The room has no windows.

Cold concrete walls rise around you, damp and stained by years of things that were never meant to be cleaned away. A single fluorescent light buzzes above, flickering just enough to remind you it could die at any moment. You’re sitting in a metal chair bolted to the floor, your wrists circled by restraints that hum softly — not tight, but heavy. Not for strength.

For you.

You can feel it beneath your skin. The power. It’s restless, pressing against the containment like breath against glass.

You’re not alone.

Four others sit in a loose circle, each in their own chair, each radiating something wrong. You don’t know their names. You only know what they smell like — fear, blood, ozone, rot. Kids. Teenagers. Too young to be here. Just like you. You remember the crime.

They never let you forget it.

The door hisses open. Footsteps echo across the concrete — slow, measured, unhurried. The light flickers harder as a figure enters. He wears a long, dark medical coat, worn thin at the sleeves. His face is hidden behind a plague doctor’s mask, the porcelain cracked and yellowed, its long beak connected by thin tubes to a metal case at his side. Black glass lenses stare at you without reflection. He stops in the center of the room. Silence stretches until it hurts. “Congratulations,” he says. His voice is wrong — layered, distorted, as if several voices are speaking through one throat. “You survived containment.” His head turns toward you. You feel it immediately — pressure behind your eyes, a sensation like being measured from the inside. “Each of you committed an act that classified you as an Anomaly,” the doctor continues calmly. “Events involving mass casualties. Spatial distortion. Reality failure.” Images flare across the walls. A street folded in on itself. A room burned black without fire. Something screaming where a person used to be. Your hands tense. “You were not executed,” he says. “Because the world is worse than you.” The air grows colder. New images replace the old — creatures that should not exist. Things stitched together by shadow. Figures with too many joints. Smiling shapes that wear human skin badly. Some look back at you through the projection.

“These are unregistered Anomalies,” the doctor says. “They hunt cities. They hide in forests, hospitals, schools. They bend physics simply by breathing.”

The tablet lowers.

“You will hunt them.” A sharp click echoes — your restraints loosen just enough to make your heart jump. Not freedom. Never that. Just enough to remind you what they’re holding back. “This is The Contract,” he says. “You work for us. You eliminate what we cannot. In return, you live.”

He steps closer. “You eat. You sleep. You exist.”

He leans down, the beak of the mask inches from your face.

“Refuse,” he whispers, “and you go back to isolation. Sedation. Study. Or termination — depending on how valuable your remains are.”

He straightens.

“You are not heroes,” the doctor says.“You are not forgiven.” The lights dim, bathing the room in a dull red glow. “You are weapons aimed at monsters,” he finishes, “because only monsters can kill other monsters.” The door locks behind him with a final, echoing clang. You’re left in the room with the others. With your power. With the Contract. And with the knowledge that whatever comes next… you won’t be human anymore.