Chapter 175: Gemini Chamber
The hallway was long and silent. The only sounds that could be heard was the hurried footsteps of Jonah and Vanessa and, the distant sound of explosions from the other side of the fortress. Draven and Seraph were doing their job.
The cold feeling in Jonah’s mind got stronger with every step he took.
"We’re close," Jonah whispered, his breath looking like fog in the cold air. "Whatever Dr Thorne has created... I sense it’s just ahead of us."
They reached the end of the hall. A giant blast door blocked their path. It had no handle, no keypad. Just a tiny, glowing blue line running around its edge.
"That’s some serious shielding," Vanessa said, pulling out her datapad. "Artificer-level. He really doesn’t want visitors."
"Can you get us in?" Jonah asked.
Vanessa knelt, her fingers moving fast on a screen she projected onto the floor. "I don’t smash things like Draven," she said with a small, tired smile. "I open them carefully."
Lines of glowing blue code flowed from her datapad to the door. She was solving a dangerous puzzle. One wrong move could trigger a security system that would trap them here forever.
For a long, hard minute, nothing happened. Then, a series of clicks came from inside the door.
Click. Click. Clack.
The blue line around the door flashed green for a single second.
With a satisfying sound, the lock opened.
A hiss of air came out from the door as the seal broke. The giant door opened, revealing the room beyond.
Jonah and Vanessa stepped through the doorway, their weapons ready. But they saw wasn’t a battlefield.
The room was the Genesis Chamber. It was a huge, circular space, even cleaner and brighter than the rest of the fortress.
And in the middle of the room was Dr. Aris Thorne, who looked like he was expecting them.
He was standing beside a large control console, dressed in lab coat. He was not armed. He was not guarded by any of his elite guards. He just stood there with a smile on his face.
"Welcome," he said, his voice smooth and polite, as if they were students arriving for a lecture. " You came just in time for the last big show."
Jonah looked around the What was behind Thorne caught his eye right away. He thought he’d only see one huge stasis pod, holding an ultimate monster.
But that’s not what was there.
They were two beings.
Two stasis pods, which looked alike, stood next to each other, glowing with a blue light from inside.
Thorne saw what Jonah was looking at and chuckled. "Ah, I see you’ve noticed. You’re wondering why there are two. That, my boy, is the secret. That is the breakthrough."
He began to walk slowly around the console, his hands held behind his back like a proud teacher about to explain his greatest discovery.
"Subject Alpha didn’t work out well," Thorne said, sounding both sad and proud. "It was a wild mix. A messy soup of parts that didn’t fit together. It had immense power, yes, but no control. No focus.
He stopped in front of the two pods.
"I realized my mistake," he continued. "The key to true, stable creation isn’t just about forcing power. It is about balance. That’s the one helpful thing I learned from the tales of the old Artificers who cared too much."
He pointed to the two pods with a big, showy move.
"Not one creature, Jonah. But two. Two perfectly stable, psychically-linked twins. One is the anchor, the other is the fulcrum. One is the shield, the other is the sword. They are in perfect balance. They are not one creature. They are a single, coordinated system."
He looked at Jonah, his smile widening. "I call them the Gemini."
Jonah and Vanessa could only watch, a scary truth becoming clear to them. Thorne hadn’t just made a monster that was bigger. He had made something smarter. Something better. Something far more dangerous.
"You have seen the first draft," Thorne said. "Now, allow me to present the masterpiece."
He pressed a big button on his console.
HIIISSSSSSS...
With a loud hiss of gas, the two stasis pods started to open. The frosted glass doors moved up, showing the figures inside.
Two young men stepped out.
They were not the pained, patched-up monsters from the containment wing. They were just right. They looked exactly alike, a little older than Jonah, with strong bodies and handsome faces. They had short hair and pale skin.
And they were completely scary.
As their eyes opened, they looked plain. There was no life in them, no feeling. They looked like the eyes of beautiful toy dolls.
They came out of their pods. Their movements were not human. They moved together perfectly, like a mirror image.
One of them lifted his right hand.
At the exact same instant, the other lifted his left hand. A perfect mirror image.
One of them took a step forward with his left foot.
The other took a step forward with his right.
They moved as one, a single mind controlling two bodies. They were not pained monsters thrashing in agony. They were beautiful, soulless, and perfect living weapons.
Jonah felt a new kind of dread, cold and sharp, pierce his heart. He had faced monsters born of rage. He had faced soldiers driven by duty. But this... this was different. This was an enemy born from cold, perfect logic.
Thorne looked at his creations, then he looked back at Jonah and Vanessa. He didn’t smile anymore. Instead, he just looked with calm interest of a scientist watching a clinical trial.
"You and your friends have a connection from unclear feelings," he said, his voice calm and cold. "Friendship. Loyalty. Trust. My creations have a perfect bond, a psychic link built by science. They work together totally. Perfectly"
He gave a small nod to his creations.
"Now," Thorne said, his eyes gleaming with cold, intellectual hunger. "Let the final test begin."