The Fangs limped back into the basement through the rear entrance. Boots dragged across concrete. Uniforms were torn, smeared with dust and blood. Nobody spoke. Even Aya, usually the loudest, kept her head down. Milena was already waiting in the infirmary. Her jaw clenched when she saw Samira supported between Trella and Amelie, her face pale, one hand pressed to her bruised chest.
“Bed! Now!”
Samira tried a weak laugh but coughed instead. “Guess… I drew… the short straw.”
Trella started to step forward, but Milena’s tone snapped like a whip. “All of you—sit! I’ll check you after.”
Trella nodded. “Samira first. We’re scratched and bruised, but she nearly suffocated.”
"We don’t matter right now," Aya muttered under her breath.
Milena shot them a glare, but she didn’t argue. She guided Samira onto the bed, hooking her to oxygen and running a scanner over her ribs. Michelle ran down to the infirmary. “How is she?”
“Two fractures, broken ribs, bruised lung. She is lucky the lungs were not punctured.”
While Milena worked, the others crowded around the metal table where the body of the berserk cyborg lay under a tarp. Even covered, the outline was disturbingly human. Liza kept staring. Aiko leaned against the wall, silent and unreadable. Michelle slipped in quietly. She hadn’t been on the strike team, but seeing her friends wounded made her stomach twist. She froze at the sight of the body bag. “She was… our age.”
No one argued. Milena finished stabilizing Samira and turned, tugging on a pair of gloves. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting. If there’s something in her biology that helps track the other two, I’ll find it.”
Amelie planted the scythe’s blade on the floor, resting both hands on its handle. “She fought like a demon. And they abandoned her. Tools. That’s all they see them as.”
Milena opened the bag and drew back the tarp. Even the hardened Fangs flinched at the mangled face and the burned-out ruin where the control device had been. Milena muttered quietly, almost to herself: “She was just a kid. And somebody turned her into this.”
Michelle took a step back, hands trembling slightly. “They stole her life.”
Trella lowered her eyes. “No… they erased it.”
The only sounds left were Samira’s slow, steady breaths under the oxygen mask and the quiet rasp of Milena’s scalpel as she began the autopsy.
The lifeless cyborg girl is stretched across the table. A deep gash across her neck and shattered plating reveal glints of silver and dark fiber. “Microfibers… everywhere. And this isn’t just plating, it’s a light metal mesh woven straight through muscle tissue.”
She taps a scalpel against a segment of torn synthetic sinew. “That explains why she could take half a magazine and keep moving.“
Talia slides a portable rig across the table, eyes wide as the screen flickers. She points to the shattered device from behind the girl’s ear. “And check this out. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
"Brain augmentations?" Dawson asked.
"More than that," Talia said. "Microsound frequency. Permanent hypnosis. Without it, the system collapses."
Trella swallowed hard. “Is there any chance we could bring them back? Make them… them again?”
Milena meets Trella’s gaze and shakes her head. “None. That brain was fried from the inside. By killing her, you did her a favor.”
The words land like a blade. Aiko flinches; even Maya looks away. Michelle’s voice is soft, almost trembling. “How many girls did actually die… before?”
Milena exhales slowly. “A lot. But none of them had to suffer. Not like this.”
Dawson picks up a vial of the extracted serum, the amber fluid catching the light. “This is a variant of Maya’s serum… weaker on its own. Maya was the only one who survived it. The others went crazy. Terminated.”
He sets the vial down. “I still remember it clearly. Compared to this—what we did was child’s play.”
“And we didn’t have technology like these fibers back then.” Milena added. “That might’ve been for the best.”
Dawson gestures at the ruined device. “We wanted supersoldiers, but we never wanted to strip them of their personalities. The girl on that table… she’s more like one of Talia’s drones. A machine in a human body.”
"We shut this down," Williams said. "Now."
Michelle brushes away a tear. “Microfibers, metal, serums. Those materials don’t grow on trees. Only a handful of facilities can produce this.”
Williams nods. “I won’t inform the brass yet. I’ll talk to Ferguson, cash in a few favors. Make it discreet.”
"We don’t know how far this goes," Dawson warned.
"So, the big question is, how do we kill them without getting killed ourselves?" Trella asked.
No one answers. The cyborg’s empty eyes stare at nothing and for a long moment, no one is able to move. Michelle broke the silence. “I’m more worried about something else—where that serum came from. Mr. Dawson, I thought the lab was blown up with all the research. Any chance any of the data survived? Or… any of the scientists?”
Dawson hesitated. “No. That lab became ground zero. The only scientist with actual knowledge still alive is Milena. We ran very tight security, and the guys working on the serum only had partial information. If anyone survived, he wouldn’t have the knowledge to create this.”
Milena nods. “That I can confirm. I know enough about the supplement serum to keep the girls alive. But if someone put me in a lab and told me to create the actual serum, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Dawson exhales, staring past them, as if seeing ghosts. “The scientists were paid well. There was only one leak attempt and…” He froze. “ …Jesus Christ.”
"What?" Trella asked.
Dawson rubs a hand over his mouth. “Can’t be… but it fits. Dr. Tien. A top scientist from the early days. He got greedy, tried to sell the data on the black market. We found out and killed him and also the buyer. I know they’re dead. I pulled the trigger. He must have hidden a backup copy we never knew about. He was finalizing Maya’s serum. That piece fits perfectly.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Michelle’s face pales. “…and someone dug up that data and continued his work.”
“Damn. This just got a hell lot more dangerous.” Williams said.
Trella suddenly realised something. “Something just hit me. Maybe a coincidence, but… Agent Williams, when did you say that girl went missing?”
“About eighteen months ago. Why?”
“A few weeks ago, we did a job for you—hitting the human traffickers. When we opened the container, we found a bunch of Chinese girls. Around the same age as these cyborgs.”
The air felt electric.
“A batch of ‘new recruits’? You’re right. It might be a coincidence, but we can’t be sure. I’ll contact Immigration, see what I can dig up.”
No one speaks. The silent weight of what’s been unleashed hangs over the room like a storm about to break. The front door clicks shut behind Williams, leaving the infirmary in suffocating silence.
"We could’ve been her," Liza whispered.
“We’ve seen a lot of messed up things,” Amelie said “But this… this takes the cake..”
Maya lowers her gaze, guilt flickering across her face. “In a way we are her. They just… didn’t break us all the way.”
Milena exhales shakily. She’s usually composed, but her voice trembles. “When I left that lab, I thought the worst was over. But seeing this, it’s like the nightmare found its way back.”
Talia gently closes her laptop, her usual snark replaced by a quiet, bitter edge. “We’ve fought mercs, gangs, traffickers, but this isn’t just another job. Somebody dug up hell itself and gave it a body.”
Amelie looks at Trella. ”What do we even do now? Just wait for the next batch to come knocking?”
Trella shakes her head, eyes burning. “No. We find them. We end this. For her… and for every girl they’re planning to enslave.”
The girls exchange silent glances. The fear in the room doesn’t vanish, but beneath it, something else begins to form: resolve.
***
A dimly lit motel room was turned into a makeshift command post. Empty coffee cups and half-burned cigarettes litter the table. A cheap map of the city is tacked to the wall, red string crisscrossing like a spiderweb. Kane stands with the phone pressed hard against his ear. He looks like he’s chewing on nails.
“Don’t feed me excuses, Schmidt. Those ‘assets of yours’—one has lost a hand and one’s scrap! And they ran away!”
Schmidt’s laugh is light and dismissive. “Relax, Kane. Prototypes are meant to be broken. Now we know their limits. And yours. Valuable data, wouldn’t you agree?”
Kane slams his palm onto the table. “Valuable data? They tore through a dozen guns and still couldn’t finish the job! I asked for backup, not a science fair!”
“And yet… you’re still breathing. You should thank me.”
Kane grits his teeth, breath hissing between them. “This isn’t over. Next time, they won’t walk away.”
He ends the call without waiting for a reply. For a moment, he just stands there in silence. Then he sweeps the coffee cups and ashtray off the table with one furious motion across the floor.
***
Sunday morning. Sunlight filters through dusty blinds. Trella taps a map spread across the table. “They’re flesh and blood with some metal. Blades barely nicked them, rounds didn’t drop them. We need something cleaner and faster, before they close in.”
“Explosives work, but are too dangerous in close quarters,” Aya said.
“Armor-piercing and brute force.” Amelie suggested. “Take joints, necks, or heads, anywhere the armor doesn’t flex.”
Aiko's voice was quiet but sharp. “I saw they can feel pain. But pain doesn’t stop them. Severing limbs does.”
“Poison’s too slow,” Liza added. “Gas maybe, but not outside.”
Michelle sits near the encrypted laptop, scrolling through CIA case files.”I’m digging, but so far it’s noise. Random trafficking ops, nothing that screams ‘cyborg supply line.’ Could be one of them, or all, or none. Shipping teenagers isn’t new. And companies capable of weaving fibers like those? We’ve found a few. They either tried and failed or kept it under wraps. Nothing conclusive.”
At another console, Talia works through multiple tabs of patents and underground chatter. “If I overlay defense-contractor patents with underground material suppliers, we might trace who’s funneling the parts. But the serum’s a dead end. No leaks, no chatter. Like it never existed.”
Maya appears from the background. “I’ll take the ground patrol again. Talia gave me a signal tracker for their frequency.”
Trella scans their tired faces. “We will strike tonight if the window’s there. Waiting only gives Kane room to breathe.”
Every Fang nods. Even through their bruises, a grim fire has returned to their eyes.
***
Maya is riding around the area, checking warehouses, freightyards, abandoned buildings, anything that can be used as a hideout. Since they now know what frequency the cyborgs use, it will be a little bit easier to find them. After a while, bingo. An abandoned industrial building. The scanner picked up something. Maya stops to confirm.
“Cipher, found them.”
“Good job. Return to the orphanage. We′ll strike tonight.”
The abandoned steel yard sat silent under a bruised sky. The Fang girls moved like ghosts through rust and rubble: Aya hauled an ammo crate into place, Amelie’s BAR found a solid perch and Mei-Ling strung a rope dart across a corridor choke point. Talia remained in the van outside the perimeter, headset crackling as her drones fed live intel to her screen. “Two heat signatures. They’re moving west, straight toward the kill zone.”
Trella and Aya created noise with a kicked drum and a feigned shot. A glint of metal answered. A cyborg stepped from shadow, the one missing her hand. She hissed a signal, and her partner closed in.
Michelle’s quiet “go” triggered a chain of detonations. Rusted loaders shattered, gas drums erupted into fireballs, debris showering the yard. The handless cyborg was hammered by shrapnel but kept charging. Amelie’s BAR thundered, bullets sparking across micro-armored skin. Aya’s grenades rocked their footing, while Talia’s drones emitted pulsing counter-frequencies, the cyborgs faltered, staggered, then pressed on.
One cyborg barreled through falling sparks and slammed a punch into Anya’s ribs, hurling her several meters across the gravel. Anya groaned but rolled to her feet, dual Uzis barking in reply. Mei-Ling’s rope dart coiled around the cyborg’s ankle, yanking her balance, Aiko darted in, sword slicing between plates. Amelie abandoned the BAR, seized her scythe, and slashed deep into the cyborg’s thigh actuator.
The weakened cyborg stumbled, sparking. Trella advanced and finished her with a close-range shotgun blast to the device behind her ear. The crack of ruptured metal echoed, and the cyborg dropped, twitching.
The second cyborg hesitated, then bolted into the maze of skeletal warehouses, disappearing into the shadows.
“Talia, use a drone to follow her!”
“Scout drone deployed, pursuing the signal.“
Its thermal feed locked on the limping silhouette slipping into the night.
The steel yard quieted down. The Fangs regrouped, adrenaline fading. Anya brushed dust from her sleeve, ribs aching but intact. Trella looked to the sky. The hunt was far from over.
Talia comes out of the van. “Girls, I found the hideout. 3 miles away.”
Girls looked at each other, then at Trella.
“Let′s finish this.”
All girls gave her a silent nod, faces full of determination. And they went hunting.
***
The industrial park was silent. Two vans rolled to a stop outside the cracked-brick safehouse. Engines off, doors clicked and nine determined figures slid out. Trella scanned the darkened windows, then gave a single hand signal. The Fangs fanned out.
Inside, the damaged cyborg staggered through the doorway, microfibers shredded, blood spattering the floor. Kane spun from his desk, face twisted in fury. “You came back alone? And what did you drag to my door?”
She didn’t answer, just collapsed against a wall.
“Go out there and fix this!”
The last cyborg dangled out. A staccato of suppressed gunfire cracked. Then silence.
Kane snatched his phone, punching a number.
“Schmidt, I need extraction now. They’re here. Send reinforcements!”
“Reinforcements? You were warned. The Fangs aren’t amateurs. You ignored orders and blew the operation.”
“Those puppets you sent me were completely useless! Get me out!”
Schmidt’s voice was like ice. “Not useless. They gathered everything we needed. As for you—your usefulness has ended.”
The call ended. Kane stared at the dead phone. “Schmiiiidt!”
The front door creaked, nine girls stepped inside. Kane backed toward the desk, realizing there was nowhere to run. Trella’s shotgun stayed slung across her shoulder as she calmly drew her sidearm.
Trella’s voice was cold steel. “Victor Kane. Nice to finally meet you in person.”
She stepped closer, muzzle leveled at his forehead.
“You’ve caused us a lot of trouble.”
Kane opened his mouth, maybe to plead, maybe to curse, but Trella’s finger tightened. A single shot cracked through the room. Kane crumpled wordlessly to the floor.
The silence afterward was suffocating. Trella holstered her pistol without looking back.
“It’s done. But this isn’t over.
