POV: Evan
I had barely slid the deadbolt closed, my pulse still racing from what she'd whispered in my ear, when I heard a sharp knock at the door.
I opened it, gun in hand, expecting the worst.
It was her. She wore a black leather jacket with sleeves too short — she must've stolen it from someone's clothesline in the building.
"Give me the keys," she said.
"What?" I looked at her, confused, lowering the weapon. "It's three in the morning. Go to sleep, Ayla."
She walked in without asking, shoved me inside, closed the door behind her and smacked the living-room light off.
"The building's watched. There's a hostile vehicle on the corner. If we stay here, they'll box us in before dawn."
"A hostile vehicle?" I felt that familiar cold drop into my stomach. "The cops?"
"Hunters." She moved to the window and peered through the blind like a stalking animal. "I need to get outside the perimeter to track. And you have a car. Drive."
"I'm not taking you anywhere. I'm tired, scared and—"
Ayla turned. Her eyes glinted in the dark.
"If you stay, they'll come in. And your wooden door won't stop them. You have two options: come with me and be useful, or stay here and be collateral damage."
I swore under my breath. I knew she wasn't lying — I'd seen the tension in her body.
"Fine. But you tell me what the hell is going on."
"Quiet. Move."
We left through the fire escape to avoid the front entrance. A damp cold bit through to the bones.
We climbed into my old sedan, parked on the backstreet. Ayla slid into the passenger seat.
"North," she ordered. "Toward the industrial zone."
I drove in silence, my hands clamped to the wheel until my knuckles went white. Ayla kept her window down despite the cold, sniffing the air like a hound.
We reached the outskirts, where the city dissolves into abandoned factories and scrubland. She made me stop by an old quarry, next to a filthy river.
"Turn off the engine," she said.
"What are we looking for?" I asked, fed up with the mystery and the fear.
"The intruder. The thing that ran across the rooftops last night. It left a trail. If I find it before the hunters do, I'll have the advantage."
"And you need me for that? To be your driver?"
She looked at me, cold, without a hint of empathy.
"For that, and because your scent masks mine. You're my camouflage, Evan. Get used to it."
We got out of the car. The ground was mud and gravel. Ayla moved ahead, crouched, scanning the earth. I followed with the flashlight off, feeling like an idiot for trailing her and more terrified of staying alone in the car in the middle of nowhere.
"It smells like sulfur," I whispered. The stench was sharp, acrid.
"It's not sulfur. It's congealed blood."
She stopped in front of a chain-link fence. The metal hadn't been cut — it had been melted. The links dripped to the ground like hot wax.
"It went through here."
---
POV: Ayla
The trail is clear. A line of residual heat cuts across the dead vegetation.
The creature is careless. Or wounded.
I cross the fused fence. Evan follows, making too much noise with his heavy boots. He's clumsy, but his presence is necessary. His human scent — fear and sweat — is strong; it hides any trail I might leave.
We arrive at a stretch of large rocks.
"Light," I order.
Evan switches on the flashlight. The yellow beam shows the mud.
There it is.
A deep print. Three long digits, claws sunk into the earth.
The rim of the print is crystallized. The soil has turned to black glass from the heat.
"Jesus…" Evan whispers. "What animal does this?"
He crouches. He's about to touch the rim of the print.
"No!" I snatch his hand away with a slap.
"Ow!" He rubs his hand. "I was just going to look."
"That burns," I warn him. "It's corrosive. That thing leaks unstable energy. If you touch it, you lose your skin."
I lean in to the print and inhale.
The smell is unmistakable. It smells like competition — something that doesn't belong in this ecosystem. But it reeks of disease. Of corruption. It's not a healthy predator. It's... broken.
"Look over there," Evan says, pointing the light at a large upright rock.
On the stone, a mark has been burned into the rock. Three spiral lines.
A territorial mark. A challenge.
Suddenly I hear something.
A twig snaps.
Squelch. Squelch.
I smash Evan's flashlight off.
"Down," I hiss.
I shove him behind the big rock. We press ourselves to the cold stone.
I hear heavy steps on the other side. Squelch. Squelch.
Something walks through the mud. Its breathing is raspy, wet, as if there's liquid in its lungs.
The sulfur stench becomes unbearable.
Evan is rigid against me. His heart pounds so loud I'm afraid the creature will hear it. I clamp my hand over his mouth, digging my nails in a little so he stays still.
The thing stops. It growls.
Then it moves away toward the river.
---
POV: Evan
We waited until the footsteps were gone.
Ayla took her hand off my mouth. I wiped the spit from my face, disgusted and terrified.
"What was that?" I whispered. "That wasn't a dog."
Ayla didn't answer. She turned the flashlight on herself, shading the beam with her fingers so it stayed dim. She shone it on the rock with the burned mark.
Now that I was closer, I saw something embedded in the melted stone, just below the symbol. A half-melted metal object stuck to the rock like a macabre trophy.
I stepped forward, fighting the urge to vomit from the smell.
It was a badge.
Blackened with soot and bent, but the gold shield still gleamed faintly in the flashlight's beam.
I wiped the surface with my jacket sleeve. I read the engraved letters.
Officer J. Miller.
City Police.
Badge #4529.
I felt the ground open beneath me. Air lodged in my chest.
"No way…" I said, my voice breaking. "It's Miller."
Ayla looked at me, expressionless.
"Who's that?"
"A partner. He went missing two weeks ago. The captain said he'd run off to Mexico with money from a raid. We all thought he was a thief."
I stared at Miller's melted badge in the rock. There was no sign of Miller — just his badge, left like trash. Or like a warning.
"He didn't run," Ayla said. Her voice was ice-cold, without emotion. "He was intercepted."
She stepped toward the print in the ground and then looked at the badge with clinical curiosity.
"This creature is territorial, Evan. And it's cleaning its hunting grounds."
"Are you telling me… it ate him?" Bile rose in my throat.
Ayla met my eyes.
"I'm telling you Miller was either competition or food. For that thing, there's no difference."
She turned toward the river, where the monster had gone.
"We have to leave. Now we know what it is. And we know it doesn't fear uniforms."
I looked at Miller's badge for one more second. The image of my partner alone out here, screaming while that thing—
Ayla yanked my arm hard.
"Move. Before it decides to come back."
We got into the car in silence. My hands shook so badly I had trouble getting the key into the ignition.
Ayla watched through the window, alert, as if nothing had happened.
All I could think was one thing: Miller wasn't in Mexico sipping margaritas. And whatever killed him was loose in my city.