The bodyguard jumped out of the way right on time.The young master looked up at him with rage.“How dare you?!” he yelled.“I am sorry, sir,” the bodyguard said quickly with a deep bow.“I am sorry, young master,” said the lead bodyguard as he entered. “But master said..."“I know what my father said, damn it!” roared the young master.He turned to look at Adam with vengeance in his eyes. “The stakes have been raised now. This bastard has a lot more to pay for!”“I am sure."“Just shut the hell up!” the young master yelled, and everyone got quiet.Knowing that he probably wouldn’t shoot him again, Adam couldn’t hold back his questions anymore.“Where are my family, please?”The young man let out a disbelieving, short laugh.“Can you hear that? Can you see that audacity?” he asked no one in particular.Then he pointed at the blood patch on the floor again “Sure, why not? They are right there,” he said callously.Adam’s heart thumped painfully as he looked down at the spot, then back a

“Percy?! I need you to…”“My name is Persephone!” The tow-headed, skinny girl turned back to snap at Dixon. She looked away from him and looked around her unfocusedly as she repeated to herself, “My name is Persephone, and I am not crazy!”“Okay, okay. Good to know,” Dixon responded with a roll of his eyes. With his hands stretched towards her, he said, “Calm your jets. I get it. You are not crazy. I need to know that you know where you are going, though. I don’t fancy getting lost.”She looked at him blankly for a while, then smiled. “You talk funny—the hotel. I know the hotel. Jared said I can’t go anywhere by myself but I can go to the hotel. I know there. I am hungry.”Dixon’s mouth hung open at her erratic way of talking. He still hadn’t gotten used to it.“You are hungry? I met you around wrappers of all kinds of food! How can you... You know what? Don’t answer that. I am hungry too. Just get us to the hotel and I am sure we are going to... well, I will get you something to eat

A few minutes earlierColonel Aguillar stood at the head of the throngs of men.She waited expressionless as the scientists made the necessary last adjustment to the tanks they had with them.Outwardly, she appeared calm and unbothered by anything.Yet inwardly, she couldn’t help but think of her niece.What if she had overestimated Cletus's sense of reasoning?What if he didn’t care about her explicit order that nothing must happen to Layla and her friend?What if she had just sent her niece to her death?That would mean failing her sister all over again.Wishing that this assignment would be over as soon as possible, she tried to put all her focus on it.It was a high-risk assignment.She had been directed to Alagan on the pretence of a food courier assignment.As much as she was irked by the sudden assignment that was dropped on the shoulders of her and her men, she knew there was no going back.An order had come from above.All they had to do was follow it.She was sorry for the f

“Run!” Dixon had no idea when he took to his heels.He had never seen the likes of it before.After seeing the purple cloud in the sky,.It grew rapidly in their direction, so fast that it was overhead before he could blink.With it came a horrible smell that he couldn’t pinpoint.The cloud kept spreading past them, and it seemed to thin out as it went.He decided to tell Persephone that they should leave.They would need to lay low so as not to be caught in the midst of something bad.Whoever was crazy enough to be sending purple chemicals up in the air during such a period must be crazy.The only good thing about that was the fact that they must be close to where people are. He turned to Persephone and froze in his tracks.Behind her, different insects of the wild had materialised.They were a hundred times bigger than their normal size.“Look!” Persephone pointed with widened eyes behind him.He had not turned when he felt heavy, spiky flesh against his back.His slightly turned h

“Mum?” Adam’s voice stopped her rocking motion.“Adam?” she called as she slowly opened her eyes.“Mum, it is me,” Adam said as he quickly moved towards her.He paid the man no heed as the latter ran out of the basement.A whiff of an unpleasant odour hit Adam’s nostrils even before his mother opened her eyes and raised her hands towards him.Adam could see drying liquid matter on her hand.“You are alive,” she said in a forlorn voice as she patted him awkwardly.The strong smell filled his nose as he looked down at the figure on his mother’s lap.It was unrecognised because it was bloated.A gaping hole peeked at Adam from the skull that belonged to a face that Adam knew as much as he knew his own.“Is he…?”“He is dead,” Marriane said simply, as if she were talking about the weather.Her glazed eyes looked starry at Adam. “They killed him. They said you killed a girl. Did you kill a girl?”A mixture of guilt and shame welled in Adam as he stared into the shock-glazed and devastated