Rain drummed hard against the concrete walls of the FBI's Eastern Operations Center.
Inside, the war room buzzed with tension, screens flashing, agents moving in tight formations, low voices humming like distant thunder.
They'd almost got rid of the menace who's been troubling them all this while. The Night demon.
The night demon is a terrifyingly swift assassin who's assassinated top-classed citizens and he always left no trace. He once assassinates the President but no one even knew how he got in despite the heavy protection.
But now.....they got a lead.
Agent Clove stood before the board, arms crossed, still drenched from the night's failure. Her hair clung to her cheeks.
Behind her, the footage looped: a burning helicopter spiraling, men screaming, a black katana dancing through flesh rapidly and then...
Nothing. He was gone like he had never existed.
The Night Demon had vanished.
Again.
A gruff voice cut the silence. "Let's go over it. What do we know?"
The speaker was Director Nash, a man in his late 50s. He had sharp eyes, a scar on his chin that never healed right. He paced slowly, hand on his hip, the weight of a service pistol heavy beside him.
Clove clicked the remote. A still image appeared: a zoomed-in, grainy shot of a young man mid-leap. The resolution was poor, but the eyes... the eyes were unmistakable.
One gold.
One violet.
"We have a visual. Frame 229. Right before he cloaked himself." Clove circled the eyes with a red marker. "That's our first clear ID of a biological trait."
Nash grunted. "So he's not just some suit. He's... something else...those pair of eyes doesn't look human"
"I don't usually believe in ghosts or spirits but this might be an exception given how terrifying he is"
An analyst chimed in. "We ran the footage through our facial recognition A.I. Nothing matched any known criminals."
"Then expand the scope," Clove said. "Not just criminals. Citizens. Civilians. Run a nationwide filter. Search for anyone, anyone with heterochromia. One eye gold, one eye violet."
Nash raised a brow. "That's not exactly a common set of eyes."
"No. It's not."
It took three hours. The system combed through birth records, immigration data, school databases, medical archives.
Finally, a ping.
A file popped up on the main screen.
Name: Zaviel Nocturne
Age: 17
DOB: February 16th, 2008
Status: High School Student – Final Grade
Location: Blackridge High, Central District
Everyone stared.
"That... can't be right," the analyst mumbled.
Nash squinted. "A seventeen-year-old? Are you saying this kid's the Night Demon?"
Clove's lips tightened. "No. I'm saying... he's the only one in the entire country with those eyes. That's either the world's worst coincidence, or we just found something big."
Another agent leaned forward. "But the Night Demon's been reported in incidents dating back at least two decades. Massacres. Executions. Black ops leaks. How the hell is that possible if this kid's just a teen?"
Clove didn't answer immediately. She stared at the school photo on the screen.
Zaviel stood alone in the frame. Black hair. Pale skin. Slouched shoulders. The kind of kid you'd assume was either a genius or one bad day away from burning the school down.
But those eyes...
They were the same....
Nash chuckled dryly "If this is actually him, then he must be one hell of an arrogant dude...or just recklessness"
"But that recklessness gave us our lead"
"I want surveillance," Clove said. "Quietly. No alerting the local law enforcement. We do this off the books. If this kid's clean, we back off. But if not....."
Nash cut in. "If not, we put him down. Fast."
Clove didn't respond.
She stared at the photo a second longer.
And for the first time that night, she felt something twist in her gut.
Not fear.
Doubt.
Across the city, inside the dimly lit halls of Blackridge High, Zaviel sat in the back of his literature class, head resting on his knuckles, eyes half-lidded.
"What was that feeling last night?" He clutched his chest as he reminisced.
It was the first time he'd ever felt like that.... Calm....
His katana was gone.
His mask was off.
His suit replaced by a rumpled school uniform, tie half-done.
Ever since he was recruited into the Night order, it's been one murder to another.
The troubling thing was.....at daytime, he never felt the urge to kill but once it clocked 12am, he always felt like a completely different version of himself.
He could still feel the urge but it wasn't as strong as it was at night.
The teacher droned on about symbolism in Shakespeare language
No one looked at Zaviel.
No one dared.....
A few students glanced at him now and then...some out of morbid curiosity, others with quiet dread but none spoke. Everyone in school knew he was... different.
If they'd known who this guy was at night, their fear might've been doubled. Info about the Night Demon had been kept under wraps by the military.
No one joked about his eyes anymore.
Not after that time someone did, and the next day their house mysteriously burned down.
The bad or should I say good thing was..... Zaviel was at the school, in a meeting with the Principal so there was no way or could've been him right?
Zaviel didn't care.
He stared out the rain-speckled window.
Somewhere, he could feel it, eyes watching.
They were getting closer.
"Good." He smirked
He was getting bored anyway..