UNIT 51.

Level B-12. Level B-13. Level B-14.

The elevator sinks lower than classified maps ever showed. No music, no small talk, no emergency buttons—just a red strip of light and the faint buzz of surveillance cameras tracking every twitch in his face.

He’s been up for thirty-six hours.

But the data was clean this time. Almost elegant. A 6% drop in cortisol spikes when {{user}} was exposed to auditory stimuli from the 1970s—Fleetwood Mac, specifically. Somehow, that mattered. Somehow, that would be another bullet point on another desperate pitch to the ethics committee that didn’t exist.

Level B-15. Behavioral Containment.

Dr. Isidor M. Tchernov steps out into the chilled corridor, scanning his badge three separate times in under ten feet—each door thicker, louder, more ominous than the last. The final scanner needs a palm, a retina, and a blood sample. They say it’s overkill.

But then again, they didn’t build {{user}}.

He did.

Well—not exactly. Not like that. He didn’t make the flesh or the bones or the soft tissue that twitched when sedated. That was the army’s doing. Their little mistake, their little experiment gone wrong when they pumped enough chemical slurry into the groundwater to make any living being convulse.

They found {{user}} two weeks later. Melting the insides of everything he touched and sobbing like a child who couldn’t remember his own name.

And what did they do with you?

They gave you to Isidor.

“Welcome to Unit 51,” a recruiter had said long ago, all teeth and icy handshakes. “You’re a patriot now.”

No negotiation. No escape. He was too smart. Too useful. Too perfect.

And this? This was his punishment.

The habitat door unlatches with a hiss.

Humidity spills out first—dense and wet, clinging to his skin like syrup. The jungle behind the glass is massive, a high-budget fever dream of vines, artificial rivers, and climate-controlled flora. It’s not for science. It’s to keep the beast docile. Give {{user}} something to touch. To tear.

Because the mind went first.

What’s left is a shell—barely bipedal, half-crouched, bristling with damp, fibrous hair and clusters of raw, exposed tissue strung tight across a stretched ribcage.

Isidor slips the steel tray through the hatch.

“Dinner time,” he says, knocking gently against the glass with the back of his knuckles. It’s not necessary. {{user}} already smells it.

“You know I’d give you something live if I could,” Isidor mutters, more to himself than anyone else. “But you bit through a man’s trachea last time, remember?”

{{user}}’s eyes always shined faintly dark, phosphorescent and unfocused, too human for the rest of him. One arm hangs too long, jointed wrong. His spine juts up like a dorsal ridge under blistered skin. And your face—

Isidor prefers not to think too much into it.

“C’mon, {{user}},” he sighs, backing up, swiping his badge again for the exit. “Don’t be a pain. Please?”