Grayson heard Pete Rowan make a sound through his teeth—half hiss, half exhale, from holding back frustration for too long.

[As expected. They contacted the family first.]

"Explain." Grayson’s voice dropped half a register, settling into the low, controlled tone.

Pete Rowan exhaled, a little ragged.

[The Mecha Research Institute was hit tonight. A full breach. Every person inside, down to the basement levels—all dead. All of them who were in the building at the time. Dead.]

Grayson’s eyes narrowed and asked, "Was anything taken? Research data? Prototypes?"

[That’s the thing.] Pete Rowan’s confusion could be heard through the call. [Nothing. Not a single file, not a chip, not a component. They killed everyone and left everything untouched.]

Silence.

Grayson’s mind ran, sorting possibilities.

An attack on a Maxwell-affiliated research facility. Zero theft, which meant that the target wasn’t the data.

"All of them dead," Grayson said slowly, trying to confirm his theory, "but nothing stolen."

[Nothing stolen,] Pete Rowan confirmed Grayson’s speculations as his voice thinned. [But they found me searching the lower levels for someone after the clearing. I had no choice but to tell them who I was looking for.]

He didn’t need Pete Rowan to say the name.

"Lilianna is missing?"

[Yeah.]

Grayson rose from his seat in one fluid motion and stood by the window. The vast ocean and moonlight painted against his reflection on the glass—sharp jaw, silver eyes, black hair that fell just past his ears.

Behind that reflection, the room was dark. Behind the dark, the gears of his mind were already spinning at full speed.

"Why would they take Lilianna?" Grayson asked more of himself than Pete Rowan.

He had been receiving updates about the situation through Pete Rowan’s research report.

Lilianna Gringer had been placed in the institute under controlled conditions. Ostensibly for recovery, but the truth was, it was for observation.

Behavioral irregularities. Pheromone fluctuations that defied her baseline readings. Moments of disorientation that vanished as quickly as they appeared.

On the surface, it could have been dismissed as late post-traumatic stress from her military days. But Pete Rowan had suspected something deeper, and Grayson wouldn’t ignore Pete Rowan’s instincts when it came to these, these instincts saved them 100% the time during their military days.

Pete Rowan had run every test short of invasive tissue sampling. Blood work, pheromone panels, neural mapping, gene sequencing—all of it had come back with results that were stubbornly normal.

That was the problem.

Normal didn’t explain Lilianna’s episodes. Normal didn’t explain the way Lilianna’s eyes would go blank for seconds at a time, or the micro-tremors in her hands that her own body didn’t seem to realize.

[There must be something we missed,] Pete Rowan murmured, more to himself than to Grayson.

He replayed every decision he had made and found no errors, which only made the failure more maddening.

[I’ve done every analysis I can perform without taking flesh samples, and even those results suggested nothing wrong. Since they took her, there must be something. Whatever they wanted from her... It’s something our current methodology can’t detect.]

"They’ve upped their game." Grayson’s voice was flat, with a face devoid of all emotion.

Pete Rowan’s silence was enough to tell that he agreed with this logic, too.

"You said the military should have contacted me," Grayson said, circling back to what Pete Rowan said earlier.

The pieces were arranging themselves now—not into a picture he liked, making his headache worse.

[The Imperial Military Command was already notified about the breach the moment the facility exploded,] Pete Rowan said carefully.

[The rest was just standard protocol. They should have looped you in immediately—since Lilianna was placed at the institute under Maxwell Corporation’s discretionary authority, and your name is on the oversight documentation. Every legal channel pointed to you as the first point of contact.]

"But they didn’t call me."

[No.] A pause so tight it hummed. [They must’ve contacted Catalina and Geron Gringer directly. Informed them that their daughter had been held at a Maxwell-affiliated research facility and was now missing, presumed abducted.]

Grayson closed his eyes, pain already pounding hard on his head.

"Are they thinking we were holding her against her will?"

[Most likely. But more so that they think we were experimenting on her. Since their information about the previous drug incident came from us too...]

Bitterness filled Pete Rowan’s voice.

[Even more damning was that the military found our test logs of Lilianna. If taken out of context—with the dead bodies in the basement and a missing patient—I can see how they might reach that conclusion. But it’s still wrong not to inform you, and they should have verified with us before going straight to the family.]

"Are they out of their minds?" Grayson said, pursing his lips tightly.

Someone had made a deliberate choice to bypass Maxwell Corporation, to frame the narrative before Grayson could respond to it.

[I’d like to think it’s incompetence rather than malice,] Pete Rowan said, [but I’m not so optimistic with that—given that Hunter is moving personally.]

The name landed differently than the others.

General Xavier Hunter?

If Hunter was personally involved, the military wasn’t treating this as a routine jurisdictional matter. They were treating it as a crisis—or, worse, an opportunity to drag his name through the mud and elevate Hunter’s name.

[There’s more.] Pete Rowan said, cutting through his thoughts.

"What is it this time?" Grayson asked, and the flatness of his voice could have been flatter at this point.

[To summarize, the military is officially making a jurisdictional claim on the case. Since they’re treating it as a potential kidnapping and unauthorized human experimentation, they’re taking full control of the investigation. We can’t privately detain or monitor anyone, or privately investigate this anymore. Our hands are effectively tied.]

Grayson’s jaw tightened, and he asked gravely, "Are they still at the institute?"

[They’re here right now, as we speak.] Pete Rowan said lightly, as if he had had enough of these people listening in on their conversation. [Military investigators have the site locked down. And before you ask—yes. Hunter is here too.]

Grayson’s eyes narrowed. He thought that although Xavier would personally move, he would leave the process to his subordinates.

Which meant that Xavier being there was either because he was personally interested in Lilianna’s case, or someone above him was.

Either way, it meant that the situation was worse than Pete Rowan was putting into words—far worse.

"Tell them I’ll come over now," Grayson said, and cut the connection without waiting for a reply.

Grayson just took a deep breath to calm down when, somewhere, he could see one of the pearls in his bracelet dimming down.

And the moment it did—as if it had been waiting, patient and predatory, for the exact moment he was distracted—the pain hit.

The pain slammed into him like a battering ram behind the eyes.

Grayson’s hand shot to his nape, fingers digging into his skin there. He staggered against the window; the glass was cold against his forehead, cold against his palm.

His reflection stared back at him, but the reflection was warping, bending, as the world tilted on its axis. His reflection began to morph, making him throw up. He could only hang his head down and try to balance himself.

The black mole on his secondary gland felt like burning. It burned like a brand being pressed into living flesh, the skin around it flushing red as if infected.

He didn’t know that throughout this pain, his silver eyes began to flicker.

Silver, then red, silver, then red—

The colors traded places with the rhythm of a failing heartbeat.

That dimmed pearl on his bracelet completely turned black.

And the pain finally stopped.

Grayson slumped. His knees gave out, and he slid down the glass, his back dragging against the window until he hit the floor.

Sweat beaded along his hairline, his temples, the hollow of his throat.

His chest heaved.

He closed his eyes unconsciously.

○●○●

When his eyes opened again, they were still silver.

But the pupils had changed.

The round human irises had contracted into vertical reptilian slits. His hair had grown slightly.

’Grayson’ reached up and pushed the hair back with a slow, deliberate motion.

A grunt escaped his throat—low, resonant, vibrating with a frequency that didn’t belong to a human vocal cord.

His eyes were filled with rage.

’Grayson’ looked at the window. What was beyond the glass was irrelevant.

What mattered was the reflection: the face staring back, identical and yet fundamentally different.

What was reflected in the glass was the version of ’Grayson’ who had slightly shorter hair and normal silver eyes.

"Not only did you get Neville to date the stupid you," the voice that came out of Grayson’s mouth said, quiet, seething, addressing the reflection as if it could hear—as if somewhere behind those silver eyes, the real Grayson was locked in a room, listening, "you also got a gift from him?" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

A sharp, humorless laugh.

"Ha!" The sound cracked against the glass.

’Grayson’ leaned closer to the window, close enough for his breath to fog the surface, studying his own reflection with the contempt of someone examining a thief who had stolen something irreplaceable.

"All you did was take advantage of him. What did you even do?"