Mikey's ears rang. The sounds around him felt distant, dulled like they were coming through a wall of water. Gunshots sprayed through the dome, screams, shouts, metal on metal. The whole place was burning alive in chaos. He turned slowly, his heart in his throat. Defector soldiers and Hit Squad members were clashing against the flood of cultists pouring in. Everything blurred—faces, sounds, movement. But then it sharpened.
Bobo was locked in a dead grip with the massive man Capricorn called, Brother Aries. Their feet dug trenches into the cracked floor, neither giving an inch. Tobi ducked behind a fallen concrete slab, Amelia beside him, returning fire with a pistol clenched tight in her hand. Her short black hair whipped as she moved. At the entrance—blocked and sealed—he saw the civilians. Dozens of them packed in like cattle, panicked and pressed against the wall. Only one man stood in front of them, Ryosuke.
Mikey could see Marlene clutching Angelica behind him. The swordsman moved like a storm, cutting down cultists one after another, his blade flashing with an obsidian glint through the haze. But there were too many. They kept coming down from the opening above. Innocent Defectors were screaming, soldiers were falling, Hit Squad members being cut down one by one. It wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter.
Beneath the massive slab the Zodiacs had stood on, Mikey saw the bandits. The ones he was supposed to fight. Their bodies were flattened, crushed under concrete. Blood streaked the ground in a web of red. Mikey's breath was ragged, shaky. He could feel every inhale scraping down his throat.
'Shit… so many people… I should've warned them. Why didn't I trust the Predecessor from the jump?! Shit!'
His heart pounded against his ribs. His legs refused to move. Fear, guilt, anger—all tangled and choking him out. Then—
BANG!
He flinched. Something hot and wet slid down his arm. Mikey looked down and saw the tear in his sleeve, a thin cut along his skin where the bullet grazed him. It wasn't deep, but it burned. And it snapped him out of it. He looked up just in time to see five cultists breaking off from the fight, heading straight for him. Two with guns. Three with long serrated daggers glinting in the light. Their robes were plain black, nothing like the Zodiacs' gold-lined garments. Their masks were all different—animal skulls, blank faces, stitched mouths. Mikey's eyes darted around. No cover except—there. A chunk of fallen concrete. He sprinted for it and dove behind just as bullets chipped the slab apart, chunks of rock spraying his cheek.
'Shit…shit…shit—'
He peeked over. The cultists were closing in fast, boots slamming against the floor. Gunfire cracked the air again—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
A voice thundered across the chaos.
"We got you, Lil Mike!"
Mikey turned.
Willie stood there, shoulders wide as a wall, smoke rolling off the barrel of a shotgun. Silvia was right beside him, hair tied back, eyes sharp, pistol raised. Jasmine flanked them from behind, pistol aimed steady, jaw tight. The five cultists lay scattered, their blood pooling out onto the broken ground. Willie reached out his massive hand.
"You good?"
Mikey grabbed it and let the man pull him up like he weighed nothing.
"All good!" he shouted back, breathless.
Silvia tilted her head toward the hole in the ceiling. More cultists were sliding down on ropes, black shapes against the harsh light. One after another after another.
"They keep on coming," she said, eyes narrowing. "How many are there?!"
Jasmine clicked her tongue, flicking the safety off with a practiced motion.
"Damn pests."
Mikey watches the chaos in the stands, the light and dust and shouting blurring together, then his eyes snap back to Capricornus. The Grand Regent is just standing there, suspended by his tendrils beneath the blue forcefield that Sister Gemini raised, watching. Slowly Capricornus turns his head, his one good eye narrowing as it scans the crowd until it lands on Mikey. The old man squints, then his expression shifts—confusion, then widening surprise. He mumbles under his breath.
"B..Blasphemy… It can't be… Lord Mako told no lie…"
His lips tremble until they pull back into a grin, crooked yellow teeth peeking through. The sound of it is wrong in the dome.
"Abomination…"
Willie, Silvia and Jasmine are already trading quick strategy—shotgun shells, angles, cover—Mikey can tell by how fast they move. He interrupts them, voice sharp even as his heart thumps.
"Guys… Guys! He's looking at me."
They turn. Capricornus rises a few inches, tendrils scraping the concrete like metal snakes. His feet dangle as he moves forward. Willie, Silvia and Jasmine snap their weapons up and open fire, rounds peppering the air. For a second it looks like it could work—then two tendrils flick out and bat the bullets aside as if they were flies.
"Mikey! Get behind us!" Jasmine yells, but before he can move, a fifth tendril lashes out and slams into Silvia. She arcs through the air and crashes into the stands.
"Sil! That's my wife!" Willie roars, charging with the shotgun, reloading as he goes, but a tendril picks him up and sends him skidding across seats like a rag doll. He hits hard and rolls, dazed.
"Willie! Silvia! Shit!" Mikey shouts, panic sharp in his voice.
Jasmine screams and charges anyway, rolling under a swinging tendril and using it like a springboard toward Capricornus's face. For a breath she comes close—then a sixth tendril wraps around her throat. Capricornus lifts her up like a toy.
"Ungrateful mutt," he says, then casually tosses her into a concrete wall. She crumples, coughing.
Mikey grits his teeth and tightens his grip on his daggers. Capricornus's stare never leaves him; his voice comes low and thick with something like rapture.
"You must be the boy who my Lord saw on the docks of Jöten… are you not?"
"Yeah?" Mikey spits, desperate and suspicious.
Capricornus's head tilts. He ignores Mikey's anger and talks to himself, almost as if he's savoring each word.
"Incredible… You reek of him. It's… beautiful."
Tears—actual wet tracks—appear in the corners of the Regent's eyes. Mikey feels the skin on his neck crawl. This is the same man from his vision: the one who pressed a tendril to the other-Mikey's throat. The memory of that future flashes cold in his gut.
Defector soldiers rush the slab, guns raised, but Capricornus barely glances away from Mikey. Tendrils lash out and take down the soldiers without breaking stride. He doesn't want to be interrupted.
"I thought it not to be true… but then again why would great Lord Mako ever lie. I should be punished for my doubt. But seeing you, child, I can feel it. I feel the pain, the agony, the doubt, the anger. It's beautiful…"
Mikey knows how ridiculous this sounds—the Blood Bear, the visions, the Zodiacs materializing—and yet the old man's obsession with him is terrifying.
"What do you want?!" Mikey snaps.
Capricornus wipes tears with thin, trembling fingers and laughs, a wet, unhinged sound. "You. I want you. My objective has changed. I came for the information of your little hideout. But… I want you now. Ah…" He laughs and weeps at once. "To think I would be born in this time! With your arrival! How joyous! My Lord is so gracious! So kind!"
Mikey swallows. He's never seen a mind so broken and so dangerous at once.
"You… want me?" he asks, trying not to let the fear show.
"Yes," Capricornus says, and his voice drops like a blade. He lifts a long, spidery finger and points directly at Mikey. "…Your blood. I want your blood. Come with us, then I will have no need to kill any more Defector dogs. I just need you. Then your people will know peace for a while, join us. Fulfill your purpose, child."
Mikey laughs, bitter and sharp. The whole day has been a series of cruel jokes. "This whole day… the Blood Bear and then the visions and now this. You cultists come in here, hurt people I care about, then you want me to leave with you? You want my blood? Nah. I ain't for sale, you old alzheimer dementia-filled sock."
He tightens his grip on his daggers, breath steadying.
"No blood for you today."
Capricornus's expression snaps from madness into cold, thin rage. His eye twitches.
"Then I'll extract it from your corpse."
He twists, and tendrils whirl like whips—one, two, three, four—aimed straight at Mikey. Mikey's confusion boils into a single, clear decision: he's not letting these bastards take his people or drag him away. He lunges forward, daggers in hand, ready to start with the Grand Regent.
Around him the dome roars—Bobo's shout, Ryosuke's sword, Luce's shots, screams and the sick thud of bodies—and for a second the world narrows to steel and teeth and the need to protect the family he's chosen.