The world tilts.
One moment Lucas is standing inside the ICU, staring at Erica's pale, unmoving body.
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP
BEEEEEP—
Her heart monitor flat-lines.
Nurses explode into motion. Doors slam open. Gloves snap. Someone shouts for epinephrine. Someone else yells for a crash cart.
Lucas doesn't fight them when they shove him back. He just stands there, fingers curled into fists so tight his claws threaten to break skin.
Then—
thump.
A single, stubborn but weak heartbeat.
thump-thump.
A cluster of relieved exhalations behind the glass.
But Lucas doesn't relax.
Something's wrong.
Horribly wrong.
Erica's heartbeat is back—yes. But beneath it… he feels a second rhythm. A thin static throb, sharp and parasitic, scraping against her pulse like a saw blade.
Tony.
The bastard was telling the truth. His "failsafe" is still inside her.
A muscle jumps in Lucas's jaw; both his hands tremble.
Not again.
He closes his eyes.
Reaches through the new bond still raw between them—golden, flickering, fragile—
…and pours everything he has into it.
Strength. Energy. Rage.
The wild, ancient power of an Alpha.
The instant his power hits the bond—
The floor vanishes.
The hospital dissolves. The world flips inside-out.
And Lucas drops into her mind.
THE MINDSCAPE
He lands in a hallway of flickering fluorescent lights.
Hospital tiles stretch endlessly in both directions. Doors line the walls, each marked with crayon-scrawled hospital wristbands.
A child's laugh echoes—high, brittle, wrong.
Lucas's breath fogs in the stale, cold air.
He whispers:
"Erica…?"
A tiny figure darts past the corner.
An eight-year-old girl. Frizzy hair. Hospital gown too big for her. Eyes wide with confusion and fear.
She doesn't seem to see him.
She just runs.
Lucas follows, steps echoing like gunshots down the corridor.
He turns the corner—
—and stops cold.
The walls behind her are rotting. Tiles cracking and sagging, veins of black creeping across them like mold that learned how to move. A fleshy mass pulses at the far end of the hallway, a tumor the size of a man, throbbing like a diseased heart.
The failsafe.
A half-grown, mindless chunk of Tony… trying to finish what the parasite started.
Its voice slithers through the air, distorted, wet, mindless:
k i l l t h e h o s t
f e e d
Erica stumbles backward from it, clutching her head, shaking.
Lucas steps between them.
Her eyes, though clouded with fear, lock onto him. "L-Lucas…? Am I dreaming?"
"Something like that." His voice is a low growl. "Stay behind me."
The parasite chunk lashes out—long, rope-thin vines snapping like whips.
Lucas shifts mid-stride.
Bones rupture. Claws burst forward. Fur erupts in black waves.
His vision burns red.
He roars, shattering the lights above.
The creature shrieks, recoils… then attacks.
They crash together in a storm of claws and tendrils.
The thing is half-formed, half-memory, half-monster—
—but it's still deadly.
It wraps around Lucas's throat, squeezing.
He claws through it, ripping rotted tendons that regrow as fast as he tears.
A vine slashes for Erica.
She screams—
—and something gold flashes behind her eyes.
She doesn't shift. She can't. She's too weak.
But her spirit lashes out.
Blue and yellow coloured lightning arcs from Lucas's hands— strong, powerful, but it's only enough to stagger the mass.
Lucas surges forward, using the opening.
He grabs the heart of the creature—
hot, throbbing, pulsing with Tony's dying will.
The parasite shrieks through Darren's voice, distant but echoing:
n O— n O— n O—
i w O n ' t d i e A l O n e
s h E d I E s W I T H—
"No," Lucas snarls.
"You don't get to take her with you."
He channels everything—
every instinct, rage, every ounce of his strength and lighting— and crushes the thing in his hands.
It bursts in a bloom of black dust.
Screams tear the mindscape apart.
The hospital shatters like glass.
The vines burn to ash.
The lights explode into white.
Erica's small hand grabs his.
"Don't go," she whispers.
"Never," he says.
Then—
THUMP-THUMP
THUMP-THUMP
THUMP-THUMP
Her heartbeat roars like drums.
BACK IN THE ICU
Lucas gasps awake on the cold hospital floor.
His lungs seize.
His neck throbs where Tony had invaded.
He pushes himself upright, vision swimming—
—and sees movement behind the ICU glass.
Nurses step back.
Erica's chest rises.
Her monitors stabilize.
Her fingers twitch.
Her eyelids flutter.
Then, slowly—
Erica opens her eyes.
Alive.
Changed.
And Lucas, still on his knees, cannot tell if he just saved her…
…or changed her fate forever.