Arriving at the private hospital, the van entered through a hidden entrance. The building looked unassuming from the outside—a vacant office complex in an industrial zone, its windows tinted dark, surrounded by an unremarkable perimeter fence.
The driver punched a code into a small keypad disguised as an electrical box. A section of wall silently slid aside, revealing a ramp that descended underground.
"Get medical on standby," the team leader barked into his comm. "Two patients, one critical, one unconscious."
The van drove down the ramp into a brightly lit receiving bay. Unlike the abandoned appearance above, the facility below was state-of-the-art—polished floors, gleaming equipment, staff in crisp uniforms.
Gates was already waiting, his normally composed face tight with tension.
"Status?" he demanded as the doors opened.
"The girl's alive but unstable. The boy is unconscious but appears uninjured," the leader reported.
Medical teams swarmed the van, efficiently transferring Charlotte to a proper hospital bed. The monitors that Arthur had somehow kept functioning throughout the journey continued to beep steadily.
"What happened?" Gates asked, watching a second team lift Arthur onto a gurney.
The mercenaries exchanged uneasy glances.
"He... appeared," one finally said. "Out of nowhere. With the girl."
"Like magic, sir. Or something worse." The speaker swallowed hard. "He was covered in blood. And the equipment... he moved it without touching it."
Gates' expression remained neutral, but his mind raced. This wasn't in any of the briefings about Arthur's potential abilities.
The merge wasn't supposed to happen yet.
"Take them both to Wing A," he ordered. "Full monitoring on both. I want to know the moment either wakes up."
As the medical teams wheeled the siblings away, Gates stood there his mind running overtime.
'How...how was he able to do that...'
As Arthur and Charlotte were being rescued, military installations across the region lit up with activity.
In the peaceful hotel room of Henderson Heights, Donald Warner's phone vibrated on the glass coffee table. The ringtone—a specific pattern reserved for highest priority calls vibrated through the room.
Donald was sprawled on the comfortable sofa, his wife nestled against him. On the massive screen before them, the season finale of their favorite show was reaching its climax.
"Honey! Enough work!" Elaine's fingers tightened around his forearm as he tensed. "You work every day. Spend some time with me." Her voice carried that particular sweetness that usually got her way.
Donald hesitated, eyes darting between his wife's pleading face and the still-vibrating phone. That ringtone meant serious trouble.
"It must be important," he said, gently disengaging from her. "I specifically warned them not to disturb me tonight."
Elaine's smile collapsed. She'd planned this evening for weeks—his favorite meal, the show they'd been waiting to finish, everything.
"Fine." The word carried ice as she snatched the remote, cranking the volume up a notch. Message received.
Donald crossed the room in four quick strides, grabbing the phone mid-vibration.
"Warner," he answered, voice low and professional.
The voice on the other end was breathless, frantic—words tumbling out in a chaotic stream.
Donald's face changed as he listened. First confusion. Then disbelief. Then absolute, consuming horror.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY? ARE YOU MENTAL?" The roar exploded from him, shattering his carefully cultivated composure.
Elaine jolted upright, the show forgotten. In fifteen years of marriage, she'd never heard Donald raise his voice like that—not during their worst incidents, not even when his father died.
"THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" Donald's knuckles whitened around the phone, veins bulging in his neck. "The merge isn't scheduled for—"
Whatever the voice said next made Donald's face drain of color. The transformation was terrifying—like watching a man age ten years in ten seconds.
"Send me the footage! NOW!" He ended the call with a violent jab that nearly cracked his screen.
For three heartbeats, Donald stood frozen, the implications cascading through his mind. Hospital staff slaughtered. Security systems bypassed. Ambulances destroyed. Charlotte Fate missing.
And Arthur was wielding abilities that shouldn't exist yet.
"I'm so dead," he whispered, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple despite the room's cool temperature. "If the higher-ups hear about this..."
He was already moving, muscle memory taking over as terror paralysed his conscious thought. Coat from the closet. Shoes by the door. Keys from the bowl.
"Donald? What's happening? You're scaring me." Elaine's voice seemed to come from miles away, underwater and distorted.
He couldn't answer. Couldn't process anything beyond the absolute certainty that his life might have possibly just ended.
The boy he'd manipulated, threatened, and controlled had somehow accessed abilities that shouldn't be possible.
The front door slammed behind him as Donald sprinted to his car, leaving his confused wife and the life he'd built behind.
He had minutes, maybe hours, before the hammer fell.
Donald's car tore through the night, engine howling as he pushed well beyond safe speeds. His phone buzzed again, it was a video footage.
He swerved into the emergency lane, braking hard. The video downloaded, loading frame by frame.
What he saw made his blood freeze.
Arthur—the quiet, controllable test subject—moved like something inhuman. Teleporting. Crushing people with invisible force. Decapitating a nurse with what looked like a tear in reality itself.
"God help us," Donald whispered.
The car roared back onto the highway.
Miles away, in Gates' underground facility, monitors beeped steadily alongside Charlotte's bed. The doctor worked feverishly, his face grim.
"What?" Gates frowned, tension radiating from him.
Any bad news about Charlotte's condition meant an opportunity to keep Arthur cooperative was slipping away. If Arthur went berserk with his sister dying in Gates' hospital... no one could stop him.
"They kept feeding her sleeping pills and injecting her with happy hormones. Completely masked the symptoms while accelerating the cellular breakdown." The doctor's face twisted with professional disgust. "Monstrous practice."
"She has about a few days left..."
Gates cursed under his breath.
Gates stared at the frail girl on the bed, calculating risks. "What treatment options do we have?"
"Conventional? None." The doctor hesitated. "But we could try Protocol Lazarus."