Fire Dreams

Time had moved on, or so the world liked to believe.

The ashes of Gallagher Street had frozen into memory—thirty-four years after the original boy's death, and months after the firestorm that silenced the monstrous heart of the district. It had become more than an incident. More than a crime scene. It was folklore.

Gallagher Street became a ghost town worshipped by digital voyeurs. People posted night-vision walkthroughs of the ruins. Conspiracy theorists argued over the physics-defying explosion. TikTokers danced beside the cracked sidewalk, hashtagging it #GhoulgherStreet.

It was 2025, and the curse had turned into a commodity.

But for some, it wasn't content. It wasn't nostalgia or myth.

It was a wound.Still pulsing.Still whispering.Still not finished.

Sasha—the last girl to see the monster in human skin—had returned.

She'd written a memoir titled "Fire Doesn't Forget: My Time in Hell on Gallagher Street." It became a surprise bestseller, mostly because no one believed it was real. They thought it was fiction. Brilliant, terrifying, cinematic fiction.

But Sasha knew.

She knew that Lukas Harrington's body had vanished from the morgue just weeks ago.

She never buried him. Something in her gut told her not to—told her he wasn't done. Told her that even if they laid his corpse in gold and prayer, he would return. And now, his body was gone.

Gone, stolen, and scrubbed from every record.

Sasha watched the news from her rented room overlooking what was left of Gallagher Street. Her breath misted on the glass as the news anchor delivered the report:

"Authorities have launched an internal investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a preserved body—catalogued as Lukas H., a former minor connected to the infamous Gallagher incident. Staff at the morgue deny any knowledge of the event. Surveillance footage has been inexplicably corrupted."

They were lying. Sasha knew. And someone out there had taken him. She clutched the copy of her own book in her lap like a fading photograph, her knuckles pale.She wasn't ready for another war—but it was coming. She could feel it. In her dreams, in the cold that slipped under her door at night, in the corners of her condo where Lukas's voice sometimes crackled like static.

Elsewhere in the city, Toff pulled his uniform tight around his shoulders. The newly minted Officer Toff stood at the steps of the stationhouse, badge glinting in the evening mist.

He had changed.

Gone was the terrified survivor. What remained was a silent, hardened man—a shadow of himself with a cop's instincts and a survivor's rage. He didn't talk about Gallagher. He didn't read Sasha's book. But he carried the same scars, only now he could shoot back.

And he didn't carry just any weapons.

Tucked into each side of his coat were twin gold-plated Desert Eagle Mark XIX pistols, their weight balanced perfectly against the sway of his stride. The guns shimmered beneath the city's gray sky like twin threats forged in myth—beautiful, but built to kill.

A shining gold belt hugged his waist, catching the sunlight with every movement. Around his head sat a leather hat, aged and creased from battle and wind, but proudly bearing a weathered eagle medal at the crown—an old insignia, passed down, reclaimed, or stolen. No one dared to ask.

Toff had become a legend in his own right. The man who'd walked through Gallagher's hell and came back loaded in gold.

Beneath the city, far below the layers of concrete and frost, beyond the reach of any legal light...

A lab hummed in stillness. Red LEDs blinked like eyes half-closed. In the cold silence of the underground, the LabRatz worked in secret.

They were brilliant, unstable. A mix of real scientists, unlicensed surgeons, and ex-convict visionaries. Their leader, Dr. Aaron Finn, stood before a massive operating table. Tubes fed into metal. A boy's body lay there—frozen, untouched by time, the face pale but unbroken, as if waiting.

Lukas Harrington. Thirty-four years in storage. The morgue had kept his body sealed in a special vault due to mysterious preservation qualities—quietly funded by private donors. Until the LabRatz received a message: "Retrieve the boy. A reward awaits. He must live again. The process must begin."

The message had no signature. No name. Only coordinates. And a price no madman could resist.

Dr. Finn accepted. Of course he did.

He assigned the job to two of his most twisted but capable underlings:

Bleu – a lanky, half-shaved neuro chemist with neon-pink goggles and a taste for experimental adrenaline injections.

Pierro – a former embalmer who once claimed he could hear corpses breathe.

One week ago. Midnight.

The morgue sat in ghostly silence.

Bleu and Pierro stood outside the back loading dock. They were dressed in maintenance uniforms, their faces hidden beneath surgical masks. The plan was clean—no cameras, no alarms, no staff. The security system had been bypassed earlier with a mix of chewing gum and electromagnetic fakes.

They slipped in unnoticed. The halls smelled of ammonia and bone. They found the cold storage unit. The key was missing. Bleu snarled, "Plan B." He smashed open the front counter drawers until Pierro lifted a rusted key from behind a stack of paperwork, laughing like he'd found gold.

The freezer door creaked open. There he was. Lukas. His body was untouched. Thirty-four years, and he looked asleep. Not dead. Just paused.

Bleu whistled. "Damn. This kid… he looks like he never died."

Pierro muttered, "He's been dreaming this whole time. I can feel it."

They lifted him—cold as ice, skin white as wax—and placed him in the insulated bag. The kind used for medical cadavers. They wheeled him out through the back.

And that's when the floodlight hit them.

"Drop the body. Now."

A voice rang out from the side of the lot. It was Officer Jasper—a night patrol who hadn't gotten the memo about the cameras being down. His flashlight gleamed across their faces as he unholstered his gun.

Bang!

The shot missed. Bleu screamed and shoved Pierro toward the exit. They bolted, pushing the gurney into the alley as Jasper chased, boots pounding behind them.

The pair reached the van. Pierro flung the doors open while Bleu fired two warning shots from a black-market handgun. The van roared away, tires screeching across the ice-bitten asphalt. Lukas was in the back. Shivering. Not from cold—but from something else.

In the lab, Lukas's body lay beneath buzzing lights. Machines wheezed around him. Monitors pulsed like ancient drums.

Dr. Aaron Finn stood over him, hands soaked in antiseptic, eyes gleaming with obsession.

"You don't even know what you are, do you?" he whispered.

The machines began to hum louder. One beeped, a strange pattern. Not a heartbeat—but a signal.

Somewhere deep inside Lukas… something was responding.

Bleu muttered, "His neurons... they're warming up. I swear I saw a twitch." Finn smiled. "Good. Then the pact has started."

Back at Gallagher, Sasha stood at the window of her condo, staring at the ruined street far below. Snow drifted over the cracked sidewalks like lace over a corpse. She sipped her tea, but her hand was shaking.

She could feel him again.

Not Michael. Not Marque. Not the veiled monsters or the weeping mouths from the vents.Lukas. A presence returning. A memory unfurling.

Toff had sent her a message hours ago:

"You feel that too? Something's waking up."

She didn't reply. She just watched. Waited. Breathed.

Outside, the snow fell heavier. Below the city, a dead boy began to dream. And in that dream, the fire returned.