Riley Ross

"He’s... pissed? But he didn’t look any different than normal."

"...You guys didn’t notice? He’s mad."

Victoria, Bella, and Pauline glanced at one another. Amid the chaos, they hadn’t paid much attention to Riley’s expression—but from what little they remembered, he looked the same as always: quiet, detached, and unreadable. Typical dry Riley Ross.

"He lo—"

"What are you guys doing?! We need to go, now!"

The Baby Crew still hadn’t moved, frozen in place even after being warned they were in the blast radius of another bomb. Their eyes remained locked on the darkened sky, following the silhouettes of Riley and the others as they vanished into the clouds.

But suddenly, even Katherine, who’d been busy ushering younger students onto the bus, froze in her tracks. Something massive was emerging through the haze. A glow, faint at first, bled red across the clouds like veins beneath skin. Like blood, almost... it crept upward, pulsing... slowly.

But soon, the beast from which this bleeding was coming revealed itself.

It was colossal, but perhaps not actually a beast.

It was a ship, a gargantuan ship that covered the sky above them, dwarfing even the thick cloud cover left by the explosion. If not for the faint red glow tracing its outline, they might not have recognized it as a ship at all. Its dark hull absorbed the light, casting a shadow more suffocating than the smoke.

"These guys... are serious," Bella’s eyes widened as the ship started to reflect in her eyes, "...Maybe I should’ve joined too?"