The lab was dimly lit when Kai arrived.

  Ray sat at his table surrounded by research result, hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot but burning with passion.

  “Don’t you sleep?”

  Ray snorted. “Sleep is for people who can effort, I am not one of them.”

  Kai smirked and sat down at nearby chair.

  “Don’t grumble as if I am the one who wrong you. Don’t I know what kind of nut you are? Huh. How’s the research?”

  “GE levels are increasing,” Ray said. “In animals. In people, even plants. Not as dramatic as the Cravers — yet. But measurable.”

  “Side effects?” The news got Kai’s interested.

  “Too early to tell,” Ray shrugged. “But it’s not killing them. How do I put it?”

  Thinking a moment for his word phrasing, “It’s like universal energy source, how the creature use it depend on its own.”

  Kai leaned back. “Will it cure little Ark?”

  Ray’s energy dimmed at the mention of little Ark. He didn’t answer immediately.

  “We don’t know what it’ll do to him. Cryo was the only safe option. Until we understand SGV fully… don’t hope too much.”

  Kai nodded, the flicker in his eyes fading to a dull hum.

  Eight days later.

  The convoy cut through the evening like a blade through bruised light.

  Twenty kilometers from Bram, rolling hills passthrough at a visible speed.

  Inside the lead vehicle, Kai watched the coastline slide past — the sea dark and heavy, the sky smeared red along the horizon like a wound that refused to close.

  “Road’s too quiet,” the driver muttered.

  Kai didn’t answer.

  He felt it too.

  Silence, it eerily bore down on the road. As if only the moving convey was alive in this dead silent environment.

  Then—

  Something moved in the headlights.

  “Sir—”

  The brakes screamed.

  The convoy shuddered as metal and inertia fought each other.

  Four shapes stood on the asphalt.

  Wolves.

  But stretched wrong.

  Nearly half-a meters at the shoulder. Their frames thick, muscle rolling like steel cables beneath taut skin. Their eyes glowed faintly red — not shining like reflections.

  As if they are burning.

  One stepped forward. Calm, but the malice pervaded in the surrounding like molten lava.

  Another lowered its head.

  The howl that followed didn’t rise.

  It pressed down.

  The pack charged.

  “Contact front!” the rear vehicle yelled over comms.

  The driver reversed on instinct. Two wolves slammed into the hood, denting reinforced steel. The windshield cracked but held.

  Behind them, doors flew open in practiced rhythm.

  Boots hit pavement.

  “Form up! Shield the truck!”

  The convoy didn’t panic.

  They moved.

  Gunfire erupted in coordinated bursts — short, controlled. Muzzle flashes strobed across the darkening road.

  The first wolf took three rounds to the shoulder. It staggered — then kept coming.

  “Center mass ineffective!”

  “Adjust! Joints and skull!”

  One soldier dropped to a knee, switching to armor-piercing. The second burst shattered a wolf’s foreleg. It collapsed, skidding across asphalt, still snapping.

  These weren’t Cravers.

  They moved differently.

  No frenzy. No blind hunger.

  The convey had been hunted.

  One vaulted onto the side of the second vehicle, claws shrieking against steel. The man inside slammed the door just in time, the creature’s teeth snapping inches from his arm.

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  “Left side!” someone shouted.

  Another wolf crashed into the rear formation. A guard fired point-blank into its jaw. Bone cracked. It recoiled — not dead, but hurt enough for it to fall back.

  They were holding.

  Barely.

  Kai was already outside, crouched behind the engine block, looking around the chaotic situation.

  This pressure, they can barely hold on.

  A wolf lunged toward Ray.

  Ray hadn’t taken cover.

  He stood several meters from the vehicles, head tilted slightly, watching.

  Too still.

  “Dr. Ray—” someone shouted.

  Kai pivoted to move, but Ray moved first.

  He ran straight at the creature.

  The wolf leapt.

  Ray slid under it in a clumsy, almost suicidal motion, coat catching on asphalt. He came up inside its reach instead of outside it — wrong angle, wrong distance — but his hand flashed upward.

  Steel kissed tendon.

  The wolf’s foreleg buckled mid-landing.

  It crashed sideways, momentum folding over itself.

  Ray scrambled to his feet, breathing hard — eyes wide.

  Devoid of fear.

  Bright silver reflects in the headlight of the vehicle.

  The second wolf was already on him.

  Instead of retreating, Ray stepped forward. Too forward. He let it close distance.

  Kai swore under his breath and shifted position to cover him.

  The wolf swiped. Claws barely tore through his lab coat.

  Ray laugher pervaded the surrounding eerily.

  “Kai,” Ray murmured, almost breathless, eyes fixed on the wolves. “Look at the muscle density. The speed—”

  “Move!”

  Kai grabbed him and yanked him sideways just as a wolf tore through the space Ray had occupied. Claws sliced air where his throat had been. The rush of displaced wind brushed Kai’s cheek.

  The shotgun thundered from the semi.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  The sound punched through the dusk.

  Gideon leaned half out the cab window, cycling shells with brutal efficiency. Empty casings clattered against the truck door. “You guys fucking crazy?!” he shouted. “Boss, we can’t hold this line forever!”

  Another howl cut through the gunfire.

  Deeper.

  Closer.

  The Alpha.

  Even the men felt it. The firing staggered for half a second.

  The air tightened.

  Kai didn’t see it at first — he felt it. A pressure behind his ribs, like something vast had stepped onto the field and claimed it.

  Then it moved.

  Something slammed into him from the side.

  The impact stole the air from his lungs and hurled him across gravel. His shoulder struck first. Sparks of pain burst behind his eyes. The sky flipped red, then black.

  He rolled on instinct.

  Jaws snapped shut where his head had been. Teeth clashed with a crack that echoed through his skull.

  The Alpha stood over him.

  Larger than the others. Scars carved across its muzzle. Its body wasn’t frantic like the pack — it was controlled.

  Its eyes locked onto his.

  Not hunger.

  Not rage. Assessment.

  Kai reached for his knife.

  Too slow.

  The Alpha lunged—

  And something crashed into it from the blind side.

  Ray.

  Not controlled. Not tactical. He hit the wolf like a man throwing himself into a burning house. All commitment, no hesitation. The three of them tangled in dust and fur. Gravel tore through fabric. Ray’s elbow bent wrong; he hissed, but he didn’t stop.

  They separated.

  Ray came up first, breathing ragged as adjusting his elbow.

  Two syringes flashed in his hand.

  He threw one toward Kai without looking.

  “Don’t think!” Ray barked — and plunged the other into his own neck.

  The Alpha recovered fast.

  Too fast.

  Kai caught the syringe by reflex and scrambled backward as the wolf circled, favoring one shoulder.

  Gunfire cracked around them in disciplined bursts.

  “Right flank hold!”

  “Reloading!”

  “Keep the semi clear!”

  Boots pounded asphalt. The smell of gunpowder and hot oil thickened the air.

  The world hadn’t slowed.

  It had narrowed.

  Kai stared at the vial.

  Golden-green.

  Ark’s face surfaced in his mind — pale behind frost, small fingers suspended inside the cryo chamber.

  Ray’s voice cut through everything.

  “What are you waiting for?!”

  That was enough.

  Kai jammed the needle into his neck.

  The reaction wasn’t cinematic.

  It was brutal.

  His muscles locked. His spine arched involuntarily. His vision flared white at the edges as if someone had flooded his skull with light.

  For a split second, he thought he would black out. Heat didn’t spread.

  Pressure did.

  Like something forcing itself through veins not built to carry it. He sucked in air that tasted metallic.

  The sounds around him separated — not slower, just sharper. He could distinguish individual gunshots now. The rhythm of Gideon’s pump. The crack of rifles. The snarl of breath inside the Alpha’s chest.

  His pulse hammered.

  But it felt… aligned.

  The Alpha lunged again.

  Kai moved.

  Not with mastery.

  With instinct.

  Barely.

  He pivoted — too slow to be graceful, fast enough to survive and drove his knife upward into the creature’s lower abdomen.

  The blade met resistance. Dense muscle. Thick hide. He had to shove with both hands.

  The wolf roared — a harsh, furious sound — and swiped.

  Kai threw his forearms up on instinct.

  Claws tore through fabric and skin.

  Pain exploded across his arms. Blood seeped instantly, warm and slick.

  The impact sent him skidding across asphalt again.

  He tasted iron.

  Anger flare inside him.

  Good.

  He rolled to one knee, breathing hard, and snatched the knife back up as blood splattered onto the road beside him.

  Across the road, Ray was no longer fighting like a normal person.

  He was inside the wolves’ reach.

  Too close.

  One snapped at his face. He leaned back a fraction too late — teeth grazed his cheek — and he answered with a casual, almost lazy slice across its foreleg.

  The cut looked accidental.

  It wasn’t.

  The tendon parted.

  The wolf collapsed mid-stride, screaming.

  Ray laughed.

  Breathless. Shaky. On the edge of something.

  He stepped closer to the next one instead of retreating.

  Blood ran down his sleeve and coat. He didn’t notice.

  “Beautiful,” he muttered, voice trembling — whether from pain or exhilaration, no one could tell.

  The Alpha shifted attention between them.

  Calculating again.

  Kai stood fully now. His breathing steadied, though his arms throbbed.

  The surge inside him wasn’t strength alone.

  It was alignment.

  His thoughts weren’t racing like before.

  They were quieter.

  Something else was steering.

  When the Alpha lunged toward Ray—

  Gideon saw it.

  The shotgun rose.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Two heavy rounds slammed into the Alpha’s flank. Not enough to drop it — but enough to twist its body mid-air.

  Instead of a clean bite, it collided with Ray. They hit the ground hard, rolling.

  Ray grinned up at it, blood on his teeth.

  Before the wolf could recover, he drove his scalpel straight into its left eye.

  The sound was wet.

  The Alpha howled and tore itself away, clawing backward.

  The convoy tightened instantly.

  “Crossfire! Crossfire!”

  “Push them back!”

  “Don’t chase!”

  Disciplined bursts filled the road.

  One wolf dropped.

  Another staggered and retreated, dragging a ruined leg.

  The Alpha stood a moment longer, chest heaving, one eye clouded red.

  It wasn’t broken.

  It was deciding.

  It gave a low, resonant call that vibrated through bone more than air.

  The remaining wolves disengaged.

  Not fleeing blindly.

  Withdrawing.

  Within seconds, they melted into the treeline.

  Engines continued to roar. No one relaxed yet.

  Silence didn’t fall.

  It returned in fragments — broken by coughing, by someone swearing, by the hiss of a damaged radiator.

  Kai stayed still, feeling the foreign rhythm inside his veins.

  But something had changed, he can’t pinpoint what it’s.

  Ray stood in the middle of the road, swaying slightly.

  His pupils were wide open, almost silver in the fading light. His hands trembled — not from fear, but from excess.

  He looked exhilarated.

  And unstable.

  Kai walked toward him, boots crunching on broken glass.

  “You good?” Kai asked.

  Ray’s smile came slow.

  “Did you feel it?” he whispered. “Something already changed.”

  Kai didn’t answer.

  Because what unsettled him wasn’t the strength.

  It was how quickly his body had accepted it.

  And how easily he had.