Chapter 1: Seven Shadows Fall
POV: First Person - Klaus
The emergency lights cast everything in hellish red. Blood splattered across marble like abstract art, and somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed their approach. The bank vault stretched before us like a tomb, all polished stone and sharp angles where seven figures moved like dancers in some deadly ballet.
Three days sober, I reminded myself, gripping the comm device tighter. Three whole days of crystal-clear consciousness, and what do I get for it? Front-row seats to another family clusterfuck.
"Number Six, advance center position," Dad's voice crackled through our earpieces, that familiar tone of absolute authority that had shaped our childhoods. "Execute Horror manifestation on my mark."
I watched Ben shift forward, his shoulders already tensing for the transformation. Poor bastard hated using his power—we all knew it, even if nobody talked about it. The tentacles weren't just weapons; they were parasites, alien things that lived beneath his skin and whispered in languages older than human speech.
The syndicate members pressed against the far wall, assault rifles trained on us, sweating through their tactical gear. Their leader, some generic piece of corporate trash in an expensive suit, clutched a briefcase like it contained the secrets of the universe. Maybe it did. With our missions, you never knew.
"Ben, wait—" I started, but Five teleported past me in a flash of blue light, appearing behind two gunmen and delivering precise strikes that dropped them instantly.
"Klaus, maintain position," Luther's voice boomed across the vault. Number One, forever trying to keep us in line, even when the line was fucking ridiculous.
I started to reply when the dead man appeared.
He stood right next to Ben, translucent and flickering, wearing the same Academy uniform we all wore. But his face... Christ, his face was wrong. Sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, and when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. Just this silent scream that made my bones ache.
Three days sober meant three days of seeing them clearly.
The ghost pointed frantically at the floor beneath Ben's feet, where the marble tiles formed a perfect circle. Nothing looked different about it, just expensive stone and grout lines, but dead guys had a way of noticing things the living missed.
"Reginald's children, move now or we detonate—" the corporate asshole started shouting, but I wasn't listening anymore.
Because I could see it. The faint outline of wiring beneath the marble, barely visible unless you knew where to look. Pressure-sensitive charges, enough to turn Ben into paste when those tentacles erupted and triggered the weight sensors.
"BEN, LEFT!" I screamed, diving forward and tackling him sideways just as Dad's voice came through the comm: "Execute."
We hit the ground hard, rolling across blood-slicked marble as the world exploded behind us. The center of the vault erupted in a fountain of stone and fire, exactly where Ben should have been standing. Heat washed over us, and chunks of debris rained down like deadly confetti.
Ben's tentacles emerged anyway—they always did when he got shocked or scared—but instead of manifesting in the killing ground, they burst through the side wall in a writhing mass of black flesh. The criminals scattered like cockroaches, their careful positioning completely fucked by our sudden direction change.
"What the hell—" Diego's voice, confused and pissed.
"Trap," I gasped, rolling off Ben and struggling to my feet. "They were ready for him."
Ben's tentacles moved with their usual horrifying efficiency, disarming gunmen and breaking bones with surgical precision. But I could see the tremor in his hands, the way his eyes kept darting to the smoking crater where he should have died.
Where he did die, in some other timeline. Where Klaus was too drunk or high or dead himself to notice the trap.
The ghost Ben flickered once more, meeting my eyes with something like gratitude, then faded away. Sometimes being sober was a real mind-fuck.
"Situation contained," Five announced, reappearing beside the briefcase with that smug expression he'd perfected. "Whatever these idiots were protecting, it's ours now."
"Everyone accounted for?" Luther asked, doing his protective big brother routine.
I looked around the vault. Allison gracefully sidestepped a pool of blood, her rumor-enhanced voice still echoing from where she'd convinced half the gunmen to surrender. Diego retrieved his knives from various non-vital body parts with professional efficiency. Vanya stood near the entrance, violin case slung across her shoulder, looking both relieved and slightly disappointed that she hadn't needed to participate.
And Ben... Ben was staring at me like I'd just performed a miracle.
"Klaus saved my life," he said quietly, his tentacles slowly retracting beneath his skin. "I don't know how he knew, but..."
"Lucky guess," I shrugged, because explaining about ghost-visions never went well with the family. "Plus, you know me. I live for dramatic tackles."
Five's expression sharpened. "Klaus, what exactly did you see?"
Shit. Too smart, that one. Always too fucking smart.
"Just... wrong positioning," I said. "Felt off."
Dad's voice crackled through the comms again: "Return to extraction point. Mission parameters adjusted. Well done."
But there was something in his tone, something that made my newly-clear brain itch with suspicion. He sounded... surprised. Like he'd expected a different outcome.
The mansion felt different when all seven of us walked through the front doors together.
Maybe it was Ben laughing at one of my terrible jokes as we climbed the stairs, his tentacles doing this unconscious protective curl around my shoulders. Maybe it was Five teleporting into the kitchen and returning with an armload of snacks, finally old enough to understand that mission survival called for celebration. Maybe it was the way Vanya sat with us in the living room, her violin case leaning against her chair like she actually belonged here.
All seven heartbeats in one room, I thought, collapsing onto the couch and feeling something in my chest unknot for the first time in years. When was the last time that happened?
"I can't believe you spotted that trap," Ben said, settling beside me with careful precision. His uniform was still torn from our dramatic tumble, dark stains marking where his tentacles had erupted. "How did you even—"
"Trade secret," I winked, unwrapping a candy bar Five had liberated from the kitchen. "Can't have you thinking I'm completely useless."
"You're not useless," Ben said seriously. "You saved my life. That makes you the opposite of useless."
Something warm and unfamiliar spread through my chest. Gratitude, I realized. From Ben, directed at me. When was the last time anyone in this family had been grateful for something I'd done?
"Candy bar?" I offered, breaking off a piece.
Diego snorted from his position by the windows. "Since when do you eat instead of drinking?"
"Since three days ago," I replied, popping chocolate into my mouth. "New lifestyle choice. Very health-conscious."
"Three days sober," Allison said softly, and something in her voice made everyone turn to look at her. "Klaus, that's... that's amazing."
Don't make a big deal, I wanted to say. Don't jinx it by paying attention.
But the way she smiled, the way Ben's tentacles did that protective squeeze thing, the way even Luther looked impressed... maybe this was what normal families felt like. Maybe this was what we could have been all along, if we'd just managed to keep each other alive.
"Think the old man expected me to miss that trap?" I asked, because the thought had been gnawing at me since the vault.
"Dad's plans always have contingencies," Luther said diplomatically. "He probably—"
"He probably expected Ben to die," Five interrupted with his usual brutal honesty. "The positioning was too perfect, the trap too specific. Someone gave them intelligence."
The room went quiet. Even the mansion itself seemed to hold its breath.
"But Ben didn't die," Vanya said firmly. "Because Klaus was paying attention. Because we were all there to watch each other's backs."
"Exactly," I said, wrapping an arm around Ben's shoulders and ignoring the way his tentacles curled toward me like cats seeking warmth. "Besides, who wants to live in a timeline where Benny here isn't around to make us all feel morally superior?"
Ben laughed despite himself. "Gee, thanks."
"You're welcome. Now, who wants to help me raid the kitchen for actual food? All this heroism is making me hungry."
As we scattered toward the dining room, I caught Pogo watching from the doorway. The old chimp had tears in his eyes, and when our gazes met, he mouthed two words: Thank you.
For what? I wanted to ask. For being sober? For saving Ben? For keeping the family together?
But maybe it didn't matter. Maybe the important thing was that we were all here, all breathing, all arguing about who got the last of the good cereal. Maybe the important thing was that the ghost of timeline-Ben could rest in peace, knowing his other self got to live.
Three days sober, I thought again, listening to my siblings bicker and laugh in the kitchen. Not bad for a start.
At 2:47 AM, I woke to the sound of typing.
Dad never sleeps, I remembered, pulling on a robe and padding barefoot through the halls. Always working, always calculating, always ten steps ahead of everyone else.
The study door was cracked open, spilling yellow light into the corridor. Through the gap, I could see Reginald hunched over his computer, reviewing mission footage with shaking hands.
Since when does the old man's hands shake?
I crept closer, years of sneaking around the mansion serving me well. On the screen, the vault scene played in slow motion: Ben moving toward the center position, my tackle, the explosion that tore through empty space.
Reginald isolated the moment, zooming in on my face as I screamed Ben's name. He played it again. And again.
Looking for something, I realized. Trying to figure out how I knew.
The computer screen flickered. For a moment, I could swear I saw a symbol I didn't recognize—something that looked like an umbrella crossed with a clock. Then the screen went dark.
Reginald cursed in a language that hurt to hear, consonants that human throats weren't designed to produce. He reached for the screen, and his hand froze midair.
A pocket watch sat on his desk. Antique brass, with intricate engravings that seemed to shift in the lamplight. I was certain it hadn't been there before.
With trembling fingers, he picked up the watch and read the inscription on the back: "The equation remains incomplete."
The color drained from his face.
"Who's there?" he whispered to the empty room. "Who's watching?"
I pressed myself against the wall, hardly daring to breathe. Downstairs, the mansion's old bones creaked and settled. Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed three AM.
Reginald stood slowly, moving to the window that overlooked the gardens. I followed his gaze and felt my blood turn to ice.
The night sky was wrong. Stars flickered and shifted, forming patterns that made my eyes water. And between them, something moved—vast shapes that existed in the spaces between seconds, temporal distortions that rippled like heat waves through reality itself.
"They know," he whispered. "They know the timeline changed."
They?
"The equation remains incomplete," he read from the watch again, his voice hollow. "But for how long? How long before they come to correct the variables?"
I wanted to burst in, to demand answers, to shake the truth out of him. But something cold and predatory moved through the temporal distortions above, and I knew with absolute certainty that asking questions right now would be the last mistake I ever made.
Instead, I crept back to my room, past the doors where my siblings slept peacefully in beds they should occupy for many years to come. Past Ben's room, where for the first time in this timeline, someone breathed who should have been dead.
We changed something, I thought, climbing into bed and pulling the covers over my head like a child hiding from monsters. Saving Ben changed something big, and now the universe is pissed about it.
But as I drifted toward uneasy sleep, listening to the sounds of a complete family under one roof, I decided I didn't care. Let the universe be pissed. Let temporal forces circle the mansion like sharks.
Ben was alive. We were all alive. And if reality itself wanted to fight us about it, well...
We'd burned down worse things than the universe before.
Probably.
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