Night settled over Paris the way it rarely did for Eric, quiet and undemanding, asking nothing of him until morning came creeping back in gold along the edges of the curtains. The sun rose slowly and unhurried, spilling early light across the room in soft, warm bands, and somewhere beyond the window a light breeze stirred the air, carrying with it the faint, sleepy hush of a city not yet fully awake.
Ruby woke before it, as she always did. She sat up and stretched her arms overhead, and it was only then that she noticed it: the strange, welcome lightness in her shoulders, the easy way her body moved without the dull ache that had followed her for weeks. No pain anywhere. Not even the ghost of it.
"Looks like the walk worked after all," she thought, still half caught between sleep and waking, her mind drifting back to the evening before, to the quiet path she'd walked with Zoe as the sky turned orange over the rooftops. She turned her head, slow and unhurried, and let her eyes settle on Eric beside her.
He was still asleep, his face smoothed of all the tension it usually carried, and for a moment she simply watched him, the rise and fall of his breathing, the rare stillness of a man who was rarely still. He'd told her the pain would be gone by morning, and it had been, exactly as he said. She didn't understand how he always seemed to know things like that, small certainties spoken with quiet confidence, but she'd stopped asking a long time ago. Some questions, she'd learned, only ever met silence, gentle but immovable, and she'd come to accept that some part of her husband simply lived somewhere she couldn't follow.
Her mind wandered back to the night before, to the way he'd looked when he came to her, sad in a way she'd rarely seen, hurt in a way he tried and failed to hide. She still didn't know what he'd been carrying since they arrived in Paris, what weight had settled into him and refused to leave. She had never liked to pry, never wanting to be the kind of person who pushed into places she wasn't invited, but surely a wife was allowed to wonder. Surely that much wasn't an intrusion.
The thought slipped away as easily as it had come, chased off by the warm, syrupy pull of the morning and the bed and the man beside her. She didn't want to move yet. So, she shifted closer instead as she lay beside him and guided his arm over her shoulder, and tucked herself into the solid warmth of his chest, breathing him in as her eyes drifted shut again. It was wide and steady beneath her cheek, a place that had come to feel like safety itself, even if his arm draped just heavy enough across her that each breath took a little more effort than the last. She didn't mind. It was worth it, and besides, she could manage.
An hour passed before Eric stirred, waking slowly and naturally into a morning that felt subtly wrong before he even opened his eyes. He was used to surfacing into sound, the clatter of pans, Ruby humming to herself somewhere in the apartment, the small domestic noises that usually greeted him. This morning there was only quiet, soft and unfamiliar, and it took him a moment to place why.
He opened his eyes to find the answer resting against him. Ruby, still asleep, her head nestled into his chest as though it had always belonged there. He didn't move to wake her. He didn't sigh, didn't feel the flicker of irritation he might have on another day, over the house left untouched, the breakfast not yet started. He only looked down at her for a long moment, something unreadable and quiet passing behind his eyes. After everything she'd given him the night before, after she'd simply held him and let him break apart against her without asking why, he couldn't imagine pulling away from her now, not even for something as small as this.
So instead, he lifted his free hand and let it settle into her hair, stroking it slowly, absently. It was soft beneath his fingers, that particular Kelly green catching the early light, and it carried the faint, familiar scent of the shampoo she always used, something that had become, without his quite realizing it, the smell of home. For a while he simply lay there, doing nothing at all, and let himself believe, if only for a few minutes, that nothing was waiting for him beyond this room. No enemies. No relics. No war being fought in silence just beneath the surface of his life.
But peace like that never lasted long for him, and he felt it slipping away even as he tried to hold onto it a little longer. Today was not a day for lingering. Today he would meet the Trapper, the one who had caught Max like a fly in a web while the ambush closed in around them, and there would be no room left for softness once he stepped out that door.
Eric slowly eased Ruby off his body and stood up in silence, careful not to wake her. He tapped his right pocket twice, just to confirm the earring was still there, then made his way out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.
He sat down at the dining table without hurrying and glanced around the room out of habit, making sure no one was watching. Even so, he activated his vision anyway, sweeping the space once more for souls, Angel Spirits, curse spirits, demons, or anything else that might be hiding out of sight. The relic had eased most of that old anxiety in him, but habits built from years of caution didn't loosen their grip so easily.
He murmured something under his breath, and a moment later the kitchen came alive around him. The toaster, the bread, the iron, even his folded clothes lifted into the air and began moving through their tasks on their own, as if the room itself had been waiting for permission. Breakfast assembled itself while his uniform pressed smooth behind him, and Eric simply sat there, staring out the window, his mind empty for the first time all morning.
His plate drifted over a few minutes later, toast and a glass of milk settling in front of him as gently as if it had been carried by hand. He ate in silence while a second piece of toast began forming behind him for Ruby.
When he finished, he pushed the empty plate and glass aside and let them float off toward the sink, though he left them there rather than have them clean themselves. Some things he still preferred to do the normal way. He rose and headed for the bathroom, brushing his teeth and washing quickly while the earring hovered nearby, waiting. Once dressed in his freshly pressed uniform, he returned to the bedroom and gave Ruby a gentle shake until she stirred awake.
"Make sure to eat the sandwich I made for you. It's on the dining table," he told her, offering a soft smile before she could fully process what he'd said, let alone apologize for sleeping in. By the time she opened her mouth to respond, he had already turned and walked out.
Eric stepped out of the apartment, locked the door behind him, and turned right toward Max's place. He knocked twice and then waited, checking his watch out of habit even though he already knew exactly how long this was going to take.
It took two minutes exactly, because it always took two minutes exactly. The door finally swung open to reveal Max still chewing on a slice of bread he'd clearly grabbed on his way out, one shoe on and the other still dangling from his hand. From somewhere deep in the apartment, Zoe's voice rang out, sharp and unimpressed.
"If you are late again, I am telling Vilbert you slept through your alarm for the fourth time this month!"
"I did not sleep through it," Max called back through a mouthful of bread, sounding deeply offended by the accusation despite the crumbs currently falling out of his mouth as proof of exactly that. "I woke up! I just... negotiated with it a little."
"That is called snoozing, Max."
"No! That is called strategy."
He finally got the second shoe on, giving up on any further defense of his morning routine, and turned to find Eric watching him with the patient, slightly amused expression of a man who had clearly seen this exact scene play out more times than he cared to count. Max swallowed the last of his bread, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and fell into step beside him without a word, as if the entire exchange behind him hadn't happened at all.
They walked to the lift in silence. Max pressed the button three times in a row, the way he always did, despite the fact that it had never once made the lift arrive any faster. Eric didn't bother pointing that out anymore. Some battles weren't worth fighting before eight in the morning.
The walk to the station afterward was quiet, easy, the kind of silence that only exists between two people who've long since run out of things that need saying out loud. Max hummed something tuneless under his breath. Eric let him.
Upon reaching the police station, Max and Eric collected their service guns from the scrawny man at the front desk and were about to head back out on patrol when Claude stopped them and pressed a copy of some files into each of their hands. Eric quietly activated his vision to check on him while he spoke, and what he saw wasn't reassuring. Claude's taint had grown noticeably worse since the last time he'd looked.
"This is the file on a little girl who went missing a week ago," Claude said. "Her parents have been terrified she's been kidnapped ever since. I'd like the two of you to look into it and see if you can turn up any leads on where she might be. I don't know how useful this will be to you, but there have been reports of a gang moving through the area, snatching kids and selling them off."
Eric had been skimming through the file without much reaction until that last sentence landed, and his expression darkened at once. Max's reaction was strange in its own way too, though it showed itself differently. He straightened up, pressed his right hand to his chest, and gave Claude a confident smile. "You don't need to worry, Captain. We'll find her."
Claude looked pleased by the enthusiasm, though he clearly wasn't banking on much. "It's fine even if you only manage to turn up a few clues. It's not that I doubt either of you; I just don't want to put unnecessary pressure on you this early. Trying too hard to make your first case a perfect one tends to do more harm than good."
"You're a remarkably thoughtful man, Captain," Eric said. "No wonder everyone here seems so content working under you."
Claude chuckled at that, gave them both a small nod, and turned to head off toward whatever else needed his attention that morning.
Once outside, Eric and Max started toward the missing girl's house without discussing it, both understanding without needing to say it that any real investigation had to begin at the source. Eric trusted what the file told him well enough, but there was also something to be said for sitting with the family himself, if only to offer them some small measure of comfort in the meantime.
Preparing for the worst had simply become second nature to him by now. After the ambush, he couldn't be certain who might come looking for him next, or when. It could be anyone. It could even be a Hypernova, for all he knew. He had a Rank 0 relic now, technically, but that fact alone did very little to make him feel any safer than before.
Eric glanced sideways at Max as they walked, and something about the set of his jaw, the faint irritation pulling at his features, made Eric hesitate before he even opened his mouth. He looked away again, back toward the road ahead, weighing whether it was even worth bringing up.
"Do you remember that person who saved us when we were four?" he finally asked, his voice low, almost swallowed by the sound of their footsteps.
Max's pace didn't change, but something in him went still. "Yes," he said after a moment, his tone quieter than before, more solemn than Eric had expected. "How could I forget him? What about him?"
Eric didn't answer right away. He kept his eyes forward, and the silence between them stretched on longer than it should have, long enough that Max glanced over once, waiting. But Eric only shook his head slightly, as if trying to shake the thought loose from wherever it had crawled out of.
"Nothing," he said at last. "Forget I said anything."
Max studied him a moment longer, clearly unconvinced, but he let it go, and the two of them walked on in a silence that felt heavier than the one before it.
After fifteen minutes of walking through the streets, Max and Eric arrived at a modest wooden house set just off the main road. Eric paused in front of the door, drew a slow breath, and knocked twice before stepping back to wait. A few seconds passed before he heard footsteps approaching from inside.
The door opened with a soft creak, revealing a woman in her thirties with plain black hair and equally dark eyes. Her face carried a weight that was hard to look away from, worry and fear tangled together with something closer to numb exhaustion, the kind that came from days of waiting for news that never arrived. "Yes?" she asked, her voice thin and tired.
"Good morning, ma'am. My name is Eric Heisenberg. You can call me Officer Eric." He tilted slightly toward Max, gesturing to him with a small, reassuring smile. "And this is Officer Max." He held up his ID for her to see.
"We're here to ask a few questions about your daughter Lila's disappearance," Eric said gently.
Something in her seemed to snap the moment the name left his mouth. "Officers have already come and asked me questions," she said, her voice rising, cracking under the strain of it. "When are you actually going to find her?"
Eric didn't flinch. "I understand how you must be feeling, ma'am. But if we're going to find her, we're going to need your help."
She bit down on her lower lip, and after a moment she stepped aside to let them in. Eric bowed slightly as he entered, and Max followed suit behind him. They settled onto the sofa in the living room while she took the seat across from them, her hands already twisting together in her lap.
Eric's eyes drifted toward a small table in the corner, where a photo sat in a simple frame. The three of them, smiling, caught in some ordinary afternoon before any of this had happened.
"We won't take much of your time," Eric said. "If you could just walk us through what happened the day she disappeared."
The woman's hands tightened further, her expression twisting with something close to dread. It was clear this wasn't a memory she wanted to revisit, and for a moment neither Max nor Eric said anything, letting her take whatever time she needed to steady herself.
Finally, she let out a long breath. "It happened a week ago," she began, her voice quieter now, worn thin from having told this story too many times already. "I woke up like always, made breakfast for my husband and Lila, and sent her off to school. She came home fine that day, no problems. Then in the evening she went out to play in the park across the street, like she always does. She's usually back by seven." Her voice caught. "That day she wasn't. I waited. By eight I couldn't sit still anymore, so I went looking for her myself, but she was nowhere. I asked the other kids in the park, and they told me she'd been seen near a black van right before she vanished." She pressed her hands to her face, and her shoulders began to shake as the tears finally broke free. "We've been searching ever since. She still hasn't come home."
Max's face softened, something raw and sympathetic passing behind his eyes as he watched her.
Eric placed a hand over his chest and spoke as gently as he could. "Thank you for telling us this, ma'am. We can't make you any promises, but we'll do everything we can." With that, he and Max rose and made their way to the door, letting themselves out.
Once outside, Max turned to him, his expression unreadable but his eyes burning with something sharper now, more focused. "So where to next?"
"Let's try some of the houses around the park," Eric said. "Someone out here has to have seen something."
The first door they tried belonged to a squat little house with peeling paint and a yard that hadn't been mowed in what looked like months. Eric knocked, and after a long pause and a lot of shuffling from inside, the door swung open to reveal a heavyset old man in a stained undershirt, a bottle of something amber-colored dangling loosely from one hand even though it wasn't yet noon.
"I don't know anything," the man barked before either of them had said a single word. "Don't bother me!"
"Sir, we haven't even asked the question yet," Eric started, but the man was already retreating.
"Don't care! Don't know anything! Go away!"
The door slammed shut hard enough to rattle the frame. Max stared at the space where the man had been standing for a solid three seconds before turning to Eric. "Did he think we were selling something?"
"I genuinely don't know," Eric said, and they moved on.
The next house belonged to a thin woman with sharp, narrow features that gave her a faintly fox-like look, and she at least had the decency to seem apologetic about her lack of help. "I'm sorry, I really don't know anything about that family," she said, wringing her hands together. "I wish I could help you more, truly, but I've got nothing."
"That's alright, ma'am, we appreciate you taking the time," Eric said, and she nodded, looking genuinely disappointed in herself as she shut the door far more gently than at their previous stop.
Two houses down, a young man in thick, sharp-edged glasses answered the door, already looking mildly put out at being interrupted. "I don't get out much," he said flatly, arms crossed. "So no, I don't know anything about a kidnapped girl or some black van. Sorry, can't help you."
He didn't wait for a follow-up question before closing the door, though at least he did it without slamming it.
Max sighed as they stepped back onto the path. "This is going great."
"Patience, Max," Eric said, though even he was starting to sound like he was running low on it.
Their luck turned at the fourth house, where a woman with startlingly bright red hair opened the door before they'd even finished knocking, as though she'd been watching them work their way down the street.
"Oh, thank goodness, you're the officers investigating Lila, aren't you?" she said, practically pulling them toward her by sheer enthusiasm alone. "My daughter Alice plays with her all the time. She told me she saw some men hanging around the park in a black van a few times this past week. One of them was bald and had this awful scar running across his face. Scared her half to death, poor thing."
Eric perked up immediately, pulling out his notepad. "That's incredibly helpful, thank you. Did she happen to notice anything else? License plate, what the other men looked like?"
"I can ask her again if you'd like; she's inside right now."
"That would be wonderful, thank you so much."
While Eric jotted down every detail the woman could offer, Max had crouched down slightly, and by the time Eric looked over, Max had somehow already charmed the woman into a full, beaming smile, the two of them radiating an almost identical brand of relentless, sunshiny energy at each other. Eric had to actually look away for a moment. He was grateful, not for the first time, that he'd bought those sunglasses.
"Thank you for your help," Max said, flashing her a grin. "Please make sure Alice doesn't go out to the park alone for a while, alright? Just to be safe."
"Of course, of course, thank you both so much," the woman said, still smiling as she waved them off from her doorstep.
Once they were a safe distance away, Eric finally spoke. "You two have the same personality, you know that?"
"What personality?"
"Never mind."
By the time they'd worked their way through every house around the park, Max and Eric had gathered only scraps, a handful of half-useful details stitched together from a dozen mostly useless conversations. It was already pushing noon, and in about four hours they'd need to head off to meet the Trapper, which meant the clock on this investigation was already running short.
They made their way to the park itself and looked around, though there was little to see. The heat had driven off anyone who might have had somewhere better to be, and the place sat empty and still, the swings creaking faintly in a breeze that offered no real relief.
Max and Eric spent the better part of an hour combing through every corner of it anyway, checking behind benches, along the treeline, near the entrance where the black van had supposedly been seen. They found nothing. By the end of it, Max had developed a newfound appreciation for divination and prophecy, since apparently walking around in circles for an hour in ninety-degree heat wasn't cutting it as an investigative method.
Eric, for his part, wasn't putting much of himself into the search at all. His mind kept drifting elsewhere, circling back again and again to what he'd need to say to the Trapper later that day, what questions to ask, what to guard against. To him, this whole investigation had become little more than a way to pass the hours until then. Max was the opposite in every way, still scanning every bush and shadow like the answer might be hiding in the next one.
It was while Eric's attention had wandered furthest that he felt something pinching his right cheek lightly.
"Hmm?" Eric was confused as he looked back and saw a flicker of movement at the edge of his vision resolve into a thin, scrawny man with an unnatural grey pallor to his skin, standing near the treeline and staring directly at them. The moment he realized he'd been noticed, he bolted.
Eric didn't chase him. He simply watched him run, tracking his path with mild interest rather than urgency before turning his eyes to his left side and staring at something invisible. A small, gentle smile appeared on his face as he whispered a thank you to seemingly nothing.
The grey-skinned man, glancing back and finding no one following him, allowed himself a small breath of relief and slowed his pace as he neared a turn in the path. He rounded the corner and nearly walked straight into Eric, who was already standing there waiting for him, arms loose at his sides, eyes cold and entirely unreadable.
"H-hello, officer," the man stammered, forcing an unconvincing laugh as he scratched at the back of his head. "Just passing through, is all. Sorry about running off like that; I guess it looked a bit strange."
Eric said nothing. He simply stared, unblinking, long enough that the silence itself became the threat. The man's nervous smile began to falter under the weight of it, sweat gathering at his temple despite the shade.
Then Eric slowly smiled, and somehow that was worse.
He leaned down slightly, bringing his face level with the man's, and reached into his pocket with his free hand, drawing out a small pouch filled with something pale and powdery. He held it there, between them, and spoke low enough that only the man could hear.
"I was wondering why you looked so thin. Guess that answers it. You're an addict, aren't you? You have the right to remain silent."
The man's eyes went wide, panic flashing across his face as he spun to bolt in the opposite direction, only to find his path blocked by a second figure, tall, purple-haired, and very clearly not going anywhere.
Eric raised the small pouch in front of his face, and an amused smile naturally formed on his face. He gazed at the grey-skinned man and gave him an offer he couldn't refuse.
"No need to be afraid, my friend. We all have problems in our lives. You do your job, while we do ours. Why don't we cooperate? We are looking for a girl named Lila. She is small and cute. I know that you have seen her before, haven't you?"
Eric's amused smile did nothing to settle the man's nerves. If anything, it made things worse, that cold, easy expression sitting on his face like he already knew exactly how this was going to go. Still, cornered as he was, with a way out being dangled in front of him, the man couldn't afford to be picky.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly on the last word.
"Nothing complicated," Eric said. "The key to the van, the location of the kids, and everything you know about your partners. Do that, and you're free to go."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
The man let out a shaky breath, glancing between Eric and Max as if searching for the catch in it. "How do I know you'll actually let me go?"
"You don't," Eric said simply. "But you also don't have much of a choice, do you?"
That seemed to settle it. The man's shoulders sagged, some of the fight draining out of him all at once. "Fine. Fine, okay." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key, tossing it toward Eric, who caught it without so much as glancing down at it.
"The van's parked two streets over, behind the old laundromat. Kids are being kept at a warehouse near the river, third floor." He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. "Three others are working with me. Boss doesn't really do introductions, so I don't have names for everyone, but there's an old guy who always looks half asleep, and two younger ones, brothers, I think. One's got a scar down his cheek."
"Where do they live?"
"I don't know exact addresses, but the old man mentioned a place off Rue Bonnet a couple of times. That's all I got, I swear."
Eric studied him for a moment longer, weighing whether that was actually everything or just everything the man was willing to give up. Eventually he nodded. "That'll do. You can go."
The man blinked, clearly not expecting it to be that easy, and a slow, relieved grin spread across his face. "Seriously? Just like tha-"
He didn't get to finish the sentence. Max's fist connected with the side of his head before the last word made it out, and he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
Max let out a short laugh, hauling the man up by the collar and slinging him over one shoulder like a sack of laundry. "He talks a lot for someone who almost got away."
Eric was already pulling out his phone, dialing the station as Max adjusted the man's weight on his shoulder. When the call connected, Eric relayed everything quickly: the van's location, the warehouse, the rough description of the men involved, and told them to move on both immediately.
On the other end, the scrawny man from the front desk hesitated. "Whoa, hold on, you two should wait for backup before doing anything. That's protocol for a reason."
"We're already here," Eric said flatly.
"Eric, I really think you should-"
"We're already here," Eric repeated, and hung up before the man could get another word in.
At the station, the scrawny man stared at the phone for a long moment, then sighed heavily and started making calls anyway, because apparently that was just how things worked with these two.
Eric slid the phone back into his pocket and glanced at Max, a silent understanding passing between them before either of them said a word. Golden liquid began to rise from both their bodies at once, curling upward and wrapping itself around them in a soft, shifting light. It spread even to the grey-skinned man slumped over Max's shoulder, still unconscious, swallowed up in the same glow without so much as stirring.
For a moment the light pulsed brighter, and then, with a small crack of sound, all three of them were simply gone. They reappeared an instant later beside the looming, weather-worn shape of Grand Moulins de Paris, its walls streaked with age and long since abandoned to whatever purpose it now served.
There had been a time when Eric would have hesitated before using his liquid so openly, wary of who might be watching. But that caution belonged to an earlier stage of things. A Hypernova was already aware of them, already watching from somewhere neither of them could see, and there was little point pretending otherwise. Whatever secrecy they'd once tried to maintain had stopped mattering the moment they'd been found.
…
On the third floor of Grand Moulins de Paris, three men occupied the dim, dust-choked room. One was old, his beard and hair long since gone white, sitting apart from the other two as though the years between them had carved out their own kind of distance. The remaining pair looked to be in their twenties, restless in the way only young men waiting on someone else's schedule could be.
Nearby, steel cages held three children, their small hands bound, cloth stuffed into their mouths to keep them silent. They could only whimper behind the gags, and even that came out muffled and hesitant, as if some instinct told them that even a whimper might cost them something worse.
"Ugh, when's the boss actually gonna show up and take these kids off our hands?" one of the young men groaned, slumped against the wall with a finger buried deep in his nose, clearly long past the point of caring about appearances. "I'm so bored I could die."
"Would you stop that?" the other one muttered, not even looking over. "You've been picking at that thing for twenty minutes. There's nothing left up there."
"There's always something left."
"That's disgusting."
"You're disgusting."
The second one rolled his eyes and let the argument die, choosing instead to lean back against a stack of crates with a small, satisfied smile tugging at his mouth. "Anyway, forget that. Have you thought about what you're gonna do with your cut? I've already decided. A mansion in Malaysia with Palm trees, ocean view, the whole thing. I'm never working another day in my life after this."
"You say that every time we finish a job."
"Yeah, well, this time I mean it. The boss is paying way more than usual for a few brats. That's gotta mean something, right?"
"Or it means whatever he's planning is a lot bigger than a few brats," the first one said, and for a moment neither of them had anything to say to that.
The old man said nothing at all through any of it. He remained seated on the floor a short distance away, his eyes fixed on some point in the dust that only he seemed to see, his expression unreadable in the low light. Unlike the two of them, he'd lived long enough to know that easy money rarely stayed easy for long.
None of them had ever laid eyes on the man who gave the orders. He'd never once shown himself, not to the old man, not to anyone the old man had spoken to. All any of them had was a voice, one that had simply appeared in their heads one day out of nowhere, calm and certain, telling them exactly what needed doing and promising exactly what they'd receive for doing it. Money. Protection. More than either of the two young men could dream of earning through a lifetime of ordinary work.
But the old man couldn't stop turning the same question over in his mind, again and again, no matter how hard he tried to set it down.
What happened once this job was finished? Would that voice simply go quiet again, satisfied, and leave them be? Or would it come back next month with another task, and the one after that, until there was no walking away from it at all? A man capable of speaking directly into someone's skull wasn't the kind of man you could simply refuse. Not without finding out exactly what happened to people who tried.
That thought alone was enough to keep something cold and tightly coiled in his chest, a feeling he couldn't quite name but recognized all too well. Fear of the unknown, he'd always believed, was worse than fear of anything you could actually see coming.
Bang!
The sound tore through the room before any of them had a chance to react. The old, rust-eaten door exploded off its hinges in a single violent motion, the impact too sudden and too immense for the frame to hold against, and it launched forward like it had been fired from something far more dangerous than a mere kick.
The young man who'd been leaning against it never even had time to register what was happening. The door slammed into him full force, crushing his body flat against the wall behind him with a wet, sickening crack, and he crumpled to the floor the instant it fell away, unconscious before he'd even finished sliding down.
Dust billowed out from the point of impact, thick and choking, swallowing the entrance to the room whole. The remaining two men froze, stunned into stillness for several long seconds before instinct finally kicked back in. They scrambled upright, guns drawn and aimed toward the doorway, backing themselves closer to the cage as if putting the children behind them might offer some kind of shield. Inside the cage, the kids had gone rigid with fear, wide eyes locked on the wreckage of the door, on the motionless shape crumpled beside it, tears already welling even though none of them dared make a sound.
"I told you to be careful, Max! What if that had hit the kids? You got lucky; that's all that saved you." A voice cut through the settling dust from just beyond the doorway, sharp with irritation.
"Sorry, sorry, I got a little excited," came the reply, sheepish and entirely unbothered, as if getting excited were a perfectly reasonable excuse for nearly crushing a group of children.
As the dust thinned enough to see through, two figures stepped into view. The one on the left had pink hair and a pair of striking rose-colored eyes, black pupils ringed by four downward-curving arrows, two set on either side, giving the unsettling impression that he wasn't simply looking at you but straight through you, into whatever sat beneath. He walked with his hands tucked near his left side, unhurried, radiating the kind of confidence that came from never once considering the possibility of losing.
Beside him stood a man with purple hair, a small tuft of white curling into his bangs on one side, his expression carrying an easy, boyish smile that made him look almost harmless, the sort of face that made people's guards drop before they even realized it was happening. His eyes glowed faintly purple, two inverted blue horns crossing where his pupils should have been.
The two remaining kidnappers raised their guns higher, hands shaking now, adrenaline flooding through them faster than either could process. Whatever they'd expected walking into this shift today, it certainly hadn't been this.
The old man, still seated on the floor, turned his head slowly toward the wall where the door had struck. The dust had cleared enough now to see clearly, and what greeted him made his breath catch somewhere in his throat.
There wasn't one body slumped against that wall.
There were two, both soaked in blood.
The old man's eyes widened as recognition finally settled in, his gaze locking onto the second body slumped against the wall, thin and grey-skinned even beneath the blood. "Daniel," he breathed, barely more than a whisper, the name catching somewhere in his throat.
The young man beside him turned at the sound of it, and the moment his eyes found Daniel's motionless form, something in his face shifted entirely. Shock gave way to fury in an instant, his features twisting with a rage that seemed to overtake whatever fear had been holding him in place moments before. He spun back toward the two officers standing in the doorway, gun rising higher, every part of him bracing to make them pay for what had just happened to the people he'd worked beside for months.
Eric, still mid-sentence in scolding Max for nearly crushing a room full of children, felt the shift before he even turned to look. The killing intent rolling off the young man was sharp enough to cut through the air itself, and Eric's attention slid toward him and his companion without any real urgency, as if the two men leveling guns at him were little more than a minor interruption to a more important conversation. His calm only seemed to make things worse. The younger kidnapper's hands began to shake harder under that gaze, his whole body trembling as though he'd been dropped into freezing water with no way back to shore.
Eric said nothing for a moment, simply watching him with the same unreadable calm he always carried. Then he raised his right hand, pressing his thumb and middle finger together, and snapped.
A single spark of pink light flickered from his fingertips, and in the space of a breath, an invisible pressure rippled outward in every direction, pressing down on both kidnappers at once. Their knees buckled almost simultaneously, and they collapsed to the floor without another sound, unconscious before either of them understood what had even happened to them.
Max and Eric stepped into the room, and Max wasted no time crossing straight to the cage, working the latch loose and pulling the door open before kneeling to untie the children one by one. His hands moved gently despite the urgency behind them, careful not to startle kids who'd clearly had more than enough reason to be frightened of strangers by now. It didn't take long before that caution paid off. His smile, warm and open, along with the soft, patient way he spoke to them, seemed to melt away whatever fear still lingered, and one by one they threw themselves at him, Lila included, small arms wrapping around him as they buried their faces against his chest and finally let themselves cry.
Max held them without hesitation, murmuring quiet reassurances, letting each of them cling to him as long as they needed. Watching him then, it was hard not to think that if he'd been born a woman, he would have made an extraordinary mother.
While Max stayed with the children, Eric let his eyes move slowly across the rest of the room, taking stock of everything with a quieter, more clinical attention. Something about this whole situation didn't sit right with him. Too many hands from too many of the four great bodies had ended up tangled in what should have been a simple, low-level kidnapping ring. Ordinary criminals didn't usually attract that kind of attention. Whatever this actually was, it had layers beneath it that hadn't shown themselves yet, and Daniel's mention of a voice guiding them, offering rewards for kidnapping children, only deepened that suspicion further.
He crossed the room first to check on Daniel and the other young man crushed against the wall. Both were still breathing, though barely, blood pooling steadily beneath them from wounds that weren't going to close on their own. Left untreated, neither of them would last much longer.
Eric left them where they were for now and moved instead toward the old man and the remaining young kidnapper, kneeling beside them to check their pulses. Both were alive, steady enough for the moment, but as Eric activated his vision and studied them more closely, something else caught his attention entirely. A small white spot sat lodged deep within each of their skulls, faint but unmistakable once he knew to look for it.
Something had been placed inside their minds.
Eric let his vision fade, and the instant it did, movement flickered at the edge of his sight. Something no bigger than a fingernail shot out of the young man's left ear with a sharp, mechanical click: a tiny figure in white armor, shaped unmistakably like a knight, and it launched itself straight at Eric's face.
"Divine puppet!" The name surfaced in his mind a half second before his hand did, closing around the thing mid-air on pure reflex. It struggled once, twice, against his grip, and then Eric simply squeezed. The puppet crumbled apart between his fingers like it had been made of nothing at all.
He barely had time to register that before his eyes snapped toward the old man. A second puppet was already emerging from his right ear, wings of light flaring out as it darted upward, clearly making a break for the ceiling.
"No, you don't!" Eric threw his arm up and snapped his fingers in one sharp motion. A spark of pink light cracked through the air, and the fleeing puppet shattered mid-flight, its tiny body twitching once, twice, before going completely still and dropping toward the floor in pieces. Eric crushed what remained beneath his boot without a second thought, grinding it to dust against the concrete.
Behind him, Max hadn't so much as glanced over. He stayed exactly where he was, arms full of children, gently angling their faces toward his shoulder and away from whatever Eric was doing, humming something low and soothing to keep their attention anywhere but on the mess unfolding a few feet away.
Backup arrived not long after, flooding the warehouse with flashlights and radio chatter. Eric handled the explanation smoothly, laying out a version of events where the kidnappers had been shot resisting arrest, their injuries a regrettable but understandable consequence of a chaotic rescue. Since neither of them had remembered to bring their bodycams that morning, there was nothing to contradict the story either way. In the end, they walked away with little more than a stern warning and a fine for the oversight, and were sent home for the day without further trouble.
Once they were clear of the warehouse and back outside, Eric scanned the surrounding street carefully, waiting until he was certain no one else was close enough to notice before drawing out his golden liquid. Thousands of thin golden strings unspooled into the air in front of him, shimmering faintly in the afternoon light. He focused, and the countless threads thinned down to just a few, each shifting into a deeper, dark-yellow hue. One reached toward Max. Another toward some friends he trusted, and the last, toward Voyage.
…
Back in the hospital, Voyage felt a faint buzzing in his mind, the unmistakable sensation of an incoming call. He glanced around, checking that no one was watching, then discreetly drew out his golden liquid and rubbed it against the dark-yellow thread coiling patiently around it, tucked halfway behind a curtain like a man sneaking a cigarette break. The connection clicked into place, and Eric's voice filled his head a moment later.
Eric didn't bother with a greeting. "Voyage. The boss of the gang, the mastermind behind kidnapping a bunch of children. That's you, isn't it?"
There was a pause. Then Voyage laughed, loud and completely unbothered, the sound echoing far too clearly in Eric's mind for someone who was supposedly hiding anything.
"Obviously," Voyage said, practically preening. "Who else could it be but me?"