Zayne woke to the sound of movement in the kitchen.
For a moment, panic spiked through him—*creature in the apartment, how did it get past the barriers*—but then he recognized the familiar rhythm. Cabinet doors opening. The portable camping stove clicking on. The soft clatter of cans being sorted.
Nana.
He found her standing at the counter in his oversized shirt and sweatpants, hair still in the braid he'd done two nights ago, opening a can of soup with mechanical precision. Her green eyes were clearer than they'd been since the hospital fell. Still haunted, still tired, but *present* in a way they hadn't been yesterday.
"Morning," she said quietly without looking at him.
It was the first word she'd spoken in three days.
Zayne's throat tightened. "Morning."
She poured the soup into two bowls, rationing it carefully so they each got half. Set one in front of him. Started eating hers in small, measured bites even though he knew she probably couldn't taste it, couldn't feel hungry the way normal humans did.
But she was eating. She was functioning. She was *trying*.
After breakfast, Nana checked her dual guns with practiced efficiency. Ejected the magazines, counted bullets, reloaded. Tested the slide action. Checked the sights. Her hands didn't shake anymore—they moved with the muscle memory of someone who'd been doing this since she was a child.
Because she had been. Specimen 21, trained from age three to be a weapon.
She checked her combat knife next. Ran her thumb along the edge, testing sharpness. Strapped it to her thigh. Then she pressed her hand to her chest, eyes closing briefly as she felt for the hum of her aether core.
Zayne watched from the doorway as her body glowed faint blue through the fabric of her shirt. The core was fully charged—his energy transfer two nights ago had worked. She was ready to fight.
"I need to go out," Nana said, still not looking at him. "Need to... do something."
"Okay," Zayne said simply. Because he understood. She needed to vent the anger, the grief, the helplessness. Needed to turn all that pain outward before it consumed her from the inside.
He knew where she was going before she even grabbed the keys to the stolen motorcycle parked in the building's garage.
Hunter Association Headquarters.
Zayne followed in his car at a careful distance.
Someone needed to make sure Nana was okay. Someone needed to watch her back while she channeled her rage into something productive. And if that someone had to be him, exhausted and running on fumes and probably making terrible medical decisions by enabling this—
So be it.
Nana rode the motorcycle like she was born on it—weaving through abandoned cars, jumping curbs, one hand on the handlebars while the other held a gun. When a hybrid lunged from an alley, she shot it point-blank without even slowing down. One shot, one dead. No hesitation. No mercy.
The creature's body hit the pavement and she was already three blocks ahead.
Zayne's ice evol hummed beneath his skin, ready to intervene if needed. But Nana was—
She was *magnificent*.
Fierce and furious and deadly, riding through the ruins of Linkon like an avenging angel. Every creature that got close died instantly. Every obstacle in her path got obliterated. She didn't blink, didn't flinch, didn't show even a hint of the broken girl who'd been crying against the wall yesterday.
This was Specimen 21 in her element.
This was the weapon the facility had created.
And Zayne watched, mesmerized and horrified and desperately in love.
The Hunter Association Headquarters was half-collapsed when they arrived.
The east wing had fallen during the initial facility breach—crushed by a giant or demolished by the government, Zayne wasn't sure which. But the armory in the basement was still intact, still accessible through the emergency entrance behind the building.
Nana knew exactly where to go.
She kicked open the reinforced door like it was made of cardboard, ignoring the biometric scanner that would have stopped anyone else. Her hunter credentials were long obsolete—the Association was gone, leadership dead or fled, systems offline—but the weapons inside didn't care about authorization protocols.
Zayne watched from the doorway as she moved through the armory like a ghost returning home.
Gun after gun lifted from the racks and disappeared into the duffel bag she'd brought. Combat knives. Tactical gear. Ammunition by the crate. Explosives that made Zayne's medical training scream in alarm but he kept quiet because Nana's eyes had that focused, determined look that meant arguing would be pointless.
She packed everything methodically. Efficiently. Like she'd raided armories a hundred times before.
Maybe she had, in Avalon. In all those timelines he couldn't remember.
When the duffel was full, she stopped at the gas station two blocks south.
The pumps were dead—no electricity—but the underground tanks still had fuel. Nana used a manual siphon to fill the motorcycle's tank, then filled four jerry cans and strapped them to the back seat.
Zayne realized what she was planning before she even turned the motorcycle toward the supermarket.
"Nana—"
"They're in there," she said flatly. "The creatures. Fighting over the corpses. Sleeping in the corners. *Waiting* for more people to come scavenge so they can hunt."
She wasn't wrong. Zayne had seen it yesterday—demons fighting over territory, vampires hanging from the ceiling rafters like grotesque decorations, hybrids prowling the aisles.
"So we burn them out," Nana continued, voice cold and empty. "All of them."
Zayne should have said no. Should have pointed out that fire would spread, that it would attract more creatures, that it was reckless and dangerous and—
"I'll cover you," he said instead.
Nana's eyes flickered with something that might have been gratitude. Or relief. Or just grim satisfaction that she wouldn't have to do this alone.
She rode to the supermarket with fury in her veins and gasoline strapped to her back.
The creatures inside didn't know they were about to die.
Demons still fought each other in the canned goods aisle, snarling and clawing over scraps. Vampires still slept in the dark corners, hanging upside-down from broken ceiling tiles. Hybrids still prowled, searching for prey that wasn't there.
Nana walked in like death itself.
She didn't talk. Didn't announce her presence. Just poured gasoline in methodical lines—across the entrance, down the aisles, around the perimeter. The jerry cans emptied one by one, fuel soaking into blood-stained floors and rotting corpses and the creatures who'd claimed this space as their own.
A demon noticed her halfway through. Roared and lunged.
Nana shot it in the head without looking up from her task. Kept pouring.
A hybrid attacked from behind. Zayne's ice spear caught it mid-leap, pinning it to the wall. Nana kept pouring.
Vampires started waking as the gasoline smell hit their enhanced senses. They shrieked and dropped from the ceiling, wings spreading, fangs bared.
Nana dropped the empty jerry can, pulled out a book of matches, and smiled for the first time in days.
It wasn't a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who'd been broken and rebuilt and turned into a weapon, and was finally doing what weapons were made to do.
She struck the match.
The world exploded into flames.
Fire raced along the gasoline trails in beautiful, terrible patterns. Creatures caught mid-stride went up like torches, shrieking and thrashing. Vampires dissolved into ash before they could reach the exit. Demons burned from the inside out, their unnatural bodies rejecting the heat.
Nana walked through the flames untouched.
Her enhanced metabolism made her fire-resistant—one of the modifications her parents had built into Specimen 21. The heat that would have killed a normal human just slid off her skin like water.
Behind her, Zayne fought anything that tried to escape the inferno.
Ice barriers blocked the exits. Ice spears impaled creatures mid-flight. Ice *everything*, surgical and precise and deadly, because if Nana was going to burn down the world then he was going to make damn sure nothing survived to tell the tale.
Above them, the sound of helicopter rotors cut through the roar of flames.
Zayne looked up through the broken skylight and saw them—news helicopters, maybe military, maybe independent journalists stupid enough to get close. They circled the supermarket like vultures, cameras pointed down, capturing everything.
The creature outbreak in Linkon City. Survivors fighting back. The apocalypse in real-time.
A hybrid with wings launched itself at one of the helicopters.
The aircraft spun wildly, pilot screaming, camera operator tumbling out the open door. They plummeted together into the flames below while the helicopter careened into a nearby building and exploded.
The other helicopters pulled back, but kept filming.
Let them, Zayne thought grimly. Let the world see what their government had created. Let them see what happened when you turned people into weapons and cities into death realms.
Let them see Nana standing in the center of an inferno, victorious and terrible and *alive*.
When the fire finally burned itself out, the supermarket was a smoking crater.
Nothing moved inside. Nothing breathed. Just ash and charred bones and the acrid smell of burned flesh.
Nana surveyed her work with cold satisfaction.
A few creatures had survived—crawling from the rubble, badly burned, dying slowly. She walked to each one and kicked it to finish the job. Methodical. Efficient. No wasted movement.
Specimen 21 completing her mission.
Zayne stood beside her and watched.
He should have been horrified. Should have been appalled by the violence, the overkill, the sheer brutality of burning dozens of creatures alive.
But all he could think was: She's magnificent.*
Strong and fierce and unbreakable even after everything that had tried to destroy her. His hunter. His weapon who chose to protect. His Nana.
He reached for her hand as she kicked the last demon's corpse to make sure it was dead.
Her fingers were small in his, still warm from the flames, callused from weapons and fighting and surviving. She looked up at him with those green eyes that had been so empty yesterday, and now burned with purpose again.
"Better?" Zayne asked quietly.
Nana nodded. "Better."
It wasn't healthy. It wasn't healing. It was just anger channeled into violence, grief transmuted into fury, pain weaponized into action.
But it was *something*. And something was better than the hollow numbness that had consumed her before.
Zayne pulled her closer, pressed a kiss to her smoke-stained forehead, and whispered against her hair: "I love you. Exactly as you are."
Weapon and all.
Specimen and all.
Killer and protector and broken girl who'd survived two different hells.
All of it.
Nana leaned into him for just a moment, letting herself be held, before pulling back and checking her weapons again.
"We should go," she said. "Those helicopters saw us. People will come looking."
"Let them," Zayne said. But he helped her onto the motorcycle anyway, climbed into his car, and followed her back toward the apartment.
Behind them, the supermarket smoldered.
Above them, helicopters carried footage to other cities—proof that Linkon had fallen, proof that creatures were real, proof that some people were still fighting back.
And somewhere in the ruins, more portals opened.
More Avalon survivors stumbled through.
More creatures claimed territory.
More bodies piled in the streets.
And Nana was back.
Not whole. Not healed. But fighting.
And that was enough.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.