RUN!.
Chapter 8: RUN!.
Dante's heart was still hammering as he forced his breathing to slow. The Null Hounds were gone, the armored figure had vanished, and yet… his skin still tingled with energy.
His golden eyes flicked to Lyra. She was already moving, her body tense, reloading her weapon with practiced ease. Her face was unreadable, but he could see the calculations running behind those sharp green eyes.
She was re-evaluating him.
She had seen what he could do.
And she knew—whatever had been done to him, whatever experiment they had run—he had exceeded their expectations.
Dante exhaled, running a hand through his dark hair. "Alright, Doctor," he muttered, voice laced with exhaustion. "What's next?"
Lyra barely spared him a glance. "We run."
Her fingers flew over the device on her wrist, pressing a sequence of commands. A small ping sounded. Whatever she had done, Dante had a feeling it wasn't just a simple GPS ping.
"Run where?" he asked, stretching out his sore muscles. They shouldn't have felt this good after a fight like that. He should have been exhausted. Why wasn't he exhausted?
"The city," Lyra said, already moving. "There's a safehouse. We need to get out of open ground before their reinforcements arrive."
Dante's eyes drifted to the horizon. He could hear the low hum of approaching aircraft. Not the military-grade machines from before. These were sleeker, quieter. They weren't coming for battle.
They were coming for him.
"Move," Lyra snapped.
Dante shook off the strange pull of his instincts and fell into step beside her. His body adjusted with ease, like he had trained for this kind of movement his whole life. Every step was calculated, his breathing even.
What the hell did they turn me into?
They moved through the wreckage quickly, slipping into the shadows of the ruined landscape. Whatever facility they had crashed near, it was long abandoned—nothing but twisted metal and overgrown structures stretching toward the night sky.
It should have been silent.
But Dante could hear things.
The faint buzz of electricity. The whisper of wind through steel. The accelerated heartbeat of the woman beside him.
Everything was heightened.
Too heightened.
Dante clenched his jaw as another pulse of awareness surged through him. The golden glow beneath his skin flickered once, then steadied.
Control it.
They kept moving, weaving through the ruins until the looming remnants of a half-destroyed building provided cover. Lyra finally slowed, placing a hand against the wall, inhaling sharply.
Dante frowned.
"You're hurt."
Lyra shot him a glare, but her lips were pale, her grip on her gun just slightly weaker. He could see it now—the way she had favored her left side during the fight.
"You're bleeding," he said flatly.
Lyra exhaled through her nose, pulling a small medical injector from her belt. "It's nothing. Just focus on surviving the next ten minutes."
Dante crossed his arms, watching as she pressed the injector to her skin. The wound on her side sealed itself almost immediately.
"You were planning on telling me about that when exactly?" he asked dryly.
Lyra shoved the injector back into her belt, stepping away from the wall. "When it mattered."
Dante's gaze narrowed. "Right. And I'm just supposed to trust that?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she nodded toward the skyline.
"The city is twenty miles from here. We need to move fast."
Dante rolled his shoulders. "You keep saying 'we.'"
Lyra met his gaze, unflinching. "I'm the only one who can help you control what's happening to you. Unless you want to keep running blind?"
Dante clenched his jaw. She had a point.
And the truth was—
He wasn't just running from them.
He was running from himself.
Whatever had been done to him, whatever power was waking up inside him—it wasn't done yet.
And something told him…
It was only getting stronger.
—
End of Chapter 8.