Ti passed.
Roberto spoke.
Not fluently—nothing close. His jaw barely moved. His words ca slow and strained, tongue and breath doing the work his ruined teeth couldn’t. Each syllable seed pulled from the throat with caution, lips curling as if any wrong movent might trigger a new wave of pain.
He didn’t dare let his teeth et.
Gary didn’t interrupt. Neither did Don.
They just listened.
Roberto started with buildings.
Old warehouses on the outskirts of Santos—one near the canal, two more near the southern shipping yards. Places he claid were used to "move things" during off-hours. Nothing ever stayed long. He wasn’t sure what was moved—drugs, android parts, contraband maybe—but he’d been stationed near one long enough to assu the place mattered.
Another location: an apartnt complex downtown.
High-rise. Corporate front.
According to him, half the units were never occupied, the upper floors rarely lit, and yet deliveries ca daily.
"Washing money... maybe," he muttered, blood wetting his lower lip. "Or hiding people. I... I never went up past the third floor."
Gary raised a brow at that but said nothing. His eyes never blinked. He just watched.
Roberto went on.
Nas ca next.
So were nicknas. So were first nas. A few had call signs.
He gave a short list. Five, maybe six people.
A courier. A logistics guy. Soone he only knew as "Ms. Finch," who supposedly handled communications with off-continent partners. He said she never spoke in person—always through old recorders and cassette decks. So kind of throwback paranoia, ant to keep voices from being traced.
His voice started to trail.
Less because of hesitation—more because the pain was taking its toll. He shifted every few sentences, trying to adjust the weight of his own body, but the tendrils didn’t budge. They held him in place like restraints on a display rack.
Across from him, Sergio hadn’t said a word.
He just stared down at the floor where his teeth still lay.
Three of them.
Crimson-white and lying in a pool of diluted blood and spit. One of them twitched slightly when his foot trembled against the tile. That seed to break sothing in him. Not rage. Not fear.
Just disbelief.
The kind that ca when the body realized the mind wasn’t bluffing anymore.
By 2:00 a.m., both of them looked... faded.
Not unconscious. Not dying.
But drained.
Their skin was pale. Not ghost-white—but stripped of color. Like the blood loss had sapped not just their strength, but their ability to look alive.
For Class-D superhumans, that wasn’t normal.
But most superhumans didn’t bleed for forty minutes straight with no nutrients, no recovery injections, no stimulant serum.
People assud superhumans were hard to break.
That was true.
But once broken?
The suffering hit different.
Roberto’s final sentence ca out barely audible.
"Tha’s... aw I knoh. I... sweah... pleash... we jus’ ou’side hewp fo’ Bahclay..."
The silence that followed was long.
Gary straightened, a sar of blood still streaked across his glove and forearm.
He adjusted his cuffs anyway, pulling the fabric back into place without care for the stains.
Don, anwhile, hadn’t moved much.
The shadows curled around him like they were part of his fra. Only his eyes were visible—twin reflections of white, unmoving, watching.
Gary crossed his arms, tilted his head slightly.
"Well," he said, letting the word breathe. "I don’t think he’s lying, Sir Predator."
He turned slightly toward Don now.
"It’s not much in the form of direct information about Barclay himself... but with so additional research—cross-referencing nas, verifying properties—I’m sure it’ll prove useful."
That tiny flicker of hope lit in both brothers’ eyes.
Roberto looked up first.
Then Sergio followed, his lips parting just enough to speak.
"S-So... yuh’ let ush go?" he asked. Slower this ti. Wiser. "We towd you... eve’ything... it’s true..."
The distortion in his words was painful to hear.
Not just because of the blood and broken dental structure.
But because of the desperation behind them.
Gary didn’t look at Don this ti. He just turned slightly toward the brothers. Hands folded neatly behind his back. Posture straight, voice calm.
"That may be so," he said politely, "but not only does this information need to be verified... we’re still yet to decide if you could be of any use."
Another pause followed.
Don stepped forward.
Not fast. Not loud.
Just motion.
Each footfall clicked against the tile. Slow, even steps until he was just a few feet from Roberto again. The shadows still wrapped around him like fabric that breathed.
"Let’s not make Barclay more suspicious," Don said, his voice low. "By having these two disappear."
He paused.
The words lingered.
Both brothers swallowed.
And instantly regretted it—the mix of blood and bile sitting heavy at the base of their throats, the taste bitter enough to provoke a flinch.
Don didn’t seem to care.
He watched them both. asured the impact of his presence like soone watching animals pace in a cage.
Gary finally asked, voice neutral again:
"Do you have sothing in mind, sir?"
Don exhaled once through his nose.
"Unfortunately," he said, "I can’t think of many areas where easy-to-break individuals would serve us well."
A longer pause this ti.
Then—
"But... there is sothing they could do."
———
So ti later, in New Coral’s infamous Y2 District, a different kind of horror show had begun—one not staged, not rehearsed, and not ant for applause.
The Theater of Nightmares lood at the end of a crooked block, still bathed in garish color even under the weight of the night’s violence. Bold Greek lettering above the marquee now flickered irregularly—one letter half-lit, another blinking wildly. It was like the sign couldn’t decide whether to invite or warn.
The entrance told the rest of the story.
The booth out front was shattered, blood sared across the inside wall like sothing had tried to claw its way out. Bullet holes ran across the glass and backboard in a tight spread. There were chunks of scalp, wet and still clinging to the edges of the broken ticket drawer.
Inside, the lobby hadn’t changed much from its usual corpse-like aesthetic—except now it was littered with the actual thing.
Bodies. So normal, many deford.
So in tactical gear, others in civilian clothes, sprawled out in awkward heaps among shattered display cases and collapsed velvet ropes. The faded posters that once showcased macabre ballerinas were stained in new reds, bullet holes tearing through where crooked smiles used to be.
The floor creaked underfoot.
Not from age. From weight.
Farther in, the backrooms had been hit too—storage areas with crates overturned, and one unfortunate corpse half-hung over a rusted popcorn machine, its morphed torso riddled with holes too small to be useful and too many to ignore.
But the worst was the main theater.
The stage lights had collapsed—so shattered by gunfire, others hanging by cords, swaying gently. The curtains were torn to shreds, riddled with bullet holes, singed in places. Several seats were stained with pooled blood. Others were occupied by sothing else entirely.
Statues.
Not props.
People.
Combat gear. LMGs. Assault rifles still clutched in stone hands. Eyes frozen wide in expressions of disbelief. So were mid-fall when it happened, bodies twisted, fingers stretched toward cover that never ca.
Others had been shattered after.
Fragnts of stone limbs scattered like gravel across the aisles.
And through it all, the stage remained the stage—centerpiece to madness.
dusa stood near the spotlight’s ruin, a jagged wound torn through her left side, the blood seeping down her dress in dark, sticky lines. Her snakes twitched erratically. Several were half-missing. One had been torn clean, leaving only a pulpy, twitching root.
She clutched a dirty towel to the wound—not to stop the bleeding, just to hold it in.
Her eyes were wild, locked on the figure across from her.
"Detective Elaine!" she snapped, her voice cutting through the static buzz of portable lights being set up. "You and I both know who did this!!"
Two rookie officers stood between her and the Inspector—young, pale, trying not to stare at the snakes or the gore. One held a flashlight that shook faintly with every twitch of his wrist.
Elaine, a chubby, short woman of dark brown skintone, for her part, looked unbothered.
She stood with her arms crossed, the police badge on her belt crooked, blazer spotless. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun that looked like it hadn’t moved in a week.
She finally turned, lips tight.
"Don’t start with that Barclay crap, Irene. And it’s Inspector Elaine."
Her tone was dry, detached. Professional, but not comforting.
dusa flinched at the na.
Barclay.
It wasn’t just a na. Not to her.
"It’s been your job for two years," she snarled. "And we’ve seen no changes! These people—these were just attendees! And now they’re bodies. Or rubble."
"You only show up after the shooting’s done. You won’t let us move them. You won’t let them be helped."
Elaine raised a hand. "You know the regular people wouldn’t be o—"
"They are regular people!" dusa scread.
Her voice cracked, and the snakes shrieked with her.
Tears burned down her cheeks, blood dripping steadily down her side. Her legs wobbled slightly, but she didn’t fall.
The rookies both flinched. One looked away completely, eyes locked on his shoes. The other took a step back without realizing.
Elaine said nothing.
She knew she’d stepped wrong.
But words wouldn’t help now.
Not in this room.
Not under this ceiling.
And high above them all, resting silently on a rusted support beam just behind the remains of the fallen chandelier, was Don.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
He just watched.
The room below shifted under the weight of grief and bureaucracy. Of death. Of missteps.
Don felt no outrage.
But the weight of the mont pressed on him anyway.
He’d seen places like this before.
Rooms where people stopped being people. Where cleanup mattered more than survivors. Where monsters wore badges and reason wore a mask.
And sothing in dusa’s voice reminded him that not all monsters were born.
So were made.
Don stayed in the dark, listening.
And waited.
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