The morning sunlight filtered through the heavy hotel curtains, piercing the gloom with beams of golden dust that forced Lief to open his eyes slowly, dragging his consciousness back to the surface from the depths of a dreamless sleep.
The room was submerged in silence.
Moved by an instinct that hadn't quite woken up yet, he turned his head on the pillow to look at the other side of the bed.
It was empty.
On the white sheets only a faint trace of wrinkles remained and the echo of another person's body temperature, a phantom warmth that was already dissipating quickly.
Fay was gone.
She had left with the same discretion with which she had arrived, leaving no note or trace, as if the night before had been a shared hallucination.
Lief sat up, stepping on the carpet with bare feet, and walked to the window to throw open the curtains.
The dazzling daylight invaded the space instantly, making him squint as he watched how, down below, the traffic was beginning to thicken and the city was waking up for a new cycle.
He didn't stop to think about where Fay had gone, nor what would become of her in the uncertain future she had chosen. Everything that happened the night before, that strange and silent connection, had been for her a necessary farewell, a physical confirmation, or perhaps the final stage of a rebirth ritual.
And that was enough.
He went into the bathroom to take a quick shower and change clothes, washing away the last vestiges of Florida.
When he went out into the hallway dragging his suitcase, the door to the adjoining room opened at that precise instant, revealing his mother, who despite her usual elegance, could not hide the slight bluish tone of tiredness under her eyes.
"Good morning..."
"Good morning, Mom."
They shared a simple breakfast at the hotel restaurant before heading directly to the airport to catch the first flight back.
After several hours in the air, the plane finally landed in the city they knew.
During the drive home, Sarah drove with mental autopilot engaged, while Lief, sitting in the passenger seat, watched the everyday urban landscape pass by with relaxation.
Upon arrival, the house welcomed them with silence, his father had evidently left for the company early in the morning, and his three little sisters must still be prisoners at school.
Sarah left the car keys on the entryway furniture and let out a long sigh.
"Lief, honey, I still have to stop by the law firm to take care of some matters," she said looking at him apologetically. "Would you mind making lunch for yourself?"
"No problem, don't worry."
Sarah went upstairs quickly to change clothes and, a few minutes later, left again in a hurry, leaving Lief as the sole inhabitant of the place.
Enjoying the solitude, he went to the kitchen and took two slices of bread out of the refrigerator, assembling a simple sandwich with a slice of cheese and several generous layers of ham, and poured himself a large glass of Coca-Cola with ice.
Holding the plate in one hand and the glass in the other, he walked to the living room and dropped heavily onto the sofa cushions, enjoying having absolutely nothing to do.
He took the remote control and turned on the TV.
The screen came to life with a burst of saturated colors, broadcasting a fitness commercial at full volume.
In the image, a woman with jet-black hair, tied back in a high ponytail, looked at the camera with a contagious smile. Her body was a masterpiece of toned curves and shiny brown skin, where every muscle line flowed with a beauty full of power.
"Hi everyone! I'm Sue!"
She spoke with an energetic voice, backed by dynamic background music and a group of students behind her who seemed equally injected with caffeine.
"Do you still feel bored and heavy with the same old routine? It's time to move and wake up that body!"
Following her own slogan, the camera angle changed and she began to demonstrate a series of high-intensity fitness moves.
Every jump and flex had both explosive strength and aesthetic grace, and the artificial sweat slid down her cheeks, shining under the studio spotlights as if it were nectar.
It was a promotional ad for an intensive course called "Sue's Fat Burning Storm".
Lief took a big bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly with an interested expression as he watched the screen.
At the end of the ad, Sue winked playfully at the camera, and the enrollment hotline and the course website flashed on the screen in flashy letters.
"Remember, change starts now!"
Taking a last long swig of his soda, he dropped the remote control onto the cushions and leaned back deep into the sofa, allowing his body to sink as the ad ended and gave way to the monotonous drone of a midday newscast.
This instant of peace, a rare silence completely his own in an empty house, brought him a relaxation he hadn't experienced in a long time... however, deep in his paranoid and experienced mind, it reminded him that the calm was only the prelude to the storm.
Sooner or later, and in the most diverse ways, they would find their way to his door without needing an invitation.
He finished the remains of his sandwich in a couple of big bites.
Sitting around daydreaming in the living room wasn't his style; inaction made his skin itch.
He stood up, stretching his muscles with a groan of satisfaction, cracked his neck to release tension, and walked down the hallway toward the door of the storage room at the back.
Pushing the door open and entering, he noticed that the usual smell of leather mixed today with the distinctive scent of burnt tin and hot metal after soldering.
His gaze was immediately drawn to a small, hunched figure in front of the main workbench.
Victor was turning his back to him, leaning dangerously over a surface full of tools, stripped wires, and metal components.
He was wearing protective glasses that were comically large for his face and held a soldering iron with the precision of a surgeon, concentrating on joining the points of a circuit board.
The boy seemed so completely immersed in his own world of engineering and sparks that he didn't even perceive that Lief had entered the room.
"Victor?" Lief asked, leaning against the doorframe. "Aren't you supposed to be at school right now?"
"W-WHAAAAT!"
The boy jumped in his chair as if he had been given an electric shock, his hand shook violently, and the hot tip of the soldering iron passed millimeters from burning his fingers.
He hurriedly placed it on the stand, adjusted the glasses that had slipped down, and turned around with wide eyes.
Upon recognizing Lief, the panic instantly transformed into a radiant smile.
"Lief! You're back early! Don't worry, now is the extracurricular activities time, the school really encourages us to develop our own hobbies at home."
Nodding slowly, accepting that answer without probing too much, Lief approached until his shadow fell over the workbench.
His gaze drifted from the wires to an object that stood out among the clutter: a finished product resting on a velvet cloth.
It was a glass sphere, small, approximately the size of a closed fist, filled with a transparent liquid that emitted a faint and beautiful silver halo under the light of the desk lamp.
The top of the sphere was crowned by a complex firing mechanism, an amalgam of metal with several diodes and touch buttons.
"Ah, that's right, look at this!" Victor exclaimed, following his gaze and lifting the device with reverent hands and eyes shining with pride. "It's a 'Holy Water Bomb'! I designed and built it based on the data about 'purification energy' you gave me last week, combining the principles of accelerated water electrolysis with a high-pressure gas injection system to maximize dispersion."
A Holy Water Bomb?
Raising an eyebrow, Lief took the object.
It had a satisfying, dense weight in his hand.
Although the sacred energy emanating from the liquid was subtle and not too potent by his standards, the engineering was impeccable.
He studied it for a few moments in silence and immediately marveled that Victor's design was diabolically ingenious, it not only featured a programmable delay fuse, but he had even integrated a module for remote detonation.
This boy's capacity for learning and application bordered on terrifying, he had only provided him with abstract concepts and vague theories, and Victor had materialized a functional weapon.
"Not bad, Victor... In fact, it's much better than I imagined," admitted Lief, looking at the boy's face, which had blushed slightly at the praise.
A strange sensation of pride settled in his chest upon realizing how absurd it was to have a ten-year-old boy developing ammunition against demons, but he had to admit that it was terribly convenient.
With a final gesture of approval, he carefully placed the bomb on the side weapon shelf, aligning it next to the pieces he himself had modified, officially accepting that small lethal sphere as the new member of his arsenal.
"Since we have the ranged artillery covered with your holy water grenades," he murmured rubbing his chin as his thoughts began to branch out, "I think we need something more immediate and adaptable to deal with close combat situations."
He dragged a chair over with his foot, sat next to Victor's workbench, and took a pencil and a sheet of scratch paper that were resting among the wires.
"Look at this," he said, drawing with quick strokes the approximate outline of a sawed-off shotgun on the paper. "Standard firearms are useless against incorporeal entities, but if we change the nature of the ammunition, the story changes. I was thinking of a mixture of coarse-grain rock salt, crushed silver, and high-concentration holy water, all encapsulated in special cartridges to take advantage of the wide dispersion coverage of a shotgun."
!
Victor's eyes lit up instantly.
"Exorcist dispersion shotgun shells! That idea is absolutely genius!"
He snatched the pencil from his hand with excitement, and began to scribble technical details and chemical notes next to Lief's crude sketch.
"The inside of the casing will mandatorily need a layer of anti-corrosive Teflon coating, otherwise, the high concentration of holy water will react with the brass and erode the metal before you can shoot. And to increase lethality and adherence to the ectoplasmic structure of spiritual bodies, we can add a suspension of blessed silver dust to the mixture! The proportion of the chemical propellant also needs to be recalculated to guarantee that the projection speed and dispersion area are optimal without bursting the barrel!..."
Watching him write a series of complex formulas on the paper at full speed, Lief nodded with deep satisfaction.
Collaborating with geniuses really saved an immense amount of effort.
"The defensive aspect is just as critical," he added, taking advantage of the creative momentum. "We need some kind of portable device capable of generating a temporary barrier. It doesn't need to have a massive range, as long as it can cover the user and withstand one or two direct attacks from a spirit, it will be enough to save a life."
"A portable electromagnetic barrier generator!"
Victor almost jumped out of his chair, his brain operating like a supercomputer that had just received a new set of data, instantly beginning modeling and mental calculation.
"We can use a high-density lithium polymer battery pack as a power source, and channel it through a voltage boost module to charge a bank of ultra-large capacity farad capacitors! When the trigger is activated, we will instantly release all that electrical energy, generating a high-frequency oscillating pulse electromagnetic field through an annular emitter. Theoretically, this field should be capable of repelling and physically interfering with the cohesion of the vast majority of negative energy spiritual bodies!"
The more he spoke, the more excited he got, to the point that the words could barely keep up with the pace of his ideas.
He abruptly dragged his laptop toward him, opened 3D modeling software, and his hands became blurs over the keyboard, typing commands at an inhuman speed.
In a matter of seconds, a digital prototype of a complex device, full of coils and emitters, began to rotate on the screen.
"..."
Lief observed the model of the barrier generator, which looked like it was taken from a science fiction movie, and then looked at the fanatic face of the young genius, feeling that his small agency was accelerating at full speed toward a strange direction.
However, just when both were leaning in front of the screen, discussing intensely, the watch on Victor's wrist emitted a sharp and insistent beep.
"Ah! No, no, no!"
Victor woke from his trance and looked at the time on his wrist and an expression of terror replaced his confidence.
"My mom told me that if I didn't return home for dinner at six o'clock, I was dead!"
He began to hurriedly gather his backpack and his scattered tools, moving with panic, but his eyes remained fixed with reluctance on the unfinished design plans on the screen.
"Lief, I promise you that tonight I will draw the preliminary circuit diagram of the barrier generator before sleeping! Tomorrow without fail I will bring it to show it to you!" he shouted while slinging the backpack over his shoulder.
Having said that, he shot out the workshop door like a rocket, and disappeared.
The workshop recovered its usual tranquility, leaving Lief alone again.
He took the sketch from the table, observing the design of the "Dispersion Shotgun", which was now almost unrecognizable under the dense notes, corrections, and formulas that Victor had added in the margins.
"Woof!"
With that bark, Lief lowered his gaze and saw Sparky, who had popped his head up by the table, watching with curiosity.
"Easy," Lief told him, placing the paper on the table with a half smile. "Victor will come looking for you again tomorrow, that kid can't stay away from you."
"Woof!"
________
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