Chapter 2814: Story 2815: The Prison Beneath the Door

Three enormous knocks shook the laboratory.

Ryan stared at the cracked floor beneath the metallic door. Something was trying to break through from below.

“Everyone, get back!” Hamza shouted.

The concrete exploded.

A gigantic hand covered in metal restraints emerged from the hole. Its fingers gripped the floor, and a wounded man slowly pulled himself upward.

Ryan stopped breathing.

“Father?”

The man lifted his head. His face was pale, his beard covered in blood, and one side of his body was wrapped in mechanical cables.

“Ryan...” he whispered.

Ryan rushed toward him, but the stranger grabbed his arm.

“Wait! We don’t know if that’s really your father.”

The wounded man looked at the stranger.

“You still haven’t learned, have you?”

The stranger stepped backward.

Father looked directly at Ryan.

“Your brother is telling the truth about one thing. There were three original children. But he lied about the fourth experiment.”

Ryan frowned. “What fourth experiment?”

Father struggled to stand.

“The reflection wasn’t created from your memories. It was created from mine.”

Suddenly, a loud laugh echoed from behind the metallic door.

The false Ryan appeared again, crawling across the wall like an insect.

“Father!” it screamed. “You promised you would never abandon me!”

Father raised his trembling hand.

“I tried to save you.”

The creature’s face twisted.

“You chose Ryan instead!”

It launched itself toward Father.

Ryan’s golden energy exploded, striking the false Ryan in the chest. The creature crashed against the wall, but its body immediately began healing.

Zara fired at its head.

“It’s not staying down!”

Meher’s voice came through the radio.

“Ryan, listen! Your father’s blood contains the original control sequence. You must get him to the central chamber!”

Hamza looked toward the broken floor.

“The central chamber is beneath us. But the only entrance is through that door.”

Father shook his head.

“No. There is another entrance.”

He pointed toward a narrow passage behind the fallen equipment.

“The original laboratory was built around something buried beneath Karachi. The central chamber connects directly to its heart.”

Ryan helped his father stand.

“Then we’re going there.”

Adam’s voice suddenly emerged from the black smoke.

“Don’t trust him, Ryan!”

Ryan turned.

Adam’s monstrous face appeared briefly inside the smoke.

“He didn’t build us to save humanity. He built us to feed it!”

Father closed his eyes.

For the first time, Ryan saw fear in his father’s expression.

“Adam knows what happened,” Father whispered. “And if he remembers everything, we have very little time.”

A deafening roar erupted behind the metallic door.

The seventh lock began turning by itself.

Father grabbed Ryan’s shoulder.

“Son, whatever you see in the central chamber... never let it touch your blood.”

Then the floor beneath them split open.

A gigantic red eye stared upward.