063 Under Attack - Part 1 - Mark’s POV

  I spotted a staff member the moment I turned down the hallway, one of the younger ones, probably barely out of her teens, with her hair tied back in a tight braid and a clipboard in hand.

  “Hey,” I said, trying not to sound as frayed as I felt. “Have you seen Professor Merrick?”

  She blinked, surprised by the sudden interruption, then nodded slowly. “He’s in the tower. With Chief Morrison.”

  I nodded, thanked her, and kept walking, trying not to break into a sprint.

  The tower.

  There was only one on the estate. A tall, white spire on the northeast side of the island, separate from the main manor and tucked into the cliffside like a watchful sentinel. From what Merrick told us during the pre-mission rundown, the tower housed the array responsible for shielding the island’s location, an invisible ESP-driven field that messed with satellite scans and spatial recognition. It also functioned as an observatory of sorts. Astral stuff. ESP frequencies. Defensive monitoring.

  Basically, it was the paranoid control room of the whole island.

  I reached the outer grounds and lucked out. A small electric kart was just rolling up, a staff driver behind the wheel and a suited guest stepping out, adjusting his ridiculous hat. I jogged up to the driver before he could pull away.

  “Hey,” I said, a little breathless. “Can you take me to the tower?”

  The driver gave me a once-over, eyes scanning my all-black formalwear, the sweat still drying on my face, and the way I was probably holding myself like someone two seconds from a breakdown.

  “You one of the Enoch guards? The one from the Academy?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Name’s Mark.”

  He nodded, motioned toward the seat. “Hop in.”

  I slid in next to him, the kart buzzing to life as we rolled forward along the stone path that snaked toward the tower. The estate’s formal gardens gave way to sharper, rockier terrain. The air got cooler. Quieter. The kind of quiet that felt too deliberate.

  “I’m Lester,” the driver said after a moment. “You new?”

  “Sort of. First time in the tower, though.”

  He smirked. “Well, you’re in for a view. Just don’t mess with anything unless Morrison tells you to.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  The staff here weren’t just waiters and bellboys. They doubled as security—off-duty bodyguards, ESP-support, and trained combatants with shiny manners. Most of them were either blood relatives or close allies of the Enoch core family. You could tell by the eyes, those eerie silver-grey shades that looked like stormclouds deciding whether to rain.

  Lester had them too, though his were softened by age and habit.

  I wasn’t sure if that made me feel safer or more watched.

  When we got to the base of the tower, that’s when I saw it.

  A hole.

  Near the bottom, just past the support foundation—huge, gaping, unnatural. Not something you'd miss. Stone blown outward. Dirt torn up. Like something had exploded from within or crashed into it.

  Lester slammed the brakes.

  “Holy hell,” he muttered.

  I jumped out of the kart, boots crunching on gravel as I ran closer. There were signs of a struggle everywhere. Scorch marks. Cracks in the surrounding walls. Something had clawed through the stone, left deep, curved gouges along the frame.

  Cryptids.

  I didn’t need to be told.

  This wasn’t vandalism. It was a fight. A real one. Blood had dried near the base of the entrance, faint but there. And scattered across the dirt were glints of broken tech—maybe ESP-reinforced gear. There were also signs of return fire. Human weapons. Human defenses.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  Lester joined me, squinting at the wreckage. “Morrison was in there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And Merrick.”

  “Then let’s hope whoever hit this place didn’t get far.”

  I was already moving toward the doorway, ESP sense tingling just beneath my skin like my nerves were trying to whisper warnings in Morse code. There was no alarm. No active sirens. Either this had just happened and nobody noticed yet…

  Or it wasn’t supposed to be noticed.

  Whatever happened here, it hadn’t been cleaned up. Which meant it was recent. And that meant Merrick was likely still inside.

  Alive.

  Hopefully.

  I stepped through the half-cracked door and braced myself for answers.

  Or something worse.

  We didn’t even make it past the threshold.

  The half-shattered doorway yawned open in front of us, and that’s when Merrick appeared—dragging someone behind him.

  Chief Morrison.

  The old man looked like hell. His shirt was shredded, soaked through with a deep, wine-colored red that pulsed from his abdomen. Blood trailed behind them like breadcrumbs. His face was pale, jaw clenched, and his eyes fluttered, caught somewhere between consciousness and oblivion.

  “Professor—” I started, stepping forward.

  “Don’t move!” Merrick snapped, his voice sharper than I’d ever heard it.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I froze. So did Lester.

  Merrick’s eyes locked on me, and for a second, they didn’t look like his eyes. Too wide. Too cold.

  “Don’t take another step, Mark,” he said, tightening his grip on Morrison. “Unless you want me to put you down right here.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady even as my instincts screamed.

  Merrick sneered. “Skin Walkers. They found a crack in the shielding array. Slipped through. Smart ones.”

  Skin Walkers. Shapeshifters, adaptable, and rare as hell. Most cryptids weren’t thinkers—they were instinct. Hunger. But Skin Walkers?

  They were planners.

  That’s when something clicked. The words. The timing. The way he moved.

  Earlier, when I was freaking out, I told Lester that Merrick and Morrison were in the tower. He repeated it back to me like it was new information. Like he hadn’t already known.

  And now here he was. Convenient. Present. Silent.

  Too silent.

  I turned toward him, slow. “You asked if Morrison was in the tower.”

  “What?” he blinked, confused.

  “You’re staff,” I said, loud and deliberate. “You should’ve already known.”

  His expression didn’t falter.

  But I wasn’t asking.

  I accused.

  “You’re not Lester.”

  I moved fast. Drew my butterfly knife in one fluid snap, like muscle memory had been waiting all day for this. I lunged forward, feigned the motion. Gave him something to follow.

  Then I blinked out.

  Nth Person ESP: cognitive flicker. Sudden erasure from the mental radar. I reappeared right next to him, low to the ground, and drove my blade across his side.

  The skin peeled.

  And underneath—

  Green.

  Not blood like ours. A thick, mucous kind of green, like sap with a grudge. It oozed out in sluggish pulses.

  Bingo.

  The thing that wasn’t Lester hissed, skin rippling like fabric soaked in acid. Its right arm twisted, cracked, morphed—elongating into a jagged blade made of bone and shimmer. I saw the swing coming.

  But it hesitated.

  Just long enough.

  I jammed my knife up into its throat. Buried it deep, just below the jawline, and shoved upward.

  The Skin Walker let out a garbled screech.

  I kicked off its chest to launch myself back, boots skidding across gravel, blood splattering across the ground in thick green arcs.

  It twitched.

  Shuddered.

  Collapsed.

  Breathing hard, I looked toward Merrick—still holding Morrison up by one arm. But now I could see it. The real Merrick didn’t move like that. He didn’t smirk in moments like this. He didn’t treat his people like meat.

  I flicked the blood from my blade and pointed it at him.

  “You next?”

  The Skin Walker collapsed in a mess of twitching limbs and greenish fluid, but I didn’t even have time to breathe.

  Because fake Merrick screamed.

  Not a human scream. Not a sound meant for the air. His face convulsed, skin bubbling and cracking, peeling back in sheets like wet paper under fire. His disguise fell apart in real-time—veins bulging and pulsing in erratic patterns, skin sloughing off to reveal the gray, veiny mass beneath. Behind him, Morrison—or the thing pretending to be him—lurched to its feet and did the same.

  They weren’t even trying to keep up the act now.

  One of them—Morrison, I think—stepped wrong. His foot tangled in a sprawl of vine-like plants breaking through the stone path. He tripped, and his face smacked against the concrete with a wet crunch.

  I didn’t get the chance to check if it was stunned.

  Because the other one, the fake Merrick, turned toward me.

  And then something dropped from above.

  A vine snapped taut overhead as Greg swung down from the upper balcony like some kind of jungle brawler, his legs tucked, his whole body a missile. He let go at the last second, crashing down onto the Skin Walker’s back with both fists raised.

  CRACK.

  The thing went down, hard.

  Greg didn’t wait. He punched again. And again. His fists blurred, each hit driving the creature deeper into the ground. Wet cracks. Splashes of that unnatural fluid. The Skin Walker spasmed beneath him, trying to reform, to fight back—but Greg was relentless. No flair. No quips. Just the kind of raw, focused fury you get when your comrade’s in danger and your adrenaline hasn’t caught up to your fear yet.

  I stayed invisible. Still riding the shimmer of my Nth Person, like I was a ghost skipping across thoughts.

  The second Skin Walker turned, distracted by Greg, its focus flickering in that one fatal second.

  That’s all I needed.

  I moved.

  Fast.

  Low.

  My knife slid in under the chin, the soft spot where armor hadn’t fully formed. I drove it up into its neck, twisting hard as I felt it shudder beneath me. It flailed once—twice—then gurgled, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.

  I stepped back, breathing heavy, knife slick in my hand.

  Greg stood, fists dripping with green gore, chest heaving.

  We looked at each other for half a second. Not a word passed between us.

  Just the unspoken agreement that it could’ve gone worse.

  Then he raised an eyebrow. “You good?”

  I nodded, wiping my blade on my pants. “You’re swinging from vines now?”

  He glanced up at the overhead branch he’d launched from. “Improvised.”

  Of course it was.

  We turned to the bodies. Both Skin Walkers were unraveling—literally. Their forms breaking down, flesh collapsing inward like paper burning from the inside out. No fire. Just rot. Like reality itself was rejecting them now that they’d been outed.

  “Think that’s all of them?” Greg asked.

  “I hope so,” I muttered. “But hope’s cheap around here.”

  A groan cut through the silence behind us.

  Greg and I both turned, my knife still slick with green blood, breath fogging in the cold air.

  Someone was limping toward us through the haze—dragging one foot, blood painting the side of his face and soaking his shirt. His left arm hung at a wrong angle, swollen and bruised from wrist to elbow. His coat was half-burned. His eyes were clear.

  “It’s me,” said Merrick.

  I snapped my knife up again.

  “Stop right there,” I said.

  Greg held out an arm, stepping between me and the limping figure. “That’s him,” he said. “It’s really Merrick.”

  I glanced at him. “How do you know?”

  Greg gave me a sideways look, deadpan. “I left a seed or two in each of you back at the Academy. Nothing weird. Just... y’know, plant stuff. For emergencies. Helps me keep track of where everyone is.”

  I blinked. “You what?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, smirking slightly. “They’re biodegradable.”

  Merrick let out a low, tired laugh. “I always knew, by the way. You’re not that sneaky, Gregory.”

  Greg shrugged. “Didn’t think I had to be. Just trying to keep everyone alive.”

  Merrick winced as he staggered closer, cradling his bad arm. “A Skin Walker could have stolen your 'seed,' used it to spoof a signature. But... good call, nonetheless. You bought us time.”

  I lowered my knife.

  Barely.

  “What happened to Morrison?” I asked.

  Merrick’s expression darkened. “He’s dead. Took three of them with him before they got through.”

  My stomach sank. The air around us felt heavier.

  ‘This is getting real,’ I thought. ‘Fast.’

  No drills. No simulations. This was blood-on-the-stone, too-close-to-die reality.

  I looked Merrick in the eye. “Is this gonna escalate?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “It already has. I’ve been kept occupied... delaying them, keeping the shielding array from total collapse. But in the end, they got through.”

  Greg and I stepped toward him, helping him stabilize.

  We walked together through the ruined courtyard, stepping over vines, chunks of fallen wall, and ash that used to be monsters. The other end of the tower’s base came into view—and that’s when I saw them.

  Two bodies.

  One of them was monstrous—hulking, horned, and unmistakably not human. A minotaur, or something like it. Its face was frozen in a snarl, a massive wound punched straight through its chest like a cannonball of pure ESP had been fired point-blank.

  The other body was a man.

  Maybe mid-thirties. Scar on his temple. Blood pooling beneath him, a broken focus bracelet still clinging to one wrist. An ESPer, clearly… but not one I recognized.

  Merrick didn’t stop walking as he said, “I don’t know who he was. But he was fighting for us.”

  I stared at the corpse for a long second.

  And then I said it.

  “There was a guy. Said he was my father.”

  Greg’s head whipped around so fast I thought he might get whiplash. “Your dad? You have a dad? That talks to people?”

  I shot him a look. “Yes, Greg. People have parents.”

  “Yeah, but—time-stopping mystery dad showing up in the middle of a cryptid invasion?” He raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got to admit, that’s one hell of a ‘Hi, son’ moment.”

  Merrick, however, didn’t laugh.

  He frowned. Hard.

  “That’s too much of a coincidence,” he said. “Far too much.”

  “You think he’s involved?” I asked quietly.

  Merrick nodded. “At the very least, he knew this was coming. And he was willing to reveal himself now, of all times.”

  Greg scratched his head, wiping blood from his cheek with the back of his glove. “Look, I don’t know about anyone’s long-lost daddy, but this whole mess? It’s got ‘kidnap Lady Enoch’ written all over it. That’s the real prize, right?”

  Merrick didn’t reject it.

  He looked at the tower. At the wreckage. And everything… Greg was probably right.

  But the truth sat heavy on my chest: If this was all just the beginning… then someone out there was pulling strings from way up high.

  And somehow, I was tangled in the middle of it.