“Adversity no longer exists within the subject, which has become indifferent to misfortune and to itself. Between the object and the subject of vengeance, no demarcation. A single, dual being, and nothing is separate.” ― Jean Baudrillard (Fragments)

  * * * *

  The wind moved in soft gusts over the sleeping outskirts of Kald, stirring dust from its concrete alleys and rattling loose the signage over storefronts.

  A thin crescent moon hung over the city like a blade—sharp, pale, and watching. Night patrols stalked through the streets like vultures, rifles slung carelessly over shoulders, with each of them bearing the insignia of the hunters in their blood-red coats and iron badges—symbols of fear rather than order.

  Beyond the narrow view of the base’s surveillance eyes, parked in a shadowed lane that had long been abandoned, a matte black van idled with its lights killed.

  It had no license, no markings, and no reason to be there—except the three figures seated in its darkened rear.

  Inside, the van thrummed faintly, not from the engine, but from the quiet, ceaseless activity of fingers moving over keys, screens illuminating pale faces in hues of soft blue and green.

  It was a cockpit of war—not of guns, but of minds.

  Raul sat closest to the door, his brows tense, and his eyes reflecting cascading lines of raw code. He was calm, precise, and surgical with every keystroke, like a surgeon cracking open the skull of a dying nation.

  Next to him was Elijah, his hood drawn up, crimson hair curling out from beneath the fabric like flame-tipped silk. His feline-like pupils flicked between screens as he adjusted external surveillance drones to mask the presence of their comrades already inside. His lips were tight, pressed in a line of quiet concentration, though the faint tap of his boot suggested otherwise.

  Louis lounged across from them, legs pulled up onto his seat, his eyes half-lidded in the way only he could manage while still navigating an internal security firewall meant to be impenetrable.

  His pineapple-style hair swayed slightly with every motion, and his headphones throbbed with soft bass, though he had one earpiece peeled back to stay alert.

  On his screen reflected thermal schematics of the hunters’ secondary base and a map of its most secret levels, newly decrypted from the files Tiara had sent before her death.

  “She died so we could break into this place,” Louis muttered under his breath, almost too low to hear.

  Raul didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. The air inside the van had weight to it—heavy with grief, rage, and the unrelenting pressure of knowing this might be their last mission.

  Then, at 10:47PM, Kald trembled.

  The explosion was like a beast’s roar—deafening, sudden, and furious.

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  Fire bloomed across the eastern horizon, followed by a second, deeper burst to the west, as twin shockwaves rolled through the facility like thunder from the heavens.

  Inside the hunters’ secondary base, chaos was instantaneous.

  Sirens shattered the night. Alarms screeched through hallways. Emergency lights pulsed red. Guards scrambled out of their rooms and posts, rifles raised, their eyes wide with confusion and fear.

  “What just happened?!”

  “The comms room’s gone! We’ve lost the uplink to the mainframe!”

  “And the arms storage in the west wing just blew sky-high!”

  “Are we under attack?! Intruders?!”

  And yet, there were no signs of an external assault—no siege weapons, no battalion, and no announcement.

  It was ghosts in their machines. And those ghosts were named Raul, Elijah, and Louis.

  Raul’s fingers danced across the keyboard again, opening firewall after firewall. “Security reroute complete. Doors C-12 to D-47 locked. Redirecting patrols from lower eastern corridor. Team A, go now.”

  “Copy.” Sera’s voice crackled over the channel, calm as ever, though Raul could hear the fire underneath. “Decoy Team A, done.”

  Seconds later, Misha’s voice filtered through. “Team B, too. Tell Louis his prediction’s off. This was easier than I thought.”

  “Don’t jinx it,” Elijah muttered without looking up. His voice was low and quiet. But Raul could see the tension in his jaw.

  “This feels strangely like déjà vu,” Louis sighed, his fingers twitching as he disabled two newly-activated auto-turrets near the western stairwell. “Heads up, Misha. You’ve got three guards heading your way—floor below, northeast hall.”

  “I’ll handle it,” came the reply.

  And still, Kald burned.

  The explosions had only been the first act. The hunters were now sprinting through a maze of false leads and dead ends, thanks to the trio in the van, while their real enemy moved in shadows.

  “Tatius and Rex here,” Rex’s deep, gravelled voice cut in, sharp and commanding, “we’re approaching the entrance to the experimental sector now. Locked behind a six-point security gate.”

  Raul was already on it. “You’ll have one shot at this. Security in that wing is sealed off from our override. You’re going to have to go manual for that door. Tatius, you still got that sand trick?”

  “Still do.”

  “Good. Melt it.”

  A pause.

  “Once the hunters realise Sera’s inside,” Raul said, his voice grim, “they’ll be flocking to her like bees to honey. That’s the plan. But she won’t be able to hold them forever.”

  Elijah’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve got two hours. Maybe less.”

  “Some of the corridors beyond Level 3 are isolated systems,” Louis added, tilting his screen. “Can’t hack into them from here. That means you’ll be going in blind.”

  He said it without fear, but Raul heard the unspoken: We can’t protect you there.

  A breath passed between them. One long, cold breath before Raul leaned forward and spoke again, more serious than he had ever sounded. “Our mission here is not just to infiltrate. Not just sabotage. We’re here to ensure the total and complete destruction of the manufacturing facility in the hidden level: Level 3. The source of Blue Pandora. That poison is no longer a weapon just against the Gifted. Nicolosi plans to flood the country with it, through the water.”

  There was a silence that followed. Not from disbelief. None of them questioned the depravity of Nicolosi anymore. But rather from the weight of knowing that the war was no longer only theirs. Eldario itself was under siege. And the people still didn’t know.

  “Zest and his team are at the water purification plant as we speak, but there is no guarantee that they’ll be able to succeed in what we’ve planned for their team. So…” Raul exhaled. “Rex. Tatius. Get in. Destroy it. Get out. The rest of you, please be safe. Don’t be reckless.”

  Raul’s voice cracked slightly at the end. And then Jonan’s voice cut in, light-hearted but firm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re all coming back alive.”

  Raul didn’t answer. Neither did Elijah.

  Louis sighed and closed one eye, muttering as he worked. “Don’t jinx it, Jonan…”

  Yet the thought had already sunk deep.

  Raul could feel it in his chest, the sick weight of doubt. This mission was different. They had broken into Kald before. But that time, it had been to save Lucas.

  This time, they were not leaving quietly. They were burning the root of the rot itself.

  Nicolosi had poisoned the minds of the country for too long. He had turned brother against brother, mothers against their children. His voice echoed across television screens and airwaves with cold charm and righteous fury.

  To him, the Gifted were not human. They were anomalies. Tools. Lab rats. Monsters.

  Raul remembered the intercepted audio from just weeks ago—the one Louis had decrypted from the encrypted channels.

  “You want them to sympathise with the Gifted? Let them drink them. Let the whole of Eldario sip purity from a glass of red. They’ll be begging us for salvation by the time their children scream in their sleep.”

  The water supply.

  This was not a war anymore. It was extermination.

  Raul looked over at Elijah and Louis, both still immersed in their work. They were about his age, with Elijah just a few years older. Sharper in some ways. Better, maybe. But they shouldn’t have to carry this weight. None of them should.

  And yet, here they were. At war with the devil himself.

  The van vibrated softly again as another wave of detonations rumbled through Kald.

  “We’re ghosts in their systems,” Raul murmured. “But if this goes sideways…”

  Elijah looked up, his eyes glowing in the dim. “Then we become phantoms in their nightmares.”

  And still, beyond the metal walls, the Hunt began.