The doors slammed behind us with a metallic finality that rattled my bones.
That was it. No exits. No illusions.
I kept my eyes on Serena as she walked away from me, each step feeling like a bullet I didn't hear coming. I wanted to call her name, wanted to drag her back into whatever version of us still existed in my head—but the moment was already gone.
The alarms deepened. Not loud. Heavy. Like a heartbeat under the floor.
"Waller," Tina muttered beside me, lowering her stance. "He's coming."
I felt it before I saw him.
The air pressure shifted. The lights overhead flickered, bending inward as if gravity itself had decided to kneel. Then the hooded man stepped forward again—but this time, the hood peeled back on its own, dissolving into drifting ash.
And I saw the face of the Eclipse.
Not monstrous. Not scarred.
Perfectly calm.
His eyes were wrong—not glowing, not mechanical—just empty, like windows looking out onto something vast and indifferent. The kind of gaze that doesn't hate you because it doesn't even register you as a threat.
"So," he said, his voice layered, as if several people were speaking at once, "this is what doubt looks like."
Tina fired first.
The gunshot echoed sharp and defiant. The bullet never reached him. It slowed midair, shuddered, and collapsed into dust before touching his skin.
"Run!" Tina shouted.
I grabbed her arm and we moved, instincts overriding disbelief. Gunfire erupted from the catwalks above. I fired blindly while dragging Tina toward a stack of steel crates. Bullets sparked and screamed, ricocheting wildly—some bending, some simply vanishing.
This wasn't a fight.
It was a demonstration.
The Eclipse lifted one hand.
The floor ruptured.
Concrete exploded upward, throwing us off our feet. I slammed into a pillar hard enough to steal the air from my lungs. Pain flared white-hot through my ribs. Somewhere nearby, Tina groaned.
I forced myself up, vision swimming.
"Still standing," the Eclipse said, almost amused. "You always were… resilient."
"How do you know me?" I yelled.
He tilted his head. "I watched you fail long before you ever knew my name."
A shadow moved to my left—Serena. She was watching, not intervening, her face locked in something between fear and faith. I caught her eye.
"This is what you signed up for?" I shouted. "Tell me!"
Her lips parted—but the Eclipse spoke over her.
"She signed up to save what comes after you."
The air cracked.
I barely had time to react before something invisible hit me square in the chest. I flew backward, crashing through a metal railing and slamming onto a lower platform. Something snapped. I screamed despite myself.
Warning lights flashed red now. The building was tearing itself apart.
Tina's voice crackled through my earpiece, strained. "Waller… the structure's failing. We don't have minutes."
I dragged myself upright, blood dripping from my mouth. My gun felt useless in my hand—but I raised it anyway.
"Funny thing about belief," I said, aiming at the Eclipse's face. "It blinds people."
I fired.
Not at him.
At the support column behind him.
The round hit. Sparks erupted. The weakened structure finally gave in, and a chain reaction roared through the warehouse. Beams collapsed. The ceiling began to cave.
For the first time, the Eclipse stepped back.
Just one step.
The shockwave hurled everyone apart. Serena disappeared into smoke and falling debris. Tina dropped beside me, grabbing my collar.
"MOVE!"
We ran as the world collapsed behind us. Steel screamed. Concrete fell. Fire bloomed.
The last thing I saw before the blast threw us through a side wall was the Eclipse—standing amid the destruction, untouched, watching us escape.
Watching me.
We hit the ground outside hard, rolling into the rain-soaked pavement. The warehouse behind us imploded in a thunderous roar.
I lay there, gasping, staring at the burning ruins.
We hadn't won.
We hadn't even come close.
But as I closed my eyes, one thought burned brighter than the pain in my body:
I'd made him step back.
And next time—
I'd make him fall.
The rain was still falling when I slipped away.
That's the last thing I remember clearly.
After that—there were only fragments.
Cold.
Motion.
The sound of Tina screaming my name like she refused to let the world take me.
I drifted in and out of blackness as my body was dragged across asphalt, then concrete, then metal. Every movement sent pain flaring through nerves that barely responded anymore. I couldn't breathe properly. My chest felt crushed inward, like something vital had folded the wrong way and refused to unfold.
"Stay with me, Waller," Tina growled, her voice raw, breathless. "You don't get to die after that. Not like this."
I wanted to answer. Couldn't.
Somewhere behind us, sirens wailed—too many, too close. The Eclipse always left a mess loud enough to draw attention but impossible to explain. Tina hauled my body into the back of a van, slammed the doors shut, and the engine roared to life.
Darkness swallowed me again.
When I came to, the ceiling above me was unfamiliar—low, reinforced, stained with old smoke and oil. The smell of antiseptic mixed with gunpowder and burnt wiring.
I tried to move.
Nothing.
"Easy," a voice said. Male. Calm. Old confidence layered over exhaustion. "You're not dead. Don't rush to prove me wrong."
My vision sharpened slowly.
A man stood at the far end of the room, sleeves rolled up, hands stained with blood that wasn't his. Gray threaded his hair, but his eyes were sharp—dangerously sharp. The kind that had seen too much and survived anyway.
Tina stood beside him, arms crossed, jaw tight. Blood dried along her temple.
"He's awake," she said.
"Barely," the man replied. He stepped closer. "Waller Greene. You're harder to kill than the reports suggested."
Reports.
That word hit harder than the pain.
"Who…" My voice cracked, barely sound. "Who are you?"
He smiled faintly. Not friendly. Not cruel. Strategic.
"Name's Marcus Vale," he said. "Former intelligence. Formerly dead, according to most agencies. And—" he glanced at Tina "—one of the last people on this planet still actively hunting the Eclipse."
My heart stuttered.
Tina leaned in. "He's clean. I checked. Saved my life once. More than once."
Vale nodded. "And now, apparently, I owe you."
Memory slammed back in pieces—Serena's eyes, the step the Eclipse took back, the way the world broke apart.
"They're not human," I whispered.
Vale didn't argue. "No. They're worse. They're convinced."
He pulled a tablet from a nearby table and turned it toward me. Schematics. Symbols. Familiar ones.
The crest.
"You didn't just meet the Eclipse," Vale continued. "You met its face. Its anchor. The thing holding the rest of it together."
Tina frowned. "Anchor?"
Vale's expression darkened. "Cut the head off a snake, it dies. Cut the anchor off a storm…" He shook his head. "You change its direction."
I tried to sit up. Pain exploded, but I forced it back. "Serena's still with them."
"I know," Vale said quietly. "She's the reason you're alive."
That made my chest hurt more than my injuries.
Vale stepped back, folding his arms. "The Eclipse thinks you're broken. Scattered. Running."
He smiled again—this time with intent.
"That's when they make mistakes."
Tina placed a hand on my shoulder. Firm. Grounding. "We heal you. We regroup. Then we hit back—harder, smarter."
I stared at the ceiling, feeling the weight of what was coming.
I had looked into the face of the Eclipse and lived.
That meant one thing.
The war had finally noticed me.
And I wasn't done yet.
Sleep dragged me under before I could fight it.
I found myself standing in a courtroom—no, bound in one. Cold iron chains wrapped around my wrists, my ankles, my chest, locking me in place like a condemned relic. I tried to speak, but my mouth refused to move. Tried to scream, but even sound had abandoned me. The world dulled—faces blurred, voices warped—yet I could still see them.
The lawyers took turns circling me.
Smiling.
Not arguing. Not defending. Just talking at me, like the verdict had already been written. I wasn't asked a single question. I wasn't given a chance to answer. And still, the trial continued.
How could anyone judge a man who never spoke?
The jury rose in unison. The scrape of their chairs echoed like a death sentence. The judge stood, struck the gavel once, and the room dissolved into silence.
Adjourned.
That was when panic finally reached me.
Who were these people?
Why was I in chains?
Was this death… or something worse?
I was alive moments ago—I know I was.
Then—
My eyes snapped open.
Harsh white light greeted me. A ceiling. Too clean. Too real. I sucked in a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and groaned as pain rippled through my body. Every muscle protested as I forced myself upright.
A hospital.
Of course it was.
But the realization hit harder than the pain.
I'm a wanted man.
My pulse spiked. My eyes scanned the room frantically.
"Where's Tina?" I croaked. "And the other man?"
My voice sounded weak. Exposed.
A shadow shifted beside me.
"I know you're wondering how someone like you," the doctor said calmly, "ends up in a hospital bed instead of a cell."
Something in his tone made my stomach twist.
That was when it hit me.
The courtroom.
The chains.
The smiles.
It wasn't a dream.
It was a memory.
Or worse—a warning.
The Eclipse never wanted me dead.
They wanted me contained.
Judged. Watched. Studied.
All this time, I thought I was hunting them.
But the truth settled into my chest like a slow, suffocating weight.
I was the case.
And the reason they've been after me all along…
was because I was never just a detective.
I was the evidence.