The hallway outside the medical room was even more unsettling than the room itself.
Everything was white and chrome and glass, surfaces so clean they looked like they'd never been touched by human hands. Fluorescent panels lined the ceiling in perfect rows, casting a flat, shadowless light that made Jax feel like he was walking through a hospital designed by aliens. Doors with electronic keypads. Windows looking into rooms full of equipment he couldn't name. Somewhere, a ventilation system hummed at a frequency that was just slightly too low to ignore.
For 2002, this place looked like the goddamn future.
Jax had been in a lot of buildings in his nineteen years. Row homes with water damage and lead paint. Abandoned warehouses where the homeless slept and the demons spawned. Government offices with flickering lights and decades-old furniture. He'd never been anywhere like this. He'd never even imagined anywhere like this.
It was, without question, the nicest building he'd ever set foot in.
He hated it.
"Where the fuck am I?"
Emil glanced back, still walking, that infuriating smile still plastered on his face. "You're joking again."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"You really don't know?" Emil laughed that same delighted, golden-retriever laugh. "Kid, you're in the Demonic Control Bureau. Philadelphia division. Sub-level three, if you want to be specific. Though I suppose from your perspective, it all looks the same."
Jax stopped walking.
The DCB. The actual, real-life, government-funded, demon-hunting DCB. The same organization that swooped in on jobs and stole contracts from freelancers. The same organization that Mrs. Reyes's sister called a scam. The same organization that showed up on the news every time a demon attack happened in a neighborhood nice enough for the cameras to care about.
He was inside the DCB.
"Why am I here?"
"I told you. Your blood work is fascinating. The lab results are—"
"No, no, no." Jax took a step back, his shoulders tensing. "Why am I here? What do you want from me? I didn't do anything wrong. I killed a demon. That's not illegal. I want—I want a lawyer. I want to talk to a lawyer."
Emil turned to face him fully, and for a moment the smile flickered; not disappearing, just... shifting. Becoming something a little less friendly and a little more amused.
"A lawyer," he repeated.
"Yeah. A lawyer. I got rights. I'm an American citizen. You can't just—"
"Jax." Emil's voice was gentle, almost pitying. "You couldn't afford a lawyer even if it was court-appointed. You're four months behind on rent. You eat two-week-old pizza. The last time you saw a dentist was... actually, have you ever seen a dentist?"
"Fuck you."
"That's not a no."
Jax's hands curled into fists. "I'm not—you can't just kidnap people and—"
"We didn't kidnap you." Emil held up a finger. "We rescued you. There's a difference. Legally speaking."
"Rescued me from what?"
"From bleeding out on the floor of a warehouse in Port Richmond." Emil started walking again, gesturing for Jax to follow. "Shortly after you lost consciousness, Mr. Kowalski returned to check on the status of his demon problem. What he found instead was his entire warehouse in complete disrepair; shattered windows, collapsed shelving, structural damage that's going to cost him a fortune, and a half-dead teenager lying in a pile of demon parts."
Jax didn't move.
"Kowalski, being a sensible man, called 911. 911, being legally obligated to report demon-related incidents, called us. We reviewed the security footage and found some..." Emil paused, savoring the word. "...interesting material. Very interesting. Interesting enough that I personally authorized your transport to this facility for observation and evaluation."
"Security footage?"
"The warehouse had cameras, Jax. Most businesses do. You didn't notice them because you were too busy monologuing about toothbrushes and haircuts, which, by the way, was genuinely charming. I've watched that footage three times. 'Five hundred dollars is a haircut and a toothbrush and a month of not having my landlord look at me like I'm garbage.' Poetry."
Jax felt his face heat up. "You watched—"
"The whole thing. From the moment you walked in to the moment you collapsed. Including the part where you ate pieces of the demon while screaming about rent money." Emil's smile widened. "That part was my favorite."
Jax didn't remember that. He didn't remember any of that.
"Come on." Emil nodded toward a door at the end of the hall. "Lab results. Then we'll talk about your future."
The lab results room was larger than Jax's entire apartment.
Banks of computers lined the walls; not the clunky beige boxes he was used to seeing, but sleek black monitors with flat screens and towers that hummed quietly beneath the desks. Equipment he couldn't identify sat on counters and tables: microscopes that looked like they belonged in a sci-fi movie, machines with digital readouts and blinking lights, refrigeration units with biohazard symbols on the doors.
Three scientists were working when Emil and Jax walked in. Two women and a man, all in white coats, all hunched over their respective stations.
"Good afternoon, everyone!" Emil called out cheerfully. "Don't mind us, just showing our guest around."
The scientists looked up.
They saw Jax.
The reaction was immediate. One of the women went pale. The man pushed his chair back so fast it nearly toppled over. The other woman made a small, involuntary sound; something between a gasp and a whimper.
They scattered.
All three of them, grabbing tablets and clipboards and whatever else was within reach, practically tripping over each other to get to the door. The man muttered something about "samples" and "other lab." The pale woman didn't say anything at all, just kept her eyes on Jax like he was a wild animal that might lunge at any moment.
Jax snarled at them as they passed; just a little, just enough to make the pale one flinch, and watched them go.
"Play nice," Emil said mildly, not looking up from the computer he was booting up.
"The fuck was that about?" Jax gestured at the door. "They scared of me because they've never seen a broke person before? Am I gonna give them poverty cooties?"
"It's not that." Emil tapped a few keys, and a series of charts and graphs appeared on the screen. "They watched the footage too. Scientists are curious creatures; show them something unprecedented, and they can't look away. But there's a difference between watching something on a screen and standing in the same room with it."
He pulled up a video file, paused on a frame.
Jax looked at the screen.
The image was grainy, washed out by the red glow emanating from the figure at its center. But he could see enough. He could see himself, or something that used to be himself, standing in the wreckage of the warehouse, veins of light crawling across his skin, his eyes burning solid red, his mouth open in what might have been a scream or might have been something else entirely.
He was holding a piece of the demon. Bringing it to his mouth.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Emil sounded genuinely pleased. "Now, let's talk about what's happening inside you."
He pulled up another screen, this one covered in numbers and charts and medical terminology that Jax couldn't begin to understand.
"During the fight, you legally died. Your heart stopped for approximately thirty-seven seconds. No pulse, no brain activity, nothing. By every clinical definition, you were dead." Emil pointed to a section of the chart. "But then your heart started again. Slowly at first—ten BPM, barely a whisper. And then it ramped up. Fifty. A hundred. Two hundred."
"I remember," Jax said quietly. "I remember it felt like my chest was going to explode."
"It should have." Emil pulled up another chart. "You peaked at over a thousand beats per minute. For forty-five seconds. Your blood pressure was off the charts. Your core temperature spiked to a hundred and twelve degrees. By all rights, your heart should have ruptured, your brain should have hemorrhaged, and your organs should have liquefied."
"But they didn't."
"No. They didn't." Emil turned to face him, those purple eyes bright with fascination. "Because you're Wired. And not just any Wired; you're something we've never seen before."
"I don't—" Jax shook his head, frustration boiling up. "What does any of that mean? I don't understand what you're saying. You keep using these words like I should know what they are, and I don't. I'm not—I'm just a guy. I kill demons for pocket change. That's it. That's all I am."
Emil studied him for a long moment. Then he pulled up a new chart; this one simpler, with a single line that looked almost like an EKG readout, except it spanned years instead of seconds.
"You're Wired, Jax. Whether you knew it or not. You've been Wired your whole life, probably since you were a child, probably from exposure to e-waste in whatever neighborhood you grew up in." He tapped the screen. "The ability has been running in the background for years. Think of it like an engine idling. Always on, always burning fuel, but never really going anywhere."
"An engine," Jax repeated flatly.
"Exactly. But when you died in that warehouse, when your body was pushed past its absolute limit, you didn't just idle anymore." Emil's eyes gleamed. "You stomped on the gas pedal. And the engine took over completely. Full throttle. Maximum output."
He pulled up the video again. The image of Jax, glowing, burning, consuming.
"A Surge state so powerful that you destroyed a Class B demon with a single punch and then ate half of it before your body shut down. I've been doing this for fifteen years, Jax. I've seen a lot of Wired. I've seen Surges that could level buildings. But I've never seen anything quite like what you did in that warehouse."
He leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms.
"You're a hybrid expression. Surge and Conduit, mixed together in a way we've never documented before. Your Surge gives you the power boost when you die and come back. Your Conduit trait lets you consume demonic matter to fuel it. Death-triggered resurrection with a consumption reflex." He smiled. "I've been thinking about what to call it. Your specific expression. I'm thinking Redline Reincarnation. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
Jax stared at him.
"You're insane."
"Probably." Emil's grin didn't waver. "But there's one more thing you need to know."
The grin faded. Not completely, Emil didn't seem capable of being entirely serious, but enough that Jax felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"The engine metaphor isn't just cute wordplay, Jax. Your ability has been running your whole life. Idling in the background. Burning fuel." He tapped the chart on the screen; the one with the long, slow line. "And fuel, in this case, is you. Your cells. Your organs. Your lifespan."
Jax felt the cold spread.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying your ability has been eating you alive since you were a child. Burning through your years like a car burning through gas. The idling alone probably cost you a decade, maybe more." Emil's voice was calm, clinical. "And that Surge in the warehouse? That forty-five seconds of full throttle? That cost you even more."
He pulled up a new chart. A simple one. Just a number.
"Based on our analysis of your cellular degradation, telomere length, and metabolic markers, we estimate your remaining lifespan at approximately..." He paused, and for once there was no smile at all. "...thirty-one years. Give or take."
The number on the screen read: ESTIMATED LIFESPAN: 50 YEARS
Jax was nineteen.
"That's..." His voice came out wrong. Cracked. "That's not... you're saying I'm going to die at fifty?"
"At the current rate of degradation, yes. Possibly sooner, if you trigger another Surge." Emil watched him carefully. "Every time you redline, you burn more years. The harder you push, the more it costs. It's the price of your particular expression. The trade-off for all that power."
Jax's legs felt unsteady. He reached out, grabbed the edge of a desk, held on.
Fifty years old. He was going to die at fifty years old. Maybe younger. Maybe a lot younger, if he kept doing what he'd been doing his whole life.
He'd never thought much about the future. Never had the luxury. But he'd always assumed there was one. Some vague, distant someday where things got better, where he figured things out, where he stopped being a broke kid killing demons for pocket change and became... something else. Someone else.
Now he knew the truth. There was no someday. There was just a clock, ticking down, and he'd already burned through almost half of it without even knowing.
"However," Emil said.
Jax looked up.
"It doesn't have to be that way."
Emil pulled up a chair; different from the folding one in the medical room, this one sleek and ergonomic, and sat down across from Jax. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, those purple eyes fixed on Jax's face.
"Let me ask you something, Jax. What do you want in life?"
The answer came out before Jax could think about it. "Money. Food."
Emil laughed; soft, not mocking. "I know that. Everyone wants money and food. But what else? What more than that?"
Jax opened his mouth. Closed it.
The question hit him harder than he expected. It was such a simple thing to ask, what do you want, but he didn't have an answer. He'd never had an answer. He'd never even thought about it.
"I don't..." He shook his head. "I don't know. I've never—" His voice caught. "I've never been given the opportunity to think about that. My whole life, I've been fighting just to survive. Killing demons just to survive. Finding food just to survive. That's it. That's all there's ever been."
Emil nodded slowly. His expression was strange, not pitiful, exactly, but something close to it. Something that looked almost like understanding.
"What if it didn't have to be like that?"
Jax stared at him.
"What if food, money, rent, haircuts—all that stuff you've been scraping for your whole life—what if you could just... have it?" Emil's voice was smooth, persuasive. The voice of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. "What if you could be one of those Center City guys? Eat the top-shelf stuff. Wear nice clothes. Walk down the street without worrying about where your next meal is coming from."
Jax felt something twist in his chest. Want. Raw, desperate want for something he'd never let himself imagine.
"And then," Emil continued, "once you're not worried about needs anymore, once the survival stuff is handled, you could actually figure out what you want. For the first time in your life, you could think about the future without it being a question of whether you'll have one."
Jax's mouth was dry. "What... what would I have to do?"
"Join the DCB." Emil spread his hands. "Get paid good money, real money, not pocket change. Get a place to stay, somewhere clean and safe. Get food whenever you want it, whatever you want. Get access to the best medical care in the city, including research into how to slow down or stop the degradation your ability is causing."
He leaned closer.
"All we ask in return is that you let us study you; figure out how your ability works, how to help you control it, and that you help us kill demons. That's it. That's the whole deal. We help you, you help us. Everybody wins."
Jax could feel himself salivating. Actually salivating, like a dog being shown a steak. Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever needed, right there, being offered to him on a silver platter.
But.
"What if I say no?"
Emil blinked. Then he laughed; hard, loud, that golden-retriever bark of amusement.
"Say no? Oh, that's good. That's really good." He wiped at his eyes, still chuckling. "Kid, you were operating as an unlicensed demon hunter without a contract. That's a felony. You destroyed private property, a lot of private property. That's another felony. And you're a Wired who just demonstrated a completely unprecedented ability that makes you a potential threat to public safety." He grinned. "If you say no, you get arrested. Right here, right now. And then we study you anyway, except you're in a cell instead of an apartment, and instead of getting paid, you get three meals a day of whatever slop the prison cafeteria is serving."
He laughed again, like this was the funniest thing in the world.
Jax didn't laugh.
Something about the way Emil said it, so casual, so cheerful, made his skin crawl. This wasn't an offer. This was a trap with nice curtains. Say yes and you're a pet. Say no and you're a prisoner. Either way, they owned him.
He felt his muscles tense. His eyes flicked to the door. If he moved fast, if he caught Emil off guard, maybe he could—
Emil's eyes flared.
It was subtle, just a slight brightening of that purple glow, there and gone in less than a second. But Jax saw it. And in that same second, he heard footsteps in the hallway outside.
A DCB worker walked past the open door, carrying a massive tray of food. Steak. Mashed potatoes. Something green that was probably a vegetable. The smell hit Jax like a punch to the gut; real food, hot food, the kind of food he hadn't eaten in months.
Another worker followed, talking loudly into a cell phone. "—yeah, direct deposit hit this morning. Twelve hundred for the week, can you believe it? I'm thinking about getting that new TV, the flat-screen one—"
Twelve hundred dollars. For a week.
Jax turned back to Emil.
Emil's eyes were normal again. That pleasant purple, no brighter than before. He was smiling that same friendly smile, like nothing had happened, like he hadn't just done... whatever he'd just done.
"So," Emil said. "What do you say?"
Jax looked at the door. At the fading smell of steak. At the charts on the screen showing his shortened lifespan. At the man with purple eyes who was offering him everything he'd ever wanted with one hand and holding a knife behind his back with the other.
"Okay," he heard himself say. "Where do I sign?"
Emil's face split into the biggest grin yet. "Excellent."
He stood up, grabbed Jax's hand, and shook it vigorously; pumping it up and down like they'd just closed a business deal, which, Jax supposed, they had.
Then Emil pulled a radio from his coat pocket and clicked it on.
"Zion? You there?"
A burst of static, then that deep, young voice from before. "Yes sir. What is it?"
"Round up the others and meet me in the briefing room. We've got good news." Emil winked at Jax, those purple eyes glittering. "The DCB just grew by one."
He clicked off the radio and clapped Jax on the shoulder.
"Welcome to the team, kid. This is going to be fun."
Jax stood there, Emil's hand warm on his shoulder, the taste of a decision he couldn't take back sitting heavy on his tongue.
Everything he'd ever wanted. Food. Money. Safety. A future, however short it might be. All of it, right there, in the palm of his hand.
So why did he feel so strange?
It was a feeling he couldn't name, sitting somewhere beneath his ribs. A weight. A wrongness. Like he'd just stepped into a trap and heard the click of the mechanism but hadn't felt the teeth yet.
Everything you ever wanted, he thought. Just like that.
Is that what you really wanted?
He didn't have an answer.
He followed Emil out of the lab.