Chapter 135
- Baby -
James slid into the console chair, fingers moving with instinct. One monitor flickered. Another steadied. Slowly, the main feed sharpened into clarity: the mayor at the long table, his lawyer beside him, and city development planners seated around them.
The masked man spoke with his group, calm and emotionless, "We move to phase two on our next area of cleaning. It will be in the Old Town line of Jiyu-kaze."
"Pests remain there, the mayor interrupted, smiling as if he had told a joke. "A purge is regrettable, yes, but necessary for renewal. A better future…requires sacrifice."
My blood ran cold.
Pest!?
He is calling living, breathing people pests — like insects — ready to exterminate.
James scrolled through their database and found an adjacency map.
The red-highlighted zone was marked.
Jiyu-kaze old town district line.
Residential block.
Old neighborhoods.
Uncle's bakery and other shops
This is what his beautification showed before, but we didn't expect this. When we started, we believed it was greedy men trying to remove people from their homes, but this was murder.
James's voice cracked. "No—baby this is..."
"I know," I cut him off before he could finish.
"He plans on taking them out. This is not just his subject of land development and growth, it's murder."
All the children, elders, and people too stubborn to leave before the dome now stay trapped in their homes.
"Detonation crew has already been in place. The breach is only a matter of time—the purge itself. A natural disaster is what they will call it. To clean the place. Unquestionable."
An outside security guard gave information to the mayor.
He then leaned over and whispered urgently in the masked man's ear.
The masked man didn't speak — just nodded once and stood.
James froze up. "Baby...I know that posture. He's military or ex-military."
He has some kind of training. His energy was obedient enough to jump when someone asked, no matter who gave the command.
A Force regimen is operative.
One of the Bureaucracy's hidden enforcement branches.
I knew that, but I was unsure if James did; his dad was ex-military, so maybe.
My chest tightened with worry.
Not all of them were corrupted.
But some had made choices that could not be undone.
And then—
The woman behind them looked directly at the camera.
The camera in the room cut and went to black.
Instantly, after all of them followed.
"Something is wrong; we need to get out of here." James' whisper is an urgent rush.
The Soursence vibrated hard—not a warning, not a message, but an impact.
I felt the shockwave before we heard it.
Then—
BOOM.
Then the floor lurched—a sound like bones of the building snapping traveled through the walls. Ceiling tiles rattled.
And dust fell in soft clouds from the vents.
Alarms alerted, screaming.
The building was collapsing.
James grabbed my hand. "We need to move—now!"
I pulled back sharply, and he stumbled a step.
"No, the guards."
It is not as if he didn't care; he had a one-track mind to get us to safety, and I believed he spaced the guards.
The two guards are still asleep in this control room, where, for all we know, innocent people are. We couldn't leave them.
Smoke already leaked through the corridors. The ceiling above the hallway creaked in a low, sickly groan.
The guards are still unresponsive to their situation.
James didn't question once focused. He realized his mistake and urgently hoisted the larger one on his shoulder. I lifted the other, supporting him as if he were a backpack.
The ceiling buckled lower again, getting ready to fall through—a deep metallic scream as the metal cried out.
"We move," I breathed.
We ran down the stairs as plaster and dust burst from the walls in clouds. The building trembled, falling apart as if it would so escape this fleeing world.
The lobby doors blew open from the pressure when we hit them, flooding the lobby with light. We were finally outside, and we made it far enough from the building, dropping to our knees on the pavement. The third floor collapsed inward behind us.
People screamed in the street. Alarms wailed somewhere distant.
James lowered his guard gently to the sidewalk. I did the same, checking both their pulses.
They were alive and fine.
No one would know we saved them; they don't need to.
James exhaled, shaky, and met my eyes.
There was no I-told-you-so... Just a quiet fierce pride in his eyes.
We just didn't run out to save ourselves, but two others as well.
Duke, Micah, and Evan were at the rendezvous point, but they had started to make their way back, probably after the boom, no doubt. Eye wide, scanning for everyone and Josh.
Micah's words lingered like smoke in the air.
"He's still not back."
Everyone looked around, but no one moved at first.
The city around us still shook from the building's collapse; dust drifted like pale snow, and the sirens of the one available fire truck in our area echoed in the distance, like a memory rather than a sound. Evan's jaw locked tight, but his eyes—those gave him away.
Fear is buried under anger and worry, no doubt. Josh was the older brother, but Evan always fulfilled the role of an older brother, thanks to his reckless, destructive nature.
James looked toward the distant street that led to old Jiyu-kaze, where Uncle and Tomo were currently staying. Where children still played, ignorant and unaware, while other elderly adults and stubborn ones lay trapped. Time was running out.
There will be a place where the construction will be erased.
Duke saw it too.
"Let's go, we can't change anything standing here waiting for Josh, he will find us by following the portal. His voice remained still, but Evan's eyes flicked toward him. Measuring and preparing for whatever brewed under the skin.
Micah wiped dirt from her face. "We will see Josh again soon, and he will meet up with us.
Evan kept silent and turned away, hiding his expression, but we knew what was on his mind.
We always saw and felt everyone, whether they tried to hide from their emotions or not.
The ground trembled again in a minor quake.
Not from the collapsing walls of city hall but from below.
It was subtle at first—like a hum under our bones. The city pulsates—like someone knocking from under near us, asking permission to come in.
James's voice came out low. "The breach is active, somewhere close."
"But not open yet," I replied. "It's testing the membrane. Pressing between worlds."
Micah swallowed hard, trying to hold back her quickly fading hope. "How long until it completely tears open into our world?"
"Depends on what's feeding it and how large it is. The birth of the last portal had to have been working for some time under the radar, but once open—well, you saw how fast it grew and fed." Duke replied.
I already knew we didn't have long.
Someone was feeding it into life.
Someone is working with the city to destroy and cleanse the area.
Someone who believes their sacrifice was holy for the greater good.
Someone like—
Her.
Her name tag pin gave her away at the previous meeting at City Hall. Marisela Quinn.
The person she showed us here was far different from what we witnessed on the camera and what we see now—the polished, pristine human—now stood a woman by the forming portal waiting for its birth into our world.
Her coat, once crisp white, now shimmered like the inside of a pearl—smooth, perfect, and wrong, catching the light that wasn't there.
She extended her hand outward, palm resting above the trembling asphalt where the world pulsed.
The demons themselves must have hired her, no doubt! The mayor's lawyer, who I am guessing had a hand in this possession, as she can easily summon demons from the other side.