The sirens came late, their shrill, jagged wails spread through the rain long after the red mud had settled.
Headlights swept across the slick tarmac in wide, desperate arcs as the primary precinct units finally flooded the North Quad.
Janvis—her uniform soaked through, her hands caked in a dark, sickening paste of blood and soil, was already shouting into her radio before the first door slammed shut.
"Officer down! North Quad, west of the annex! Requesting medical transport on the line now!"
Her voice crackled through the local frequency, repeating the distress code until the officers in pursuit of Holly and Fiona abandoned their sweep along the south fence.
They pulled back in haste, tires skidding on the wet gravel as they rushed to establish a hard perimeter around the maintenance court.
Within minutes, the emergency crews had Quive strapped to a heavy gurney, a thick white bandage already turning crimson over his left socket. Beside him, the collapsed, grotesque form of Caleb was hauled onto a reinforced stretcher, his limbs heavy and limp as the dark, foul fluid continued to ooze from his mouth.
Janvis stepped into the back of the lead transport, her face drawn, supervising the transfer as the ambulances sped toward the town line.
In the low-lit reception of the local clinic, the air smelled sharply of rubbing alcohol and stale rainwater.
Rein stood near the edge of the frosted glass partition, her breath catching in her throat as the double doors burst open.
The scene was pure, unadulterated violence. Quive was wheeled in first, his face bloodied, the stark white linen wrapped around his head doing little to hide the ruin beneath.
Right behind him came Caleb. The boy's skin was a horrorshow, it was torn open in deep, jagged strips as if the flesh itself had tried to burst free from the bone, leaving raw, weeping fissures that looked less like a sharp blade cuts and more like the violent tearing of wet canvas.
Two of the junior orderlies standing by the desk took one look at the gurney, turned sharply on their heels, and retched into the waste bins.
Rein backed away, her hands trembling as her shoulder bumped into Professor Julian. He caught her by the arm, his grip firm, his expression lined with a severe, quiet gravity.
"Rein," Julian murmured, his voice barely audible over the shouting orderlies. "Go back to the dorms. Find Claire and ask her about the updates." He hesitated, his thumb pressing into her sleeve. "It would be better to hear it from a sibling."
The words hung cold in the air. A sibling. Rein felt a sudden, sickening drop in her chest. Her mind flickered instantly to Klaus, it's been close to three years since the last incident of gaspe peninsula. The last she could remember of him was when she go shot and blacked out, anything aside that was fuzzy.
She didn't ask a second question before turning away and vanished into the rain.
High above the sprawling grid of the lower district, the upper floor of an old skyscraper stood swallowed in shadow. Rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling glass, casting long, weeping reflections across the polished mahogany desk inside the corner office.
A single landline phone rested on the blotter, its small green light glowing in the dark.
"He took a round through the orbit, sir," Janvis's voice came through the receiver, small and distant, absent of her usual iron composure. She was standing in the hospital stairwell, her voice carrying a faint tremble as she detailed the massacre on the quad—the impossible speed of the hostiles, the mutated boy, the blood in the mud, and Quive's critical condition from an unknown assailant .
"The precinct is declaring a structural lockdown. We... we barely contained the local news but there's no assurance that the others wouldn't have been made aware of the incidents."
A long, suffocating silence stretched across the line. The heavy curtains rustled as the man in the leather high-backed chair shifted slightly. He let out a slow, deep sigh.
"And the detective?" the raspy, cold voice finally asked.
"He's in surgery," Janvis whispered, her throat tight. "What... what is our next move, sir? Do we deploy the secondary reserve?"
The man did not answer her question. Instead, he leaned forward into the dim light, his fingers tapping a slow cadence against the wood. "Give me an update on Curt."
Janvis gave a bitter exhale which escaped over the line and seized the opening. "Bill is completely out of hand," she said, the tremble in her tone replaced by a raw, furious heat.
"He's acting like a wild animal. He's hunting students along the perimeter, dragging his experimental failures through the public brush, and leaving trails of blood on our doorstep. We are spending every hour of the night sweeping up his mess while he struts around in scrubs pretending to be an invited surgeon!"
In the dark office, the shadow tilted his head back. A low, dry chuckle rattled in his throat, devoid of any genuine warmth.
"Let the surgeon enjoy his thread a little longer, Janvis," the cold voice rasped softly. "I shall attend to Mr. Curt personally."
Before she could offer another word, the line clicked dead.
She looked into the operating room followed by her legs limping to the ground as she grabbed her head in worry.