The black SUV pulled into the driveway, it drove hurriedly as the tires screeched like an animal cornered in its last breath. The engine choked off, and the front door flung open before the headlights had dimmed.
Dr. Adrian Reyes was bleeding. Not from a wound you could bandage, but from terror that had carved itself into every line of his face. His white shirt clung to him, stained crimson near the collarbone, and his fingers trembled as he came down through the front door.
"Mandy!" he yelled, voice raw. "Grab Luna. We don't have time."
Mandy Reyes, upstairs in the hallway, was already moving. She dropped her laptop bag without a second thought and sprinted for the nursery. Her instincts had long prepared her for this moment, though she never believed it would come.
Sasha Reyes was only sixteen years old, she stood frozen at the top of the staircase wearing a loose hoodie and pajama shorts, her hair pulled into a messy bun, a novel still clutched in her hand, her heart was pounding so loudly she barely heard her father.
"Dad?" she called out.
He looked up from the bottom of the stairs, eyes meeting hers. And for the first time in her life, she saw real fear in him.
"Sweetie," he said, urgency strangling every word, "go to your room. Lock the door. Don't open it unless you hear Peter's voice. Understand me?"
"What's going on?"
"NOW, Sasha!"
Her legs stumbled into motion. She turned, heart pounding, but instead of going to her bedroom, her instincts led her to her father's walk-in closet. She slipped inside, closed the door almost completely, and crouched behind the racks of suits and uniforms. Her breath trembled and her fingers dug into her knees to stop herself from shaking.
Downstairs, she could hear Adrian grunting, throwing open drawers, stuffing files into a duffel bag. He paused just long enough to pull something metallic from the safe beneath the stairs. A drive, maybe, or a weapon.
Upstairs, Mandy returned with five-year-old Luna swaddled in a pink blanket. The child was out cold, blissfully unaware of the chaos crashing through her home.
"She's still asleep," Mandy said, her voice cracking.
Then, from outside, a deep thud followed by three sharp cracks of suppressed gunfire.
Mandy flinched. "They're here."
Adrian looked at her. And in that one moment, they said everything that couldn't be spoken. "I love you. Protect the kids and forgive me for not being the man you wanted".
Before Mandy could utter a word, the front door exploded.
Sasha flinched in the closet. Her fingers curled into fists as she watched through the small crack. The doorway was splinters now. Shadows moved across the hall, five, maybe six men in black tactical gear. Helmets. No insignia. No words.
These weren't police.
One of them reached for Adrian. There was a scuffle, a burst of blue light from a taser or some kind of modified stun gun, and Adrian collapsed onto the hardwood floor.
"Dr. Reyes is down," one of the soldiers said into a comm.
Mandy stood at the top of the stairs, clutching Luna to her chest. "Please," she whispered. "Take me. Just let them go."
One of the soldiers raised his rifle.
Sasha saw the muzzle flash, but the sound barely registered. Her ears rang. Her world tilted.
Mandy crumpled backward, arms still wrapped around Luna. She collapsed at the top of the stairs, unmoving.
Sasha bit down on her hand until blood pooled in her mouth to keep from screaming.
A soldier approached Mandy's body, crouched, and checked her pulse. He carefully pulled Luna from her arms. The child didn't stir.
"Target secured," he said. "Sedative took. She's stable."
"No witnesses," another voice crackled through the comm.
"We found traces of the files Adrian copied," one of them muttered, kicking over a cabinet. "Still encrypting. Nothing transmitted yet. We clean this up before Vane finds out we slipped."
Silas Vane.
Sasha had heard the name only in whispers and closed-door meetings. The CEO of Zentech Robotics. Her parents' boss. A man with too much power and not enough conscience.
And they didn't look in the closet. Sasha stayed silent. Breathing in cloth and dust and fear.
Sasha stayed in the closet for what felt like hours, but it had only been minutes. The hum of the air conditioning kicked back on like nothing had happened. The distant barking of a neighbor's dog returned, then faded.
Her fingers trembled against the door. She pressed her ear to it again but nothing. Just the ticking of a wall clock and the drip of water from a cracked pipe.
She pushed the door open slowly. The house looked like a battlefield.
Furniture overturned. A lamp shattered. Blood smeared across the floor like someone had tried to crawl away. The air stung her nose, gunpowder and something metallic.
"Mom?"
Her voice cracked.
"Dad?"
No answer.
She stepped into the hallway. Her socks soaked something warm. She looked down dark red, smeared across the wood. Her knees buckled but she didn't fall.
She took another shaky step.
"Luna?"
The silence screamed back at her.
She turned the corner and saw them.
Her father lay slumped against the wall, eyes wide open, frozen in the moment of his last breath. Her mother lay half-twisted across the floor, one hand stretched toward the hallway.
Sasha let out a noise, a whimper, a sob, something in between and stumbled toward them.
"Dad... no. No, no, no—"
She dropped to her knees. Blood seeped into her jeans.
"Wake up." Her voice was shaking. "Wake up, please."
Her mother's hair was sticky with blood. Sasha reached for her, brushing it back, but her hand wouldn't stop shaking.
She didn't realize she was crying until her throat burned.
She buried her face into her mother's shoulder. "You said we'd go. You said we'd leave tonight. You said we'd be safe"
Her body convulsed with a sob.
Then something clicked in her head.
Luna.
She sat up, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
Her sister's bedroom door was wide open but empty. The blankets tossed aside. The stuffed bunny missing from the pillow.
They took her.
She looked around the room in a panic, as if she'd missed something, some note, some clue but there was nothing. Only silence and the distant sound of sirens far away.
She stumbled back into the hallway and remembered the thing her father had clutched so tightly. His left hand was still curled.
She forced herself to walk back to him. Kneeling slowly, she opened his palm.
A small black flash drive. Scratched, almost crushed, but intact.
She held it like it was made of glass. What did you know, Dad? What were you trying to protect?
She slid it into the pocket of her hoodie and stood up just as the front door creaked.
Sasha froze as she hears the approaching footsteps.
Then a voice low and tense. "Sasha?"
She turned around in terror, raising her fists like her father had taught her, awkward and trembling.
But it wasn't a soldier.
It was a man in a black coat, gun drawn, moving carefully through the door.
She knew that voice.
"Uncle Pete?"
His eyes went wide. "Jesus fucking Christ Sasha."
He rushed to her and pulled her into his arms, gun still clenched in his other hand. She collapsed against him, sobbing again, this time in a flood.
"I—I hid… they k-killed them… they took Luna"
"I know. I know, kiddo. I'm here now."
He looked over her shoulder. The bodies. The blood. His jaw clenched, his voice rough.
"Goddamn bastards."
Peter lifted his radio. "Target confirmed. We're too late."
He turned back to Sasha, his voice softening. "You're safe now. But we gotta move. They'll come back to clean this up."
He grabbed a towel from the counter and wiped blood off her face.
"Can you walk?"
Sasha nodded weakly.
Peter glanced at the flash drive bulging in her hoodie pocket. "Did your dad give you anything?"
She nodded again.
He took a breath, his eyes darkening. "Then you're holding something they'd kill the whole world to keep secret."
He glanced one more time at the bodies, his voice tight with fury. "We're gonna burn them all, Sasha. Every last one."
And as he led her out the door, into the cold night. Sasha Reyes looked back at the ruins of her home... and something inside her broke.
That night, the Reyes family name was scrubbed from the company servers. Zentech called it a domestic accident.
The news mentioned faulty wiring, a gas leak, and unfortunate casualties. But in the shadows of the city, something else stirred.
A girl with fire in her eyes.
A child who saw too much.
A sister with a name she would carry like a weapon.
'BLACK HEAVEN'.