"BAHAHAHAHAHA—"
The sound tore from Cedric, raw and unfiltered. It wasn't just laughter; it was a physical release, the pent-up tension of the last twenty-four hours detonating at the sheer, ridiculous spectacle in front of him. He wasn't even trying to hold back anymore. He bent forward at the waist, one hand slapping his knee for support, the other coming up to scrub at his eyes as tears of pure, undiluted mirth streaked down his face. His shoulders shook violently, each convulsion wringing another loud, shameless bark of laughter from his lungs. This was the laugh he reserved for when a hunt went sideways in the most absurd way possible—a laugh of survival and disbelief—now redirected at his best friend's domestic Waterloo.
Darren wasn't much better.
He stood rigid near the kitchen counter, his entire body a monument to the effort of containment. His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white islands in a sea of red skin, his arms held stiff at his sides. His cheeks puffed out, quivering with the pressure, his face deepening to a spectacular, alarming shade of plum. A high-pitched, wheezing squeak—like a balloon slowly deflating—escaped his clamped lips every few seconds. He bit his lower lip so hard Ace half-expected to see blood. His eyes, wide and streaming, darted frantically from the still-smoldering curtain to Ace's deadpan expression and back, as if the tragicomic contrast was physically painful to behold.
Ace stood between them, an island of utter devastation in a sea of hysteria.
Completely still.
Arms crossed tightly over his chest, a defensive barricade. His fingers dug into his own biceps.
Expression flat. A perfect, blank mask of dead inside. The only movements were the slow, rhythmic throb of a vein in his temple and the deliberate, controlled rise and fall of his bruised ribs.
"Seriously?" Ace said. His voice was the sound of sandpaper dragged over sun-baked stone, dry enough to dehydrate a desert. "It's not that funny."
Cedric looked up at him, gasping for air as if he'd just surfaced from deep water. "Not that—" he wheezed, one finger uncurling to point a trembling, accusatory line at the blackened, corpse-like pan on the stove. The finger swung, a shaky pendulum of judgment, to the new, paisley-shaped scorch marks on the laminate counter. Finally, it landed, unwavering, on Ace himself. "Dude. You. Went. In. There." A gasp. "To make an omelette."
He dissolved again, the sentence devolving into another helpless gale. He had to brace himself against the doorframe, his laughter echoing in the hollow, smoky space.
"And somehow," Cedric continued, words squeezing out between spasms that shook his whole frame, "you didn't just burn the house down. You didn't just ruin breakfast. You managed to"—another swipe at his wet eyes—"knock yourself out cold. In a one-on-one showdown with a non-stick skillet! That's not a cooking fail, that's a tactical deficit!"
Darren finally lost the battle.
A sharp, strangled yelp—like a stepped-on toy—escaped him, and that was it. The dam shattered. He doubled over, clutching his stomach as if he'd been gut-punched, laughing so hard that for a moment, no sound came out at all. Then it erupted in great, heaving, tearful gasps.
"Bro," he managed, breathless, pointing a trembling finger first at the unoffending, slightly smoldering pan, then at the egg-splattered floor. "You didn't even burn the eggs! You got knocked out before they had a chance to be bad! That's… that's a pre-emptive strike! On yourself! That's next-level culinary sabotage!"
Ace's left eye twitched. A tiny, furious tic beneath the skin, the only crack in the armor.
"Wow," Ace muttered, the word dripping with icy, bottomless sarcasm. "Comedy gold. I'm so glad my near-death experience could brighten your day. Should I start selling tickets? Merchandise?"
"Near-death?" Cedric shot back, finally regaining a sliver of control, though a grin was splitting his face ear to ear. He straightened up, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "Nah. If this were a hunt, you'd be dead already. The post-mortem would be embarrassing. The official cause of death: 'acute breakfast-related humiliation.' Imagine trying to explain this to your dad—"
Ace's flat expression didn't change, but his gaze sharpened into something honed and dangerous, the hunter's look he used right before a strike. He raised one hand, index finger extended like the point of a blade.
"Finish that sentence," he said, his voice dropping to a low, perfectly even, and utterly frigid register. "And I will find a way to stab you. With something that isn't already broken."
Cedric's grin only widened, bright and unrepentant. He glanced meaningfully at the broken plastic spatula handle on the floor. "With what? A spatula? Oh wait."
Darren suddenly straightened up, his laughter cutting off as if a switch had been thrown. His eyes, still sparkling with malicious, unholy glee, lit up with a terrifying, profound inspiration. He looked at Ace, then did a slow, panoramic scan of the apocalyptic kitchen—the burnt curtain, the oil slick, the general aura of catastrophic defeat—then back at Ace. A slow, wicked, prophetic smile spread across his face.
"I'm telling everyone," Darren announced, his voice filled with the solemn, unstoppable gravity of a historian recording a pivotal event.
Ace froze. The dead-inside mask shattered, revealing pure, unadulterated alarm. "…What?"
"I'm telling everyone," Darren repeated, already inching backward toward the hallway, his movements quick and jerky with the electricity of his terrible idea. "The whole school. The neighbors. Old Mrs. Henderson who walks her judgmental poodle at 6 AM. Future generations. This story…" He swept a grand, dramatic gesture over the entire kitchen, as if presenting it to an invisible audience. "This story is too pure. Too perfect. It's going to become mainstream. Canon. People will whisper about 'The Omelette Incident' for decades. It will outlive you."
"Don't you dare," Ace snarled, the veneer of cool utterly evaporating. He lunged forward, his sore body screaming in protest at the sudden movement.
Too late.
Darren turned on his heel and bolted for the front door like a spooked deer, his manic laughter echoing off the walls as he thundered down the hall. "OMELETTE SLAYER!" he shrieked at the top of his lungs, the title bouncing, becoming a war cry. "HE WAS VANQUISHED BY HIS OWN BREAKFAST! A CASUALTY OF CULINARY COMBAT!"
"STOP, YOU LITTLE—" Ace chased him for exactly two steps before the combination of the pounding in his head, the fiery complaint from his ribs, and the sheer, soul-crushing futility of it all hauled him back like a chain. He stopped, hands braced on his knees, head hanging, and let out a sigh so heavy and deep it felt like it dragged his very spirit partway out of his body with it.
Cedric watched Darren's fleeing form disappear into the daylight, then looked back at Ace with a satisfied, almost paternal grin. He shook his head slowly, the last few chuckles dying in his throat.
"Yeah," he said, matter-of-factly, as stating a universal law. "That story's never dying. It's got legs. It's gonna follow you to your grave. 'Here lies Ace Eldren. He fought monsters, but was felled by a fluffy egg dish.' It'll be on your tombstone. I'll make sure of it."
Ace straightened slowly, wincing as his spine realigned. He looked at the closed front door, then at his best friend's amused, unrepentant face, then at the still-smoking ruin of his kitchen and his dignity. A profound, weary acceptance settled over him, colder than anger.
"…I hate you both," he stated. It wasn't heated. It was a simple, geological fact, recited like the time or the weather.
Cedric shrugged, the picture of innocent benevolence. "Love you too, man. It's what family does. We memorialize your failures so you never forget them."
There was a brief silence after that. The ghost of their laughter hung in the smoky, egg-scented air, but it faded quickly, leaving behind the stark, silent evidence of the wreckage. The weight of the morning—of the skipped school, of the empty house, of the deep, aching alone-ness—settled back onto Ace's shoulders, heavier and more oppressive for the momentary, raucous distraction.
Cedric's smile slowly faded as he took in Ace's posture—the slight, unconscious curl around his injured side, the grey tinge of exhaustion under his eyes, the way he held himself not with pain, but with the deep fatigue of someone carrying too much, for too long, by himself. His gaze did another quick scan of the kitchen, not with humor now, but with a hunter's pragmatic assessment. The burnt curtain (now just a sad, charred rag dripping onto the windowsill). The expansive oil slick on the tiles. The general aura of a battle lost to the most mundane of enemies. His tone shifted, shedding the last of the teasing, becoming grounded, practical.
"So," he said, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe, his voice dropping. "What are you gonna do now?"
Ace frowned, not following, stuck in the literal. "What do you mean? Clean this up. Open a window. Bury the pan in the backyard."
"I mean now," Cedric clarified, his gesture encompassing not just the kitchen, but the silent, waiting house around them. The too-clean living room, the empty hallway, the stairs leading to more empty rooms. "You can't stay here alone like this, man. No offense." He said it not as an insult, but as a fellow soldier stating an obvious, tactical reality. The position is untenable.
Ace opened his mouth. The automatic response, the prideful reflex forged in years of having to be the strong one, the capable one, rose instantly. I'm fine. I can handle it. I've done it before.
The words reached his teeth.
Then they died.
His eyes tracked Cedric's gesture. He saw the burnt pan, a permanent monument to his incompetence. The overturned chair, a casualty of his own panic. The faint, persistent smell of smoke and failure that he knew would cling to the curtains, the walls, his hair, for days. He thought of the silent phone, the empty fridge, the sheer, draining effort of just being in this space with only his own thoughts and his recent failures for company.
The fight drained out of him, leaving a hollow, undeniable truth behind. It felt less like a defeat and more like a surrender to gravity.
"…Yeah," Ace admitted, the word quiet, almost lost. He didn't look at Cedric. He stared at a particularly stubborn, congealed egg yolk on the floor tile. "I know."
Cedric nodded once. A short, sharp dip of his chin. No judgment. No I-told-you-so. Just a simple, solid understanding. He knew about empty houses. He knew about the particular silence that wasn't peaceful, just absent. He knew the weight of a legacy in a too-quiet room.
Ace exhaled, a long, shaky breath that ruffled the hair hanging over his forehead, and ran a hand through the mess, forgetting about the dried egg until he felt the stiff, sticky patch. He grimaced, pulling his fingers away. "I'll clean this up first," he said, more to himself than to Cedric. A final, pointless act of order, a ritual of closing the door on the disaster before he walked away from it.
Cedric chuckled softly, but it was kind. "Good luck. You're gonna need a priest for that pan. And maybe an exorcist for the curtain. And a hazmat team for the floor."
***
The house finally went quiet.
Too quiet.
Cedric had left with a final, firm clap on the shoulder that said more than words could. Darren was long gone, already undoubtedly weaving the Tale of the Omelette Slayer into the foundational mythology of their neighborhood. The front door clicked shut, the lock engaging with a sound of terrible, absolute finality, and just like that, Ace was alone again.
The silence wasn't empty. It was a thick, suffocating presence. It absorbed the faint, accusatory hum of the refrigerator, the slow, metronomic drip… drip… drip from the kitchen tap he hadn't fully closed, the rustle of his own clothes as he moved. It pressed in from all sides, a physical weight on his eardrums.
He stood in the kitchen for a long moment, hands planted on his hips, staring at the mess. It looked different now, without an audience. Less like a dark comedy and more like a crime scene—the scene of the crime being his own ability to cope with the mundane. He stared at it as if sheer willpower could trigger a reversal, could un-break the eggs, un-burn the curtain, un-crack his skull on the island, un-make the entire humiliating morning.
It didn't.
The smell hit him fully now, unmitigated by adrenaline or the heat of humiliation. Burnt eggs, acrid and sour. The sweet, toxic, plastic scent of melted synthetic curtain fibers. Underneath it all, the faint, greasy, everywhere aroma of the spilled vegetable oil. The floor was treacherously sticky in patches, the counter smeared with the haphazard, panicked swipes of his earlier cleaning attempt. One chair lay on its side near the table, a fallen soldier in his lonely war against domesticity.
Ace sighed.
A long, tired sigh that seemed to originate in the cold marrow of his bones and scrape its way up through his bruised ribs, past his aching throat, and out into the stale, ruined air. It was the sound of profound, unequivocal defeat.
"Great job," he muttered to the silent, judging room. His voice was hollow, an echo in a tomb. "Really killing it, Eldren. Monster hunter. Protector of the Veil. Expert in interdimensional threats. Taken down by Grade-A, federally inspected agricultural products. A real hero's end."
He grabbed a rag from under the sink—it was stiff, bleached-white, and smelled faintly of mildew and old bleach—and ran it under water so hot it turned his skin pink. He started wiping down the counter. Slow. Methodical. Almost robotic. Each swipe of the cloth was a penance. Every movement felt heavier than it should, as if the gravity in the kitchen had been personally dialed up to punish him. His body was a living catalogue of complaints: the deep, bruise-ache in his side, the tender, throbbing lump on the back of his skull, the raw scrapes on his palms from his graceless impact with the floor.
As he scrubbed at a baked-on streak of egg yolk that had already bonded with the laminate, his thoughts drifted—unbidden, unwelcome, a traitorous current pulling him away from the simple, punishing task.
He thought of Cedric's house last night. The solid, welcoming boom of the heavy door closing, sealing out the vast, hungry dark. The blast of warmth and light and smell that was the opposite of this hollow place. Becca's voice, steady and sure, not asking with fragile worry if he was okay, but telling him, with concrete certainty, that he'd done good. The undeniable weight of a full plate in his hands, earned not begged for. The sound of other people living, breathing, being around him—Cedric's teasing, Chole's quiet efficiency, Becca's stories. Not the oppressive, consuming silence of his own home, but the comfortable, shared quiet of a pack after a hunt, a silence that was full, not empty.
Ace swallowed, his throat suddenly tight and dry. The rag stilled on the counter.
Living alone wasn't new. He'd done it for stretches when his mom visited distant family, when his dad was on longer, more obscure trips. Hell, he should be used to it by now. Self-reliance was the first lesson, wasn't it? The cornerstone. But something about this time felt different. The quiet wasn't just an absence of noise; it was a vacuum, sucking at him. The emptiness felt less like space and more like a lack, a missing fundamental particle.
Maybe it was because his mom was gone for a real, raw crisis, not just a social visit.
Maybe it was because the Goatman hunt had been closer, messier, the psychic scars still fresh and itchy beneath his skin.
Or maybe—and this thought felt dangerously close to a confession he wasn't ready to make—he was just finally, bone-achingly tired of pretending the silence was peaceful, and the solitude was strength, and the weight of this empty house was something he could carry indefinitely.
He scrubbed at a phantom stain on the countertop, the friction burning the skin of his knuckles. He scrubbed harder, grinding the cloth in a tight, furious circle, as if he could scour the lonely, weak feeling out of his own chest.
"Stupid," he whispered into the vast quiet. He didn't specify if he meant the unyielding stain, the ruined curtain, the broken spatula, or the tight, cold knot of isolation coiled just beneath his sternum.
After what felt like an age, he moved to the floor, kneeling with a soft, pained groan. He picked up the scattered utensils, each one a relic of the disaster. A fork, one tine bent at a pathetic angle. The pasta pot lid, Cedric's improvised firefighter's tool, now smudged with soot. Finally, he picked up the cursed omelette pan. It was cool now. A blackened, twisted disc of abject failure, its "non-stick" surface permanently, chemically wed to a carbonized, egg-shaped monument to his hubris. It was beyond saving. A total loss. A casualty.
He stared into its ruined, mirrored interior, seeing his own distorted, tired reflection in the scorched metal.
"All that," he said aloud, his voice flat and toneless in the silent house. "For eggs."
The sheer, ridiculous, disproportionate tragedy of it hovered on the edge of absurdity again, but this time it didn't feel funny. It felt pathetic. It felt like a perfect, stupid metaphor for everything—for fighting epic, hidden battles only to be undone by the simplest, most ordinary things.
A laugh tried to bubble up from that dark place—a dry, hollow, hopeless thing. He choked it down. It had no place here.
Two hours passed in a grim, soul-deadening grind of mundane atonement.
Cleaning. Scrubbing until the muscles in his arms trembled and the cheap rag frayed. Tossing the corpse of the pan and the sad, charred remains of the curtain into a black trash bag with a sense of grim finality. Mopping the oily floor twice, the water in the bucket turning a murky grey. Resetting the house, piece by piece, chair by chair, back into a state that looked... functional. Normal. A careful lie constructed from clean surfaces and righted furniture.
By the time he was done, sweat plastered his t-shirt to his back in a damp map of exertion, his arms ached with a deep, weary fatigue, and his head throbbed with a fuzzy, overstimulated exhaustion that came from focusing too hard on nothing of consequence. The house smelled of lemon-scented cleaner and the ghost of underlying smoke. It was clean. It was empty. It was utterly unbearable.
Ace collapsed onto the one upright chair at the kitchen table, the wood creaking under his weight. He let his head fall back against the headrest, staring up at the familiar water-stain continent on the ceiling. The silence was complete now, a perfect void.
"…Yeah," he muttered to the stain, to the void, to himself. "I can't do this."
The decision, once voiced into the quiet, didn't bring a wave of panic or shame. It settled in his chest like a heavy, smooth stone dropped into a still, deep well—a deep, definitive thud of relief. The pretense was over. The performance could end.
He grabbed his phone from where it sat, a silent black slab on the otherwise clean table. He pulled up his mom's contact. Her photo smiled back at him, a picture from a summer BBQ, a lifetime ago when smiles were easier. This time, he didn't hesitate. He pressed the call button.
Ring.
Ring.
She picked up almost immediately, as if she'd been holding the phone, waiting for this.
"Hey, mom."
"Ace?" Sophie's voice was there, wrapped in the distant, muffled sounds of a hospital hallway—a tinny intercom announcement, the squeak of a rolling cart, the low murmur of a world of other people's crises. She sounded drained, threaded with fatigue, but the relief at hearing his voice was instant and palpable, a warmth bleeding through the static. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he said automatically, the trained response. Then he paused. He let the silence hang for a beat, two beats, long enough for her to hear the unsaid words crowding the line, to feel the shape of the truth he wasn't speaking. "…But I don't think I should stay here alone anymore."
There was silence on the other end. Not the awkward, heavy silence of disappointment he sometimes feared. This was the thoughtful, listening silence of a mother who already knew. Who had perhaps been waiting for this call, dreading it and hoping for it in equal measure. The silence of someone recognizing a surrender they saw coming.
"I figured," Sophie said gently, her voice softening further, no recrimination in her tone. Just a soft, sad understanding that vibrated down the line. She took a breath. "I'll send Samuel to pick you up."
Ace froze for half a second, his grip tightening imperceptibly on the phone.
Samuel.
His uncle—Sophie's younger brother. The one who existed in a different universe.
Ace's memories of him were snapshots, faded and blurry: a loud laugh at a family gathering that had made him jump as a kid; a smell of cologne and something else—maybe bar smoke; a tendency to ruffle Ace's hair and make jokes that flew over his head. Samuel Ames. Ace remembered his mom mentioning it with a vague, amused sigh. The Fifth Quarter. It meant nothing to Ace, just a name attached to a world of loud music, shouting sports fans, and the mundane problems of spilled drinks and late deliveries. Samuel was life at full volume, in bright, primary colors, with no hidden layers. To Ace, who lived in the shadows and silences, he represented a particular, exhausting kind of chaos.
He was… a lot. Sophie's word. It encompassed the volume, the relentless energy, the way he took up space both physically and audibly. The exact kind of chaotic, normal-world variable that Ace's bruised, silent, secret-keeping life was not equipped to handle.
Ace exhaled slowly, the sound a silent surrender. He could hear the unspoken alternative in his mother's suggestion—I could ask your uncles on the compound. But that would mean Garrick. It would mean questions that were actually interrogations, scrutiny from behind Eldren eyes, the heavy, suffocating weight of family expectation in a moment of perceived, profound weakness. Samuel, for all his exhausting normalcy, was the safer harbor. The ignorance of a Normal was, in this case, a shield.
"Okay," he said, the word tasting like dust and defeat. "Tell him to hurry."
After hanging up, he moved through the next steps on autopilot, a prisoner following a familiar routine to the end. He stood, walked to his room, and pulled a small, worn black duffel bag from the back of his closet. He packed without thought or sentiment: a few pairs of jeans, some t-shirts and sweatshirts, socks, underwear. The basic, anonymous kit of a person passing through, a refugee. He added his toiletry bag, his phone charger.He zipped the main bag shut. It held nothing that felt like home, only the essentials for survival in an alien, brightly-lit environment.
The house felt exponentially emptier with the packed bag sitting at his feet by the front door.
When the car horn sounded outside—two short, impatient, aggressive blasts—Ace didn't hesitate. He slung the duffel over his shoulder, the strap pulling uncomfortably at his sore muscles. He stepped into the hallway, opened the front door, and locked it behind him with a decisive, echoing click. He did not look back.
***
Ace stepped out into the late afternoon light, which felt strangely bright and accusing after the gloom of the house, just as the horn blared again—long, rude, and demanding. Before he could even make it to the wrought-iron gate that separated the Eldren compound from the ordinary world, a familiar voice cut through the suburban quiet, softer than the horn but just as effective at stopping him in his tracks.
"Going somewhere, Ace?"
Betsy Eldren stood on the porch of the largest house on the compound, the one belonging to Garrick. Darren's mother. Garrick's wife. A woman who had, by all accounts, walked into the world of hunters with her eyes open, married for love, and spent the subsequent decades trying to build a normal, gentle life on top of a foundation of secrets, violence, and unexplained absences. She was in her late forties, but her eyes were older—kind eyes, but they held a permanent, gentle exhaustion, the look of someone who has spent a lifetime smoothing over worried brows and fielding questions she's not allowed to fully answer.
Ace stopped and manufactured a polite, tight smile.
"Yeah," he said, shifting the duffel bag on his shoulder, a clear visual cue. "Heading to my mom's family for a bit. While she's with Grandma."
Betsy's expression softened immediately, the gentle concern wiping away any casual curiosity. "Oh, honey. Of course. Is she… is everything stable now?" She meant his grandmother, but the question seemed to encompass more.
"Something like that," Ace replied, giving a small, non-committal nod. It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the whole, sprawling, messy truth. It was the truth that fit the world Betsy lived in.
She hummed, a sound of deep, empathetic understanding. Betsy had always been like that—the emotional heart of the compound, the one who remembered birthdays, who made casseroles for no reason, who looked at boys like Ace and Cedric and saw, through the hardened exteriors and old-soul eyes, the children they still were underneath all the grit and trauma. It was both a comfort and its own kind of unnerving pressure.
Another honk, sharper and more impatient this time, echoed from the curb.
Ace glanced toward the gate, then back at Betsy, an apology in his eyes. "I should go. Don't want to keep…" He trailed off, not sure what to call Samuel in this context.
Betsy waved him off with a half-smile, her own eyes flicking past him to the idling vehicle at the curb. "Yeah, yeah. Don't keep whoever that is waiting. Travel safe, Ace. Call if you need anything." The offer was genuine, even if what he needed was something she could never provide.
As Ace walked past her toward the gate, he caught a fuller glimpse of Garrick's house through the large front window. It was impeccably clean, obsessively ordered. A showroom. A museum of a normal life. Too big, too quiet, every cushion perfectly plumped, every surface gleaming and bare. It always felt less like a home and more like a command center or a stage set. It felt like something fundamental was missing there… or maybe, something fundamental was just wrong, buried under all that sterile perfection.
From inside the open door, he heard Darren's voice, muffled but animated, rising in pitch, followed by Betsy's softer, chiding reply. He was undoubtedly already holding court, weaving the Omelette Saga into the family's oral history, a new chapter of absurdity in their otherwise deadly serious legend.
Ace sighed, the sound entirely internal this time. He unlatched the heavy iron gate, stepped through onto the public sidewalk, and closed it behind him with a metallic clang that felt like the closing of a very heavy door. An act was over.
A white SUV sat parked at the curb, its engine emitting a low, expensive purr. It was sleek, spotless, gleaming under the afternoon sun like it had just been driven off a lot. It looked like it belonged to a mid-level corporate manager or a real estate agent. It absolutely did not match their neighborhood of weathered fences, sprawling oak trees, and houses that wore their ages with unpretentious grace. And it certainly didn't match the idea of "Uncle Samuel" that lived in Ace's head—a figure of loud chaos and barroom grit.
He opened the passenger door, the interior smelling of new leather and air freshener with a faint, underlying note of coffee. He climbed in, throwing his duffel into the footwell.
Behind the wheel sat Samuel Ames.
He looked nothing like the somewhat blurry, impressionistic memory Ace had carried from family gatherings years ago. This man was sharp. Defined. His dark hair wasn't just long; it was styled, falling in a sleek, intentional curtain to his shoulders, parted with razor precision down the middle. His features were fine-boned and handsome in a way that seemed carefully maintained—no five-o'clock shadow, no tired lines. He wore a simple but clearly expensive black henley and dark, perfectly fitted jeans. An easy, practiced grin split his face as he glanced over, his eyes—the same warm brown as Sophie's, but sharper, more inquisitive—taking Ace in with a quick, comprehensive sweep that missed nothing: the duffel bag, the tired slump, the guarded posture, the whole picture of a kid who looked like he'd been on the losing end of a week-long fight.
"Heyyy, Ace," Samuel said, dragging the greeting out with a smooth, casual warmth that felt both genuine and performative. He put the SUV in drive with a fluid motion. "Long time no see, kid. You grew up. Sort of." The grin widened, teasing. "Still got the whole 'brooding protagonist' vibe going strong, I see."
"Hey, Uncle Samuel," Ace replied, his own voice flat and toneless by comparison. He pulled the seatbelt across his chest, the click loud in the insulated quiet of the cabin.
Samuel chuckled, a low, amused sound as he pulled away from the curb with smooth, confident acceleration. He drove like he did everything else, Ace imagined—with a relaxed, almost theatrical ease that was somehow more irritating than outright incompetence would have been. "So," he began, his tone light, conversational, needling just a little. "What's the emergency extraction all about? Sophie said you needed a pickup, stat. Get spooked by a big spider? Too scared to stay home by yourself? Teenage existential dread finally catch up to you?"
Ace let out a short, utterly hollow laugh, a dry puff of air. "Something like that." He turned to look out the window, watching his street, his compound, his entire strained, secretive life shrink and disappear in the side mirror, swallowed by the mundane flow of suburban afternoon.
Samuel smirked, clearly pleased with his own wit, with the narrative he was constructing. "Don't worry. Uncle Sam's got you. We'll get some real food in you—not whatever you were attempting back there. You look peaky. All pale and interesting." He said it like it was both a diagnosis and a mild critique.
The SUV turned a corner, merging seamlessly into the late afternoon traffic heading toward the denser, brighter heart of the city. The familiar world of quiet streets and hidden dangers fell away behind them, replaced by the anonymous, predictable flow of cars, streetlights, and people with ordinary problems.
Ace leaned his head against the cool glass of the window and stared out at the passing streets without really seeing them. The low thrum of the engine vibrated through his skull.
Tomorrow was Saturday. A full, empty Saturday. Not a day for healing from a hunt in silent solitude, but a day to be filled with… what? Samuel's loud questions? The blare of a TV sports channel? The awkward, exhausting work of performing as a normal teenager with normal teenage problems?
He sighed, a quiet, internal sound of pure, deep-seated resignation.
Yeah, he thought, the city lights beginning to blur into streaky halos as they picked up speed. This weekend is gonna be a whole new kind of long.