They left the ICU in silence.

Jack lay where they had placed him — clean sheet drawn over his face, paper crane on his chest, the bent IV pole head at his side. The door clicked shut behind them, muting the stillness inside.

The corridor beyond felt too wide, too empty — a vacuum that swallowed every footstep. By the time they pushed through the rear fire door into the night air, the silence had weight.

The hospital's garden had long since died — trellis broken, flowerbeds choked with weeds, rain-dark soil giving off a faint earth smell beneath the stink of smoke and scorched metal.

Alyssa moved first, finding a spot near the fallen trellis and sinking down onto the damp concrete. She wrapped her arms around her knees, chin on her forearms, staring straight ahead. Her jaw worked like she wanted to say something but couldn't quite get it out.

Chloe stayed standing for a while, looking lost in the space between one step and the next. When she finally sat beside her sister, she kept her back stiff, her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles whitened. She didn't look at anyone.

Dan came over and crouched down beside them. He put a hand lightly on Alyssa's shoulder. She didn't pull away, just leaned into it slightly.

When he reached toward Chloe, she shifted back — not far, but enough. "I'm fine," she said quickly, too quickly. Her voice was tight, the words sounding like she was trying to hold them together before they could break apart.

Her gaze flicked briefly toward Max, and something cold and sharp moved behind her eyes. Not blame, not yet — but the beginnings of it, the way a crack forms in glass long before it shatters. She looked away before it could show on her face.

"You're not," Dan said gently. "And that's okay."

Her gaze stayed fixed on the ground. "If I let it out now, I won't stop."

Alyssa's voice came low, almost to herself. "Liz would've wanted him to have more time," she said, voice tightening. "She's going to wake up and think he's still here. And I'll have to tell her she never even got to say goodbye."

Chloe's jaw clenched at that, but she didn't speak.

Victor, leaning against a cracked section of wall, watched the three of them for a moment before speaking. "She's in shock," he said quietly to Max. "They both are. But she's… locking it down harder." He nodded toward Chloe. "That's the one to watch."

Victor's voice dropped lower. "And no one touches them. Not tonight, not ever. They come near the girls, they go through me first."

Max's eyes lingered on her — the stillness in her posture, the tension in her jaw. He nodded once. "Then you watch her," he told Victor. "You and Dan both. Keep them close. Don't let them drift."

Victor's expression darkened, but he gave a short nod. Dan looked over his shoulder at Max and returned a grim one of his own.

The quiet settled in again, thick and heavy.

Then Victor's head lifted, eyes narrowing. "Engines," he said.

The sound reached the others a moment later — low and steady, crunching across wet gravel.

Max's gaze shifted toward the overgrown driveway. "We're not alone."

The sound grew — steady, deliberate, the kind of approach that belonged to people who didn't need to rush because they already owned the ground they were walking on. Mist curled low across the overgrown driveway, distorting the shapes sliding through it until they became sharp and black against the faint light.

***

The hallway outside the ward was silent when they left Jack. Too silent.

Max led the way, scanning every doorway, every shadow. The smell of burnt plastic still clung to the air, thick enough to coat the tongue. The flicker of dying fluorescents strobed the floor in uneven intervals, like the building itself was trying to blink and couldn't.

They'd just cleared the emergency stairwell when Victor's head snapped toward the window.

"Engines," he said. Low. Certain.

Dan glanced back. "Rescue?"

Victor shook his head. "Not the kind we want."

A faint vibration rolled through the walls — tyres over gravel, heavy suspension shifting weight. Then the first shape moved through the mist outside: matte-black, low, predatory. Another followed. And another.

Three vehicles. No lights. No markings.

Max slowed at the stairwell landing, keeping to the shadows as the convoy slid into position in the hospital's rear lot. Doors opened in perfect unison — six figures stepping out, armour gunmetal-grey and bristling with both rifles and something stranger strapped to their backs.

Even before the insignia caught the light, Max knew. The crest — sword, scroll, bat-like wings — glowed faintly against each chestplate. Then he saw the name.

His fists curled. The name rose in his head like a taste he couldn't spit out.

The Grimm Institute.

The same people who had sent two men to his hotel room to kill him. The same people he'd left dead on the floor—before a demon ripped through them, and a firestorm took the building.

And now they were here.

The lead soldier — tall, helmet off, silver buzzcut and a scar cutting deep into one cheek — stepped into the open, scanning them like a man checking off targets. When his eyes found Max, they stayed there.

The air shifted. Tighter. More dangerous.

Max didn't move. "You're not military."

The soldier didn't blink. "No, sir. We're the Grimm Institute." His voice was flat, controlled, and absolute. "We specialize in the kind of threats you just dealt with."

Victor stepped forward, claws beginning to form again. "And you just show up? What, were you watching us the whole time?"

The soldier met his eyes without flinching. "Dr. Grimm has standing alerts on Category-3 incursions. A spontaneous manifestation of that magnitude triggered every sensor we have in Southeast Asia. Your… outburst lit up half a dozen satellites."

He looked back at Max. "We've been en route since the motel burned."

Max's gaze narrowed. "What do you want?"

The man didn't answer immediately. He tapped a device behind his ear. "This is Hawthorne. Extraction team is on-site. Target located. Subject is cooperative." A pause. "Yes. All four."

Dan's brow creased. "All four?"

Another vehicle rolled forward — this one sleek, black, and clearly built for transport, not combat. Armoured plating gleamed faintly under the broken floodlights, the same crest marked on its sides.

From the back, two more figures emerged — medics in dark grey, faces obscured by full visors. They carried something between them.

A pod.

Glossy black metal. No windows. Cables and runes etched along its sides pulsed faintly red. It hissed open a fraction, revealing a soft white interior lined with strange silver threads. It looked more like a coffin than a stretcher.

Alyssa stepped forward before anyone else could react. "Don't touch her."

The medics hesitated. Hawthorne lifted one hand — a signal, not a surrender. "This is for her protection. That girl is not just comatose. She's submerged. If she wakes up without containment—" he looked directly at Max "—we might lose the whole hospital."

Max's voice was stone. "You knew about her."

"We know about everything," Hawthorne said evenly. "Or we try to. Dr. Grimm flagged her case six months ago. As soon as your name came up in relation to a failed summoning attempt, she was classified a potential Contractor of Interest."

Dan frowned. "She's… what?"

"Power dormant. Locked beneath trauma or corruption. If she breaks surface in the wrong place, it'll be catastrophic. That's why we're taking her to London. To containment. And to him."

Stolen novel; please report.

Chloe flinched at the word. "Containment? Like she's the monster?"

Alyssa's voice sharpened. "Maybe you should contain the ones who actually killed someone."

She didn't say Max's name, but the weight in her stare did.

Chloe looked from Liz's pod to the dirt still caught under her nails. "She should be here. Not locked in a box. Not sleeping through the fallout. She's the reason he came." Her voice cracked. "She should have seen him. At least once more."

Alyssa moved closer to the pod. "She's not a threat."

"Neither was the boy you just left in that ward," Hawthorne said. "And look how that turned out."

The silence that followed was jagged, stretched tight between them.

Max stepped past Alyssa, shoulders squared, every muscle in his body telling him to hit Hawthorne and keep hitting until he got the truth. These were Grimm's people — the same bastard who'd sent two hired killers to his hotel room. He hadn't forgotten.

"I should leave her with anyone but you," Max said, voice low, dangerous. "Hell, I should burn that pod to ash before I let you take her." His gaze cut to Liz's still form. "But I can't leave her here. This city's already taken one kid tonight. It's not taking her."

"She won't stay," Hawthorne replied, calm as concrete. "We're wiping this site. Psych scrub teams are en route. Survivors will be implanted with trauma suppression markers. Anyone who saw the demon won't remember it."

Victor growled, claws flexing. "That's not comforting."

"It's not meant to be," Hawthorne said. "It's effective. And it keeps the world turning."

Max's jaw tightened. "We take her together. You don't move her until I'm in that aircraft with her. And the girls come too."

Hawthorne's brow lifted. "They're civilians."

"They're targets," Max shot back. "I'm not leaving them here for another thing to crawl out of the dark. We bring them now — and when it's safe, they go back to their parents."

A beat of silence. Then Hawthorne gave a short nod. "Agreed."

He turned to his team and gestured. "Secure the perimeter. Prepare lift. Full silence protocol."

Chloe edged closer to Max, her voice low. "Who the hell is Grimm?"

Max's eyes stayed locked on Hawthorne, his voice flat but edged with promise. "Someone with too many answers — and I'm going to get every damn one of them."

***

The rooftop trembled faintly under their feet, a low vibration that came and went like a passing heartbeat.

Below, the hospital grounds had transformed into something unrecognisable. Grimm Institute operatives in black-and-silver uniforms moved in tight, fluid units. Every step, every gesture, was deliberate. No chatter. No wasted motion. Some carried sleek rifles with runed plating along the barrels. Others bore glowing melee weapons — axes, glaives, sabres — the kind of tools made for killing things you couldn't shoot.

Max's eyes swept the scene, jaw set hard. The weapons didn't unsettle him. The precision didn't unsettle him. What unsettled him was knowing who these people worked for.

The Grimm Institute.

The same organisation that had sent two hired killers to his hotel room back in Singapore, the night everything started. He hadn't forgotten their faces. Or the look in their eyes when they realised the Contract summoning had gone through. And now these same people wanted him to walk willingly into their custody?

His hands curled into fists.

Beside him, Victor shifted subtly to put himself between Alyssa, Chloe, and the nearest group of operatives. He didn't bare his claws, but the weight in his posture said he could — fast — if anyone so much as looked at the girls wrong. His gaze tracked each soldier that passed them, memorising faces.

Then Max saw him.

Walking down the main corridor like he owned it — mid-thirties, clean suit, neat dark hair, glasses. At first glance, he looked like a consultant or a corporate lawyer. But the shimmer in his eyes wasn't human. A faint blue glow that caught the light, paired with a ripple in the air around him, as if the heat itself bent to make space for him.

Two nurses came out of a side hall, moving fast — until they saw him. Their steps slowed. Their faces slackened, expressions smoothing into a glassy calm. By the time they reached the stairwell, they looked like they'd never seen a monster in their lives.

Victor's brow furrowed. "What the hell is that?"

Hawthorne didn't even glance over. "Contractor. Class 3. Psychic focus. Operative Kane. Handles information suppression and memory overwrite."

Alyssa's eyes narrowed. "You're erasing people's memories?"

A voice answered from right behind her. "Not erasing."

She spun. Kane was closer than he should have been, flanked by two silent guards. His presence pressed into the space around him like an unspoken command to get out of the way.

"Rewriting," he said, his tone clinical — like he was correcting a medical diagnosis.

Dan's jaw tightened. "Isn't that—"

"Necessary," Kane cut in, his voice snapping like a trap. "You want a media frenzy? You want every rookie cop in Singapore trying to explain why a teenage boy was impaled by a six-armed nightmare? You want every idiot with a grudge and a summoning circle thinking they can bargain their way into power before we're ready to control it?"

No one answered.

Kane's eyes locked on Max's, and the world seemed to tilt. A cold, metallic taste hit his tongue, sharp as blood on a bitten lip. Pressure slid in behind his thoughts — not words, not images, just the weight of someone else's hand pressing into the folds of his mind. His skull felt too small for it, every nerve in his spine tightening in revolt.

Max shoved back, the way you'd slam a door in someone's face.

He bared his teeth. "Stay the hell out of my head."

Kane's smile was faint and deliberate, like a man humouring a child who didn't understand the rules. The shimmer in the air around him followed as he stepped away.

Hawthorne glanced at Max. "First time?"

Max didn't look at him. His jaw was tight, voice low and flat. "Won't be the last. And next time he tries that, we're going to have a problem."

***

The rooftop vibrated under a low, thrumming hum. The Grimm Institute's VTOL waited at the far end, matte-black and predatory against the skyline. Its angled hull caught the faint light, the crimson insignia of sword, scroll, and bat wings glowing faintly on its flank. No markings. No windows. No hint of where it had come from or where it would go.

Operatives moved around it with clockwork precision — securing the perimeter, loading gear, sweeping the hospital grounds one final time. None of them spoke above a murmur.

Max didn't take his eyes off Hawthorne as they crossed the pad, Liz's containment pod rolling between them. His hand never left the metal shell, as though keeping it under his grip could make the whole situation less wrong.

Victor walked close to Chloe and Alyssa, subtly angling his body between them and the soldiers. His eyes tracked every movement — especially Kane's — like a wolf watching strangers circle his pack.

"They come near the girls, they go through me first," Victor muttered.

Max gave a small nod without looking away from the pod. "That's the plan."

Hawthorne caught the exchange but didn't comment. "Your people will board with you," he said. "They'll be processed at HQ."

"They're going back to their parents once we're done," Max said, the words sharp. "Right now, it's too dangerous to leave them anywhere alone. But when this is over, they're out."

Hawthorne didn't object — which only made Max trust him less.

They reached the base of the ramp. The VTOL's cargo bay was lit in low crimson, rows of reinforced seats lining the walls. Heavy harnesses hung loose, waiting. The air inside carried a faint metallic tang, undercut by a low, constant hum from Liz's pod.

Chloe stepped up beside Max, her fingers curled tight around Liz's necklace. She glanced at the sealed shell, then at him. "If this goes wrong, you get her out. No matter what it costs."

Max met her eyes. "It's not going wrong."

Alyssa stayed quiet, but the way she crossed her arms and watched him said she didn't believe him — not entirely.

Dan was last up the ramp, avoiding eye contact, his hands still raw from the failed healing. He dropped into a seat farthest from the pod, eyes locked on the floor.

Kane appeared in the doorway just before the ramp began to close, his faint smile back in place. "Settle in, Jaeger. You'll have plenty of time to think about how much you don't trust us."

Max didn't rise to the bait. He just sat, buckled in, and kept one hand on Liz's pod.

The ramp sealed with a hiss. Outside, the hospital — the city — disappeared. The VTOL lifted, silent and absolute.

And somewhere above the clouds, Max knew, the real fight wasn't waiting for them at all. It was already here — strapped into this aircraft, sitting across from him, staring back with eyes too young to be this hard.

***

The VTOL's cabin felt smaller in the air. No windows. No sky. Just steel walls, red light, and the constant low hum of engines. The air smelled faintly of ozone and oil, undercut by the cold sterility of Liz's containment pod.

Max sat beside it, one hand resting on the smooth black surface as if he could reach her through it.

Across from him, Chloe and Alyssa sat shoulder-to-shoulder. Chloe's fingers worried Liz's necklace without pause. Alyssa sat rigid, arms folded, gaze fixed on Max like she was waiting for him to break the silence.

Victor occupied the seat nearest the ramp, half-lidded eyes watching every small movement in the cabin. Dan was in the far corner, hunched forward, elbows on knees, staring at his hands. He hadn't spoken since the hospital.

Finally, Alyssa's voice cut through the hum. "What the hell was that back there? With you. With them." She tilted her head toward Dan and Victor. "That wasn't normal."

Max's eyes met hers. "No. It wasn't."

Alyssa waited. Chloe did too.

"Victor wasn't born with claws," Max said. His tone was measured, like he was choosing every word with care. "He was just a man—until I gave him a spark. My power woke something in him… shaped that spark into what you see now."

His eyes flicked to Dan in the corner. "Dan didn't have light in his hands until me either. He was dying. I forced my power into him to keep him alive. It stuck. Changed him."

Max's gaze lingered on them both, a quiet warning in it. "It's not a gift I hand out lightly. And it never comes without a cost."

Alyssa frowned. "And you can do that for other people?"

Max hesitated. "Yes. But it's not clean. It's not safe. It burns away parts of you you might need later. And you don't get to choose which parts."

Chloe leaned forward, eyes fixed on him. "So you could do it to us."

"I could," Max admitted. "But I shouldn't."

Alyssa's tone hardened. "You're going to do it, aren't you?"

Max leaned back, eyes narrowing. "Do what?"

"Awaken us." Her tone wasn't a question — it was a challenge.

He studied her, then glanced at Chloe. She hadn't looked away. "If Alyssa's in, I'm in," she said.

She leaned back just slightly, eyes still locked on his — not daring him, exactly, but refusing to blink first.

"Not happening," Max replied.

"We were in the second we followed you into that room," Chloe snapped, the words hitting harder than she meant. "We watched Jack die. We watched Liz get locked in a box. You think we can go back to algebra homework after that?"

Victor stirred, looking uncomfortable, his voice low and edged. "They're kids, Max."

"They're targets," Max said flatly. "And right now, they're my responsibility."

"Then make us harder to hit," Alyssa shot back.

Max leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You think you know what you're asking for? You don't come back from this. Pieces of you burn away. And they don't grow back."

Chloe's grip on the necklace tightened until her knuckles whitened. "Pieces already burned, Max. Jack's gone. Liz is locked in a box. We're already not who we were yesterday."

Dan finally looked up, voice quiet but steady. "She's right. You can't keep them on the sidelines forever. Not now."

Max's gaze swept over each of them — Dan's weary conviction, Victor's watchful silence, Alyssa's steady defiance, Chloe's raw determination.

He sat back slowly. "I'll decide when we land. Until then, no promises."

Alyssa didn't blink. "Fine. Just remember — every hour you wait is an hour we stay weak."

The engines deepened in pitch. Somewhere ahead, a faint voice crackled over the intercom — Hawthorne calling in to someone Max didn't know, words lost under static.

Max kept his hand on the pod. His reflection stared back from its surface — harder, older, unfamiliar.

"One boy died for this war," he murmured, too low for most to hear. "I won't let it happen again."

No one spoke after that.

The VTOL carried them on through the dark, engines thrumming like a heartbeat that wasn't theirs, toward London — and whatever waited there to claim them, teeth bared in the shadows.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.