“The duty of a police is to act against the vengeance of the people not to act for his vengeance against the people.” ― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

  * * * *

  The air inside the war room had grown thick—choking, almost, under the weight of what they had just uncovered.

  Rain tapped lightly against the keyboards of his portable computer, its steady rhythm the only sound in the silence that followed Raul’s final keystroke. Beyond the window slats, the night was pitch black, disturbed only by the distant murmurs of wind scraping through the trees that surrounded Ashenridge like a dark wall.

  Inside, light from the holographic screens bathed the cabin’s occupants in a cold, ethereal blue. Shadows danced over tired faces, with grim expressions carved into hardened lines. No one spoke. Not yet.

  Maps, documents, and scattered comms were scattered across the surface of the table in the center. The rotating projection of Eldario’s water purification systems were also reflected in the holographic screens in the air, spinning silently like a quietly ticking time bomb.

  Raul leaned back from the console, his golden eyes heavy. He didn’t need to say anything. His silence was enough. Elijah stood to his left, his arms folded tightly across his chest, his jaw locked, crimson hair half-shadowed under the hood drawn over his head. On his right stood Louis, trembling ever so slightly as he closed another decrypted file. His eyes, tired and rimmed red from hours of scouring through corrupted logs and hidden directives, darted to Sera at the far end of the room.

  Sera’s gaze was unreadable, her face still and calm in a way that terrified more than comforted. Her right hand hovered just barely above the table surface, her fingers twitching every few seconds. Sparks—barely visible, threads of static and restrained current, flickered between her fingertips, evidence of a mounting storm beneath her composure.

  “…They’re turning it from capsule form,” Rex said, breaking the silence with a voice low and laced with disbelief, “into liquid form?”

  Ashenridge’s leader stood at the head of the table, his arms braced against the wood. His caramel hair was slightly damp, swept back as if he’d just returned from the storm outside. The shadows cast by the holograms sharpened the lines beneath his eyes.

  Eyes that had seen war. Eyes that had survived Project Nonary.

  “Not only that.” Rex’s brows furrowed deeper as another file flickered open, revealing wireframe blueprints of a purification facility. “Blueprints. Plans. Of the water plant. Of the nation’s entire water supply system. Of everything the Council had in their databases… Why take these? I would’ve thought they’d go after the birth records at least.”

  Elijah stepped forward, his voice grave. “We think that the hunters, Nicolosi in particular, plan to place Blue Pandora into the national water supply.” He exhaled slowly, his eyes scanning every face present. “To wipe out all Gifted. Blue Pandora has a high probability of killing us. Even the dormant ones. We all learned that during the incident years ago. And now it’s been refined. Weaponised.”

  A cold stillness settled over the room.

  Jonan’s pale eyes widened as he exchanged a look with Allen, who stood stiff beside him, his arms clenched so tightly around his chest that his knuckles had gone white. Taylor, standing between her brother and Leonid, inhaled sharply, blinking as if she hadn’t fully registered the words. Her mouth opened to say something, but nothing came.

  Lucie’s hand crept up to her face, covering her mouth in horror. Her silver bracelets jingled softly, the sound woefully out of place. “But that would mean…”

  “It doesn’t make sense if they’re targeting the Gifted,” Zest interrupted, his voice firm, but his brows were knit with confusion. His red eyes flickered toward Sera instinctively, but she didn’t look at him. “The Gifted who are still alive—the ones who’ve escaped the purge, they’ve gone to the Abyss. The Abyss doesn’t even use the nation’s water system. They run on the old pipes, underground, pre-Council. Zalfari too. If they’re targeting the Gifted with this, then it’s doomed to fail from the start.”

  Kailey stepped forward from beside Neil, her usually gentle expression pinched in a rare, hard frown. “So what’s the plan, then?” she asked quietly, her voice a whisper fighting against a scream. “What are they really planning…if not to kill us directly?”

  A silence followed. Heavy. Suffocating.

  It was Rex who answered, his tone low and unsure, but grounded in the logic that had saved his life too many times to discount. “What if…” He paused, swallowing. “What if the Gifted were never the target?”

  Several heads turned sharply toward him.

  “I’m not saying this is fact,” Rex added quickly, raising his hand. “It’s conjecture. But think about it. The perfected formulas. The distribution schematics. The detailed logs of the testing. The shift from capsule to liquid. Why go through all of that if they know the Gifted won’t even be using the national water? Why invest this much effort unless…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the implication landed like a thunderclap.

  Lucas spoke for the first time, his voice hoarse, like someone waking from a nightmare. “You think they’re planning to dose everyone else?”

  Rex didn’t blink. “I think Nicolosi’s not just trying to wipe us out. He’s trying to change the country.”

  Sera’s eyes darkened. Her voice, when it came, was deathly quiet. “You’re saying Blue Pandora is no longer just a weapon. It’s a filter. A trigger.”

  Rex nodded grimly. “We all saw what it did to those who took it. The surge in physical strength. The way their eyes changed. Their voices. But more than that… There is one thing they all have in common. The rage. The unrelenting hatred. Even those who weren’t hunters, even those underground idiots who got their hands on it during the Blue Pandora incident years ago, they didn’t just become stronger. They became violent. Especially towards the Gifted.”

  “They stopped seeing us as people,” Leonid muttered, his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth were grinding. His blue eyes had gone darker.

  Raul closed his portable computer gently. “What if Blue Pandora wasn’t just about augmenting soldiers? What if, in the refining process, Nicolosi enhanced another property?” He gestured toward one of the files floating beside him, filled with graphs of psychological markers. “What if it makes Normals—people who wouldn’t otherwise harm Gifted, want to?”

  A chill fell over the room.

  “An entire nation,” Neil murmured, pearl-white eyes wide with realisation, “turned into executioners.”

  Jonan’s voice cracked. “And if this shit goes into the water…”

  “Dear Goddess,” Lucie whispered, her hand trembling.

  Allen took a step back and gripped the edge of the table, visibly reeling. “They’re not trying to wipe us out with the water. They’re trying to make them do it for them.”

  “They’re not targeting the Gifted,” Rex said again, eyes narrowing. “They’re targeting everyone else.”

  The words hit like a sledgehammer.

  And suddenly the full horror of it became clear.

  Sera stepped away from the table, her hand pressed over her mouth as she stared at the swirling projection of Eldario’s water system.

  Her mind raced—images of children in orphanages, of families, of quiet towns whose people had no idea of the poison that was inching its way toward their morning cups of water, toward their skin in the bath, their crops, their animals. Toward their minds.

  “They want them to become the monsters,” Sera said, her voice shaking, “so they’ll never stop until we’re all gone. They don’t even need to pull the trigger themselves. They’re turning Eldario into a weapon.”

  “And they’re doing it under the guise of protection,” Mara muttered from Rex’s side, her voice hollow. “The public won’t know until it’s too late. The Council’s dead. The ESA’s gone. There’s no one left to stop them.”

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  Silence fell amongst the room as everyone tried to digest what they just heard.

  The hunters weren’t planning to use Blue Pandora to simply cull the Gifted. They were planning to infect the entire nation.

  To poison the very water flowing through taps in every home. From the rural edges of Caswell to the sky bound towers of Meridian. Children. Elders. Unborn. All of them. Gifted or not. Normal or not.

  It wasn’t extermination. It was purification, through annihilation.

  The silence didn’t last.

  “…Even the most fanatic hunters wouldn’t agree to this plan if they knew, surely?” Kailey’s voice trembled as she leaned forward, her pearl-white eyes flickering with disbelief, her fingers twisting in the fabric of her lavender jacket. “Some of them… They truly do believe that they’re protecting the Normals from the Gifted. But doing this to the people they claim to protect…”

  “You are assuming they even know about this plan to begin with,” Raul said grimly, his arms crossed, and his shoulders tense. His golden eyes, usually glinting with some measure of calm sardonicism, were cold now. “The plans are stored in the deepest part of their damn motherlode. Hidden behind layers of clearance only Nicolosi and his inner circle can access. His personal unit, maybe. But the rest? The foot soldiers? Grunts? They don’t know. They follow orders like it’s scripture. Let’s face it, these bastards stopped being just a military unit a long time ago.”

  He looked around, meeting every eye around the table. “They’re a goddamn cult at this point. A fanatical death cult that worships Nicolosi like he’s their messiah. Brainwashed to the marrow. If he told them to drink acid, they’d do it smiling.”

  Tatius let out a bitter, sharp laugh—humourless and strained. “Hell, they probably think the water’s a blessing. A baptism.”

  “Don’t joke,” Laura snapped, her voice cutting across the table, sharp and raw. “Don’t joke about that, Tatius.”

  “I’m not,” Tatius muttered, but he didn’t press it.

  “They’re not even hiding it,” Taylor said softly, staring down at the table’s surface with wide eyes. Her fingers were trembling where they clutched the edge of the wood. “They’re not even trying to hide it.”

  “They’re monsters…” Lucie murmured. “They don’t even see the Gifted as people. And now they don’t see anyone as people.”

  Leonid’s voice was quiet, but heavy, like lead dropped into a still pond. “This isn’t about Gifted anymore. This is about control. They want a world where they decide who lives. Who’s worthy of breath. And if that means erasing Eldario to build a twisted version of it atop the ashes, so be it.”

  “They’ve already started refining the process of turning Blue Pandora into liquid form,” Allen muttered, his eyes scanning the terminal again, his brows drawn. “They’ve got labs. Funded. Staffed.”

  “But they don’t know how to complete the process yet,” Elijah said quickly, speaking for the first time since the initial reveal. He looked up from his seat near Raul, his eyes sharp beneath the fall of his crimson bangs. “The data said they’re still missing the final catalyst. That buys us time. They’re not ready.”

  “How much time?” Jonan asked. “A month? A week? A day?”

  “If Blue Pandora is as volatile as Tiara’s notes suggest, it won’t be a quick process,” Elijah insisted. “It needs precision. And if they mess up the mixture, it can decay into useless compounds.”

  “Unless they fix it tomorrow,” Allen said quietly. “Unless someone completes the research for them. One wrong hand captured. One lab raid. One traitor scientist. It’s all it takes.”

  “But we still have time,” Elijah pressed, but his voice was thinning. He didn’t even sound like he believed it anymore.

  The tension escalated like fire catching oil. Voices overlapped.

  Arguments broke out—angry, fractured, and even desperate.

  “We need to warn people—”

  “Warn who? The media’s muzzled, and the ones that aren’t are controlled by the hunters. No one would believe us!”

  “Then we attack. Take down the labs. Burn them down before they complete it—”

  “With what manpower? With what intel?”

  “We could try the Council—”

  “They’re all DEAD! Don’t you get it?! The entire Council was slaughtered!”

  “Then the underground—”

  “The underground’s fractured! Zalfari’s under siege and the Abyss is barely hanging on!”

  And through it all, Sera said nothing.

  She sat at the edge of the table, motionless, as if the storm around her wasn’t even touching her. Her fingers were laced together, her knuckles white. Her face, always pale, was drained of every remaining ounce of colour. Her eyes flickered in the dim light, unreadable.

  She looked like someone who had already made peace with something the others hadn’t yet dared to voice.

  Rex had been quiet this entire time—leaning back in his seat, his arms crossed, watching the room. The shadows cast by the lantern light made his caramel brown hair appear darker than usual, and his dark eyes were narrowed—not in confusion, but in recognition.

  And finally, he spoke.

  “Sera.”

  The room stilled instantly.

  Rex sat forward, resting his forearms on the table. His voice was low and calm—but in a way that commanded silence. “From the look on your face,” he said, “you already have a plan. Don’t you?”

  Sera didn’t reply.

  Rex gave a faint, humourless smile. “I know that look. You’re calculating probabilities. Cost versus risk. You’re trying to convince yourself not to say it.”

  A silence followed. Then…

  “…The only plan I have that might even work,” Sera said slowly and quietly, “will send the lot of you walking to your deaths.”

  The words hit like a guillotine.

  No one spoke. No one moved.

  Then Laura rose from her seat, stepping forward, her voice firm despite the tremor beneath it. “We all knew, from the moment we started involving ourselves in this, that it would be dangerous,” she said. “We told you… We told you…that we would be in this with you. I do not fear death.” She turned, sweeping her eyes across Aegis. “And I know the rest of us agree.”

  One by one, they nodded.

  Raul. Tatius. Lucie. Neil. Kailey. Letha.

  Each silent, each resolute.

  Even Zest, leaning against the far wall with arms crossed, gave a slight tilt of his head.

  Sera looked away. Her jaw was clenched tight. “No,” she said at last, her voice barely audible. “I won’t agree to this.”

  And before anyone could stop her, she turned, her coat sweeping behind her, and walked straight out of the war room.

  “Sera!” Laura called, instinctively stepping after her.

  “I’ll go after her,” Zest said quietly.

  He pushed off the wall, stepping into the doorway and vanishing into the dark night after her, leaving the war room plunged in stunned silence once more.

  Only this time, the silence carried with it a bitter finality.

  Outside, the wind had picked up, rustling the trees surrounding Ashenridge, as if the world itself could feel the threads unravelling. Inside, the war room held the flickering light of fragile hope, and the weight of a choice that could no longer be avoided.

  They had learned the truth. And it had teeth.

  * * * *

  The door clicked softly behind Zest as he stepped out into the cold Ashenridge night, the rough wooden boards of the cabin porch creaking slightly beneath his boots.

  The war room, once filled with urgency and debate, now lay behind him in breathless silence, its air still heavy with the stench of dread and disbelief. The revelation had cracked something open inside all of them.

  Blue Pandora. The water supply. Not just the Gifted. Everyone.

  Zest exhaled slowly, steam curling in the frigid air, then looked up.

  Sera stood just beyond the porch’s edge, her back to him, silhouetted by moonlight that bathed Ashenridge in silver-blue hues. The trees swayed gently in the distance, whispering secrets to one another in a wind that carried the scent of pine and ash. Stars glittered above like scattered glass, cold and distant, unmoved by the suffering unravelling below.

  She didn’t move at his presence, though she clearly sensed it. Her shoulders, tense beneath the black trench coat, were as still as stone. She had removed her scarf, and her long raven hair, tied loosely in a low ponytail, stirred faintly in the wind. Her head was tilted upward, eyes lost in the stars, as if searching for answers in constellations that had long stopped offering them.

  Zest remained silent for several moments, watching her. He knew better than to speak too soon. He had learned, long ago, that sometimes, the silence said more than any words could. Especially with her.

  “Let’s face it,” Sera said finally, her voice soft, flat, almost detached. “Lots of people are going to die.” She didn’t turn around.

  Zest’s expression didn’t change, though his red eyes flickered faintly in the dark.

  “I swore when I started Aegis,” Sera continued, the wind brushing against her words, “that I wouldn’t make the same mistake I did with Blade.” Her arms slowly crossed over her chest, as though shielding herself from something colder than the wind. “And now… I’m sending them to their deaths.”

  Zest leaned against the wooden post beside him, his arms folded, his eyes still on her. “Sera,” he said quietly, “let’s face the practicality of the whole matter. Do we even have a choice at this point?”

  She was silent again.

  “If we don’t stop this insanity,” Zest pressed on, his voice low but firm, “who is going to? Other nations? It’ll mean war. A war between countries, spilling out across borders. Millions would die. Maybe more.”

  The idea was terrifying, but also deeply, frighteningly plausible. If Eldario’s water system became a death sentence… If Blue Pandora turned its own citizens into rabid husks, no other country would sit back and do nothing.

  And once the hunters were done with Eldario, what was to stop them from spreading their “cleansing” elsewhere?

  Zest’s voice softened. “You need to trust us. Trust them. To handle themselves.”

  Sera slowly turned her head toward him, her eyes shimmering faintly in the moonlight, both filled with a quiet war. “…What if we do this,” she whispered, “go with my plan…and something goes wrong? What if they all die?” Her voice trembled on that last word. “I can’t do this again, Zest. Not after what happened with Blade. Not again.”

  The pain behind her eyes was raw. The memory of Blade—her former group, still cut deep. She had carried the weight of their deaths for years, worn it like invisible armour, hardened herself to survive.

  But the ghosts had never left. They whispered behind every decision. Screamed behind every loss.

  “But what if we do this,” Zest said gently, taking a step closer, “and it works?”

  He didn’t speak like someone offering blind hope. There was steel in his voice, and reason. A grounding force amid the chaos.

  “Let’s face it,” Zest said again. “Do we have any other plan? Any other way? If you’ve got a plan, however slim the chance is, we have to take it. We’re running out of time.”

  Sera looked away. Her hands had curled into fists at her sides, her knuckles bone-white.

  “Sera.” Zest’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Whatever happens…let it happen. It’s the Goddess’s will at this point. Trust us. Trust in our abilities. No matter what,” He stepped beside her now, his voice softer still, “we have to stop this.”

  There was silence again. The kind that stretched and trembled with meaning. Finally, Sera closed her eyes.

  Then, she nodded.

  A quiet motion, small and exhausted. But it was enough.

  They turned together and walked back into the cabin.

  * * * *

  The war room was quieter now, though the air had not cooled. The tension still clung like static. Every eye turned toward them the moment they stepped inside.

  Lucas straightened where he stood by the edge of the oval table. Leonid and Taylor looked up from the map strewn across its surface. Raul, seated with his arms folded, gave a silent nod. Neil, Kailey, and Laura stood to one side, watching. The former ESA, Aegis, and the resistance leaders of Ashenridge all gathered—many still pale from the revelation that had shattered through them only moments earlier.

  Rex stood by the head of the table, his hands on his hips, his caramel hair slightly tousled. He didn’t comment on their return. Didn’t prod or question.

  Instead, he asked with a sardonic drawl, as if the last five minutes hadn’t occurred, “So you got a plan, don’t you?”

  Sera stared at him for a long beat. Then nodded.

  Rex gave a half-smile. “What’s the plan?”

  Sera exhaled slowly. Her eyes swept the room, lingering on each face. So many were young—some barely in their early twenties. Some had been soldiers. Others, criminals. Most were just survivors.

  “It’s going to be risky,” Sera warned. “Many of us are going to die if we’re not careful.”

  “We can say that about any other plan we have,” Leonid said grimly, stepping closer.

  Sera gave a faint nod. “Then we drive the hunters into a corner, like we discussed before. But this time, we go beyond that. We bleed them out.” Her tone sharpened with purpose. “We’ll need the help of the Abyss. Their informants. Their networks. Every whisper and rumour we can get.”

  “An information war,” Elijah murmured, the corners of his crimson-red hair casting shadows across his sharp features. “Propaganda. Rumours with half-truths. Espionage. And sabotage.”

  “We use the hunters’ tactics against them,” Taylor finished softly.

  Sera nodded. “Yes. But before that, we need concrete proof. Undeniable evidence. Something even Nicolosi can’t dismiss as lies or fabrications. Knowing him, he probably gloated before killing my aunt.”

  Her voice cracked slightly at the end, but she didn’t stop. Tiara’s death was still raw. The memory of her aunt—stern but kind, a shield for the Gifted within the broken halls of the ESA, burned behind her ribs.

  Sera turned to Neil. “Neil. How far back can you see into the past with your abilities?”

  Neil blinked, clearly taken aback. “I can go back years, if necessary.”

  “…If we go back to where ESA HQ once stood,” Sera asked, “do you think you can see the past again? More specifically, the moment when my aunt died. No way Nicolosi wouldn’t try to kill her himself. She’s been a major thorn in his side for years.”

  Everyone stilled.

  “Wait…” Jonan interjected, brows furrowed. “Sera, that’s insane. ESA HQ is in Zhane City. That entire region is crawling with hunters now.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Sera said firmly. “First, I need to know the limits of Neil’s abilities. If we bring a recording device and record what you can see, will it work? Can we capture a memory of the past?”

  “I’ve never tried,” Neil admitted, his voice slow and uncertain. “But… There’s no reason it can’t work.”

  Sera’s shoulders tensed. Then eased. “…Okay.” She nodded. Then she looked around, her gaze sweeping the table again, sharp and cold and steady. “Then this is what we’re going to do…”