Alpha Subject 591

In this post-apocalyptic wasteland, my only ticket to survival was Subject 591.

He was the apex predator of the Facility. To make sure he would keep me safe when the world inevitably went to hell, I starved myself to save him extra rations. I racked my brain every day trying to make small talk and win his affection.

But after all that effort, the look in his eyes when he stared at me was still the look of a beast watching its prey.

A massive, ice-cold claw suddenly pinned my chest to the floor. Putrid, bloodstained fangs hovered mere inches from my nose. My entire body locked up in absolute terror.

"Please don't eat me!" My voice trembled violently. "Did you forget? I was the one who hand-fed you when you were just a baby!"

591 did not listen to a single word. Instead, his wet nose began to nuzzle against my cheek. His colossal body pressed flush against mine, and his heavy tail coiled tightly around my calf.

I was completely lost. What the hell did he want from me? Just back off!

My vision was entirely submerged in blood-red. Agonizing screams echoed in my ears.

A split second later, a searing pain tore through my flesh. I lost all consciousness and sank into a pitch-black abyss.

Something hard and cold jabbed roughly against the side of my head.

I snapped my eyes open. The freezing barrel of a rifle was pressed hard against my temple, digging into my skin with rhythmic, punishing shoves.

"What are you standing around daydreaming for? Get back to work."

My survival instinct kicked in instantly. I bent over and began apologizing profusely to the two armed guards in front of me.

One of them sneered. "Do your damn job, or I'll throw you in the pens to feed the test subjects."

Their heavy combat boots faded down the corridor. Only then did I dare to stand up straight and carefully survey my surroundings.

The hallway was immaculately clean and brightly lit. I was holding a mop and a plastic bucket, apparently right in the middle of my cleaning shift.

I lifted the bucket, set it down, and looked around in utter disbelief. I pinched my thigh hard. I even slapped my own cheek.

After doing this a few times, the impossible truth finally sank in. I had been reborn.

The memory of being torn to pieces and chewed alive by the experimental subjects was still vividly burning in my mind. A violent shiver wracked my body, and cold sweat beaded on my forehead.

In my past life, I was the janitor assigned to clean the observation cell for Subject 591.

591 was classified as a low-threat asset. Nobody in the higher-ups cared about him. Because he was utterly neglected, the researchers constantly used him for cheap entertainment.

They subjected 591 to gruesome, sadistic torture. His agonizing shrieks would echo through the entire wing. But his cries never bought him any sympathy. They only made the scientists more creative with their cruelty.

I watched it all happen, but I couldn't do a single thing to stop it.

I was just the lowest-ranking cleaner in the entire Facility. In this apocalyptic era, human laborers like us were dirt cheap. The moment we signed those predatory contracts just to get a daily ration of moldy bread, we signed away our freedom. We were nothing more than slaves.

I had to stand by and watch them mutilate 591 until he was barely recognizable.

But as 591 matured, his size exploded. His physical strength multiplied tenfold. During one of their sadistic sessions, 591 snapped his restraints and ripped the researchers into pieces.

I tried to run, but 591 dragged me back.

I begged for my life. I sobbed and swore I had nothing to do with it, that I never hurt him.

His chilling voice still echoed in my ears.

"Did you really think standing by and watching makes you innocent?"

I took a deep, shaky breath, gripped my mop, and started walking toward 591's cell.

His room was in the deepest, most neglected sector of the Facility. It took a winding twenty-minute walk to get there.

The automated doors hissed open. My eyes instantly locked onto the massive, cylindrical containment pod made of reinforced glass in the center of the room.

They called it an "ecological habitat," but it was really just a few pathetic rocks and some dead grass scattered across a concrete floor.

The room was empty. I put down my cleaning supplies and carefully approached the glass.

A tiny, pitch-black ball of fur was huddled against a rock. He looked like a stray puppy.

Right now, 591 wasn't even the size of a football. He looked so fragile that any random guy off the street could easily crush him.

But I knew the truth. In the future, 591 would grow to be larger than an armored transport van. The spikes running down his spine would be a hundred times harder than tempered steel, and humans would be as fragile as wet paper under his claws.

Sensing my shadow, 591 lifted his head. A harmless, fuzzy little face looked up at me.

His dark, crimson eyes locked onto me without blinking. He looked me up and down, scanning me the exact way a predator sizes up its food.

Because of his low threat level, 591's cell was incredibly basic. There were no wall-mounted turrets, and no guards were posted at the door.

I was probably the only person in this entire hellhole who knew exactly what a nightmare he would become.

I didn't want to die.

I wanted to live.

I wanted to end this slave-like existence and escape this place for good.

And there was only one way to make that happen.

I had to make 591 my best friend.

While I was busy observing 591, the sound of deliberately muffled footsteps echoed from the corridor outside.

I jumped, immediately retreating to the corner where I had left my mop bucket.

"Why is there someone in here?"

I pretended to be startled, taking a step back and keeping my head bowed respectfully.

"Just a janitor? Want me to kick him out?"

"Nah, leave him. He's just a cleaner. What's he gonna do, snitch? I'll slit his throat in a heartbeat." The man's voice trailed off as he made a slicing motion across his neck, drawing cruel laughter from his two buddies.

They ignored me completely and walked straight toward 591's containment pod.

"Are you sure nobody is gonna find out?"

"Relax, have I ever steered you wrong?"

"Man, look at those red eyes. I really want to carve them out..."

My grip tightened around the mop handle. Every muscle in my body pulled taut.

I couldn't let them touch 591.

My brain worked in overdrive, desperately searching for a way to stop them.

The control panel lit up under their fingers. The three of them began arguing excitedly about where to make the first incision.

Just as they finalized their sadistic little game, I stepped forward. It felt like walking to my own execution.

"Excuse me..."

My weak voice cut through their twisted excitement. All three heads snapped toward me, their eyes locking onto the frail, malnourished cleaner standing in the corner.

"They installed a new surveillance system in the containment pod..."

I tried with every fiber of my being to sound calm.

The air in the room instantly turned freezing. Their eyes cut into me like jagged knives, full of doubt and disgust.

"A new surveillance system?" the leader frowned, glancing at his buddy.

"I don't know anything about that..."

"Who ordered that?"

"Just shut it off."

"I can't. There's no override switch on this panel..."

The hairs on my arms stood straight up. My cheap uniform was soaked in cold sweat.

In this Facility, a researcher could have me tossed into the mutant feeding pits with a single word.

I instantly regretted my impulsive move. My instinct was to drop to my knees and apologize.

But dying to 591 later, or being executed for insubordination now. It was a death sentence either way.

That thought ironically centered me.

I faked a terrified flinch, hugging the mop handle tightly to my chest. My voice was a tiny, frightened squeak. "Director Blackwood ordered maintenance to install it this morning."

"Who?" Their patience had completely run out, their faces contorted with rage.

"Director Blackwood."

The moment that name left my mouth, the room fell dead silent.

Director Blackwood was the absolute sovereign of this Facility. He controlled the food, the water, and whether we lived to see tomorrow.

They stared at me in disbelief. "The Director?"

I nodded frantically.

Getting a firm confirmation, the men slowly pulled their hands away from the control panel.

"Why would he suddenly want cameras here? 591 isn't even a priority asset."

"Dammit, is this rat lying to us?"

"Could it be because of what happened last week?"

"You mean the guys who got caught running unauthorized vivisections?"

"Tch. So the Director doesn't trust us anymore? He's monitoring everything himself?"

"Probably. There were rumors a few days ago about hidden cameras going up."

"Why didn't we get a memo about it?"

"Are you an idiot? Why would the boss send out a warning if he's trying to catch rulebreakers?"

"This is bullshit!" The leader kicked the control console violently. "I really needed to blow off some steam today..."

"Forget it, let's just go. Don't let the Director catch us down here."

I went back to slowly mopping the floor, keeping them in my peripheral vision until the heavy metal doors hissed shut behind them.

Once their footsteps vanished, a massive breath shuddered out of my lungs.

I collapsed onto the cold concrete floor, my heart hammering violently against my ribs.

If they had noticed even a single flaw in my lie, I would be monster food right now.

As my heart rate finally settled, I turned my gaze back to the containment pod.

Pressed against the glass, two tiny, round crimson eyes were quietly watching me.

They were filled with blatant hostility and deep confusion. His fur was patchy and dry, and I could clearly see his ribs protruding beneath his skin.

Food was incredibly scarce in this apocalypse. Even the high-priority monsters barely got enough to eat. 591, an off-the-books reject, was practically starving to death.

I needed to get him some food.

Sharing a meal is the universal fast-track to building trust. Whether you're dealing with a human or a feral beast, food is love.

I crawled over to the glass to start farming approval points.

"Hey."

"I'm Nate." I pointed at my chest. "I'm a friendly human. I'm not going to hurt you."

591 tilted his head, studying me.

"Don't be scared. They're gone. You're safe now. I"

A voice suddenly echoed inside my skull, sending a violent chill down my spine.

"Did you honestly think playing savior would make me spare your life?"

I scrambled backward, staring wildly around the empty room.

It was just me. I thought I was losing my mind, so I tried speaking to 591 again. "Hey..."

"Idiot."

I was completely speechless.

Our eyes met through the glass.

Inside the pod, sitting on that fuzzy, adorable little face, was a look of pure, unadulterated disgust and mockery.

I didn't say a word. The only entity capable of speaking into my mind was 591.

He sat perfectly still inside his enclosure. His tiny, puppy-like appearance severely contrasted with the deep, resonant, masculine voice echoing in my head.

"It's just you and me in here."

In that exact moment, I knew with terrifying certainty: 591 had been reborn, too.

My brain completely short-circuited.

591 didn't open his mouth, but the voice reverberated through my mind.

"Though, keeping you alive isn't entirely off the table."

He lowered his mental voice into a dark, seductive whisper. "If I'm in a good mood, I might even take you with me when I break out of this cage."

"You've been trapped in this hellhole for a long time, haven't you?"

He casually licked his front paw, issuing a commanding order without a shred of hesitation.

"I need food."

"Bring me food."

Feeding him was literally step one of my master plan anyway.

"Deal."

But my shift wasn't over, and I couldn't afford to get written up. I immediately went back to furiously scrubbing the floors.

In my peripheral vision, 591 stopped licking his paw.

He paced impatiently. "Why are you still standing there? I said I need food."

I didn't possess telepathy, so I had to answer out loud. "I have to finish my job. If I don't finish, I don't get my daily rations, and they'll beat me."

"Tch."

591 scratched at the concrete floor but stopped rushing me. He just sat there, monitoring every single move I made.

At noon, I lined up at the mess hall with my roommate.

The food was a joke. A stale, rock-hard protein biscuit, a spoonful of pickled cabbage, and a bowl of broth that tasted like warm dishwater. That was our entire caloric intake.

The janitors did the most grueling, hazardous work in the Facility, but we received the smallest rations.

Nobody dared to complain.

The cabbage and the broth were impossible to smuggle, so I wolfed them down. I slipped the protein biscuit into my pocket and hid it in my bunk.

We only got three meals a day, and breakfast was ironically the best one. It was just the leftover scraps from the guards and researchers from the night before, reheated by the kitchen staff.

I stockpiled a little bit from every meal. By the end of the day, I had managed to hide two biscuits and half a synthetic meat stick.

I had the food. Now I just had to figure out how to feed it to 591.

"Stupid."

591 looked at me with immense disappointment, tapping his claw against the glass.

"Every cell has an automated feeding chute. Over there."

Because 591's cell was an outdated model, the mechanics were simple. It only took his brief explanation for me to figure it out.

I pulled the hidden food out from the bottom of my bucket and shoved it into the delivery pipe.

I hit the button, and the biscuits and the meat stick dropped right into his enclosure.

591 walked over and poked the rock-hard biscuits with his paw.

The biscuit flattened under his force, leaving deep claw marks in the dough.

"This is it?"

591 glared at me, the spikes along his spine bristling with irritation.

"Are you screwing with me?"

The razor-sharp quills ran from his neck all the way down to the tip of his tail. They weren't fully matured yet, but they were still lethal enough to impale a human.

"No, no, I swear! They barely give us anything to eat..."

Right on cue, my stomach let out a loud, aggressive growl, providing solid evidence that I wasn't lying to him.

591 went silent.

He didn't ask any more questions. He leaned down and sniffed the food.

Confirming it wasn't poisoned, his defensive posture relaxed. The spikes flattened against his back, and he returned to looking like a harmless puppy.

Starving, he wolfed down the stale biscuits with a feral ferocity.

Once the biscuits were gone, he turned his attention to the synthetic meat.

As he was chewing, his eyes locked onto mine through the glass.

I hadn't forgotten my mission to build maximum trust.

I leaned close to the glass, doing my best to make sure he understood exactly how much I was suffering to feed him.

"The cafeteria gives us barely anything. It's usually just watery gruel or these little rocks they call bread."

"We do manual labor all day. It's never enough food."

"But I'd rather starve. I'd rather work until I'm dizzy, nauseous, and my vision goes black, than watch you go hungry in here..."

591 just stared at me.

Without breaking eye contact, he picked up his meat stick, turned around, and pointed his furry rear end directly at my face.

591 rarely initiated conversations with me.

Occasionally, out of sheer boredom, he would observe me and mimic my movements for entertainment.

He would pace around his pod, using his tail to sweep the floor exactly the way I used my broom.

If I stopped, he would stop, and we would just stare at each other.

The second I picked the broom back up, his tail would start sweeping again.

When I inevitably got annoyed and started yelling at him to stop copying me, he would bare his fangs in a wolfish grin, clearly laughing at me.

My temples throbbed with irritation. I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine.

I started mimicking him. Whatever he did, I copied.

He stretched his front legs. I stretched my arms.

He let out a low howl. I howled back.

He licked the glass. I leaned forward and licked the exact same spot on my side of the glass.

591 froze.

He tilted his head, his tail flicking in confusion.

"What the hell are you doing?"

I parroted him out loud. "What the hell are you doing?"

In the end, I couldn't tell if he was furious or just disturbed. He blew a hard puff of air through his nose and retreated to his dark corner.

Having won the psychological warfare, I felt fantastic. I hummed a weird little tune as I got back to work.

As the days turned into weeks, I started treating him like a captive therapist, dumping my daily complaints on him whenever no one was around.

"I'm telling you, there's not a single decent human being in this entire place. The other janitors keep dumping their sectors on me."

"Thank God I'm quick on my feet and made up a lie, or I wouldn't have gotten a single minute of sleep last night."

"And don't even get me started on the researchers. They act like they're gods just because..."

591 raised both his front paws and clamped them firmly over his fuzzy ears, making it painfully clear he was rejecting my trauma dump.

I tapped on the glass. "What's your problem? You don't want to listen?"

He pressed his paws harder against his head.

I let out a heavy sigh.

"Come on, just let me vent."

"Aren't you terrified of me? I've killed you before."

To say I wasn't scared would be a massive lie.

But in this sprawling, freezing, metallic tomb of a Facility, 591 was my only friend.

"Yeah, but nobody else in here is willing to listen to me."

The furry ears twitched.

591 slowly lowered his paws, giving me a look of profound resignation.

After getting everything off my chest, I felt a million times lighter.

"If you've got anything bothering you, you can tell me too."

591 flicked his ears, his tone laced with sarcasm. "I'm locked in a glass box twenty-four hours a day. Aside from the complete loss of freedom, what could possibly be bothering me?"

"How did they even catch you? Doesn't Director Blackwood only order the retrieval of high-tier apex mutants?"

As far as I knew, the Facility never brought in infants. They always captured adult pairs to breed and experiment on them.

591's mental voice grew dangerously low.

"Humans used long-range artillery to butcher my parents and my siblings."

"When they came to harvest the corpses, they found me in the den."

"The humans said my bone density was highly unusual. They said I would be extremely valuable."

"They said once I grew up, they would skin me and strip my bones..."

Putting myself in his shoes, a suffocating wave of despair washed over me.

My lips parted, but it took a long time to finally force the words out. "They're going to pay for what they did."

"I expected you to defend your own kind."

591 mocked. "Don't all humans want to eradicate us?"

"Not all of us."

The apocalypse started eight years ago. Flora and fauna underwent massive, grotesque mutations, overrunning the cities and hunting humans to near extinction.

I didn't know the exact scientific cause, but it was almost certainly due to global pollution. At the end of the day, humanity brought this upon itself.

591 looked at me. The mockery in his eyes faded.

"What about me? I tore you apart."

"If you didn't think I could break you out of here, wouldn't you want me dead?"

That was a complicated question. For once, I actually used my brain.

"It's a lie to say the thought never crossed my mind. But honestly..."

591 watched me intensely, his claws curling slightly against the floor.

"If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't just kill the janitor. I'd slaughter every single breathing thing in this Facility."

This unexpected answer made 591 tilt his head in confusion.

"I'd make the blood flow like a river! I'd make them suffer a thousand times worse than what they did to me!"

I let out an evil, unhinged laugh. It actually startled 591 so badly his ears pinned flat against his skull.

"Ugh, it's too depressing. Don't ask me these heavy questions anymore."

I grabbed my mop and got back to scrubbing.