Chapter 32 Koa
koa
. . .
Devastation sounded like breaths pulling too fast through too many throats and hearts failing.
The simulator dropped us onto a ruined street in Fate Hollow during the aftermath of a supernatural attack.
Buildings of shattered stone leaned like broken teeth on both sides of the road, and smoke churned, tinted green from how ripe the magical essence was lingering in the air.
Sparks crackled around the broken wards, and every few seconds, another unstable rune or enchantment detonated in the distance.
Hurt supernaturals were everywhere.
A fae boy sobbed into his ruined hands, iron poisoning turning his veins black.
A werewolf girl clutched her ribs, eyes feral with panic.
A pair of witches held magic over a warlock’s wound, blood pooling between their palms.
A firedrake coughed up smoke. Scales had fallen off him, leaving gaping holes in his flesh.
A vampire had a stake through his ribs, barely missing his heart.
And we were charged with fixing them all.
I moved before any of my other healer classmates did.
Blue flames surged around me, pulling from my special power so they were healing rather than destructive.
I knelt by the fae boy first, cradling his hands. It was odd that a fae would be here since the fae only came to Kalista when they needed to do their jobs. It made no sense for a fae child to be here.
“Hey. Hey, look at me. You’re not bleeding out today.” Blue fire seeped from my palms, eating the iron from his blood as it licked over his black veins.
He gasped as the pain eased.
The other healers in my class ran to the others in the immediate area, so I left the boy healed up and moved to the next injured supernatural.
I found a witch whose leg had nearly been severed. My power fused the torn flesh, muscle, and bone back together.
My vision blurred from the magical energy it took, but I didn't stop.
Someone screamed behind me.
I pivoted, blue fire already rising through my body.
One of my housemates, a banshee, knelt over the fallen vampire, her long dark braids streaked white like lightning frozen in the night sky.
She looked terrified, shaking so hard she could barely keep her grasp on the man’s chest to stop the bleeding.
Then, a stark realization hit me.
The scream I’d heard was a banshee's death wail for a warning, but she didn’t open her mouth. No, scratch that. She didn’t even move, but the scream still came, a psychic shock ripping over us like icy wind.
It didn’t come from her lungs. Instead, it came from the device on her necklace.
Her eyes widened as she caught me looking, and her lips parted, but it was too late. Suspicion bit through me, sharp and cold.
She wasn’t a banshee.
She was human.
She froze, just for a second, but I saw it. The fear of being recognized.
I marked her in my brain for later and moved again.
My flames mended a firedrake’s gaping wound from scale loss, something I didn’t know any other healer to be capable of. My shirt was soaked in blood.
I had healed five supernaturals, then ten, and then fifteen. I didn’t stop even when my watch flashed with low magical energy.
Magical Reserves: Critically low: 5%
A fiery blast of enchantments went off, and I shielded two shifters with my body, my fire wings wrapping around them.
Pain crackled across my ribs, but I ignored it and healed them, anyway.
I became a machine made of heat and healing, and I knew that this was the only time that nobody would question the clumsy phoenix who died too much.
Greenblood didn’t pull me until I’d reached 1% on my magical reserves, but by the time that happened, we’d healed everyone in the immediate area. We’d completed our mission, and the banshee avoided me like the plague.
Greenblood waited by the control panel, arms crossed, with her expression unreadable.
Everyone else stumbled out of the simulator, panting and sweating.
“Koa,” Greenblood said. “Stay behind.”
Some shot me a sympathetic look, but honestly, I ignored them. I didn’t have anything in common with my housemates, and I could out-heal them due to my special power.
Professor Greenblood exhaled slowly. “You almost killed yourself again by using up your reserves.”
“Well, I didn’t, so I feel like that should give me extra credit.” I gave her a lopsided grin.
Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t keep healing at the cost of yourself. It’s not healthy, Koa. You come into my class ragged and tired every morning.”
“I’m a phoenix, so it’s not like I’ll stay dead,” I muttered. “They needed me.”
She didn’t argue about that. “You weren’t distracted until about halfway through,” she said. “What did you see?”
I hesitated.
Technically, she should know if a human’s in our class, but I was a double-agent. I couldn’t blow my cover before I found enough intel to clear my dad of his crimes.
“I think you should test our class for humans,” I blurted.
Her chin lifted slowly. “Say that again.”
“Test for humans,” I repeated. “I saw something, but I don’t want to accuse or point fingers in case I am wrong.”
Greenblood stared at me for a long beat. Her expression went from skeptical to disturbed, then to calculating. “Then you need to take that to the headmaster,” she said. “Immediately.”
“I was already headed there,” I said, stepping toward the door.
She stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Koa.”
I looked back.
“Don’t die today. Shift into a phoenix and fill up your reserves. You did well, and the council will be lucky to have you as an asset.”
I grinned. “Thanks, Professor.”
She dropped her hand and nodded. “You’re welcome. Don’t disappoint us.”
“I won’t.” I went to walk out of the simulator, but my foot caught the threshold, and I tripped. My head caught the metal door on the way down.
Everything went black as my heart stopped, again.
The human territory always smelled wrong.
It was too sterile, like metal shavings and disinfectant, to ward off the pesky germs humans were so susceptible to. Even the air felt thicker here, and I hated it.
I loathed the humans, and playing pretend with them was fucking with my head. I never wanted to be a spy, but I’d do anything to clear Dad of being a traitor.
I dropped out of phoenix flight behind a crumbling warehouse on the industrial edge of Nearport. Flames rolled off my shoulders and died into embers as I landed. My wings faded into my back with that familiar searing heat down my spine.
Sentinel drones swept over the horizon in tight patterns, and cameras blinked from the tops of street poles. Razor-wire fences hummed with electricity where they bordered the rogue human faction’s secure research sector.
It was a poetic way of saying supernatural torture den.
The guards at the checkpoint recognized me. I was officially the “Phoenix Asset.” I hated that title, but they waved me through without incident.
The facility was filled with humans wearing white lab coats.
Sirens blared somewhere deeper in the compound. Security officers with rifles strapped to their backs marched tourmalyke-cuffed supernaturals down a hall, and it took everything in me not to burn this entire facility to the ground.
One of them turned. She had a small frame, cobalt hair, and curling horns. The young demon’s mouth trembled when she saw me.
“Phoenix,” she whispered. She had a tiny, hopeful voice.
Every time another supernatural saw me, unchained, they always looked at me like I was some kind of savior, but they didn’t know I worked here. They didn’t know I was forced to play both sides, and they didn’t know I was already dying inside from it.
A human commander with dead eyes stormed toward me in a sharp black suit. “Ashbourne. You’re late again.”
“Traffic,” I said flatly. “Why do you have supernatural children?”
He sneered. “Children? It’s eighteen. That’s an adult, and this one broke its last handler’s spine without getting us its DNA. If you’re done being unreliable, dispose of it for us.”
The demon girl growled weakly. Her wrists were raw where the tourmalyke had rubbed too hard against her skin. She swayed on her feet, and she was too small even for her age.
I clenched my jaw. “She’s a kid.”
“It’s a weapon. Eighteen isn’t a kid in the human territory. It’s a full-grown adult,” he corrected. “We let you take that demon child back, didn’t we? We aren’t completely heartless.”
“The child was only five, and you didn’t let me.” I gritted my teeth. “I fought for it.”
“You either make the demon useful, or we scrap it.”
I forced a smile, cold and dead. “Take off the tourmalyke cuffs, then.”
He motioned to the guards, who hesitated but obeyed. The chains clattered as they fell to the floor.
The child looked up at me, her eyes glowing faintly. “Please,” she whispered. “Help me.”
“I’m sorry.” I did what I had to do. I reached out slowly, calming and soft, like you would to any child. “But they need your blood, and you need to give it to them.”
Her face cracked with devastation an instant before I pulled the small blade from my belt and sliced her palm. She cried out, and her blood ran down into the waiting vial that a human had placed under her hand.
The commander’s face twisted. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Saving time,” I said coldly, putting the blade back as she swayed. I gently tugged her to my side. “I made her useful, and now, I will scrap her as I see fit. Got it?”
The commander shifted. “The phoenix asset thinks he runs the show.”
A gunshot exploded from behind me, and the demon girl’s head jerked as she fell to the ground in front of me, dead.
Horror jolted through me.
“Can’t have that,” a security officer said condescendingly.
I stared at the demon, whom I’d just fucking tried to save. “You killed her for what? You don’t usually kill them.”
“That demon’s DNA was useless.” He shrugged.
“We actually got it, but I wanted to see how far you’d go to prove its usefulness.
There’s no more taking the creatures back to the supernatural territories.
If you bring us useless supernaturals, we will kill them.
There’s no need to keep up appearances when we know which supernatural we need. ”
I locked my jaw. My phoenix flames simmered under my skin, unable to escape.
“Careful, Ashbourne. We might not kill you, but you won’t win this fight here. The entire facility is made of tourmalyke. Go drop off your briefing at my office and then leave.”
I needed intel. Answers about my father. Anything to end this before I lost myself anymore. I hated these fucking humans.
Turning on my heels, I moved deeper into this damned place. I walked past the test chambers, past the cages, and past the wall where names were scratched by claws and bleeding hands.
Human scientists watched me pass but didn’t question it. I’d been coming here long enough. Earning “trust.” Earning the scorn of my people.
Finally, I made it to the back offices and dropped my brief on the commander’s desk.
I took the chance to slip inside one marked RESTRICTED CLEARANCE – PROGRAM: MERGING.
It was a simple office with the computer on, and it lacked a password screen.
Frowning, I moved toward it and pulled up project logs. Document after document spilled the human’s current plan—human-supernatural hybrid enhancement trials. DNA storage. Supernatural asset indexing with names. Student names. Staff names. From the academy.
RUNE BLOODWYNE: PRIORITY TARGET 01.
DRECKEN GRIMSWORN: TARGET UNREACHABLE.
JESPER WYVERNHEART: HAZARD CLASS LEVEL 5.
DIMITRI NOCTURNUS: POTENTIAL ACQUISITION.
KOA ASHBOURNE: UNDERCOVER
My heart dropped like a cold weight in my gut.
Shit.
My future mate was top priority. I’d known they wanted her, but I didn’t fucking know how badly.
I dug deeper through security reports and communication lists. And then I found something reminiscent of what was on my dad’s computer when he was framed.
A single heavily encrypted file named: GENOCIDE.
I started cracking it open, but a reflection moved on the screen behind me.
I turned to find Allison standing in the doorway, the fucking human who had been under our noses at the academy for so long.
“Koa, you shouldn’t be in here.” She smiled at me like she owned the fucking world.
Though her family owned the facility, so it made sense.
She wore a crisp tactical coat this time, no academy-issued suit in sight because she didn’t have to pretend here.
Her blonde hair was slicked back, and there was a pistol strapped to her thigh.
I didn’t reach for my dagger, even though I really wanted to. “I was curious.”
She stepped inside. “Curiosity killed the cat, didn’t you know?”
“Supernatural DNA injected into the bloodstream kills humans,” I stated plainly, closing out of the encrypted file I was after. “Why fuck with this?”
“They’re building a future for us, and there are more ways to get it in our blood without injecting it directly.”
I stared at her. “That’s insane.”
Her smile sharpened. “We don’t have to be enemies, Koa. In fact…” She leaned in. “We just gained another supernatural ally. One who will join us willingly. One who is going to see it our way, like you. I won’t tell anyone I found you in here, in good faith. Don’t screw us over, Koa.”