The explosion tore the reinforced steel shutter off its tracks like it was wet paper.
A concussive wave of heat and pressure slammed into the group, throwing Kai and Ren backward into a rack of spare tires. The air instantly filled with a choking gray dust, swirling with the debris of shattered concrete and twisted metal.
"MOVE!" David's voice cut through the ringing in their ears.
He was already firing. The old agent lay prone behind an overturned workbench, his heavy pistol barking rhythmically into the breach. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Through the hole in the wall, shadows poured in. They moved with the jerky, insect-like precision of the Chimera soldiers—six of them, fanning out in a tactical wedge. Their armor absorbed the dim light, making them look like voids in reality.
"Secure the perimeter," the mechanical voice of the Alpha unit boomed. "Target the biologicals. lethal force authorized for non-essentials."
Non-essentials. That meant Kai, Ren, and David.
Saya was on her feet before the dust settled. The explosion had knocked her down, but the scent of gunpowder triggered the dormant predator in her blood. Her eyes bled from brown to glowing crimson.
She didn't have a sword—Hagi's blade was in the case, and the case was on the floor—so she grabbed a heavy steel wrench from the nearest table.
She moved.
To Ren, watching from the floor, she was a blur. One second she was standing there; the next, she was airborne. She landed on the shoulders of the point man, driving the wrench into the joint of his neck armor with terrifying force. Metal crunched. The soldier flailed, firing his rifle wildly into the ceiling before collapsing.
But there were too many of them.
Three soldiers trained their weapons on her. The barrels glowed with a high-pitched whine—plasma dischargers.
"Saya!" Hagi's voice was weak, but his movement was desperate.
He threw himself in front of her, creating a shield with his own body. The plasma bolts hit his trench coat. They didn't burn him—Chevalier flesh was resistant to heat—but the kinetic impact was like being hit by a sledgehammer. Hagi grunted, his body jerking violently with each hit. He didn't fall, but he slid backward, his boots screeching against the concrete.
"Hagi!" Saya screamed, grabbing his arm to pull him back.
"I am... fine," he lied, blood—purple and crystallizing—leaking from the corner of his mouth. He shoved her toward the back of the garage. "Get the case! Get your sword!"
"Dad! Look out!" Ren yelled.
Two soldiers had flanked them, ignoring the Chiropterans to target the humans. They advanced on Kai and Ren, their wrist-blades extending with a menacing snick.
Kai scrambled backward, grabbing a crowbar from the floor. He stood in front of his son, his legs shaking but his jaw set. He was forty-eight years old, a restaurant owner, not a soldier. But he raised the crowbar.
"Don't touch him," Kai snarled.
The soldier didn't pause. He backhanded Kai with an armored fist. The blow sent Kai flying across the room. He smashed into a tool chest and slumped to the floor, dazed, blood pouring from a gash on his forehead.
"DAD!" Ren screamed.
The soldier raised his blade to finish Kai.
"NO!"
It wasn't Saya who moved. It was Hagi.
Abandoning his defensive position in front of Saya, Hagi launched himself across the room. He didn't have the strength to fight gracefully anymore. He tackled the soldier like a linebacker, driving his shoulder into the enemy's midsection. They crashed into a pile of scrap metal.
Hagi rolled, coming up on top. He grabbed the soldier's helmet with both hands and twisted. The metal shrieked, and the neck snapped.
But the distraction had cost him.
"Target locked," the Alpha unit announced.
The Alpha stood in the center of the breached wall. He was holding a different weapon—a bulky, two-handed rifle with a tuning fork-like barrel that hummed with a violent violet light.
The Resonance Emitter.
The Alpha aimed not at Saya, but at the unprotected Kai, who was struggling to sit up.
"Compliance strategy: Threaten the anchor," the Alpha droned.
Hagi saw the weapon. He saw the aim. He saw Kai, groggy and defenseless.
Hagi didn't think. He didn't calculate his remaining energy. He didn't look at Saya to say goodbye.
He moved.
The Alpha pulled the trigger. A wave of distorted air—visible only as a ripple of violet distortion—fired from the cannon. It wasn't a bullet. It was a sonic frequency designed to unbind the molecular structure of Chiropteran cells.
Hagi stepped in front of Kai. He opened his arms wide, as if to catch the wind.
The wave hit him.
There was no blood. No explosion.
There was only a sound—a terrible, high-pitched ping, like a crystal wine glass being tapped with a knife, amplified a thousand times.
Hagi's body went rigid. His back arched.
"HAGI!" Saya's scream tore her throat raw. She was halfway to him, her hand outstretched, but she was too slow.
Hagi stood there for a heartbeat, shielding Kai from the blast. He looked down at Kai, who was staring up at him with wide, horrified eyes.
Hagi smiled. It was a small, gentle smile. The purple crystallization that had been plaguing his hands suddenly raced up his neck, covering his jaw, his cheeks, his forehead.
"Live," Hagi whispered. The word sounded like grinding glass.
Then, he fell.
He didn't hit the ground as a body. As his knees touched the concrete, the impact shattered him.
It started at his legs. They dissolved into a shower of glittering, sapphire-blue dust. The cracks raced up his torso. His coat collapsed inward as the body inside it disintegrated. His face—still holding that gentle smile—fractured into a million tiny shards of light.
In less than a second, the tall, dark Chevalier who had guarded Saya for a century was gone.
All that remained was a pile of empty black clothes and a mound of shimmering blue dust on the dirty garage floor.
Silence fell over the garage. Even the soldiers seemed to pause, processing the elimination of the target.
Kai stared at the pile of dust in front of him. "Hagi?" he whispered. He reached out a trembling hand to touch the empty coat.
"TARGET ELIMINATED," the Alpha announced. "SECURE THE QUEEN."
The sound of the mechanical voice snapped something inside Saya.
She didn't scream again. She went silent. The red in her eyes darkened to almost black. The air around her seemed to drop ten degrees.
She walked toward the Alpha. She didn't run. She walked.
A soldier stepped in her way, firing his plasma rifle. The bolts hit her shoulder, burning the flesh, but she didn't even flinch. She grabbed the barrel of the rifle, melting the metal with the heat of her own blood, and ripped it from his hands. She drove her fist through his chest plate, pulling it out with a spray of oil and blood.
She tossed the body aside like trash.
She reached the Alpha. The Alpha raised the Resonance Emitter to fire again.
Saya didn't dodge. She grabbed the barrel of the weapon with her bare hand. The sonic vibration flayed the skin from her palm, but she didn't let go. She crushed the barrel, silencing the weapon.
With her other hand, she grabbed the Alpha's helmet.
"You broke it," she whispered, her voice devoid of humanity.
She ripped the helmet off. Then she ripped the head off.
She threw the severed head into the wall, where it exploded in sparks.
The remaining three soldiers, realizing the threat level had just spiked to catastrophic, began to back away. "Retreat. Target unstable. Retreat."
"Don't let them leave!" David yelled, firing his pistol, dropping one of them.
But Saya didn't chase them. She stopped. The rage vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a crushing, suffocating realization.
She turned around.
She looked at the pile of clothes on the floor.
"No," she whimpered. She stumbled toward it, her legs giving out. She fell to her knees in the dust. "No, no, no."
She plunged her hands into the pile of blue crystals. They were warm. They pulsed faintly against her skin.
"Hagi, stop it," she cried, scooping up handfuls of the dust, trying to mould them back into a shape. "Form up. Heal. You have to heal!"
The dust slipped through her fingers. It was sand. It was glass. It wasn't him.
"He's gone, Saya," Kai said, his voice thick with shock. He was sitting right next to her, covered in the same dust. "He... he saved me."
"Shut up!" Saya shrieked at him, clutching the empty trench coat to her chest. "He's not gone! He promised!"
"We have to go!" Ren shouted from the van. He had the back doors open. "More are coming! I can hear the sirens!"
David grabbed Saya's shoulder. "Saya, listen to me. We can't stay here. If they come back with reinforcements, his sacrifice means nothing."
Saya looked up at David. Her face was streaked with tears and dirt. "I can't leave him."
"Then take him with us," David said grimly. He kicked the open cello case across the floor toward her. "Ren, help her!"
Ren ran over, looking pale and sick, but he knelt down. "Aunt Saya, come on. Put him in."
Saya stared at the velvet-lined case. It was a coffin.
With trembling hands, she laid the empty trench coat inside the case. Then, frantically, she began to scoop the blue dust. She clawed at the floor, scraping every crystal, every shimmer, every grain. She didn't care that the glass shards cut her fingers. She mixed her blood with his ashes.
"Get it all," she sobbed. "Don't leave any of him."
Kai helped her. The three of them—the old man, the boy, and the Queen—knelt on the floor of the ruined garage, scooping the remains of their friend into a musical instrument case.
"Contact front!" David yelled, firing at the doorway. "They're back!"
"Done!" Ren yelled. He slammed the lid of the cello case shut and latched it. "Go! Get in the van!"
Saya grabbed the handle of the case. It was heavy. Heavier than it should have been.
She stood up. She didn't look back at the soldiers. She dragged the case toward the van, her eyes hollow.
Kai scrambled in after her. David fired one last covering shot and dove into the passenger seat.
Ren floored the accelerator.
The van shrieked out of the garage, smashing through the debris, leaving the burning ruins behind.
Location: Highway 58, Northbound.
Time: 20 Minutes Later.
The adrenaline had faded, leaving only the cold shock.
Kai sat in the back of the van, pressing a rag to his bleeding head. He looked at Saya.
She was sitting on the floor, hugging the cello case. Her cheek was pressed against the cold black leather. She wasn't crying anymore. She was staring at nothing, her eyes wide and unblinking.
"Saya?" Kai whispered.
She didn't answer. She just tightened her grip on the handle.
Kai looked at his hands. They were stained with blue dust. He rubbed his thumb against his fingers, feeling the grit.
"He stepped in front of me," Kai said, his voice trembling. "He could have dodged. He stepped in front of me."
David turned around from the front seat. He looked older than Kai had ever seen him. "He did his job, Kai. He protected the things Saya loves."
"I didn't ask him to die for me!" Kai shouted, slamming his fist against the wall. "I'm an old man! He waited thirty years for her! It's not fair!"
"Fair died a long time ago," David muttered, turning back to the road.
Ren was crying silently as he drove, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
Saya shifted. She leaned her head closer to the case. Her lips moved.
Kai leaned in to hear her.
"I can hear you," she whispered to the case.
Kai froze. "Saya?"
"I can hear the music," she murmured, a disturbingly peaceful smile touching her lips. "It's quiet... but it's there. You're just sleeping. Right, Hagi? You're just tired."
She stroked the lid of the case.
"Don't worry," she promised the dust inside. "I'll carry you. I'll carry you until you wake up."
Kai looked at David. David met his eyes in the rearview mirror. They both saw it.
She had snapped. The grief was too sudden, the hibernation sickness too fresh. She couldn't process the death, so she had rejected it.
"Let her be," David said softly. "For now... let her be."
The van sped north into the rainy night, carrying a broken family, a sleeping Queen, and a cello case filled with the blue dust of a hero.