The Spire was built to hold the worst.
A monolithic tower rising from the Arctic Shelf, it was said to be escape-proof. Ten levels, each more secure than the last. Level Four — deep in the freezing core — was where they kept the monsters that couldn't be silenced, bought, or contained by collars.
And yet, it started with a flicker.
A soft, barely noticeable pulse in the lights. A gentle hum in the walls, like a sleeping beast twitching in its dream. No alarms. No screams. Not yet.
Then the power died.
In one breathless moment, all the reinforced doors, sedative drip systems, dampener fields, and neural locks went dark. The Spire fell silent, then erupted into chaos.
The prison break began.
Steel groaned as cell doors slid open like tombs.
On Level Four, silence was not an option. Not here. Not among these… things.
The first to move was Anton Volkov — a man whose bones had been warped in a black-site experiment in Siberia. Seven-foot-four in human form, he roared as he took his monstrous shape: muscles splitting skin, bones snapping and reforming. He became a bear the size of a garbage truck, fur matted with scars, eyes feral with bloodlust.
He charged through a wall as if it were paper, roaring in Russian as guards opened fire, only to be turned to meat in seconds.
Sirens finally kicked in. Too late.
The Spire burned with riot and fire and howling. Villains screamed. Some for joy. Some for vengeance. Some just because it felt good.
But none of them were the true threat.
No, the one everyone feared wasn't the strongest, or the largest.
It was the boy in Cell 9.
Elijah "Eli" Marris sat on his cot as chaos bloomed around him.
They hadn't opened his door.
Of course they hadn't.
His cell was triple-sealed with mirror walls and emotion-dampening tech. He watched the chaos reflected in a dozen different angles — the way a god might look at the world through broken glass.
Then he smiled. Wide. Sincere. Beautiful.
"I can hear you," he whispered, his voice hushed, reverent. "All of you..."
The rage above him. The grief in the guards. The manic joy of a man who set himself on fire just to taste what freedom felt like again. Eli felt it all.
He breathed it in.
And then the emotion-dampeners flickered.
He blinked once.
Then the glass cracked.
It started like a cough in God's throat.
Every inmate within a 50-meter radius screamed — some collapsing to their knees, others vomiting blood, others clawing their own skin off. Rage bloomed inside them like nuclear fire.
One villain, known only as Blackjester, tore out his own eyes screaming, "Get it OUT! GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!"
And from the center of it all, Eli stepped through the broken glass of his cell, barefoot, face lit with childlike wonder.
A pair of guards tried to tranquilize him.
They got within ten feet.
Their vision bled red. They screamed, dropped their weapons, and turned on each other. One bit off his own tongue. The other begged for someone to end it.
Eli kept walking, trailing fingers along the wall, leaving bloody prints shaped like smiles.
The Spire was no longer a prison.
It was a war zone of broken minds and rampaging bodies. The security team couldn't control it. The Warden had already fled in an emergency capsule.
The breakout was total. Level after level collapsed into anarchy.
And still, Eli walked.
He passed monsters who avoided him like a plague. Even Volkov — now the size of a tank, his snout dripping gore — stopped as Eli passed. The great beast whimpered.
Because he felt it. All of it. What Eli carried inside — the trauma, the ache, the bottomless well of secondhand agony.
And the worst part?
It felt good to Eli.
Eli didn't fight.
He touched.
A woman who could create acid with her blood tried to strike him. He touched her hand — just a brush of the fingers.
She crumpled, sobbing, begging her mother for forgiveness.
He passed a telepath trying to dominate the minds of others — the man howled as Eli stared into his soul, causing an echo chamber of torment.
The Spire couldn't hold him. Never could.
Because Grinlock didn't break walls. He broke people.
By the time the last evac chopper left the top level, Eli had vanished into the snowstorm outside.
Dozens had escaped. Hundreds had tried.
But only one was never found.
Not a single camera caught his escape. Not a single tracker worked.
Only the aftermath was clear: a spiral pattern in the snow outside the perimeter, drawn in what looked like blood and ash. A trail of prison uniforms left like breadcrumbs. The final piece was a mirror, cracked in half, stuck upright in the snow — facing the horizon.
One Month Later
The Spire had been retaken. Most inmates rounded up. Volkov was found two towns over, eating elk and speaking in grunts. A woman who could bend metal with her voice turned herself in after losing control and nearly killing her children.
But Eli?
Eli was gone.
Worse — he was a ghost story now.
People reported strange group hallucinations in small towns. Bar fights where a dozen men killed each other over nothing. Riot outbreaks that started with laughter and ended in weeping.
And in every report — a boy with a smile too wide for his face, walking barefoot like he didn't know he was free.
The government scrambled to cover it up.
But they knew.
They had created him.
They had taken a broken boy and forced a dead villain's power into his soul.
And now he was out there — the child who loved villains too much. Who didn't want to conquer the world. Just feel it.
Every. Broken. Piece.