Fox, Hound, and Snake

Mr. Specter’s Estate, Los Angeles, 2025

POV: Naga

My throat worked before my thoughts caught up. “What do you mean, it all went as you planned?”

Specter’s smirk deepened, as if the question itself proved his point. “I let you all run out there because I knew Malice couldn’t resist. Better to dangle bait on a string I control than wait for them to tear down the house themselves. It worked didn’t it?”

The words sank like hooks.

“You used them,” I said. The air in my chest felt tighter. “You used me.”

“Correction,” Specter replied smoothly. “I gambled. And now you’re here instead of in their hands. The difference between a corpse and a piece still on the board is nothing but foresight.”

Makoto shifted by the wall, silent, unreadable.

I felt that old hunger to bare fangs, to lunge. Still, my hands trembled once at my sides. Was survival all I was good for? A curse men bet on, waiting to see if it devours itself?

On the carpet to my right lay Laurent, battered and asleep. Bound wrists and ankles. His head was turned toward the door as if even unconscious he’d mapped his exits.

“You brought him,” I said, my voice lower than I expected. The words felt like they had to push past something growing in my chest.

“Of course,” Specter said. “He’s valuable.”

Makoto’s gaze stayed on me, measuring. “You can stand?”

I tried. The world tilted a bit and then steadied around my weight as I stood.

“Good,” Makoto said. He moved to Laurent and rolled him with the heel of his boot. “Up.”

Laurent came back to waking with a grunt. His eyes found Specter first, and he smiled, disdainful curve showing teeth without warmth.

“Thought it’d be you,” he said.

Specter only snidely grinned back. “The hound of L.A. Getting careless now? Or just growing senile?”

Laurent’s gaze flicked to me. “Skip it, Specter. That’s what they call you now, right? What do you plan on doing with me?”

“You’ll find out,” Specter said lightly. “Assuming you manage to keep your teeth long enough to talk.”

A muscle in Makoto’s jaw ticked. He didn’t speak. He reached down, caught Laurent under the arms, and hauled him up like a sack. Laurent thrashed and hissed until Makoto’s knuckles grazed his ribs once.

“Where,” Laurent said, looking past Specter with the stubbornness of a predator who refuses to see the trap even after it closes, “did you find that much loyalty? You used to buy it by the hour.”

Specter glanced at Makoto almost fondly. “I didn’t buy anything,” he said. “It’s a mutual partnership.”

I still couldn’t grasp Specter’s stake in all of this. Was he just going along out of sheer boredom? Unlike Makoto who was looking for Vinnie, Malice had nothing that belonged to Specter.

Makoto didn’t bother to agree or deny. He dragged Laurent toward the door. “Basement,” he said to me without turning.

I followed.

The mansion’s halls were long and smooth. Floors that had never known mud, walls paneled in wood the color of whiskey, paintings that didn’t look back. Curated, like an Eden with gardeners and invoices.

Stairs spiraled down into stone as the hum of the house thinned into something plainer, the honest damp of earth. The basement was made of whitewashed brick.

A single bulb. A chair bolted to the floor. No guards, only the fox at home in his castle, the orphan with fists for answers, and me.

Makoto sat Laurent hard into the chair and bound him into a straitjacket with deliberate hands. Each strap cinched with a small, unarguable sound as he was tied to the chair. Laurent swore under his breath as leather strapped him in measured slices.

“This is vulgar,” Laurent said when his breath returned. “You always did misunderstand theater, Specter. You use a hammer when a raised eyebrow would do.”

“You trained me,” Specter said, arranging himself in the room as if it were a parlor and Laurent a guest who’d been rude at dinner. “If I lean toward bluntness, it’s because your instruction was so… formative.”

Laurent laughed, bright and ugly. “You remember the floors? I had you scrub them. On your knees. You thanked me for teaching you about grit.”

“I thanked you for showing me what hunger felt like,” Specter said. He didn’t blink. “And how to feed it in rooms that don’t smell like bleach.”

Makoto’s palm met Laurent’s jaw. Not rage, but punctuation. Laurent’s head snapped sideways, but his smile still lingered.

Specter glanced at me, then back at Laurent.

“Look what’s happened to you,” Specter said pleasantly. “Never thought the hound of L.A himself would work for someone else.”

Laurent worked his jaw until it clicked. “They share my vision. And more importantly, they pay well.”

Specter’s smile thinned. “And that vision is…?”

“Proof,” Laurent said, eyes sliding to me. “That we, God’s pets, can bleed out divinity in a tube if you squeeze us hard enough. Your serpent is the prize pig in that particular fair.”

I didn’t move. The word serpent sat in the room like a coin on a tongue.

Makoto’s fist lingered by Laurent’s jaw, knuckles raw. “You knew we’d be there at the docks,” he said. “How?”

Laurent’s smirk came thin. “Do you think Malice only watches its cages? The three of you that made it out of Mount Hoshiumi, they’ve been looking for you. Tabs. Eyes. Records. Every move you’ve made in this city hums through their wires.”

Specter’s tone stayed almost conversational. “So, someone is doing their due diligence.”

Laurent’s silence said enough. His jaw flexed against the strap.

“Name,” Makoto said, voice heavy. “Lie and I kill you. Don’t believe me then try it.”

Laurent laughed once, blood bubbling at the corner of his lip. His slick back hair now draped messily down his forehead. “Jinho Kang. He’s the one who signs the ledgers. The one who knew all your faces before you even knew his name.”

The room thickened. The name clung to the stone walls like smoke.

Specter’s smile faltered only for a moment before returning sharper. “Jinho Kang, huh. Never heard of him.”

My chest tightened. There it was. Jinho again. The name felt like a thread that had been waiting to tug all of us down the same road.

Makoto stepped closer, his shadow leaning over Laurent. “And where is Vinnie.”

Laurent smirked. “I assume that’s subject V-seven. He slipped the leash. Escaped. Malice is tearing its hair out trying to reel him back.”

The air thinned. So the one they were looking for was free. That didn’t mean he was safe. Malice would find him sooner or later.

Laurent’s laugh cracked in his throat. “They’ll keep chasing him, of course. He’s the first successful product. But you know how it goes. Run long enough and even freedom feels like a collar.”

Specter pressed for details, but Laurent threw barbs instead. “Funny, Specter. Don’t forget, you learned from me how to smile while lying.”

A heat ran through me that wasn’t anger exactly. The memory of a sky that did not need ceilings. It was not a memory I owned, but a wound that taught me its shape.

And now even that wound felt hollow. Haneul was gone. Her body traded and her light extinguished. If exile had meaning, it was bound to her, and without her, of what value was I? What purpose did my survival serve, except to be used by others?

I almost envied Laurent’s certainty, even in chains. Better a hound trapped than a serpent who no longer knew why he crawled.

Laurent slumped in the chair, bruised, bleeding, but alive. His words lingered heavier than his presence.

Specter smirked and turned his back as he walked off. “Every lie is a breadcrumb. We’ll follow them all.”

Makoto stood silent, his knuckles raw.

I watched Laurent in silence.

We left him there.

Upstairs, the house breathed wealth again. The first floor opened into a lounge that wasn’t a room so much as a landscape, a sweep of wood and furniture. Tall windows opened onto a terrace.

Shelby saw me first.

She jumped off the sofa and across the room before the logic of it could catch up to her. The movement wasn’t elegant, but it was honest. Her arms went around me on instinct, like she was proving to herself that I was still warm. Her cheek brushed my collarbone, her breath shaking against my chest.

Then she remembered herself. She released, stepped back, crossed her arms over herself like she’d been the one caught. “Sorry. I— I just…” She laughed once, too loud. “You’re… okay.”

“Alive,” I said. The word felt both too large and too small. “I told you not to worry.”

Aki stood behind her, arms folded, chin lifted like a blade. The anger in her eyes wasn’t for me this time. It was for everything else. Haru hovered to the side. Relief went through his face like a shadow passing.

Then Makoto moved past me into the room and the air changed around him the way rooms adjust around a missing column. I guess he was waiting for a good time to break the news of Vinnie’s escape to Aki and Haru. Perhaps he wasn’t sure if the news itself was good or bad yet.

Specter poured tea into thin cups. He did it without asking if anyone wanted it, as if offering civility counted as kindness. “Laurent sings banal hymns to money,” he said. “But even a bad choir knows the chorus. Malice is nervous. They’re moving. We’ll just have to move faster.”

Shelby’s eyes were still on me, then on the bandage at my shoulder. “You should sit,” she said. “You look hurt.”

“I’m fine,” I said, and even I didn’t believe it. I lowered myself into a chair.

“Laurent?” Aki asked.

“Breathing,” Makoto said.

“Shame,” Aki muttered without heat.

Haru hovered near the arm of my chair, hands shoved into the sleeves of a sweater two sizes too big. He looked at me like I was a statue. “Back at the docks… you let them take you,” he said, the words slow.

“I have a bad habit of returning,” I said.

He nodded, as if that made the math work. “Good.”

Specter set a cup on the low table near me and another within Haru’s reach. “He told us Vinnie escaped,” he said. “Which means on top of us looking for him, Malice will be too.”

Aki and Haru froze, their gazes shifting to Makoto right away, who only gave a small nod in return. A glimmer of hope beamed in their eyes for a split second. It was like a weight lifted off their shoulders, just knowing that he was alive.

“Escaped?” Aki echoed. “He just ran? Where the hell could he go?”

Haru didn’t answer at first. His face went pale, eyes somewhere far away. Finally, he whispered, “If he’s out there alone… they’ll definitely come for him. Malice doesn’t let go.”

Aki turned, fire flaring in her eyes. “Then we’ll find him first.”

Haru swallowed hard, nodded, but the tremor in his hands gave him away.

“Yeah,” Makoto said, almost under his breath as he turned to Specter. “This time without using anyone as bait. I don’t agree with your way of doing this, Specter.”

Specter’s smile was lazy and edged. “And yet here I am in a mansion, and you’re here with me. The world rewards different mindsets.”

Aki shot him a look that would have broken less careful men. He accepted it like a tip.

Shelby sat on the arm of the chair across from me, near enough to be counted, far enough to be denied. She studied my bandage again. “You should let me—”

“It doesn’t hurt,” I cut her off.

“Are you sure?”

I lifted the edge of the gauze. The cut that had lipped like a mouth now showed only the faintest seam, like a wrinkle where skin had been pulled together and decided to forgive. The purple field at my ribs had yellowed at the edges while we were in the basement.

I’d almost completely healed.

Shelby’s eyes widened. Haru leaned closer, curious beating back dread. Makoto’s gaze did not move, but the line of his mouth changed like a thought slid home in its slot.

“The serpent sheds,” Specter said lightly, as if making a joke to dress a fact. “Any other powers we should know about?”

“It shouldn’t be that fast,” Shelby said. “You need rest. Stitches. Something.”

“I am resting,” I said. It was not a lie.

I touched the seam of the wound gently. Heat curled under my fingers. No tenderness ran from skin to bone. No electric complaint. The ache in my ribs stayed, but it no longer hurt.

“Did Malice do this to you?” Aki muttered.

“No,” I said. “It’s one of my divine blessings, slowly adapting to my human body.”

Specter raised a brow, his sharp gaze seeping with a quiet curiosity.

I looked at my hands. They looked like hands. The cuticles a little ragged from bad nights. The bones beneath thinner than they should have been.

Hands. Not claws. Not miracles.

I didn’t want to be a relic that men used to wage their wars. I didn’t want to be a weapon men pointed and said fire. I wanted to be a name that did not require a story to call it true.

Makoto leaned his hip against the table, knuckles idly pressing into it until the wood decided to welcome them. “We go after Vinnie,” he said. Not a question.

Specter sipped tea as if it were an answer. “Our serpent friend should be able to smell him,” he said. “I’ll use my own network to find him on my end.”

“And if Malice gets to him first?” Aki asked.

“Then what we set out to do does not change,” Specter said, setting down the cup. “Either way, we’ll have to face them eventually. An inevitable spectacle.”

Shelby rolled her eyes. “You talk like this is theater.”

“It is,” Specter said. “All the world. All our parts. One big script the heavens have written for us.”

Haru glanced at me. “Do you still plan to help us?”

“Give me time to think,” I said. “Right now, I’m trying to figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” he asked, earnest and sharp.

“Whether I am a man or a story,” I said.

He paused, then nodded. “You can be both.”

“Dangerous,” Specter murmured. “The last time a story learned it had hands, it wrote God a letter.”

He was talking about Malice.

“Did God write back?” I asked.

Specter’s smile did something graceful and unkind. “Always. In blood or in weather.”

Silence settled without irritation. The kind you can sit inside without needing to scratch at its walls. Shelby’s shoulder brushed mine and then pretended not to. Makoto picked a splinter from his knuckle with his teeth and pretended he hadn’t. Aki watched the window like it owed her a debt and Haru folded his hands in his sleeves and looked at the teacup as if it might break.

I breathed.

The serpent sheds. The wounds began to heal themselves. Exile adapts, and the body learns the language of curses and conjugates it into survival. I did not know whether that made me more of what Malice wanted or less. I only knew that the next time a blade found me, it would find something that refused to remain cut.

Outside, leaves fell from trees that had been carefully groomed and arranged.

Inside, the fox poured tea, the hound stayed locked in the basement, the orphans watched with tired eyes, and the girl who had nearly held me touched her hands together as if they remembered the shape of my body.

And I, the serpent, sat whole again, wondering if my wounds healed because of heaven’s will, or because exile refuses to die before its purpose is found.