The impact was like a hammer to the gut.
Bingley's right hook drove into Klaus' abdomen with the weight of a sledgehammer, sending a ripple through his body and shoving him backward into the frame of the doorway. A hollow "thud" echoed through the hall.
Klaus exhaled sharply, the blow biting into old scar tissue, but he didn't fold. He straightened slowly shoulders squaring, face still blank as carved stone.
Bingley grinned with his nostrils flaring then followed up with a stomp forward again, faster this time. His left hook came in mean and wide, a brutal arc meant to take heads off shoulders.
Upon seeing this attack, Klaus remained rooted with his hands guard up as he caught the motion not the fist, but the momentum. His hands hooked around Bingley's forearm like steel clamps, pivoting on his heel. The redirection was fluid, almost effortless. Bingley's own power betrayed him, and with a guttural growl, his body slammed through the doorway across the hall crashing into Klaus's room with the splintering sound of wood and metal folding under force.
Dust exploded into the air.
The girls didn't follow immediately given they didn't have to. Scarlet and Anne in haste turned their attention to Kristen, who sat half-crumpled on the floor, her hands still shaking. Lucy's trembling fingers checked her pulse. Issa, pale but defiant despite the blow she'd taken, crouched at the foot of the bed.
"Kristen," Lucy whispered. "Look at me."
"I...cough..I'm okay," Kristen rasped, though her voice betrayed the tremor crawling through her bones.
Scarlet's eyes swept her quickly, jaw tightening at every bruise but softening with relief. "She's not tainted. Just in time."
Issa exhaled shakily, then closed her eyes. A pulse of violet light ran along the veins of her hand, and in the blink of an eye, "whoosh" a black duffel and three metallic cases blinked into the room. Their gear. Weapons. And tucked neatly in the smallest case, a recording device already humming with faint red light.
Scarlet snatched up the recorder, checking it, while Anne unlatched the weapons compact rods, tasers, silver-edge knives, all sleek and practical.
Their breathing synced. The wild panic that had filled the room only minutes ago bled into something colder. Calculated.
This wasn't just payback. It was going to be proof.
"Scarlet," Anne muttered. "On your word."
Scarlet's eyes flicked toward the busted doorway opposite the hall. But where Bingley and Klaus had crashed through, there was nothing now.
Only the curtains fluttering against the open window, dust swirling like restless ghosts.
"Shit," Lucy hissed.
Bingley too.
Scarlet tightened her grip on the blade in her hand, her pulse a steady drum. The windowpane rattled slightly in the cold night air.
"He took the bastard outside," Issa whispered.
Scarlet's eyes narrowed. "they can't have gone far."
The cold air outside was biting, dragging steam from their lips as the four of them rounded the side of the building daggers drawn, heart beating in their throats.
Just before they could take another step toward the tree line, a shape peeled out of the shadows.
Klaus, stood with his back against the concrete wall, head tipped down slightly, blood drying faintly on the corner of his lip. His breathing was rough, but steady. His shirt was torn at the collar from the struggle, and his hands hung loose at his sides not in surrender.
Scarlet froze first. "Where is he?"
Klaus didn't answer at first as his eyes lifted to meet hers, cold and heavy. Then, he spoke not sharp, but low and tired.
"Let's head back ."
Anne's fingers clenched tighter around the steel pole she'd brought. "Don't tell me to retreat, Klaus. He is an animal. We're not letting that bastard crawl back into the barracks like nothing happened."
Klaus exhaled slowly, pushing off the wall. "And then what?"
Lucy blinked. "What do you mean then what? We drag his ass into the open. We show everyone what he really is "
"You think that's smart , to barge in and point a weapon to a senior officer," Klaus interrupted flatly. "Out here. At dawn with no witnesses on your side except each other. No one will care what you say. They'll only see a group of newly enhanced feminists soldiers attacking a superior."
His tone was calm, but beneath it was something frayed. Am obviously exhaustion that came from knowing the system was a noose waiting to tighten.
Issa stepped closer, voice wavering with anger and fear. "He deserves to pay for his actions."
"I didn't say he didn't," Klaus said quietly. "But if you do it now… out here…they'll call it insubordination. Then it won't just be him who pays. It'll be all of you. Branded as unstable, dangerous individuals that seem to be going against orders."
Scarlet lowered her blade and gun slightly, her jaw tightening. The sound of the night wind filled the tense silence between them.
Anne spat to the side. "So what huh...what are you saying? We just let him walk?"
Klaus' gaze hardened. "No. You just need to rest"
Lucy's voice cracked. "Do you hear yourself? We're supposed to breathe the same air as that monster after what he tried?"
Klaus' eyes flicked briefly to Kristen, who was being supported by Issa, still shaking but holding on. "Even after you all have been here before me it seems you are unclear about what is going on."
" I can't be bothered about this so just head back before patrol sets out"
Scarlet clenched her fists. She wanted to argue, to scream, but she could see the quiet certainty in his eyes the kind of certainty that only came from surviving something ugly.
"I hate this," she muttered.
Klaus gave a dry, humorless huff. "Good thing you still care about morals hehe."
For a long moment, the five of them stood there, the cold biting into their skin, the night pressing close like a held breath.
Scarlet finally hid her gun in her gun patch, the motion stiff, reluctant. One by one, the others followed none of them happy, but all of them understanding.