WHUD-WHUD-WHUD-WHUD.
The loud, rhythmic thumping of heavy rotor blades vibrated through the entire house. The windows in Noah’s bedroom rattled violently in their frames. Downstairs, the floodlights we kept in the backyard suddenly flared to life, casting blinding, stark white beams of light straight through Noah’s bedroom window, illuminating the swirling dust motes and the horrific scene in stark, terrifying clarity.
Over the roar of the helicopter, a booming, distorted voice echoed from a megaphone outside, sounding incredibly close—right over our roof.
“CONFINEMENT PROTOCOL 7-DELTA IS NOW IN EFFECT. JASON AND EMILY VANCE, YOU ARE ORDERED TO STAY EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEAVE THE PREMISES. DISREGARD FOR THIS ORDER WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE.”
“They found us,” Emily choked out from the hallway floor, holding her bruised ribs, her face twisted in absolute despair. “The database logs… they must have tracked my digital footprint when I accessed the restricted files last night.”
I looked from my weeping wife to the terrifying, pulsing entity that currently possessed my only son, and then out the window. Through the blinding searchlights, I could see dark figures descending from the sky on ropes, rappelling down from a massive, unmarked black military helicopter hovering just above our tree line. They were wearing fully enclosed, matte-black hazmat suits with integrated tactical armor, carrying assault rifles equipped with heavy under-barrel canisters.
They weren’t coming to rescue us. They were coming to harvest us.
Noah—or whatever was currently inside him—slowly stood up from the floor. He didn’t look at the windows. He didn’t look at the flashing lights. Instead, he turned his blank, completely purple eyes directly onto me.
His jaw unhinged slightly, stretching far wider than a human jaw should ever be able to stretch without breaking, and a thick, violet mist began to pour from his lips, rapidly filling the bedroom air.
“Daddy,” the entity hissed through Noah’s mouth, stepping toward me with an eerie, disjointed grace. “Open the door. Let us give you the gift.”
Behind me, the front door of our house downstairs was violently blown off its hinges with a deafening BOOM. Heavy, tactical boots began to flood into our living room, rushing toward the stairs.
I was trapped between a black-ops clean-up crew coming to eliminate or imprison my family forever, and my own son, who was rapidly transforming into an apex biological nightmare right in front of my eyes.
The purple mist touched my bare skin, and a searing, white-hot pain instantly erupted across my neck.
