Caught by the Mad Alpha King Chapter 295: Falling walls

The call connected on the second ring.

"Fitzgeralt..."

"I’m Ethan Miller. I do not have much ti, so please just listen. I am on the outskirts of an industrial area. There’s a facility with kidnapped ogas and alphas," Ethan said in one breath, words punching out faster than panic could shape them. "They’re sedated, restrained, and hooked to God knows what via IV. A full demolition crew is on site and preparing charges. They’re going to level the building with them inside. I need you to locate this phone right now and send people capable of stopping it."

"Stay on the line until your location is confird." Trevor’s cold voice ripped through the artificial quiet of the corridor. "Make pictures of anything that you can, and don’t touch the victims. You may provoke more damage than good."

"I’m here for Leon Stuart. He was an hour ago still conscious."

"Did you contact anyone else?"

"Yes. Detective Albrecht. I was waiting for him and his team to appear but the demolition team moved first... You were the last resort."

Silence pulsed at the other end of the line.

Trevor Fitzgeralt’s silence was the sound of engines being mobilized.

"Good," Trevor said at last. "Send pictures. Floor layout. Hall distribution. Victim positioning if possible. And Ethan, do not draw attention to yourself. If they realize you’re inside, they accelerate the schedule."

"I know," Ethan breathed.

He forced himself to move.

His hands still wanted to shake. He didn’t let them. He gripped the phone with both palms, teeth clenched as he snapped photo after photo. Corridors. Room doors. Restraints. The monitors flashing vitals. ID tags taped crudely on cots.

Click. Send. Click. Send.

He docunted quickly but carefully. Wide fras. Detail shots. Any clue Trevor might turn into a miracle.

"This is organized," he muttered without aning to. "This isn’t so drugged warehouse horror show. This is maintained. Soone is paying to keep them alive until they’re finished with them."

"I am aware," Trevor replied. "They have power rerouted on a separate backup circuit. Sedation is dically stable. Whoever is running this invested money and expertise. You will not save anyone by running in blind. Continue sending."

Ethan swallowed and obeyed, but sothing told him that Trevor already knew who was behind it.

Ethan swallowed and obeyed, but sothing in the back of his mind whispered that Trevor already knew who was behind this. It was in the way every new horror Ethan described sounded like confirmation instead of discovery.

Trevor Fitzgeralt wasn’t piecing a puzzle together.

He was watching one finish.

Ethan took another photo of the backup power junction, zood in on the rerouted cabling, and then the numbered tags on IV bags. Sent. Moved. Sent again.

A new ssage vibrated in his ear.

"Do not engage with staff unless absolutely necessary," Trevor said. "They may not all be demolition personnel. So are clinical. So are security. If you are caught, the schedule advances and they will trigger internal failsafes. You have thirteen minutes until my people breach."

"Thirteen," Ethan repeated under his breath, grounding himself on the number. "All right."

He turned another corner.

The sound reached him first, irritation strained through exhaustion, thinned by too much sedative and too much fear.

"I said don’t... I told you... just stop touching it..."

And then the nurse, voice low and falsely patient.

"Try to relax. You’re agitating your vitals. This will be easier if you don’t struggle."

Ethan’s hand tightened around the phone, his mind recognizing the voice before he did.

Leon.

He ended the call without ceremony and slipped forward, keeping close to the wall, heart beating too loudly in his throat.

The nurse was a man in his fifties, maybe older, and seed dead set on injecting Leon with sothing. Ethan guessed that it was most likely the sa thing that put the rest to sleep.

Leon lunged at the nurse and throttled him hard enough for the nurse to drop his syringe.

Leon lunged at the nurse and throttled him hard enough that the syringe slipped from his hand and clattered across the floor.

The man cursed, shock flaring into rage.

"You stupid...!"

He hit Leon.

A sharp, open-pald crack to the face.

Once.

Twice.

The sound of flesh being slapped with brutal force echoed in the empty room.

Leon gasped but didn’t let go.

He couldn’t kill the man. He didn’t have the strength. Every muscle trembled, his breath guttering in ragged bursts, his body fighting through sedation like he was dragging himself through cent.

"Stop!" Leon choked out, voice raw. "Don’t touch ! Don’t!"

The nurse reached for his pocket.

Ethan moved.

He didn’t rember deciding anything, just that his body moved without thought.

He crossed the room in three soundless steps, dropped low, and snatched the fallen syringe from the floor. The man didn’t see him. He was too busy prying Leon’s hands off his throat with professional efficiency and vicious irritation.

"Uncooperative little..."

Ethan drove the syringe into the man’s neck with a sharp, brutal precision born of panic and instinct. His hand pushed the plunger down completely.

The nurse stiffened.

Then convulsed once.

His fingers scrabbled uselessly at Ethan’s wrist before his whole body went slack, collapsing with a dull, heavy thud halfway against Leon and the cot.

For one second, no one breathed.

Then Ethan inhaled shakily and yanked the body back enough so it didn’t crush Leon’s chest.

Leon’s head lolled against the pillow, eyes glassy but there, pupils struggling to focus. His chest heaved. His lower lip was split. His cheeks flushed from strain and fear.

He blinked at Ethan.

"...You’re... late," Leon rasped, sounding more offended than relieved.

Ethan almost laughed.

It ca out broken.

"Yeah," he whispered, hands hovering uselessly over him like he didn’t know where to touch without hurting sothing. "I’m working on that."

He moved and took Leon. "Let’s get out. Professional help is on its way."

Ethan braced Leon against his side and started moving, each step a careful act of stubbornness rather than strength. Leon’s body was heavy and trembling, his legs barely rembering how to obey commands, but he clung to consciousness because sowhere in the back of his mind, he understood that falling ant being left behind. Ethan kept his voice low, present in a way that forced the world to stay real.

"We’re getting out," he murmured, tightening his hold when Leon staggered. "Professional help is already coming. You’re not dying in an unfinished basent. Not today."

Leon gave a breath of sothing that might have been a laugh in any other universe and focused on breathing instead of the burning in his lungs.

The first tremor rolled through the floor with a slow, ominous weight that traveled up Ethan’s calves and into his spine. Dust slipped from the ceiling in a thin, drifting veil before the sound caught up, a delayed thunder that vibrated through steel and bone. Above them, sothing heavy clanged, then the ductwork rattled violently, bolted tal protesting as if it knew what was coming.

Leon’s fingers dug instinctively into Ethan’s jacket.

"That... doesn’t sound like a drill," Leon whispered, his voice hoarse.

"No," Ethan replied quietly, staring down the corridor as another shudder rolled through the structure, deeper this ti, closer. "It doesn’t."

He could hear people outside now with vehicles stopping hard, doors slamming, and commands cutting clean through chaos. Help had arrived. But help was outside, and the building they were in had already been condemned in soone’s mind long before today.

A second jolt shook the hall. A light fixture popped overhead, glass scattering across the floor in a glittering spray. Sowhere deeper in the structure, a siren finally started to sing.

Leon swayed and nearly dropped before mory caught him by the throat.

"Ethan..." he gasped, suddenly panicked. "There’s... another one. Down the hall. They brought him in after . He didn’t wake up. He’s still..."

For half a heartbeat, Ethan wished he hadn’t heard it. He wished he could pretend he didn’t know. He stood there in the break between collapsing options, between what he could carry and what he couldn’t live with, and then the decision wasn’t a decision anymore.

"Stay upright," he said sharply, almost pleading but refusing to let the fear bleed into his tone. "Do not pass out. Do not stop breathing. Do you understand ?"

Leon nodded, fast and shaky, and Ethan maneuvered him toward the reinforced corner of the corridor.

"I’ll be right back."

He ran, boots slipping against dust-coated tile as the hallway trembled like a living thing trying to shake them off.

The last door gave way beneath his shoulder. A breath of stale, warm air escaped the room with him, and there, on a narrow cot shoved against the wall, lay another oga, young, deeply unconscious, and terrifyingly still. No machines, IV, or monitoring.

Ethan didn’t let himself think about how much he hated this.

He simply lifted.

The weight nearly took him to his knees. He gritted his teeth, got the boy across his shoulders, and headed back, every step feeling like it dragged the world down with it.

By the ti he reached Leon again, the building sounded like it was actively breaking apart. The walls groaned. The air thrumd. Sowhere above, tal supports snapped.

"Go," Ethan barked, forcing Leon ahead of him as the corridor shuddered. "Move!"

Leon did, dragging his body forward while Ethan followed behind with the unconscious oga, trying to keep them both between him and the worst of the falling debris.

Then the world tore open.

The wall burst open in a roar of collapsing plaster and steel. Ethan saw it in one terrible heartbeat: the heavy cabinet, the fractured beam, and the cascade of ceiling falling faster than instinct could react.

He shoved.

He didn’t think about it. He didn’t weigh options. He simply threw his body into Leon and the other oga, pushing them hard into open ground just as the corridor gave way.