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The scorched circle in the clearing was a brand on the world, a sigil of everything that had changed. Jack stood over it for a long time, the morning sun doing little to warm the chill that had settled in his bones. It wasn't the chill of fear, but of comprehension. The fight had shifted on a fundamental level. The war was no longer on a single, horizontal plane of human ambition. It had just opened a vertical dimension, a deep, terrifying depth he had only ever glimpsed from the corner of his eye.
The creature hadn't been a monster. It had been a symptom. A tear in the fabric of things. And the crystal in his backpack had been the needle that pulled the thread, unraveling it completely.
He slung the pack over his shoulder, the hum of the contained crystal a constant, grim reminder. It was no longer just a tool for study or a dangerous trophy. It was a key. Or a lure. He could feel it now, more clearly than before—the way it subtly warped the space around him, a tiny, dense gravity well of lunar power that other forces, other entities, could potentially sense.
He needed to get it off the streets. But where could you hide a piece of the moon?
The church library was compromised. It was his sanctuary, but it was also the first place anyone looking for him would check. He needed a vault. A place warded with more than just locks and shadows.
A name surfaced from the depths of his memory, spoken in the weary tone of a fellow outcast. The Silent Market. A bazaar that existed in the spaces between, a crossroads for things that were lost, forbidden, or too dangerous for the waking world. It was not a place one found on a map. It was a place one unraveled to.
It was also a place Morbius had warned him about. "They trade in curiosities, Jack, and they have a particular appetite for living ones."
But desperate times bred desperate paths. If anyone knew how to safely contain an artifact of pure lunar energy, or who might be trying to pry open dimensional rifts, it would be the entities that frequented that cursed marketplace.
The journey there was less about distance and more about perception. He drove to the old Union Station, not for a train, but for the forgotten, lower levels—the tunnels that had been sealed off decades ago. The air grew cold and thick with the smell of damp concrete and ages of neglect. Graffiti gave way to older, stranger markings scratched into the walls—sigils, warnings, and invitations in languages no human mouth had spoken for millennia.
He followed a specific pattern of marks, a sequence Morbius had once sketched for him in case of absolute need. It felt like walking a labyrinth in the dark, his senses stretched thin, the hum of the crystal in his pack a dissonant note in the silent, oppressive dark.
Then, he found it. A seemingly solid wall of crumbling brick. But as he focused his will upon it, the air shimmered, and the bricks dissolved into a shimmering, opaque curtain of mist, from which spilled a cacophony of whispers, strange scents, and a light that was no color at all.
Taking a final, steadying breath, his hand resting on the strap of his backpack, Jack Russell stepped through the veil.
The silence of the tunnels was instantly replaced by a low, pervasive murmur. The air was thick with the smell of exotic spices, decaying parchment, ozone, and something ancient and dusty, like opened tombs. He stood at the edge of a vast, cavernous space that had no right to exist beneath Los Angeles. Stalls made of shadow and bone, twisted metal and living wood, stretched out into a impossible distance. Beings of every description moved through the gloom—huddled figures in cloaks, things that skittered on too many legs, and shimmering forms that were barely more than concepts given shape.
This was the Silent Market. And he, with a captured star on his back, had just walked into the lion's den.
The atmosphere of the Silent Market pressed in on him, a physical weight of ancient magic and alien intent. Every sense was assaulted. He heard the clink of soul-coin transactions, the sibilant whispers of deals being struck in dead languages, the dry rustle of scales and chitin. He smelled phosphorescent fungi, boiling unguents, and the cold, dry scent of astral projection.
And he felt every single one of them feel him.
The moment he stepped fully into the market, a ripple of awareness passed through the crowd. Not a startled ripple, but the slow, deliberate turning of predators sensing a new, interesting scent on the wind. Dozens of unseen eyes, compound lenses, and psychic sensors focused on the newcomer. On the man, and more specifically, on the thrumming, silver-lined backpack he carried.
He was a lighthouse in a sea of fog, and every ship was looking his way.
He kept his expression neutral, his body language coiled but non-threatening. He met the gazes that dared to meet his, his own eyes—still human, but holding the ghost of the wolf's predatory calm—daring any of them to make a move. Most looked away. A few held his gaze for a moment longer, their interest palpable, before melting back into the shifting crowds. He was recognized. Not as Jack Russell, but as what he was. A lycanthrope. A power. And today, a carrier of something potent.
He moved with purpose, ignoring the stalls selling bottled memories and crystallized screams. He was looking for a specific kind of vendor. He found it tucked between a purveyor of prophetic entrails and a cart stacked with haunted mirrors. The stall was a simple, weathered cart made of a dark, petrified wood, attended by a being so shrouded in ragged, grey cloth that its form was indistinguishable. Above the cart, floating in the air, was a single, unblinking eye the size of a dinner plate, its pupil a swirling vortex of muted colors. It was the Warden of Lost Things.
Jack approached. The floating eye swiveled to regard him. The shrouded figure did not move.
"I need a container," Jack said, his voice low but clear, cutting through the market's murmur. "Something that can contain a powerful energy signature. Completely. No leaks, no echoes, no scent."
The floating eye blinked slowly. A dry, rustling voice, like pages turning in a tomb, emanated from the shrouded figure, though its head never moved. "The nature of the energy defines the nature of the cage."
"Lunar," Jack said. "Pure. Amplified."
A palpable shift occurred in the small space around the cart. The nearby murmur quieted. The Warden's form seemed to grow stiller, if that was possible. The floating eye narrowed.
"You carry a dangerous sun in your pack, Hound of the Moon," the rustling voice stated. It was not a question. "Such a thing is not meant to be caged. It is meant to be... used. Or destroyed."
"It's not for sale," Jack said flatly. "I need to hide it. From those who would use it. And from things that are... drawn to it."
The Warden was silent for a long moment. "The price for such a container is high. It requires a sliver of a forgotten god's prison. A whisper from the void between stars. It is not paid for with the trinkets of men."
"I'm not offering trinkets," Jack replied, his gaze unwavering. "I'm offering a trade. Information for the container."
The eye swiveled, its vortex-pupil spinning faster. "What information could a lone wolf possess that would be of such value?"
"You felt the disturbance to the north," Jack said. "The fraying at the edges of this world. Something is tearing holes. Letting things through. I was there. I saw what came out. And I saw what drew it." He tapped the side of his backpack. "I will tell you what I know of the breach. Its scent. Its taste. The nature of the thing that failed to cross. That knowledge is worth more than any coin in this market. It is a warning."
The Silent Market around them seemed to hold its breath. The Warden of Lost Things was a repository of knowledge; such a firsthand account of a dimensional instability was a currency it could not ignore.
The rustling form shifted slightly. A long, thin, desiccated hand emerged from the robes and placed a small, unadorned box on the cart. It was made of a dull, non-reflective metal that seemed to drink the light.
"The Cry of the Void," the Warden rasped. "Nothing placed inside can be sensed from without. Not by magic, not by machine, not by instinct. The deal is proposed."
Jack nodded. "The deal is proposed." He began to describe the creature in the clearing, the specific, agonized frequency of its energy, the way the crystal had acted as a destabilizing agent. He gave them the scent of the abyss.
When he finished, the Warden's hand pushed the small box forward.
"The deal is struck."
Jack took the box. As his fingers touched the metal, a profound silence fell over his senses. The constant, low-level hum of the crystal was gone. Completely. It was as if it had ceased to exist.
He carefully opened his backpack, transferred the pulsating crystal into the small, dark box, and closed the lid. The world was silent. The beacon was extinguished.
He had what he came for. But as he turned to leave, the Warden's rustling voice stopped him.
"A word, Hound. The silence you have purchased... it is not a shield. It is a mask. Those who are already hunting you... they hunt by other means. They do not need a beacon to find what they have already seen."
Before Jack could ask what that meant, the Warden and its cart seemed to fold in on themselves, dissolving into the market's shadows, leaving him alone with a new, deeper kind of dread.
The silence was absolute. As Jack slipped the Cry of the Void box into his backpack, the last trace of the crystal's presence vanished. The oppressive weight of being a beacon was gone, replaced by the profound quiet of a snuffed-out star. He should have felt relief. Instead, the Warden's final words coiled in his gut like a serpent.
They hunt by other means.
He moved through the Silent Market with renewed urgency, the atmosphere now feeling less like a curious gaze and more like a predator assessing camouflaged prey. The deal was struck, but he had traded one danger for another. He had drawn attention to himself in the one place where attention was a currency, and he had revealed his knowledge of a breach. Information was power here, and he had just spent a significant amount of it.
His goal now was simple: get out. He retraced his steps, the path back feeling longer and more treacherous. The shimmering curtain of the entrance came into view, a promise of the mundane world beyond.
He was ten feet from the veil when a figure stepped into his path, blocking the way.
It was not a hulking monster or a shrouded mystic. It was a man, or something wearing the shape of one. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored, ash-grey suit that seemed to absorb the market's weird light. His features were sharp, handsome, and utterly devoid of expression. His eyes were the color of a frozen lake.
"Jack Russell," the man said. His voice was smooth, cultured, and carried no inflection. It was the voice of a statement, not a greeting.
Jack stopped, his body coiling into a state of readiness. He said nothing, his own gaze locking onto the man's icy one. He could smell nothing from him—no cologne, no sweat, no life. Just a void, cold and empty.
"The entity in the basin was an unforeseen variable," the man continued, as if they were resuming a previous conversation. "A minor miscalculation in a grander equation. Your intervention, while disruptive to the specimen, provided valuable data on the interaction between dimensional instability and concentrated lunar thaumaturgy."
Promethean. But this was not Thorne. Thorne was a fanatic, a man driven by a lust for discovery. This was something else. This was management.
"You're with them," Jack stated, his voice low and dangerous.
"We are the reason they existed," the man corrected him mildly. "Dr. Thorne was a project lead. A talented one, but replaceable. His capture is an administrative inconvenience. The data, however, is not."
The man's eyes flickered to Jack's backpack, to where the Cry of the Void box was now hidden. "You have removed the artifact from the board. A prudent, if temporary, measure. But you misunderstand our primary objective, Mr. Russell."
He took a single, fluid step forward. The air grew colder.
"We do not need the crystal to find you. We do not need a resonator to control you. We have your genetic profile. We have the resonance signature of your curse. We have mapped the quantum state of your very soul." The man's lips curved into a smile that never reached his eyes. It was a cold, surgical gesture. "You are not a subject to be studied. You are a patent to be filed."
He raised a hand, and in his palm, a small, silvery disc began to glow with a complex, geometric light.
"The capture order for Subject Zero is now in effect."
The silvery disc in the man's palm didn't emit a wave of force or a beam of light. Instead, it emitted a silence. A sphere of absolute, dead air expanded from it, swallowing the chaotic sounds of the Silent Market. Within that sphere, Jack felt a pressure unlike any he had ever experienced. It wasn't physical. It was a pressure on his essence. The disc was a targeted suppressor, designed not for a generic werewolf, but for him. For the specific quantum signature of Jack Russell's curse.
His muscles locked. The connection to the beast, the constant, humming presence in his blood, was suddenly muffled, pushed down under a layer of leaden stillness. He couldn't transform. He could barely breathe. It was a cage built from his own DNA.
The man in the grey suit took another step, his expression unchanged. "Resistance is a miscalculation. Your compliance is required for the next phase."
Panic, cold and sharp, tried to spike through the suppression. This was it. This was the end of the road. Not in a blaze of glory, but in a silent, sterile capture in a forgotten place. To be filed away, dissected, and replicated.
But Jack Russell had spent a lifetime fighting a cage from the inside.
He couldn't call the beast. So he called on the man. On every ounce of willpower, every moment of control he had ever clawed from the darkness. He focused not on breaking the suppression, but on moving through it. His body screamed in protest, his bones aching with the strain of moving against a force that was unmaking him from the inside out.
With a guttural roar that was pure human defiance, he took a single, shuddering step forward.
The man in the suit blinked, the first genuine flicker of surprise in his frozen eyes. The suppressor was working perfectly. The subject's lycanthropy was neutralized. And yet, he was moving. The will was overriding the biology. This was... unprecedented.
That moment of surprise was all Jack needed.
He couldn't swing a claw, but he could swing a backpack. With a final, explosive effort, he hurled the heavy pack, laden with the Cry of the Void box, directly at the man's head.
The man, expecting a supernatural attack, was unprepared for something so brutally mundane. He flinched, raising his arm to block the incoming weight. The sphere of suppression flickered.
It was less than a second. The briefest crack in the prison walls.
But for a creature of instinct, a second was an eternity.
The beast, feeling the pressure relent for a single, glorious moment, did not surge forth in a wave of rage. It lent its strength, its raw, animal power, to the man's frame. Jack didn't transform. His body remained human. But the force behind his next movement was entirely supernatural.
He lunged, not at the man, but past him. He shouldered into him with the force of a battering ram. The sound of the impact—a sickening crunch of bone and a grunt of shock—was loud in the dead air. The suppressor disc flew from the man's grasp, clattering to the stone floor, its light dying instantly.
The pressure vanished. The connection to the beast roared back, a tidal wave of power that left him dizzy. He stumbled, catching himself against the shimmering veil of the exit. He didn't look back. He didn't go for the kill.
He plunged through the curtain.
The cold, damp silence of the train tunnels welcomed him back. He gasped, leaning against the rough brick wall, his whole body trembling with adrenaline and the aftershock of the suppression. He was free. But he had never felt more hunted.
The man in the suit wasn't just a new enemy. He was the embodiment of the new war. A war not of fangs and claws, but of cold, calculated science that sought to define, catalog, and own the very core of his being.
He looked down at his human hands, then back at the now-solid wall. The first part of his journey, the battle against a visible enemy in Los Angeles, was over.
He had won. But as he stood alone in the dark, the echo of the suppressor's silence still ringing in his soul, he knew the truth.
The Scent of Moonlight had faded. The war for Los Angeles was done.
To Be Continue...