Fast forward—Zelpher stood in front of a secret military lab. The kind of place that didn't exist on paper. Heavy security surrounded the building—cameras on every corner, guards with rifles, fingerprint scanners, and reinforced gates. Rumor had it not even a fly could get through without clearance.
Zelpher had taken a job as a cleaner. It wasn't glamorous, and didn't pay well—certainly not what you'd expect from a government lab where citizens' taxes funded everything from quantum experiments to weapons no one was allowed to speak of. But it paid just enough to put food on the table and keep the lights on.
He passed through the checkpoint with his ID badge, avoiding eye contact with the guards. No one really paid attention to the cleaners. That was fine with him.
The halls inside were quiet. Cold. Everything smelled like disinfectant and metal.
It was just a job. Mop the floors. Empty the bins. Keep your head down.
At least, that's what he told himself.
He was cleaning one of the empty corridors when a guard approached him.
"The biologists are out," the guard said flatly. "You're cleared to clean Lab C."
Zelpher blinked. Lab C? He'd been working here for over a week now and had never even seen the inside of one of the high-security labs. Normally, those areas were off-limits. Rumors floated among the staff—whispers about gene-editing, weaponized plagues, even extraterrestrial studies. But cleaners weren't paid to ask questions. They were paid to mop.
Still... the curiosity itched at the back of his skull.
He swallowed his nerves. "Sure. I'll be right there."
He gathered his cart—detergents, wipes, gloves, mop. The usual. Nothing that would help if things went sideways.
Two guards met him at the elevator. Both armed. Both stone-faced. They didn't say a word as the elevator descended deeper than Zelpher had ever gone before. When it stopped, they walked in step with him down a metal corridor that curved slightly, almost as if it were spiraling inward toward the center of the earth.
Then came the door.
A massive slab of brushed steel, sealed airtight. A keypad glowed faintly beside it, along with a palm scanner. One of the guards entered a long code, then pressed his hand against the scanner.
Zelpher stood still, eyes darting. What if this was it? What if he wasn't going in to clean anything... but to become part of some secret project? A nobody with no family nearby, no one to file a missing person report. Easy to erase.
He glanced sideways at the guards. They were unreadable. Expressionless.
Zelpher forced a nervous chuckle. "This isn't the part where I disappear and get turned into a lab rat, is it?" he joked, voice too thin.
Neither guard laughed. One raised an eyebrow. The other didn't react at all.
He gulped.
The door hissed open. A blast of cold, sterilized air rushed out, washing over his skin and raising goosebumps along his arms. The lights inside the lab flickered to life—bluish-white.
Zelpher stepped cautiously into the lab, bracing himself for the unimaginable—bizarre technology, alien pods, dismembered test subjects floating in tanks. Instead…
It looked normal.
Microscopes lined the counters. Cabinets labeled with chemical names—most of which he couldn't pronounce—sat orderly along the walls. A few digital monitors hummed softly, screens filled with graphs and code. The cold air still bit at his skin, but it was just a lab. No floating monsters. No secret weapons in plain view.
Just glass. Metal. Clean, sterile silence.
He let out a long breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Just a lab," he muttered to himself, a nervous laugh escaping his lips. "Of course it's just a lab."
The guards remained posted outside the door as it slid shut behind him, locking with a soft thunk. That was fine. Normal. Maybe even a safety protocol.
He rolled his cart in, rubber wheels squeaking softly on the pristine floor. A couple of chemical beakers sat half-filled on a workstation, their contents glowing faintly under the overhead lights—acidic compounds by the smell of it. He made a point not to touch anything that didn't need moving.
There were streaks on the floor near the centrifuge—something sticky and yellowish. He didn't want to know what it was, and he definitely didn't ask. He just cleaned.
Wiping down the counters. Swapping out full biohazard bins. Mopping the floor in slow, careful arcs.
It was easy to forget how tense he'd been just minutes before. The place felt almost peaceful. Silent, yes, but not ominous. Just another room. Another task.
As Zelpher mopped the far end of the lab, the silence was broken by a sharp crack—the unmistakable sound of glass shattering.
His heart jumped into his throat.
He turned, eyes scanning the room. One of the glass vials had fallen from a workstation. It lay in pieces on the floor, its contents pooling around something that shouldn't be there at all.
A feather.
Golden. Delicate. Almost glowing.
Zelpher froze.
That... didn't make sense.
There were no vents, no open windows, no way a bird could've gotten in. The room was pressurized, airtight. Every inch of this place screamed "controlled environment." And yet—there it was.
A single feather.
He took a cautious step forward and leaned in, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The vial's label was still partially intact, and when he squinted at the cracked lettering, the name sent a chill crawling down his spine.
GENE-ALPHA.
He swallowed hard.
"Gene-Alpha," he said aloud, voice barely above a whisper. "That… doesn't sound important at all, right?"
He laughed nervously. It echoed too loudly in the sterile room.
"Who am I kidding?"
Heart pounding, he grabbed gloves and a wipe, telling himself it was just debris. Nothing unusual. Nothing dangerous, just a broken container. Maybe a bird feather used for DNA splicing or cellular mapping. Nothing more.
"Let's just clean it up," he muttered.
As he bent down to retrieve the feather, his foot slipped slightly on the smooth floor. He reached out instinctively, hand brushing the edge of the table for balance—but instead, his elbow struck it.
Hard.
A second vial, balanced precariously near the edge, tipped and fell.
He didn't even have time to look up before it burst open against his shoulder.
The liquid hissed. His skin screamed.
A sharp, sizzling pain tore through his arm and into his side as the acid soaked through his uniform. Smoke rose in thin trails. The pain hit an instant later—it felt like his nerves had caught fire. Each second stretched into agony. His scream bounced off steel walls, unanswered.
Zelpher collapsed to the floor, screaming, writhing, his vision blurring as he looked toward the shattered vial.
The label was intact.
GENE-OMEGA.
The last thing he saw before the darkness took him."