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The ICU lights never turned off.
They hummed softly above Richard Solace's bed, casting everything in pale white—too clean, too quiet. Machines surrounded him like sentinels, their steady beeping the only proof he was still alive. Tubes ran from his arms, his chest wrapped tight beneath layers of bandages. Every breath he took was shallow, forced, borrowed.
Siara Halden sat beside him, her chair pulled close, her fingers wrapped around his hand like letting go would mean losing him for good.
He hadn't woken up.
Not since they'd dragged him out of the forest. Not since the ambulance. Not since the doctors used words like critical and unstable and we're doing everything we can.
She leaned forward, resting her forehead against his knuckles.
"You're not allowed to leave," she whispered. "Not after everything."
The door to the ICU was supposed to be locked after visiting hours. It was supposed to be secure. That's what the nurse had said when Siara begged to stay. Somehow, they'd let her. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was because no one thought a seventeen-year-old girl could matter this much to a boy hovering between life and death.
Down the hall, footsteps echoed.
Slow. Measured.
Siara didn't look up at first. Hospitals had sounds like that all the time—doctors, nurses, guards. But something about these steps felt… deliberate. Heavy. Like whoever was walking didn't belong to the rush and panic of a hospital.
The lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
The machines beside Richard stuttered, their beeping warping for half a second before stabilizing again.
Siara's head snapped up.
The hallway beyond the glass doors darkened, shadows stretching unnaturally long. The temperature dropped, raising goosebumps along her arms. Her heart began to pound, instinct screaming danger before her mind could catch up.
Then she saw him.
He didn't burst in. He didn't run. He appeared, stepping out of the darkness as if it folded around him willingly.
Tall. Inhumanly still.
His coat brushed the floor without a sound. His eyes—cold, calculating, ancient—locked onto Richard immediately, like he'd never been looking anywhere else.
The Collector.
Siara shot to her feet. "Get away from him."
The words came out shaking, but she didn't move. She planted herself between Richard and the thing that had haunted their lives since the forest.
The Collector tilted his head slightly, studying her. A faint, almost curious expression crossed his face.
"You are not the subject," he said calmly. His voice was smooth, distorted just enough to feel wrong. "You are collateral."
The machines began to fail.
One by one, monitors flickered off. The lights dimmed until the ICU was lit only by emergency red. Siara reached into her bag on instinct, fingers brushing cold metal—but before she could pull the revolver free, the air itself pressed against her.
She slammed backward into the wall.
Pain exploded through her shoulders as she hit the tiles. The gun clattered across the floor, uselessly out of reach. She gasped, struggling to breathe as an invisible force pinned her there.
"Please," she choked. "He's dying."
"Yes," The Collector replied, stepping closer to Richard's bed. "Which is why I'm here."
He placed one hand on the bed rail. The metal warped beneath his touch.
"Richard Solace is incomplete," he continued. "Broken. But still valuable. Still… Omega."
Siara's eyes burned. "Don't touch him."
The Collector glanced at her, almost amused. "You misunderstand. I am not here to hurt him."
The IV lines snapped free.
The heart monitor flatlined for half a second—
Then surged back to life as The Collector lifted Richard effortlessly from the bed. The wires tore loose, alarms screaming far too late to matter.
Richard didn't wake. His head lolled against The Collector's shoulder, pale and fragile compared to the thing holding him.
"No!" Siara screamed, thrashing against the invisible force. "Richard!"
For the first time, something shifted in The Collector's expression. Not emotion. Recognition.
"She will be a complication," he murmured, almost to himself.
The pressure vanished.
Siara collapsed to the floor, gasping, scrambling forward—but the shadows swallowed them whole. The air folded in on itself, and in a blink, Richard and The Collector were gone.
The alarms wailed.
Nurses shouted in the distance.
Siara crawled to where the bed had been, gripping the empty sheets with trembling hands.
"They took you," she whispered, tears blurring her vision. "I swear… I'll get you back."
Outside, unseen by anyone else, the hospital cameras looped the same five seconds of empty hallway over and over again.
And somewhere deep in the moving jungle, The Collector finally brought Richard Solace home.
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