Chapter 173:Continue on.
The rusted blast door groaned softly as Silver pushed it farther open. The sound echoed down the long corridor beyond, disappearing into the oppressive silence.
Silver instinctively rested a hand on the hilt of his sword while Ravenna raised her flashlight, its beam cutting through the darkness ahead.
The containment wing was noticeably different from the rest of the laboratory. The ceilings were lower, and the walls were thicker.
Every few meters stood another reinforced steel door, each fitted with small observation windows made of heavily cracked glass. Most of the doors had been forced open long ago, while others remained sealed shut, their electronic locking systems long since dead.
Yellow warning signs were still bolted to several walls.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
BIOHAZARD LEVEL 4.
CONTAINMENT BREACH PROCEDURES.
Most of the lettering had faded, but enough remained to understand the purpose of this section.
"This really was where they kept the experiments," Ravenna murmured.
Silver nodded.
"And probably the dangerous ones."
They moved cautiously from room to room. The first containment chamber resembled a medical ward.
Several reinforced beds were bolted directly into the floor, each surrounded by restraints thick enough to secure something far stronger than an ordinary person.
Many of the restraints had been snapped cleanly apart. Others still hung from the beds, rusted but intact.
Silver crouched beside one. The metal hadn’t been cut; it had been pulled apart through sheer force.
"...Someone was incredibly strong."
Ravenna looked at the twisted restraints before quietly replying.
"Or something."
Neither of them lingered. The next few rooms contained little more than shattered equipment. One held dozens of empty cages no larger than dogs. Another appeared to have been used for observation, with rows of broken cameras facing a single reinforced cell.
Dust coated every surface. Nothing moved; only the faint hum of distant ventilation echoed through the halls.
[Spatial Sense Lv2 Activated.]
The familiar ripple expanded outward. He found nothing; no movement, heartbeat, or hidden presence. He let the skill fade.
"We’re still alone."
Ravenna gave a small nod.
"I’m beginning to believe this place really is abandoned."
Silver wasn’t ready to make that conclusion yet. The laboratory felt too... deliberate. Too much had been left behind, yet so much else had disappeared.
It was as though someone had carefully chosen what to remove before abandoning the facility.
The corridor eventually widened. At its end stood a pair of enormous reinforced doors unlike any they had passed before. One door hung crookedly from a single hinge while the other lay several meters away on the floor, bent almost into the shape of a shallow bowl.
Silver stopped walking.
"...That’s impossible."
The fallen door had to weigh several tons. There were no scorch marks, signs of explosives, or cuts from machinery. It had simply been ripped away.
Ravenna slowly approached the entrance. The steel around the doorway had curled outward. Her fingers traced one of the warped edges.
"It wasn’t destroyed from outside."
Silver finished her thought.
"...It was forced open from the inside."
Neither spoke for several seconds. Then they carefully stepped through the ruined entrance. The chamber beyond dwarfed every other containment room they had seen.
It was a prison.
The ceiling stretched nearly three stories high. The walls were constructed from thick reinforced concrete lined with layers of steel plating. Massive anchor points protruded from the floor.
Several lengths of broken chains still remained attached to them; each chain was as thick as Silver’s wrist. All of them had been torn apart.
Ravenna slowly swept her flashlight across the room. The beam stopped.
She frowned.
"Silver..."
He followed the light, then froze. The walls were covered in scratches. It wasn’t some random scratches but straight vertical lines grouped neatly. They were five at a time; four lines, then a fifth crossing them.
There were thousands of them. Some sections were carved carefully, others became increasingly uneven. Near the far corner, the tally marks dissolved into chaotic scratches that covered almost every inch of the wall.
Silver slowly walked closer. His fingers hovered over one of the older marks. It was deep; far deeper than an ordinary knife could make.
"...He was counting."
Ravenna looked around the enormous chamber.
"Days."
Silver nodded quietly.
"Or maybe months."
The realization settled heavily between them. Someone had been imprisoned here for an unimaginably long time. Not as an experiment on an operating table but as a living prisoner.
Ravenna continued examining the walls. Mixed among the tally marks were enormous gouges running several meters across the concrete. Some reached almost to the ceiling. Others ended in deep fist-shaped craters.
Entire sections of reinforced steel plating had been dented inward. One corner of the room looked as though something had repeatedly slammed against it with overwhelming force.
Silver’s gaze eventually drifted upward. Near the ceiling, four thick restraint cables still dangled uselessly. Each had been ripped free from its mounting.
His thoughts returned to the journal.
Subject 001.
"...They never disposed of him," Silver said softly.
Ravenna looked toward the twisted doorway.
"No, he escaped."
Silence filled the room again. Neither of them wanted to imagine what those final days inside this prison had been like.
A volunteer, praised as humanity’s greatest hope. Had been reduced to counting the passing days on cold concrete walls and watching researchers slowly become afraid of him. Until eventually, they decided he had become a monster.
Silver clenched his fist.
The diary had called him a failed specimen. Looking around the chamber now, he wasn’t sure who had truly failed.
His thoughts were interrupted by a distant voice echoing through the containment wing.
"Silver!"
It was Dillian. Another shout followed.
"Ravenna! We found something!"
Silver and Ravenna exchanged a glance. Ravenna took one last look at the thousands of tally marks covering the walls.
"...Let’s go."
Silver nodded. As they turned to leave, he looked back one final time at the ruined prison. No report could ever fully describe what had happened inside that room. Yet somehow... the silence told the story better than words ever could.
Together, they left the chamber behind and followed Dillian’s voice deeper into the abandoned research facility, wondering what discovery could have pulled everyone back together.