The SUV moved through the early morning traffic like a black shark through murky water. Its windows were tinted dark enough to swallow the rising sun, and its engine hummed with the quiet authority of a vehicle that did not expect to be stopped.
David sat in the back seat, pressed between Jonathan and a woman he didn't recognize.
She was older than him mid-twenties, maybe but still young, still striking. A ginger pixie cut framed her face in sharp, angular lines, the kind of haircut that said I don't have time for hair ties and neither should you. Her eyes were the color of dark honey, scanning the passing streets with a calm, practiced disinterest.
She wore the Covenant uniform the same sleek black fabric as the rest of them but her version was sleeveless, a fitted jumpsuit that left her arms bare. Blue gloves stretched from her knuckles to her elbows, the fabric thick and reinforced, marked with faint patterns that looked almost like circuitry.
David glanced at her. Then glanced away. Then glanced again.
Down, boy, he told himself. Mission. Phobias. Priorities.
She caught him looking.
"Ivie," she said, not offering a hand to shake. Her voice was low, a little rough, like someone who spent more time shouting over gunfire than making small talk. "You're David."
"That's me." He nodded toward the gloves. "Gift?"
"Hands." She replied instantly
"Your hands are your gift ?" Turning to Jonathan who was at this point using his phone
"My hands are the delivery system." She almost smiled. "The weapons are in the bag."
She tilted her head toward the back of the SUV, where a large black duffel sat wedged between equipment cases. It looked heavy. Unreasonably heavy.
David decided not to ask what was inside.
The driver, a clean-shaven man in a plain black suit, his face forgettable by design spoke without taking his eyes off the road.
"The survivor's name is Kelvin. He was a site supervisor on the hotel construction crew."
The SUV's dashboard screen flickered to life, displaying a photograph of a man in his forties, smiling, arm around a young girl. His daughter.
"Kelvin and his men arrived at 6:00 AM. By 9:00 AM, he was the only one who made it out."
The screen shifted. A grainy security camera feed from a nearby gas station showed the hotel in the distance twenty floors of exposed concrete and empty windows.
Then the building moved.
Not much. Just a ripple along its facade, like heat distortion over asphalt. But David's stomach turned anyway.
"Kelvin's account is fragmented," the driver continued. "He reported walls rearranging themselves. Floors disappearing. His men being pulled into surfaces that had turned to liquid. He heard constant rhythmic hammering even when no one was working."
The driver paused.
"He also reported a figure. Humanoid. Made of concrete and rebar. He only saw it for a second, but he says it was standing in the center of the building, and it was watching him."
Silence in the SUV.
"Great," David muttered. "A building that eats people and the monster inside it. Love that for us."
"Jaron sent me," Ivie said, cutting through the tension. "Eloghosa can't make this one."
A look of bewilderment was over David's face. " The pink guy?".
Everyone paused and turned to David in shock.
Jonathan slightly added "Don't be mistaken he's one of one." David's face showing he's not buying it
Ivie continued unbothered.
"Didn't say. Just said he was busy." Ivie shrugged, the movement casual, almost dismissive. "So you're stuck with me instead."
"She's being modest," the driver interjected. "Ivie is the Covenant's best weapons expert. And her hand-to-hand is …"
"Marcel." Ivie's voice was flat. "Focus on the road."
"Yes, ma'am."
Jonathan, silent until now, spoke from David's left. "She's good, Osayi. You'll see."
Praise, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned back and offered David a small, reassuring smile. "We're in good hands."
Ivie didn't acknowledge the praise. She just stared out the window, watching the city give way to empty road, and the empty road give way to red earth and skeletal buildings.
The hotel appeared on the horizon like a bad memory.
Twenty floors. Maybe more. It was hard to tell where the building ended and the sky began the top floors seemed to blur at the edges, like an unfinished sketch that couldn't decide on its final shape.
The SUV stopped a hundred meters from the entrance.
"This is as far as I go," the driver said, killing the engine.
Everyone moved at once.
Jonathan was first out, his cobalt-blue aura flickering around his fists, ready. Praise followed, her amber eyes already scanning the building, counting windows, marking exits.
Ivie walked to the back of the SUV and pulled out the black duffel. She slung it over her shoulder, then turned and tossed it to David.
He caught it or tried to.
The bag hit his chest like a bag of cement. His arms buckled. His knees bent. He staggered two steps backward, barely keeping his balance, the duffel's weight threatening to pull him face-first into the dirt.
"Omo...." he grunted, adjusting his grip. "What's in here? An elephant?"
"Sanctite weapons," Ivie said, not helping. "Be grateful I didn't pack the heavy ones."
"These are the light ones?"
"For me."
She walked past him toward the building entrance, not waiting to see if he followed.
David exchanged a look with Jonathan. Jonathan's expression was unreadable, but his eyes held a flicker of something that might have been amusement.
" You'll do good.. Hopefully" Jonathan said quietly.
"Shut up," David muttered, hoisting the bag higher on his shoulder.
They gathered at the entrance which was a gaping doorway that seemed to breathe, just slightly, as if the building itself was inhaling.
The driver remained by the SUV, one hand on the hood, watching them.
"Ivie," he called. "Anything goes wrong?"
"Contact Jaron." She didn't look back. "And drop the concealing barrier."
The driver nodded. He closed his eyes, placed both palms on the SUV's roof, and began to speak.
"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.'"
White light bloomed from his hands not bright, not blinding, but solid. It spread outward in a dome, growing, expanding, until it covered the entire hotel in a translucent shell.
From the outside, the building would look like nothing more than heat haze. A mirage. A trick of the light.
From the inside, there would be no leaving until the barrier fell.
"Concealment in place," the driver said. "Go."
They stepped through the doorway.
The air inside was cold. Not the cold of shade or shadow,the cold of absence. Like the building had been waiting for warmth and had forgotten what it felt like.
David's skin prickled. The green light at the tip of his fingers flickered, uncertain.
"So," he said, trying to break the silence, "what's the ranking system for Phobias? Class C, Class B, Class A? How do we know what we're dealing with?"
"We don't." Ivie walked ahead, her bare arms catching the dim light. "Ranks are nonexistent. In the field, every Phobia is equally dangerous until proven otherwise."
"That's… not reassuring." David added still struggling to move with the duffel
"It's not supposed to be." She glanced back at him. "If a Phobia overescalates and is beyond what we can handle. We call Eloghosa."
David thought of the tall, grinning man with the pink doves. "He's that strong?"
"He's that strong." Ivie's voice was matter-of-fact. No hero worship. Just acknowledgment. "But he's not here. So we handle it."
They moved deeper into the building.
The hallways were raw concrete, marked with faded spray paint and the ghost impressions of scaffolding. Rebar jutted from walls like broken bones. The floor was uneven, pitted with holes that seemed to go nowhere.
Praise stopped in the center of what might have once been a lobby.
"Here," she said.
She raised her hands. Golden light pooled between her palms, stretching, solidifying, becoming the sleek, elegant form of her Solar Crossbow.
David had seen it before, but he still caught his breath. The weapon was beautiful. Impossibly so,a thing of pure radiance that seemed too delicate for combat.
Praise didn't aim. She simply released.
The bolt shot upward, not at the ceiling but through it, passing through concrete like it wasn't there. It rose to the top of the building the twentieth floor and stopped.
Then it bloomed.
Not an explosion. A revelation.
Golden light spread outward from the bolt, soft and warm, illuminating every floor, every hallway, every hidden corner of the hotel. It didn't blind. It revealed.
"Afterglow," Praise said quietly. "My bird's-eye view. Fifty meters in every direction."
David stared up at the light, then back at Praise.
"You can see everything?"
"Everything within the radius." Her eyes were distant, focused on something only she could perceive. " For when i need to shoot "
She paused.
" Any unusual business as of now " Jonathan asked.
" Everything is calm so far." Praise's voice was barely a whisper. " Do we wait or… ."
Ivie clapped her hands once, sharp and final.
"Praise. Jonathan. You're a tag team. Cover the east and west wings. We'll do a one hour surveillance and meetback at this point."
Jonathan nodded. Praise notched another bolt, not to fire just to be ready.
"David." Ivie turned to him. "You're with me."
She pointed at the heavy black duffel still digging into his shoulder.
"And you're carrying the weapons."
"Of course I am."
She almost smiled again.
They moved into the dark.
Behind them, the doorway they'd entered through became a wall.
Ivie turned at the sound or the absence of one. The doorway was concrete now, seamless, as if it had never been anything else.
She looked at it for exactly two seconds.
" Thirty minutes," she said. "And if you lose comms, find high ground and you signal Marcel ."
Nobody argued. Nobody looked surprised.
David looked at the wall. Then at the team. Then at the wall again.
"The door," he said. "The door is gone."
"Yes," Ivie said.
"The door we came through. That was a door. Now it's a wall."
"David."
"I'm just confirming that everyone saw that. That we all saw the door become a wall. That this is something that happened." David still terrified
"We saw it." Jonathan said, already moving. "Keep moving."
David stood there one second longer, staring at the seamless concrete where the exit used to be. Then he hoisted the duffel higher on his shoulder and followed.
"Cool," he muttered under his breath. "Great. Fine. This is fine."
The building had closed its mouth.
And somewhere above them, in the core of the incomplete hotel, the Incomplete opened its weeping crack of an eye.
"Fresh materials," it whispered, its voice the sound of grinding stones and unfinished prayers. "So beautifully incomplete."
The hammering began.