The Five Evolution

Chapter 29: Breach!

『"When the walls come crashing down..."』

The warden’s voice came through the facility intercom, no longer cheerful: "LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL INITIATED. ALL PERSONNEL TO DEFENSIVE POSITIONS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

A woman in a yellow jumpsuit with wild hair and even wilder eyes created chains made of green flames that lashed out at the nearest group of students.

They scattered, screaming, their terror echoing through metal corridors.

Emergency lighting kicked in throughout the facility as blood-red illumination cast everything in hellish shadow and made it impossible to tell friend from threat at a glance.

Through the facility’s intercom, distorted by static and the sound of something breaking in the background, came the warden’s voice one final time:

"The Clam is compromised. All units, contain the breach. Use lethal force if necessary."

***

[UPPER LEVELS - CONTROL ROOM]

"I... I can fix this..." Weesil’s voice cracked as sweat poured down his face, his hands hovering uselessly over the console that was now flashing every warning color simultaneously.

But after stabbing at buttons randomly, he only made more alarms activate and more collar indicators shift from green to red, and realized with dawning horror that he was only making things catastrophically worse.

With his eyes constantly darting to every direction, he backed away from the console. Then he ran straight out of the control room before anyone could definitively pin this disaster on him, taking full advantage of the chaos erupting throughout the facility.

On his way out, he collided with a security agent rushing toward the control room, their body armor clanking with the impact.

"Hey kid!" The agent grabbed his shoulder. "What were you doing at that console?"

Right there, Weesil froze as his mind went blank.

Then an explosion rocked the facility, coming from Cell Block C. The agent’s comm unit erupted with frantic voices as multiple emergencies demanded attention simultaneously.

He looked at Weesil, then at his comm, and made a split-second decision.

"Find your supervisor. Stay with your group. Move!" He pushed past Weesil toward the failing console, already shouting orders.

Weesil stumbled backward, not believing his luck. He’d been seconds from getting caught. Seconds.

Weesil’s face cycled through several expressions of guilt, fear, indignation, and finally settled on defensive anger.

"This isn’t my fault," he muttered to himself, already constructing the narrative he’d tell later. "The console was faulty. Anyone could’ve made that mistake. The Institute’s shoddy security protocols are to blame..."

He disappeared into the chaos, leaving others to clean up the mess he’d created.

***

[MAIN CORRIDOR - CELL BLOCK C]

An old woman who looked like someone’s grandmother in appearance, with grey messy hair and a yellow jumpsuit over a cardigan, stabbed a guard with her knitting needles, transforming him instantly.

Where the needles pierced his flesh, his body began to unravel. It was not blood and organs spilling out, but yarn. Thick strands of it pulled from his substance like he was being unmade.

She yanked the needles out, and the entire guard came with them, reduced to a long stream of yarn that she knitted into a pair of gloves in seconds flat.

Gloves that wiggled on her hands, still containing whatever remained of the guard’s consciousness.

"Much better," she said pleasantly, flexing her new accessories.

Her eyes scanned the chaos afterwards until they found Hiro, who observed what she just did to a guard while trying to help students toward safety.

"Fine young man," the old woman called out with a grandmotherly warmth. "You’ll make a decent scarf."

"No, no, believe me, I’ll make a very ugly scarf. Very ug—"

Before he could finish, she’d crossed the distance with blinding speed and plunged a knitting needle into his torso.

Hiro looked down at the needle protruding from his belly, then up at the old woman who was licking her lips with anticipation.

"Oh, man..." Blood bubbled up past his lips as he coughed.

"Why aren’t you turning?" The old woman’s expression shifted from satisfaction to confusion as she stared at her spirit weapon still embedded in his gut. "You should be yarn by now. What’s wrong with you?"

She grabbed the needle to yank it out in order to try again, to figure out what was blocking her power, when Andre appeared from the chaos.

Ice shot out of his palm in a concentrated blast that caught the old woman square in the chest, pushing her away from Hiro. The water vapor in the air crystallized instantly, coating the front of her body in thick frost.

Andre kept firing, each blast adding another layer, pinning her to the ground as ice climbed up her torso, across her arms, over her face until her entire body was encased in a prison of frozen water.

In the meantime, Raj came barreling through the chaos and caught Hiro from behind before he could collapse, his arms supporting his friend’s weight easily.

"I don’t think that’s gonna hold for long, man," Andre said concerning the iced woman, breathing hard as he approached them. His eyes assessed Hiro’s injury and he added, "and you don’t look too good."

"Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here," Hiro managed to say through gritted teeth, one hand pressed against the wound even though the needle was still embedded in his flesh.

Andre took one of Hiro’s arms over his shoulder. Raj supported the other. Then they started moving quickly through corridors that were rapidly filling with smoke and screams.

Behind them, quiet cracks began to spiderweb across the ice holding the old woman.

"Have any of you guys seen Naomi?" Andre asked as they navigated past a collapsed ceiling.

"I think I saw her leave with Amara and Ethan," Raj said, adjusting his grip when Hiro’s feet started dragging. "Like, sneaking off somewhere they definitely shouldn’t have been."

"I think you both need to focus on me right now!" Hiro protested weakly. "I almost got turned into a scarf here!"

"You look okay to me," Raj said with a forced smile. "I’ve seen you look worse after all-nighters."

They rounded a corner and nearly collided with Tova, huddled behind an overturned table with his hands over his head.

"You’re still alive," Raj observed.

"Where’s Sophia?" Andre asked urgently, scanning the chaos beyond their immediate area. "And Hana? And that weird Lockwood kid?"

Tova pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with trembling fingers. "I-I saw Hana and Sophia with Professor Gaius. They were heading toward an emergency evacuation route. Not sure about Weesil though." He swallowed hard. "I think I saw him running. Just... running."

"Five bucks says that Weasel had something to do with this whole shit show," Hiro said, then winced as his movement jostled his wound.

"I don’t think even he’s that stupid," Andre muttered, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. He looked down at Hiro and his eyes widened slightly. "Dude. Your bleeding’s stopped."

"What?" Hiro looked down at his torso. The blood that had been soaking through his uniform had indeed stopped spreading. The wound was still there, needle still protruding grotesquely, but no new blood was flowing.

"That’s... that’s not normal, right?" He touched the wound’s edge carefully. The flesh was already knitting together around the foreign object.

"Woah, you got regeneration too?" Raj asked with excitement. "That’s so cool! We match!"

"More like accelerated healing," Hiro corrected, carefully removing his arms from their shoulders to test his stability. He wobbled but stayed upright. "It’s not anything crazy like yours, but it’s... good enough."

He pulled the knitting needle from his torso with a sickening schlick sound and dropped it to the floor like it had somehow offended him.

"We need to find Amara and the others," he said, his voice stronger now that the immediate danger of bleeding out had passed.

"I think I should go find Professor Gaius as well," Tova suggested nervously. "Safety in numbers with an actual trained combat specialist seems—"

"Nope." Hiro grabbed his arm with a grin. "You’re coming with us. More witnesses to my near-death experience means it definitely happened, and I can milk it for sympathy later."

Through the chaos, Hiro could see other groups of students. Some were being herded toward evacuation routes by supervisors, others huddled in defensive positions, a few running blindly into danger.

Not everyone was going to make it out.

***

[LOWER LEVELS - MINING OPERATION]

Sirens were blaring down in the illegal mining operation as well, echoing off the cavernous walls in disorienting waves.

"What the fuck is going on up there?" Naomi asked, looking toward the ceiling like she could see through multiple levels of reinforced ceilings.

"Let’s just document this and get out," Amara said, already pulling out her Institute-issued smartphone.

She took several photos of the prisoners wielding energy pickaxes, the massive beam shooting concentrated power into the pit, and the margaronium materializing where that energy struck. Evidence that couldn’t be denied or explained away.

"Got it," she said, sliding the device back into her pocket. "Now we—"

They turned to leave, pushing open the heavy door that led back to the elevator.

The warden stood on the other side.

Behind him were roughly thirty guards, all armed, all staring at the three students.

"What are you doing here?" The warden’s voice was flat. His perpetually-shut eyes somehow made his gaze more unnerving.

He looked down and spotted Amara’s phone sticking out of her pocket, then the unconscious body of the guard they’d borrowed for biometric access. "This area is restricted."

"Must have gotten lost or something," Amara said, giving him the same fake smile he’d been giving them all day. "You know how these facilities are... all the corridors look the same."

"I see." He turned around slowly, leaving his guards behind as he walked toward the north elevator with measured steps.

The red emergency lighting cast his shadow long across the floor.

"It’s a shame about this security breach," he said, not looking back. "Such chaos. Such confusion. Some students will sadly not make it back to the Machine."

Amara’s lie detection wasn’t triggered.

He wasn’t lying. He genuinely believed—no, he intended—for them to die here.

As soon as he reached the elevator, he turned around. The false pleasantness had vanished from his face entirely, leaving something cold and calculating.

"Kill them," he said simply.

All thirty guards raised their weapons in perfect synchronization, high-tech guns shaped like a cyborg’s cannon from the comics Hiro was always reading.

Amara recognized them from orientation. RSF-4 emitters. Reality Stabilization Field weapons that could fire blasts capable of weakening even Tyrant-class Awakeners by disrupting their connection to their powers.

They were essentially kryptonite for people like them. And their effectiveness scaled inversely with the target’s power level. The weaker you were, the more devastating the effect.

Instinctively, they all raised their hands in surrender.

"Does any of you fuckwads have any more bright ideas?" Naomi whispered, her usual bravado cracking slightly as she stared down thirty barrels.

However, the guards didn’t care about their surrender. Fingers were already tightening on triggers, energy beginning to glow in the weapons’ chambers as they charged for firing.

Amara’s mind raced, calculating angles and distances and the odds of survival.

They were approximately zero.

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HIRO JOSUKE | The Boots

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Spirit Weapon: Acceleron (Boots of Freedom)

Rank: Dream Walker (▮)

Ascendant Sigil: ▮ (1 Bar - Right Ankle)

Abilities Unlocked:

┣ Motion Energy Amplification

┣ Lightning Toss

┣ Accelerated Healing / Metabolism

┣ ??? [LOCKED]

Status: Fucking terrified, feeling brave

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