The Phoenix of the Slums

The rain had stopped by morning but the clouds remained thick, as if the sky itself was holding its breath. Inside the safehouse, the walls hummed softly with the vibrations of encrypted data being unpacked. Zhao hunched over three monitors, fingers flying as layers of code peeled away like the skin of an onion.

Fang leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, her eyes drifting to Tianming who sat shirtless on the couch, bruises blooming across his ribs and arms like dark flowers. He hadn’t moved in an hour, just stared into the void with the calm of a man calculating vengeance.

Zhao’s voice cut through the silence. “Got it.”

Tianming looked up. “Talk to me.”

Zhao turned the monitor toward them, revealing a screen full of project files marked with crimson warning symbols. “This isn’t just a lab. That place we hit? It was one of several sites under something called ‘Project Zhenmo.’”

Fang stepped closer. “What’s that?”

Zhao clicked open a file. An old blueprint loaded, showing the internal structure of a human body overlaid with technical data. “It’s a biological weapons program. They were building super-soldiers using human subjects fused with experimental tech. Cybernetic augmentation, neural rewriting, adrenal control systems. Frankenstein stuff.”

Tianming’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

Zhao hesitated, then opened another file—a genome report.

It bore Tianming’s name.

“You weren’t just a target,” Zhao said. “You were the template.”

The room dropped into silence like a trapdoor.

“They used your DNA to build the first generation of these things. Prototype 07-A was modeled on your physiology—modified, weaponized, but it all started with you.”

Fang’s voice was low. “That means… they had access to your blood. Your body.”

Tianming’s hands clenched into fists. “That means my mother wasn’t just killed. She was harvested.”

Zhao pulled up one last document. A video file titled: Dr. Jin Wei—Confession Log.

They played it.

The screen flickered to life, showing a woman in her forties, wearing a lab coat stained with blood. Her eyes were sunken, voice trembling. “If you’re watching this… then you found the lab. My name is Jin Wei. I was head of bioengineering for the Orchid Society’s Zhenmo Division. I created monsters for them. I obeyed out of fear. But I kept records. I kept one truth hidden… about Subject Zero.”

She looked around, paranoid, then whispered.

“Subject Zero wasn’t an experiment. He was a child born naturally. A perfect fusion of genetic superiority. They killed his mother to extract her womb and tried to replicate him. But none of the others… none of the monsters… ever matched him.”

Tianming stood slowly, voice like a blade dragging against stone. “Where is she?”

Zhao shook his head. “There’s no file location.”

Fang stepped forward, placing a hand on Tianming’s chest. “Then we find her.”

Zhao added, “The footage was dated five years ago. That means if she’s still alive… she’s deep inside one of their black sites.”

Tianming stared at the flickering image of Dr. Jin, now frozen in mid-confession. “Then we burn every lab. One by one.”

Outside the safehouse, the clouds began to break, a shaft of light cutting through the gray.

But the storm had only just begun.