[POV Sora]

  The air in my lungs burned as if I were swallowing shards of gss. My legs, driven by a primal survival instinct that erased any trace of my scientific training, moved rhythmically against the cold concrete of the dam. Behind me, far behind — or at least that’s what my terrified mind wanted to believe — I had left Chelsea. The image of her body sinking into that industrial dumpster, hidden beneath filth but safe from those men’s hands, was the only thing allowing me to keep going.

  "Run, Sora. Don’t look back. Just run," I repeated to myself, my heart smming against my ribs like a caged animal.

  I turned one corner, then another, venturing into corridors that no longer felt familiar. The settlement, which for weeks had been a grid of efficiency and order in my mind, began to blur. The emergency lights, dim and orange, cast elongated shadows that looked like cws trying to grab me. At some point, the echo of my pursuers’ boots began to fade. At first, I thought it was because I had gained distance, but then I realized the silence was too abrupt. They had stopped. Not because they had lost me — but as if they had reached a boundary they dared not cross.

  I stopped, bracing my hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath. My vision was blurred by sweat and panic. When I finally managed to focus, the chill I felt was not from the night wind.

  I stood before a massive steel gate, its bck paint chipped away to reveal rusted, ancient metal beneath. Above the lintel, block letters, faded by time yet still legible, pronounced my sentence: ALPHA SECTOR.

  My knees trembled. The Alpha Sector. At the cafeteria tables, when the guards weren’t nearby, people spoke of this pce in whispers, as if saying its name might invite misfortune. The rumors were varied and terrifying: they said this was where those who lost their sanity ended up, those whose minds fractured under the stress of the apocalypse and confinement within the dam. They said the screams sometimes heard on windy nights came from here — screams that did not sound entirely human.

  But there was an even darker rumor, one Leo used to mention with a skeptical grimace: that the Leader had achieved the impossible. That deep within Alpha Sector, Ganuts were imprisoned — captured creatures being "domesticated" or trained like war dogs.

  "No... that can’t be," I whispered, my voice barely a breath in the darkness.

  The panic that had been fueling me until now turned into an anchor. I spun around, determined to retrace my steps, to face the guards if necessary rather than remain one second longer in this pce. But when my eyes searched for the corridor I had just come through, my breathing stopped completely.

  There was no corridor. In its pce stood a smooth, solid concrete wall.

  "What?" I stepped toward it, pressing my hands against the cold surface. It was dry. Solid. No doors. No seams. It was as if the path had sealed itself behind me. "No! It was here! I just came through here!"

  I pounded on the wall with my fists, but the only result was a sharp pain in my knuckles. My engineer’s mind tried to find a logical expnation: a hidden door mechanism? A sliding panel system triggered by my movement? But nothing aligned with the speed at which the corridor had vanished. It was as if Alpha Sector was not merely a pce, but an entity that had just closed its jaws around me.

  I turned back toward the interior of the sector. The design here was different from the rest of the dam. While the residential and turbine areas were functional and clean, Alpha Sector looked like a relic from a forgotten industrial era. Massive pipes dripped a thick, dark liquid, and the floor was coated in a yer of dust that muffled my steps.

  Then the sounds began.

  They did not come from a single direction. It was a chorus of distorted noises seeping through the walls. First, the dragging of heavy metal chains across concrete — slow and weighted. Then a prolonged hiss, like that of a giant serpent, ending in a sharp snap. But the worst was the whispering. Broken, incoherent voices repeating fragments of phrases I could barely understand.

  "Close... so close... the light doesn’t reach... the faceless man..." I thought I distinguished among the echoes.

  The hair on my arms stood on end. The faceless man. It was a terrifying story about a student they had once had at the university. Were the mad people here sharing the same nightmare?

  In the dimness of a side corridor, something moved. It was not the silhouette of a guard. It was too broad. Too hunched. I heard a low growl — a vibration that did not come from a throat but seemed to emanate from the very floor. It was the sound of a Ganut, but it cked the frenzied aggression of those we had seen in the city. This sound was rhythmic, almost mechanical, as if the creature were in a state of forced lethargy.

  "I have to get out of here," I told myself, stepping backward toward the center of the chamber, my eyes darting frantically. "Guys... Orion, please, find me."

  But Orion was not there. Chelsea was unconscious. And I was trapped in the heart of the Leader’s madness. Alpha Sector was not a prison for the insane — it was a boratory of the impossible, a pce where human science and biotic monstrosity shook hands in the dark.

  The cng of something metallic falling just behind me made me jump. I spun around, my fshlight trembling in my hand. The beam illuminated the end of the corridor, and for a second, I thought I saw two red orbs watching me from the darkness — just before they vanished.

  I was being hunted.

  And in this pce, the rules of physics and reason no longer mattered. Only fear mattered. And fear was telling me that in Alpha Sector, no one ever wakes from their dreams.