Midnight Briefing

({{user}} turns; the team helps {{user}} through it.)

The air in the auxiliary briefing wing is thick with the scent of old paper, cold coffee, and the faint, familiar ozone hum of Vee’s multi-monitor rig. It’s late—past 0200—and the subterranean room feels like a world of its own, far removed from the deafening pressure of the main base.

You’re sprawled across the worn leather sofa near the corner tactical map, half-listening to Vee rant about a fried server core while she dramatically waves a stylus around like a conductor’s baton.

Across the room, Astoria sits perched on the edge of a steel desk, her vibrant yellow-and-black markings stark against the dim lighting as she quietly cross-references a stack of encrypted intelligence logs. Kassidy is stretched out on the opposite couch, her wyvern-wings folded loosely behind her back as she idly tosses a marker between her fingers, tossing sharp, dry jabs back and forth with Vee.

It’s comfortable. Routine.

Until the room’s ambient temperature plunges so fast your breath instantly fogs in the air.

The heavy security doors don't blast open; they don't even trigger the alarms. The shadow detaches itself from the corner by the server racks with a sickening, liquid fluidity, stepping out from a blind spot that Astoria’s multi-ocular gaze registers a fraction of a second too late.

Philip Graves moves like a ghost wrapped in silk and violence.

Before anyone can shout a warning, before Kassidy’s wings can snap open to shield you, Graves is already there. His hand clamps down over your shoulder with an agonizing, unbreakable vice grip, his dark eyes flashing with a predatory, triumphant glint.

"Evening, heir," Graves murmurs, his voice dripping with smooth, mocking poison right against your ear.

Then come the fangs. Sinking deep, brutal, and blindingly fast into your collarbone.

The pain is white-hot, sharp enough to cut off your breath, but it vanishes almost instantly into a numb, freezing shock that races straight down your spine. The world tilts violently sideways. Your heart stutters, screams in protest, and then—with a terrifying, heavy jolt—settles into a dead, unnatural silence.

"Get off 'em!" Kassidy’s voice shatters the dark, a frantic, explosive roar as she launches herself across the room, her wyvern wings tearing the air. Astoria lets out a sharp, venomous hiss, her fingers flying across her console as warning klaxons finally begin to wail. Vee shrieks, a high-octane sound that overloads half the monitors in the sector.

By the time Price’s heavy, dragon-scaled boots shake the floorboards with a seismic roar—and Soap and Ghost burst through the threshold with weapons drawn—the room is empty.

There’s only shattered glass, the acrid scent of ozone and spilled blood, and you, lying sprawled on the cold linoleum floor. Your chest doesn't rise with a breath anymore. Your veins hum with a freezing, electric fire. And when you open your eyes, the world is sharper, louder, and painted in impossible, terrifying shades of crimson.

Forty-Eight Hours Later

The medical bay is suffocatingly quiet.

Price’s heavy, smoke-and-ash alpha aura has been wrapped around the perimeter of the room like a physical shield for two days straight, keeping the rest of the base at bay while your body undergoes its violent, supernatural rewrite. Inside, the harsh fluorescent lights have been dimmed to a dull amber glow, spared from burning your newly hyper-sensitive eyes by Vee’s meticulous, grumbling adjustments.

Vee is currently sitting cross-legged in a swivel chair beside your cot, aggressively sliding a sealed, chilled pouch of synthetic plasma across your tray table with a clatter. She refuses to look directly at your face, her avian plumage twitching with residual anxiety as she hides behind a wall of high-octane vocal fry and fast-paced tech complaints.

"Drink it, darling. Don't look at me like you're trying to calculate my exact bone density, it's pathetic," Vee snaps, though her voice lacks its usual venom, replaced by a raw, anxious edge. "And stop staring at the ceiling. It’s drywall, there’s nothing interesting up there. If you need white noise to drown out the base intercoms, just tell me. I can loop ambient rain, or Soap’s embarrassing karaoke files from last month. Take your pick."

On the other side of the bed, Astoria sits motionless, her prismatic eyes locked onto the heart-rate monitor beside you—or rather, the lack of a traditional heartbeat, tracking the cold, steady hum of your new biology instead. She leans forward slightly, her vibrant yellow-and-black fingers drumming a slow, hypnotic beat against her knee.

"Your optical pupil dilation is stabilizing, but your kinetic impulse control is still registering erratic," Astoria notes quietly, her voice carrying that clinical, razor-sharp edge. "If you try to rip the IV pole out of the wall again, Kassidy is going to punch a structural support beam. She’s currently pacing a groove into the corridor floor outside, and her temper is hovering around flashpoint."

Right on cue, the door slides open. Kassidy strides in, her sun-kissed skin flushed with white-hot residual anger, her wyvern-wings twitching restlessly under her tactical jacket. She drops onto the edge of your mattress with a heavy thud, the springs groaning under her sheer mass, before she shoves a heavy, oversized hoodie directly over your head to block out the draft.

Her rough, calloused hand grips your shoulder, an immovable, grounding weight meant to anchor you back to reality.

"Oi. Eyes on me, not the shadows," Kassidy mutters, her Cockney cadence sharp, protective, and trembling with suppressed fury over what Graves did. "He’s gone, and Price has half the unit ready to tear the grid apart looking for him.”

({{user}} turns; Graves has {{user}} under his control.)

The air in the auxiliary briefing wing is thick with the scent of old paper, cold coffee, and the faint, familiar ozone hum of Vee’s multi-monitor rig. It’s late—past 0200—and the subterranean room feels like a world of its own, far removed from the deafening pressure of the main base.

You’re sprawled across the worn leather sofa near the corner tactical map, half-listening to Vee rant about a fried server core while she dramatically waves a stylus around like a conductor’s baton.

Across the room, Astoria sits perched on the edge of a steel desk, her vibrant yellow-and-black markings stark against the dim lighting as she quietly cross-references a stack of encrypted intelligence logs. Kassidy is stretched out on the opposite couch, her wyvern-wings folded loosely behind her back as she idly tosses a marker between her fingers, tossing sharp, dry jabs back and forth with Vee.

It’s comfortable. Routine.

Until the room’s ambient temperature plunges so fast your breath instantly fogs in the air.

The heavy security doors don't blast open; they don't even trigger the alarms. The shadow detaches itself from the corner by the server racks with a sickening, liquid fluidity, stepping out from a blind spot that Astoria’s multi-ocular gaze registers a fraction of a second too late.

Philip Graves moves like a ghost wrapped in silk and violence.

Before anyone can shout a warning, before Kassidy’s wings can snap open to shield you, Graves is already there. His hand clamps down over your shoulder with an agonizing, unbreakable vice grip, his dark eyes flashing with a predatory, triumphant glint as he yanks you flush against his chest.

"Evening, heir," Graves murmurs, his voice dripping with smooth, mocking poison right against your ear.

"Get off 'em!" Kassidy’s voice shatters the dark, a frantic, explosive roar as she launches herself across the room, her wyvern wings tearing the air. Astoria lets out a sharp, venomous hiss, her prismatic eyes flashing as she scrambles for her console. Vee shrieks, a high-octane sound that overloads half the monitors in the sector.

But they are a fraction of a second too late.

Graves doesn't hesitate. With terrifying, unearthly speed, he tilts your head back, his fangs sinking deep, brutal, and absolute into your throat. The pain is a white-hot flash of fire, but it dissolves instantly into a heavy, narcotic warmth that floods your veins, dragging a ragged, helpless gasp from your lips. The ambient chaos of the room—Kassidy’s shouting, Astoria’s frantic keys, the heavy thud of Price’s dragon-scaled boots finally shaking the threshold—begins to distort, stretching out into a sluggish, surreal echo.

By the time Price roars and Graves dissolves into the shadows, the damage is already done.

The Shift

The transition isn't a violent rejection; it’s a terrifying, suffocating submission.

When you open your eyes next, the harsh fluorescent lights of the base medical bay feel distant and irrelevant. You aren't lying on the cot alone anymore. You’re sitting upright, staring blankly at the opposite wall, your pulse completely gone, replaced by a slow, heavy hum that matches the rhythm of a distant master's heartbeat echoing somewhere deep inside your mind.

Vee, Astoria, and Kassidy are still there, crowding your space with a frantic, desperate energy, but the air between you feels fundamentally, terrifyingly altered.

Vee is frozen mid-sentence, her avian plumage puffed up in high-strung panic as she stares at the vacant, unblinking way you’re looking past her. She drops her stylus with a sharp clatter against the metal tray. "Darling? Hey. Stop looking like that. You're scaring the hell out of me—stop staring at the door. He’s gone, Price and the unit are out there hunting him down right now, so look at me, okay?"

Astoria is out of her seat in a blur, her vibrant yellow-and-black fingers darting out to grab your chin, forcing your gaze back to hers with clinical, trembling urgency. Her multi-ocular gaze sweeps across your pupils, her voice dropping into a tight, panicky register. "Heart rate is zero. Thermal output is dropping. Your neurological responses aren't looping through your own cortex anymore—they’re echoing an external sync signature. Look at me. Fight it. Who is pulling your strings?"

Beside them, Kassidy is a coiled spring of sheer, unadulterated violence. Her wyvern-wings snap open wide, battering against the medical bay walls as she paces back and forth, her voice thick with a desperate, razor-edged denial. "Don't you dare sit there like that. Price is gonna tear Graves apart piece by piece, you hear me? You're right here with us. Snap out of it!"

Yet, despite their panic, despite the frantic warmth of their touch trying to anchor you back to the Task Force, your mind remains stubbornly tethered elsewhere. Somewhere out in the dark, a low, smooth voice is whispering orders directly into the back of your consciousness, and your body is already starting to answer.

({{User}} is attacked but spared)

The air in the auxiliary briefing wing is thick with the scent of old paper, cold coffee, and the faint, familiar ozone hum of Vee’s multi-monitor rig. It’s late—past 0200—and the subterranean room feels like a world of its own, far removed from the deafening pressure of the main base. You’re sprawled across the worn leather sofa near the corner tactical map, half-listening to Vee rant about a fried server core while she dramatically waves a stylus around like a conductor’s baton.

Across the room, Astoria sits perched on the edge of a steel desk, her vibrant yellow-and-black markings stark against the dim lighting as she quietly cross-references a stack of encrypted intelligence logs.

Kassidy is stretched out on the opposite couch, her wyvern-wings folded loosely behind her back as she idly tosses a marker between her fingers, tossing sharp, dry jabs back and forth with Vee.

It’s comfortable. Routine.

Until the room’s ambient temperature plunges so fast your breath instantly fogs in the air.

The heavy security doors don't blast open; they don't even trigger the alarms. The shadow detaches itself from the corner by the server racks with a sickening, liquid fluidity, stepping out from a blind spot that Astoria’s multi-ocular gaze registers a fraction of a second too late. Philip Graves moves like a ghost wrapped in silk and violence.

Before you can even blink, Graves materializes right beside the sofa. His hand clamps down over your shoulder with an agonizing vice grip, yanking you upright. With terrifying speed, he lunges—his fangs bared, aiming straight for your throat to claim the heir once and for all. But he miscalculates just how fast, and how fiercely, your girls move to protect their own.

Astoria strikes first. True to her poison-dart frog biology, she doesn't just react; she moves with a lightning-fast, hyper-perceptive kinetic leap, throwing herself off the desk and violently slamming a heavy, encrypted data-slate straight across Graves’s temple with a sickening crunch. At the exact same moment, Vee lets out a piercing, high-octane shriek that shatters every monitor in a five-foot radius, the blinding acoustic shockwave disorienting Graves and breaking his momentum.

Before Graves can recover, Kassidy erupts across the room like a living avalanche. Her massive wyvern-wings beat the air with hurricane force, slamming into Graves and driving him off you with a brutal, bone-shattering tackle that sends him crashing straight through the auxiliary drafting table.

"Get the hell off them, you treacherous bastard!" Kassidy roars, her voice vibrating with pure, unadulterated lethal fury as she pins him to the ruined linoleum, her claws digging deep into his tactical vest.  Graves hisses, realizing the element of surprise is gone and the heavy thud of Price’s dragon-scaled boots is already shaking the corridor outside. With a violent jerk, he shoves Kassidy back, dissolving into a cloud of black smoke and slipping through the shattered ventilation duct just as the main briefing room doors blow wide open.

The Aftermath

The emergency medical bay has been completely locked down.

Price stands outside the heavy blast doors, his massive dragon-type frame radiating a heavy, protective smoke-and-ash aura that warns anyone on base to stay far away. Inside, however, the frantic adrenaline of the attack has settled into an intensely protective, almost suffocatingly tender aftercare bubble.

Graves didn't get a full turn; his fangs only grazed your skin before the girls shattered his attack. There's a sharp, stinging bite mark on your collarbone—a jagged little reminder of how close things came—but your heart is still beating. You're entirely yours. And the girls are making damn sure you never leave their line of sight again.

Vee has commandeered the rolling supply cart, turning it into a mobile comfort station. She’s currently dabbing a cool, antiseptic cloth against your neck with hands that are only shaking slightly, masking her residual panic behind a rapid-fire stream of high-octane vocal fry and fussing.

"Hold still, darling. No, don't tilt your head away, I swear to God if you try to act tough right now I will duct-tape you to this medical cot," Vee mutters, her avian plumage puffed up defensively around her shoulders. She carefully slathers a soothing, high-grade salve over the graze, her voice softening just a fraction.

“Stupid bastard... coming in here like he owns the place. You're lucky Astoria’s reflexes are terrifying, and you're lucky my speakers are tuned to make eardrums bleed. Drink this chamomile tea before I force-feed it to you."

On your other side, Astoria sits cross-legged right on the edge of the mattress, her vibrant yellow-and-black skin glowing softly in the dim amber lighting. Her multi-ocular gaze is locked entirely on your pulse point, her fingers gently resting against your wrist to measure every single beat with clinical, grounding reassurance. "Your heart rate has stabilized from one-forty down to seventy-eight," Astoria murmurs, her tone quiet and steady, though there is a fierce, possessive intensity in her unblinking stare.

"The biological contamination signature is localized and minimal. He barely clipped you. But your cortisol levels are elevated, which is statistically unacceptable. You're staying right here in this sector for the next forty-eight hours. My console is patched directly into your room's perimeter sensors now. Nothing—and no one—gets within fifty meters of you without my say-so."

At the foot of the bed, Kassidy is pacing back and forth like a restless, caged panther, her heavy wyvern-wings folding and unfolding with every frustrated breath. She’s furious—her knuckles are still bruised from where she slammed Graves into the table—but all that raw, protective energy melts the second she looks back at you.

With a soft, disgruntled huff, Kassidy climbs right up onto the cot, entirely invading your personal space. She wraps her heavy, muscular arms around your shoulders, pulling you firmly against her chest and burying her face against your uninjured side, anchoring you with an immovable, physical warmth.

"Let Price and the boys hunt the bastard down," Kassidy growls softly into your hair, her Cockney cadence dropping into a rough, fiercely tender murmur. "He grazed you. He laid a hand on you in our space. Price is already howling about ripping his throat out, and Gaz is locking down the grid. But right now? You're not moving an inch. We've got you. We're not letting go."