Two weeks had scabbed over the raw nerves left by the Ames household. The routine was a soothing, if boring, balm. School was a predictable drone of lectures and hallway chatter. Zach was a ghost story from another school district. Marco and Cedric had forged an easy alliance, their bond cemented in the aftermath of alleyways and concrete rooms. Marco's fear had morphed into a wary, steadfast loyalty. Cedric's calm had become a familiar anchor.
Ace kept his tabs on Carl through sporadic, careful texts. The replies were slow but steady, and the tone was shifting from bewildered ("Someone left a new sketchbook on my desk?") to cautiously optimistic ("Joined the audio/visual club. It's quiet."). Healing, in its way.
In the void left by the crisis, Ace's focus had bled into other channels. His gaming had improved—not to the point of being good, but to where losing was a complex, fun puzzle rather than a frustrating slaughter. He analyzed his own failed strategies with the same detached intensity he used to assess a threat. It was a pale substitute for the real thing, but it kept the tactical part of his mind from rusting shut.
This particular morning, that restlessness was a physical itch under his skin. The alarm screamed. Downstairs, his mother's voice cut through the floorboards. "ACE! If you're not down here in two minutes, I'm pouring your coffee into the plant!"
He groaned, peeling himself from the bed. The familiar routine felt like moving through syrup.
In the kitchen, the world was all comforting, mundane scents: brewing coffee, butter sizzling in a pan. Sophie stood at the stove, her back to him, wielding a spatula like a scepter. She placed a perfect, fluffy omelette and a glass of milk in front of him as he slumped into his chair.
He picked up his fork, the world still blurry at the edges. "Can't I just skip today?" he mumbled around a yawn.
"You know the answer," Sophie said, not turning from the sink.
"Oh, come on, Mom. Pleeeeease? Just for today? I'll do all the dishes for a week." He injected the whine with maximum, practiced patheticness.
Sophie remained a fortress. "No means no. Your attendance is hanging by a thread as it is. You're going."
Ace stabbed his omelette, the brief negotiation concluded. He ate in a half-awake daze, the taste of eggs and cheese barely registering. The peace was absolute. It was safe. It was warm.
And it was slowly driving him out of his mind.
His fingers tapped a silent, arrhythmic beat against the Formica tabletop. His gaze drifted to the window, to the quiet street outside. Everything was in its place. It was the picture of recovered normalcy.
But for Ace, after the structured chaos of the hunt and the brutal clarity of the concrete room, this normalcy didn't feel like peace.
It felt like waiting.
The sound didn't start as a sound. It started as a vibration.
It traveled up through the foundations of the house, a deep, intestinal grumble that made the cutlery on the table shiver against the Formica. It was a frequency, not a noise. A specific, off-kilter rhythm of pistons firing out of sync and an exhaust pipe with a hole in it, chugging like the diseased heartbeat of a mechanical beast.
Ace froze, his fork clattering onto his plate.
Every other sense dialed down. The taste of eggs vanished. His mother's voice from the kitchen became distant radio static. His entire world funneled into that growing, familiar tremor in the air.
It was a sound from before. From memories smudged with campfire smoke and the cold sweat of fear. It was the sound of the gate between his two lives being kicked open.
He was out of his chair and sprinting for the front door before his conscious mind had fully processed the command.
"Ace?!" Sophie called after him, but he was already gone, the screen door slamming behind him.
He exploded onto the front lawn just as Cedric burst from his own house next door. They met in the middle of the street, two soldiers snapping to the same silent alert. No words were needed. Their faces mirrored the same stark realization, the same animal focus that had been absent for two peaceful weeks.
"Is that…?" Cedric breathed, his eyes scanning the empty street at the end of the block, searching for the source of the thunder.
Ace just nodded, his jaw tight. "Yeah. It's them."
And then it rolled into view.
It wasn't a vehicle; it was a statement. An old, boxy RV, once white, now wearing a geography of dirt, mud, and unidentifiable stains like battle scars. Red stripes, faded to the color of old blood, slashed across its sides. The tires were cakes of dried clay and gravel from forgotten backroads. It didn't drive down the peaceful suburban street so much as invade it, its grumbling engine a defiant roar against the morning quiet.
It rumbled to a halt a house away, and for a moment, there was only the sound of it ticking as it cooled, a dragon catching its breath.
The passenger door swung open first.
A man unfolded himself from the cab. He was tall—not just tall, but built on a scale that made the neat picket fences look like toys. 6'5" if he was an inch, a silhouette cut from granite and bad decisions. His hair was a wild, shocking cascade of light pink, the kind of color that didn't say 'dyed' so much as 'declared war on natural selection.' It was paired with a tight, black leather jacket studded with silver spikes across the shoulders—one of which was visibly bent. His bootcut jeans were frayed at the hem, and his scuffed cowboy boots hit the asphalt with a sound of finality. This was Axl. Chaos given human form and a driver's license.
He hadn't taken two steps before the driver's side door flew open.
The second man emerged with less theatrics and more weathered substance. He was also tall, maybe 6'3", but built with the dense, enduring strength of an old oak. His hair was a classic, no-nonsense mullet, brown and practical. He wore a blue flannel shirt so worn it was soft as gossamer at the elbows and cuffs, tucked into a pair of faded, tough grey cargo shorts—jorts that had seen more miles than most hiking boots. On his feet were a pair of ancient, rust-orange Converse, the soles worn perilously thin. This was Garath. Not a force of nature, but the immovable object it crashes against.
Axl's face, all sharp angles and a perpetual, mocking grin, lit up as he spotted them. He began swaggering forward, the spikes on his jacket catching the morning sun.
Ace didn't wait. A coiled-spring tension from two weeks of placid boredom released all at once. He broke into a sprint, covering the distance between them in seconds. He didn't yell. He just launched himself, a flying fist aimed not to maim, but to make a point.
The punch connected with Axl's jaw with a solid thwack.
Axl's head snapped to the side. He staggered back a single step, more from surprise than force. He touched his jaw, working it back and forth, and then that sharp grin returned, wider.
"Fuck you, Axl!" Ace shouted, the words bursting out with two weeks of pent-up frustration. "You promised! After the Cincinnati mess, you looked me dead in the eye and said, 'Next time for sure, kiddo.' You swore!"
Axl chuckled, a low, rasping sound. "Did I? Must've been the concussion talking."
"You're a fucking liar!"
"Your mom said no," Axl shrugged, the picture of mock innocence. "Can't argue with Sophie. She's scarier than a wendigo in a bad mood."
Cedric approached then, a smile of genuine relief on his face. "Axl. It's good to see you."
Axl turned, his presence seeming to suck up all the space on the sidewalk. "Cedric! Now this is a proper greeting. A little respect. Not like this feral gremlin who punches first." He jerked a thumb at Ace.
Ace just glared, but the fury was already cooling into a familiar, grudging warmth. He turned to Garath, who had ambled up, his expression one of weathered patience. Ace's eyes went wide with genuine horror. "What the hell happened to your hair?"
Garath ignored the question. His voice, when he spoke, was a slow, gravelly rumble, like stones turning in a creek bed. "How's my mom? And Darren?"
"Aunt Betsy's fine. Darren's at school, probably setting something on fire for science class," Ace replied, then immediately pointed again. "No, seriously. The mullet. Why?"
Cedric joined in, pointing. "Yeah, Garath. That's a… a choice."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Garath's lips. It was like watching a mountain crack. "Functional. Keps the back of my neck warm, doesn't get in my eyes." He looked past them, his gaze sweeping over the quiet street, the tidy houses. His eyes, a calm, assessing grey, didn't see suburbia. They scanned for sightlines, exits, shadows. The peace of the scene didn't relax him; it seemed to put him more on edge.
The laughter that followed Cedric's joke was real, a burst of warm sound in the cool morning. But as it faded, a different silence descended. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of minutes before. It was the thick, charged quiet of a gathering storm.
Ace looked from Axl's performative nonchalance to Garath's watchful stillness. They weren't here for a social call. They hadn't rolled in with the dawn just to catch up. The feeling settled in Ace's gut, cold and certain—a hunter's intuition.
The waiting was over.