Code Red

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Collector's Table

The laboratory was too clean.
Clean like a crime scene scrubbed before the detectives arrived.

Rows of glass panels gleamed under the pale fluorescence, each one reflecting the man who stood at the center of it all — the one they called the Collector.

He didn’t look like the stories described him. No cloak, no monstrous grin. Just a man in a suit too perfect to wrinkle, hands clasped behind his back, eyes like cut glass and twice as cold.

Before him, a large screen flickered to life. A grainy feed: Lucian carrying Max through the rain, then vanishing beneath the city.

“Fascinating,” the Collector murmured, his voice calm, almost curious. “He’s still fighting it.”

A scientist standing nearby hesitated. “Sir, his vitals show partial bonding. He shouldn’t be able to resist the draw.”

“He was never partial anything,” the Collector replied. “That’s what makes him unique. Even now, he’s still trying to convince himself he’s not both.”

He turned away from the screen, walking toward a table lined with vials. Each one glowed faintly red under the sterile light. He picked one up, held it against the glass to inspect it.

“Maxine Stillwater,” he said softly, reading the label etched on the vial’s base. “Her blood carries traces of stabilizing markers we’ve never seen before. The connection runs both ways now.”

The scientist frowned. “You mean she’s bonded too?”

The Collector smiled faintly. “Of course she is. It was inevitable once he fed. What he takes, she feels. What he feels, she will crave to understand.”

He set the vial down gently, almost reverently. “That’s the beauty of it. Love is the oldest form of control. And he’s already too human to see it coming.”

Another technician approached, tablet in hand. “Sir, the tracking implants failed. The target destroyed every signal after the ambush.”

The Collector didn’t look surprised. “He’s resourceful. That’s why he survived when the others didn’t.”

He walked toward a large containment pod in the center of the room — a clear cylinder filled with red mist swirling slow and deliberate, like smoke caught in water. Inside, the faint outline of a body hung suspended, veins glowing faintly.

A woman’s body.

“Project Ashfall,” the scientist murmured, unable to hide the unease in his voice.

The Collector smiled, faint and patient. “The original prototype. Claire Newman. The ghost beneath the badge.”

He rested a hand on the glass, eyes narrowing. “You see, our detective was never a failed subject. He was the first success. The first hybrid who didn’t collapse under dual identity.”

The scientist swallowed hard. “You mean—Claire’s physiology still exists?”

The Collector’s gaze didn’t leave the tank. “In pieces. But pieces can be repurposed.”

He turned sharply toward the screen again, Lucian’s face frozen mid-motion in the grainy footage. “He’s running from himself, and from me. But what he doesn’t realize—” He leaned closer, eyes glinting. “—is that part of him never left this lab.”

A flick of his wrist brought up a second feed — biometric data pulsing faintly. The signal originated from another source entirely.

Max.

“Track the girl,” the Collector ordered. “She’s our leash. Wherever she goes, he’ll follow.”

The scientist hesitated. “And if she resists?”