The soldiers' boots receded, heavy thuds swallowed by the night. A metallic clatter as the doorframe was kicked wider, then silence, broken only by clipped radio voices vanishing down the street. Engines roared back to life, spotlights dimmed, and the convoy pulled away—one armored beast after another
The neighborhood was left gutted and hollow. A dog barked once, then whimpered itself quiet. Somewhere far off, glass crunched under a careless boot. And then… nothing.
Inside the wreckage of the Graves' home, everything stank of smoke, gunpowder, and blood. The front door hung lopsided from broken hinges, one side dragging across the floor. Bullet casings gleamed faintly in the strips of moonlight cutting through the blinds. Chairs were overturned. A picture frame lay shattered, its glass biting into the rug.
The center of the living room was empty. Only a dark smear of blood marked where Spencer Graves had fallen. The Taskforce had carried him off like cargo, leaving nothing behind but silence and ruin.
But Grant remained sprawled where he had fallen, his shirt stiff with blood, one arm reaching toward the dark stain where his father had been. To anyone looking in, he was only another casualty—pale, still, swallowed by silence.
For anyone looking in, it was a picture of loss. Father stolen. Son slain. Another raid complete. The Taskforce had no reason to doubt it.
But the silence pressed differently around Grant.
His chest rose—barely, shallow as a whisper. A tremor flickered at his fingertips, a pulse too faint for human eyes.
A hand twitched. Just one finger, curling against the blood-soaked floorboard.
For a moment it stilled again, as if it had been nothing but the settling of a corpse. Then the twitch came back, sharper this time, a pulse of life threading through what should have been still flesh.
His body arched once, sharp and unnatural, and as it fell back into the pool of blood, the wound on his chest began to close—flesh knitting like fabric drawn by invisible thread. His chest rose again—shallow, but steady.
Grant did not wake. His eyes stayed closed, lashes sticky with tears and blood. His face was as pale as stone. But the impossible truth remained—he lived.
Unconscious, broken in every way but the body itself, the boy lay untouched in the wreckage.
The Taskforce had left behind a corpse.
What they had really left was something they could no longer kill.
Outside, neighbors whispered in the dark. A child whimpered. Someone murmured, "They stormed his house." Another answered, "Dragged him off. The father. Maybe the boy too." None dared cross the shattered doorway.
The sound of a new presence cut those whispers short.
Footsteps—steady, unhurried—approached the ruin. A tall figure's shadow stretched across the splintered threshold before he stepped inside.
Detective Rook.
His coat brushed the ground as he moved. He did not hesitate at the broken frame. His eyes swept the room in slow, methodical arcs, cataloging every overturned chair, every hole in the wall, every trail of blood. He had walked into too many rooms like this before.
But when his gaze fell on the boy, his expression shifted. Not surprise—Rook rarely allowed himself that—but something harder to place. His jaw tightened and his shoulders stilled.
Rook moved closer, his boots crunching over broken glass. He stopped beside the boy, crouching low so the beams of his flashlight cut across Grant's chest.
The shirt was shredded, blackened in places, stiff with dried blood. Three distinct holes marked where bullets had struck. But as Rook's light shifted, the truth revealed itself.
No wounds.
No torn flesh.
Only smooth skin beneath the ruin of cloth.
Rook froze, his breath caught in his throat. His hand hovered just above the boy's chest, close enough to feel the faint tremor of breath rising and falling. He was alive.
"Impossible…" the word slipped out before he could stop it. His eyes narrowed, scanning again, as if repetition would make sense of what he saw. The blood was real, the fabric was torn, yet the body beneath carried no scar.
The detective's jaw flexed, his voice dropping to a rasp meant only for himself. "…Gifted."
For a moment, his hardened mask cracked. His gaze softened, something like pity touching his eyes. This boy, small and pale, had survived what no one should have survived. The father was gone, taken to some fate Rook knew too well. And now the son remained, marked by something more dangerous than grief.
Rook's lips thinned. A whisper escaped him, meant only for the dark. "Aldus was right…"
Slowly, carefully, Rook slid his arms beneath the child and lifted him. Grant's head lolled against his chest, limp with unconsciousness, yet the faint heat of life radiated against Rook's coat.
He paused in the ruined doorway, the weight of the boy heavy in his arms. His eyes flicked once to the shadows outside—neighbors still lingering, still afraid to come close. None spoke as Rook carried the boy into the night.
His whisper cut low, only for the boy to hear, though the boy was far from waking.
"Your fight isn't over, kid."
The words lingered like an oath as the detective disappeared into the silence, the house behind them sagging into the shape of loss.