That night, sleep eluded me completely.
Around midnight, I heard my grandfather return from whatever business venture he had been attending to.
I quickly shut my eyes and feigned sleep as he quietly stepped into my room. He had brought a glass of water and a couple of melatonin pills, acting as though he knew exactly what kind of restless night I was having.
"A man called me today... I know everything," he said.
His usual grumpy, stern demeanor vanished, replaced by a soothing, deeply familiar tone.
"You don't need to explain anything right now. Just take these so you can get some rest."
He leaned closer, trying to catch a glimpse of my face in the dark. I sat up in bed, deliberately avoiding eye contact as I mumbled a quiet "thank you."
Taking the melatonin pills from his hand, I swallowed them down with the water. I sank back into the mattress, staring blankly at the ceiling while waiting for the medicine to drag me under.
Grandpa stayed by my side, a quiet anchor in the dark, until my eyes finally closed for the night.
The next morning, I woke up at 4:00 AM. Grandpa was still fast asleep, but he must have anticipated my early departure, he had left my tactical backpack right by the front door, fully packed with everything I might need for the day.
I checked my gear, quieted my breathing, and slipped out into the crisp morning air. The sun was just beginning to fracture the horizon, leaving the New Orleans streets completely deserted.
Stepping past the front gate, I found Henry waiting.
He was standing outside a sleek black sedan, leaning against the driver's side door and smoking a cigarette despite the ungodly hour. When he spotted me, he straightened up and threw the door open.
"Get in," he muttered.
"We have a lot of ground to cover."
I climbed into the passenger seat.
I had at least expected a half-hearted "good morning," but I was quickly realizing that basic manners were entirely foreign to this guy.
He drove in absolute silence for the first few miles before reaching into his tactical jacket and tossing a handful of sugar packets into my lap.
"I don't—" I started.
"Sugar is vital for your system now," Henry interrupted, his tone leaving zero room for argument. "Unlike whatever garbage those doctors were pumping into you."
Deciding it wasn't worth the fight, I simply complied and began ripping open the packets.
I had a million questions rattling around in my head, but I knew he wouldn't give me a straight answer, or worse, he'd just snap at me the way he had in the car the day before.
When we finally arrived at the Section 77 facility, I realized I hadn't properly processed its scale the previous afternoon.
It was a massive, imposing complex that made me wonder how they managed to keep it completely wiped from every public map.
Henry pulled up to a heavily fortified guard station manned by two soldiers with assault rifles. He flashed a specialized clearance card, and the gates swung open, though the guards didn't miss the chance to shoot me a thoroughly suspicious look.
We parked deep within an underground garage. From there, Henry led me straight to an elevator, punching the button for the fourth floor.
We stood side by side in excruciating silence while generic, cheerful elevator music buzzed in the background. Neither of us had anything to say to the other.
When the doors slid open, he guided me down a seemingly endless corridor. Agents in various tactical uniforms passed us, some staring openly while others gave Henry a respectful nod or wave.
He returned each gesture with an emotionless flick of his hand, making me wonder if he was just cold to humanity in general, rather than specifically hating me.
We halted outside a heavy black door. Henry swung it open without knocking and gestured for me to follow him inside.
The room was already occupied. Layla, the red-headed doctor from the basement, was lounging on a sofa in casual clothes, her clinical lab coat tossed over the armrest. Sitting nearby was Julie, the dark-skinned girl with the raven braids who had violently swung a baseball bat at my skull yesterday.
She looked distinctly amused to see me standing there.
The final occupant was a boy who looked to be around our age. He had curly brown hair and wide green eyes, and he was biting his nails so nervously he nearly leaped out of his skin when the door slammed open.
"All right, look alive," Henry announced to the room. "This is the rookie. He'll be deploying on missions once he survives training."
"So..." Julie leaned back, crossing her arms as her eyes locked onto mine.
"Is he actually the Child of the Prophecy?"
Henry's expression darkened into something entirely humorless. "Yes, Julie. But the Chief explicitly ordered us to keep his identity completely locked down. Right now, he's weak, untrained, and completely inexperienced. If the other sections find out what he is, they'll tear him to pieces out of sheer panic."
"But... are we sure he's safe?" the curly-haired boy, stuttered, his voice trembling. "What if he loses his mind? What if he turns into something like Yuri? Are we entirely sure those Rhohonoids won't just—"
"Shut it, Jay," Layla cut in sharply. "Look at the kid. He can barely run with an ankle like that."
The entire room shifted their gaze downward.
I usually wore long socks to cover it, but today I had thrown on a shorter pair, leaving the thick, jagged scar completely exposed. Embarrassed, I tried to shift my weight to hide it behind my other foot.
Julie raised an eyebrow, her sharp eyes studying my face. "What happened to you?"
"Car accident," I replied flatly. "When I was a kid."
"The one that killed your parents?" Henry asked bluntly.
He clearly hadn't considered how incredibly disrespectful it was to throw that in my face. But the sudden, venomous glare I shot him seemed to do the trick.
He cleared his throat, looking slightly uncomfortable, and mumbled a rare, quiet, "Sorry."
Julie broke the silence, letting out a dismissive sigh. "So the savior of humanity can't even sprint. How exactly is he supposed to put Yuri in the ground?"
"I have no idea," Henry said, stepping forward and gripping my shoulder with an iron hand. "But we're going to train him until he can."
He gestured for the rest of the squad to fall in, leading us down to the ground floor. He threw open a set of reinforced double doors, revealing a colossal training facility that looked like a military-grade school gymnasium.
The place was a chaotic symphony of violence: agents were sprinting through obstacle courses, simulating hand-to-hand combat, and swimming laps in a massive pool that looked freezing cold. Further down, a firing range echoed with the thud of gunfire, while other squads practiced high-speed parkour and simulated tactical engagements against massive, holographic representations of those horrific Entities.
Henry kept us to a secluded corner of the facility, personally overseeing my regimen while the rest of the Black Team scattered to their own specialized training areas.
That grueling routine became my entire reality.
For four months, day in and day out, I woke up at 4:00 AM and didn't crawl back into my bed until 8:00 PM, only to wake up and repeat the nightmare all over again.
But the training worked.
I quickly discovered that flooding my system with heavy doses of sugar and caffeine kept my eye condition completely at bay, far better than the synthetic pills Dr. Maria had always forced me to take[1]
It was still entirely surreal to realize that a hidden, paranormal ecosystem existed right beneath the surface of the world, and that Section 77 routinely exterminated and captured these entities to lock them away in a subterranean laboratory I still wasn't permitted to see.
Over those months, Henry learned to tolerate my presence, even if he never truly became a friend.
But the biggest change was internal. Without the heavy fog of those medical sedatives, my personality began to shift.
The constant nervousness and paralyzing fear of speaking to people began to fade, though I still kept my distance and rarely spoke to anyone outside of the Black Team.
By the end of the four months of agonizing physical conditioning, I was officially initiated as a full member of the squad.
I had learned to channel and suppress the volatile percentage of my power that had awakened. I was finally ready for real field missions.
Little did I know, the real nightmare hadn't even begun.
It was a perfectly ordinary Thursday at noon.
I was sitting in the bustling central cafeteria, sharing a table with the rest of my team. It was a strange, yet deeply gratifying feeling to realize that the other personnel never questioned my existence, to them, I was just the new rookie assigned to the Black Team.
I was just about to take a bite of my lunch, Thursday was universally recognized as burger day across the facility, when the cafeteria doors swung open.
The Chief stepped inside.
He almost never appeared in the common areas, choosing to remain isolated in his top-floor office.
But today, he walked in with that same suffocating, dangerous aura that always seemed to bleed into the air around him.
"Good afternoon, my dedicated workers," he announced.
His husky voice cut through the ambient noise effortlessly.
The entire room went entirely rigid.
Conversations died instantly, silverware clattered against plates, and a heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the cafeteria.
"You may be wondering what brings me down from my perch today,"
the Chief continued, slowly pacing down the center aisle between the long tables. Every eye in the room followed his movement with absolute focus.
"I am here to brief the entire section on a critical matter, a situation we have kept strictly confidential for the past four months."
The tension in the room was palpable.
"Four months ago, our tracking systems detected a monumental anomaly,"
the Chief explained, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.
"And no, I am not referring to a standard Entity breach. I am talking about an anomaly within our very system, one we only recognized thanks to a centuries-old prophecy. It seems our section has been granted the distinct privilege of working alongside the one and only Child of the Prophecy."
A frantic wave of whispers rippled through the crowd.
Agents stiffened, a collective dread settling over the room at the mention of a figure they had all been taught to fear.
The murmurs grew louder, but they died out entirely as the Chief continued his slow, deliberate march, stopping right at the edge of our table.
"The information I am sharing with you today must remain strictly classified" the Chief warned, his voice dropping to a low, commanding register. "It must not leave this room, and it must never reach the ears of other sections. As our archives dictate, the Child of the Prophecy is our greatest asset, but they carry the exact same potential for absolute ruin as Yuri himself."
The murmurs threatened to break out again, but a man suddenly stood up a few tables over.
He wore a prominent red armband over the right sleeve of his uniform, signaling his status as a team leader. I had seen him around the facility before, a guy with sharp brown hair and cold purple eyes who took a twisted pleasure in throwing arrogant jabs at Henry whenever they crossed paths. If I recalled correctly, his name was Damian.
"Who is it?"
Damian demanded, his voice laced with mild annoyance as he stared directly at the Chief.
"Give us a name."
The Chief let out a low, unsettling chuckle.
He stepped behind my chair, slowly bringing his hands down to rest heavily on my shoulders.
Behind the shifting, distorted blur of his face, I could feel him grinning like a absolute madman.
"It's him."
[1] ⚠️ATTENTION: do not try this at home, I don’t want to make anyone diabetic or insomniac ofc…