The morgue doors burst open.
Jay staggered into the midnight rain, blood soaking through the sleeve where Nina's bullet had grazed him. The cold bit into his skin, but he didn't feel it. Pain had become his oldest friend.
The voice in his head whispered—
"Run, Jay. Run."
Lina.
His sister's spirit.
Twisting behind his right eye like smoke in glass.
Sirens howled.
Tires screeched.
The alley ahead lit up in red and blue.
"FREEZE!"
Jay stopped, silhouetted beneath the orange haze of a streetlamp.
Ten cops.
Guns raised.
Fingers trembling.
He looked at them and saw ghosts.
Men in blue, no different than the ones who had murdered his family.
They were already dead to him.
He took a step forward.
"Don't do it!" one shouted. "Get on the ground!"
But Jay just smiled.
A crooked, blood-slick grin.
"You already buried me once," he murmured.
Then
Gunfire.
The street lit up in a storm of bullets.
His body jolted, twisted. Blood sprayed across the sidewalk like red paint on concrete.
He dropped to his knees. Then collapsed face-first into the cold.
Still.
Silent.
Detective Nina arrived minutes later.
She stood over the corpse. His face was half-hidden in shadow, blood pooling beneath him like a halo. Paramedics hovered but didn't move.
One look at the body told her the story.
Multiple shots. Chest. Head. Legs.
No one survives that.
"Is it him?" a captain asked her.
Nina stared at the pale face.
The black hair.
The golden eyes now dim.
She nodded.
"Yeah."
"It's him."
The monster was dead.
Or so they thought.
But down in the sewer beneath the street, crimson water swirled.
A single eye opened—
Golden, glowing with hatred and hunger.
Jay's whisper echoed through the tunnel.
"You'll have to do better than that."