The air inside the ruined vault was still thick with residual energy. Billy could feel it, an unnatural hum at the back of his skull, like the aftershock of an explosion that hadn't quite faded. The Cerberus agent—who still hadn’t given him a name—stood beside him, arms crossed, golden eyes narrowed.
“Dr. Vance Holloway,” Billy muttered, rolling the name over his tongue. “So where do we start?”
The agent’s gaze flicked toward the terminal. “Kane Industries erased most of the data, but not all of it.” She tapped on her wrist-mounted interface, syncing with the system. “If Holloway was high-level, he wouldn’t just disappear without leaving a trail. People like him always have contingencies.”
Billy leaned against the shattered containment pod. “You sound like you know him.”
The agent hesitated. “Not personally. But I’ve hunted men like him before.”
Billy watched her closely. There was something about the way she said it—calm, professional, but with a cold edge. She wasn’t just some random operative. Cerberus didn’t send grunts to deal with this kind of mess. She was a specialist.
His cybernetic interface beeped, flashing an alert.
Recovered fragment located.
Billy pulled it up. A GPS coordinate. Somewhere in the underbelly of the city.
“Looks like Holloway left us a breadcrumb.” He turned the screen toward her. “You recognize this place?”
She frowned. “Yeah. That’s Sector 12. One of Kane’s old research zones. It was shut down after a ‘containment accident.’”
Billy smirked. “Let me guess—official reports said nothing happened.”
“Bingo.”
Billy pushed off the wreckage. “Then we’ve got a lead. Time to move.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The agent nodded, but before they could leave, a sudden static pulse rippled through the vault.
Billy tensed.
The summoning circle flickered.
For a split second, he saw something—a brief image, a distortion in the air, like a shadow cast from nowhere. It was watching.
Then it was gone.
The Cerberus agent looked at him. “You saw it too.”
Billy exhaled. “Yeah.”
Neither of them spoke as they exited the vault. But they both knew the truth.
Whatever Kane had summoned… it wasn’t gone. Not completely.
Billy adjusted the strap of his sidearm as they approached the entrance to Kane’s abandoned research site. The place was an overgrown ruin, buried beneath layers of forgotten infrastructure. Cracked neon signs flickered in the distance, casting eerie glows over the crumbling district.
The agent moved ahead, sweeping the area with her disruptor pistol. “No automated defenses. Either they ran out of funding or…”
“…someone else already got here,” Billy finished.
They moved inside. The facility was in disrepair—hallways lined with shattered glass, terminals long since dead, the air thick with the scent of ozone and decay.
Billy activated his night vision overlay, scanning for heat signatures.
Nothing.
Until—
A whisper.
It wasn’t audible—more like a pressure against his mind. Faint. Distant. But undeniably there.
Billy stopped. “You feel that?”
The agent nodded, her posture shifting into combat readiness. “We’re not alone.”
Ahead, a faint blue glow pulsed from an open chamber.
Billy moved first, gun drawn, scanning the room—
And froze.
Inside, a body was slumped over a terminal.
Dr. Vance Holloway.
Or at least, what was left of him.
The man had been dead for a while. His body was half-decayed, his flesh withered and stretched as if something had drained him dry. The terminal beside him flickered weakly, struggling to stay powered.
The Cerberus agent exhaled sharply. “Looks like we found him.”
Billy crouched, checking the body. “Yeah. But someone else got here first.”
The terminal beeped.
A message appeared on the screen.
“You’re too late.”
Then—
BOOM.
A blast door slammed shut, locking them inside.
The lights died, plunging them into darkness.
Billy cursed, switching to infrared vision.
That’s when he saw it.
The shadows were moving.
And they weren’t alone.
