The Lab

A Dark Flash Fiction From the Sci/Fi world of D'Veen

This story takes place in D’Veen, the original universe created by Bradley Ramsey

Pain came first. Not sharp, not clean. This was a slow crawl through her spine, like rust grinding inside her bones. The kind of pain that made breath hurt and thought bleed.

She opened her eyes to darkness, lit only by the blue flicker of a dying rune tile overhead. It spat light in jerks, casting shadows that moved when she didn’t.

The floor was cold metal, slick with something sticky. Her fingers came away wet and black. Blood. Maybe hers. Maybe not.

She tried to sit up. Her muscles screamed. Her arms trembled. Her body felt used. Not tired, emptied.

Outside, something shrieked. Not beast. Not machine. Something dangerous.

She forced herself up, knees cracking beneath her. Her breath rasped loud in the silence, like broken glass dragged across her throat.

The air stank. Ozone. Char. Burnt copper. The smell clung to her skin, threaded into her hair.

A cry echoed from above. Pulsefire followed, rattling the walls.

She stumbled toward the nearest table. Tools, glass vials, and a half-buried weapon lay scattered across its surface. Her hand found the blade first.

Curved metal. Copper inlaid with sigils that pulsed faintly when her fingers closed around it.

It hummed. Low. Alive.

And it knew her.

She didn’t know herself. Not her name. Not her purpose. But the blade welcomed her like an old friend. Or a leash.

The room was chaos. Burned notes plastered the walls. Arcane diagrams smudged with blood. Tanks shattered. Tubes spilled viscous blue fluid that steamed where it touched the ground.

One name appeared over and over again, scratched into the steel wall in jagged lines.

Vel Tal-Vorath

The name tasted like iron in her mouth. It made her stomach turn.

Another scream cut the air, this time followed by boots, multiple pairs, heavy and fast.

The door hissed.

She raised the blade.

"You woke early," he said.

She braced against the wall, legs unsteady beneath her. The blade in her hand buzzed low, like a warning. Her mouth opened, but her voice cracked, dry and rough. "Where am I?"

"In the place you told me to bury you." He stepped closer, slow and deliberate, like approaching an animal that might bite or break.

Her breath caught. She lifted the blade slightly, not in threat but reflex. A tether. A shield. "What did you do to me?"

"You asked to forget."

Her brow creased. Sweat trickled down her temple. The blade warmed in her grip. "That doesn’t answer me."

He paused. His gaze dropped for a heartbeat. When he looked up again, the burn in his eyes had dulled to something older. Regret. Maybe. Weariness. “You asked to forget what you became.”

She stared at him. Her hand clenched around the hilt until her knuckles ached. "Who are you?"

"Vel Tal-Vorath."

The name struck her like a blow. Her grip tightened. The blade pulsed once, quick and sharp.

"You carved your name into the wall," she murmured, glancing toward the jagged letters scratched into the metal beside her.

"I needed to remember too."

The ground rumbled beneath them. Dust drifted from the ceiling with falling chunks of ceiling rune tiles. Somewhere above, a scream twisted into something wet and final.

She jerked her head toward the noise, heart thudding like it had remembered something her mind hadn’t.

"You don’t have long," Vel said, his voice flat, almost numb. "They’re here for you."

She turned her eyes back to him. Cold, sharp, uncertain. "Why?"

"Because you’re the only one left."

Her blade flared, a flicker of fire coiled with electricity.

Vel watched it, then her. "You weren’t born. You were built. And the thing that sets you apart? You kept your soul. No one expected that. Least of all me."

She staggered back. Her heartbeat thundered. The blade vibrated in her hand, a pulse that matched her own.

"I don’t remember any of that."

He nodded once. "Then maybe you have a chance."

A scream echoed from the corridor. Not the cry of a soldier. Not pain. Something deeper. Like awe breaking into terror.

Vel turned toward the sound. “They found the lower lab.”

She didn’t move.

“What did they find?”

Vel looked at her then, long and level. “Ghosts. Yours.”

A hiss bled through the vents. Mechanical at first, then wet, like breath filtered through a throat that had been remade too many times.

She stepped back, her shoulder brushing the wall. The blade in her hand pulsed, louder now, as if responding to what was coming.

“I don’t…”

“You don’t remember, I know,” Vel cut in. His voice softened, almost kind. “But they do. The ones who tried before you. They remember everything.”

The door behind him slammed open. A soldier stumbled in, armor charred and visor cracked. He fell hard, clutching his side.

Behind him, something crawled.

No. Not crawled. Slid.

It was made of pieces, bone, wire, half-fused flesh, and a metal spine that hissed with trapped steam. Its eyes were human once. Now they glowed green with fury.

It saw her.

And it screamed.

The sound slammed into her like a fist. The blade in her hand flared. Something behind her eyes cracked open.

She dropped to her knees. Images flooded in. Shouts. Fire. A room full of bodies. Hers. Over and over again. Built. Broken. Built again.

Vel’s voice cut through the noise. “You weren’t just a prototype. You were the reason the program failed. Because you fought back. Every time. You tore through the walls of your own mind and burned your way out.”

The thing lunged.

She raised the blade.

It stopped mid-air. Frozen. Twitching. Then screaming again, this time in raw panic. Its metal spine sparked. Runes along its skull cracked open and oozed black fluid.

It turned and fled.

Vel watched it go. “They were made to fight. You were made to end things.”

She didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Because deep in her bones, she knew it was true. And worse, something inside her enjoyed it.

The silence after the creature fled was thicker than the smoke. Her hand still trembled around the blade, its pulse slowing to match her own.

Vel said nothing. He only looked at her the way a man might look at a wound he stitched closed too quickly, regret carved deep behind the eyes.

She swallowed hard. Her voice was low. “There are more of them.”

He nodded. “Below.”

She didn’t ask what waited there. She already knew it would be worse than what she’d seen. But something in her chest pulled toward it anyway. Not curiosity. Not duty.

Gravitation.

She stepped past him, toward the half-lit corridor where the walls hummed like breathing things and the dark pressed in close.

Vel followed, wordless.

And down they went, into the place where she had died before. Again. And again. And again.

The lower corridor was half-collapsed. Wires hung like vines from the ceiling, sparking where they kissed water pooling along the floor. The walls wept black fluid. The air tasted like rust and bile.

Vel walked ahead, silent except for the wet slap of his boots. Her own footsteps echoed in a rhythm she hated, like she was being followed by herself.

A heavy door loomed ahead. The panel beside it was shattered. Vel placed a hand against the surface, and a soft click echoed like a warning.

The door groaned open.

The lab beyond was cold. Not the kind of cold that bit skin. This was marrow-deep. The kind of cold that whispered of things that should not move but did anyway.

Rows of vats lined the far wall, most shattered, all empty. The floor was cracked tile, streaked with dragging marks. Blood, scorched metal, glass like frozen screams.

The lights flickered as if trying to hide what they illuminated.

She stepped inside and the stench hit her hard. Decay. Preservative chemicals. Something like burned sugar rotted beneath it all.

A face stared at her from the floor. Not alive. Not even whole. Just a head, eyes open, jaw slack, wires still twitching from the base of the skull.

The face looked like hers.

She stumbled back.

Vel did not turn. His voice was quiet. “You asked to be erased. Every time you woke up, you remembered too much. We tried to start clean. But it clung to you. Like oil on skin.”

One of the stasis pods still stood intact in the center of the room. Frost glazed the glass. Inside was another her.

Younger. Smaller. Limbs curled like a child asleep.

Vel finally looked at her. “That one was the closest we came to peace.”

She moved toward the pod. Her hand trembled as she reached for the glass. Her reflection met her there, warped by frost. She could not tell which version was real.

Behind her, something moved.

A shape emerged from behind one of the broken tanks. Thin, hunched, skin stretched across bone and machine. Its face was half metal, half ruin.

It didn’t attack. It knelt.

“You remember me,” it rasped.

She didn’t. But her chest ached like she should.

The thing reached forward with a trembling hand. “You burned the pain out of us. You made it stop.”

More figures stepped from the shadows. Bent. Twisted. Some still sparking from damage. Others dragging blades that should have gleamed but were caked with gore.

None of them struck.

They bowed.

Vel watched without a word.

One of the figures looked up. Its voice was cracked like shattered glass. “They told us you died. They promised us peace. But the screaming never stopped. Not until now.”

Tears welled in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. They burned.

She didn’t know who she was. Not yet. But in their eyes, she saw it. A weapon. A savior. A curse. And for the first time since waking, she was afraid of herself.

---