The apartment door hung open like a broken jaw.
Red and blue police strobes painted the hallway in pulses. Officers moved through the cramped unit carefully, scanning broken glass and scattered furniture. An Ares Corp drone hovered near the ceiling, projecting a rigid red forensic grid across the room.
The living room looked like a storm had passed through it.
A window had been blown outward entirely, its frame twisted. Curtains fluttered in the cold air rushing in from the street far below. Shards of glass glittered across the floor like ice.
"No blood," one officer muttered.
"Doesn't mean anything," another replied. "Look at the walls."
Four long gouges carved through the plaster near the ceiling. They ran diagonally across the room before ending near the shattered window.
Claw marks.
But they were wrong.
Too wide.
Too deep.
As if something enormous had grabbed the walls just to steady itself.
Near the couch, a man sat hunched forward with both hands covering his face.
"Sir," an investigator said gently. "We need you to answer a few more questions."
The father looked up slowly.
His eyes were red. Exhausted.
"I already told you everything," he said hoarsely.
"Just once more," the officer insisted.
The man swallowed.
"I came home late from work," he said. "Around midnight." His voice trembled slightly. "The door was open. The window was gone."
He gestured weakly toward the broken frame.
"And my son…"
His throat closed.
"He wasn't there."
Silence hung in the apartment.
Zeri flicked her wrist.
A soft blue lattice unfolded from her gauntlet, expanding into a holographic grid that swept across the claw marks.
"Ari," she said.
The grid sharpened instantly, lines tightening as the scan deepened.
"Running surface analysis," the AI replied, its voice calm—almost human.
Light rippled across the gouges, mapping depth, pressure, and direction in real time.
"Did you hear anything unusual before you arrived home?" the investigator asked.
"No," the father whispered. "Nothing."
He hesitated.
"Our cat is gone too," he added quietly. "It never leaves the house."
That made one of the officers pause.
"No blood? No fur?" he asked.
Zeri's grid swept lower across the floor, light tracing every shard and surface.
"Nothing," the other officer confirmed.
No signs of a struggle.
No signs of a kill.
Just absence.
The hallway outside filled suddenly with the sound of approaching boots.
The Ares drone continued its steady sweep, red lines slicing across the walls and floor.
Three figures stepped through the door.
Black coats.
White collars.
The POND insignia gleamed faintly along their shoulders.
The room changed instantly.
Officers straightened.
Darian stepped forward this time.
"We'll take it from here," he said, calm and firm.
That was enough.
The officers moved aside almost immediately.
No arguments.
No questions.
The Ares drone dimmed and pulled back toward the hallway.
This wasn't their case anymore.
Ravion stepped past them without slowing.
Zeri followed, hands shoved into her jacket pockets. Her eyes moved rapidly across the room, taking in every detail.
Darian entered last.
Ravion crouched near the gouged wall.
"Depth," he muttered.
Zeri leaned over the broken window frame, her holographic grid extending outward into the open air.
"Ari, extend scan perimeter," she said.
"Perimeter extended," the AI responded.
Zeri frowned slightly.
"Whatever moved through here," she said, "it came from outside."
Ravion didn't look at her.
"No," he said.
She glanced back.
"What?"
He stood slowly, eyes scanning the room again.
"The kid wasn't taken," Ravion said. "He was gone before this happened."
Zeri frowned.
"You're guessing."
"No signs of a struggle," Ravion replied. "No blood. No displaced mass near the entry point."
He gestured toward the floor beneath the window.
"Whatever came through here didn't fight anything. It just moved through the space."
Darian's gaze drifted back to the claw marks near the ceiling.
Too high.
Too deliberate.
Not hunting.
Passing through.
Zeri crossed her arms, unsettled now.
"So what, it just... visited?"
Ravion didn't answer.
The holographic lattice hummed faintly as it continued mapping the room.
In a room where something had clearly happened—
there was still no evidence of when the boy had left.
Or how.
Darian turned toward the father.
The man looked small sitting on the couch, surrounded by investigators and broken furniture.
"Your son," Darian said quietly. "How old?"
"Nine."
The word barely came out.
Darian nodded slowly.
The age lingered in his mind for a second before he pushed the thought away.
"We'll look into it," he said.
The father stared at him.
"You'll find him?"
Darian didn't answer immediately.
Instead he looked back toward the window.
The night sky outside was a maze of cables and lower traffic lanes.
Anything could hide out there.
"We'll try," he said.
Ravion moved toward the door.
"We have enough," he said.
Zeri took one last glance around the apartment before following.
Darian lingered one second longer.
Then he stepped outside.
The street below smelled like oil and rust.
This part of the planet sat far beneath the polished towers of the upper districts. Down here the sky was barely visible. Pipes ran between buildings like veins, dripping condensation that hissed when it struck the hot pavement. Old transit rails hung overhead, long since abandoned, their shadows striping the road like prison bars. Neon signs flickered weakly through the fog, advertising products that hadn't existed in years.
Zeri leaned against a railing and exhaled slowly.
"God," she muttered. "I hate the ground sectors."
Ravion stood a few paces away, arms folded, staring down the length of the street like a king inspecting a ruined kingdom.
"Naturally," he said, voice edged with contempt. "This is what happens when order abandons a place. Vermin inherit the throne."
Zeri snorted. "Yeah yeah, your majesty."
Darian stepped onto the cracked pavement beside them. The streetlights buzzed overhead, barely illuminating the maze of pipes and cables strung between buildings.
"Upper city gets the rules," Zeri said, gesturing lazily toward the skyline barely visible through the fog. "Clean air. Patrol drones. Pretty little skylanes."
She glanced around the street.
"Who even lives here?" she said. "Seriously. Why would anyone choose this dump?"
Darian didn't answer. He simply looked down the street.
People were there.
A man slumped against a wall, injecting something into his arm with shaking hands. A pair of children dug through a garbage crate for anything edible. A woman with hollow eyes sat beside a flickering vending machine, whispering to herself. Further down the road, a cluster of makeshift tents sagged beneath the weight of pipes leaking warm vapor.
Zeri followed his gaze.
"...Right," she said quietly.
A drunk stumbled out of an alley, laughing to himself.
Then something moved.
The pavement cracked.
A low, wet hiss echoed from the drainage grate.
A shape surged upward.
Not a tentacle.
A limb.
Too thin. Too long.
Fur clung to it in patches—slick, matted, wrong.
Claws scraped metal as it dragged itself higher.
The man froze.
Two glowing eyes blinked open in the darkness below.
Vertical pupils.
Watching.
"WHAT THE—"
The creature lunged.
It hit him full force, knocking him onto his back. The impact cracked against the pavement. Blood sprayed as claws tore across his chest—not deep enough to kill.
Not yet.
The thing crouched over him.
Catlike.
But stretched.
Its spine arched unnaturally high, vertebrae jutting beneath its skin. Its limbs were too long, joints bending at angles that didn't belong in anything alive.
And from its back—
Unfinished wings.
Twisted bones pushed outward beneath thin membranes, half-formed, trembling uselessly. They twitched as if trying to remember how to exist.
The creature tilted its head.
Studying.
Then it opened its mouth.
Too wide.
Rows of needle teeth.
A blur of silver cut through the fog.
THUNK.
Ravion's spear drove through the creature's shoulder and pinned it to the pavement.
It shrieked.
Not a roar.
A distorted, choking yowl—half feline, half something broken.
Its claws raked violently against the ground as it tried to tear itself free.
"Filth," Ravion said coldly.
He planted a boot beside the spear shaft and shoved it deeper.
"You dare hunt in my sight?"
The creature twisted.
Bones cracked.
It forced itself forward anyway.
Zeri kicked off the railing.
Her gauntlets unfolded with a mechanical whine. Plates slid apart along her forearms as blue holographic emitters formed over her hands.
"Okay," she muttered. "That is— nope. Don't like that."
A pair of glowing blaster arms projected over her real ones.
"Let's end it."
She fired.
Blue bolts slammed into the creature's side, blasting chunks of flesh away. It screeched again, back arching as the unfinished wings spasmed violently.
Behind them, the trapped man screamed.
Darian was already moving.
He grabbed the man under the shoulders and dragged him away from the creature as it thrashed against the spear.
"Stay still," Darian said.
The man was shaking violently.
"I— I didn't see— it just—"
"You're fine," Darian said firmly.
The creature wrenched one limb free.
Too strong.
Too fast.
It lunged again—
Ravion stepped into it.
The spear tore free and spun in a brutal arc.
Steel met flesh.
The blade carved across the creature's neck, tearing through muscle but not clean enough to sever.
Black fluid sprayed across the pavement.
The creature didn't fall.
It twisted mid-motion, landing on all fours.
Then six.
More limbs unfolded from its sides—smaller, twitching, unfinished.
Ravion's eyes narrowed.
The creature shrieked and launched itself forward.
Ravion met it head-on.
The spear became a blur—each thrust precise, brutal, controlled. He drove it through limb after limb, pinning the creature down in stages as it writhed and clawed at the ground.
Zeri vaulted onto a rusted pipe above the fight.
"Heads up!"
Her holographic cannons expanded.
A concentrated beam fired downward—
It struck the creature through its torso.
The blast tore through its core.
For a moment, the thing convulsed.
The half-formed wings spread reflexively—thin membranes catching the light—before collapsing in on themselves.
Ravion didn't hesitate.
He drove his spear straight down.
The blade pierced through the creature's spine and into the concrete beneath it.
The body jerked once.
Then stilled.
Steam drifted across the ruined street.
Darian helped the injured man sit against a wall.
Behind him, the creature's corpse twitched faintly, its malformed wings slowly going slack.
Zeri dropped down beside Ravion.
"Well," she said, brushing soot off her gauntlet.
"That was… deeply unsettling."
Ravion pulled his spear free from the corpse.
"Merely vermin," he said.
The fog rolled back in around them.
The street returned to silence.