Ace stared at the cold, grey concrete floor between his feet. The grainy surface swam a little in his vision, a side effect of the pain and the lingering fog in his head. His mind was a battlefield, scrambling for the right high ground, the perfect argument to bridge the impossible, screaming chasm that had opened between his mother's raw terror and his own desperate need.
He could talk about duty. The solemn responsibility passed down from his father, from his grandfather. The weight of the Eldren name, even in exile. He could talk about training. The countless hours Garath had drilled him on stance and grip, the brutal, patient lessons Axl had forced into him about monster lore and weakness. He could point to the girl in the next cot. Layla. A living, breathing reason. An innocent who had been pulled into their dark world, who needed someone to stand between her and the things that went bump in the night.
Every single argument rose up, a legion of good and righteous points, and every single one of them marched straight to the edge of that chasm, looked into the depths of his mother's red-rimmed, watery eyes, and dissolved into nothing. They were words. She was looking at a bandaged body.
All that made it out of his tight throat was a weak, thick, stubborn mutter. "I didn't die."
Sophie's head tilted slowly. The anguish on her face didn't fade. It mutated, shifting into something worse. A bewildered, profound hurt, as if he'd spoken in a language she no longer understood. "You didn't die?" she repeated, her voice thin, scraping the air. "What is that… what is that even supposed to mean, Ace? Is that… is that somehow going to make me feel better? Is 'not dead' the bar we're setting now?"
He winced, heat flooding his cheeks. It sounded even more pathetic and childish out loud, hanging in the sterile, weapon-scented air of the basement. He had to claw back some dignity, some scrap of pride to stand on. He grasped for it, his voice gaining a brittle edge. "I'm just saying I'm not as weak as you think I am. I can handle this."
Sophie didn't yell. She brought her hands up, pressing her palms hard against her temples, her fingers digging into her hairline. It was a gesture of someone trying to contain a mounting pressure, as if his words were a physical, discordant noise pounding inside her skull. "Ace," she said, and her voice was low, strained with the effort to be calm. "Look at me. This is not about being strong. Or being weak. This is about the risk. The plain, simple, undeniable fact that you could die. It doesn't matter how strong you are, how fast you are, if you're dead. Do you understand that? Can you even hear what I'm saying?"
Frustration, hot and sour, boiled over in his gut. His careful control splintered. He gestured wildly with his good arm toward the two silent, still figures standing by the heavy metal door like statues of judgement. "Sure, fine! But what about them? Huh?" His voice rose, echoing off the concrete. "They're out there! Right now, they're fighting! Aren't their lives on the line too? Doesn't that count for anything?"
"They are trained, Ace," Sophie fired back, her own composure cracking. "Professionally, extensively trained. You can't just compare yourself to them. It's not the same. They have experience."
"Yeah!" he shot back, the logic finally feeling solid and real in his hands, a weapon he could wield. "And they got that experience from fighting! From being in the dark, from getting hit, from learning! You don't get experience from a book, Mom! You get it by doing the thing! Come on, I know that you—"
"No."
The word was not loud. It was flat. Absolute. A single, immovable stone wall built in the space between them.
She shook her head, the motion final. "No means no, Ace. You are not changing my mind on this. You are still too young. You are still my son."
He bit down on the inside of his lip, hard, until he tasted the bright, coppery tang of blood. The frustration was a live wire under his skin, sizzling and popping. Too young. Inexperienced. The words echoed, not just from her, but from every doubtful glance Axl had ever given him, from every time Garath had taken point without a word. In her eyes, he was just a kid playing soldier. A reckless, foolish boy in over his head. Pathetic.
His gaze, sharp and pleading, snapped across the room to Axl. The priest had been a silent witness, leaning against a cabinet stocked with enough gauze to mummify an elephant, his arms crossed, his face an unreadable mask of grave absorption. A spark of desperate, foolish hope cut through Ace's anger. Axl's word carried weight. It was the word of the man his father had trusted above all others. If he vouched for him, if he told Sophie that Ace had what it took, that he'd seen it…
"Help me, Axl," Ace said, the plea naked and clear in his voice. He was past pride now. "Back me up. Tell her."
All eyes in the cold basement turned to Axl.
He was the pivot point. The authority in the room that wasn't maternal, but martial. He carried the keys to the forbidden study. His opinion was the closest thing to Neal's own voice any of them would ever hear.
Ace held his gaze, that spark of hope a fragile, flickering thing in the grim atmosphere. Just tell her I'm ready. Tell her I can do this.
Axl looked back at him. For a long, heavy second, he said nothing. His eyes were shadowed, unreadable. He seemed to be weighing something far heavier than Ace's request. Then, he gave a single, slow, deliberate shake of his head.
"I think your mom's right, Ace," he said, his voice a low, tired rasp. It wasn't angry. It was resigned. "You should sit this one out."
The words did not feel like a refusal. They felt like a verdict. A sentence. They landed in Ace's gut with the finality of a coffin lid closing.
For a second, Ace just stared, his brain refusing to process the sound. The betrayal was so complete, so cold, it stole the air from his lungs more effectively than the poltergeist's blow had.
"What?" The word was a breathless punch of air. Then his voice found its strength, laced with pure, hot disbelief. "Are you serious?"
Axl pushed off from the cabinet. He took a step closer, not in threat, but as if delivering a difficult lesson. "Look, kid. You're strong. I'll give you that. Compared to other teenagers, you're a damn powerhouse."
"Other teenagers?" Ace repeated. The words tasted like ash, like poison. The fragile hope in his chest curdled into a hot, sickening rage. He didn't think. He pushed himself up from the cot, ignoring the dizzying, white-hot lance of pain that shot from his bandaged ribs through his entire nervous system. The room tilted. His vision swam with black spots. He swayed, but he remained standing, a testament to sheer, furious will. "Well, guess what, Axl? I'm not just some 'other' teenager you dragged along for fun! I can do this! You know I can!"
Axl's face remained impassive, but a muscle twitched in his jaw. He smacked his lips, a dry, dismissive sound. "No. You can't." He let the statement hang, brutal in its simplicity, before driving the point home. "You got beaten down by a poltergeist, Ace. A damn poltergeist." His gaze flicked past Ace, pinning Cedric who stood frozen by his mother's wheelchair. "And that goes for you too, Cedric. You're both out. Consider yourselves benched."
The dismissal was total. It was the sound of being fired. Of being deemed unfit.
Ace's anger ignited into a blind, nauseating inferno. He took a half-step forward, the world tilting again. "This is bullshit!" The shout was raw, scraping his throat. "That thing… that wasn't a normal poltergeist! It was stronger, okay? It was different!"
Axl's eyebrows lifted a fraction. Not in surprise, but in a cold, clinical challenge. "Oh yeah? How so? Enlighten us."
"It could use telekinetic powers!" Ace spat the words out like weapons. "It didn't just throw a book! It threw me! Through a wall! Now tell me, since you're the all-knowing priest, how many normal poltergeists can do that?"
From the corner of his eye, Ace saw his mother's hand fly to her mouth. A sharp, stifled gasp cut through the room. Her face went from pale to sheet-white. He realized his mistake instantly. He shouldn't have said it. Not like that. Not with those specific, violent details. He had just handed her imagination the very weapon he was trying to fight.
Axl, however, didn't react to Sophie's horror. A faint, grim smile touched his lips. It wasn't amused. It was the smile of a man who had just been proven right in the worst possible way. "Telekinetic," he echoed, nodding slowly as if filing the information away. "Noted. Interesting. But you know what? It still doesn't change the basic fact, Ace. The fact you keep trying to run from."
He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping, every word a carefully placed stone.
"You. Got. Beat. By. A. Poltergeist."
The silence after Axl's pronouncement was thick and suffocating. Ace stood swaying, the truth of the words a physical weight trying to drive him back to his knees. The throbbing in his ribs was a drumbeat to his humiliation.
"It wasn't like the others," he insisted, but the fight was leaching from his voice, replaced by a desperate, wheedling tone he hated. He turned, his gaze searching for an ally, landing on the one person who had been in the dark with him. "Tell them, Cedric! Back me up! You saw it!"
Cedric did not look up. He kept his eyes fixed on a crack in the concrete floor as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. His shoulders were hunched, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He looked smaller than he was. He looked like he wanted to disappear into the wall.
Ace's anger, thwarted and bleeding, found a new target. "I'm telling you, I've faced other poltergeists before!" The confession burst out of him, a last-ditch effort to prove his experience, to claim some scrap of credibility.
It had the opposite effect.
Sophie rose from the edge of the cot. The movement was slow, deliberate, charged with a new and terrible kind of energy. The heartbroken mother was gone. In her place was a woman uncovering a betrayal.
"And when," she asked, her voice dangerously quiet, "did you face these 'other' poltergeists? I don't recall you ever telling me about that." Her eyes, hard and piercing, shifted from Ace to Cedric. The weight of her stare was a physical force. "Tell me, Cedric. You must know. You're always together."
The pressure in the room became unbearable. Becca had gone perfectly still in her wheelchair, her face a neutral mask, but her eyes were watchful, missing nothing. Garath's stoic expression had tightened. Axl simply waited, arms crossed, his earlier verdict hanging in the air.
All of it focused on Cedric.
He finally lifted his head. His face was pale, his eyes darting from Sophie's stern gaze to Ace's pleading, furious one. He looked trapped. He looked like a kid who knew the game was over.
"I…" His voice was a dry croak. He swallowed. "I'm sorry, Aunt Sophie." He couldn't look at Ace. "Ace and I… we've been… we've been going on hunts. For a while now. Small ones. Without telling you."
He said it to the floor, the words dropping into the silence like stones into a deep, still well.
Sophie didn't scream. She didn't cry. She let out a single, soft, disbelieving sound—a light scoff that was somehow more devastating than any shout. The last of the color drained from her face.
"That's it," she said, her voice flat and empty. She looked at Ace, and in her eyes, he didn't see anger. He saw a profound, gutting disappointment. A line being drawn. "That's it."
She turned and walked out of the medical bay. Her steps weren't hurried. They were slow, measured, and utterly final. She didn't slam the heavy metal door. She left it standing open, a rectangle of light from the hallway upstairs feeling like an exit he was no longer permitted to use.
Becca gave the boys a long, inscrutable look—a veteran seeing the fresh recruits blow their cover on a simple op. Without a word, she turned her wheelchair and rolled smoothly out of the room after Sophie, the quiet hum of its motor the only sound.
Then it was just them. The shattered remains of the team.
Ace stared at Cedric. The rage and pain and betrayal churned inside him, a toxic soup. His friend. His brother in everything but blood. The one person who was supposed to have his back, no matter what.
"So," Ace said, his voice dangerously low, trembling with the effort to control it. "Now you can suddenly speak, huh? Now you find your voice."
Cedric finally met his eyes. His own were wide, glistening with unshed tears of shame and frustration. "Ace… listen to me—"
"Fuck you."
The words were not a shout. They were a cold, precise expulsion. They hung in the air between them, stark and absolute. They were not the hot anger of a fight. They were the cold statement of a fracture.
Cedric flinched as if struck.
Before either could move, Garath was there. He stepped into the space between them, a wall of quiet authority. He didn't shout. He didn't grab. He simply placed a firm hand on Cedric's shoulder.
"That's enough, Ace," Garath said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Rest. We'll talk later." The command was for both of them, but his protective grip on Cedric was a message in itself.
He guided Cedric, who was now looking at the floor again, shoulders slumped in defeat, toward the open door. Cedric went without resistance, a puppet with cut strings. They disappeared into the hallway, Garath's broad back the last thing Ace saw.
Axl was the last to move. He stood for a long moment, looking at Ace—at the bandages, the defiant, wounded posture, the fury and hurt warring on his young face. Axl's expression was unreadable, a complex mix of pity, duty, and his own heavy burdens. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He just gave a slow, weary shake of his head.
Then he, too, turned and walked out.
The heavy metal door swung shut behind him with a soft, but final, clunk. The sound of the lock engaging was a quiet, metallic click that echoed in the sterile, concrete silence.
Ace was alone. Surrounded by weapons and medicine, in a room built for war and recovery, he had never felt more completely defeated. The only sound was the faint, ragged sound of his own breathing, and the softer, oblivious breath of the stranger, Layla, sleeping on in the other cot.