Zayne had planned this carefully.
Not the way he planned medical procedures—with calculated precision and contingency protocols. This was different. This was personal. This was him watching the woman he loved become a little more hollow every day and deciding he couldn't just stand by.
Nana had been quiet again lately. Not the dramatic silence of someone processing grief—she'd moved past that. This was quieter. Subtler. A kind of resignation that settled over her in small ways.
The way she checked her phone every few minutes when she thought Zayne wasn't looking. Always opening the same page. Always finding the same result.
Zero messages. Zero responses. Zero proof that anyone else remembered Avalon.
Zero signs of Mina or Jisu.
Zayne had noticed. Of course he'd noticed—he noticed everything when it came to Nana. And he'd seen the way her shoulders drooped just slightly each time she locked the phone and tucked it away with that carefully neutral expression.
So he'd taken days off the hospital. Something he rarely did—Dr. Zayne Li had a reputation for working shifts that bordered on medical malpractice against his own health. But Nana needed him present. Not in a white coat examining symptoms. Just... present. Beside her. Being her person.
"Where are we GOING?" Nana asked for the fourth time as Zayne drove, her face pressed against the passenger window like an excited child.
"You'll see when we get there."
"I hate surprises."
"You love surprises. You just hate waiting."
"Same thing!"
"It is not remotely the same thing."
She stuck out her tongue at him in the rearview mirror. Zayne caught it and smiled—that small, genuine expression that was reserved entirely for her—even as something darker churned beneath the surface.
He was getting better at hiding it. At keeping his expression warm and present while his mind worked through the puzzle pieces he'd been assembling since the night of her examination.
But today wasn't for puzzles. Today was for Nana.
The downtown festival district was even more vibrant than the last time they'd visited. New vendors had set up alongside the permanent shops, and the streets were alive with color and noise and the smell of a hundred different foods competing for attention.
Nana's face lit up the moment they stepped out of the car.
"Oh! Is this—are we doing the festival again?" She was already scanning the stalls, her eyes bright with genuine excitement for the first time in weeks. "Zayne, look! There's a new takoyaki stand! And—oh, is that cotton candy? Can we get cotton candy? I want the blue one!"
"You can have whatever you want," Zayne said, and meant it in ways that went far beyond food.
Nana grabbed his hand and pulled him into the crowd with the kind of enthusiastic force that would have knocked a lesser man off his feet.
They ate. They walked. They laughed.
Nana tried seventeen different foods—most of which she abandoned halfway through, passing the remainder to Zayne with guilty giggles. He ate everything without complaint, because this was their dynamic and it made her happy and he would eat seventeen more things if it kept that light in her eyes.
"You're going to need a bigger stomach," Nana warned, watching him finish off a stick of fried dough that she'd declared "too sweet for human consumption" after two bites.
"My stomach is remarkably adaptable. Years of dating you have trained it."
"My cooking isn't THAT bad."
"Remember the incident with the rice cooker?"
"We agreed never to speak of that again!"
"We did. But it's medically relevant."
She swatted his arm, and he caught her hand, interlacing their fingers. The contact was grounding—for both of them, though for different reasons than Nana knew.
They wandered deeper into the festival, past food stalls and music stages and children chasing each other between the vendor tents. Eventually they reached the carnival games section—a cluster of brightly lit booths with oversized prizes hanging from the ceilings.
Nana stopped dead in front of the shooting gallery.
It was a classic setup—rows of moving metal targets that swung back and forth on tracks, a pellet gun mounted on a counter, and a wall of stuffed animals as prizes. The biggest prize—a massive brown bear with a ridiculous red bow around its neck—hung at the very top.
"I want that one," Nana declared, pointing at the bear.
"The large one."
"The LARGEST one."
"Of course."
Zayne paid for a round and handed her the gun. Nana took it with the casual familiarity of someone who handled weapons every single day—which she did—but there was something playful in the way she held it now. Relaxed. Showing off.
She switched the gun to her left hand.
"Left-handed?" the booth operator asked, surprised.
"Just to make it fair," Nana grinned.
The targets began moving. Nana didn't even seem to be trying. Her left hand moved with fluid precision, each shot landing exactly where it needed to. The pellets pinged against metal targets in rapid succession—ping, ping, ping, ping—a rhythm so consistent it sounded almost mechanical.
Every single target hit. Not a single miss.
The booth operator's jaw dropped. A small crowd had gathered, watching with wide eyes as the hunter demolished the course with her non-dominant hand while barely breaking a sweat.
When the round ended, the operator stared at his scoreboard in disbelief. "Perfect score. With your left hand."
"The bear, please," Nana said cheerfully.
The massive stuffed animal was detached from its hook and handed over with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious relics. Nana hugged it to her chest with a triumphant grin, bouncing on her toes.
"For you," she announced, turning to Zayne and pressing the bear into his arms with exaggerated ceremony. "A trophy. Proof that your girlfriend is the coolest person alive."
Zayne accepted the bear—it was almost as big as Nana—and laughed. Really laughed, the kind of sound that came from somewhere genuine and warm.
But behind the laugh, something twisted.
He watched her shooting display with the same analytical attention he'd used during her medical examination. The speed of her hand. The accuracy that went beyond trained skill into something that shouldn't be possible with a carnival pellet gun—the same impossible precision he'd seen when she fought Wanderers in the forest.
Her aether core was active even now. Even in a carnival shooting gallery. Even in a context where there was no threat, no combat, no reason for her enhanced abilities to manifest.
It was always on. Always running. Always augmenting her capabilities whether she consciously activated it or not.
Like a system that had been engineered to operate continuously.
Zayne smiled at her and took the bear and let her tug him toward the next booth, because today was not about the examination results or the surveillance cameras or the questions that wouldn't stop multiplying in his mind.
Today was about Nana. And making sure she remembered what it felt like to be happy.
They walked through the festival hand in hand, the massive bear tucked under Zayne's arm, Nana chattering happily about everything and nothing.
"—and then Tara tried to fight the Wanderer with a broom because her gun jammed, and I swear the thing looked confused—"
"A broom."
"A broom! Like, an actual cleaning broom! And somehow it worked better than you'd think—"
"It shouldn't have worked at all."
"That's what makes it funny!"
Zayne listened. Really listened, not just to the words but to the tone—the way her voice rose when she was genuinely amused, the way she punctuated her stories with animated hand gestures, the way she occasionally squeezed his hand when she remembered he was there.
This was Nana at her best. Alive and bright and full of energy that made everything around her feel warmer.
This was the Nana he wanted to protect. From whatever was watching her. From whoever had modified her body without her knowledge or consent.
From the truth, if the truth would break her.
"Oh!" Nana suddenly stopped walking, pulling him to a halt. "My parents have been gone for over a week now. They said they'd only be visiting my cousin for a few days."
Something in her tone shifted. Not dramatically—just a slight flattening of her usual enthusiasm.
"Have you tried calling them?" Zayne asked carefully.
"Yeah. Mom answered yesterday. Said they're just enjoying the trip and might stay a bit longer. Dad's been sightseeing apparently." She shrugged, but her hand tightened slightly around his. "It's fine. It's normal for them to extend trips. I just..."
She trailed off, and Zayne watched the thought form behind her eyes—watched her struggle with something she didn't quite know how to articulate.
"You just what?" he prompted gently.
"Nothing. It's stupid." She forced a smile and started walking again, pulling him along. "Come on, let's get more cotton candy. I want to try the pink one this time."
Zayne let her redirect. But his own mind was already working, turning the new information over and examining it from every angle.
Her parents. Gone for over a week. A trip that was extending beyond its original timeline.
A coincidence? Probably. Parents extended vacations all the time.
Or was it something else?
Zayne thought about the examination results. About the genetic modifications that had been integrated into Nana's DNA with extraordinary precision. About the aether core that hummed like an engineered power source inside her chest.
Someone had done this to her. Someone with access to advanced genetic technology, sophisticated medical equipment, and extensive knowledge of human biology. Someone who had been able to modify a human being at the cellular level without the person ever knowing.
That kind of work required resources. Institutional support. Government-level funding and infrastructure.
And it required access. Access to the subject. Access to their medical records. Access to their early life, their development, their growth.
Access that a family would have.
The thought settled into Zayne's mind with quiet certainty. Not as an accusation—not yet. As a question. One of many questions that were assembling themselves into a picture he wasn't sure he was ready to see clearly.
Aether core—engineered. Government surveillance. A forest full of military-grade cameras pointed at a specific hunter. Parents who had raised that hunter from birth.
Were they connected?
Did Nana's parents know what their daughter was?
Zayne looked at Nana walking beside him—cotton candy in one hand, his hand in the other, laughing at something a street performer was doing—and felt the bittersweet ache of loving someone while carrying knowledge that might destroy her peace.
He couldn't tell her yet. Not until he understood more. Not until he could present the full picture rather than fragments that might send her spiraling into the kind of grief and rage that wouldn't help anyone.
He was a doctor. He understood the importance of a complete diagnosis before delivering difficult news.
But the questions wouldn't stop forming.
Aether core—artificially engineered, seamlessly integrated into human biology.
Surveillance network in the forest—military-grade equipment monitoring Nana's combat performance.
Her parents—absent at a convenient time, raising a child they must have known was different.
Avalon—a death realm that had somehow existed and then been erased, leaving no physical evidence except Nana's memories and the skills she'd gained there.
Wanderers—the creatures that the Hunter Association existed to fight. The same creatures whose dust seemed to be involved in creating the hybrids and vampires and other monsters that had populated Avalon.
What if Avalon hadn't been a supernatural phenomenon at all?
What if it had been built?
The thought was enormous. Too enormous to process in the middle of a festival while cotton candy melted on his girlfriend's fingers and music played from nearby speakers.
But it was there now, forming in the back of his mind like frost spreading across glass. Slowly. Inevitably. Connecting points he hadn't seen before into a pattern that was beginning to make terrible sense.
"Zayne?"
He blinked. Nana was waving her hand in front of his face, her head tilted with that familiar expression of amused concern.
"You went somewhere again," she said. "Doctor brain mode. I can always tell because you stop blinking for like thirty seconds."
"Sorry." He forced himself back to the present. Back to the warm evening air and the festival lights and the woman beside him. "I was thinking about something."
"Something serious?"
"Something that requires more information before I can draw any conclusions."
"That's very doctor of you."
"Occupational hazard."
She studied his face for a moment—Nana had always been observant, even more so since Avalon—and something flickered in her expression. A question she didn't quite ask.
Then she squeezed his hand and smiled, and the moment passed.
"Come on, Dr. Brooding. Cotton candy waits for no one."
Zayne let himself be pulled forward, let the noise and warmth of the festival wash over him, let himself smile at the woman he loved who was enjoying the simple pleasure of a night out with her boyfriend.
But beneath the smile, his mind continued its work. Assembling pieces. Connecting dots. Building toward a truth that he could feel approaching with the same inevitability as a tide.
He wouldn't tell her yet. Not tonight. Tonight was for cotton candy and stuffed bears and holding hands under festival lights.
But soon.
Soon he would need to share what he was beginning to understand.
And when he did, everything would change.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.