Blackness.
The basement dropped into total darkness, swallowing them whole.
For one breathless second, there was nothing but the sound of their breathing—fast, shallow, collective. A wheeze from Micah. A soft exhale from Abby. Somewhere, a metal pipe ticked as it cooled.
From somewhere beyond the wall, a muffled voice cried out—high, desperate, then cut short.
Then nothing again. No echo. No explanation.
The silence returned so complete it almost felt staged.
One by one, they attempted to pull out their cell phones to shed some light on the situation. Yet, each device failed them.
Then a voice—Abby's—sharp and low: "Stay calm. Don't move."
David's pulse thundered in his ears. He pressed his back to the cold steel of the door, as if it could tether him to something real.
The dark felt alive, pressing in from every side, thick as wet wool. He tried to count his breaths, but they slipped.
A flicker. Then the lights blinked back on—harsh, fluorescent, buzzing harder than before.
For a moment, everything looked tilted.
Michelle was crouched like a cornered animal, shoulder twitching.
Micah's knees were bent like he'd dropped into a combat pose.
Abby stood absolutely still, face pale, scanning the shadows like she expected something else to emerge.
David whispered, "We're completely trapped."
Abby put a hand on his shoulder. "There's another way. There has to be."
"Sure," Micah muttered, pacing in tight circles. "Maybe there's a Narnia portal behind the wall."
He slammed his fist into the wall. The sound cracked like a gunshot.
Michelle flinched, then turned on him. "Do you think jokes help? If this is anything like what they did to Noel—"
She stopped herself, breathing hard.
"Noel?" Micah snapped. "You want to bring him into this now?"
"You're the one losing it," she shot back.
"I'm the one who sees what this is!"
He marched over to a small vent and began yanking on it, teeth gritted. Regardless, it wasn't large enough to fit a human body. He just had to do something.
"It's a fucking box," he concluded. "They built it to watch us fall apart."
"Don't waste energy," Michelle shot at him.
Abby stepped between them. "Stop. All of you."
But Micah wasn't listening. "They probably stuck Noel in a room just like this. Let him rot. And now we're next."
David's voice cut in, sudden and quiet: "Do you hear that?"
Silence.
Everyone froze.
He pointed to the walls.
A soft hissing from behind the concrete.
Pipes. Or something worse.
Not water.
Just... waiting.
Abby pressed her ear against the wall, then jerked back. "It's getting louder."
"They're flooding something through," Micah said flatly.
"Gas. Or worse."
David stepped back from the door and slumped to the ground, knees drawn up.
The silence returned, more suffocating than before.
No one responded.
Michelle reached into her jacket and pulled out a protein bar—crushed, half-melted. She held it out.
"Anyone?"
Micah took it and tore it in half without asking.
"Last meal," he said.
Abby snorted.
Even Michelle cracked a smile.
For half a breath, they almost looked human again.
"I used to be afraid of the dark," David murmured. "I'd sleep with my closet light on. My dad would say the dark couldn't hurt me, only what I brought into it."
David reached into his pocket, fingers closing around the prayer beads, then lowered his head and pressed his palms together. The words came before thought, summoned from everything his mother had ever given him to survive the unbearable.
"In the Buddha," he breathed. "I take refuge."
"If the soul remembers," he whispered, "if the heart stays clear—come back as light."
"In the Dharma, I take refuge."
"Where there is seeing," he said, voice tightening, "there is return."
He pictured Johnny's face as it once was: sunlit, laughing, untouched.
"I take refuge in the Sangha."
The others had gone still. Even Micah looked dumbstruck.
"No fear between us," David finished. "No wall. No shadow."
And then: a creak above.
A step.
Measured.
A dull metallic groan sounded from above, low and long, like something shifting behind a wall.
The lights dimmed.
Everyone stood.
That's when they heard it—measured footsteps on the metal stairs.
David's breath caught.
"Someone's coming," Michelle whispered.
Each step rang clear.
Abby pulled David behind her, shoulders squared. Micah backed against the wall.
The figure appeared in the reinforced glass—broad-shouldered, backlit, every step deliberate.
Crisp uniform.
Blank expression.
Johnny.
He strode forward like gravity pulled him, his eyes unreadable, his body language military-perfect.
The air in the room tightened.
David's stomach dropped.
And behind Johnny, a second figure appeared.
Eli Prophet.
Watching.
Smiling.
No one moved.
Johnny's eyes scanned them like a soldier doing inventory—one heart, one soul, one threat at a time.
David barely felt Abby's arm holding him back.
Johnny's presence—his silence—was worse than any word.
Above, Eli Prophet's face brightened behind the reinforced glass.
The intercom buzzed to life, and his voice filled the basement like a sermon bleeding through a mega-church PA.
"There he is," Eli said. "The prodigal made perfect."
He chuckled, low and pleased. "I told you discipline wasn't cruelty—it's mercy."
"I know what it is to hunger for the wrong things," Eli said, almost tender. "I know what it is to be twisted up in secret softness. To mistake closeness for righteousness. But God wrung it out of me. One fast. One flame. One lash at a time. "
"He will do the same for you, David."
"Praise His holy name, this is what correction looks like when it takes root."
David swallowed hard.
"You all mocked the path. Said it was too narrow. Too hard. But Johnny chose to walk it. And look—he has become it."
Johnny didn't blink.
"He's proof the flesh can be broken and reborn. Proof that will is not a right but a burden to be laid down."
Still nothing from Johnny.
"He has cast out the confusion. Cast out the desire. He knows now what righteousness demands."
Johnny's eyes finally settled on David.
It was only for a moment. But something trembled in the space between them.
"I know that silence," Eli said, voice soft now. "That's not hesitation. That's the sound of a heart yoked to heaven."
Then Johnny lifted his hand. Calm. Intentional.
He tapped his earpiece once.
And spoke.
One word.
"Michelle."
She stiffened.
Johnny's voice didn't rise. But it carried.
"Step away from the door."
Michelle didn't move.
Her hand hovered inches from the lock panel, jaw set, spine like iron. She looked at Johnny the way someone might look at a statue they'd once prayed to, now hollowed and strange.
"Michelle," Johnny said again. Voice level. Almost bored. "I said step away from the door."
David's heart kicked against his ribs. He tried to catch Johnny's eye, but Johnny wasn't looking at him.
Not yet.
Micah stepped forward, placing himself between Johnny and the group like a dog in a thunderstorm.
"Fuck you, Johnny! You're not giving orders," he said. "Not to her. Not to anyone."
Abby's hand was on David's shoulder again, anchoring him.
Michelle took a half-step back from the panel, not in fear—but calculation.
The silence pressed in.
Then: a low mechanical groan from somewhere outside the door. A strip of red light flared to life above the exit—pulsing, slow and steady.
"They're sealing the outer hallway," Johnny said. Still calm. Still blank.
David's voice broke through, quiet but sharp. "Johnny..."
Johnny's gaze flicked to him.
Just a flick.
Then he turned back to Michelle. "Move. Now."
Michelle didn't.
So Johnny added, quieter this time—like an invocation:
"Do it. Or we all burn."
That was when the speaker crackled again.
Eli's voice returned, like oil over a flame. "Integration is not a switch—it's a fire. And fire spreads, boys and girls."
Micah's breath caught. "He's locking us in."
David stepped forward before he could think. "Johnny?.."
Johnny didn't answer.
But his eyes lingered on David a second too long.
Michelle's hand twitched near the table.
Her eyes were still on Johnny, but something behind them had shifted—not fear.
The red light above the door pulsed faster.
Then—
A soft click.
Followed by a hiss.
Everyone froze.
A vent above the far corner had cracked open. The air didn't change all at once, but it thickened—slow, invisible. Like the room was breathing in something it shouldn't.
Micah swore under his breath. "They're piping something in."
Abby touched her nose. "You smell that?"
"You need to be prepared," Eli interjected.
David's head felt suddenly heavy, like a thought he couldn't hold on to.
"Emergency containment procedure," a flat voice droned from the wall speaker.
"Basement perimeter: air-cycle reset."
The gas grew thicker. David's lungs burned.
Michelle slumped against the wall, coughing.
Abby swayed.
Micah was blinking hard, trying to stay upright.
The airlock door hissed behind the observation glass.
Then it opened.
Eli stepped through, slow and composed, dressed in black.
The gas mask over his face gleamed like insect chitin.
He carried a second mask in his left hand.
He tossed it to Johnny without looking, "Put it on."
Johnny caught it, slipped it over his face with practiced efficiency—like he'd drilled for this moment.
Untouched.
Untouchable.
Eli descended the short metal stairway into the room like a high priest entering a holy tomb.
Johnny followed shortly.
David tried to stand. His knees buckled.
"Don't try to rise," Eli said, voice filtered and amplified through the mask's speaker. "You're witnessing a sanctification."
He turned to Johnny.
"This was always your test," he said. "The others were just scaffolding. But you—Jonathan—you were our cornerstone. The Lord's blade."
Johnny didn't move.
Eli stepped closer to David.
"You belong to the Church," he said. "Even your gift—your strength—it was ours to sanctify."
Then Johnny's hand slipped beneath his jacket. Not to draw a weapon—there was none. Just a shape, familiar and strange in this place: a worn leather baseball, scuffed at the seams.
For a brief instant, he cradled it in his palm—like memory, like weight.
This was the thing they hadn't burned.
The one piece of him they hadn't sanctified.
He stepped forward.
Eli turned toward him, as if to speak—
But Johnny didn't wait.
With a sharp inhale, he brought the ball down in a brutal arc—
straight into the center of Eli's mask.
The crack was immediate. Shattering.
Glass and bone together.
Eli reeled back, arms flailing as the faceplate fractured and peeled away.
Blood sprayed inside the mask, then smeared his side as he collapsed onto the floor.
Silence.
Johnny stood over him, breathing hard.
"Momentum," he said, plainly, to his teacher's collapsed form - like an equation solving itself.
Then: a mechanical beep.
The gas vents snapped shut.
The red lights turned white.
Abby eyed the door.
Johnny stood over Eli's crumpled form, chest rising, slow and even.
He turned to the group.
"Run!"
By the time the first extraction agents reached the corridor, the smoke had thinned but the nerves hadn't.
Johnny didn't speak again. He didn't have to.
"Move," Jez said, and the compound obeyed.
Agents peeled off without hesitation. Two broke left, one scaled the inner balcony, boots echoing off marble. Jez didn't look back.
She reached for her comm. "Team Delta, basement extraction. Make it clean."
No chaos now.
Just sequence.
The door to the underground corridor opened with a grinding whine. A medic crouched beside it, checking something offscreen.
Jez didn't wait.
Behind the medic crouched a wiry search dog—muzzle taut, vest marked with a faded "Recovery K9" patch.
Shiloh.
David's breath caught.
Not just their shelter dog—Jez's dog.
The peculiar way she had always protected the shelter, her uncanny ability to read people's intentions, it all made sense now.
Her nose was low to the ground, ears alert, working like she'd been trained for this moment.
Because she had been.
From the shadows, they emerged.
David first—pale, steady, but blinking like the light hurt.
Abby followed, one hand on Michelle's back. Michelle wasn't shaking now, just watching—face blank, eyes pinned to everything at once.
Micah came next, eyes unfocused, one wrist cradled against his chest.
Then Johnny.
Still in uniform. Blood on the collar. Holding something in one hand—the baseball.
Jez stepped forward. "Medical triage is staged east. No statements yet."
David gave the faintest nod. His eyes darted to Johnny.
Johnny didn't meet them.
He looked past Jez, toward the Pathlight entrance.
He was stone still. Blood leaked from one fist.
His other hand was bleeding.
A second team arrived—quiet, professional, eyes scanning for threats that hadn't yet materialized.
"Get them clear," Jez said. "No flash. No sirens."
A pair of agents stepped in. One offered a thermal blanket. David waved it off. Michelle took hers but didn't wrap it around. Abby reached for Micah's good arm, guiding him gently.
Johnny hadn't moved.
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil!" Eli shouted, fighting the grip of two agents. "Who put darkness for light and light for darkness! You vipers!"
Jez knew that stillness. It was the kind you learned in church—how to disappear in plain sight.
Jez's eyes tracked him. The blood at his knuckles. The baseball in his palm. Her voice softened.
"Cadet."
Johnny blinked. Once. Then tucked the ball into his pocket like it was nothing more than habit.
Jez took that as assent.
She turned to the comm clipped to her shoulder. "Cameras are en route. I want shields on the west barricade. Nobody gets a shot of these kids without a warrant or a moral spine."
A crackle of acknowledgment came back.
From across the courtyard, the sound of voices rose—shouted prayers, angry slogans, the crack of something heavy dropped on concrete.
Jez didn't flinch.
"Move them now," she said, low and firm. "Before the story writes itself."
Jez lingered at the threshold, just long enough to glance back.
The Pathlight crest above the door had cracked down the middle—half torn from its bolts, sparking in the early light.
Sanctuary, she thought bitterly. That's what they used to call it.
Two agents moved with purpose, not force. The group followed, staggered, silent.
Johnny came last.
Still cracked.
Still blinking.