Papa?" Yui's hand was on his shoulder. Her voice was soft, steady—too knowing for a child. "Did you know her?"
He nodded, tears soaking his breath.
"She's under the dirt too?"
Yes. Just like Aiko. Just like everything I touch.
They moved on in silence, his heartbeat loud in his ears. The next chamber was colder, sealed with a DNA lock. His hand trembled as he placed it on the scanner.
MATCH: REN KURODA.
The vault door groaned open. Cryopods lined the walls, most shattered. One remained sealed. Frost curled off its glass. Inside floated a girl with violet skin, her golden eyes closed like a prayer. She was small—Yui's size.
Yui stared. "She's like me."
Ren looked away. His old files still glowed on the nearby console.
**PROJECT ECLIPSE-Ω:**
*Subject displays full Argwan traits without degradation.*
*Recommend termination.*
He had refused. Couldn't kill her. Instead, he'd sealed her down here with the rest of his regrets.
Then her eyes snapped open.
Yui screamed. The girl moved within the pod, thrashing as frost shattered across the glass.
Ren slammed the vault door. The hybrid shrieked—high and primal—and the walls trembled in response. Mold ruptured into violet blooms. Yui clung to him, sobbing.
"You made her?" she asked.
"To save you." The words fell like blood. He told her everything—how he'd spliced Argwan DNA into himself, how Yui was never just a child of love, but science. "I wanted to make you immune."
Her voice cracked. "I'm a monster?"
"No." He gripped her face in his palms. "You're perfect."
The cryopod hissed as the hybrid clawed at it. He dragged Yui to a service elevator, jamming the descent button. The doors closed on the hybrid's scream.
The lowest level was colder than the dead.
They emerged into a cavern shaped like a cathedral, not built by men but grown by guilt. At its center pulsed a core of biomass—dark, purple, veined like a heart that had never stopped growing. The Eclipse Seed. Ren had fed it everything: failed experiments, discarded test subjects, guilt by the ton. It had become the central artery of the Hollowing.
Yui approached the glass surrounding it. Her hand met the surface. Inside, the Seed pulsed, reaching.
"It's singing," she whispered.
Ren's locket burned hot against his chest. A voice slithered from the Seed, Sora's voice—twisted by time and infection.
*Big brother… you promised.*
He pulled his gun. Raised it.
"You can't kill me again," the Seed laughed, a thousand mouths speaking as one. "I'm in your blood. In hers."
Yui's eyes flared gold. "Mama's here too."
The Seed shifted. Aiko's face formed in the writhing flesh—beautiful and broken, smiling.
"Stay with us, Ren."
His gun hand trembled. The pistol slipped from his grip and clattered to the floor.
And in that moment, in the dark, in the womb of the world he'd built to save his daughter, Ren Kuroda broke again—again