Tang Coco had been hiding on the freighter for a full day, yesterday’s dusk to today’s dusk, like a shadow folded into steel.

She crouched in a cargo locker in the hold, fasting and sleepless, her calm like a cold pond under moonlight.

She waited for an opening, a cat before the pounce.

This afternoon, the seam finally split.

“All staff and technicians, assemble on the foredeck.”

The shipwide speakers crackled with a man’s voice, like rust waking in rain.

Hearing it in the locker, Tang Coco peered through a slit like an owl in brush.

No one nearby.

She slipped out, smoothed her clothes like wiping dew, and walked for the foredeck as if she belonged.

As she walked, people gathered around her like a slow tide.

She watched the workers and the men in suits, unease pricking like thorns.

Their faces were wrong—eyes dead ahead, steps mechanical, like puppets wound too tight.

That helped.

Puppets don’t question the odd leaf in the wind.

No one looked twice at Tang Coco.

They reached the foredeck, fifty or sixty souls, a shoal of orange uniforms and a sprinkle of technicians.

The techs looked normal, mouths moving, eyes alive, like lanterns in a fog.

“Good. If everyone’s here, we’ll begin.”

The suited youth she’d seen at the pier stood high before the bridge, a hawk on a rail.

The technicians broke off and moved to prepped machines, each to their station like cogs meshing.

Bzz—

A radar-like array spun up beside them, spitting sparks like ink lightning.

Tang Coco frowned; the sparks were black, a stain on the air.

“Ugh… ah! Ah!”

“Ah… ah!”

Around her, dozens of workers clutched their chests and screamed, voices like torn canvas.

Some dropped and writhed, fish gasping on a dry deck.

What’s happening?

The thought flashed cold, then she bent into the scene, palms to chest, acting like pain was a hook in her ribs.

She kept her head low, her voice caged; even her scream turns heads, and that would be a bad lantern to light.

She didn’t idle.

While writhing, she shoulder-checked a nearby youth and sent him down like a felled sapling.

In the chaos, she yanked open his shirt—cough, mission needs, don’t overthink—and stole a look.

She froze for a heartbeat.

At his heart, a black rhombus was embedded, skin split like dry earth and laced with thin tubes.

The device pulsed with purple-black light, beating like a second heart under ice.

So that’s it… they’ve all been altered.

The realization rose like smoke.

But why call them here just to drown them in pain?

The answer peeled itself open.

In the middle of the deck, four people went suddenly still, as if surf turned to glass.

They stood, lifted their heads toward the suited youth, and their pupils darkened to pitch, like wells without bottom.

“Good. Four already. Have them go in and wait.”

The youth’s voice held a spark of excitement, a boy with a new toy.

A tech swung open a nearby shipping container.

The four passed through the chorus of screams like knives through cloth, and vanished inside.

So that’s it.

They’re sorting the fit, then finishing the remold.

The thought slid through Tang Coco’s mind like a blade into water.

“ROAR!”

A bellow shook the deck.

She turned and saw a youth twisted into something wrong, veins like black vines, eyes stretched so wide the corners might split.

His limbs swelled, trunks of meat and rage.

“Yaaah!”

A shriek sliced in from another angle, a woman breaking into a run of madness.

Her body twisted to match the man’s, but her arms didn’t bulk; her fingernails elongated and warped, ten hooked blades, like thorns gone feral.

“ROAR!”

The man roared at her, shoved the crowd aside like reeds, and charged.

He reached her in a bound and hammered down a giant fist.

She moved like a swallow in a storm, flashed behind him, and stabbed her hand for his skull.

“ROAR!”

He howled.

A skin of black particles slid over him, a carapace of soot.

Her hand hit the layer and was ground to pulp, petals crushed under millstones.

…!

Tang Coco stared at the black-wrapped brute, a cold wave rolling up her spine.

The energy shiver felt close to I Energy, a cousin in shadow.

“Yaaah!”

The woman screamed.

He gave no quarter.

His other arm, packed with black particles, scythed down, and his blow smashed the rhombus at her heart.

She flew, struck a container with a dull ring, and slid down like a broken banner.

“Didn’t expect a trial subject that can use dark particles…”

The suited youth watched the black-sheathed monster like a collector admiring a flaw.

“But… a failure in the end. Pity.”

He drew a silver pistol from his waist, moonlight captured in metal, a design Tang Coco had never seen.

He leveled it at the black beast.

Bang!

The report was crisp as snapping ice.

The bullet slipped through the black particles without a ripple, then cut the purple-black rhombus like paper.

Thud.

The monster fell, a felled statue.

…

Tang Coco frowned at the fallen thing.

She knew that particle skin’s defense; it was a wall in a storm.

Yet the pistol carried no Anomalous Energy.

That meant the gun—or its bullets—could pierce I Energy like a needle through silk.

That was a blade at her throat.

Fear didn’t root her.

Instead, resolve coiled like a spring.

She would take that pistol; it might crack a Dark Ability User’s energy field.

The testing ground kept turning.

Some walked into the container, their steps like a funeral march.

Some died under their own, or under the suited youth’s cold muzzle.

Bodies thinned; the deck emptied like ebbing tide.

Problem: how to leave.

She slid toward the last cluster of a dozen, moving like a shadow between stones.

A man snapped.

He swung wild at those near him, a storm with fists.

Opportunity.

She read his rhythm, spotted the opening, and stepped into his punch like a clumsy stumble.

Thump!

Bang!

The first sound was his fist landing in her chest, a drumbeat under armor.

The second was the rhombus in his heart punched through by a bullet.

Two bodies fell together, a pair of cut kites, and Tang Coco went face-down among the dead.

“Tch. Separate them…”

The suited youth clicked his tongue at the mess a berserker had made, annoyance like grit in teeth.

Ten minutes later, the rest finished.

Of the original fifty or sixty, only a dozen or so had gone into the container; the rest gave their lives to the sea air—Tang Coco not included.

“Not bad. Sixteen successes this time.”

He nodded at the view, satisfied by scarcity like a miser pleased by gold.

How many had died before, for him to call this good?

“The rest is yours.”

He said it to the foreman at his side, then turned and walked into the bridge like a shadow retreating.

The foreman came down the stairs, boots clacking like stones, stepping around corpses sprawled on the armored plating.

He didn’t flinch at the blood in the air; hard edges all the way through.

“What are you doing just standing there? Toss them into the sea.”

He barked at the techs loitering by the machines.

“W-wait… there’s an issue…”

A tech’s voice trembled like a wire.

“Hm? What?”

The foreman strode toward the instruments, curiosity like a knife point.

“It shows… one experimental core is still running.”

The tech frowned at the readout, a wrinkle in calm water.

“Hm?”

The foreman’s brow tightened.

He turned and looked over the field of bodies, a scavenger eyeing bones.

“Heh. A lab rat greedy for life, then. Let’s see who fears death without a heart.”

His mouth curled.

He lifted his right hand, and a black old-style flintlock appeared like a ghost relic, a sharp bayonet hanging from its nose.

He paced onto the deck and began to probe corpses with the bayonet, a farmer turning soil.

Tang Coco lay near the middle, a stone in the pond.

He started at the rim and spiraled inward, a hawk tightening circles.

She didn’t twitch.

Minutes later, the foreman reached center.

“So… you’re here, hmm? Little mouse.”

He didn’t kneel to check.

He lifted the gun and fired.

Bang, bang!

Two shots cracked, neat as knuckles.

They hit two bodies beside Tang Coco, meat jolted by iron.

Bang, bang!

Two more.

These thumped into Tang Coco’s back.

Bang!

The impact rang not like flesh but like a bullet on steel plate, a bell struck under mud.

“Mmm—ah.”

Tang Coco let a soft sound slip, the note warm as a brushstroke—temptation where there should be silence.

“Uh???? WTF????”

The foreman stared at the “corpse,” mind blank as snow.

“W-what was that? Did I mishear? Which one of you is watching something not safe for work?!”

He wheeled on the techs, cheeks twitching.

“N-no… not now… who’d watch that now…”

A tech answered, deadpan misery, like rain on damp clothes.

“Uh…”

The foreman shook his head, then nudged the “corpse” with the bayonet, a cautious poke.

“Mmm—ah… mm—mm…”

The strange sound blossomed again, a flower out of place on a grave.

“What the—what is happening!”

He swore, flung the long gun aside, and crouched, reaching to flip the body over—

Face-down on the boards, Tang Coco’s mouth curled, a fox’s smile under fallen leaves.