The Last Dainv-Chapter 78

The Last Dainv-Chapter 78

Ollie fiddled with the red marble in his palm. In front of him stood Yorkdale Adult Learning Centre. The building's orange bricked walls from the outside were typical of government buildings made before the 2000s.
At 2AM, the building should've been empty. Lights were turned off, but emergency red lights were on when they shouldn't be. Shadows moved where they shouldn't.
Quickly turning on his phone, only 1 notification.
[Rachel: Did you get a chance to look at the survivor from the Red Hollows?]
He sighed. No messages from Alexander.
"Another waste of time," he muttered, putting the phone back into his pocket. Higher-ups had their reasons. They always did. But sending him to deal with this?
He walked up to the front door. With a touch of the handle, the door lock clicked open.
Now inside, the stale air carried coldness that seeped into his bones. Time to work.
Ollie put both of his hands into his blazer's pockets, unholstering the black double deagles. Blue light pulsed faintly along the glyphs of the silencer. The deagles themselves had faint lines that pulsed from the trigger to the barrel. He grinned at the sight of his own artificed work of art.
First, he unloaded the magazines already inside them and replaced them with a magazine filled with silver bullets. Each round glowed a soft gray, specifically designed for tonight's target. Higher-ups were expensing it. Might as well use top quality Glorious Bazaar ammo.
"Had to be a Resonant," he grumbled as he began walking through the entrance hall. "Like they don't have anyone else at that level."
But orders were orders, even if they came wrapped in bureaucratic nonsense.
Ollie moved through the first-floor hallway, both guns pointing directly in front of him.
The first room came up around the corner. Using telekinesis, a blue strand turned the knob. Immediately when it opened, he kicked the door open, guns up, pointing inwards while holding the door with the same strand. He went in, checking the corners and under the desks. He checked the metal locker containing cleaning supplies.
Nothing here.
He moved to the next room. Back towards the wall. Turn the knob. Kick open, then guns up. Checked all the corners and the cleaning locker. Nothing again. He didn't bother closing the door. Less risk too.
Ollie went through the whole first floor, repeating the same actions in each room. The 1st floor office was different. More desks to check. A water cooler bubbled, making him spin and aim. Just regular nighttime building sounds.
Room 107 - clear. Teacher's lounge - clear. Men's bathroom with piss on the floor - clear. The women's - also clear.
"This is beneath me," Ollie muttered, checking the janitor's closet.
But the mission briefing was clear: sweep the building, locate the target, deal with any other threats. Simple, direct, and most definitely
annoying.
The cafeteria took longest. It had too many tables.
His boots squeaked against the floor as he moved between the rows. The kitchen was next. Door also open.
The first floor's rooms revealed nothing. Ollie rolled his shoulders. One floor clear. Four to go.
The stairwell door creaked as he pushed it open. Cold air hit his face, different from the cold in the first floor's hallways. He entered, looking up at the red emergency lights that reflected off the metal railings.
The second floor waited ahead. High chance that thing was on the second floor. Whatever it was wasted his time just because a few mundanes got spooked. Horror stories spread. Higher ups got spooked because the mundanes took notice.
Classic
.
His foot touched the first step, and something wailed in the darkness above.
Ollie jumped up to the second and burst through the stairwell door. Both deagles aimed up.
A woman stood at the end of the hall. Two and a half times his height. Long hair flowing like underwater. Spectral entity located.
"Waste of my time," Ollie muttered, raising both guns. He squeezed the triggers before the woman figure even turned. Bright flashes of light exploded from his muzzle. No sound, though. Silver trailed the bullets he fired.
Muzzle flash was a little bright. Needs fixing.
The figure shrieked. Sound vibrated through the hallways, shaking the inside windows. It dropped, slithered forward and into a lunge, covering half of the hallway's distance.
Ollie rolled sideways, landing on one knee. Guns already squeezed. More shots and more silver trails shot through the figure. The bullets made contact. Smoke spilled out of the figure's bullet holes.
Its arm stretched out. Dark needle appendages stabbed at him. Ollie tried to dodge. Fraction of a second too slow, and the fingers brushed his left shoulder.
Cold. Bone-deep cold. His arms went numb, and the gun nearly slipped away from his fingers.
Great, it does elemental damage.
Ollie tossed his right deagle up. In one quick motion, he took out a syringe gun from his jacket and stabbed his left shoulder with it, then put it back. Right hand caught the falling deagle and squeezed the trigger again.
Bullets flew at the figure's face, and more holes leaked smoke.
The figure lunged again. Slower this time. Ollie leapt backwards, keeping his aim on the figure. Squeeze. More bullets flew. This time, they hit the figure's arm and legs.
The figure's form began to break apart already, pieces of it dissolving into nothing.
Ollie landed on his feet. The figure was just below him, crawling and trying to stab him with its nails.
Taking out a lollipop from his pocket, he unwrapped it and put it in his mouth, throwing the wrapper onto the floor.
Just before the figure reached his ankles, he aimed his right deagle down at its head and fired.
The figure disintegrated, not letting out another sound.
Ollie walked towards the other stairwell from where the figure came. "Higher-ups getting spooked over a low-level manifestation. Could have sent anyone for this job."
The security guard lay crumpled where the entity had dropped him. Still breathing, just unconscious. He'd live, probably forget most of what happened. Better that way.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. it.
Ollie moved to secure each room just like the first floor. Standard procedure, even for a milk run like this. The cold spot lingered where the entity had been, but its presence was gone.
"Clear," he muttered, marking off another section on his mental map. The janitor's cart near Room 213 still had fresh cleaning supplies.
The third floor yielded similar results. More classrooms and just an empty hall. No bodies either.
A paper airplane lay abandoned in the middle of the hallway. Ollie stepped over it without breaking stride.
Moving up to the fourth floor, it housed the computer labs. Rows of monitors reflected the emergency lights. No sign of any oddities other than someone had left their coffee cup on a keyboard.
"Another waste of time," he said, checking his phone. No new messages about Lab 7 or the Vancouver situation.
The fifth floor contained staff offices and administration. The layout changed. Gray cubicles and yellow walls. Paper scattered across the desks and the floor. A half eaten rice bowl that a beggar probably would have had a field day with. Basically, organized chaos.
In the corner of the office, he found what he was looking for. Chalk marks formed a familiar pentagram with a circle on the floor, one glyph at the end of each point of the pentagram. Candle stubs sat precisely placed inside the points of the pentagram.
A failed summoning ritual.
"Amateurs," Ollie pulled up his phone. The camera flash lit up the room as he took three pictures of the same object from different angles. Three was the minimum the higher-ups would want for proof before filing this away in some dusty archive.
He found the janitor's closet two doors down. The mop left brown streaks across the chalk marks as he erased them.
"Any rookie could've handled this stupid subjugation," he muttered, scrubbing harder. "But
no
. Send a resonant, they said. Send Oliver, they said."
The ritual circle disappeared under soapy water and a little bit of elbow grease. Ollie wiped his hands on a nearby blazer someone had forgotten and then pulled out his phone.
[Oliver: Target neutralized. Amateur summoning ritual discovered and cleaned. Building secure. No collateral damage. Recommend increased security patrols.]
[Carl: Done. Send the bill to accounting.]
Ollie packed up the cleaning supplies. The building had gone quiet again.
His phone buzzed again.
[Lily: The usual?]
[Oliver: omw]
The rusted LED sign of The Lab416 cast an orange hue across the damp pavement as Ollie pushed through the door at 3:30 AM. The place reeked of cheap alcohol. The dreams of the people inside were even cheaper.
A handful of regulars slumped at their tables. No one knew if they were sleeping or not. The bar owner just let them. Everyone here was lost in their own flavour of misery, and he fit right in.
Lily sat in their usual corner of the bar, scrolling through her phone. Her blonde hair caught the blue light of the phone along with the dark circles under her eyes. Three empty glasses had already lined up beside her. Fourth one was already half-empty of something purple.
Her usual cocktail. Four already.
"You smell like chalk, coffee, and gunpowder," she said without looking up. "Job done?"
Ollie sat beside her. His shoulder still ached where that thing had touched him. "Nothing worth talking about."
The bartender started pouring Ollie's usual without him asking. A double whisky, neat. The ice clinked against the glass as he set it down. How many times has he come here in the last five years?
"Hey, Ollie. When do you think was the last time you were genuinely happy?" Lily asked, finally putting down her phone. "Like really happy?"
Ollie knocked back half his drink. "Probably in the forest. I guess. The forest was simple. Point, shoot, survive. No paperwork. No corporate bullshit."
Also gave me a goal to get out of that shithole to come back to,
Ollie didn't say.
Lily laughed, but they both knew it wasn't genuine. "Simple? That's what you call it?"
She leaned forward. "Guess that was great for you, not being locked up away, waiting for your turn to go upstairs and never come back alive again."
"You know that's not what I meant."
"Save it." She waved down the bartender for another drink, then drank the last half of the current glass beside her. "The last time I felt happy was when I was in that group of survivors, fighting for our lives in that forest. Finally a chance to take your life with your own hands."
The bartender sent another purple drink to their side. Lily took it immediately, gulping it half down. Their grievances didn't need communication. They both knew how each felt. Both couldn't fix each other's problems.
"Did you hear about what happened near Yorkdale? An old lady almost got hit by a car. Papers are calling it a miracle," Lily said.
Ollie sloshed his glass around. "Not interested in street accidents."
"The car hit something invisible. Left dents in the hood," Lily continued. "Someone took that hit. An awakened sturdy enough to take a hit from a car driving at 60 to 70. Does it make sense? Not even you can do that. Not even Carl."
The bartender brought honey garlic wings to Ollie's side.
"You remember Gale?" she asked softly. "What he did for my group in Blue Haven?"
Ollie's glass froze halfway to his mouth.
"I used to dance in clubs," Lily downed the other half of her cocktail in one long pull and then continued. "Thought that's all I was good for. I couldn't run away from it. Couldn't take my own life. Couldn't do jack. Then Gale... He never asked questions. Never judged. Just helped. Gave me that bone spear and told me to take my own life with my own hands."
"Lily-"
"What would he think of us now, Ollie? Of your labs? Of what we've become?" She pushed her glass away to the other four with a clink. "Sometimes I wonder if he made it back. If he's out there somewhere, watching."
"He's dead," Ollie said flatly.
"But what if he isn't?" Lily slammed her clenched fist on the bar's counter. "What if he saw what you're doing with dust? The people dying in your labs?"
"I'm saving lives. You don't understand."
"I understand plenty." She pulled out her phone again, but her hands shook as she scrolled through the mundane news article of the Yorkdale incident. "Gale saved us without asking for anything in return. And here I am, five years later, and what have I done with that second chance?"
Ollie reached for the wings beside him. Biting into it, it wasn't as sweet as the lollipop he just had.
"Maybe he would hate what we've become," Lily whispered. "All of us. The experiments. The cover-ups. The lies."
Lily was right. He also changed. Changed too much from what he was back in the forest. No one to call family in this world. And when he saw the only person he loved…
"We did what we had to do," Oliver said.
"Did we?" Lily laughed again, completely hollow as another glass of purple drink slid to her side. "Or did we just convince ourselves that's true?"
"If he came back today," Lily continued, this time in a whisper, "what would you say to him? How would you explain all this?"
"You're right," Ollie sighed. "Gale wouldn't understand. None of this."
He gestured at the bar around them, at the broken dreams floating in bottom-shelf liquor. At the people that slumped down on the tables, just waiting for the next day. "We're all just chasing ghosts now."
"Remember when we thought we could change things? After the Eclipsed?" Lily's fingers traced the rim of her empty glass. "Look at us now."
"How are they anyways?" Ollie asked. "The others that came from the forest?"
"Scattered." Lily picked up her drink for a sip. "Marie's in Vancouver, working tech support. Says she doesn't sleep much anymore. Sarah's got a bakery in Montreal. She told me she likes keeping the ovens running all night so she doesn't have to go home to an empty apartment. Jessica's here in Toronto, teaching dance to kids."
She took a deep breath. "They're surviving. That's all any of us are doing."
"They know, don't they?" Ollie said. "About the labs. The dust."
"We all know. Marie handles your tech shipments out west. Sarah keeps the UK off your back in Quebec. Jessica..." Lily smiled, but her eyes didn't. "Well, those coffee shops are perfect for watching Path movements."
"They could walk away."
"Like you could walk away from finding that cure?" Lily's blue eyes turned to him. "We all got our reasons, Ollie. The forest taught us that much. Sometimes the only choices are bad ones."
"It's funny, isn't it? Rachel said Gale wanted to run away from all of us," Ollie said. "But the choices he made in the forest were all good ones."
Lily laughed, this time sincerely, as she wiped a tear from her eye. "She still doesn't stop talking about him."
"That's true," Ollie laughed with her.
"But Ollie," Lily suddenly stopped laughing. "Watch yourself in Oshawa. UK's got boots on the ground. Looking for something."
"They won't find anything," Ollie said.
"These aren't the usual grunts. Multiple attuned. One Resonant in charge of the squad," Lily said. "These ones know what they're doing. Real hunters."
"Let them hunt."
"We should've died in that forest," Lily said softly. "Sometimes I think we did."
Ollie's phone buzzed. This time it was from Alexander. The message he'd been waiting for.
"No," he said, standing up. "The forest just showed
us
who we really are."

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Chapter 78