A soft groan echoed through the office as the doorknob turned, and the door creaked open. Haturii stepped inside, his light goatee, darkened eye bags, and weary expression making his exhaustion apparent. He moved toward the two other officers at the table, their attention split between a round of poker and a decanter of whiskey.
Before you judge them, do remember: if your job involved upholding law and order while also hunting down creatures that defied reality, you'd probably drink too.
Some retrieval events were uneventful. Others were nightmares. This one? It was about to be the latter.
"Welcome back," one of the officers greeted without looking up.
"How'd it go?" the other asked, dealing another hand.
Haturii sighed—his signature exhausted exhale—before dropping a thick stack of files onto the table. The weight of them made the men exchange glances.
"That bad, huh?"
The officer across from them picked up the folder. "Alert the Claives on patrol. We've got a rogue anomaly on the loose—containment cell 096. Type-H humanoid." His tone was flat, almost uninterested, but the room tensed.
"Right." One officer pushed away from the table and left to make the call.
"What, again?! Not just an attempt—an actual breach this time?" The remaining officer scowled, flipping open the folder. "Those people could never hold these damn things down."
His eyes scanned the dry paragraphs of bureaucratic jargon before landing on the only part that mattered.
Ah, there it is.
Contents.
"RSCP-004… produces heat signatures rivaling that of the sun."
He snapped the folder shut immediately. "Oh, fantastic. We sure have our hands full now, don't we?" His voice dripped with sarcasm. "And what about the two troublemaker kids you've got babysitting? Orange and Yukimo, was it?"
Haturii exhaled. "Orenji and Yukira."
"Right. Right. Never seem to get their names right."
"No, you don't," Haturii muttered. "I gave them the day off."
"To keep them out of the way?"
"To keep them safe," Haturii corrected. "Category 3s don't break out often. I don't want them involved."
The officer poured himself a glass of whiskey, downing it in one go. "Yeah? Well, I'd bet my entire life savings and then yours that those delinquents won't sit this one out."
Haturii tensed. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, come on. We were just like them at their age." The man leaned back, grinning. "You, the wimpy one, and me, the ever-so-manly, running around disobeying orders. Good times."
"That was a long time ago."
Haturii moved toward the door, but the officer clumsily draped an arm over his shoulders. "You used to be fun, Haturii. What happened to you?"
Haturii's grip tightened on the doorknob. He turned, his fatigued eyes dull but firm. "You're wasted, Emmett."
Then he walked out, leaving Emmett to stew in the silence.
—
Humansfeartheunknown.
Andwhattheyfear, theylabelevil. Whattheycannotcontrol… theydestroy.
Dare I say, thisistheworldthroughmyeyes!
Unlike most days, the sun shone bright over Stonehaven, its golden light flooding the town. The air here felt different. Clean.
The Kaiju walked, hidden beneath a yellow hoodie with gray sleeves, a visor cap shielding his face. A necessary disguise. His features would betray him in an instant. He had no idea where he was, his mind lost in the endless loop of memories.
Idon'trememberthishappening...
A surge of recollections hit him—flashes of the Foundation, the chaos of his escape. Armed men. The glass shattering as he crashed through a window, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. The pain. The rage.
His past played out in flickers: bodies strewn across the floor, broken, unconscious. One man had flown back against the wall, ribs crushed from a single kick. The Kaiju had turned to the rest, a grin of madness curling his lips.
Now, he walked among civilians, his fingers clenching and unclenching. He lifted his head, teeth gritted. A faint taste of blood lingered from the cut on his lower lip.
Five.
Exactlyfivemeters, it had been.
That was how far he had fallen. About half the height of an Olympic diving board, only there was no pool at the bottom, just the white powder of thick snow before him. It had cushioned him, but barely. To a passerby, he would have looked nothing more than roadkill.
But beneath the frost, his body was working. Slowly. Painfully. Pushing out every single one of the 247 bullets that had pierced his flesh. Stitching itself back together.
His vision blurred, his surroundings warping from the exhaustion and pain. He wanted to close his eyes. Just for a moment. But he knew better.
There! Was the affirmation, finally. Bleeding… stemmed.
He forced himself to his feet, grunting from the effort. The wind bit at his skin as he tucked his chin into his chest and kept moving.
He had to keep moving.