Mateo was already kneeling at the external junction box, fingers flying.He worked fast but not sloppy, ghosting systems instead of killing them outright.Lights inside flickered once, like the house taking a breath, then went dark.
“Clear,” Mateo said.“Temporarily.Let’s not get comfortable.”
Inside, the house felt wrong.
Not messy.Not abandoned.Wrong.
The air was stale, recycled too many times.Furniture sat in precise alignment, untouched by habit or personality.No photographs.No clutter.The kind of place someone slept in but never lived in.
Luca cleared rooms with practiced efficiency, every sense tuned sharp despite the ache pulling at his muscles.He moved carefully, not slower—controlled—each step measured so the pain didn’t steal precision.Elias took the stairs two at a time, hand light on the rail, Dominic covering their six without being told.
They found the locked door on the top floor.
It didn’t belong.
The wood was heavier, the frame reinforced, the lock industrial.Mateo crouched in front of it, tools already out.
“Someone didn’t want company,” he muttered.
“Which means whatever’s behind it mattered,” Dominic said.
The lock gave with a soft, reluctant click.
The smell hit first.
Sweet.Putrid.Thick.
Death.
Luca’s stomach clenched as they stepped inside.
Daniel Kovac sat slumped in his office chair, head tilted unnaturally to one side.His eyes were open but vacant, the glaze unmistakable.His hands were nailed through the wrists to the armrests, the wood split and darkened with dried blood.
His chest had been opened.
Not a single wound.Not a gunshot.This had been slow.Deliberate.Skin peeled back, ribs cracked, organs exposed and ruined with a patience that spoke of time and intent.
He hadn’t died quickly.
A piece of paper was nailed to his sternum, the metal pin driven deep enough to bite bone.
Tell your Covenant that lines go both ways.
The house clicked.
Not a lock.
A timer.
“Move,” Luca snapped.
They didn’t argue.
They ran.
The blast came seconds after they cleared the fence.Heat slammed into Luca’s back, the shockwave lifting him off his feet as the house detonated in a roar of fire and splintering timber.Windows across the street shattered in sympathetic screams.The night lit up like dawn.
They hit the ground hard, rolling, breath knocked from lungs.
