The anomaly lunged straight for my forehead, its long, white claws aiming to inflict the exact same mind-locking paralysis it had used on Julie and Henry.
I ducked. The claw whistled over my head, severing a lock of my hair.
The creature closed the distance with terrifying speed, unleashing a relentless flurry of strikes.
Fighting Jacob, Henry, and Julie, it had looked powerful, but face-to-face, it felt like standing in front of a runaway freight train.
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to retreat, but a strange, intoxicating surge of adrenaline buzzed through my veins.
A feeling I hadn't experienced in years.
My vision burned a deep, blinding crimson. My Rhohonoids were screaming.
I spun on my heel and threw a desperate sidekick into the creature's ribs.
My boot connected, but the impact felt like kicking a solid slab of iron. The anomaly barely flinched, instead, it threw back its head and unleashed another high-frequency screech. The sound vibrated violently inside my skull, making my teeth ache and my ears ring with agony.
It lashed out with its right hand, its needle-sharp nails tearing across my throat. Pain flared bright and hot.
I stumbled back, gasping, but the beast gave me no room to breathe.
Its claw swept down again, carving a deep, jagged gash into my forearm.
I hit the grass hard. I was taking a brutal beating, far worse than the rest of the team had. My physical attacks were like paper cuts to an SS-Class construct.
From the corner of my blood-tinted vision, I saw Layla dragging Henry and Julie's motionless bodies behind the safety of a thick tree line, frantically digging through her medical kit for counter-sedatives. They were out of the fight. I was entirely on my own.
As blood seeped from my arm, a hot, viscous tear slipped down my cheek. I wiped it away, my fingertips came back stained in deep red. Blood tears. Just like the day my powers first awoke.
The anomaly lunged forward to finish me off. I didn't think, my body simply acted on autopilot.
I reached out, caught its wrist mid-strike, and twisted with everything I had. But instead of throwing a counter-punch, my hand shot straight out toward the monster's face, my fingers aiming directly for its glassy, void-like eye.
I didn't know why my body was forcing the move. Blinding an SS-Class entity was a solid tactical choice, but doing it from this close left my torso wide open. It could slice me in half before I even made contact.
My index finger pressed directly against the center of its pupil.
The world went instantly black.
The forest disappeared. The pain in my arm vanished.
Flashes of vivid, overwhelming light exploded behind my eyelids. I was standing inside the memories of someone else: a life I had never lived.
I saw a little girl, no older than four. She had bright, laughing eyes and soft brown hair, running through the sunny streets of New Orleans while clutching a worn bunny stuffed animal.
I watched her sit on a sunlit porch, giggling as she used red and yellow crayons to draw a simple house with a smiling family underneath a crude, geometric tree.
Then, the sunny memory twisted into a suffocating dark.
A man, a tall adult in his late thirties, stepped into the girl's bedroom, closing the door behind him. From that night on, the light in the girl's eyes died.
I watched her transform into a ghost of herself.
She stopped laughing. She stopped drawing. She hid in the dark corners of her room, refusing to eat, staring blankly at the wall with hollow, terrified eyes.
The man returned again and again. I couldn't see the full details, but I heard the muffled, desperate sobbing, the way her small voice begged him to stop, over and over, until she had no voice left.
I stood in the center of the memory, my fists clenched so tightly my knuckles turned white, tears burning my eyes. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear the man apart. But I couldn't do anything. I was just a spectator to a tragedy that had already happened.
Then came a freezing, rainy night. The man entered her room once more. A muffled shriek echoed through the dark, followed by a long, heavy silence.
Severe internal hemorrhaging. That was what the coroner wrote on the official report.
I saw her body lying motionless in a small white coffin surrounded by flowers. Her parents were weeping uncontrollably. Standing right beside them, wiping away fake tears, was the assaulter: a trusted family friend who had babysat her while her parents worked late. He had established a flawless alibi. The family trusted him blindly. The community mourned him as a grieving uncle. He got away with everything.
Sitting on top of the coffin, invisible to the weeping crowd, was the ghost of the little girl.
The scene shifted again. The girl's spirit lingered near her headstone in the cemetery, watching the flowers wilt over time. One night, a figure approached her grave.
He wasn't human. He wore a crisp, pitch-black uniform, and his eyes gleamed with a cold, robotic light.
He knelt, murmured something softly to the little girl, and extended his hand.
She took it.
Instantly, the memory dragged me deeper into the Abyss.
I was standing in a vast, pitch-black hall illuminated only by a deep crimson glow. At the far end stood a towering, jagged throne. The moment I tried to lift my gaze to look at the figure sitting upon it, a crushing, suffocating weight slammed onto my chest. My heart threatened to burst from the sheer pressure.
Even without looking, I knew who sat on that throne.
Yuri.
From across the void, the presence on the throne shifted. Despite this being an old, locked memory... the entity on the throne looked down and saw me standing there.
A deafening, inhuman screech tore me from the vision.
My eyes snapped open. I was back in the surreal, crayon-like forest of Audubon Park.
The crimson haze in my vision had completely cleared, leaving my eyes their normal color, though my head throbbed with a terrifying, migraine-level ache.
I was flat on my back in the grass. A few feet away, the massive, emaciated anomaly lay collapsed on her side, trembling uncontrollably. Silent, black tears streamed down her hideous, multi-fanged face.
The bloodlust was gone.
My body screamed in pain, but I forced myself to crawl across the grass toward her. I reached out and gently wrapped my fingers around her long, pale hand, using the exact same soft, careful grip my older brother Kai used whenever I broke down into panic attacks as a kid.
"Emi..." I whispered softly, my voice raspy. "I'm sorry."
The anomaly stiffened. I didn't push my luck. I didn't draw a blade. I just held her hand, letting the silence settle between us. Beneath the towering, horrifying skin of an SS-Class monster, she wasn't a biological weapon or a pawn of the Abyss. She was just a little girl who had been broken by the evil of a man, and exploited by the darkness of Yuri.
Emi turned her face toward me. She didn't lash out. She didn't scream.
"We're not going to hurt you," I said, looking straight into her dark eyes. "We're going to help you."
A low, trembling sob escaped her throat. Suddenly, she lunged forward and threw her arms around me. The hug was tight enough to bruise my ribs, but I didn't pull away. I wrapped my arms around her emaciated back and held her tightly.
As I held her, the crushing weight of her frame began to melt away. The long, needle-like claws shrank, the terrifying, multi-fanged jaw closed, and the skeletal gray skin softened into smooth, pale warmth.
When she pulled back, the monster was gone.
Sitting in front of me was a little girl in a simple, gray dress. She looked about six years old now. Her eyes were a light, clear gray, they weren't bright with childhood innocence anymore, but for the first time in years, a small flicker of hope burned within them.
I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for hours. A faint smile touched my lips, and I reached out, gently pinching her cheek to steal a shy, tiny smile from her face.
Click.
The loud, unmistakable sound of a heavy tactical firearm being cocked echoed right behind my head.
"Step away from the anomaly, Nico," Henry's cold, unyielding voice commanded from the shadows. "We're here to neutralize the target."