The walk out of the tunnel was a limp. Each step ground a protest. The silence in the tomb behind me was absolute. Hark Hale was gone. Ravage was gone. I had won. So why did it feel like I was walking away from a funeral?

  I emerged from the mouth of the subway into the pre-dawn gray of the city. The relentless neon glow was softer now, washed out by the approaching sun. The city was quiet, sleeping. It felt like a different world from the one I had left behind, a lifetime ago.

  I didn’t go back to the lab. There was nothing for me there but ghosts and dust. I just walked, my movements slow, my mangled leg a burning reminder of the price of my victory. I limped away from the underbelly, from the shadows and the rust, and retreated to the fringes of my old life, a ghost returning to haunt her own home.

  Standing in the silent, marble-floored lobby of Olympus Tower, I was a creature from another planet. The polite android at the security desk, Ben, gave me a long, silent look, his optical sensors whirring as they scanned my filthy, blood-streaked form. He didn’t stop me. Maybe there was a protocol for dealing with a tenant when she shows up looking like she just crawled out of a grave.

  In the polished chrome of the elevator doors, I saw my reflection. A stranger stared back at me, her eyes too old, her face a mask of exhaustion. The scar on my cheek was a pale, silver line in the dim light. I looked like a soldier coming home from a war no one else knew was being fought.

  The door to the penthouse slid open with a soft, familiar hiss. The lights came up, warm and gentle. And there they were. My parents, sitting on the couch, their faces etched with a sleepless, hollow-eyed worry.

  My mother was the first to see me. Her hand flew to her mouth, a small, choked gasp escaping her lips. My dad was on his feet in an instant, his face a storm of relief, terror, and a thousand questions.

  “Nikki?” my mom whispered, her voice trembling.

  And then a small figure with blonde hair and glowing dinosaur pajamas appeared from the hallway, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Mommy? What’s all the…” Jackie’s voice trailed off as she saw me. Her big blue eyes went wide.

  I had rehearsed a hundred different lies on the long, painful walk home. They all turned to ash in my mouth.

  I just stood there in the doorway, a broken, filthy thing, and the first sob I’d allowed myself in weeks tore its way out of my chest.

  My mom was across the room in a second, her arms wrapping around me, holding me so tight I could feel the frantic, relieved beat of her heart against my own. She didn’t ask where I’d been. She didn’t ask about the blood or the dirt. She just held me, her own tears soaking into the shoulder of my ruined jacket. My dad’s hand came to rest on the back of my head, his touch gentle, his presence a solid, comforting weight.

  Over my mom’s shoulder, I saw Jackie’s face. She wasn’t scared. She was looking at me with a strange, fierce pride, her eyes shining.

  “You came back,” she whispered.

  I just nodded, my face buried in my mother’s shoulder, and let myself be a daughter again, if only for a moment.

  *****

  Later, after a shower that felt like it washed away a lifetime of grime, I sat on the couch, wrapped in a thick, soft robe, a mug of hot chocolate cradled in my trembling hands. My parents sat opposite me. My mom couldn't seem to stop touching my hand, her eyes tracing the lines of my face as if memorizing it. My dad’s expression was softer, but he clenched hands tight in his lap, the questions he wasn't asking screaming in the silence. Jackie was curled up beside me, her small hand clutching mine, a silent, fierce little guardian.

  This was the hard part. The lie.

  “I’m so sorry,” I began, my voice hoarse. “For disappearing. For scaring you.”

  “Nikki, honey, just tell us what happened,” my dad said, his voice gentle but firm. “Where have you been?”

  I took a deep breath. The lie had to be close enough to the truth to be believable, but far enough away to keep them safe.

  “After the incident at the nightclub,” I started, the words tasting like poison. “Something… happened to me. The news reports, the attacks… the thing that’s been terrorizing the city… it found me. In the alley, that night after practice. It… it bit me.”

  My mom’s hand flew to her mouth again, her eyes wide with horror.

  “I got something,” I continued, the lie flowing more easily now, a story I was building from the wreckage of the truth. “An infection. A neurotoxin, maybe. It made me… not myself. It made me go feral. I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening. I was afraid I would hurt you. So I ran.”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It was the truth, in a way. Just with all the monstrous, unbelievable parts sanded off.

  “But I found someone,” I said, the lie getting bigger. “A doctor. An old colleague of Uncle Finch’s. He’s been helping me. He developed an experimental treatment, a series of retroviral inhibitors. It’s working. He says… he says he can fix it. Fix me.”

  My parents exchanged a look, a silent conversation passing between them. I could see the confusion in their eyes, the doubt. But underneath it was a desperate need to believe me. To have their daughter back.

  My dad leaned forward, his mouth lowered. “Wow… We should meet this doctor and thank him.”

  “He’s very private.” The lie came out faster than I intended. “He works outside the system. Pandora… they wouldn’t approve of his methods. It’s better if he stays anonymous. For his safety. And for ours.”

  It was a flimsy explanation, a house of cards built on half-truths. But it was all I had. And in the end, it was enough. Because they wanted it to be enough. They wanted their daughter back, and I was offering them a version of her they could live with.

  The questions eventually subsided, replaced by a wave of quiet, exhausted relief. I was home. I was safe. And I had a story that would keep the monsters in the shadows where they belonged.

  *****

  The reunion with Tessa and Cody was a different terror.

  We met at a small, quiet café in the mid-sector, a neutral ground. When I walked in, they were already there, sitting at a small table in the corner, nursing cups of synth-coffee.

  They both looked up as I approached, and for a split second, I saw it. The same fear from the tunnel. The look that had shattered my soul. Then, it was gone, replaced by a carefully constructed mask of casual concern.

  The silence when I sat down was a physical thing, a thick, awkward wall between us.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  “Hey,” Cody said, his eyes fixed on the table. Tessa just picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.

  A tight band seemed to squeeze my chest.

  “Look,” I started. “About the other night… in the tunnel.”

  Tessa flinched, a small, involuntary movement.

  “I know what you saw,” I said, my voice low and steady. I gave them the same lie I had given my parents. The infection. The neurotoxin. The feral rages. The secret doctor.

  I watched their faces as I spoke, watched the slow, subtle shift in their expressions. They were two of the smartest people I knew. They weren’t buying it. Not completely.

  “So… you’re saying you weren’t…?” Cody started, then trailed off, unable to even say the word.

  “A werewolf?” I finished for him, forcing a small, wry laugh. It was the most difficult sound I had ever made. “No. I’m not a werewolf, Cody.”

  Tessa finally looked at me, her brown eyes full of a deep, painful confusion. “But… at the club… and in the tunnel… we saw… It looked so real.”

  This was the moment. The precipice.

  I leaned forward, my voice dropping. “It was a hallucination. The neurotoxin… it has psychoactive properties.” Please buy this. Please, just buy this stupid, flimsy, last-ditch lie. “It doesn’t just affect me. It affects the people around me. Makes them see things. Their worst fears.”

  They looked at each other. I could see the war in their eyes. The terrifying, impossible truth versus the comforting, logical lie. And in the end, they did what all normal people would do.

  They chose the lie.

  A slow, visible wave of relief washed over Tessa’s face. “A hallucination,” she repeated, the word a life raft in a sea of terror. “So… when we saw you at the club… with the fur, and the claws… that was just… our brains freaking out?”

  “And in the tunnel,” Cody added, his voice regaining some of its usual laid-back calm. “The glowing eyes… the snarl… that was just the toxin?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my heart aching with the depth of the deception. “It was just the toxin.”

  And then, the most miraculous, heartbreaking thing happened. Tessa laughed. A small, shaky, but genuine laugh of pure relief.

  “Oh my God,” she said, a hand pressed to her chest. “We thought… wow, we actually thought you were a werewolf. That is so… insane.”

  Cody cracked a smile, the tension finally leaving his shoulders. “I mean, it kind of makes sense. You’re a member of the Neon Wolves. It was a little on-the-nose.”

  And I laughed with them. A genuine laugh, full of a relief so profound it felt like I could fly. It was a laugh built on a foundation of lies, a friendship rebuilt on a shared, unspoken agreement to believe the impossible was just a trick of the light. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the truth. But it was all we had. And for now, it was enough.

  *****

  A few weeks later, on a bright afternoon that felt like a gift, I was sitting on a bench in a park, watching Jackie play on the swings. The sunlight felt warm on my skin. The sound of children laughing was a balm on my scarred soul. Jackie was soaring, her little legs pumping, trying to go higher, her face a mask of pure, uncomplicated joy. This was why I fought. This was what I was protecting. I made a silent promise to her, to my uncle, to the ghost of Hark Hale, that I would never let the darkness touch her.

  As I watched her, a flicker of movement from a rooftop across the park caught my eye. My senses, my new, predatory senses, went on high alert. I looked up.

  There was a figure standing on the edge of the roof, a dark silhouette against the bright blue sky. They were too far away to make out any details, but they weren’t moving.

  They were just… watching. Watching me. Watching Jackie.

  A cold, familiar dread trickled down my spine.

  I blinked, and in that split second, they were gone. Vanished. As if they had never been there at all.

  My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t a trick of the light. I knew what I had seen.

  The fight was over, but my trouble, I had a sickening feeling, was just beginning.