It was the twenty-eighth day.

The silence in the underground laboratory was absolute, thick, and suffocating. Without the hum of the massive machines, the basement felt exactly like what it had become: a cold, concrete tomb.

Roxy was barely clinging to the physical realm. Her heartbeat was incredibly slow, a faint, erratic flutter against her prominent ribs. She was unconscious far more than she was awake, her brain shutting down entirely to protect her from the catastrophic agony of starvation and untreated wounds.

Elias had completely given up on his grand experiment.

The older man sat on his wooden stool, his tweed coat hanging loosely over his hunched shoulders. He was staring at her bound, skeletal form, but the manic, obsessive light in his gray eyes had entirely burned out, replaced by a cold, bitter resentment.

Roxy was no longer his scientific breakthrough. She was just a broken, dying woman. A sick, rotting trophy serving as a permanent reminder of his absolute failure.

"You had the radiation," Elias muttered into the quiet dark, sipping from a chipped mug of black coffee. He looked at her with pure, unfiltered disgust. "But you lacked the conduit. You were nothing but a dead end. A complete waste of my time."

Roxy did not lift her head. Her chin rested heavily against her chest, her pale, cracked lips slightly parted as she pulled in shallow, rattling breaths. Her eyes were rolled slightly back beneath her half-closed, bruised eyelids.

"You will be dead by morning," Elias stated coldly, setting his mug down on the console.

He didn’t say it as a threat. It was a simple, clinical observation. Her organs were failing. The heavy steel chains holding her to the chair were practically the only things keeping her shattered skeleton from completely collapsing onto the floor.

But hearing those words did not trigger a final, desperate surge of panic.

Instead, Roxy felt a strange, beautiful peace wash over her battered soul.

The agonizing, clawing desperation to survive completely evaporated. She was so incredibly tired. The physical pain, the biting cold, and the relentless, crushing grief of losing her children slowly began to recede, replaced by a warm, heavy numbness.

Death was no longer a terrifying void. It was a doorway. It was the only escape from the concrete walls of the basement.

Roxy completely gave up on life, letting her consciousness untether from her ruined body. She closed her eyes, entirely surrendering to the dark.

As the basement faded away, her mind lovingly, desperately conjured the sensory memories of the universe she belonged to. She imagined the sharp, salty breeze of the Southern Seas blowing across her face.

She felt the heavy, suffocatingly safe warmth of Zarek’s draconic chest fire radiating against her back. She heard the soft, rumbling purr of a massive white tiger vibrating through the floorboards, and the gentle, icy touch of Northern snowflakes landing on her cheeks.

I am coming home, Roxy thought, her mind drifting peacefully into the abyss. I am coming back to you.

Elias pushed his stool back, the wooden legs scraping harshly against the concrete.

He walked over to a dark corner of the laboratory, returning a moment later carrying a massive, heavy roll of thick black plastic sheeting. He dropped it onto the floor beside the metal chair with a loud, hollow thud.

He wasn’t going to let her body rot in his workspace. He was going to discard her like trash before the sun came up.

****

Miles away, the slick, rain-soaked asphalt of the city highway violently vibrated under the crushing weight of a high-speed pursuit.

The late-night city traffic was sparse, but the few civilian drivers on the road violently swerved toward the shoulders, honking their horns in absolute terror as a convoy tore through the lanes.

Five massive, heavily armored black SUVs were speeding across the highway.

They were not driving like normal humans. They were maneuvering the cars with the terrifying, flawless, and deeply aggressive precision of apex predators running down a bleeding prey. They wove through the scattering civilian cars at catastrophic speeds, riding mere inches from one another’s bumpers in a perfect, unbreakable hunting formation.

The engines roared, entirely drowning out the sound of the city.

They did not use sirens. They did not slow down for intersections or red lights. The black tinted windows hid the occupants completely, but the intent radiating from the five vehicles was a pressure that made the surrounding air feel incredibly thin.

The lead SUV violently jerked its steering wheel, tires screeching in a deafening, smoking drift as it tore off the highway exit ramp. The other four vehicles mirrored the exact movement flawlessly.

They tore through the labyrinth of narrow, dark alleyways of the industrial district, entirely ignoring the speed limits and the structural confines of the streets.

With a final, synchronized screech of heavy rubber on wet pavement, the five black cars violently slammed on their brakes.

They parked in a tight, impenetrable barricade directly in front of a derelict commercial building housing a dusty, forgotten antique bookstore.

The headlights of the SUVs cut through the dark alleyway, illuminating the heavy, unmarked iron door at the back of the building. The engines idled, a low, mechanical growl that sounded eerily like a pack of starving wolves waiting for the command to strike.

***

Back in the suffocating depths of the basement, Elias reached into his tweed coat and pulled out a heavy ring of brass keys.

He stepped up to Roxy’s motionless form. She was entirely limp, her breathing so shallow it was practically non-existent. Elias unlocked the heavy steel band across her waist, letting it fall open with a loud metallic clatter. He quickly unlocked her ankles and her wrists.

Without the chains to hold her up, Roxy’s body completely collapsed. She slid off the metal chair, hitting the cold concrete floor like a pile of discarded, broken bones.

She did not flinch. She did not open her eyes.

Elias unrolled the heavy black plastic sheet, kicking it flat across the floor. He leaned down, grabbing Roxy roughly by the shoulders of her ruined, blood-stained silk nightgown, and violently rolled her onto the thick plastic.

"Nothing but a waste of my genius," Elias muttered, wrapping the heavy black material tightly around her waist and legs, preparing to bundle her entirely into a makeshift body bag.

He grabbed the heavy plastic near her shoulders, hauling her dead weight backward toward the wooden staircase that led up to the bookstore.

Roxy’s head lolled back, her dark, tangled curls sweeping across the filthy floor. She felt the jarring, painful bump of the first wooden stair against her spine, then the second. But the pain was distant, completely muted by the overwhelming, peaceful numbness pulling her toward death.

Elias dragged her up the narrow stairwell, his breathing heavy with the exertion. He reached the small landing at the top, his hand reaching out to grasp the brass doorknob that led into the main floor of the antique shop.

Before his fingers could even brush the metal, the door at the top of the stairs was slammed open.

Elias recoiled, throwing his arms up to shield his face from the flying wood, completely dropping Roxy’s plastic-wrapped body back onto the landing.

He opened his mouth, a scream of pure, human terror forming in his throat as a massive, towering shadow stepped into the ruined doorway.

Before he could even utter a single word.

The deafening, ear-shattering crack of a high-caliber gunshot instantly completely drowned out Elias’s scream.

A single, perfectly aimed projectile tore straight through the dark, striking Elias directly in the center of his forehead. The force of the impact snapped his neck violently backward. A spray of dark crimson painted the wallpaper behind him as his gray eyes rolled back into his skull.

The older man’s knees instantly buckled. He collapsed backward, tumbling entirely down the steep wooden stairs like a broken ragdoll, his lifeless body coming to a heavy, sickening stop at the bottom of the basement floor.

Roxy lay paralyzed on the dusty wooden landing, completely tangled in the heavy black plastic sheet.

The ringing in her ears from the gunshot was absolutely deafening. Her heart, which had been slowly fading into nothingness just seconds ago, suddenly seized with a massive, violent spike of adrenaline.

She lacked the physical strength to push herself up. She could barely turn her head.

Through the dim, flickering light of the stairwell, Roxy forced her heavy, bruised eyelids to open.

Men shoes stepped smoothly over the splintered remains of the doorframe. A towering, incredibly broad silhouette dropped smoothly to one knee directly beside her broken body.

Roxy’s breath hitched in her ruined throat.

The man reached down, his hands gently, reverently tearing the black plastic sheet away from her face. An intoxicating, and undeniably familiar heat radiated from his skin, completely cutting through the biting cold of her predicament.

Roxy stared up through her blurred, tear-filled vision.

Staring back down at her, glowing with absolute, murderous, and agonizingly beautiful golden light, were the eyes of a Dragon King.

Roxy’s pale, cracked lips parted, a single, disbelieving whisper escaping into the dark.

"Zarek?"