CHAPTER 35: The Fugitive Part 6

CHAPTER 35: The Fugitive Part 6

The cold light of the morgue reflected off the stainless steel surfaces. Fénix fastened the last buttons of his shirt, his fingers moving mechanically over the fabric while his mind navigated the memory of that place between life and death. It wasn't a dream. It was a fresh wound in his psyche.

The void had been absolute. A darkness so dense it seemed to have weight, pressing against his consciousness from all angles. There was no up or down, just an infinite, cold nothingness. And then, a light. Not a warm or divine light, but a clinical, cruel spotlight illuminating the only other figure in that limbo.

Adam didn't float; he occupied the space. His smile was a white scar in the gloom, too wide, too full of teeth that seemed sharpened on purpose.

"Welcome to the threshold, Fénix," his voice didn't come from a point, but resonated inside Fénix's own skull, as if it had always been there. "I'm pleased you've arrived... though, let's be honest, your transit options were rather limited."

Fénix tried to scream, struggle, but his being was pure consciousness, trapped in a form that didn't respond. The gravity of nothingness crushed him, an immense slab of absence.

"Where the hell am I?" he managed to project the thought, a wave of rage and pure terror into the void. "And why that idiot grin?"

Adam's laughter was the crackling of dry bones on a silent night. He took a step forward, and the light followed him, distorting his silhouette.

"It's simple. You're dead. Clinically, irreversibly, amusingly dead. Well, we were dead. We share rent in this apartment, how cute. But I, being the charitable soul that I am, bring you an offer. Two paths. Clear. Consequential."

Fénix felt a chill that had no body to manifest it. Distrust was a knot in his essence.

Adam raised a finger, long and pale.
"Option one: we rot together. An eternity of this. Silence. Nothing. A fitting end for the great Fénix Rogers. A hero who died as he lived: causing trouble and leaving a mess. Your legend will be... well, non-existent. But who cares, you'll be dead."

He let the concept sink in, enjoying the silent panic emanating from Fénix.

He raised a second finger.
"Option two: I stitch up that melodramatic little hole in your heart, I return you to the world of tax-payers... with one tiny condition. You accept the pact. Full moon. Fusion. You lend the body, I lend the... persistence. The whole premium survival package."

"I'd rather rot," Fénix growled, rebellion his last bastion. "Before I become your puppet, your personal monster."

Adam sighed, a theatrical exaggeration.
"Always with the drama, dear host. But let's do the math. Do you really want to abandon everything? Marcus. Enid... oh, Enid. You'd leave her alone with this mess. And your life... all that unused rage. Because don't forget: if you go, I go with you. And I have no intention of spending eternity in this boring void with you."

The silence that followed was deeper than the darkness itself. Adam didn't press. He just waited. And Fénix, trapped in his pride and his fear, felt the image of Enid bearing his failure, of his team shattered, overriding his stubbornness. Finally, with a resentment he savored like poison, he yielded.

"Fine," the concession was a bitter, defeated thought. "I accept. But this is not an alliance. This is... prison."

Adam's smile widened to inhuman limits, a spectacle of pure triumph.
"I knew you'd see reason! Well, the light at the end of the tunnel was me, but you get the metaphor. Now... hold on tight. This isn't going to feel good."

A white, absolute pain then tore through the nothingness. It wasn't the pain of a body, it was the pain of a soul being forcibly mended, soldered back to the flesh with the white-hot iron of the pact.

Fénix blinked, back in the morgue. The memory of the phantom pain made his hand tremble slightly as he fastened the last cuff button. He looked at his reflection in the metallic surface of a shelf. The eyes looking back were his, but now he knew there was something else looking through them. Something that had signed a contract in the darkness, with his own life as currency.

He put on his jacket, feeling the weight of the agreement on his shoulders, heavier than any weapon or armor. Resurrection had a price, and he had just begun to pay it.

The break room on the 41st floor was sunk in a heavy silence, broken only by the faint hum of the refrigerator and the occasional clink of a spoon stirring coffee. The evening light filtered through the windows, bathing everything in orange tones and lengthening the shadows of the two occupants.

Vanessa held her mug with both hands, as if seeking warmth in the porcelain, but her gaze was lost in the void, fixed on the pattern of the acrylic table. Lucian, sitting across from her, took intermittent sips of his black coffee, too focused on the bitter liquid to break the ice that had formed between them.

Forty-eight hours had passed since the incident at the Berghain. Forty-eight hours since they had recovered their leader's shattered body from the temporary morgue set up in the club's basement.

Lucian was the first to yield to the weight of the silence. He set his cup down on the table with a sharp tap that made Vanessa blink and look up.

"Someone will have to take command," he said, his voice rough from disuse and tension. "Enid won't leave the team without a captain for long."

Vanessa pressed her lips together, looking away toward the city stretching beyond the glass.

"And what do you suggest? A vote?" she asked, with a hint of bitterness. "You or me? Because there are no other options. Marcus... Marcus isn't well. I saw him in the infirmary. He's a wreck. And Fénix..." Her voice broke on the name, and she swallowed hard. "Fénix is dead."