Veins of Ruin

The Labryinth

Jax's boots splashed through murky puddles as he made his way toward the Dominion lab. The rain had only gotten heavier, drowning out the distant hum of machinery and the hollow echo of voices in the alleyways. Sin City's night was thick and quiet, as if the city itself held its breath, waiting for the chaos he planned to unleash.

The lab loomed ahead, a squat, imposing structure in the middle of an industrial sector that Dominion had long since abandoned. Metal shutters covered the windows, and the building's perimeter was lined with drones, small red lights scanning the area like eyes in the dark. He crouched behind a rusted, overturned dumpster and ran through his plan one last time.

In and out—quick, silent, brutal. He didn't know exactly what he'd find inside, but Raven's warning about a purge had stuck with him, haunting him with the grim possibility of what Dominion was willing to do. Jax's mind flashed to the people he'd seen in the lower city streets just hours earlier—families huddled in makeshift shelters, kids scavenging through trash piles. If this purge program went live, they'd all be gone in hours, snuffed out by Dominion like they were nothing.

He moved silently toward the rear entrance, his eyes scanning for security. The cameras were easy to spot, their lenses glinting in the rain. Jax slid out his blade, a thin, steel weapon he'd used in dozens of close encounters, and took out the two nearest drones with a quick, precise cut to each.

With the cameras blind, he pried open a side panel and slipped inside the lab, keeping to the shadows as he made his way down the dimly lit hallway. The air was stale, thick with the metallic tang of machinery and disinfectant. It was cold in here, colder than it had any right to be. The lights buzzed softly above him, casting an eerie glow that seemed to stretch and distort his shadow on the wall.

He followed the faint sound of humming equipment, his instincts leading him down a set of narrow stairs. The lower levels were where Dominion did its most covert work, hidden from even the city's officials. Here, they could experiment without oversight, turning the undercity into their own twisted lab.

At the bottom of the stairs, he found a steel door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in bold, red letters. He pressed his ear against it, listening for movement. Nothing. He glanced down at the keypad beside the door and pulled out a small, modified chip—a piece of tech he'd lifted from a Dominion officer months ago. He slipped it into the keypad's slot and waited as it blinked, analyzing the code.

The door hissed open.

The room beyond was bathed in the dull, fluorescent glow of overhead lights. Rows of glass pods lined the walls, each one filled with a murky, greenish liquid that bubbled softly. Jax's stomach twisted as he realized what he was looking at.

People.

They were stacked in the pods like specimens, their eyes closed, their bodies floating in the viscous liquid. He recognized a few faces—residents from the lower sectors who had gone missing recently. Dominion had been rounding them up under the guise of "security checks," and this was where they'd ended up, trapped in pods and pumped full of whatever experimental toxins Dominion was testing tonight.

Jax clenched his fists, a dark anger settling into the pit of his stomach. He reached out to a nearby console, the glowing screen displaying lines of code and monitors tracking the vitals of each captive. He couldn't understand all of it, but he recognized enough to know these people were dying slowly, being drained for whatever the Ascended deemed valuable.

"Is this what freedom looks like to you, Jax?"

He spun around, his hand moving to his gun. Raven stood in the doorway, arms crossed, her expression a mixture of disdain and something that might have been regret. She looked different here, in this sterile, cold room filled with the echoes of Dominion's cruelty. Almost like a ghost.