The rain thinned into a soft drizzle as Aaron Ray and Lyra reached the dust filled warehouse. Old wooden pallets were stacked like forgotten bones, and the air carried the heavy smell of kerosene and rust. Water dripped from holes in the roof, each drop echoing through the hollow space. Their footsteps were slow, each sound feeling like a warning in the cold, abandoned dark.
Lyra trembled with every breath. The lab coat around her clung heavily to her body, soaked and cold, yet she refused to remove it. Her eyes stared blankly toward the dim street outside, as if waiting for the next horror to reveal itself.
Aaron closed the warehouse door with an ease that made the metal groan. He said nothing. Words in a moment like this would only shatter the fragile calm they had left. The entity inside his mind whispered constantly, its voice a forbidden hum that did not belong in the human world. Aaron gently pressed Lyra against the wall to check her wounds. Some bruises would fade. Others would remain.
"How long are we safe in here?" Lyra asked. Her voice was raw and uneven.
He did not answer immediately. He exhaled slowly and let the mental map of the city turn inside his mind. The facility would deploy hunter teams soon. The ones specially trained to suppress anomalies like him. They carried tools, injections, and weapons built for one purpose. Their names were whispered only by soldiers who feared the darkness behind science.
"Not long," Aaron finally said. "They will come."
Lyra watched him carefully. Fear lived in her gaze, but something else flickered beneath it. Trust. A trust so fragile it felt like glass he had to shield with his own body. The entity clawed at him, urging him to release everything... to destroy anything that dared approach her.
Aaron bit his lip until a small bead of blood formed.
Outside, the distant growl of engines crawled through the night. Searchlights swept across the streets like hungry eyes. Aaron pressed his ear to the wall. He caught fragments of encrypted radio chatter, coded commands, and unit designations.
One name made his breath pause.
A name whispered only by those who commanded the deepest shadows.
"Unit Blackthorn," Aaron murmured. "The ones who know how to kill a shadow."
Lyra swallowed. "Do they have special weapons?"
Aaron nodded faintly. "They can trap an entity inside a host. After that... they execute."
The engines grew louder. The warehouse door rattled as someone pried at it with a metal tool. Military voices followed, sharp and decisive. Men who did not hesitate to take lives.
"Stay ready," Aaron whispered. "If they get in, do not scream. Stay behind me."
Lyra reached for him instinctively. Her fingers found his hand and gripped it lightly. The touch was small, but warm enough to calm something deep inside him. Aaron glanced at her. Something unspoken flickered in his eyes. Not just a promise to protect her. Something like loyalty slowly forming.
Lyra stepped closer, lowering her head.
"Ryu... do not let go of me," she whispered, her breath trembling.
Ryu tightened his hold gently. "I will not. I am here," he said.
For a moment, time hesitated. Only their hands remained locked together and the fear of losing each other pulsed through their palms.
The door finally broke.
A hunter team stormed inside, armored in matte black. Their faces were hidden behind expressionless masks. Their movements were precise, each step a mechanical rhythm of violence. The leader raised one hand.
"Area secured. Locate the subject."
A hunter pointed at the wet footprints on the floor. They smelled human scent mixed with metal and something inhuman lingering in the air.
"Subject may still be inside," one whispered.
Aaron moved before they could act.
Not like a shadow. Not like smoke. But with a speed so sharp it felt like a blink slicing the world apart.
The first hunter's knee snapped before he realized Aaron had crossed the room. The second screamed as his weapon twisted violently, crushed by a pressure that felt impossible. Aaron flowed between them like a surgeon without mercy. Efficient. Precise. His entire being focused on one purpose.
Protect her.
Blood splattered across the dusty floor. The metallic scent thickened. Lyra squeezed her eyes shut. Her stomach churned as she heard bones shatter. She did not want to see Aaron crush a hunter's skull with the ease of someone crushing a paper cup.
Outside, the facility sirens wailed louder.
They finally understood.
The subject they hunted was no ordinary teenager.
The facility director clutched a trembling phone. "Shut everything down," he hissed. "Call Blackthorn. Initiate protocol zero."
Inside the chaos, Aaron pushed Lyra to the floor and covered her mouth gently as a rear unit tried to break through the back door.
"Do not move," he whispered.
The command was soft, yet carried the weight of someone who refused to let her die.
A hunter kicked open the back door, entering with a vibroblade that hummed with lethal hunger. He swung hard. Aaron slipped aside like thin mist. His counterstrike dented the hunter's helmet with a single blow.
There was no mercy. Any hunter left alive would return for Lyra.
But Blackthorn was different.
The leader entered the warehouse without a sound. His gaze was sharp, his coat layered with carbon plating. He was not merely a soldier. He was someone who understood what an Anomaly truly was.
He spoke the name clearly.
"Aaron Ray."
Aaron turned. A cold calm settled over him.
"We have your full profile," the man said. "Your brilliance cannot be hidden."
Aaron did not reply.
The man lifted a small device. An electro frequency collar hummed softly in his palm.
"Surrender. We can put the entity inside you to sleep."
Aaron smiled faintly. "I do not know how to surrender."
The battle shifted at once.
Blackthorn fought with psychological traps, fragmentation rounds, and gas that burned the lungs and eyes. Aaron endured it all. Wounds opened across his skin, but he did not fall.
The entity thrashed inside him, begging to be released.
〈Let me out and they will all die in one second.〉
Aaron gritted his teeth.
"Quiet."
He did not release everything he held inside. Only a fragment... enough to turn fear into panic.
The warehouse floor cracked. Air twisted violently, not like magic but like the physical aftermath of movement that should not exist.
Lyra watched in horror and awe. Aaron's eyes clouded, then cleared again. Each strike carried guilt. Each kill hollowed him further.
"Why are you protecting me?" Lyra whispered during a brief pause.
Aaron's breath trembled. He looked painfully young, yet his eyes held centuries of sorrow.
"Because you gave me water in the middle of the night," he said softly. "Because you said my name like I was human."
Lyra could not speak. Her body shook in the cold underground air. Aaron looked at her with a fragile stillness that felt almost human.
Without realizing it, he knelt so she could see his face clearly beneath the flashing emergency lights.
"Lyra," he whispered. His voice broke faintly.
"If I had been one second later..."
He could not finish. He touched her arm gently, as if afraid his strength might harm her.
Lyra wrapped her fingers around his hand.
Her touch froze him in place.
Not because of fear.
But because for the first time... someone he saved was holding him back.
A faint current crossed between them, not from a trap but from closeness.
"Do not leave me... again," she whispered.
Aaron closed his eyes. His breath shook.
He pulled her closer, not to shield her from soldiers but from the storm raging inside his own chest.
"As long as I live," he whispered near her ear, "you will never be alone."
For a moment, the world outside vanished.
Helicopters.
Orders to kill.
The hunt.
All gone.
Leaving only their hands clasped tight in the dark and two hearts pounding with the same terror.
The terror of losing each other.
The battle resumed.
A helicopter swept over the warehouse roof. Searchlights tore across the broken walls. The facility director issued the final command. An electromagnetic trap would activate soon.
Aaron felt the signal.
Without warning, he wrapped an arm around Lyra's waist and dashed into a narrow side passage. One strike shattered a small metal door leading to the storm drain below.
The tunnels smelled of rot and stagnant water. Dripping echoes filled the air. Lyra hugged herself tightly. Aaron stood in front of her, his body marked with blood and bruises.
"Where do we go now?" she whispered.
Aaron stared into the endless dark.
"To a place without a name. A home that exists on no map. Somewhere they have not searched."
They walked.
Behind them, the facility announced the subject had escaped and increased the perimeter lockdown. The director wrote one final note in his report.
"Subject R Zero One has displayed an unclassified level of adaptation. Recommendation... full Blackthorn protocol without mercy."
Deeper underground, Aaron and Lyra found a forgotten room. An old mattress. A stack of yellowed books. The remnants of someone long gone.
Lyra sank to the floor, trembling. Tears traced silent lines down her cheeks.
Aaron sat beside her. Not too close. Not too far. Just close enough to say without words that he was there.
For the first time in his life, Aaron felt something almost like a home.
He did not know how long they could survive.
He did not know what tomorrow would bring.
He only knew one truth.
He would do anything to keep Lyra alive.
Above them, the rain fell harder over the city.
The world seemed to close its eyes, waiting for two things that had never lived side by side.
Freedom and war.