Chapter 51
Dev
The institute was crumbling around us.
The rockets had obliterated most of the ferals. The few remaining were being wiped out by Sy’s fire—efficient, merciless, final.
I could hear the approaching sirens of first responders. They would be too late.
The ground was littered with the dead. Not just ferals. Guards. Techs. People who had been alive minutes ago.
I grabbed Jess by the arm and ran toward the ward where Ash had vanished. The building had crumpled like a tin can, its walls peeled back, its insides exposed.
As I got closer, I saw a white helicopter emerge from the trees beyond the perimeter.
For a moment, I spotted Marr standing in the doorway.
“Fuck.”
He was getting away.
And Ash was nowhere in sight.
“Fuck! Ash!” I shouted, scrambling over the rubble, tearing at broken concrete and twisted metal. “Where are you?”
Black vans were already pulling up around us. Men and women spilled out, rifles raised, moving with practised precision. Guards were rounded up and bound. Students were already being led to waiting buses, to be taken out of the area.
Probably to another holding cell.
I watched Miranda Wild run out to a waiting silver BMW and take off through the chaos.
For a moment I met her eyes. She sneered and ducked into her car. It sped through the gunfire in a squeal of tires, before disappearing off down the road.
She was abandoning the school.
Goddamn coward.
Good fucking riddance.
A Black Hawk descended nearby, rotors thundering overhead. The wind from the rotors was deafening.
When it landed, a familiar figure stepped out.
He was older—forties, maybe. Greying at the temples, solid, composed. His soldiers fanned out around him without a word.
Elliot Muir.
He spotted me immediately and hurried over. “Dev?”
“Ash was here,” I muttered, barely looking at him as I shifted rubble. “He went into the ward.”
Elliot’s expression hardened instantly. He nodded once.
“Start digging,” he ordered. “All of you.”
The soldiers moved without hesitation, tearing into the ruins with ruthless efficiency.
Elliot’s hand closed briefly around my arm. Firm. Grounding.
“We’ll find him, Dev.”
“Elliot!”
K’s voice cut across the courtyard.
Elliot straightened and turned. Across the wreckage, K and the Phantom stood with Gideon between them, guns trained on his chest.
Elliot approached slowly. Deliberately.
Like this was something he’d waited a long time to see.
“Hello, Gideon,” Elliot said quietly.
Gideon sneered. “I should have known you were behind this, you freak.”
Elliot didn’t rise to it. He merely glanced at the devastation around them. His eyes lingered on the bloody bodies of the fallen.
“Isn’t this virus the result of your research, Gideon?” he said mildly. “One could argue this was your doing. And I am pretty sure my forces just saved your ass.”
Gideon’s lip curled. “I wouldn’t be so wasteful, Muir.”
“Wasteful, huh. Don’t kid yourself, Gideon. Everything you are—everything you have ever done—was a waste. And now look at you. We own you.”
“The Council will come for me,” Gideon sneered.
“Good,” Elliot said coldly. “Each and every one of them is due a reckoning. You’ll just be the first.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
The Phantom stepped forward. “Elliot—you said—”
“All in time,” Elliot cut in.
Jess shifted beside me, her gaze never leaving Gideon’s face. “What about Seph? I watched you take her away.”
I turned to Gideon, who glared at all of us with pure hate.
“Where is she Gideon? What did you do to her?”
“Why would I tell you?” he spat. “She’s better off away from all of you!”
K spun on the spot and struck him hard across the face, forcing Gideon to stumble.
I charged at him, lifting my palm so the blood oozing from his nose paused and began to burn.
It crawled up his face, scarring his flesh.
He hit his face, screaming, like he could wipe it away.
Instantly his healing ability began to kick in.
So I pushed harder. I didn’t give him a chance.
“Dev – “
“Tell. Me.” The words clipped out, cold and fierce.
“I …gave her to Marr…” Gideon stammered.
K went white. “You what?”
Sy stepped forward and lifted Gideon up so he was dangling in mid-air. Jess stood beside me, her hands blazing.
Sy met Gideons eyes, staring deep into his soul. The simple vastness of that gaze gave me shivers.
Sy was not a tame dragon.
His power was ancient. Destructive.
“You would give your child to monsters.” Sy didn’t raise his voice. Instead, it was filled with a promise of pain and suffering.
“My child is a monster!”
“Wait –“ Elliot called out.
But Sy didn’t listen. Instead, he threw Gideon away like he weighed nothing. I watched the councillor fly across the dirt and hit the ground hard.
Sy turned and behind his face, something flared. He roared, raising his body off the ground with his half shifted wings.
Beneath us the ground shuddered, like something bigger was waking. I was sure Sy was about to rip all of us apart when I heard it.
Thump.
Thump, thump.
I turned towards the sound. “What was that – “
Sy landed in a rush of displaced air, nostrils flaring, his massive form drawing weapons instinctively from the Equinox soldiers.
“Wait!” I shouted, stepping in front of him. “Sy—”
The dragon shifted beside me, slow and deliberate. A moment later he stood there in human form, tall, unashamed, entirely unconcerned with the chaos he caused by existing.
“She is near,” he said.
Hope flared in my chest. Seph—
Then I heard it again.
Someone was yelling beneath our feet.
“Seph!” I yelled.
We tore at the rubble with bare hands until a doorway to the underground gave way. Dust billowed out—then a hand appeared.
Then another.
And then—
Seph’s small, bloodied body collapsed out onto the concrete, shoved from below.
“Oh my god.”
K leaped for her instinctively. “Seph.”
Something else moved in the darkness behind her.
A larger shape.
I saw the silver hair first—matted, dark with blood.
Sy was already moving. A low growl tore from his chest as he surged forward.
“Ash,” I breathed.
He dragged himself free and collapsed beside her, one arm curling around her body instinctively. He bared his teeth.
“Is she dead?” Elliot shouted, rushing toward her.
“Don’t touch her!” K snapped instantly.
I didn’t think. I just moved—dropping to my knees beside her as Jess and K shifted with me, all of us forming a wall between Seph and the Equinox soldiers.
Elliot stopped short.
For a fraction of a second, something unreadable flickered across his face.
“I won’t hurt her,” he said quietly.
“Keep your hands off her,” I said, my own hands lifting without conscious thought.
Jess’s gaze swept over us once, measuring. Deciding.
Click.
The lighter sparked in her hand.
Flames licked to life around her fists.
“Keep back,” she said softly.
Only Sy moved.
He knelt beside her, careful, one massive hand brushing gently through her hair. At the touch, she shifted—subtle, instinctive—straining toward him like she recognised safety even in the dark.
A soft whimper left her throat.
“She lives,” Sy said quietly. “But she is hurt.”
He lifted his gaze toward the sky.
“Don’t you fucking dare take her,” K warned.
Sy turned his head. The look he gave him could have melted flesh.
“Sy,” I said quickly. “Don’t. It might hurt her more.”
He stilled.
“What about me?” Ash muttered, still curled protectively around her.
I couldn’t help it. I snorted.
“She needs a doctor. Or a healer. Now.” K’s voice was urgent.
I looked at Gideons unconscious body. “Did you have to knock him out?”
“He wouldn’t have helped her. But I can.” Phantom said, stepping forward. She cast a dirty look at the fallen man on the ground.
“After all, he taught me everything he knows,” she sneered.
Seph stirred on the ground. For a moment her eyes opened. I watched her gaze connect with Phantom. I sensed her disbelief and horror.
For a moment she looked at Phantom. Phantom smiled.
“Sable?” Seph whispered. “You’re dead.”
Sable ‘Phantom’ Quinn smiled back. “Not quite, sis.”
Sephs eyes rolled back in her head and she blacked out.