Chương 122: 121: Family

Thornburgh had left before the Commander arrived. For seven years, he had run. He had run from the sound of his daughter's neck snapping, from the look in his wife's eyes when they were told he was dead, and from the quiet voice that reminded him every person he killed belonged to someone. He didn't run anymore. He walked. The corridor stretched before him, its cracked walls trembling beneath the distant roars of the galaxy-beast forcing its way through the facility.

He could feel it climbing toward the surface, an entire universe compressed into the body of a single creature. Soon it would break free, and everything above would cease to exist. He could still help. His claws remained. His fangs remained. His body was still a weapon. He never looked back. He hated the Syndicate. They had murdered his daughter, imprisoned his family, and promised to return them if he killed enough people. He had believed them. Seven years of bloodshed later, nothing had changed.

The Commander hadn't freed them. He had simply sent Thornburgh to murder another little girl. The memory made him sick. He couldn't fight for them anymore. All he could do was keep walking and wonder when he had stopped being a man. The air changed. Without realising it, he had reached the surface. The facility loomed behind him like a wound carved into the earth while dawn painted the rain-soaked grass in pale gold. A cold breeze brushed across his face, and he pressed a hand against his chest.

His heart was beating. For seven years, he had barely felt it. Now every buried emotion returned at once. Grief. Rage. Guilt. They settled across his shoulders with crushing weight, leaving his chest aching beneath them. A red-and-grey Syndicate jet descended through the clouds and touched down a hundred metres away. Its engines whined as the rear ramp lowered. Thornburgh's instincts awakened at once. His claws slid free. His fangs lengthened. His body prepared to kill. Then someone stepped off the aircraft.

A woman. Grey threaded through her hair. Fine lines marked her face, and her hands trembled with age and exhaustion. Her eyes hadn't changed. His breath caught in his throat.

"Elara..." His wife. She saw him. Her hand flew to her mouth as her eyes widened, and before she could think, her legs were already carrying her across the grass, closing a distance measured not in metres, but in seven years, a thousand deaths, and a million lies.

"Thorn?" Her voice barely escaped her lips. It was the voice of someone who had whispered his name every night for seven years in a room where no one could hear.

"Thorn... is it really...?" He couldn't answer. His throat had forgotten how to form words. His hands - hands again, no longer claws, no longer weapons - reached for her. She reached back. Then she was in his arms. He held her. She held him. She was real.

"You came back." Tears streamed down her face. He hadn't seen her cry since the day they buried his father.

"They told us you were dead. They said there'd been an accident... that you were gone..." She drew back just enough to cradle his face, her fingertips tracing the scars carved into him, following every place where the wolf had devoured the man and left behind something still struggling to be human.

"You're alive..." She looked at him properly for the first time. The experiments had transformed him. Every muscle stood sharply defined beneath his skin. He towered over her, broader than she remembered, powerful in a way no ordinary man should have been. She could only stare.

"You're alive."

"I am." His voice was rough, worn down by years of pain, but those two words were the truest he had spoken in a very long time. The children came next. Maya. She wasn't a child anymore. She was tall and slender, the kind of woman forced to become strong because no one else could bear the weight for her. She had inherited his dark hair and her mother's warm brown eyes. Those eyes stared at him in stunned disbelief.

"Dad?" Her voice cracked.

"Dad... is it really you?" He opened his arms. She ran. The moment she crashed into him, she stopped being a grown woman. She was his little girl again - the one whose bicycle he had steadied until she learned to ride, who had laughed when he fell off the roof fixing the antenna, and who had once believed her father could fix anything. Including leaving.

"I... I'm sorry." His voice finally broke.

"I should've been here. I should've watched you grow. I should've..." She held him tighter, refusing to let him finish.

"You're here now." She buried her face against his chest, tears soaking through his shirt.

"That's all that matters. That's all that's ever mattered." Liam. His son. Seventeen now. Old enough to be called a man, though life had forced him to become one long before he was ready. He stood at the edge of the clearing with his hands buried in his pockets, his expression carefully composed despite the tears gathering in his eyes. His hair carried Elara's fiery red, while the square line of his jaw belonged unmistakably to Thornburgh. For a long moment, neither of them moved.

"Liam..." Thornburgh whispered. His son walked towards him. He didn't run. Every step was deliberate, carrying seven years of unanswered questions. He stopped only when they stood face to face. Silence stretched between them. Then Liam wrapped his arms around his father. He held on.

"I hated you," he said quietly, his voice muffled against Thornburgh's shoulder.

"I hated you for leaving. I hated you for dying. I hated waiting... and waiting... and believing you were never coming back." Thornburgh embraced him with trembling arms. His son. The little boy he'd left behind had grown into someone else during those seven years.

"I know," Thornburgh whispered.

"I hated myself too." Liam finally pulled away, wiping at his reddened eyes.

"Are you coming home?" His voice cracked.

"Or... are you going to leave again?" Thornburgh looked from Elara to Maya, then to Liam. They were the family he'd spent seven years believing he could only protect by staying away, the family he'd been told he would never see again unless he brought enough heads to the Commander's table. His entire purpose...... had been built upon a lie.

"I'm not leaving," he said, his own voice breaking.

"Never again." He cupped Elara's face, his thumbs tracing the faint lines time had carved into her features and the silver beginning to thread through her hair. Waiting had changed her. It hadn't made her any less beautiful. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"You came," he whispered.

"They let you come." Elara smiled wearily.

"The Commander sent for us. He said the facility was under attack. That everything was falling apart." She swallowed.

"He told us... it was finally time." Her hand rested gently against his cheek.

"He said we were to bring you home before things became worse." Thornburgh stared at her.

"He... let you leave?" His voice barely existed.

"After everything... after all the heads... after-""He sent a jet," Maya said softly as she stepped beside them, her hand settling firmly on his arm.

"All the way from Auckland. He paid for everything." She hesitated.

"He told us you'd been working for him. Protecting us. That you couldn't come home because you were keeping us safe." Her eyes met his.

"And he made sure we understood that." Liam stood beside her now, jaw clenched and eyes red. Seventeen years old. Old enough to look like a man, yet still the boy who had spent seven years hating a ghost. Now the ghost stood before him, and he no longer knew what he was supposed to feel.

"We had calls," Liam said quietly.

"Every six months. Like clockwork. You'd call, tell us you were okay, ask about school, ask about us..." His fists tightened.

"You always said you were coming home." Thornburgh's chest tightened until it hurt. The calls. The lies. Every six months he'd borrowed the voice of a man who wasn't a monster.

"I know," he whispered, his voice breaking.

"I know. I wanted... I wanted to tell you. I wanted to-""You called," Elara said softly. She sounded exhausted, like a woman who had held a family together for seven years with hope alone.

"You asked about Liam's grades. About Maya's paintings. About the garden." Tears slipped down her cheeks, yet she smiled through them.

"You always said you loved us." She drew a shaky breath.

"You always said you were coming home." Thornburgh's knees gave way. He never reached the ground. Elara caught him. Together they held him up, wrapping their arms around him as though seven lost years could somehow be bridged by a single embrace. They looked...... healthy. That shattered him more than anything. Elara's hair had thinned and turned grey with age, yet her eyes still shone and her hands remained steady. Maya had grown into the strong young woman she'd been allowed to become.

Liam stood broad-shouldered and clear-eyed, carrying the quiet confidence of someone who had been fed, educated, and loved. The Commander had made sure of it. As long as they were safe...... Thornburgh would keep killing. He would keep bringing heads to the table. He would keep being the wolf. Yet here they were. Holding him without knowing what he had become.

"Dad..." Maya raised a hand to his scarred face, her fingertips tracing wounds that hadn't existed seven years ago.

"What happened to you?" Her voice trembled.

"What did they make you do?" Thornburgh lowered his gaze to his hands. The hands that had taken uncountable lives. Those same hands now trembled as they held his daughter's fingers, cupped his wife's face, and rested gently upon his son's shoulder. He opened his mouth. He wanted to tell them everything. About seven years of bloodshed committed under the belief that every death had carried him one step closer to protecting them. No words came. Every confession died in his throat before it could escape.

His chest felt impossibly heavy as his gaze moved from Elara to Maya, then finally to Liam. This was the family he had spent seven years trying to return to. They were here. Looking back at him with a love that knew nothing of the monster he had become. Movement stirred at the edge of the clearing.... Thornburgh's head snapped toward it. His claws slid free. Fangs lengthened. Every muscle coiled with murderous instinct before his mind had even recognised the silhouette emerging from the trees.

Recognition struck like ice. Clock. White hair matted with blood. Violet eyes that matched the impossible gaze of the girl whose severed head Thornburgh had once carried in his hands. Butter's brother. His heartbeat lurched. He had heard that boy carve through more than a dozen Abominations alone, leaving creatures that could slaughter continents strewn across the battlefield as though they were nothing more than fallen leaves. Even now, broken and drenched in blood, Clock inspired the same primal terror.

Thornburgh stepped in front of his family without thinking.

"Get back," he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the approaching figure.

"All of you. Stay behind me." Elara immediately pulled Maya close, while Liam obeyed without protest, retreating behind his father as all three stared at the young man stumbling into the clearing. Of course. Revenge had finally come. Thornburgh lowered his head. He deserved it. He deserved far worse. Clock staggered forward, each step looking heavier than the last. His clothes hung in blood-soaked tatters, his body held together by little more than impossible stubbornness.

Every movement looked like an argument against collapse. Yet there was no hatred in his exhausted face. Only unbearable weariness. His legs finally gave way. He folded quietly, like a tree that had endured one storm too many. His knees struck first, then his hands, and finally his face met the earth. He didn't get back up. Thornburgh was already moving. He dropped beside the fallen boy and caught him before his body could collapse completely into the mud. He looked down. Half of Clock's face had ceased to exist.

It hadn't been torn away. It was simply... gone. Skin, muscle, bone, even one violet eye had become an unrecognisable ruin. Purple-black blood seeped from the wound, swirling with strange cosmic colours like fragments of galaxies refusing to settle. It was the blood of something that had held itself together far beyond its limit. Behind him, Thornburgh's family stood frozen. They had never seen anyone like him.

Maya's eyes slowly travelled over the young man, taking in the snow-white hair matted with blood, the sharp features still somehow beautiful beneath the devastation, the single luminous violet eye, and the ruined half of his face that only made the untouched half seem more impossibly elegant.

"What... is he?" she whispered.

"I don't know," Liam murmured, unable to look away. Maya swallowed hard, her heart aching at the sight of him.

"He looks like..." She shook her head.

"... like a prince." The contrast only made it worse. Someone who looked so impossibly young, so beautiful, and so utterly broken.

"Elara..." Thornburgh whispered. His wife's eyes glistened as she watched the dying boy in her husband's arms.

"He's just a child..."

"Clock..." Thornburgh's voice barely escaped his throat.

"Clock, I..." The boy's remaining eye opened. One violet. One ruin. They found Thornburgh's face. There was no rage left within them, only the weary peace of someone who had been dying for a very long time.

"Thornburgh," he rasped.

"You're here."

"I'm here." Thornburgh held him a little tighter. Clock felt impossibly light, his body little more than skin stretched over failing strength.

"What happened to you? What-" A faint smile touched Clock's lips.

"I read your mind. I know the limits of your power." His breathing hitched.

"I can feel what's happening. You have to save them. You're the only one who still has the balance... and the speed." Thornburgh's blood turned to ice.

"Ankou..." His voice cracked.

"You fought Ankou. He did this to you. You should be dead." Clock managed a faint, exhausted smile.

"I'm stronger than that. I carved away his reserves." Thornburgh stared at him in disbelief.

"That's impossible. He's been storing that power for years, long before I ever became an Experiment. How do you carve away something that's taken decades to accumulate in a single fight?" Clock's smile widened by the smallest fraction.

"I'm Clock." He coughed, blood staining his lips.

"That's how." His breathing grew rougher, each inhale sounding like it hurt.

"I've held out this long... but I'm out of Gloom. I only escaped because I felt you. You have to leave. Now." His eyelids sagged before he forced them open again.

"For a while, my Gloom has been holding my body together, forcing my cells to stay intact and keeping the erasure from finishing its work." He drew another ragged breath.

"But it's running dry. The damage was too severe. He absorbed too much power. I'm..." Thornburgh frowned.

"Then why come here?" Clock's gaze settled on him once more.

"Because I read your mind... the moment we met." His voice trembled.

"I saw Kiri." A painful silence followed.

"I saw what they did to her." His breathing caught again.

"I saw what they did to you." Thornburgh forgot how to breathe. Seven years collapsed into a single moment.

"I was trying to save them," he whispered.

"You were," Clock said gently.

"Your family." His fingers weakly tightened around Thornburgh's sleeve.

"They used your love. They weaponised your grief. They turned you into a man who could kill forever... while believing every death brought them closer." Warm tears slipped down Thornburgh's face. He hadn't cried since the night his daughter died.

"I killed her," he whispered.

"I killed your sister."

"I know." Clock's hand found his arm.

"I was angry... when I first saw you." Another faint smile appeared.

"Then I read your mind." Purple-black blood spilled from his lips, staining Thornburgh's chest.

"I understood." Another cough shook his body.

"I need you to help them." His voice had become little more than a breath.

"Butter... the thing wearing Katherine's face... the galaxy beast..." His breathing faltered again.

"They can't do this alone. They need someone who can still move. Someone who can still run." Thornburgh's hands trembled uncontrollably.

"I can help you," he said desperately.

"I can fight. I can save you too-""No." The word was gentle. Absolute.

"Help them. Not me. This body doesn't matter anymore."

"You matter!" Thornburgh snapped, desperation finally breaking free.

"I'll find a way! I'll save them and you!"

"I'm already dead." The words settled between them like freshly turned earth. Clock never looked away. One violet eye and one ruined eye rested upon Thornburgh without the slightest trace of fear. There was only exhaustion... and acceptance. Thornburgh noticed the guitar hanging at Clock's side. Its broad body flared into twin axe-like edges, while its elongated neck was long enough to grip like a polearm, allowing it to be wielded as either a massive axe or a sword. His gaze drifted lower.

Tiny wisps of erasure still leaked from the places where the tendrils had severed him. Then he saw the cuts. Dozens of them. The tendrils hadn't merely pierced Clock. They had sliced clean through him, separating his body into countless pieces.

"I'm holding myself together," Clock said quietly.

"My Gloom and my telekinesis are the only things keeping my body from falling apart. The moment I let go... my cells will simply drift away." A weak smile crossed his face.

"I can't reverse it. I don't have enough energy left." He let out a tired breath.

"I spent the last of my Gloom controlling an entire city, just to get everyone out of the way before the fight reached them." Thornburgh's arms tightened around him. The boy wasn't alive because his body still functioned. He was alive because his will refused to let it die.

"Let me help you," Thornburgh pleaded.

"Let me-""You can't." Clock's voice remained gentle, carrying the quiet acceptance of someone who had already made peace with the inevitable.

"The damage is too severe. I've held myself together for too long." A slow breath escaped him.

"I'm out of time." His violet eye met Thornburgh's.

"But you're not," Clock said softly.

"You still have a chance. Go back. Fight. Save them. Become the man you were meant to be before they turned you into something else." Thornburgh looked toward his family. Elara stood at the edge of the clearing with trembling hands covering her mouth, tears glistening in her eyes. Maya clung to her arm, pale and silent, while Liam stood beside them with his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles had turned white, refusing to look away from his father. Thornburgh turned back to the boy in his arms.

The boy who should have hated him. The boy who had every reason to leave him to die. The boy who was begging him to live.

"I can't let you die," Thornburgh whispered, his voice breaking.

"I've already killed your sister. I won't lose you too." His hands moved before doubt could stop them. The essence that had sustained him for years - the power that granted impossible healing, unnatural speed, and the curse of the wolf - flowed from his body into Clock. Clock gasped. His back arched violently as violet light rippled beneath ruined flesh. The blood staining his face, black and purple like shattered galaxies, slowed and receded. Torn skin knitted itself together.

The hollow around his eye filled as bone, muscle, and flesh remembered how to exist. Life returned. Thornburgh felt his own strength leaving with it. His healing. His speed. Everything that had made him more than human drained steadily into the boy. He never hesitated. He simply gave. With every passing second, he became smaller, weaker, and more human. Clock's breathing steadied as his heartbeat strengthened. The desperate rhythm of a dying body faded into something calm... something alive. His eyes opened.

Both of them. Bright violet. Clear.

"Thornburgh..." he breathed.

"You're giving me too much. Stop. I'll survive like this. You're going to-""I know." The words were gentle, spoken by a man who had spent years running from himself and had finally found the courage to stand still. He withdrew his hands, and the flow of life ceased. Clock's wounds were gone. His face was whole again. Colour had returned to his skin, and each breath came easily. He was still running on fumes, but his body had been restored. Thornburgh lowered his gaze to his trembling hands.

He didn't know if it was enough. He didn't know whether anything could ever outweigh what he'd done. The blood on his hands wasn't something time could wash away. Yet the boy was alive. He was breathing. And he was looking at Thornburgh with gratitude instead of fear.

"Go," Clock whispered, his voice rough with emotion.

"Go back. Run. Save them... please." Thornburgh turned towards his family. Elara. Maya. Liam. They stood together, waiting for him as they always had. His gaze drifted beyond them to the distant facility, a wound carved into the earth. His trembling legs finally carried him forward. He wrapped his arms around Elara first, then drew Maya and Liam into the embrace until all four of them stood together.

"I have to go," he said quietly.

"There are people who still need me." His voice faltered.

"I can't abandon them again." Elara cupped his face. Tears shimmered in her eyes, yet her smile never wavered.

"Go," she whispered.

"Be the man we always believed you were."

"We'll be here."

"We'll always be here." He kissed her forehead, kissed Maya, then pulled Liam into one last embrace before letting him go. Without another word, Thornburgh turned towards the smoking ruins. Towards the battle. Towards the debt he'd carried since the night his daughter had been torn from his arms. He never looked back. He didn't have to. He knew they were watching. Waiting. Believing. For seven years, he had been a wolf. A murderer. A man who'd smiled while holding a young girl's severed head. Now...

He was going back to save her.