Six weeks of careful distance didn't break because of a brilliant plan.
It broke because of terrible timing.
Reyes was canvassing the block outside a reopened church near the hazard zone's edge when the screaming started.
Eleven years of federal work had stripped the hesitation out of him. He was already sprinting toward the alley, sidearm drawn, when he rounded the corner and realized his weapon was completely, catastrophically useless.
The thing crouched over an overturned car wasn't human.
It was a eight-foot mass of fused shadow and grotesque limbs. A cluster of mismatched eyes blinked across its chest in stomach-churning patterns. Beneath the crushed car frame, a woman lay pinned, screaming, her arm bent at an impossible angle.
It's real. It's actually real.
Reyes raised his gun and fired three rounds into its center mass.
The creature didn't even flinch. It turned slowly, its cluster of chest-eyes narrowing with raw hunger.
Mistake.
It lunged.
Before it covered half the distance, something hit it from the side like a freight train.
Adrian had felt the surge of cursed energy three blocks away. His Six Eyes had flagged the spike the moment it manifested near the grief-heavy church—exactly the kind of outbreak he'd feared. He just hadn't expected Agent Reyes to be standing directly in the kill zone.
Of course he is.
The impact sent the spirit sprawling across the asphalt. Adrian rolled to his feet, cursed energy instantly reinforcing his fists, his Six Eyes reading every twitch of the creature's limbs before it could even commit to a strike.
The fight was fast, brutal, and completely devoid of technical perfection.
There was no chosen terrain here. No clean tactical execution. Just raw chaos with a screaming civilian fifteen feet away and a stunned federal agent behind him.
A claw strike raked across Adrian's shoulder as he blocked a blow aimed at the pinned woman. Another sliced his ribs as he redirected a crushing smash away from the car frame. Pain flared, but he didn't yield.
"GET HER OUT!" Adrian roared, not daring to look back. "NOW!"
Training kicked in, snapping Reyes out of his shock. He dropped beside the car, adrenaline enabling him to tear the crumpled door frame back just enough to pull the woman clear.
Adrian drove the spirit back, channeling a surge of reinforced energy into a direct strike straight through the largest eye on its chest.
CRUNCH!
The creature shrieked—a sound like grinding metal—and collapsed into a cloud of black mist that drifted harmlessly into the night.
[ +34 EXP ]
Adrian sagged, chest heaving, blood soaking his shirt in two places. He turned.
Six feet away, Reyes was holding the injured woman, his sidearm hanging forgotten at his side. He stared at Adrian, his mind struggling to process what he'd just witnessed.
"You're him," Reyes said, his voice stripped of procedural calm. "The Blue-Eyed Vigilante."
"Yeah," Adrian panted.
No point in lying now. Not with his shirt soaked in blood and his eyes glowing in the dark.
Reyes looked down at the woman, then back at Adrian. "I should arrest you."
"You could try."
"That's not a comfort."
Adrian let out a tired huff. "It wasn't meant to be. Get her to a hospital before we have a moral crisis. We're both bleeding."
An hour later, they sat in the quiet waiting room of a local ER.
Reyes had driven the woman himself to skip the checkpoint delays. Adrian sat three chairs down, a thick bandage wrapped around his ribs courtesy of an overworked nurse who hadn't asked a single question.
Reyes sat down beside him, handing over a paper cup of black coffee.
"You're not calling this in," Adrian noted, taking a sip.
"I haven't decided yet," Reyes said flatly. "I spent six weeks building a case against someone I thought was a threat. Then I watched you throw yourself between a civilian and a nightmare."
"I've been dodging you because I didn't know if you'd listen to the truth, or just lock me in a cage," Adrian said softly.
Reyes turned his cup slowly in his hands. "My daughter died during the invasion," he said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Subway collapse near Grand Central. I took this job to figure out what happened to this city. To understand why she didn't come home."
Adrian fell silent. Hearing it directly from the man carried a weight no cemetery headstone could match.
"I'm sorry," Adrian said quietly. "It doesn't get easier to understand. You just learn to carry it."
Reyes studied him intently. "Those things... are there more of them?"
"A lot more. And they're getting smarter." Adrian leaned back, taking a gamble on the agent. "I've been fighting them quietly. Trying to keep the city safe while the high-profile heroes handle the stuff on the news. If the government gets involved, they turn me into an experiment instead of letting me do my job."
Reyes remained quiet for a long time, the fluorescent lights humming overhead.
"I won't pretend I trust you," Reyes said finally, standing up. "Not fully. But you saved a life tonight that I couldn't save. I'm not filing a report that gets you locked in a lab."
Adrian looked up. "So what happens now?"
"Officially? The case stays open," Reyes said, a faint glint of purpose returning to his eyes. "Unofficially... certain incident reports might get filed a little slower. Certain patterns might get overlooked."
"A quiet alliance?"
"The only kind I can offer." Reyes extended a hand.
Adrian hesitated, then stood and shook it.
"Don't make me regret this, Hayes," Reyes added smoothly.
Adrian froze, his stomach dropping. "You know my name?"
Reyes almost smiled. "I've known it for four days. Property records on the warehouse. Take it as a professional courtesy that I didn't send a tactical team to your front door."
He turned and walked out of the waiting room, leaving Adrian sitting alone with his lukewarm coffee, a bandaged ribcage, and the unbelievable reality that he had just gained an ally in the DODC.