The lights flickered first in the eastern districts.
Nana saw it from the hospital rooftop where she'd gone to get a tactical view of the creature movements. One moment the downtown skyline was illuminated—buildings glowing against the night sky, street lights marking the grid of roads, the visual proof that civilization still existed.
The next moment, a section went dark. Just one district. A single grid square where the lights simply... stopped.
Then another district. Then another.
Not all at once. Not the dramatic blackout that came from a major system failure. This was methodical. Systematic. District by district, the power grid was dying.
Because the creatures had found the substations. Had destroyed the infrastructure. Had torn through the electrical systems that kept the city running.
Or because the people maintaining those systems were dead. Or had fled. Or had simply given up trying to keep the lights on in a city that was rapidly becoming uninhabitable.
Nana watched the darkness spread like a disease. Eating through the city block by block. Getting closer to the hospital with each passing minute.
Zayne joined her on the rooftop. He didn't say anything. Just stood beside her and watched civilization die in real time.
"How long until it reaches us?" Nana asked quietly.
"An hour. Maybe two." Zayne's voice was flat. Clinical. The detachment that came from processing information too terrible to feel. "The hospital has backup generators. They'll keep critical systems running for maybe six hours after main power fails. After that..."
He didn't finish. Didn't need to.
After that, people on life support would die. The surgical suites would go dark. The trauma bays would lose their equipment. The hospital would become just another building full of wounded people waiting to die in the dark.
"We need to evacuate," Nana said.
"To where?" Zayne gestured at the city below. At the creatures roaming through streets that were barely defended anymore. At the shimmer points still opening randomly, still depositing more nightmares into a city that couldn't handle what it already had. "There's nowhere left that's safe."
He was right. Nana knew he was right. But acknowledging it—accepting that they'd reached the point where the hospital couldn't be defended anymore—felt like surrender.
Felt like admitting they'd lost.
The power failed at 2:47 AM.
Nana was in the middle of the north perimeter when it happened. One moment she was fighting under the harsh glare of emergency floodlights. The next, everything went dark.
Not completely dark—the moon provided some illumination, and fires burning throughout the city cast flickering orange light. But the artificial brightness that had kept the creatures partially at bay, that had let the defenders see what they were fighting—gone.
And the creatures, who had spent eleven years adapting to Avalon's grey twilight, who were built to hunt in low-light conditions—they thrived in darkness.
The attack intensified immediately.
Hybrids that had been cautious under the floodlights surged forward. Vampires that had kept their distance dove into the fray. Demons materialized from shadows that suddenly seemed deeper, more substantial, more dangerous.
The military perimeter buckled.
Not broke—not yet. But buckled. Bent under pressure that had been building for days and was now compounded by the sudden tactical disadvantage.
Soldiers fired blind. Hunters used their evols to create light—flames, electricity, anything that might illuminate the battlefield. But it wasn't enough. Would never be enough.
Inside the hospital, the backup generators kicked in. But they couldn't power everything. Couldn't maintain the full lighting systems. Only critical equipment. Only life support. Only the bare minimum needed to keep the most fragile patients alive.
The rest of the building descended into darkness.
Nana fought in that darkness. Dual guns blazing, her enhanced vision letting her see slightly better than the humans around her but still struggling in the near-total absence of light.
A hybrid lunged from her blind spot. She shot it more on instinct than aim. The creature dissolved but two more took its place.
Then four more.
Then six.
The horde was coming. Not the scattered attacks they'd been dealing with. Not the opportunistic hunting. A coordinated assault—hundreds of creatures moving together, drawn by the darkness, by the vulnerability, by the scent of prey that had finally lost its advantage.
"FALL BACK!" someone shouted. Military captain, maybe. Hunter team leader. Nana couldn't tell in the chaos. "FALL BACK TO SECONDARY POSITIONS!"
The perimeter was collapsing.
Nana saw it happening in real time. Saw defensive positions being overrun. Saw soldiers retreating in organized chaos, trying to maintain formation while giving ground. Saw hunters covering the retreat with everything they had.
Saw people dying.
A young soldier—couldn't have been more than nineteen—went down screaming as a hybrid tore into his leg. Nana shot the creature but two more were already on him. She tried to reach him. Couldn't. Too many creatures between her and him. Too much chaos.
His screaming stopped.
A hunter Nana recognized—someone she'd trained with years ago, whose name she couldn't remember through the adrenaline—got caught by a demon. The creature's dark energy wrapped around him like chains. Dragged him into the shadows. He was gone before anyone could help.
More casualties. More deaths. More people who had been fighting to hold the line suddenly and violently removed from the battle.
And through it all, the creatures kept coming.
Inside the hospital, chaos of a different kind was erupting.
Zayne had abandoned the surgical suites when the power failed. Had made the call that any surgeon hates to make—that continuing to operate in the dark with limited power was more likely to kill patients than save them.
He'd moved to organizing evacuation instead. Getting the mobile patients moving toward whatever exits were still defensible. Coordinating with what remained of the medical staff to identify who could be moved and who was too critical to transport.
Making triage decisions in the dark. Choosing who might survive an evacuation attempt and who wouldn't. Who to try to save and who to—
He couldn't finish that thought. Couldn't accept that he was making decisions about who to leave behind.
But he was. Because there weren't enough people to carry everyone. Weren't enough hours before the creatures breached the building completely. Weren't enough miracles to save them all.
Around him, the hospital was dissolving into nightmare.
People screaming. Some from pain—wounds reopening, IVs failing, life support cutting out as generators prioritized critical systems. Some from terror—understanding that the defenses were failing, that the creatures were coming, that they were trapped in a building that was about to become a tomb.
Medical staff tried to maintain order. Tried to keep people calm. Tried to keep working despite the darkness and fear and the knowledge that they might all die here.
Some of them succeeded. Some broke. Some just... stopped. Sat down in the hallways and gave up, too exhausted and traumatized to keep fighting.
Zayne didn't have time to help them. Could barely help himself. Could only keep moving, keep organizing, keep trying to save whoever he could.
He was in the ground-floor evacuation staging area when the military rushed past him. Not toward the perimeter—away from it. Retreating. Running.
"The north entrance is compromised!" someone shouted. "PULL BACK! PULL BACK TO THE CENTRAL—"
An explosion cut off the rest. Not ordnance—a demon's energy detonating as it died. The force of it blew out the remaining windows on the ground floor, showering glass across the staging area.
Civilians screamed. Scrambled. Ran in every direction looking for safety that didn't exist.
And through the broken windows, the creatures poured in.
Zayne was moving before conscious thought. Ice forming in his hands, manifesting as barriers and weapons and anything that might slow the invasion for even a few seconds.
He wasn't alone. Hunters and soldiers who had retreated to the hospital's interior were fighting too. Making their final stand not at the perimeter but inside the building itself, trying desperately to protect the people who couldn't fight for themselves.
But it wasn't enough. Would never be enough.
The hospital was breached.
Nana heard the screaming from outside. Heard the unmistakable sounds of combat inside the building. Heard everything she'd been fighting to prevent finally happening.
The hospital was falling.
She was still fighting at what remained of the north perimeter. Still trying to hold a line that didn't exist anymore. Still killing creatures one after another after another in a desperate attempt to slow the inevitable.
Her aether core was at thirty percent. Then twenty. Then fifteen.
She was running out of time. Running out of power. Running out of everything except the stubborn determination that had kept her alive through nine months of Avalon.
A hybrid caught her from behind. Its claws raked across her shoulder, tearing through armor and flesh. Blood ran hot down her back. She spun and shot it point-blank. It dissolved. Two more took its place.
She was surrounded. Completely. The perimeter had collapsed so thoroughly that she was now an island in a sea of creatures. Fighting alone. Dying alone.
An ice spear punched through the hybrid to her left. Then another. Then a wave of frost that froze everything within ten meters.
Zayne.
He appeared through the chaos, his ice evol blazing at full power, his face set in grim determination. He'd abandoned the hospital interior. Had come back for her.
"We need to go," he said. Not shouted—the quiet certainty of someone who had made a terrible decision and would live with the consequences. "Now. The building is compromised. We can't hold it."
"The patients—"
"The ones who can move are evacuating. The ones who can't..." His voice broke slightly. "We can't save them. We can't save everyone. But we can save ourselves and maybe some others if we move RIGHT NOW."
Nana wanted to argue. Wanted to scream that they couldn't abandon the hospital, couldn't leave people behind, couldn't just give up.
But a demon materialized between them and the building. Then three hybrids. Then a vampire. Then more creatures than she could count, all of them drawn to the scent of blood and fear emanating from the hospital.
The horde had arrived. The real horde. Not the scattered attacks they'd been defending against. This was what Avalon's elimination cycles looked like—hundreds of creatures converging on a single location, overwhelming it through sheer numbers.
"GO!" Zayne grabbed her hand. Frost exploded from him in all directions, creating a temporary barrier that bought them seconds. "RUN!"
They ran.
Away from the hospital. Away from the screaming. Away from the people they couldn't save and the building they couldn't defend.
Creatures gave chase but Zayne's ice barriers slowed them. Nana's remaining ammunition took down the ones that got too close. They fought and ran and fought again through streets that were becoming increasingly impassable.
Behind them, Linkon General Hospital—the last major stronghold in the city, the place where hundreds of wounded had been receiving treatment—fell.
Nana could hear it happening. Could hear the screaming intensify. Could hear the sounds of creatures rampaging through the building. Could hear the final desperate stands being made by people who had nowhere left to run.
Could hear it all ending.
Zayne pulled her into an alley. Pushed her behind a dumpster. Followed her into the narrow space and pressed them both flat against the wall as a pack of hybrids rushed past.
They waited in silence. Breathing hard. Bleeding. Exhausted.
The screaming from the hospital continued for ten more minutes. Then began to fade. Not because people were being rescued.
Because there was no one left to scream.
Nana closed her eyes. Felt tears running down her face that she didn't have the energy to wipe away.
All those people. All those wounded civilians and overwhelmed medical staff and soldiers who had fought until they couldn't fight anymore.
Gone.
Consumed by the nightmare that Nana's parents had created. That the government had funded. That had been built as a solution to the Wanderer threat and had instead become something infinitely worse.
"We couldn't save them," she whispered.
Zayne pulled her closer. His arms wrapped around her shoulders, his body shaking with exhaustion and grief and the weight of impossible decisions.
"No," he agreed quietly. "We couldn't."
Around them, Linkon City burned. Bodies lay in the streets—too many to count, too many to bury, too many to mourn individually. Creatures prowled through the darkness, hunting the survivors who were scattered across a city that had stopped being a city and started being a hunting ground.
The government had fled. The military had fractured. The hunter association was destroyed. The hospital had fallen.
There was no organized resistance anymore. No coordinated defense. No infrastructure left to protect.
Just survivors. Scattered groups of people trying desperately to stay alive in a place that had become indistinguishable from the hell it had created.
Linkon City was dead.
And in its place, Avalon had been reborn.
Nana and Zayne held each other in that alley while the world they'd known finished dying. Held each other and breathed and tried to find the strength to keep fighting in a battle they'd already lost.
Because that's what they'd been built for. To survive. To fight. To keep going even when there was nothing left to fight for.
They were weapons. Specimens. Things that had been created in a laboratory.
But they were also human enough to grieve for everything they'd failed to save.
And that, in the end, might be the cruelest modification of all.
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To be continued.