Chapter 160: Victory
Lucas hit the dirt of his own mind so hard it rattled his vision, though he didn't consciously register the moment he'd been pushed. One instant he was braced, ready—then a violent force slammed into him, sending him skidding across the leaf-littered floor of his inner world.
Seeing that his best attack only pushed the werewolf back a bit, Tony's consciousness broke apart into motion. Not a man. Not a voice. Just a streak of black-green biolight, jagged and frantic, zipping between the towering trunks of the memory-forest like a roach scrambling for shelter the second the kitchen lights flick on.
Lucas did not chase.
He charged.
His body blurred at the edges—one heartbeat forming his shape, the next stretching it into something blurry and terrible. In the space between breaths, the werewolf simply was, appearing among the trees like a tear in the fabric of the world. Wherever he passed, bark exploded outward in splinters; shadows curled to avoid him; the forest rippled and bent as if the mindscape itself recognized the threat he was after and wanted the parasite cornered.
Tony darted desperately, teleporting in short, panicked bursts through fragments of Lucas's memories.
Emily's laugh flickered beside him—warm, bright, gone in an instant.
A nightmare-vision of claws dripping warped into view.
A young Lucas bundled in winter clothes, laughing as snowflakes clung to his lashes.
Another scream, another flash, another door slammed behind Tony as he fled from scene to scene.
The parasite hacked through the recollections like someone forcing open doors to rooms they weren't meant to enter, searching frantically for any gap, any fissure, any safe burrow where Lucas's fury couldn't follow.
But Lucas was done.
In three massive, ground-shaking strides, he overtook him.
A huge clawed hand—fur bristling, muscles coiling with predatory certainty—closed around Tony's shape. The parasite wasn't a person anymore but a writhing mass of vine, nerve-light, and oily consciousness. It let out a shriek layered with metallic distortion, with Darren's voice underneath it and something older, uglier beneath that. It thrashed in Lucas's grip like an engine stuffed with something alive and panicking.
"Impossible—" the thing spat, its voice fracturing mid-syllable, glitching as though the mindscape itself couldn't parse its language. "You're not right. You shouldn't— you shouldn't—"
Lucas did not bother replying.
He squeezed.
The world reacted first. Trees folded inward, pulled by invisible gravity toward the epicenter of Lucas's wrath. The sky above cracked in a jagged web like a pane of ice hit with a hammer. The ground trembled as though a giant had stepped onto it.
Tony's essence convulsed, fibers snapping like overstrained wires.
"You think you're winning?" Tony gasped out, voice hitching between a choke and a laugh. "You think this is—hah—victory?"
Lucas's claws tightened. Light burst between his fingers.
Tony's form tore apart. Strands snapped into glittering dust, dissolving into the surrounding dark like sparks whisked away by wind.
Then—
"You forgot about the girl."
Lucas froze.
What remained of Tony—one thin, nearly extinguished thread of consciousness—coiled itself toward him. It flickered weakly but its malice was focused, sharp, intentional.
"I left a fail safe in her… a little piece. Quiet. Sleeping." The voice rasped as though dragged through broken metal. "I tied it to myself."
A jagged, dying laugh.
"And the moment you ripped me free? It woke."
A brutal cold slammed through Lucas's body, down to the core of him.
Tony's whisper seeped through the collapsing forest, filling every falling tree and cracking sky with its venom:
"I'm not dying alone.
She's coming with me."
The parasite's final filament crumbled—scattered into dust, then smoke, then nothing.
The world shattered.
—
REAL WORLD
Lucas's body jerked on the apartment floor as if someone had rammed a live wire through his spine.
He sucked in air in a tearing, guttural gasp—like someone who'd been dropped into deep water and clawed their way back to the surface with pure will. Fire raced along every nerve in his back. His neck throbbed raw and flayed, the skin feeling too hot, too tight, where Tony's threads had dug beneath it.
He forced his elbows under him. Pushed upright. Muscles trembling. Vision flickering between reality and ghost-impressions of the mindscape he'd just left.
Against the couch, Darren's body sat slumped.
His eyes were open but empty.
His jaw slack.
A perfect blackened circle scarred the side of his neck—directly where Tony's tether had anchored itself.
He was gone.
Lucas didn't allow grief to even brush against him. Not now. Not with the terror that had hooked into his gut like barbed wire.
He staggered across the room toward the jar on the table.
Inside, the blood had solidified into something that resembled volcanic rock—black, cracked, dead. The hive of vines inside had collapsed into ash, fragile and grey, no hint of pulse or whisper left.
Tony was gone.
Good.
But Erica—
A spike of horror drove straight down Lucas's spine, so sharp his vision went white around the edges. He lurched toward the door, using the wall for balance as his legs trembled from the lingering damage of Tony's attempted takeover. Every step felt like hauling a dying battery through thick mud. Every second upright felt temporary.
Didn't matter.
He shoved open the stairwell door with his shoulder, nearly falling through it, taking the stairs in a stumbling, two-at-a-time descent. His breath came in harsh, tearing pulls; the edges of the world wavered as though he might slip back into his mind at any moment.
He forced his body forward anyway.
Hold on, Erica. I'm coming.
He burst into the parking lot—vision tunneling, limbs half-numb—and practically collapsed into the driver's seat. His hands shook violently around the keys.
The engine roared alive.
Lucas slammed his foot down and shot out of the lot, his neck burning, his head pounding, his heart hammering with a singular, desperate rhythm—
Please. Please don't let me be too late.