A low groan echoed as the door creaked open. The fluorescent lights above buzzed, casting a pale yellow glow on the worn tiled floor. Each flicker felt like a headache waiting to happen.

Haturii stepped in, his shoulders heavy from another night without sleep. His uneven goatee and dark eye bags told the story for him. The rain had soaked his coat, and it clung to him like something he couldn't shake off.

Across the room, two officers sat at a dented metal table, a half-finished poker game between them. They sipped whiskey lazily, fingers loose around their glasses. Cigarette smoke drifted upward, curling toward a ceiling fan that whirred with a tired hum.

Before you judge them, do remember: if your job involved upholding law and order while also hunting down creatures that defied logic, physics, and sometimes God Himself, you'd probably drink too.

Some retrievals were easy. Others were hell.

This one?

It wasn't hell.

It was the thing hell ran from.

"Welcome back," one officer muttered without looking up.

"How'd it go?" the other asked, lazily shuffling the deck like the cards might defuse the tension in the room.

Haturii let out a long, tired sigh. This was his usual response to questions that didn't have good answers. He stepped forward and dropped a stack of worn, overstuffed folders onto the table with a heavy thud.

The glasses trembled. So did the mood.

"That bad, huh?"

One officer reached for the top file. He didn't even flinch at the large red stamp slashed across the front.

"Alert the patrol units," Haturii muttered, exhausted. "We've got a rogue anomaly, containment cell 096. Systematic Wraith-Class."

The mood shifted instantly. The lazy comfort of whiskey and smoke vanished.

"Right." The younger officer shot to his feet, his chair screeching across the floor. His glass hit the floor, but he didn't look back. He was gone before it stopped rolling.

The older officer leaned in, flipping open the top folder. "Wait, an actual breach? Not just an attempt?" His voice dropped. 

"Those clowns at the Foundation couldn't hold a balloon, let alone a Category 2."

He skimmed the pages, skipping past thick walls of technical jargon until—

He shut the folder like it bit him.

"Perfect," he muttered. "A walking entropy engine. Just what we needed."

Then he looked up.

"And the two juvenile firecrackers tagging along with you, what about them? Orange and… Yukina? Yuzu? Yuna?"

"Yukira." Haturii didn't flinch. "It's Orenji and Yukira."

"Right, right. Never seem to get their names right."

"No, you don't," Haturii said flatly, slipping off his coat and tossing it over the back of a chair. Steam rose from the fabric as it started to dry.

"I gave them the day off."

"To keep them out of the way?"

"To keep them safe," Haturii replied, his eyes narrowing. "Category 2s don't break out often. I'm not dragging them into this."

The officer snorted and poured himself another drink. This time though, he didn't rush. He just swirled the glass slowly, as if buying himself time to think.

"Yeah? Well, I'd bet my entire life savings and then yours that those delinquents won't sit this one out."

Haturii's jaw tightened. "What do you mean?"

He kicked his legs up onto the table and leaned back in his chair, tipping it dangerously.

"Oh, come on," he said with a smirk. "We were just like them back in the day. You, the soft-spoken bookworm with a god complex. Me, the charming rebel."

He chuckled, shaking his head.

"Running around, disobeying orders, making our own damn rules. Good times. Good times."

"Those days are over," Haturii said.

But there wasn't much conviction behind it.

The truth was, he carried every mistake now. Every hesitation that cost a life. Every anomaly that slipped through his fingers.

He used to believe in justice.

Now, he believed only in containment.

Haturii turned toward the door to walk away. But Emmett stood, stumbling slightly, and threw an arm around his shoulders.

"You used to be fun, Haturii. What happened to you?"

No reply formed. Just Haturii's hand tightening on the doorknob.

"You got old, man," Emmett continued. "You got scared. And you stayed that way."

Haturii turned back to look at him, his eyes dull but steady. "You're drunk, Emmett."

"I'm realistic," Emmett replied, grinning tiredly. "That anomaly out there? It's going to burn this place to the ground. And I don't think you've got the fire left in you to stop it."

But Haturii was already walking away, his footsteps heavy, his coat trailing behind like ash.

Fitting for a man who once played with fire…

and got burned.

He didn't answer. But once he was alone in the hallway, the words slipped out like something he'd been choking on:

"I don't need fire. I just need to survive."

"Even if I don't deserve to."

Because the truth was, he still didn't know if this job was his way of making things right…

Or just another way to hide from all the things he'd already broken.

Outside the office, the hallway lights dimmed once. Then twice. Then went out completely.

The backup generators kicked in. A cold, mechanical hum filled the base.

And somewhere miles away, under the quiet rain and blinking neon lights, a child's rubber ball rolled into the middle of an empty street. The air gently moved around it, cold and hungry. Paint peeled from nearby lampposts. Rust spread quickly across stop signs. A stray cat hissed once, then vanished into the fog.

And from the edge of town, something stepped into the light.

Its outline blurred as if reality itself was rejecting it. Pavement cracked beneath each step it took. A distant power grid surged, then died with a groan. Streetlights blinked, sparked, and decayed in silence.

 

And with it, came the slow unraveling of everything it touched.

Everything it leaned against.

And everyone who thought they were strong enough to stop it.

A thought came at him.

The sun didn't come out over Stonehaven today. Gray clouds covered the sky, making everything look dull. The air felt heavy, like the whole town was waiting for something. Maybe more rain, maybe something worse.

The wind blew through the streets in quick bursts, kicking up dust and bits of loose trash. The old buildings, worn by time and weather, looked even older in the dim light.

Everything seemed darker, quieter.

The boy walked through it like he belonged to the silence. Not hidden, just ignored. A part of the background, easy to miss. His hoodie was pulled tight, sleeves torn at the cuffs. A bent cap covered his eyes, and a wrinkled surgical mask ripped from a hospital trash bin clung to his face.

It smelled faintly of antiseptic and ammonia, just enough to keep the world at a distance.

Rain hadn't even started yet, but it was close.

 He could feel it.

His face was too strange now. Too remembered.

If anyone looked too long—really looked—they'd scream. Or worse, recognize him.

He didn't know where he was going. Only that he had to keep moving.

Because stopping meant thinking.

And thinking meant remembering.

He stumbled.

He took a sharp breath. A sudden flash lit up his mind.

 The thought hit him like a shard of glass; sharp, unwelcome.

Then the memories bled through—

Too fast to stop. Too loud to ignore:

Men dressed in black.

 Red warning lights flashing everywhere.

The crack of gunfire in a sterile corridor.

His body slamming into a window. Glass breaking all around him. The ground rushing up to meet him—

And his shoulder suddenly bursting with pain.

The Foundation, he remembered.

Their pristine white walls, soaked in red.

The sounds. Their screams. Wet ones.

Bones snapping like brittle branches.

A man folding like paper beneath a single kick.

 His kick.

Immediately, his stomach twisted, and he sensed he would throw up.

He dropped to his knees, gagging once then again. The bile rose fast, burning up his throat before he lurched forward and vomited onto the dirt.

It splattered at his feet, steaming in the cold air.

His hands trembled as he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

He sucked in a shaky breath, releasing warm vapors in the air. It'd happened again. His feet dragged for half a second before he forced them forward again.

One step. Then another.

Because stopping meant remembering.

And remembering—

Meant breaking.

The file had labeled him RS-07.

He used to have a name before that.

Now, it was just some code stamped across a breach report.

There'd been a time when he thought he could go home after this. To her. V...

Her smile was already fading in his memory like heat leaking from a forgotten cup of tea. He couldn't even remember her voice anymore. Just the sound of it felt… safe.

It was stupid, but he used to think survival meant something.

 Now, it just meant being awake for the next nightmare.

 Kept his fists clenched at his sides until the tension made his hands ache.

He didn't trust his body anymore.

 It moved too fast. Hit too hard.

 Reacted before he could think.

And when he did think, it terrified him.

A metallic taste sat on his tongue.

 It was blood from the split on his lip.

 He'd bitten down too hard again. Like he was trying to hold something back.

Or punish something trying to get out.

A mother passed by him on the sidewalk, clutching her child's hand tighter as she glanced at him.

 She didn't say anything.

 But she didn't have to.

Some part of her probably sensed it—

 the wrongness beneath the hoodie.

 The ticking under his skin.

He turned his head away.

It was always like this now.

 Eyes darting, never still. His shoulders hunched.

 A quiet war between staying hidden… and not losing control.

And in the space between his ribs, a thought pulsed like a bruise:

Because no matter how far he ran,

 one truth stuck to him like ash: He wasn't supposed to survive.

And whatever had crawled out of that lab wearing his skin—

wasn't sure it wanted to, either.