NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2: Chapter 2
**Late at Night**
After finishing dinner with his peers, Zedd returned to his dorm room. He lay down on his bed, allowing himself to drift into sleep. For now, he rested, his mind already formulating plans for the next day.
At precisely 2 AM, Zedd woke up. Silently, he snuck out of the dorm building, ensuring no one noticed him. Moving swiftly, he reached the academy building. Scaling the walls with ease, he picked the lock and slipped inside. He navigated his way to the second floor—his secret haven.
The second floor had been abandoned for years, and no one ventured there anymore, making it the perfect spot for privacy. Zedd pushed open the door to an old classroom, which now served as his secret laboratory. Inside, shelves lined the walls, filled with vials of chemicals and surgical instruments. Several fellow students and instructors were bound in chains, their bodies ravaged by starvation. Some were missing limbs, while others had white, pale substances grafted onto their flesh.
For the past year, Zedd had been conducting grotesque experiments, using human test subjects to achieve his ultimate goal: the creation of synthetic tissue. He envisioned a breakthrough that would eliminate the human body's limitations—the need for food, water, and rest. With his synthetic tissue, injuries like losing a limb could be rendered trivial, and fatigue would become a relic of the past.
Zedd donned his surgical gloves and selected his tools. He approached his latest test subject, a 50-year-old instructor. The professor's cries of pain, muffled by a gag, echoed through the room as Zedd began cutting away the man's flesh. The procedure was meticulous but merciless. Zedd had no sympathy left; it had been stripped away by countless failed experiments.
When the professor finally succumbed to the agony and died, Zedd sighed in disappointment. "Pathetic," he muttered under his breath. "I should have expected him to die from the pain. I'm a little disappointed, though. During the last war, they said this professor endured enemy torture without breaking. I guess those rumors were exaggerated. Or maybe age has weakened his resilience."
Shrugging off the failure, Zedd turned to his next test subject—a junior student. The boy had been lured into the lab a week ago, knocked unconscious, and chained in place. Without hesitation, Zedd strapped the student to a table and began his gruesome work. Despite the student's muffled cries and pleas for mercy, Zedd remained unfazed.
He carefully grafted the synthetic tissue onto the student's arm, but once again, the subject's body rejected the tissue, leading to death. Zedd grimaced in frustration. "Another failure," he thought. "Thirty experiments, thirty deaths. No survivor, no success. The formula must still be flawed. I'll need to make adjustments."
As the first light of dawn began creeping through the windows, Zedd realized it was time to leave. He removed his bloody gloves, washed his hands, and slipped out of the building as stealthily as he had entered. Returning to his dorm room, he lay down, drifting off to a brief sleep.
**A Normal Day**
By 4 AM, Zedd was awake again. He participated in the morning training exercises, following the rigorous routine expected at the military academy. After brushing his teeth, donning his uniform, and eating breakfast, he joined the day's classes.
The day was filled with lessons in martial arts, survival skills, medical training, and sparring. Zedd excelled in every subject. His instructors praised his knowledge, discipline, and skill, unaware of the darkness he hid. His peers admired him, seeing only a diligent and intelligent student.
The seed of Zedd's twisted ambitions had been planted a year ago when, during a C-rank escort mission, he witnessed his friend Kayden severely injured. That moment made him question the fragility of the human body and inspired his obsession with overcoming its limitations.
He had spent weeks researching biology and human anatomy, eventually setting up his laboratory in the abandoned classroom on the second floor of the academy. There, he began luring classmates and even instructors, using them as unwilling participants in his experiments. Despite a year of effort and thirty murders, he had yet to achieve a breakthrough.
**Suspicion Grows**
At the end of the day's classes, Zedd packed his books and walked out of the academy with his friends Kayden and Murray.
"Hey, Zedd," Murray said. "Did you hear about the missing reports? Two more of our classmates were declared missing. That makes thirty people gone in the last year, with no trace of them."
"Yeah, I heard," Zedd replied nonchalantly. "But what can we do about it?"
Without waiting for a response, he walked away, leaving Kayden and Murray exchanging uneasy glances.
"There's something off about him," Kayden said. "He never hangs out with us anymore, always locked away in his dorm room."
"Maybe he's just focused on his studies," Murray suggested, though his tone was uncertain.
Still, neither could shake the nagging feeling that Zedd was hiding something far darker than they could imagine.