He burst into the kitchen, where everyone was waiting.
“They’re here!” Barnaby shouted, gripping the doorframe for balance. “They’ve jammed the systems, we can’t communicate. I told Corey; he’s checking it out!”
The room froze.
Lucy’s eyes locked on his. She was calm, but only just. “Mary,” she ordered, her tone sharp and cutting through the noise, “takeErin, Nick, and Mandy upstairs. Go to Barnaby’s room and lock the door.”
She turned to Barnaby, stepping close enough that he could see the tremor in her hands. “You stay with them.”
He nodded automatically, but Lucy reached up, brushing his cheek with the back of her fingers, a fleeting softness in the middle of chaos. “I remember when you were little,” she whispered. “Now look at you, twice my size.”
He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Take care of yourself, Lucy,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “Please. I need you.”
She gripped him tighter, her eyes glistening. “Of course,” she said softly. “Now go.”
He hugged her one last time before running back through the corridor. His footsteps faded up the stairs, the echo swallowed by the thick, suffocating quiet that followed.
Lucy turned back to the others just as Corey burst through the kitchen door, his face hard and his clothes streaked with dirt. “Two doves are down already,” he said, catching his breath. “We need to get ready.Now.”
He pointed toward the far window; the glass streaked with condensation from the cold outside. “They’re moving over here, this side of the grounds.”
He looked straight at Davina and beckoned her over, pointing over to the direction of the Lucent's he said in the calmest tone. “Fuck. Them. Up.”
Davina’s lips curled into a dark smile. “My pleasure, baby.”
Her eyes shifted instantly, the soft brown swallowed by a black so deep it looked endless. Her body lifted off the ground, the air vibrating around her. Her voice, when she spoke, came through distorted. “I can feel them,” she whispered. “Their steps against the grass. Their arms bushing against the vines.”
Her hands began to move, fingers bending and curling like the tendrils of the plants outside. The forest responded. The floor trembled. Then came the first scream.
It was high-pitched, panicked and blood-chilling.
“Wow,” Lucy breathed, watching through the window.
Outside, the ground erupted.
Roots tore up through the soil, thick as serpents, wrapping around ankles and throats, dragging men into the undergrowth. The vines moved with precision — one coiled tightly around a soldier’s leg, another shot upward, impaling the man beside him clean through the chest. The sound was wet and final.
The rest of the Lucent soldiers started shouting, firing blindly into the trees. Bullets ripped through branches and leaves, but the forest only hissed in response. Each shot was answered by another scream — another body pulled down, broken, silenced.
Then they saw them.
Dozens of figures burst from the tree line — shadows wearing uniforms, white insignias glinting faintly under the dim light. There were at least twenty of them, spreading fast across the open field, rifles raised.
“Join us when you can, Davina!” Corey shouted. “Let’s go!”
Lucy, Byron, Sam, Ethan, and the remaining Doves were already moving. They hit the door and ran straight into the chaos.
The cold air hit them like a wall. Smoke and dust rolled low over the grass, mingled with the metallic scent of blood. The noise was unbearable, gunfire, shouting, the guttural sounds of death echoing across the field.
Sam moved first. She slipped behind a soldier, catching him by the collar, and drew her blade across his throat in one clean motion. Blood sprayed across her arm as she shoved the body aside and moved to the next. Corey caught her out of the corner of his eye.
“You still brought a knife to a gunfight?” he yelled, firing two rounds into the line ahead.
Sam twisted her blade from another man’s eye and smirked. “Does itlooklike I’m lacking?”
Byron was already in the thick of it, his sheer strength a weapon of its own. He swung one soldier into another, their armour clattering together like broken metal. A third rushed him, and Byron caught the man’s wrist mid-swing, twisting it until the crack echoed. He threw him to the ground and stomped hard. The crack echoed as his chest collapsed.
Lucy stood a few meters back, moving between cover and open ground, switching between bow and gun. One arrow sliced through the air, pinning a Lucent soldier to a tree; another bullet shattered the visor of a helmet just before its owner pulled the trigger on her. She barely blinked, reloading as she turned.
