Chapter 24: Sole Survivor of Expedition 66

The second truck bounced violently as it tore down the King’s Road, its suspension groaning in protest. The toxic fog outside the slitted windows was a solid wall of yellow-grey, swallowing the headlights and reducing the world to a claustrophobic tunnel of light and shadow.

Inside the cabin, exhaustion had finally won.

After the standoff in the ravine, Commander Darwin hadn’t separated them. Instead, he had ordered Gio, Melody, Lloyd, Kojiro, the twins and the rest of the core squad into the second truck with him. It wasn’t a gesture of goodwill. It was a leash. He wanted his most volatile recruits in his line of sight.

The standoff in the ravine, the bioengineered hounds, the relentless terror of the past three days had drained everyone to the bone. One by one, the recruits had slumped against the cold metal walls, their breathing deepening into the heavy, ragged rhythm of true sleep.

Melody was curled against Reuben’s shoulder, her tail wrapped loosely around her waist. Lloyd sat across from them, his head tilted back, his mouth slightly open. Even Blaze, who rarely slept, was snoring softly near the front.

Kojiro was the worst off. He was slumped in the corner, his breathing shallow and wet, the purple veins on his neck still bruised. He looked like a man who might not wake up.

Gio was the only one still awake.

He sat near the back, his head resting against the wall, his eyes half-closed. The blinding headache hadn’t faded. Every bump in the road sent a spike of pain through his temples, a lingering reminder of the mental feedback from forcing the wasp construct. His Bioenergy was hovering at a miserable twenty-five percent. He should have been asleep hours ago. But his mind wouldn’t shut off. It kept circling back to the vault, to the dead civilian, to the thirteen people walking into the serpent’s nest.

Across from him, Commander Darwin sat perfectly still.

He hadn’t moved in over an hour. His bionic arm rested on his knee, his mechanical pupil whirring softly as it tracked the passing fog. He looked like a statue carved from cold iron.

Then, Darwin moved.

Slowly, deliberately, he reached into his coat and pulled out the black data drive they had taken from the vault. He glanced around the cabin, his mechanical eye sweeping over the sleeping recruits with clinical precision.

Gio kept his breathing steady. He let his eyelids droop, pretending to be lost in the heavy pull of sleep.

Darwin leaned forward and plugged the drive into the truck’s central diagnostic console. The screen flickered, casting a pale, sickly green glow across the cabin. Lines of encrypted code scrolled rapidly, followed by a progress bar.

DECRYPTING PROJECT VELITHARI MASTER LOGS...

Gio’s heart hammered against his ribs. He forced himself to stay still, but he cracked his eyes open just enough to see the screen over Darwin’s shoulder.

The progress bar hit one hundred percent. The screen shifted, displaying a series of old-world documents, stamped with the seal of the World Government Alliance.

Gio’s eyes scanned the text as the information sent shivers down his spine.

—Phase Two: Incubation. Objective: Establish controlled genetic reservoirs. The Sector Cities are not designed for permanent habitation. They are designed as incubators. Controlled environments to maintain a baseline, unmutated human gene pool while the exterior biosphere undergoes forced evolutionary acceleration.—

Incubators.

The Sector Cities weren’t shelters. They were farms.

Gio’s breath caught in his throat. He forced himself to keep reading.

—Phase Three: Harvest Protocols. The Expeditions. Annual deployment of mutated subjects into the exterior biosphere. Objective: Track survival rates, map evolutionary ceilings, and cull weak genetic lines. Data to be transmitted to the Pacific Impact Site for analysis.—

The expeditions. The sixty-six teams before them.

They weren’t failures. They were culls.

The city had sent them out to see how far they could evolve, and when they stopped being useful, they let them die. Or they sent the data back to whatever was waiting at the Pacific.

Gio’s hands clenched into fists. His head throbbed. His chest tightened with a rage so pure it momentarily eclipsed the pain.

"I know you’re awake," Darwin said quietly.

Gio froze. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t made a sound. But Darwin’s mechanical pupil had locked onto him with terrifying precision.

"I... saw the screen," Gio whispered, his voice barely audible over the rumble of the engine.

Darwin didn’t turn around. He just kept staring at the glowing console, his expression unreadable.

"How much did you see?" He asked.

"... Enough." Gio’s jaw tightened. "The cities are farms. The expeditions are just tests. And we’re just rats in a maze."

"We are survivors," Darwin corrected quietly. "The Sector Cities preserved humanity. The expeditions pushed it forward. It was a necessary calculus."

"Necessary?" Gio’s voice cracked with fury. "My sister-figure died in a fire because the city didn’t care about District Maria. The people in Expedition 66 probably died screaming in the mud. And you’re telling me it was just a math equation to you?"

Darwin was silent for a long moment. The truck hit another bump, the fog swirling outside like a living thing.

Then, slowly, Darwin turned to face him.

His mechanical pupil whirred, dilating and contracting as it focused on Gio’s face. His flesh eye betrayed his act of pretending not to be exhausted.

"I was in Expedition 66," Darwin said.

"W-What?" he whispered.

"I was a soldier. Just a soldier. No bionic arm back then. No command codes. Just a rifle and a prayer to return home... alive." Darwin’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion, but his hands were trembling slightly where they rested on his knees. "We made it further than any expedition before us. We made it to the coast. We saw what was waiting at the Pacific Impact Site."

He paused. His mechanical eye flickered, just once.

"I was the only one who came back."

The silence in the truck was suffocating. Gio stared at Darwin, his mind racing. The Commander wasn’t just a cold, calculating officer. He was a ghost. A survivor of the very graveyard they had passed on the road.

"And... that’s why you’re in charge," Gio said slowly. "They gave you command because you’re the only one who knows what’s out here."

"They gave me command because I’m the only one who came back," Darwin corrected. "And because I told them I could do better. I told them I could lead a team to the Pacific and bring back the data they needed."

"And the thirteen people you let walk into the serpent’s nest?" Gio’s voice was sharp, accusatory. "Was that part of your plan?"

Darwin’s expression didn’t change. "They were weak willed. people like that will get everyone else killed. I made a proper calculation."

"You made a murder," Gio snapped.

Darwin didn’t flinch. He just turned back to the console. The screen had changed. The final file on the black drive had opened.

It wasn’t a document. It wasn’t a log.

It was a map. A live, topographical map of the King’s Road. And right in the center of the screen, a bright red dot was pulsing steadily.

TELEMETRY LINK ESTABLISHED, the screen read. BEACON ACTIVE. SIGNAL BROADCASTING.

Gio stared at the pulsing red dot. He looked at the truck’s GPS. The red dot was exactly where they were.

"It’s a tracker," Gio whispered.

"The drive contains the data," Darwin said, his voice cold and final. "But it also contains a localized sub-space transmitter. The moment I plugged it in, it began broadcasting our exact coordinates on an encrypted frequency."

Gio’s stomach dropped. "The cloaked figure in the fog... the bioengineered hounds outside... they weren’t just patrolling."

"No," Darwin agreed, staring out the window into the thick, yellow mist. "They were tracking the signal. The hounds are the King’s scouts. And the cloaked figure is probably his herald."

"You knew," Gio said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, quiet register. "You knew they would follow us. You used the drive to draw them out."

"I used the drive to flush the King’s forces into the open," Darwin corrected, finally turning to face Gio. His mechanical pupil dilated, locking onto Gio’s face. "We are not just explorers, recruit. We are bait. And if we are going to survive the King’s Road, we need to know exactly what is hunting us."

Gio stared at him. The man sitting across from him wasn’t just a commander. He was a survivor. A man who had seen hell and come back with nothing but scars and a mission.

And now, he was leading thirty-two recruits into the same hell, using them as bait to flush out the monster that had killed his squad.

"You’re not trying to save us," Gio whispered. "You’re trying to finish what Expedition 66 started."

Darwin didn’t answer. He just ejected the black drive, slipping it back into his coat as the truck hit another bump and the fog swirled outside.