The relief lasted exactly 1.7 seconds.
Just long enough for eyes to adjust to the familiar light, and for the brain to finally accept the lie.
July 9th Street was back.
But it had been defiled.
Barros felt the acidic taste of bile rise in his throat. This wasn't the aftermath of an explosion or a shootout. There was no point of origin, no mechanical logic. The violence here was older. More intimate. More feral.
The asphalt was coated in a dark, sticky layer of blood that reflected the police lights like a warped mirror. Bodies—and pieces of them—were scattered chaotically. A woman had been cut clean in half and was still held in place by her seatbelt, her torso hanging out of the car like a broken doll. A man had been impaled on a streetlight, the metal twisted as if it were heated wire. Severed arms and legs lay in thick pools, and on many of the corpses there were unmistakable bite marks: flesh torn down to the bone, ripped apart by something that hadn't cared about killing quickly.
The building walls bore deep gouges from monstrous claws, but also bullet marks, vehicle impacts, shattered glass—evidence of desperate, futile resistance. Storefronts weren't merely broken; they had been pulverized. Cars were stacked atop one another, as if a furious child had played with metal toys.
It was a war zone.
A war waged by animals.
"Don't send for forensics yet," Barros said into the radio, his voice hoarse, forcibly controlled. "I want the DAO team. Full containment suits. Don't touch anything."
He moved down the street, the initial shock giving way to the professional coldness that had kept him alive for fifteen years. His mind began to catalog.
The wounds were bestial, but there were no footprints.
The claw marks were massive, but there was no sign of what had made them.
Shots had been fired, but there were no casings from unfamiliar weapons.
There was no pattern. No logic.
Only the final outcome.
The slaughter.
"Agent Barros!" someone shouted from down the street. "Here! We found one!"
In an instant, the focus of the entire operation shifted.
In a side alley, behind overturned trash cans and a smashed service door, a young officer pointed with trembling hands toward the interior of a restaurant. In the narrow basement, curled against the wall, was a middle-aged man. He was shaking uncontrollably, covered in dried blood that was clearly not his own.
His eyes were open.
But they weren't there.
They extracted him with the care reserved for unstable explosives. Every movement was calculated. Every second mattered. That man wasn't just a survivor.
He was the black box of a flight that had crossed hell.
Barros followed the ambulance to the headquarters of the Department of Oneiric Activities—a building far too unassuming to house the strangest technology humanity had ever created. While the medical team stabilized the man's body, Barros's team prepared to deal with what truly mattered.
"Can he handle it?" Barros asked a physician, never taking his eyes off the glass separating the room.
"Physically, yes," she replied, hesitating. "Mentally… I have no idea what he saw. But something broke in there."
Barros watched the survivor lying on the gurney, still trembling, eyes fixed on a nonexistent point. If there were answers, they were trapped in that empty stare.
He turned to his lead technician.
"Prepare the Probe."
The Psychic Probe was the department's last resort. A controversial, dangerous technology, officially classified for extreme use. It allowed access to recent fragments of traumatic memory—raw images, unfiltered emotions.
It was a violation.
But in the face of one hundred and eleven unexplained deaths, it was a necessity.
The metal helmet was carefully fitted over the survivor's head. Wires connected to his temples, the nape of his neck, his chest. Monitors flickered to life with a cold, clinical glow.
Barros folded his arms.
"Record everything."
When the Probe was activated, the first sound it captured was not a scream.
It was a growl.