Night pressed over Westvale. Searchlights swept the ruined skyline, their beams cutting across smoke and broken glass.
Every newsfeed looped the same headline, frantic and relentless:
RED TEMPEST STRIKES TASKFORCE COMPOUND.
Grainy footage showed red lightning ripping through steel soldiers hurled like ragdolls, alarms howling in the dark.
****
Cold air swept through the corridor of the Ampers' safehouse when Grant stepped inside.
Conversation died.
Anna froze halfway to the med bay, a rag in one hand. Her eyes wide and searching. Nullis straightened from a console, one hand still resting on the packet of stolen Project AMP files. Xylo's grin faltered, breath caught between relief and awe.
Brakkon was the only one who didn't move. He stood against the far doorframe, arms folded, shadows sharpening the hard lines of his face. His stare cut through the room, and Grant felt the weight of it settle like a stone. Brakkon knew.
Grant forced a half-smile, but the motion felt brittle, too thin to hide the pulse pounding in his skull. Celestius's words throbbed behind his eyes—Protector of the Core.
Anna crossed the space first. She stopped just short of touching him, uncertainty flashing in her gaze before relief softened it. "You made it back," she whispered.
"Barely," Grant said, voice low.
Xylo leaned against a pillar, shaking frost from his gloves. "Whole city's losing its mind. They're calling you Red Tempest now. It's everywhere."
Grant looked around the room—the flicker of holo-screens, the tired faces, the air thick with smoke and adrenaline. He felt the truth of the moment press in from every side.
Brakkon finally spoke, his voice a low rumble. "I know what happened to you."
Grant met his eyes, the unspoken words between them heavier than the night outside.
Brakkon pushed away from the doorway, his boots heavy against the concrete. The room seemed to draw tighter with every step he took.
"Project A.M.P.," he said at last, the name landing like a hammer. "Augmented Militarized Physiology. That's what they call it in their files. A way to weaponize us—Gifteds—by putting Luxium into bone and rewriting the cells that make us who we are."
No one moved.
Brakkon's gaze drifted to the far wall, as if the memory was etched there. "In 2015, I was their first subject. I was picked, the best they had in covert ops., if you can believe that. Thought I was helping protect people." His jaw tightened. "Instead, they turned me into an experiment. Luxium burned through my veins, stripped my memories. Half of me died on that table."
A muscle in Anna's cheek twitched, but she said nothing.
"I broke free," Brakkon went on, voice lower now, rough with things he didn't often say. Wandered for years—didn't know my name, barely knew I was human. Then a telepath found me. John Charleston."
Something like a ghost of a smile crossed his face and vanished. "John pieced together what he could of me. Never forced the rest. He just… convinced me that fury isn't enough. That if we don't stand together, we're only weapons waiting to be used."
He looked to each of them in turn—Nullis, Xylo, Anna—then finally to Grant. "We built the Ampers out of that. A place for the hunted. For the broken. For the gifted."
Grant felt the words settle.
Brakkon's eyes narrowed, hard and certain. "What they started in me, they perfected in you. And they won't stop. Not until every Gifted is either a corpse or a tool."
The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut.
Acuent slammed a fist onto the table. "He has to vanish. Now. If Veynar somehow kidnaps him again, it will mean the end of every Gifted."
Across from him, Aldus shook her head, arms folded tight. "Disappearing only feeds their fear. He chooses his path, or we repeat every mistake that built this war."
Brakkon stood in the corner, silent but stone-still, the scars of his own past written across his posture.
Nullis slid a worn folder across the table toward Grant. "Then let him choose with both eyes open."
The folder landed with a dull slap. Schematics bled across the first page—metallic skeletons, chemical notes scrawled in clinical shorthand, half of it blacked out. Beneath, photographs: shattered restraints, cold autopsy tables, bodies tagged with numbers instead of names.
Grant flipped through them, the paper rough beneath his fingertips. Every line of data, every redacted paragraph felt heavier than the last.
Aldus pressed on, voice rising. "You think you can fight an army built to cage us? Hide him, or we all burn."
Acuent's reply cut sharp. "And when the world never sees him again, what then? We become the monsters they already believe we are."
Their words blurred into background noise. Grant's eyes caught on a single header stamped across one sheet: Subject One: Barrett Howell.
Howell.
The name rooted him to the chair, the memory of that impossible void surging back—Celestius's voice, calm and certain: You are not accident, Grant Howell.
His pulse quickened, his eyes red with lightning.
They kept arguing—about strategy, about survival—but the sound seemed to fade, muffled like he was underwater. All Grant could hear was that name, his name, and the unshakable certainty that whatever waited beyond this fight had already chosen him.
He closed the folder, the room's noise rushing back like a storm.
Grant ran to the rooftop door and into the cold.
Night wind tore across the concrete, carrying the city's restless hum—sirens in the distance, the faint thrum of Taskforce drones sweeping the fractured skyline.
He gripped the railing until his knuckles ached, lightning flickering faintly under his skin.
What does it mean to carry a burden no one else can know?
The question slid through him like a blade.
If I stand in the open, they become targets.
If I hide, the world burns in the dark.
The red sparks danced once, then stilled. He drew a breath that tasted of smoke and metal, but no answer came.
****
Down below, the base pulsed with quiet panic. In the comms alcove, Slha's fingers flew across her console, code cascading like falling light. A new feed bled through—encrypted Taskforce chatter, urgent and fast.
Her brow furrowed. "Multiple strike teams converging… heavy signatures I can't trace," she muttered, almost to herself. "Power readings off the charts. Something big's moving."
She slammed the alert through the network.
****
The rooftop door creaked open behind Grant.
Anna stepped into the wind, her silhouette framed by the city's red glare. "Westvale's closing like a fist," she said, voice low but steady. "They're moving faster than we thought."
Grant didn't turn. He kept his eyes on the distant sweep of drones, their lights combing the night like hunting hawks.
"I can feel it," he said finally. "The hunt."
Anna came to stand beside him, close enough that the warmth of her presence cut through the chill. "Then we face it. Together."
He exhaled, the weight of Celestius's words pressing like a second gravity. Protector of the Core. The thought burned, silent and heavy.
"This fight might be mine," he murmured.
"Maybe," Anna said. "But you don't walk into it alone."
The rooftop trembled beneath their feet—a low, rolling BOOM that seemed to rise from the marrow of the city itself.
Anna's eyes snapped to the skyline. "What was that?"
Another concussion followed, closer.
Below, searchlights erupted in wide arcs, slicing through the dark treeline that ringed the hidden base. Drones wheeled like angry stars, their beams sweeping in synchronized patterns.
Grant stepped to the edge, red lightning crackling faintly across his skin.
Behind him the Ampers gathered, silent. Brakkon's jaw was set tight. Nullis flickered uneasily, her outline stuttering in the glow. Even Xylo's usual grin was gone.
Another BOOM rolled across Westvale, closer still. A tremor shivered through the forest, toppling branches and sending birds screaming into the night.
From the far tree line, something massive shifted—just a silhouette at first, a bulk that seemed to drink the searchlights instead of reflect them.
Slha's voice cracked over the comms, barely a whisper. "Whatever that is… it's coming straight for us."
The sound of heavy footfalls followed, deliberate and unhurried, each one shaking dust from the rafters.
Grant's eyes burned crimson as he squared his shoulders. The Ampers watched the dark horizon where the shape loomed, a giant drawn out of nightmare and steel.