"What do you think they'll do to him?"
Sid, the youngest and most green member of the team, asked with naked curiosity. All eyes turned to the boy lying bound and broken on the seat.
"After the trial? They'll ship him straight to IMFA," Logan replied casually.
He leaned back, running a hand through his ash-gray hair as if discussing the weather. Around him, several team members nodded in grim consensus.
"Isn't he a bit young for that place?" Sid pressed.
Logan let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter.
"Too young? Kid, that 'brat' is the reason that mansion is a morgue. He nearly dismantled an entire Avalon Guardian unit before we even stepped through the door. You still think he's some harmless child?"
His face twisted into a sneer. A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the van as it vanished into the relentless rain.
A needle-like chill biting into his skin slowly dragged Aren back to the waking world. Behind long, trembling lashes, blood-red eyes stared blankly at a concrete ceiling.
As his mind cleared, the pieces of the puzzle began to click into place.
He tried to push himself up, but a jagged groan escaped his lips. Pain tore through him, a sensation of every muscle being systematically stretched to the snapping point.
His cell was a tomb—dimly lit, claustrophobic, and devoid of anything but a cold stone floor and a toilet in the corner.
That woman... Mary, he thought, jaw clenched. She didn't heal me. She just stitched the surface.
There were no visible scars where the metal spikes had pierced him, but the agony was very real.
Mary hadn't used true recovery magic; she had forced his body to accelerate its own healing process.
It was a cruel efficiency—his nerves were forced to endure weeks of recovery pain in a matter of hours.
They could have used a recovery potion, Aren mused darkly. But after the mess I made, they're making me pay the price. No healing until the trial—if I even make it that far.
The heavy thud of footsteps echoed in the corridor. With a sharp metallic clatter, the small observation window in the door slid open.
Aren looked up, his expression a mask of indifference, and met the eyes of the girl standing behind the bars.
He knew her instantly. Not from memory, but from the vivid descriptions in the novel. She had dark green hair—so dark it bordered on black—and eyes of the same cold hue.
Amy Donovan. Aren't younger sister by two years.
In the original story, Amy was a titan of a character, defined by her exceptional strength and a tragic, burning core of trauma.
Her idolized father had been slaughtered by her own brother. That brother had been cast into the hell of IMFA prison to die, while Amy and her mother crawled back to the Donovan family, one of the seven elite families.
As the daughter of a woman who had married "down" into a common bloodline, Amy had been treated as a stain on the Donovan name.
She had fought like a demon to become the successor, not for love, but to erase the shame her brother had left behind.
Aren studied her in silence. In the novel, Amy was the embodiment of poise. Now, she was a wreck. Her hair was matted and tangled, and her eyes were raw and swollen from hours of weeping.
The hatred burning in those green irises was potent—a venomous heat meant to suffocate him.
"Why?" she whispered, her voice trembling as she searched his face for a shred of humanity. "Why did you do it?"
Aren remained silent.
"When you got sick... when they locked you away in the isolation wing... Father was the only one who ever cared about you!" her voice cracked. "He was the only one who fought for you!"
Amy couldn't understand it. They had never been close, but she never imagined her brother was capable of such butchery.
As the memory of the "isolation wing" flickered in Aren's mind, a cold, mocking smile tugged at the corners of his lips.
Sick? Isolation wing?
He thought of the sterile, cold rooms and the clinical equipment he had seen. Was that research facility meant for a patient? Or a lab rat?
"How interesting," he whispered in the darkness.