Luke said nothing. No one did.

The stranger stepped forward, his boots crunching over broken glass and debris. His sharp eyes moved over them, scanning, assessing. Then he saw their wrists.

The numbers.

His expression changed instantly. Whatever casual confidence had been there before was gone, replaced by something far colder. His grip on his weapon tightened.

"Slaves..." he murmured, the word barely more than a breath.

Luke instinctively curled his wrist inward, as if hiding the mark could erase what had been done to him. The others did the same, their movements small, automatic. Shame burned through them, an instinct drilled into their bones after years of servitude.

Jake, however, stood his ground, his jaw tightening as his fists clenched at his sides.

"We're not slaves anymore," he snapped, his voice edged with defiance.

The stranger's gaze lingered on him for a long moment, unreadable. Then he gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

"No," he agreed. "But you were."

And then-memories.

The sizzle of branding irons. Flesh burning.

Agonized screams echoing down cold, stone corridors.

Luke, younger, pinned down as red-hot iron seared into his skin. The scent of charred flesh filled his nostrils, his stomach twisting, bile rising. Above him, The Keeper of Fangs watched impassively, his expression unreadable.

Maria and Anya, draped in silks they had never chosen, leashed like pets, paraded before their vampire masters with glassy eyes and painted lips.

Jake, fists trembling, staring at the head of a fellow slave impaled on a spike. A warning. A lesson. A reminder that escape was impossible.

The memories hit hard, gripping them by the throats, suffocating.

Luke exhaled sharply, pushing them away, forcing himself back into the present. But the weight of them still lingered.

The stranger was still watching, and Luke could see in his eyes that he had noticed the way they all flinched, the way their breathing had changed.

Then the stranger spoke again, his voice quieter this time.

"I've seen those numbers before," he said.

"On corpses."

His words sliced through the silence like a knife.

Maria stiffened. Anya sucked in a quiet breath, hugging herself. Even Jake faltered, his fingers twitching slightly.

Luke met the stranger's gaze, refusing to let himself flinch. "Not this time," he said.

The stranger studied him for another long moment, then, without a word, sheathed his sword. The tension in the air didn't ease, but the immediate threat of violence dissipated.

He jerked his head toward the ruins behind him.

"Come with me," he said. "Unless you want to be ripped apart in the next ten minutes."

The group hesitated.

Maria narrowed her eyes. "Why would you help us?"

The stranger sighed, rolling his shoulders as if the weight of their questions was an inconvenience.

"Because if you die out here, it's a waste." He glanced back at them, eyes unreadable. "And I hate waste."

It wasn't a warm answer. It wasn't even reassuring. But it was enough.

With that, the stranger turned and walked into the ruins.

The group exchanged wary glances. They didn't trust him. But did they have a choice?

Jake looked at Luke, nodding once.

"We follow."

Luke exhaled, then motioned for the others to move. They slipped into the darkness after the stranger, their steps quick but cautious.

As they moved, the distant howls grew louder.

The hunt wasn't over yet.

And something told Luke that it was only just beginning.

The building loomed ahead, a skeletal remnant of the old world. Cracked windows, rusted fire escapes, and the crumbling facade made it indistinguishable from the countless ruins they had passed. But there was something different about this place. Something intentional.

Lucas led them toward it, his gait steady and unbothered, as though he had done this a thousand times before. The reinforced steel door stood in stark contrast to the decayed surroundings, its edges welded and reinforced. A security panel, foreign and sleek, blinked faintly in the dim light.

Without a word, Lucas pressed his palm against the scanner. A sharp beep cut through the silence before the door let out a hiss and unlatched.

"Inside. Now."

Luke and the others hesitated for only a moment before stepping into the darkened space beyond.

The room they entered was small, a single flat resembling an old apartment, but everything inside had been gutted and replaced. Steel crates stacked against the walls, a few mismatched chairs, and a single wooden table in the center. A radio sat atop it, wires snaking across the surface and leading to a battery pack.

Lucas motioned for them to sit.

"Stay put."

Without another word, he pulled a sleek, thin device from his belt—something resembling a tablet but far more advanced than anything they had seen before. He tapped across the screen, his expression unreadable, his focus unwavering.

The group sat in silence, their bodies tense, their eyes darting between one another.

Jake finally leaned closer to Luke, voice barely a whisper.

"Is he—?"

"Human," Luke confirmed, though the answer felt wrong somehow.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Lucas' eyes flicked up toward them, catching their glances, his sharp gaze locking onto their wrists. The numbers.

For a moment, there was no expression on his face. Then, something flickered in his eyes—recognition.

Luke felt the air tighten, his pulse hammering in his ears.

Lucas knew what those numbers meant.

The realization sent an immediate rush of memories crashing down on them, each one razor-sharp. The cold steel of the branding needles. The searing pain. The way the vampires had watched, amused, as their identities were stripped away, replaced with numbers like they were livestock.

Luke clenched his fists.

Lucas let the silence stretch before speaking, voice low.

"You were slaves."

No one answered, but the weight in the air was heavy enough. Lucas didn't press further. He had seen enough.

Instead, he turned his attention back to the tablet, fingers moving swiftly.

An hour passed. Then another.

The radio crackled to life, a distorted voice coming through, but the words were unclear. Lucas responded in clipped, efficient phrases, his tone unwavering.

Then came the sound.

A deep, rhythmic chop in the distance, slow at first, then growing louder.

The air vibrated.

The group tensed, eyes snapping toward the darkened windows.

A shadow passed over the building, a hulking silhouette against the broken skyline.

The sound grew deafening—a roaring thunder of blades slicing through the air.

An aircraft.

Jake scrambled to his feet, his voice breathless.

"Is that... a helicopter?"

Lucas didn't look up. He simply shrugged.

"Yeah."

Like it was nothing. Like it was normal.

But for them, it wasn't.

It had been years since they had seen one. Years since the fall of human civilization. Since the vampires had reduced cities to husks, silencing every machine, every piece of human ingenuity.

Luke swallowed hard as he listened to the sound—something so familiar yet so foreign.

A voice crackled through Lucas' radio again, this time clearer.

[ETA two minutes. Prepare for extraction.]

Lucas turned toward them. "We're moving. Roof. Now."

They followed without question, their bodies still tense from the sheer impossibility of what was happening.

As they ascended the stairwell, the sound of the aircraft grew louder. Dust rained from the ceiling with each pulse of the blades.

Then they reached the top.

The rooftop was open, exposed to the dead city beyond. Wind howled through the broken landscape, kicking up debris, but all of it was drowned beneath the overwhelming presence of the aircraft hovering above.

It was a Black Hawk.

Matte-black plating. Reinforced armor. The red glow of night-vision optics gleaming from the cockpit.

And the men who stepped out...

They weren't ordinary soldiers.

Dressed head to toe in black tactical gear, they moved with mechanical precision, their weapons sleek and unfamiliar.

Guns that didn't use bullets.

Guns designed for something else.

They flanked Lucas, their faces obscured by helmets and dark visors, offering no words, no acknowledgment of the battered group standing before them.

One of them motioned toward the helicopter.

Move.

No one hesitated.

The group rushed forward, climbing into the aircraft as the soldiers took position around them.

No words were spoken.

Only the sound of the helicopter lifting into the sky, pulling them away from the ruined city below.

Luke leaned against the cold interior, his mind racing as he stared out over the expanse of Los Angeles.

The skyscrapers stood like blackened tombstones, their shattered windows glinting in the moonlight. Streets once filled with life now stretched into endless emptiness, the scars of war and blood staining the roads below.

And for the first time in years...

He wasn't looking at it from the ground.

The weight of everything hit him all at once.

The fall of civilization. The years spent in servitude. The blood spilled, the lives lost. The sheer vastness of the destruction.

He could still hear the echoes of a world that no longer existed.

A lump formed in his throat, but he forced it down, eyes hardening.

He didn't know where they were going.

Didn't know who Lucas really was.

Didn't know what awaited them on the other side of this flight.

But one thing was certain.

They had escaped.

And for the first time in three years...

They were no longer slaves.

The helicopter soared through the night, its blades cutting through the air like a relentless drumbeat. The group sat in silence, their minds still reeling from the impossible reality unfolding before them.

For two hours, they flew.

Luke sat near the open side panel, staring out at the ruined world below. The land stretched endlessly, a graveyard of what had once been civilization. The skeletal remains of cities loomed in the distance, their broken towers like blackened teeth biting into the sky. Cracked highways snaked through the wasteland, now overtaken by nature, vines slithering through the ruins like veins of a dying beast.

Then, in the far distance, movement.

Luke narrowed his eyes.

A city—one not abandoned.

At first, it seemed like salvation. Structures still standing. Roads not completely lost to decay. Then he saw the truth.

Figures moved through the streets, their bodies thin, pale, drained.

A vampire-controlled city.

Luke's fingers clenched into fists as he saw the tall black spires marking the vampires' domain. In the streets below, humans moved in chains, herded like cattle.

Factories churned in the distance, but these weren't producing machines of war or weapons. No. These were slaughterhouses. Blood farms.

Luke could see them—lines of people waiting to be drained. Some still standing, others barely conscious. The vampires had turned them into cattle.

His heart pounded with rage.

His mind flooded with memories of the mansion, the cruelty, the cold efficiency of their captors. This was the future the vampires wanted.

Luke exhaled slowly, his voice barely above a whisper.

"All of them... all those bloodsuckers... will die by my hands."

He could feel Jake's eyes on him, could sense Maria shifting beside him at the venom in his tone.

But Luke didn't stop.

He meant it.

Every single one of them would burn.

A foolish dream.

One that would carve a path through endless blood and bodies to reach.

But he didn't care.

He let the thought sink into his bones, carving itself into his resolve like a blade etching into stone.

His bloodlust wasn't just for survival anymore.

It was for vengeance.

Then, the wall appeared.

At first, it was nothing but a sliver on the horizon, barely distinguishable from the darkened landscape.

But as they drew closer, the true scale of it became clear.

It was massive.

A city-sized fortress surrounded by an enormous wall—one that seemed almost alive.

Metal plates shifted and locked in constant motion, shifting like the surface of water, a fluid barricade of steel and magic.

Glowing runes pulsed along its length, flickering in strange patterns as if reading the very air itself. A warded barrier. No one could enter unless permitted.

This was no ordinary human settlement.

It was a stronghold.

Luke leaned forward, eyes wide as they flew over the vast stretch of land within the walls.

It was a functioning city.

Not just a scavenger's den or a crumbling ruin where survivors clung to life.

This place had factories, homes, schools, and towers bristling with defenses.

Fields of crops stretched across sections of land, wind turbines spun in the distance, and armed patrols moved along the walls, their weapons sleek and unfamiliar.

This was a civilization.

A resistance that wasn't just surviving.

It was thriving.

The helicopter veered toward the far end of the city, where a series of helipads stretched out beneath them. A massive, fortress-like structure loomed in the center, its dark metal walls standing like an impenetrable bastion.

Luke felt something strange in his chest—something he hadn't felt in years.

Hope.

Not just for survival.

But for a future.

The landing was not a welcome one.

As soon as the helicopter touched down, figures emerged from the shadows.

Before anyone could react, orders were barked.

"On your knees! Hands behind your head!"

Lucas stepped forward, calm as ever, raising his hands slightly.

"They're with me," he stated.

A soldier, taller than the rest and wearing insignia that marked him as someone in charge, stepped forward. His helmet's visor retracted, revealing a scarred face with piercing silver eyes.

"They're prisoners until proven otherwise," the man said coldly.

A moment of silence passed.

Then, without another word, the team surged forward, forcing them to their knees, binding their hands behind their backs.

Luke gritted his teeth but didn't resist. He knew better.

Jake shot a glare at Lucas. "Are you serious?"

Lucas simply met his gaze, unfazed.

"You'll understand soon enough."

Luke felt the cold bite of restraints locking around his wrists.