CHAPTER 3 — Prisoner 731
Mason hid the dog tag inside his fist before anyone saw it.
The prison was chaos.
Inmates screamed from the balconies. Guards shoved men back into their cells. Marcus stood above the arena, his face pale with rage.
Daniel Cross was gone.
But the name on the dog tag was real.
Eli Kane.
Mason’s little brother.
The boy who used to sleep with a baseball bat under his bed because he thought monsters came at night.
The same boy Mason believed he had buried twelve years ago.
Mason looked up at Marcus.
Marcus looked back.
And in that single glance, Mason understood everything.
Marcus hadn’t just been running illegal fights.
He had been guarding a secret.
That night, Mason waited until lockdown. Then he tore the metal frame from his bunk, broke the lock on his cell, and disappeared into the lower tunnels of the prison—places even guards avoided.
Behind the laundry room, he found a sealed door marked:
MEDICAL STORAGE — DO NOT ENTER
But beneath the peeling paint, someone had scratched three numbers into the steel.
731
Mason forced the door open.
Inside, the smell of bleach and blood hit him first.
Then he heard a weak voice from the darkness.
“Mason?”
His heart stopped.
Chained to a hospital bed was a man with sunken eyes, gray skin, and the same birthmark Mason remembered from childhood.
Eli.
Alive.
Barely.
Mason stepped closer, shaking.
“I buried you.”
Eli smiled faintly.
“No, brother…”
May you like
His voice cracked.
“You buried an empty coffin.”
