The hum wasn't just a sound.
It was alive.
As Rama stepped further into the chamber, the light overhead flickered, and for the first time, he saw it clearly.
Not a dungeon.
Not a prison.
But a lab.
Worn-down surgical tables lined the walls, some still stained with things that didn't look like blood. Tubes snaked along the floor like dead veins. Monitors blinked with outdated UIs, cycling through biometric readings no human could survive.
And in the corners... Glass tanks. Each one fogged, each one occupied. Bodies floated inside. Human shapes... Almost.
But wrong.
Too pale. Too still. With fangs that looked too real.
Vampire?
His mind reeled as the reality set in. This wasn't about punishment. This wasn't about justice. It was about experimentation.
They brought him here to test something.
And worse…
They thought he'd survive it.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
More figures entered the room, scientists in ragged lab coats, their eyes sunken with obsession, not sleep. One of them carried a metal case, humming faintly. Cold vapor drifted from its edges.
The lead scientist, a woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair and gloves stained in something too red to be painted, stepped forward.
Her smile was pure hunger.
"You're finally here. Good"
She said as she opened the case.
Inside was a heart.
Small. Still beating. Pitch black.
"It's taken us years to stabilize it," She said, voice clinical, "but with your Singularis genome, we believe compatibility is finally within reach"
Rama backed away, shaking his head.
"What is that?"
"A vampire's heart," She said, almost reverently. "Not just any vampire, but Noble vampire heart"
She snapped her fingers.
Two orderlies moved in. Strong. Silent.
Rama tried to run. He didn't make it two steps.
A syringe jabbed into his neck.
Cold fire raced through his veins.
As the world tilted, he heard her voice again... Soft, satisfied.
"Let's see if your heart can outbeat a monster's... Rama"
And then
Darkness.
--------
Darkness.
It was the first thing he felt.
Not the absence of light, but a suffocating, crawling darkness inside his chest, like something alive had made a home beneath his ribs.
Then... A heartbeat.
But it wasn't his.
*Thump*
*...Thump*
*THUMP*
Too strong. Too cold. Too ancient.
His eyes snapped open.
White ceiling. Harsh lights.
A slow, rhythmic beeping echoed from nearby machines. His body lay on a cold slab, covered in wires, tubes, and restraints.
And yet… He didn't feel weak.
He felt… Wrong.
Rama sat up slowly, his breath catching. Every movement felt foreign, like wearing a body not quite his own. His muscles responded faster. His senses were sharper. He could hear things... Too much.
Dripping water.
Buzzing lights.
Footsteps in another hallway, three corridors away.
His vision adjusted instantly, catching details down to the dust particles floating in the stale air. He touched his chest, half-expecting to find it torn open and stitched back together.
Instead, he felt something beneath the skin. Not a scar.
A pulse. Alien. Inhuman.
*Thump-thump* *Thump-thump*
It was like something was syncing to him.
A voice crackled over a hidden speaker.
"Subject 9 has awakened. Stabilization appears successful"
A shuttered window slid open. Behind it. Faces, scientists in lab coats, watching like vultures.
One of them leaned toward the mic.
"Can you speak?"
Rama glared at the glass, his voice low, dry, like it had been buried and unearthed.
"...What did you do to me?"
"An opportunity," The woman from before replied, her smile audible. "You're the first to survive the transplant without any side effects. Your cells are adapting. You're becoming... Something new"
Rama's hands trembled, but not from fear.
His nails had darkened and elongated slightly like claws waiting to grow.
His eyes caught his reflection in a metal tray.
Red.
Not fully.
Just a faint glow pulsing in the irises.
Feral. Hungry.
He stumbled off the table, nearly crashing onto the floor, but something in him caught balance, like instincts he hadn't earned.
"Let me out," He growled, voice deeper now, something underneath it echoing wrong.
The scientists didn't answer.
But the door hissed open anyway.
A test.
A challenge.
Or maybe they just wanted to see what he'd do now.
What the monster in him would become.
--------
Days passed. Or maybe weeks. Time blurred in the white walls of the lab.
Rama wasn't just a subject anymore, he was a project.
They called him Specimen Nine.
The success story.
The miracle that survived what dozens before him hadn't.
Others died screaming. Bodies rejected the transplant. Organs melted. Minds shattered.
But not Rama.
His body accepted the vampire's heart. Then his liver. Then eyes. Bone marrow. Skin cells.
Piece by piece, he stopped being human.
And the researchers? They were thrilled.
"We've never seen cellular synchronization this fast"
"Subject Nine shows no signs of rejection, even in neural tissue"
"His regeneration is accelerating... As expected of Singularis, they're something else"
They pushed further. More grafts. More surgeries. More tests.
He was awake for some of them.
Not fully conscious, but enough to feel.
Metal tools inside him. Voices around him. Cool whispers of anesthesia that didn't always reach deep enough.
He screamed.
Sometimes they let him.
Sometimes they muted him.
And the worst part?
He stopped dying.
No matter what they cut, extracted, replaced... He always healed.
Faster each time.
Blood clotted in seconds. Bones reknit in minutes. New organs grew alongside old ones, meshing seamlessly.
He became adaptive. Efficient. Silent.
Too silent.
One researcher, Dr. Kwan, once looked at him after a session and whispered, almost reverently:
"He's not a man anymore. He's a prototype"
They didn't notice the way his red eyes followed them even when he pretended to sleep.
They didn't hear how his hearing picked up every password, every hidden conversation.
They didn't realize he could smell fear and they all reeked of it.
Something inside him stirred.
Something that remembered being prey and now saw the cage from the other side.
He let them keep going.
Because deep down, he wanted to know:
What would they do when their perfect monster stopped playing along?
--------
Rama lay strapped to the cold steel table. His skin was pale, smooth like porcelain, almost translucent in places. Veins glowed faintly beneath the surface, a dark crimson, unnatural.
His chest rose and fell, but only because the body required it. Not because he needed to breathe anymore.
His heartbeat was silent. Mechanical. Rhythmic like a metronome.
He blinked. Occasionally.
But his gaze… Was empty.
The researchers called it "null-phase dormancy" A polite way of saying:
He looks alive, but nothing's in there.
One day, Dr. Sorell came in alone.
She wasn't a sadist like the others. In fact, she talked to Rama. Told him stories, as if speaking to a corpse that might one day answer.
Today, she came in quietly, dragging a stool beside him.
"I guess you deserve to know, Specimen Nine"
She placed a steaming cup of coffee beside his chart and took a deep breath.
"Do you know who rules this world? The Strongest? Yes, it's the Strongest, but all of the Strongest people, who stand at the pinnacle of power, almost all of them... It's the Vampires... You know Hero D'Archy? He, too, was a Vampire, Surprising, Isn't It?"
She chuckled darkly, sipping her drink.
"They've existed long before civilization. Everything, the wars, the power shifts, even the 'Great Calamity' has something to do with them. They move in silence. Control everything from the shadows"
She leaned closer to Rama's pale face.
"And You... You're the first step to making them obsolete. The next evolution. They don't even know we're doing this"
She laughed again, bitter and quiet.
"And when they find out, it'll be too late"
She looked into Rama's eyes.
And then froze.
For the first time, his eyes weren't empty.
They were burning. Not with fire, but with purpose. Hunger. Rage.
Awareness.
His pupils had constricted. Not from light. From focus.
He was looking at her.
Really looking.
Sorell dropped her cup. The sound shattered through the lab.
Her voice trembled.
"…You're awake"
Rama's lips twitched. Just a little. Enough to form a ghost of a smile.
Not human. Not kind.
Predatory.
And then, too late, she realized:
He'd been listening to everything.
Too late to call security.
Too late to sedate.
Too late to run.
The perfect subject had awakened.
And he was no longer interested in being anyone's experiment.
....
...
..
.