Protection. That was the word that floated through Locke's mind as he stood in the ruined apartment, staring at the pale ashes scattered across the floor. This was the Marvel Universe, sure, a place where gods fell from the sky and aliens punched holes in reality. But before the so-called golden age of heroes had fully exploded into public chaos, ordinary people were still shielded from most of it.
The ones doing the shielding were just as famous as the monsters they hunted: S.H.I.E.L.D.. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division had been authorized decades ago by the world's major powers, and its mission had always been brutally simple. Act as a firewall between the normal world and the extraordinary one, and make sure civilians never had to see what lurked in the dark.
That responsibility used to include everything—mutants, vampires, enhanced freaks, occult nonsense. If a creature could tear open a car door with its bare hands, it was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s problem. Only later, after the mutant population began rising, did the Sentinel Special Service take over that slice of the nightmare.
Locke's department was the new firewall. And tonight, five of their own had burned.
If mutant awakenings stayed quiet, if they didn't turn into catastrophic events, most people would never even know mutants existed. That was the design. Silence. Containment. Clean-up crews before the morning news cycle. Before the Sentinel Special Service was formed, S.H.I.E.L.D. handled all of it.
Vampires, if nothing unexpected happened, were technically still S.H.I.E.L.D.'s jurisdiction.
But unexpected had just happened.
And for Locke, that was very good news.
He kept his face cold as he stared at the white ash on the floor, but inside, something sharp and electric stirred. Everything was hard at the beginning. Once there was one, there would be two. Once there were two, there would be a nest.
For the past two years, he'd thought about this exact scenario. He had even considered leveraging S.H.I.E.L.D. intelligence channels to hunt vampires deliberately, but nothing had surfaced. No leads. No confirmed sightings. Nothing but dead rumors.
Now one had shown up.
If there was one, there were more. That was how vampires worked. They were predators, but they weren't loners. They formed lines, covens, bloodlines. Social creatures. Hierarchies.
Locke wasn't afraid of having only one vampire to kill.
He was afraid there wouldn't be enough.
After he fully understood what the Ultimate Evolution Module could do, the first supernatural species he targeted in his mental blueprint had been vampires. Mutants were unpredictable. Some were weak, some were walking natural disasters. They also tended to scatter after awakening.
Vampires were different.
They were organized. They replicated. They clustered.
The more Locke thought about it, the hotter his blood felt.
Follow this vampire's life trajectory. Track his feeding grounds. Identify contacts. Identify suppliers. Identify whoever turned him. Even if each vampire only yielded a single evolution point, the math stacked beautifully.
Ten vampires meant ten points.
One hundred meant one hundred.
And that was just the bottom rung. There had to be elders out there. Ancient ones. Higher-tier variants.
Finally, something worth hunting.
He glanced at Debbie.
"Debbie."
"Boss."
"Run checks."
His eyes swept across the ash again before settling on Brown. His voice dropped, steady and deliberate. "Whether this was a mutant or a vampire, we lost five people. We trade fifty lives for theirs."
There always had to be a reason. Law enforcement didn't get to operate on emotion. But avenging fallen comrades? That was clean. Justified. Procedural.
Brown met his gaze. The gratitude and shock from earlier were gone, replaced by steel. He nodded once, hard.
Debbie did the same.
Locke was about to continue outlining operational language—something formal enough to survive internal review—when his phone vibrated in his pocket.
He pulled it out, glanced at the caller ID, and smiled faintly.
Esme.
He stepped aside before answering.
Esme worked as a flight attendant for United Airlines. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, an almost unfair combination of elegance and warmth. She had a calm voice that could steady turbulence, literal or otherwise. Locke liked her more than he had ever expected to like anyone.
They had married less than six months after they started dating. It hadn't been his original plan. He had never pictured himself settling down so quickly. But family pressure and timing had aligned, and here they were.
Esme hadn't quit her job after marriage, and Locke had never asked her to. He respected that she had a life outside of him.
Yesterday, she'd called to say she'd be flying back to New York from Texas today, about a three-hour flight. Locke had planned to meet her at Kennedy Airport after work, maybe steal an hour together before she went home.
Then the vampire happened.
He'd texted her earlier, explaining he was stuck on a case. She had probably just landed and seen it.
"It's too late to come now," he thought. One hour wasn't enough to matter, and rushing would ruin the point. More importantly, five of Brown's men were dead. It would look obscene if he left early for a romantic airport reunion.
He answered.
"Hey."
On the other end, Esme's voice was sharp with concern. "Are you okay? I saw your message. Five people died? What happened? Was it an Alpha-level mutant?"
"This time it wasn't mutants."
There was a beat of silence. "No?"
"It's complicated. I'll explain next time you're back in New York."
He wasn't going to discuss vampires over an unsecured line.
"…Okay." Her tone softened, but worry lingered. "I have three days off after I fly to Los Angeles."
"I'll pick you up when you get back," he said. "We'll make up for today."
"Deal."
They hung up.
Locke slipped the phone back into his pocket and walked over to Brown.
Brown had an ice pack pressed to his forehead. He looked up. "Esme?"
Locke nodded. He pulled a cigarette from his pack and handed one to Brown. They lit up in silence.
Brown exhaled smoke slowly. "Six months ago, you told me you weren't the marrying type. What changed?"
Locke smiled faintly. "The time was right."
He didn't elaborate. The truth was simpler and more complicated at the same time. His father had pushed. Hard.
Brown studied him for a moment, then let it go. His gaze drifted to the covered bodies being carried out of the apartment building. His expression darkened, grief creeping in around the edges.
Locke didn't offer words. He stepped forward and patted Brown on the shoulder, firm and steady. Brown needed anger more than comfort right now.
And anger came.
By the time they returned to the bureau, Brown's sadness had hardened into something productive. He was already mobilizing his team, pulling surveillance logs, tracing the vampire's background, digging through financial and property records.
Locke watched from the doorway for a moment and felt satisfied.
Yes. That was the correct direction.
If you kill one of ours, we take ten of yours.
When Locke finally left the office, Brown had already divided tasks and launched a preliminary sweep. The entire unit carried the same look in their eyes.
Good.
He headed down to the parking lot and unlocked his Audi A8. The engine purred to life, smooth and expensive. He drove out of the underground lot of the Sentinel Special Service building and merged into the evening traffic.
Half an hour later, he pulled into the small lot outside his apartment complex.
The place wasn't large. Around fifty square meters, just a living room and a bedroom. Functional. Temporary. Enough for a man who planned to outgrow the world.