Chapter 13 – I Hate These Monsters

【Esdeath PoV】

I was twenty-three when they offered me the director position.

Fresh out of the academy with honors, recommendations from three different generals, and a ice manipulation ability that could freeze a city block in under thirty seconds. I thought I was ready for anything. I thought I understood what “dangerous” meant.

I was wrong.

The facility sat in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests that animals refused to enter. The building looked normal from the outside, just another government black site with too many cameras and not enough windows. But the moment I stepped through those reinforced doors, I felt it.

The weight of something ancient pressing down on my chest.

“Director Esdeath, welcome to Special Containment.”

The outgoing director looked like he’d aged thirty years in five. His hands shook when he handed me the security clearance badge. His eyes kept darting to the hallway behind him, like something might burst through at any moment.

“How many inmates are we housing?”

“Seventeen active containments. Three in critical observation. One in voluntary confinement.”

He said it like he was reading a grocery list, but his voice cracked on the last word.

“Voluntary?”

“Patient Zero. He stays because he wants to. We built the cell he requested, we gave him the privileges he demanded, and we pretend we’re in control.”

That should have been my first warning sign.

The second warning came during the facility tour. We stopped outside Cellblock Seven, where the pressure made my ears pop. The reinforced titanium door had seventeen locks, each one glowing with active containment wards.

“Thalia. The Void Entity. She’s been here for six years.”

“Has she ever tried to escape?”

The director laughed, a hollow sound that echoed in the empty hallway.

“Every day. We lose three guards a week to psychological damage just from proximity. She generates localized reality distortions when she’s bored. Last month she turned the cafeteria into an ocean. Two people drowned before we could pull them out.”

I stared at the door, watching frost spread across its surface.

“How do you contain her?”

“We don’t. She contains herself. Mostly.”

That word hung in the air like a threat.

The third warning came in Cellblock Nine, where Loki was housed. The chaos goddess who treated reality like a suggestion. The walls of her cell shifted colors, furniture floated at random intervals, and the air smelled like burnt sugar and ozone.

“She’s relatively harmless.”

“Relatively?”

“She only plays pranks. Mind games. Psychological torture disguised as entertainment. Last week she convinced the entire night shift they were stuck in a time loop. We had to bring in therapists.”

I watched through the observation window as objects spun through the air with no regard for physics.

“And we keep her here because?”

“Because if we let her go, she’d turn the entire eastern seaboard into her personal playground.”

Fair point.

The fourth warning should have made me walk away. We passed the medical wing, where I saw three guards strapped to beds, their eyes vacant and staring at nothing. One of them was crying silently, tears streaming down his face while his mouth moved in soundless screams.

“Exposure to the shapeshifter in Block Twelve. She feeds on fear. These men will recover in a few months, assuming the nightmares don’t drive them to suicide first.”

The outgoing director said it so casually, like permanent psychological damage was just part of the job description.

“What’s our staff retention rate?”

“Six months average. Three months for guards in direct contact with inmates. We’re always hiring.”

I should have quit right there. Should have handed back the badge and walked out. But I was young, arrogant, and convinced my powers made me special. I thought I could handle anything these monsters threw at me.

The first month proved me wrong.

Thalia went into a rage state when one of the guards forgot to log her daily checkup on time. The temperature in her entire sector dropped to negative forty in minutes. The containment glass started to crack. Alarms screamed through the facility while I scrambled to assemble a response team.

By the time we got there, three guards were down with severe frostbite. One would lose both hands. Thalia stood in the center of her frozen cell, her eyes glowing with cosmic fury, and she smiled at me through the observation window.

“You’re not him.”

Her voice echoed directly in my skull, bypassing my ears entirely.

“You’ll never be him.”

I didn’t know who she meant. Didn’t care. I just needed her to stop before she killed someone.

“Stand down or we activate the suppression field.”

“Your suppression field is a joke. I stay here because I choose to. Remember that, little director.”

She was right. The field wouldn’t hold her if she really wanted out. We both knew it. That realization kept me awake for three days straight.

The second month brought Loki’s chaos to a new level. She hacked into the facility’s security system somehow, despite having no access to technology. She replaced all the camera feeds with looping footage from a children’s cartoon. When we finally noticed, she’d been free-roaming the facility for six hours.

We found her in the kitchen making pancakes.

“Good morning, Director! Want some? I made them with extra chaos!”

I stood there in full tactical gear, surrounded by armed guards, staring at a chaos goddess flipping pancakes with magic.

“Back to your cell. Now.”

“But I haven’t finished breakfast! That’s so rude, Director!”

It took four hours of negotiation to get her back. Four hours where she held the entire facility hostage with the threat of turning our reality into a cartoon. She finally agreed to return in exchange for a magazine subscription and a new bookshelf.

A bookshelf. That was the price of containing a goddess.

The third month was when people started dying.

The shapeshifter in Block Twelve figured out how to possess guards through line of sight. She’d slip into their bodies, use them to access restricted areas, and feed on the fear of their coworkers. We lost two people before we figured out what was happening. Found them in their quarters, hearts stopped from sheer terror, their faces frozen in expressions of absolute horror.

I implemented new protocols. Rotating shifts. Mandatory psychological evaluations. Hazard pay increases. None of it helped. The guards were terrified, the inmates were getting bolder, and I was barely holding everything together with ice and desperation.

Gaia decided she wanted a garden. She started transforming her cell into a cottage, complete with flowers that grew through solid titanium. When we tried to cut them down, they grew back within hours. She’d hum cheerfully while reality warped around her, turning sterile concrete into pastoral countryside.

“This needs sunlight, dears. Could you remove the ceiling?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to make my own.”

She created an artificial sun in her cell. It burned with actual solar radiation. Three technicians went blind trying to shut it down before I negotiated a compromise involving grow lights and stricter meal schedules.

Every day brought a new crisis. Every week we lost more staff. I was running on coffee and fury, barely sleeping, constantly waiting for the next disaster. My ice powers were the only thing keeping me sane, the cold focus cutting through the chaos.

I started to understand why the previous director looked so broken.

Month six was my breaking point. Multiple inmates decided to test their boundaries simultaneously. Coordinated chaos that nearly brought the whole facility down. Thalia froze half the building, Loki turned the other half into a funhouse, and the shapeshifter possessed twelve guards at once.

We had a full containment breach in three sectors.

I stood in the control room, watching everything fall apart on the monitors, and I realized the truth. We weren’t containing these entities. We were just politely asking them to stay. The moment they all decided to leave together, we were finished.

I was drafting my resignation letter when the Warden called me into his office.

“We have a solution.”

I looked up from my computer, exhausted beyond words.

“Unless your solution involves a nuclear weapon, I’m not interested.”

“Better. We’re bringing in a new guard.”

“Another guard won’t fix this.”

“This one will. He’s immune.”

I laughed, a bitter sound that tasted like defeat.

“Immune to what? Reality manipulation? Psychic attacks? Existential dread?”

“All of it. Complete immunity. He inherited it from his father.”

Something in his tone made me pause.

“His father?”

The Warden pulled up a file on his computer and turned the screen toward me. I read the name at the top and felt my blood freeze in my veins.

“Patient Zero. The first inmate. The one we can’t actually contain.”

“He has a son?”

“Twenty-four years old. Grew up knowing exactly what his father is. He’s been training for this his entire life.”

I stared at the photo attached to the file. Young guy, early twenties, tired eyes that looked older than they should. He didn’t look special. Didn’t look like someone who could survive five minutes in this nightmare facility.

“When does he start?”

“Monday morning. His name is Kai Evans. Let’s see what he’s made of.”