The transition from the clinical silence of the High Court to the chaotic, beep-laden atmosphere of the ICU was jarring for the three agents. They stood in the shadows of Mrs. Drustin's room, their spectral forms vibrating with an unnatural frequency that made the hospital's fluorescent lights flicker and hum.
Mrs. Drustin's eyes fluttered open, the pupils blown wide with the trauma of her fall and the heavy sedation in her veins. She expected to see the white light of heaven or the darkness of the grave; instead, she saw three figures that didn't belong to the world of the living.
She saw Shetan, whose shadow seemed to move independently of his body; Zippo, whose reattached hand twitched with a mechanical rhythm; and Gerry, whose eyes held a cynical, ancient weight. To a woman balanced on the edge of death, they didn't look like relatives—they looked like the Fates themselves.
A gasp caught in her throat, a sound of pure, instinctive terror. Her heart monitor spiked into a frantic, high-pitched rhythm. Before she could scream, her consciousness buckled under the weight of their presence, and she slumped back into a dead faint.
"Great work, Shetan," Gerry hissed, stepping back into the darker corner of the room. "You look so much like a 'long-lost cousin' that you literally scared her back into a coma."
Two nurses rushed in, checking the monitors and Mrs. Drustin's vitals. They looked toward the three agents, who had adjusted their auras to appear as solid, mourning humans.
"You three need to step out," the head nurse said firmly, her voice strained. "She's in no condition for visitors, even family. You said you were her distant relatives from out of state? You can wait in the lounge, but you're over-stimulating her."
"Of course," Zippo said, her voice a practiced, velvet lie. "We just... we were so worried about our dear aunt. We'll be right outside."
They retreated to the hallway, pacing the linoleum floors with a restless, predatory energy. They weren't there to mourn; they were there to harvest.
An hour later, the nurses allowed them back in, though they remained by the door. Mrs. Drustin had regained consciousness, her eyes glassier this time, but her mind was anchored by a singular, burning purpose.
She didn't look at the three "relatives." She looked at the nurse, her voice a cracked, dry whisper. "My boy... Cael. He's... he's dead, isn't he? I saw the car... I saw him stop moving."
The nurse took her hand, a look of professional pity on her face. "He's alive, Mrs. Drustin. He's on a ventilator—oxygen is doing the work for him right now—but the doctors say he's stable. He's fighting. He's going to be fine."
A sob broke from the woman's chest—a sound of such profound, agonizing relief that it made the three agents flinch. They had spent eons in the Hellos, where relief was a forgotten concept. To witness it in its rawest form was like being burned by cold fire.
"He's alive," Mrs. Drustin wept, closing her eyes. "My Cael is still here."
The three agents watched her from the foot of the bed, their eyes narrowed.
"She loves the boy, that's clear," Shetan whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the machines. "But that's not what we're here for. We need to know why the boy—or the mother—didn't spit on the name of Marriane"
"Wait for the moment," Gerry replied, her eyes fixed on the photograph of Cael on the bedside table. "Once she's calm, we ask the question."
Gerry stepped closer to the bed, her spectral eyes narrowing as she mimicked the concerned expression of a family member. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, one that seemed to vibrate the very IV bags hanging beside the bed.
The Interrogation"We know you lived across the hall from them, Auntie," Gerry said, the lie rolling off her tongue like silk. "The Thornveil family. People say they were a nightmare, but you and Cael stayed. They say you were... close. How were you really related to them? Did they owe you something? Or did you owe her?"
Mrs. Drustin's breath hitched. At the mention of the name Thornveil, the monitors beside her bed gave a sharp, frantic chirp. A memory, jagged and terrifying, surged through the fog of her sedation.
She saw him. A man draped in clothes as dark as a moonless night, his face obscured by a heavy cowl that seemed to swallow the hospital light. He had appeared in her apartment weeks ago, standing over her while Cael slept. His voice had been a cold blade against her spirit.
"If you value the breath in your lungs and the heartbeat of your son," the shadow had hissed, "you will bury the Thornveil name in the back of your throat. To anyone who asks—neighbor, police, or anyone—you know nothing. You saw nothing. You are nothing to them."
The threat had been so absolute that it had felt like a physical weight on her chest ever since.
Mrs. Drustin looked up at the three agents. She saw the unnatural stillness in Shetan's posture and the way Zippo's eyes didn't seem to reflect the room. She realized with a jolt of primal instinct that these were the "anyone" the man in black had warned her about.
Slowly, her terrified expression began to twist. A smile, wide and unhinged, stretched across her pale face. Then, a dry, rattling sound erupted from her throat.
"Relationship?" she croaked, and then she began to laugh.
It wasn't a laugh of joy; it was a high-pitched, screeching cackle that echoed off the sterile walls of the room. She threw her head back, her body jerking against the restraints of the bed.
"The Thornveils! The devils! They're in the walls! They're eating the sky!" she shrieked, her eyes rolling back until only the whites were visible. She began to babble in nonsensical rhymes, thrashing her arms and pointing at the empty air. "Cael is a bird! I'm a fish! We're all swimming in the soup of the Devil's kitchen!"
Shetan recoiled, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of a blade that wasn't there. "What is this? Did her brain snap from the fall?"
"She's playing us," Zippo hissed, looking toward the door as the sound of running footsteps grew louder. The nurses were coming back, alerted by the commotion. "She's hiding behind a mask of madness."
"Or someone got to her first," Gerry muttered, her eyes darting to the shadows in the corner of the room. "She's terrified, and she'd rather look insane than tell us the truth."
As the medical team burst into the room to sedate the 'hysterical' patient, the three agents were forced to retreat into the hallway once more. They had come for the truth, but they had found a wall of laughter.