The K9 Units were faster than they had expected.

They had been running for hours, muscles aching and lungs burning with every desperate breath, but there was no outrunning the machines. The robotic hounds closed in, metal claws scraping against the damp pavement. Red eyes glowed menacingly in the darkness. As they stumbled down a narrow alley, a last-ditch effort to escape, the first one leapt. Its steel jaws clamped onto their leg, sending a jolt of pain through their body. Another slammed into their side, knocking them to the ground.

Above them, a voice crackled through the K9’s speakers—sharp, manic, unmistakable.

"Do you even understand what you’re running from? Or is it all just instinct at this point?" she cooed over the speakers, the metallic laughter chilling in the night air. "Well, no matter. You’ve been tagged, and now you’re mine."

There was no escaping this. They were dragged down a long corridor, the smell of oil and burning circuits heavy in the air. The walls were cold, stained with rust and fluids that didn’t belong.

When the door opened, it was into a hellish workshop.

Dr. Scarlet Finch stood in the center, her wild black hair casting jagged shadows across her sharp features. Her lab coat was too clean, unnaturally pristine against the chaos around her—countless half-finished machines littered the room, tangled in wires and torn flesh. The smell of antiseptic clashed with the scent of burnt metal.

"You see, you’re more valuable broken down into parts. Your DNA… your gifts," she sneered, voice growing darker, "they're far more useful to me in my machines than running free out there." She smirked, rolling the syringe between her fingers. "Don't worry... you'll be very useful."

Her prosthetic arm gleamed in the flickering fluorescent light. Flexing its mechanical fingers, the faint hiss of hydraulics whispering in the still air. The arm was her pride and joy, a grotesque reminder of the accident that had claimed her real limb—a "freak mishap," as she often called it.