"Destroying someone's life could be remarkably cathartic." ― Kate McNeil (Thistles)

* * * *

The skies above Kald were heavy with dark clouds, their bloated forms lit faintly from beneath by the orange glow of city lights. The air was thick with an electric tension that clung to Lucas's skin like a second layer.

He crouched in the shadow of a concrete support pillar beneath one of the city's outer bridges, his fingers curled tightly around the cold edge of the utility knife he always kept tucked at his hip. Far above him, searchlights swept across rooftops in deliberate, methodical arcs—hunting for movement.

He inhaled slowly through his nose, exhaled through his mouth. His breath fogged slightly in the chill air.

Kald.

Once a proud city that served as a training ground for the hunters' next generation, now, it sat like a fortress under siege. Paranoid, locked down, and trembling under the fallout of what had happened three weeks ago at Blackpool.

Elijah had warned him, even before he'd set off, trying to change his mind.

"If you step foot near Kald, you'll be lucky to get within five blocks without a dozen eyes on you. They've tightened security on everything. Street checkpoints. Block-wide scans. Even civilian IDs are monitored hourly. I'm telling you, Lucas, it's not just suicide, it's lunacy."

Lucas had smiled, the kind that didn't reach his eyes.

"Then I'll be a lunatic."

Now, huddled in the belly of a city that reeked of state control, Lucas was beginning to think Elijah might've undersold just how bad it really was.

Every street had patrols. Every alley was lit. Every building had reinforced barricades. Hunters roamed in pairs, most in their midnight-black hunter gear—leather reinforced with carbon plates, faces hidden behind smooth matte visors that reflected nothing but swallowed light. Occasionally, a different uniform would appear among them: navy blue and white, standard-issue ESA patrol gear. Their presence was colder and quieter, but perhaps even more chilling in its implication.

Lucas paused behind a parked truck as one such pair passed him. A hunter and an ESA patrol officer, walking in eerie synchrony, as if they'd been born from the same mould. The ESA officer's arm bore a patch he recognised—Civilian Oversight and Response Unit.

A subset of the ESA's Patrol Division.

Lucas gritted his teeth.

Elijah had mentioned this department once offhandedly, the ESA's way of keeping the peace, responding to "minor civilian disturbances." One formed during the final days of the last war. Now, they were playing watchdog for the very faction hunting Gifted like animals in the street.

"Some of those ESA units aren't even answering to the director anymore," Elijah had said grimly. "Too many sympathisers. Too many who think we've 'gone soft' on the Gifted."

Lucas crept forward, sliding between buildings, barely daring to breathe.

The civil war hadn't officially begun, but it was there, coiled beneath the surface like a viper in tall grass. People whispered of it on street corners, in half-sentences and fleeting glances. Gifted children disappeared from villages. Town halls were raided under the guise of "security sweeps." Underground safehouses were being exposed, and bombed.

He passed a shuttered market where the windows were boarded with planks spray-painted with slurs. "GIFTED VERMIN." "CLEANSE THE BLOODLINE."

One of the walls bore the hunters' sigil—an eye wrapped in flame. Underneath it, someone had painted a single word in black: MONSTERS.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Lucas kept walking.

It took him two hours to make it through the perimeter of the hunters' base—a brutal gauntlet of checkpoints, cameras, biometric gates, and aerial drones that had him ducking through sewer grates and scaling the under-construction skeletons of half-built towers.

It was the kind of infiltration mission Elijah or Taylor would've handled in minutes. Lucas had never appreciated their skills more than he did now.

By the time he made it into the main building—a squat, angular monolith of gunmetal grey and mirror-black windows, his arms were shaking from exertion, and his chest was tight with nerves. He'd narrowly avoided at least four different patrol units. At one point, he'd had to wedge himself behind a stack of supply crates as a hunter passed so close that he could smell the acrid scent of gunpowder on the man's armour.

Now, crouched inside the service hall, Lucas pressed his back to the wall, forcing his breaths to slow.

A door hissed open somewhere down the corridor. He didn't wait. He darted to the next intersection, slipped through an unmarked door, and froze.

The room was dark, but familiar.

Rows of shelves stretched before him, lit only by the soft blue glow of holographic terminals. Each shelf was stacked with files, some physical, many digital, marked with labels like "INTAKE RECORDS," "EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS," "PROJECTS - REDACTED," and "TERMINATED ASSETS."

His heart leapt.

This was it. The Archives Room.

Lucas didn't know how he'd gotten here, dumb luck or fate, but the truth waited for him just beyond those glowing terminals.

He approached the nearest console, fingers trembling as he activated it. A smooth hum filled the air as the interface lit up, loading the Hunter Database.

He typed in the name.

GENE ALESCIO.

The loading bar stretched across the screen like a scar. And then…

There he was.

A younger version of his father looked back at him from the profile photo. He would have been in his late twenties in that photo, with short-cropped dark hair, and a half-smile caught between smug and solemn. Lucas stared at it, his heart clenching.

And then he looked at the details.

Affiliation: Hunter Elite Unit 3

Status: Deceased

Specialisation: Gifted Neutralisation / Precision Execution

Confirmed Kills: 162

Targets: Gifted Tier 1-4, Underground Sympathisers, Rogue Normals

His vision swam.

The file didn't list names, but the target IDs… The regions… Dates…

They painted the picture clearly enough. Many of those missions had occurred before Lucas was even born. Some when he was still in diapers.

There were children listed under the age of ten. And while the hunter database didn't go into detail, Lucas knew enough about the hunters by now to know that at least half of Gene's 'victims' were likely innocent of whatever crime they were accused of.

Lucas backed away from the console, bile rising in his throat.

This wasn't the father who had taught him how to whistle, who used to carry Misha on his shoulders through the fields outside Salmouth. This wasn't the loving family man Lucas had known.

But it was. It had to be.

The screen blinked. A new line of text appeared, small and red.

Unauthorised access detected. Report filed.

Lucas's eyes widened, and he cursed, getting to his feet, and spinning around.

The door hissed open, and light spilled into the room.

And stepping through, wrapped in the flickering silhouette of a monster made of arrogance and menace, was Albert Nicolosi, flanked by four fully armoured hunters, all of them heavily armed.

Lucas snapped his gun into his hands instantly, feet widening into a balanced stance. But he didn't shoot. Not yet.

Nicolosi's bandaged arms rested behind his back. He looked gaunter than the last time Lucas had seen him, his eyes sunk deep, and his skin waxy and stretched, but the cold precision in his stare had not dulled.

"Lucas Alescio," he said calmly.

Lucas's finger curled near the trigger. "Albert Nicolosi."

Nicolosi gestured to the terminal. "Do you think we wouldn't protect our files? The moment you first accessed Project Nonary's records at ESA headquarters, we marked you."

Lucas stiffened. That was over a year ago…before everything even began.

"You…knew that long?"

Nicolosi smiled, a hint of madness visible in his eyes. "Of course. I wanted to see what you would do." He began to pace slowly, his voice almost thoughtful. "You and your brother. We had our eyes on you both since your father passed. I had plans. You would've made excellent replacements for Zexter. But then O'Boyle got in the way. And that ESA wench Tiara stole you both."

Lucas's voice shook. "Was it true? Was my father one of yours?"

"He was one of the best," Nicolosi said flatly. "Until he found out you and your brother were abominations. And instead of cleansing you, he ran. Like a coward."

Lucas's jaw tightened. "Did you kill him?"

The data that Elijah got for him had implied that there were suspicions even amongst the underground that Gene Alescio's death might not be an accident.

Nicolosi paused. Then, he smiled. "It's not hard to make it look like the Gifted did it. Stoked the fire. Made it easier to pass laws. The insurance payout helped too. A tidy little bonus."

Lucas surged forward half a step, barely containing the fury in his veins. "You sick bastard—"

"And don't think I've forgotten Project Nonary," Nicolosi hissed. "The only successful subject we ever had escaped. And now she's leading a rebellion. A thorn in my side."

Lucas's blood turned to ice. Even without any names, with the way Nicolosi is speaking, that is only one person that could be.

"…Sera."

Nicolosi's eyes gleamed. "I'll make my own project. Better. Cleaner. Using perfected Blue Pandora. Eldario will rise. The world will fall to its knees before us." His voice crackled with madness now, his pupils dilated and twitching. "Humanity will be saved. By my hand. No more Gifted. No more filth. Just order. Purity. And power. No one will stand against me! Not the underground! Not the Gifted! And not the ESA! Not even the Eldario Council! Eldario will be a powerhouse. One so feared that other nations would never dare touch us. We'll be humanity's saviours!"

Lucas stared at him.

This man wasn't just dangerous. He was delirious. Unhinged. Broken. Whatever that he had been doing to himself, whether he was testing Blue Pandora on himself, or something else, it had clearly affected his mind.

Or was Nicolosi always this insane, and no one noticed?

"…You're sick," Lucas whispered. "You're insane."

"Insane, am I?" Nicolosi made a hand gesture, and the hunters with him moved forward. Lucas's hand wavered, wondering if he can shoot them. Or use his Gift and make a run for it. "I'll suggest you come quietly. This is the end of the line for you."

The hunters stepped forward. Lucas's hand wavered. He could fight. Could run.

But he didn't.

Slowly, Lucas dropped the gun, raising his hands up in surrender. He didn't resist even as the hunters moved in and secured him, snapping cuffs around his wrists.

"I won't do what you want," Lucas said quietly.

Nicolosi stepped close, his face mere inches from Lucas's.

"We'll see about that."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

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.