The holographic image of Javier Morales, a black speck of triumphant evil disappearing into the horizon, finally vanished from the main monitor in Elliot Hayes' penthouse. The Aegis Power Armor, now a silent, silver cross in the sky, began its long, lonely journey back to its hidden hangar in Chicago. The immediate crisis was over. The five thousand souls aboard the 'Serenity of the Seas' were safe.
And Elliot Hayes lost it.
He let out a raw, guttural roar of pure, undiluted fury and swiped his arm across his main console. Monitors, keyboards, and expensive data slates crashed to the polished marble floor in a cacophony of shattering glass and cracking plastic.
"FUCK!" he screamed, his voice a ragged, tearing sound, all the calm, controlled authority he had projected moments before completely gone. He slammed his fist into the wall, the impact cracking the plaster and sending a jolt of sharp, satisfying pain up his arm. "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"
He had let him go. He had stood on the precipice, stared into the face of absolute evil, and he had blinked. He had chosen five thousand lives over the potential fate of eight billion, and in doing so, he had allowed the monster to escape, to regroup, to come back stronger. He, Elliot Hayes, the builder, the healer, the man who had created a machine to save the world, had just made a decision that could very well end it.
He sank to his knees amidst the wreckage of his command center, his head in his hands, his body trembling with a mixture of rage, self-loathing, and the bone-deep weariness of a man who had been forced to bear an impossible weight. VARIA, his ever-present, ever-calm companion, remained silent. Her programming allowed her to offer tactical advice, to calculate probabilities, but it did not, and could not, offer absolution. This was a burden he had to carry alone.
After a long, shuddering breath, he forced himself back to his feet. The rage was still there, a hot, molten core in his gut, but it was now overlaid with the cold, hard urgency of the next crisis. There was always a next crisis.
He grabbed a spare datapad from a nearby table and pulled up his secure communication line to Ji-Yeon Park. He had cut her off, ordered her to abort her mission. Now, he needed to debrief her, to bring her back into the fold, to recalibrate their entire strategy in the face of his own catastrophic failure.
He initiated the call. It rang. Once. Twice. It went to her encrypted voicemail.
A cold dread, far more terrifying than the rage he had just felt, washed over him. He tried again. And again. Voicemail.
"VARIA," he said, his voice a low, tight whisper. "Locate Ji-Yeon Park. Last known coordinates."
"Scanning now, Master," VARIA replied. "Her last known position was outside the National People's Congress Hall in Beijing. Her phone's tracker has been deactivated."
Deactivated. Not out of battery. Not out of range. Deliberately shut off. She had gone in. She had ignored his order and walked straight into the dragon's den.
"FUCK!" he roared again, the sound now tinged with a new, desperate panic. Another problem. Another fire. A missing ally, a free-roaming demon king, and a new, impossibly powerful "gifted" monarch in the heart of the world's most fortified superpower. He felt like he was trying to plug a hundred holes in a dam with only two hands.
He clenched his jaw, forcing the panic down. One crisis at a time. Ji-Yeon was resourceful, a survivor. She knew the risks. For now, she was on her own. He had to focus on the immediate, tangible threat. He had to talk to the one person who would understand the impossible choice he had just made.
He opened a secure line to the Cantacuzino Global private jet. A moment later, Mihai's face appeared on the screen. He was still in the back of a military truck, the dense, smoking jungle a blur of green and gray behind him. His mask was off, his handsome face smudged with soot, his crimson eyes holding a deep, weary exhaustion.
"He's gone," Elliot said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "He took hostages. I let him go."
Mihai listened, his crimson eyes holding Elliot's gaze through the small screen. He saw the self-loathing, the simmering rage, the raw, unfiltered agony of a good man forced to make an impossible choice. He did not offer judgment. He offered perspective.
"You did what you had to do, Elliot," Mihai said, his voice a low, steady baritone, a calm anchor in Elliot's storm. "You saved five thousand lives. You chose to be a savior, not a statistician. Do not torture yourself for an act of mercy. He is gone for now, but he is not gone for good. We will find him."
He paused, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touching his lips. "And you must think positively. The board has changed. We are not just three anymore. We have a new piece. A powerful one." He gestured with his head to the burning jungle behind him. "Charlie Finch. He remains here. He has chosen to stay, to help cleanse this jungle of the remaining demonic filth and to assist the military. He is dealing with the aftermath. We have an ally on the ground."
"How is Ji-Yeon?" Mihai asked, his tone shifting, becoming more urgent.
Elliot's face tightened, a fresh wave of anxiety washing over him. "I don't know," he admitted, the words tasting like failure. "I told her to abort. She went dark. Her phone's tracker is offline. She went in."
Mihai's jaw clenched, his expression hardening into a mask of cold fury. This foolish, stubborn girl. Her courage was going to get her killed. "Then I will go," he said, his decision absolute. "After I deal with this. There will be a press conference. I will stand with the Brazilian military, and we will reveal what has happened here. We will show the world the footage. We will make the Harbinger of Doom and his kind the sole, unequivocal enemy of all life. We will unite humanity against a common foe."
He knew it would be a logistical and political nightmare, a process that would take days of careful negotiation and manipulation. He told Elliot it would take him a week. But in his mind, he knew it would be less. He needed to be in China. But before he could face a potential dragon, he needed more power.
An idea, cold and ruthless and necessary, began to form in his mind. There was a high-security prison a few hundred miles from here, a place where the worst of humanity—cartel enforcers, serial murderers, human traffickers—were left to rot. Their souls were already so stained, so corrupt, that their loss would be a net gain for the world. He would go there. He would offer them a choice: an eternity of servitude or a quick death. He would turn them into his vampiric fledglings, bind them with his laws, and then, for those who inevitably broke them, he would execute the System's judgment himself, reaping the points from their deserved destruction. It was a grim, bloody calculus, but it was the only way to gain the strength he needed without sacrificing his own soul.
"Elliot," he said, his voice returning to a calm, commanding tone. "Take care of Charlie's family. And his friend, Bobby Klein. The demon has seen Charlie's face; he will know their names. They need to disappear. Take them somewhere safe, somewhere off the grid."
"Already on it," Elliot confirmed. "I'm sending a private transport for them as we speak."
Mihai nodded, a flicker of gratitude in his eyes. Charlie had, in the midst of the chaos, pressed two small vials into his hand. 'For your stamina,' he had said. A vitality potion and a stamina potion. The boy's generosity, his empathy, in the face of such horror was… astounding. Mihai hadn't drunk them yet, but now, he wondered. Perhaps they could lessen this gnawing, eternal hunger. Perhaps they could give him the strength to do what needed to be done. He would see.