1996 | The Release
Rain trailed in thin, silver lines down the barred windows of Ravenstrike Asylum, carving rivers across the glass like veins. The walls hummed with the low, constant buzz of fluorescent lights. Somewhere down the hall, a radio whispered static between the orderlies' shoes.
Dr. Alena Kafiris's pen paused above a stack of papers.
"Nine years," she murmured. "No violent incidents in the last three. Jaxen, I'm impressed."
Across the desk, Jaxen Reyes managed a quiet smile.
"Guess I finally learned to breathe again, Doc."
Kafiris's eyes softened but didn't relax.
"You've also learned to hide. The moment we talk about him, you retreat."
Jaxen's fingers twitched.
"If you mean Aron, I've made peace with it. I'm done letting him live rent-free up here." He tapped his temple and forced a chuckle.
She didn't laugh.
"Obsession doesn't vanish; it hibernates. Remember that."
He leaned back, looking oddly calm.
"Then let it sleep. I just want my life back."
Kafiris exhaled, signed the release, and slid the folder shut.
"You'll check in weekly. If you feel anything — nightmares, impulses — you call me. Promise?"
"Promise."
He said it easily, almost too easily.
⸻
The gates clanged open to gray sky and the smell of wet asphalt.
Jaxen stood for a moment on the steps, the world stretching wide and unfamiliar after nine years of stone. He carried a duffel bag, a bus ticket, and a stack of legal papers stamped RELEASED – JUNE 12 1996.
"Free," he muttered. "Right."
Freedom felt hollow. Nights came heavy and loud with dreams of whispering voices and black rivers of tar. He'd wake gasping, craving the weight of something that used to make him whole.
He found a one-room apartment near the docks — cheap, damp, anonymous. Day shifts moving freight kept his body tired, but not his mind.
Every time a truck chain scraped metal, it sounded like a heartbeat.
Every time rain hit the glass, he thought he heard it calling.
⸻
At first, Jaxen told himself the noise was just the sea. The docks never slept — gulls, foghorns, diesel engines coughing through the night. Yet beneath it all, there was something else. A rhythm that pulsed just under the sound of the tide, a whisper that curled through his dreams like smoke.
"Jaxen," it said, or maybe the wind only made him think so.
Days blurred. He woke before dawn, worked until dusk, returned to the same flickering bulb and leaky faucet. He ate cold beans from the can, lined the counter with newspaper clippings he couldn't stop collecting — Nightweaver sightings, HelixDyne contracts, reports of strange black residue found near chemical plants. The city moved on without him, but he couldn't move past it.
Sometimes he'd catch his reflection in the window — eyes rimmed in red, beard untrimmed — and for a heartbeat he'd expect another face layered over his own. The grin, the teeth, the voice that wasn't his.
He'd blink and it would vanish, leaving only the tremor in his chest.
He tried therapy like Kafiris asked. The community office smelled of disinfectant and resignation. A group of ex-cons sat in a circle under buzzing lights, trading stories about mistakes and second chances. Jaxen listened, said nothing, and when it was his turn, he lied.
"I'm fine," he told them. "Just figuring out what's next."
The counselor smiled thinly and wrote something down.
He never went back.
Instead, he spent hours walking the piers. The water there was black and restless, lapping against rusted hulls that never left port. The city skyline shimmered beyond the fog — a thousand windows blinking like eyes. Every reflection showed him pieces of what he'd lost: his career, his pride, his sanity. Somewhere out there, Aron Kincaid had all three. Somewhere out there, the Nightweaver still swung free while Jaxen counted coins for rent.
One night he passed a newspaper stand, headlines damp from drizzle:
NEW THREATS IN THE SKYLINE — NIGHTWEAVER STOPS CHEMICAL HEIST.
Jaxen's jaw tightened. He didn't buy the paper, but he stared until the vendor told him to move along. When he reached home, he couldn't remember the walk back. His hands were trembling.
"You don't get to live rent-free," he muttered, repeating his promise to Kafiris.
But the name pulsed in his skull like static — Aron, Aron, Aron — until it drowned out the rain.
⸻
Three weeks after his release, a letter arrived. No return address. The handwriting was blocky, almost military.
Mr. Reyes,
We followed your case with interest. HelixDyne Industries could use a man of your talents in freelance fieldwork. Discretion guaranteed. Enclosed: time, place, payment.
A crisp fifty-dollar bill was folded inside.
Jaxen turned it over in his hands for a long while.
HelixDyne.
The name burned like acid.
He tore the letter once, then stopped.
Curiosity was a dangerous thing — but so was hunger.
The rent was late.
He went.
The address led to a warehouse on the edge of Brooklyn, half-collapsed and surrounded by cranes. A man in a suit met him at the door, face half-hidden under an umbrella.
"Mr. Reyes," he greeted smoothly. "We're conducting a clean-up operation. Old research materials need disposal. Confidential."
Jaxen's gut twisted.
The smell inside hit him first — chemical and sharp, laced with something sweet and rotten. Crates were stacked along the walls, each stenciled with numbers and warning signs.
Hazardous material. Bio-organic.
He swallowed.
"You just want it moved?"
"Moved, burned, gone," the man said. "You'll be paid in cash."
By the time Jaxen signed the sheet, rain had started again. Forklifts groaned through puddles, chains clattered, and thunder rolled over the river. When the first container opened, black residue clung to the inside — slick, almost breathing.
Jaxen froze.
The smell punched memory through him like a fist.
Don't touch it, he told himself.
But his hand moved anyway.
A single drop slid onto his glove.
Cold. Alive.
His pulse hammered, and for a heartbeat he swore he heard it — a hiss curling between his ears:
"Missed you."
He jerked back so hard he fell against a crate.
The other workers stared.
"You okay, buddy?" one asked.
"Yeah," Jaxen lied, scraping the glove clean.
He threw it away that night, but the skin beneath it tingled for hours.
⸻
The days that followed blurred into insomnia. He'd jolt awake, sure something was moving under his skin. He'd shower until the water ran cold, but the feeling stayed. Sometimes he'd dream of glass shattering, of corridors humming under blue light, of a voice whispering together.
He'd wake with the taste of metal on his tongue.
Kafiris's number glared from the fridge door.
Twice he lifted the phone.
Twice he hung up.
What could he even say?
That the thing she swore was gone was singing again in his blood?
She'd send him back, cage him, label him relapse.
He couldn't.
Not yet.
Instead, he started running.
Miles along the river at dawn, sweat stinging his eyes. It helped for a while — until the nightmares followed him into waking. Every shadow on the water looked like oil. Every ripple seemed to crawl.
The whisper never stopped; it only learned to wait.
One evening, after another double shift at the docks, he wandered into a dive bar that smelled of salt and rust. The bartender barely looked up. A baseball game flickered on the TV, but Jaxen didn't watch. A man beside him muttered about the Nightweaver saving the city again, about heroes and freaks.
Jaxen's knuckles went white around his glass.
"You don't know anything about freaks," he said quietly.
The man laughed until he saw Jaxen's eyes.
He left without finishing his drink.
That night, Jaxen walked home through the rain. The streetlights bled gold through the fog, turning every puddle into a mirror. Somewhere far behind him, a siren wailed. He kept his head down until he reached his building — but when he passed the alley beside it, something caught his eye.
A smear of black shimmered against the bricks, faint but unmistakable.
It pulsed once, like a heartbeat, then stilled.
Jaxen's breath caught.
He stepped closer, rain hissing against his jacket.
The smear quivered.
His reflection in the puddle warped — not his face anymore but something wider, grinning.
"No," he whispered. "You're gone."
The puddle rippled.
"We never left," came the reply, soft as thunder.
He stumbled back, heart thundering, until he hit the opposite wall. When he looked again, the smear was gone. Only rainwater streamed down the bricks.
He sank to the ground, trembling.
"It's in my head," he told himself.
"Just my head."
But as lightning tore the sky open, his shadow stretched longer than it should have — long enough to smile back.
⸻
Across the river, inside her office at Ravenstrike, Dr. Kafiris reviewed Jaxen's file for the fifth time that night. The rain against her window sounded almost identical to the rhythm of his heartbeat from their last session, steady but haunted. She hesitated, picked up the phone, and dialed his number.
It rang four times before the machine clicked.
"Jaxen, it's Alena. Just checking in. Call me when you can, okay?"
She hung up, uneasy.
Somewhere deep in the facility, the lights flickered.
And miles away, in that damp apartment by the docks, Jaxen Reyes sat on the edge of his bed staring at his hands. The tingling hadn't stopped. The whisper had returned, louder now, threading through the hiss of the rain.
He pressed his palms together, fighting to breathe.
"I'm free," he whispered to the empty room.
"You hear me? Free."
The darkness in the corner stirred, and a voice purred back:
"We agree."