Darkness didn't leave when Bat opened his eyes.
It stayed.
But he could see.
Not barely. Not dimly. He saw everything.
The cryopod glass in front of him was cracked, frost long melted, wires hanging like dead veins. Beyond it—metal walls torn open, corridors collapsed inward, the facility split and hollowed like a corpse picked clean.
And yet…
Bat felt it.
A pressure at the back of his mind.
Something was watching him.
His body tensed instantly, instincts flaring, eyes scanning corners, ceilings, vents—nothing. No movement. No heat. No sound. Whatever it was, it stayed hidden. Unknown.
He stepped out of the cryopod.
His feet touched the ground silently.
That's when he noticed the bodies.
Scientists—what remained of them—scattered across the floor. Some torn apart. Some reduced to bones. Others fused into the walls like they'd tried to escape and failed. The smell hit him a second later, rotted and metallic, so thick it should've made him vomit.
It didn't.
Bat steadied himself. His mind was loud, fractured—but not broken.
Tactical. Assess. Survive.
As he moved through the ruined base, his eyes adjusted further. Darkness meant nothing. Walls meant little. He could trace corridors without maps, see through collapsed passages, sense space where there should've been none.
That's when he found the files.
Research terminals, shattered screens, data cores half-buried under debris. He didn't hesitate. He gathered everything he could—drives, paper logs, handwritten notes. Whatever still existed.
Then he saw his name.
His file.
Medical scans. VIRE exposure levels. Stability reports. Emergency notes written in haste.
"Subject unstable. Cryogenic suspension required."
"This is the only way to save him."
"If we fail—at least he lives."
Bat lowered himself slowly.
He knelt beside the remains of a scientist, bones still dressed in a lab coat torn apart by claws.
"…Thank you," he said quietly.
That was all.
He left the base with the files secured.
Outside, the world was wrong.
Where steel and concrete once stood, a forest had taken root. Trees pierced broken structures. Grass swallowed roads. Nature had reclaimed everything.
Night covered it all.
Bat looked outward—and his vision stretched.
Farther than it should. Farther than possible.
He thought the city was close.
I can make it.
He ran.
The ground vanished beneath him.
Trees blurred. Wind tore past. His feet barely touched the earth as distance collapsed in seconds. To him, it felt normal—controlled.
To anyone else, it would've been impossible.
He reached the city.
Lights. Buildings. Streets. People.
But something was wrong.
He searched for the government headquarters. The base. The authority. Nothing. No flags. No symbols. No presence.
It hit him then.
They're gone.
Either destroyed… or replaced.
And then—
Sound exploded.
Heartbeats. Thousands of them. Voices layered over voices. Footsteps, breathing, whispers miles away crashing into his skull at once.
Bat grabbed his head and staggered.
Pain ripped through him like knives.
"Stop—" he gasped.
It didn't.
He ran.
Back the way he came. Faster. Deeper. Into the forest, into silence.
Only when the world emptied did the noise fade.
Bat collapsed against a tree, breathing hard.
Whatever he had become… it wasn't finished.
Far away.
In shadow.
Two figures stood before a larger presence, their forms distorted by darkness.
"Sir," the first said. "We've confirmed movement. A survivor."
The second tilted its head. "Description?"
"Disfigured. Masked. Fast. Not human."
Silence.
Then the voice from the shadows spoke.
"…So the hybrids remain."
A pause.
"Hunt it down."