The carriage grinds to a halt.

Micheal gets out and starts walking up the street, with Adrian following suit. "The Revenant's name is Thomas Smith. He's a class 2 warrior like me. He retired due to old age."

Micheal stops at a medium-sized house. The house is made of bricks and painted yellow; a chimney reaches out into the skies from the sloped rooftop.

Micheal knocks on the wooden door three times while saying, "Police, open up."

No response.

Micheal's carefree demeanor drops, changing into that of utmost focus.

"Be on guard." Micheal takes a step back from the door before thrusting the bat into it.

Bang!

The door slams open, allowing entry. The two walk into a dark living room, only lit by the light coming out of the doorway.

Micheal looks around the room. "Mister Smith, it's the police—come out."

No response.

A hallway with four doors sits to the left of the living room, one door at the end and three at the sides. "He should be in there," Micheal says, pointing toward the far door.

"Be careful." Micheal slowly walks toward the room, his bat firmly gripped in his hand.

Bang!

The hallway's left wall busts open, leaving a cloud of smoke. Adrian hears a pained scream coming from the smoke.

As the smoke clears, Micheal is hung to the wall by an entity's arm penetrating his stomach. The entity is a humanoid creature as pale as a ghost; its eyes and mouth are pitch black, and its arms and legs are replaced by sharp and large needles.

Fucking hell. Adrian takes his gun out and fires three times toward the monster.

One bullet hits the creature's arm. It pings off with a metal clang. The other two hit center mass, and black liquid is sprayed from the monster. It lets out a loud shriek before quickly running back through the wall.

Micheal stands up. "I'm alive, but I ain't in no state to fight that fucking thing. I'll defend; you shoot." Micheal's stomach has a big puncture wound in it; he's barely managing to stand up straight.

Adrian quickly reloads his gun while Micheal readies his bat.

Metal clanging sounds echo throughout the rooms. The creature is moving rapidly, waiting for a chance to strike.

Bang!

The right wall of the hallway busts open. The sound of metal clashing echoes in the building. Micheal's bat blocked the entity's attack.

Adrian takes aim and fires four bullets toward the entity. Three of them hit the target. It steps back and shrieks in pain before going back into the room.

Loud and fast metal clanging comes from above them.

Bang!

The roof above Micheal busts open, the creature falling down and attempting to stab its arms into him. He dodges into the hallway.

As Adrian takes aim, the creature shifts its focus from Micheal to him.

The thing runs on all fours toward him. Adrian frantically shoots his last two bullets, but they both miss.

The entity lunges at Adrian, trying to decimate his head. Adrian forces as much spirit energy as he can into his hand. He puts his hand toward the sharp blade coming toward him.

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The needle-like arm pierces through Adrian's palm; the spirit energy slows it down, and the arm is stuck in Adrian's hand. "Don't move!" Micheal shouts at Adrian.

The creature lunges with its other arm toward Adrian's neck. Adrian's eyes widen as he stares down the blade coming toward him. Shivers go down his spine as he can only think of one word.

Death.

The blade is mere millimeters from his neck, but suddenly the creature gets flung to the wall, its chest completely crushed. Micheal had put all he had into his bat and hit the entity.

Micheal crumples to the floor, his stomach bleeding profusely.

Adrian's right hand is burning with hot, searing pain, blood gushing out of it. Adrian focuses his mind and energy on making a cloth. Blue energy flows out of his left hand and forms a cloth.

Well, at least I'm not dead, thanks to Micheal. His wound looks pretty bad, but I doubt he'll be dying from that.

He wraps his palm with the cloth, stopping the bleeding.

Now how do I carry him back to the station?

Loud footsteps quickly approach from outside the house.

Adrian turns back to look at the door.

A tall man stands in the doorway, relief washing over his face. The Captain.

The Captain's eyes dart around the room, analyzing the situation. The Captain disappears from Adrian's vision as if he's teleported.

Adrian looks around. The Captain has put Micheal on his shoulder, carrying him with ease.

"I'll take Mike back. You take the entity's body and come back with the carriage." As soon as the Captain finishes talking, he bolts out the door, running as fast as he can toward the station.

How did he get here? Or even know that we needed help? I guess it doesn't matter.

The entity's body is lying next to the wall, dead. Adrian grabs the creature's head and starts dragging it. He leaves the house and gets back to the carriage as quickly as he can.

"Back to the station, mate."

As the carriage driver looks back, his face turns into one of disgust. "Eww, what the fuck is that? And where's Micheal?"

"Micheal was injured; the Captain took him. And this is an entity's body. I thought you would have seen one by now."

"They don't typically bring them into the carriage." The carriage starts moving.

Adrian looks down at the entity's corpse. A human can turn into something like this? Is this what happens when you lose your mind to the voices? You turn into weird-ass monsters? Then why did John stay normal?

Pain jolts through Adrian's body. The fatigue of the fighting and the wounds have caught up to him. His body craves rest, but the pain doesn't let him fall asleep. All he can do is lie down while trying to take his mind off the pain.

...

The carriage reaches the station.

Adrian grabs its head and drags the creature into the station.

Melissa looks up with a smile, ready to greet the visitor. Her expression quickly changes as she looks away and closes her eyes. "Why are you bringing that in?"

"Captain's orders."

"Just get it out of my sight as fast as you can, please."

"Sure." Adrian drags the body up the stairs, its metallic limbs scratching up the wood.

"There you are." A man's voice rings out from the lounge. It's the station's resident doctor, Thomas Sinclaire.

"Come here, show me your hand," Thomas says in a tired voice. Adrian lets go of the body, leaving it in the middle of the lounge. He stretches his hands out toward the doctor.

Thomas inspects the wound. "It's not that bad; it should heal in an hour or two. Take these two." Thomas pulls out a white pill and a red vial from his satchel, handing them to Adrian.

Adrian first drinks the liquid. A bitter taste invades his mouth. He struggles to take more than a sip. Tastes like cough medicine.

"Take it with water if you're struggling."

Right, why didn't I do that?

He walks into the bathroom, downing the red liquid, then washing out his mouth with water. He does the same for the pill.

As the pill enters his body, he feels the pain slowly fading away. It's a painkiller, I guess.

He comes out of the bathroom. He looks toward the sofa. Micheal is laid down unconscious, his wound wrapped up. "How's he doing?"

"It's a pretty bad wound; he would have died had he reached me later. But he should be fine—he'll be back to normal tomorrow."

"Thank God." Adrian breathes a sigh of relief as he walks toward the Captain's office. He knocks twice on the door.

"Come in."

Adrian steps in. "I brought the entity's body, sir."

"Good, time for some training."

The Captain gets up from his chair. He walks out of the room and toward the entity's body.

"Entities leave behind important valuables. A PRF officer should be able to extract them. The first and most important thing is the core." The Captain puts his hand onto the creature's body.

"To find it, you gotta put your hand on it and feel the spirit energy." The Captain gestures for Adrian to do the same. Adrian complies.

Adrian feels a reservoir of spirit energy in the entity's abdomen. "You found it, right?"

"Yes, sir."

The Captain takes out a knife. "Then you carve the flesh of that area and pull the core out." The Captain inserts the knife into the creature's abdomen, carving its pale flesh out. He puts his hand inside the entity and pulls out a spherical core.

"Then you take any unique material the entity has. For this one, its sharp limbs should be useful." The Captain slashes the creature's arms and legs, separating them from the rest of the body.

"Finally, put your hand onto the body and flow spirit energy into it." The Captain grabs Adrian's hand and puts it onto the body.

Adrian flows his spirit energy through his arm into the entity's body. The entity's body slowly turns into blue spirit energy until there is nothing left.