Grey stared at the encrypted files spread across his desk, each document bearing the crimson classification stamp that meant only a handful of people in the world were authorized to read them. The afternoon sun cast long shadows through his office windows, but he barely noticed as his mind worked through the implications of what lay before him.
"Sir?" Kent's voice broke through his concentration. "Agent Brian still hasn't reported in. It's been three days now."
Grey looked up from the files, his expression grim. "Three days since the Pale Fang rejection was sent out," he said quietly. "That's not a coincidence."
The intercom on his desk buzzed suddenly, and Quinn's voice came through clear and professional. "Director, we have a situation developing downtown. Multiple energy signatures detected near the Grand Hotel district."
"Energy signatures?" Grey asked, pressing the response button.
"The same type we encountered during the Graves incident three years ago," Quinn replied, her tone carrying an edge of concern that made Grey's stomach tighten.
He stood immediately, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. "Kent, get me everything we have on Brian's last known location and cross-reference it with any unusual activity reports from the past week. Quinn, I want Teams A and C on standby, and find me Agent Liam—now."
As Kent hurried out to execute his orders, Grey walked to the large window overlooking the USOV compound. Agents moved purposefully across the courtyard below, but he could sense the underlying tension that had been building since Dorian's return. The rejection of Pale Fang had been necessary—the organization couldn't allow Graves to establish any official presence—but Grey knew it would force his old enemy's hand.
His phone buzzed with an incoming message. Unknown number, but the content made his blood run cold: "You should have approved my request, old friend. Now we do this the hard way. - D.G."
## Downtown - Near the Grand Hotel
Liam descended from the sky, landing silently on the rooftop of a building three blocks from the Grand Hotel. His enhanced senses immediately picked up the disturbance Quinn had mentioned—a low, thrumming energy that seemed to pulse through the air like a heartbeat. It reminded him of the day three years ago when half the city had nearly been reduced to rubble.
His comm device crackled to life. "Liam, this is Quinn. I'm tracking at least six high-energy signatures converging on your location. Whatever Graves is planning, it's big."
"Copy that," Liam replied, scanning the streets below. "I can feel it too. It's like the air itself is charged."
Movement caught his eye in an alley between two office buildings. A figure in a dark coat walked purposefully toward the hotel district, and something about the way he moved set off every alarm in Liam's head. The man paused at the alley's mouth, looked directly up at Liam's position despite being several blocks away, and smiled.
It was Brian.
"Quinn, I've got eyes on our missing agent," Liam said into his comm. "And I don't think he's missing by choice."
Brian raised his hand in a mock salute, then stepped out of the alley and continued toward the hotel. But as he walked, his form began to shimmer and distort, like heat waves rising from summer pavement. By the time he reached the next corner, he looked completely different—taller, broader, with silver hair that caught the afternoon light.
"That's impossible," Liam muttered, but even as he said it, he was launching himself from the rooftop, his body cutting through the air as he pursued the transforming figure.
He landed hard in the street where Brian—or whoever he really was—had been walking, but found only ordinary pedestrians going about their business. None of them seemed to have noticed anything unusual, and when Liam grabbed the shoulder of a businessman who'd been right where the figure should have been, the man looked at him with genuine confusion.
"Sir, is everything alright?" the businessman asked, adjusting his tie nervously.
Liam's comm crackled again. "Energy signatures are spiking," Quinn reported. "Whatever's happening, it's starting now."
That's when Liam heard it—a sound like glass breaking, but magnified a thousandfold and stretched across several octaves simultaneously. Windows in nearby buildings began to vibrate, and car alarms started going off in a chain reaction that spread outward from the hotel district.
High above the city, storm clouds began forming despite the clear afternoon sky, swirling in patterns that defied meteorological explanation. Lightning flickered within the unnatural formations, but instead of the typical white-blue color, these bolts pulsed with deep purple energy.
"Grey, you need to see this," Liam said into his comm, but static was all that came back. Whatever was happening was interfering with their communications.
He started running toward the Grand Hotel, pushing through crowds of confused civilians who were pointing at the sky and taking pictures with their phones. But as he got closer to the hotel district, the crowds thinned out, and the few people he did see moved with an odd, mechanical precision that made his skin crawl.
Two blocks from the hotel, Liam stopped dead in his tracks. Standing in the middle of the street, perfectly calm amid the chaos erupting around them, were three figures. Edmund stood to the left, his usual nervous energy replaced by an unsettling stillness. To the right was someone Liam didn't recognize—a woman with long black hair and eyes that seemed to reflect light like a cat's.
And in the center, looking exactly as he had three years ago, stood Dorian Graves.
"Agent Liam," Dorian called out, his voice carrying clearly despite the distance and the growing supernatural storm overhead. "So good of you to join us. I was hoping we'd have a chance to chat."
Liam's hand instinctively moved to his weapon, but Dorian raised a finger and shook his head with an almost parental disapproval.
"Now, now," Dorian said. "There's no need for unpleasantness. Not yet, anyway. I simply wanted to introduce you to my dear Kiyomi." He gestured to the woman beside him. "And to let you know that your friend Brian sends his regards."
The woman—Kiyomi—smiled, and when she did, Liam could see that her teeth were too sharp and too white. "He's been most helpful," she said, her voice carrying an accent he couldn't place. "Though I'm afraid he won't be needing his body much longer."
As if summoned by her words, Brian emerged from the hotel entrance behind them. But something was fundamentally wrong with the way he moved—too fluid, like his joints had been replaced with liquid mercury. His eyes, when they met Liam's, held no recognition, no humanity at all.
"The rejection of Pale Fang was expected," Dorian continued conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather rather than standing in the middle of what was clearly building toward a supernatural catastrophe. "But it was also unnecessary. You see, I never actually needed your organization's approval. I just needed to know where you all were."
The storm overhead intensified, and Liam could feel power building in the air around them—not just Dorian's, but something much larger and more ancient. The very fabric of reality seemed to be bending around the four figures standing in the street.
"What do you want, Graves?" Liam shouted over the growing wind.
Dorian's smile widened. "The same thing I wanted three years ago, my dear agent. I want to remake this world into something better. Something where people like us don't have to hide what we are."
He raised his hand, and the purple lightning in the clouds above began to coalesce into a single, massive bolt aimed directly at the USOV headquarters across the city.
"And this time," Dorian said, "there's no one left who can stop me."
-----
# Chapter: The Gathering Storm
## USOV Headquarters - Emergency Response
The massive purple lightning bolt struck the USOV building's defensive shields at exactly 3:47 PM, and the impact sent shockwaves through every floor of the facility. Emergency lighting kicked in as the main power grid fluctuated, casting an eerie red glow through the corridors where agents scrambled to their assigned positions.
Grey stood in the command center, watching multiple screens display the chaos erupting across the city. The building's defensive systems had held against Dorian's initial attack, but energy readings showed they wouldn't withstand another assault of that magnitude.
"Status report," he called out to the room full of technicians and analysts working frantically at their stations.
"Communication with Agent Liam is still down," Quinn reported from her position at the tactical console. "Last GPS reading had him two blocks from the Grand Hotel, but that was fifteen minutes ago."
"Sir," interrupted Agent Sarah from Team C, who had rushed into the command center with the rest of her squad. "We're detecting multiple breaches in the city's supernatural containment grid. Whatever Graves is doing, it's destabilizing the barriers that keep the ordinary world separate from the other side."
And yes, that was it for real