Face off: Victor Vs Zero

Victor moved quickly through Decontamination Zone 3, the emergency lights painting the walls in red pulses. At the corridor’s end, the reinforced door had been torn open—not pried. Ripped. Claw marks—jagged and unnatural—ran along the walls.

The silence was almost reverent, broken only by the low hum of failed ventilation systems and the crunch of broken glass underfoot.

Victor now moved with precision, each step echoing against steel and broken tile. The corridor to the Nest was littered with bodies —guards, scientists, torn apart with grotesque precision. Limbs scattered. Faces frozen in agony. Victor stepped carefully over the scattered remains of personnel. The air was thick with the coppery stench of death.

He checked his phone. No heat signatures along the corridor or beyond the Nest door.

Then—schluck… schluck…

A wet dragging sound.

The door creaked open.

Zero stood in the doorway—shirtless and drenched in blood, his skin white as a ghost. In his hand, he held a long canister—part of it torn, fleshy strands dangling from its edge. He took one step forward and tilted his head.

“You…” His voice was deep, low, hypnotic. “Do I know you, or are you here to avenge your comrades?”

Victor slid his phone away. “Neither. I’m here to kill you.”

Zero smirked. “You mean attempt.”

Victor wasted no time.

He immediately grabbed a guard’s body and hurled it straight at Zero in one swift motion. The body collided with the Nest door—slamming it shut as Zero sidestepped. In that instant, Victor closed the distance, hand lashing forward in a precise spear strike aimed at Zero’s neck.

Zero’s blood reacted—shhhk!—crystallizing mid-air, forming a jagged shield.

The impact sent Zero stumbling back.

Zero blinked—more amused than alarmed. “Fascinating…to think my blood reacted to your attack. That’s a first.”

He relaxed, the blood sliding back beneath his skin like a serpent retreating.

“Who are you?”

Victor said nothing.

Zero exhaled. “A man of few syllables. Fine. I was in a hurry, but I can indulge you—briefly.”

He placed the canister reverently by the door.

Then he spread his arms wide — forming curved claws along his fingers. His back twisted grotesquely, blood and bone fusing into skeletal wings like jagged ribs stretching wide.

Their eyes met—blue on brown.

Victor raised his hands in a defensive pose. He turned his head left then right, taking in his environment. It was a closed tiny corridor with rails to his left, near a containment pod secured with wires and a huge window to his right.

“You really believe you can defeat me, don’t you?” Zero remarked.

Zero's skeletal wings snapped open. In a blur, he lunged—claws slashing in a frenzy. Victor ducked the first blood claw, countering with a brutal jab to Zero’s ribs. The hit landed—a shockwave rippling through the corridor. Zero slid back, boots scraping on tile.

He laughed.

Zero drove his fingers into his chest, pulling out a ribbon of blood and snapping it into a whip.

CRACK! It lashed Victor’s arm, slicing skin and cloth. Blood sprayed.

Victor didn’t flinch. He grabbed the whip, yanked it free, and tossed it aside. The wound on his arm sealed with unnatural speed.

Zero narrowed his eyes. “You’re not human, are you?”

Victor charged again, shoulder first. They collided like freight trains, fists flying—every blow creating shockwaves that shattered nearby screens and cracked the walls. Zero grunted as Victor landed a brutal hook to the jaw, sending him spiraling into a containment pod.

The machine exploded, hissing nitrogen mist into the area.

Zero emerged, laughing. “Hey, now. Don’t get so amped up.”

Then he shifted.

His skin bulged, warped. Blood erupted along his shoulders, solidifying into a twisted armor of crimson glass, jagged and alive.

“I think you’ll find… I’m not quite killable,” Zero said, voice lower now, distorted.

Victor smirked and lunged again, ducking a scythe of blood twisting mid-air, and driving his knuckles into Zero’s elbow. The joint popped—dislocated.

Zero grinned and reformed the arm with pulsing tissue. “That was cute. Let me guess—target the joints, slow me down, then deliver a fatal blow? Mmm. A clever tactic but ineffective.”

Zero’s eyes glowed blue as he condensed his blood into a long spear, “You don’t seem to know who you’re up against. I am the Apex predator— the Crimson Sovereign. Everything else is inferior to me. Let me show you what I mean.”

Victor didn’t respond—but his eyes shifted again, taking in his surroundings. The containment pod was a bit damaged but was useless to him. He had to think of a way to beat or incapacitate him.

{He’s evolving. Faster than I anticipated. I should get him outside away from the others. Emily… I have to end this before he reaches her.}

But that was easier said than done. Every cell in his body screamed in pain. Victor was clearly stronger than a normal human but his strength wasn’t at full. And Zero was only growing stronger.

Zero threw the blood spear right at him. Victor evaded but the spear moved as it got closer to his face, shifting into an axe. He just managed to react fast enough for the axe to graze his right cheek slightly.

Zero lunged—wings flaring wide like tattered sails of war, claws sweeping with lethal precision. His movements blurred, not fueled by rage or pain but by excitement, he sliced the air toward Victor.

Victor moved like a ghost through walls, sliding just out of reach. A sidestep, a pivot, then a sudden burst forward. He caught Zero’s wrist mid-strike, twisting it hard enough to snap bone had Zero been anyone else. With a guttural roar, Victor planted his heel and hurled Zero upward like a ragdoll.

Zero’s body crashed into the reinforced platform above with a boom that sent cracks spiderwebbing across its surface. The impact rippled through the structure—but Victor wasn’t done.

He leapt after him.

A single Jump—gravity-defying, fueled by muscle and sheer will—slammed into Zero mid-air like a missile. The platform couldn’t withstand the force. It shattered, raining reinforced glass and concrete in a thunderous cascade below.

The explosion of debris blurred the world for a moment. Dust. Shards. Flashes of red emergency lighting. Zero twisted mid-fall, grabbing onto the fractured edge of the corridor to stop his descent.

Victor landed hard beside him, knees digging into steel. His eyes scanned forward—instinctually—searching for threat.

And just for a second…
A flash of color through the dust.
Movement.

His gaze locked onto a figure across the corridor—a girl shielding someone small beneath her coat, eyes wide, frozen. Red curls. Pale face. Her gaze locked with his—briefly.

{Emily?}

Then the moment passed before he could process it as Zero crashed into him.

Victor rose slowly, blood trailing down his arm. From where they landed, were a few bodies of guards. Zero set a finger down on the corridor, his blood emerged from his finger onto the floor, reaching the dead guards. Their bodies twitched and rose up mechanically into humanoid puppets for Zero to control.

Victor exhaled. Shifted his stance.

The first puppet lunged.

He spun past it, elbow shattering its chest. Another came. He parried, kicked, spun. Each strike was surgical landing a fatal blow instantly.

“You really are incredible and dare I say…fun.”

Zero stomped once. The ground beneath them cracked.

His blood spilled from his feet onto the floor—pools drawn from the dead corpses rose like serpents under Zero’s call. They hissed and coiled, forming the grotesque silhouettes of humanoid constructs—hollow blood puppets, eyeless and twitching.

“I see it now,” Zero said from across the corridor. “You’re like me.”

Victor’s lips curled. “I’m nothing like you.”

“Oh, but you are. Albeit an inferior version. I can’t explain it but I feel a certain kinship with you. Something I only ever felt with my mother.”

“You mean the mother you killed?” Victor asked catching his breath.

“An unfortunate incident, I was not in my best mind at the time, I was being conceived after all. I though if could find her, bring her back, give her my blood but her body is beyond repair. Still, I will offer you the chance she couldn't have. To join me as a General of my growing Hive. Together we could remake the world. Our kind at the top.”

“No thanks.”

Zero narrowed his eyes. "Disappointing."

The blood puppets fell down as his blood melted into liquid once more—rushing back toward him, reforming into twin scythe-blades around his forearms.

He charged.

They collided mid-air.

Victor redirected the scythe’s first swing, letting it graze his shoulder in exchange for landing a punch under Zero’s chin. But Zero’s head snapped back too fast—his neck dislocating, only to snap itself back into place with a nauseating crack.

Victor grimaced. He launched a series of feints—knee to the ribs, elbow to temple, a slide into a foot sweep. Zero absorbed each hit, laughing through the pain.

From his back, blood javelins shot out like missiles.

Victor flipped, snatched a wall panel mid-air, and hurled it—blocking the tendrils. Zero surged through—hand morphing into a claw, latching onto Victor’s leg.

Victor anchored his foot, twisted—CRACK!—his heel shattered Zero’s wrist into crystal shards.

Still, Zero leaned in, face close, whispering:

“Is that… all you can do?”