Rain still fell long after the body stopped moving.
Kael stood in it until the sky began to pale at the edges, until every drop felt like judgment.
The city below went on pretending nothing had happened—horns, neon, the heartbeat of the unbroken.
Selene crouched beside her father's corpse. The hybrid form was fading, leaving a man's face that looked older than she remembered, lines etched by pain and time. She closed his eyes with shaking fingers.
"We should burn him," she whispered.
Kael nodded. "We will. But first we need to know what he died for."
She looked up, eyes hollow but burning. "Lucien's secrets are buried in Vanguard. I'm not leaving until we dig them out."
---
They returned to the ruined lab before dawn. Smoke still curled from the upper floors, sirens echoed far off, but the main systems were dead—Kael's earlier rampage had cut the power grid.
Selene moved through the shadows with the ease of someone who'd spent her life hiding in them. She tore a panel from the wall, pried open a black box of drives.
"These are encrypted," she muttered, slipping them into her satchel. "But my father used a personal cipher. I can break it."
Kael scanned the shattered room—the pods, the blood, the scorched metal. The stench of chemicals clawed at his throat.
"This place feels wrong," he said quietly. "Like the ground itself hates it."
Selene didn't answer. She was staring at a photograph half-melted against the floor. Her father, younger, smiling beside another man—Lucien—both in lab coats. In the corner, written in pen: Project Ascendant — Phase Two.
Kael crouched beside her. "Phase Two?"
She met his eyes. "Whatever was done to me… it wasn't the end. It was a beginning."
---
They burned the body on the roof as the sun rose—a silent fire against the silver dawn.
Kael stood beside her, the warmth licking his skin, smoke carrying away the smell of loss.
Neither spoke. Words were too small for what had been taken.
When the flames died, Selene turned toward him. "Lucien wanted hybrids that could survive daylight. Wolves who could walk unnoticed. He succeeded with my father for a while. Maybe with others."
Kael frowned. "You think there are more?"
"I think Vanguard was just the surface."
He looked over the city—the towers glowing like teeth, the streets pulsing with oblivious life. "Then we dig deeper."
---
By midday they were miles away, hidden inside an abandoned subway station that served as one of Kael's safe houses. The walls were carved with claw marks from old fights; the air smelled of rust and oil.
Selene set the drives on an old desk, wires snaking into a laptop. "Let's see what ghosts he left behind."
Kael paced behind her, restless. "Lucien always had backup plans. He'll know we hit Vanguard."
"Good," she said. "Let him watch."
Lines of code rolled across the screen. Static hissed, then a flood of files opened—research notes, videos, voice logs. The first clip flickered to life: Lucien's lab, pristine and cold.
> "Day 219. Subject A's blood carries dormant lunar proteins—unlike any strain we've cataloged. The key is memory: the body remembers the moon even when hidden underground. Fascinating."
Kael's claws twitched. "He sounds like he's in love with it."
Selene's jaw tightened. "He's obsessed with control. He always was."
Another file loaded—grainy footage of a chamber filled with cages. Shapes moved inside—wolves, half-shifted, trembling.
> "Early attempts unstable," Lucien's voice said. "But if the blood link can be stabilized, they'll regenerate indefinitely. Soldiers that never die."
Selene's breath hitched. "Those aren't soldiers. They're people."
Kael leaned closer. "Pause it."
She froze the screen. One cage in the corner was marked Subject K-01. The figure inside looked familiar—broad shoulders, black hair, eyes that glowed faintly gold.
"That's you," she whispered.
Kael stared, numb. "He experimented on me?"
Selene searched through the metadata. "No… these files are from six years ago. Before your pack war. Before you even knew him."
Kael's voice dropped to a growl. "He cloned me."
The room went silent except for the hum of old wires.
---
Another file auto-played. This time, Lucien appeared on-screen, face close to the camera, voice calm and cold.
> "To the one who finds this: by now, you've realized what you are. Don't waste time mourning the old world. The new one begins beneath Echelon Tower. When the moon turns crimson, ascend."
The video cut out.
Kael frowned. "Echelon Tower… that's downtown."
Selene nodded slowly. "And beneath it—he said beneath. There's an old metro system down there, sealed since the flood ten years ago."
Kael smirked, though there was no humor in it. "So that's where the snake hides."
Selene unplugged the drives. "Then that's where we go."
---
They left the station before dusk. The city above them was already waking for night—horns, lights, the pulse of a thousand unaware lives.
As they emerged onto the street, Kael caught their reflections in a shop window—two shadows moving through rain, both marked by loss, both too stubborn to break.
"You sure you're ready?" he asked quietly.
Selene adjusted her coat, eyes hard. "I buried my father this morning. Ready stopped being an option."
He gave a small nod. "Then we hunt."
---
Hours later, thunder rolled again over the skyline.
From the observation deck of a distant tower, a man watched them through a scope—Lucien, glass of wine in hand, eyes bright with triumph.
> "Good little wolves," he murmured. "Follow the trail. Let the city bleed you dry."
Behind him, monitors displayed biometric readings—Kael's and Selene's. Both pulsed steady, almost in rhythm.
> "Phase Three," Lucien whispered. "Commence."
Somewhere far below, in the depths beneath Echelon Tower, machinery began to hum awake.
---
Kael and Selene didn't hear it yet.
They were already descending into the underground tunnels, the air growing colder, the moonlight vanishing behind layers of stone.
Selene's footsteps echoed first, then his—two heartbeats, one purpose.
Kael touched the scar on his arm, the one that still burned from the fight. "Whatever he's planning," he said, "we finish it there."
Selene glanced back, her eyes gleaming faintly in the dark. "Together."
And for the first time since the fire, Kael almost believed they could.