The Force Team stood in the clearing, rifles raised and ready to fire. Before them, Al Shaula loomed high above.

  Each agent’s finger hovered over their weapon’s trigger, but before anyone could squeeze it, the specter’s fiery gaze blazed brighter.

  With the speed of a whip crack, a surge of hot air swept the Satellites off their feet. As if hit by an invisible freight train, the men in tuxedos flew over Adam and Vicky’s heads and landed behind them, sprawled among jungle trunks and foliage.

  Adam and Vicky exchanged glances and agreed not to move.

  The agents struggled to their feet amid groans and stumbles.

  Despite their humiliation, it was impressive that none of them dropped their weapons. Though, that might have been less due to their determination and more to the magnetic device in the S747 rifle grips, designed to secure the weapon to its user’s hand. Vicky recognized the technology; Imperial soldiers used it too.

  Number One was the first to recover.

  Adrenaline pumping through his veins dulled any pain he might have felt. His wounded pride pushed him to his feet in one quick motion, consequences be damned. He could’ve had a broken bone or a twisted ankle that would’ve sent searing pain through him from such a hasty move, but there was nothing—not even a hint of dizziness. His thick lips were pressed tightly together. Brushing leaves and dirt off his uniform, he adjusted his jacket and dark glasses, gripping his rifle with a finger on the trigger.

  Number Three felt a mix of electricity and pain shooting from his leg to his head; he’d twisted his ankle on landing, hit his face against his own weapon, and split his lip.

  Number Four had a numb back after slamming into a tree, but the impact wasn’t severe, and he quickly caught his breath.

  Three and Four helped each other up next. Like their leader, they dusted off their uniforms—their glasses still clung to their faces as if part of their skin—and got back into position.

  Number Five had a cut on his forehead that bled, swelling and turning red. The same shockwave that had hurled him into a tree had also sent a branch flying into his head, knocking off his glasses, which landed who knows where. Shaking his head to clear it, he felt like he had an anvil hanging from his neck. The dizziness lingered but would pass; adrenaline was dulling his discomfort.

  He took a few shaky steps after the fall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight filtering through the canopy. His comrades were already on their feet, but he couldn’t see Number Two. Looking around, he found him sitting at the base of a thick tree not far from the dome’s collapsed doorway.

  “Oh no…”

  Number Two’s face showed little more than mild annoyance, but behind his cracked glasses, his eyes told a different story. Part of his jacket was torn, another part hung in tatters, and his white shirt bore a crimson stain spreading across his ribs.

  Number Five tried to assist him but stepped aside as Number Three, the team’s medic, arrived.

  “I can still…” Number Two gasped.

  Three removed his glasses to get a clearer view—they’d cracked in the fall. Kneeling in front of his injured teammate, he peeled away the remnants of the jacket, tore off the blood-soaked shirt, and examined the wound. Something dark jutted out from the circle of blood—something that shouldn’t be there. A branch had impaled Two from behind, piercing through his abdomen.

  “I can still…”

  Probing the injury gently, Three made him shudder in pain. “Yeah, sure, buddy. Maybe you’ve got a fractured floating rib.”

  Removing Two’s broken glasses, he inspected his eyes, which were bloodshot and teary. Moving his finger back and forth, he asked him to follow it with his gaze. “Well, it looks like you didn’t suffer any brain injuries. But you’re staying right here, soldier.”

  Though Two’s wound wasn’t as serious as it had initially appeared, it needed attention—and fast.

  Used to relying on the transmitter embedded in his glasses, Three put them back on and pressed the frame to contact the camp staff. Then he remembered: Anderson had said transmissions were down—they were still cut off from communication. Looking for someone to help, his eyes landed on Adam, who was a short distance away, frozen like a bystander who had just witnessed a grisly crime in the street.

  “Hey, you! Get over here!” he called.

  Adam approached, too overwhelmed to refuse.

  “Help my friend up and take him back to camp,” Three ordered. “Carry him on your shoulders if you have to.”

  High above, Al Shaula hovered in the air, his dark silhouette cutting against the blue sky, watching their every move with the detached curiosity of a god observing a trail of ants.

  “Thou shalt not go anywhere,” the specter declared.

  Vicky shot Adam a pleading look, begging him not to move.

  Driven more by the pain of seeing Two in such a condition than by his duty as leader—or perhaps by the sheer frustration of losing a team member—One stepped forward to face the specter again. His team followed suit, heedless of the consequences their stubbornness might bring.

  Vicky gave them a farewell glance. If these fools hadn’t succeeded the first time, they wouldn’t fare any better now.

  Meanwhile, Adam stayed with Number Two. That guy had a branch piercing his side, and from what he’d overheard, it had gone right through his ribs. The black, jagged splinter jutted out of Two’s body, surrounded by bright, gleaming red blood. The kid couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than Adam himself. He didn’t seem so different from the guys Adam saw at nightclubs. Hell, who was to say agents didn’t hang out in the Ciccone neighborhood on their days off?

  This guy, bleeding and fighting back tears of pain, had a life outside of the job, just like Adam did. He had come here to do his duty, and now…

  Adam understood, and it made him feel lucky. He could have ended up just like this, crushed by the wave of purple tar—or worse, impaled by one of the dome’s fallen beams.

  “Hang in there. You’ll be okay,” Adam said to Two. He felt compelled to comfort the boy, even if it was just with meaningless words.

  Behind them, the four remaining members of Team Satellite leveled their weapons at the supernatural being.

  Al Shaula arched his smoky eyebrows and let out what sounded like a sigh.

  “There was a time when I could have annihilated thee just by looking upon thee,” he said.

  Number One knew full well that what they were about to attempt was a huge mistake, one they might pay for dearly—perhaps even more dearly than Two had—but the specter had made it clear they wouldn’t be allowed to leave. If everything was about to go to hell, it might as well happen now. He activated his rifle and pulled the trigger.

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  The rest of the agents followed his lead. The S747s roared, spitting bullets that buzzed through the air.

  Al Shaula smiled, exuding arrogance, and like a spectral, male Medusa, his hair—tendrils of smoke and crystalline particles—mimicked the serpents’ movements, entangling each pellet and transforming them, not into stone, but into clouds of vapor.

  The sun beat down on Number One. He felt its heat, but his sweat ran cold.

  “Pulsation-B!” he commanded. He was the leader; he wouldn’t give up until every option was exhausted.

  The four men toggled a switch on their rifles. The intensity of the attack ramped up. This time, there were no pauses between shots. The gunfire was continuous—a single, prolonged roar.

  But the hail of bullets met the same fate as the previous volley. No matter how fast they flew, none could penetrate the specter’s dusty curtains.

  Frustrated by Pulsation-B’s futility, One bared his teeth, released the trigger, and flipped the switch again.

  “Prepare Pulsation-C!”

  This time, the S747s emitted a high-pitched whine, an electric hum that made the specter scowl, as if it were the annoying buzz of a mosquito in his ear. He no longer looked like a god intrigued by ants—now, he was a god growing impatient with them.

  The specter sharpened his fingers into claw-like shapes, and Vicky realized the end was near for F-Team. Courage was one thing; stupidity and obstinacy were another. Confronting Al Shaula was a surefire way to hasten death. She and Adam were the only ones who seemed to grasp that.

  They were about to witness a massacre. Vicky could see it coming. She envisioned a grisly scene: those four men reduced to bloody, shredded chunks of flesh scattered across the barren clearing.

  Because that’s exactly what was coming—Al Shaula’s gaze said it all. It would be a show no one would ever forget. If Adam was already stunned by Two’s injuries, seeing the slaughter she imagined would leave a deep emotional scar.

  She had to stop the massacre. There was no time to devise a plan, barely enough to act.

  “Stand down!” she shouted at the agents.

  Before the smoke demon unleashed his fury on the men, Vicky—her powers sealed off by Kappa radiation—leapt like a basketball player ready to dunk, hurling two Fotias with all the destructive power of a light show.

  One orb struck the agents and, though harmless, managed to stop them by catching them off guard. The second shot straight toward the specter.

  Al Shaula tore through the mass of light with his claws, like a wild cat shredding a ball of yarn, scattering sparks everywhere.

  Vicky hadn’t meant to do more than create a distraction, but her actions triggered a consequence far worse than what she’d tried to prevent. Now, Al Shaula’s eyes were locked on her.

  Adam felt a crushing weight in his chest. His partner had tried to play the good Samaritan, and all it had earned her was the ghost’s full attention. In a cruel twist, Vicky’s fear for what might happen to the agents had turned into Adam’s fear for what might happen to her. He, who had planned to stay neutral and escape at the first opportunity, now found himself forced to intervene—perhaps committing the same foolish mistake Vicky had: becoming the specter’s next target.

  He had no choice. There was no way he could stand by and watch her get ensnared by Al Shaula’s smoky tendrils and disintegrate, just like the bullets from those massive rifles. Among the humans present, he was the most powerful; perhaps he could make it out unscathed if things escalated.

  Gabor’s studies were right, so… he thought, trying to muster some courage.

  He told Number Two to hang on—the poor kid was in so much pain he didn’t even respond—and stepped into the clearing to join Vicky.

  Sweat streaked his cheeks and his hair clung to his forehead. Adam clenched his jaw to stop it from trembling and stepped into a hero’s role he barely believed himself. He almost crossed his arms to project—if only to himself—a sense of confidence, but decided against it, opting to leave them free and ready to shield himself if needed. He considered forming a pair of Fotias to launch at the enemy at the first sign of movement but held back. No point provoking him unnecessarily. Instead, he simply raised his chin and locked eyes with the specter, despite the fear twisting his stomach.

  “Are you an idiot or what?” Vicky snapped at him.

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  The shadowy elder seemed amused by the scene, a mysterious smile spreading across his face. The fury of a god looking down on lesser beings, ready to crush them, faded from his expression. Crossing his arms and tilting his chin upward, he mimicked Adam in a manner almost playful, like a grandfather teasing his grandson. Then that macabre orchestra of sounds that was his voice transformed into words:

  “Behold the gallant youth!”

  Suddenly, the specter dissolved into a swirling cloud of dust and gleaming crystalline particles that rained down on Adam, encircling him in a spinning cyclone.

  Adam felt a foul wind licking his face before he was pulled into the eye of the small, violet hurricane, which enveloped him completely, cutting him off from everyone else.

  Vicky’s mind raced back to what had happened to the bullets from the S747s when they had come into contact with that glittering dust. When Adam vanished from sight, she imagined him reduced to ash and panicked—until she heard a pained groan from within the vortex. He was still alive in there.

  Without thinking of the consequences, she threw herself at the cloud, trying to scatter the ghostly vapor with desperate swipes. All she achieved was getting pelted by grit and wind, as though she had stuck her hand out of a speeding car during a storm.

  Her gloves were falling to pieces on the ground, eaten away by the crystalline particles that had torn through the synthetic fabric along with the computerized band on her left wrist. If she’d taken them off after ditching the suit, that damage would’ve gone straight to her hands.

  Still, Vicky was determined to break through the violet haze. She threw herself sideways, like she was trying to shoulder through a door—but the vortex’s force hurled her back, leaving fresh scrapes across her skin.

  “Adam!” she screamed.

  There was no response. No groaning now. What was happening in there?

  “By all the gods, Adam, answer me!”

  The smoke burned her eyes. She couldn’t fight what she couldn’t touch. There was nothing she could do. The cloud had swallowed him whole, and all she could do now was hope for a miracle.

  “Adam!”

  Inside the darkness, Adam heard her calling but couldn’t reply.

  He had instinctively clamped his lips shut, closed his eyes, and pinched his nose before the storm of dust swallowed him whole. But the suffocation was relentless, and he was on the verge of begging for mercy.

  No. Even as the voracious void squeezed his lungs and pressed on his stomach, he had to hold on. The whirlwind’s force had immobilized his legs and was beginning to push his chin up, trying to force his mouth open and invade him.

  He wouldn’t allow it. He just needed to endure a little longer—someone would pull him out any second now.

  But the need for air overwhelmed him. His survival instincts overpowered his will.

  Adam opened his mouth, gasping for the air that wasn’t there. The vortex had sucked all the oxygen from the air.

  He couldn’t breathe. Despair crushed him. The choking felt like a knife to the heart. Adam felt chained to an anchor, dragged down into the depths of a freezing ocean.

  Juzo! he called out to his brother, and a spark lit up the silent darkness—the energy of his twin rushing to the rescue. Adam felt it, just like he had during their fights with Simon and Kitty.

  Juzo’s spiritual reactor was rising fast, pushing toward the surface of Adam’s consciousness. His eyes would soon snap open, blazing with power. He would scream, and his brother’s voice would fuse with his own, speaking in unison. White fire—crackling and untamed—would wrap around him from head to toe, burning away the swarm of shadows and lifting the pressure.

  But in that darkness—whether caused by the storm of dust and wind that had trapped him or the death of his senses from lack of air—Al Shaula’s red eyes opened wide, eager to savor the moment of victory.

  Somehow, the specter hadn’t just reached his lungs—it had slipped into his mind and hidden there, lying in wait for Juzo to show up. That had been its plan all along: push him to the edge so he’d be forced to unleash his power.

  Stop! Adam shouted inwardly, just in time. Juzo pulled back, and the spark that had flared to life in the void vanished as quickly as it had come.

  “How clever thou art, thou little gallant,” Al Shaula acknowledged, his voice crackling like static. “Yet eventually thou shalt want thy brother, and when thou summonest him, I shall be there to eat thee both.”

  With a roar, the purple storm shot back into the sky, reshaping itself into the elder’s spectral figure.

  Adam collapsed to his knees, gasping for air, choking and retching as he tried to purge the gas burning in his throat. The foul stench of the dusty particles, the same acrid smell as the liquid amethyst, clung to his nostrils. His stomach throbbed with pain, as though he’d taken a brutal punch.

  “What happened?!” Vicky rushed to his side. “Are you okay?!”

  Still coughing violently, Adam gave a weak gesture to indicate he was fine—that he just needed a moment to recover.

  He was lying. He was so terrified he couldn’t even begin to figure out how to tell her the truth.