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London, November 2013. Two years before the end of everything.

Hot blood oozes from Kamala's broken nose as her eyes adjust to the darkness surrounding her. Heavy drops soak through her jeans as unseen walls collapse around her whirling head. She laps at her lip with her coarse tongue, tasting the iron and lost energy as she breaks the nauseating flow. The last thing she remembers is bringing down the construction site when her adaptation grew too powerful to be controlled. Ziegler's pack arrived first, then all of London decided to join after, staring up in awe at a spectacle unlike any they've seen before. In the end, they got what they wanted, as they were taken to the subterranean lab where Soraya Singh is held.

Fighting their way through an army of hired muscle was the easy part, Kamala thinks as her breaths grow heavy from her obstructed nose. Escaping Ziegler's clutches is going to be the hard part. As much as she thinks she can resist him, the wolf's own natural adaptation is his silver tongue, he has a way of making you stay, even if everything in your brain is begging you to run away.

Kamala channels the urgency beating in her chest to white-hot heat that liquifies the restraints on her wrists. She pulls her arms apart, causing drops of molten steel to scorch the concrete floor. Kamala rubs the singed fur on her wrists as she contemplates her escape.

With her sharp teeth, she pulls at one of the sleeves of her tattered sweater, pressing it firmly against her nose and blinking her eyes as they struggle to adjust to the pitch blackness, a consequence of the albinism she inherited.

She's only beginning to make out the rusty, featureless walls when intense white light fills the tiny room as heavy doors are flung open, clanging loudly when they hit the concrete walls, the sound echoing in Kamala's aching head.

An onyx-colored panther with flowing silver hair glides into the room like a living shadow. Her amber eyes and facial piercings luster as they steal the little light left between them. She searches for a source of light, but her flustered daughter illuminates the space with pink radiance emanating from her clenched fists.

Soraya Singh looks into her daughters' eyes for the first time since she was an infant. Kamala looks into contemplative eyes she's known all her life. While the father she saw in the photographs back in Singh's home looked like Kyran, her twin inherited everything about his eyes from their mother, from the same amber color to the same calculating glare.

"I never imagined I'd see you here again, my lotus flower. Yes, again. You and your brother once lived in London briefly, after you were born. I'd stay up all night keeping an eye on the both of you. You were so beautiful when you were born. Your fur resembled the petals of the lotus, so I named you after them."

Kamala spits blood onto the floor.

"If we were so special to you, then why did you abandon us?"

Singh's expression doesn't change.

"Every time you cried, I tried to hold you in my arms to comfort you, but you would burn me with your power. Every emotion you felt produced havoc, as if you were feeling for the first time. Kyran would disappear. The neighbors would knock frantically at midnight, telling us they found him in their home, trying to find his way back to us. I could never give you both a normal life. I was not ready to hide you from the world, but Thaddeus could."

"Thaddeus failed," Kamala says angrily.

"Of all the ways you could've made it here, you decided to bring down an entire building. Were you never shown grace in surrendering, or have you been conditioned by Thaddeus Axton to believe that the only way to get any attention is to tear the world apart?" Singh asks, conflicting accents in her orotund voice.

"Maybe if my mother raised me better, I'd know those things. Besides, it was Quinn's idea to bring down the building. Shocking what we're capable of if we just, let go," Kamala says, trying to hide her surprise through searing sarcasm.

"Don't bring my daughter into this."

"Your daughter? Give me a fucking break. Your daughter is sitting right in front of you. I spent my entire life convinced you were dead because I couldn't find a logical enough reason to explain why you'd abandon us the way you did. Lying to yourself by saying she's your daughter won't make up for what you did to us."

"If Quinn isn't my daughter, then is Zephyr not Thaddeus's son?" Singh asks, crossing her arms as if to shield her heart from the daggers her daughter tries to drive into it with her words.

Kamala catches her words in her blood-soaked mouth, trying to listen rather than waste her rage, but a lifetime of anger at a stranger she wishes she knew rushes outward like blood from a fresh wound.

"What are you doing down here Soraya? Catching up on good times with your old friend Dietrich?"

An invisible knife stabs Singh's heart deeply. But she withstands, trying desperately to turn her children away from the terrors assured to them.

"Take her someplace safe, please. You know where to go."

"We're not leaving here without you!"

"I've done all I can do for you, Kamala. What comes next is inescapable, all I can give you is a chance to walk away."

Kamala doesn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't for her mother to be wearing a long white lab coat with a familiar Z insignia on it. She eyes the badge on her collar with fury. She's here by choice. Ignoring her gaze, Singh pulls a small silver key from her pocket.

Sharp metallic scraping rings in their ears as Kamala kicks the steel handcuffs toward her mother's feet.

"I didn't need you then, and I don't need you now. The most you can give me now is an explanation for Quinn. She deserve to know why you're working with the wolf responsible for what I am."

"Tell her I'm sorry, and that I did all I could to save her," Singh says, her eyes glistening.

"You'll tell her yourself. How do we make it out of here?" Kamala asks, rising and stretching her sore arms.

Singh stops Kamala at the doorway to brush her silken hair with her fingertips, struggling to form together a lifetime of missing words. Kamala pulls away from her touch and follows Singh down the constricted halls of a bunker far beneath the ground, saying nothing, allowing a different type of pain to run through her.

"Where is she being held?" Kamala demands, trying to establish in her mind that Singh isn't her partner, but her prisoner. The labyrinth of slate hallways reminds Kamala of the mountain base they lost Zephyr in, and she tries to shake the pained memories away as Singh points at a door at the end of the unremarkable hall. Singh slides her keycard to unlock it. Inside, they find Quinn, sitting in the corner of the blank room, her forehead pressed against her knees, her long tail wrapped around her.

"Took you long enough," she says, leaping off the bed and adjusting her skirt.

"Are you okay?" Kamala asks the raccoon, who rushes past her to embrace Singh.

"Did you figure a way out of here?" Quinn asks, fixing her long black hair into a neat bun.

"There's a stairwell, but it's locked, I can try to fry it, but that may trigger some alarms."

"I heard Ziegler from my cell earlier," Quinn says, quivering. "He mentioned your brother, he said Zenith 2."

"Ziegler we can handle, it's his big lizard friend who creeps me the hell out," Kamala says as they travel cautiously down the hall to a series of steel elevator doors.

Soft vibrations work their way up their bodies from the soles of their feet.

"Did anyone call the lift down?" Singh asks nervously, peering down to the end of the hall.

Quinn motions at Kamala, calling her attention toward the sliding doors as the elevator grows nearer.

Kamala inhales deeply and searches for the invisible push against her fingertips. Once she senses it, she matches it instinctively, not fully understanding how she knows for certain the magnetic force at her fingertips is positive. Kamala channels the rose-colored energy within her to emit negative polarity, causing the elevator deep within the walls to resist gravity and rise away from her.

"That should take care of whoever was in there, but just to be safe," Kamala says, twisting and binding together the metal doors leading to the elevator shaft into one another with a powerful blast.

"Impressive. So, where do we go from here?" Quinn asks.

"Up. Then onward," Singh says with a small smile, gripping Quinn's hand for the final time and gesturing toward the stairwell. She presses her key card into Kamala's palm as the entire hall is flooded in deep red light. Somewhere above them, an alarm blares, its shrill sound slipping through thick layers of concrete and earth.

"Aren't you coming with us?" Quinn asks, turning back, surprised at how tightly Singh grasps her gloved hand, as if afraid of letting go.

"I'll follow you out, but I know another way," Singh reassures them with a thoughtful look into Kamala's eyes.

Singh tightens her grip on Kamala's hand, sensing the warm electricity-like energy pulse through her palms, remembering how it felt.

"One day, you'll understand, and you'll forgive me for what I've done," Singh says.

Against all her strength to stifle any emotion for Singh, Kamala senses a lump in her throat, more so because she's staring into her brother's eyes, but deep down the longing from her childhood resurfaces in a sinister lab hidden deep underground.

"I think I understand enough already. You're a scientist. If something doesn't work, you throw it away and start over. But I think you forgot that you have to learn from your failures to make sure you don't make the same mistakes again."

Kamala pulls her hand from her mothers grip to run up the stairwell with Quinn, maneuvering through the blood-red light. She locks the door behind her by channeling energy onto the handle, melting the steel to bind the door shut. They're not far up the narrow stairwell before they're met with heavy gunfire. Kamala blindly launches bursts of energy above her head, striking at the armored guards who try to shoot at them from several landings above, showering them in dust as her energy collides violently with the concrete walls.

"Where are we?" Quinn asks from under the crystalline shield.

"I haven't been conscious for long enough to tell," Kamala responds, the hail of bullets beginning to shatter the crystal she conjures from what little energy there's to siphon from.

"Can't you launch the bullets back to them or something!?" Quinn asks through sharp, gritted teeth.

"I've tried that already, they're rubber bullets. It seems Ziegler wants us bloodied up but still alive," Kamala says, trying to concentrate through the commotion, but she's losing her connection to the magnetic forces surrounding them.

"There's too many to keep pushing up!" Quinn says as they reach another landing, listening to the heavy footsteps marching down the staircase toward them.

"In here!" Kamala says, tearing a door open with her powerful adaptation and shepherding them into a dark hallway.

Kamala flips switches to bathe their surroundings in sickly artificial light. Along the hallway are identical gray doors, each bolted and numbered with thick steel plates, causing chills to run up Kamala's spine as they remind her of the doors to their bedrooms in Axton's manor. Quinn peers through a small window, but the insides are too dark to see anything hidden within. Kamala tries the keycard on the third door, but all she receives is a red light and a buzzing. Their only way out is through the large sliding door before them.

.

Kamala fuses the door behind them shut with the intense heat from her hands to stop the guards from entering without having to blow the door apart first.

"Do you hear that?" Kamala asks, a haunting hiss filling the air.

The doors at the end of the hall slide open, spewing vapor that hovers closely over the ground. Kamala's overstimulated electromagnetic aura causes the fluorescent lights to flicker and explode, showering them with sparks and glass as a menacing growl emanates from the depths of the chamber veiled in darkness before them.

The electricity in the air worsens the chills of familiarity running up Kamala's body. They step into a domed room with an unseen ceiling. A bomb shelter from long ago, the space now serves as a resting place for a horror too sinister to die.

Two crimson eyes glare through the haze as the loud snap of severed restraints ring through the lead lined walls.

"Thorne?" Quinn asks nervously.

"No," Kamala says, energy surging at her fingertips while the unsteady rhythm of several pairs of claws scratch apart the concrete floor.

An ashen werewolf breaks through the fog and lunges at them, his long and bloody fangs bared to kill. He's massive, towering over them on all fours like a feral creature from the depths of their darkest nightmares. A mane formed from long crimson obscures his marred face, but his glowing red eyes melt through the fear in their frozen brains. The only indication this beast was once someone they knew is the familiar torn shorts obscuring his bottom half, supported by his long tail swaying like the powerful branch of an ebony tree.

Kamala pushes the beast back into the hallway behind them with trembling hands, sending a powerful burst of crystalline energy into his chest.

"You had to seal the bloody door shut!" Quinn shouts, backing up against the coffered walls of the bomb shelter.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time!" Kamala says, shooting energy at the walls before her in an effort to collapse the hallway onto the snarling werewolf, who breaks apart the floor with his powerful claws as he lunges at them on all fours, panting heavily, his long tongue longing to taste fresh blood again.

They reach the center of the atomic blast shelter. Streaks of dried blood paint the floor and silver walls and the overwhelming smell of decay blinds their sense of smell as they rely on their other, overwhelmed senses to find a way out.

"Stay behind me!" Kamala says, clutching Quinn.

The werewolf's howl forces them to cover their ears as he circles them. Kamala is preparing her next attack when a door is thrown open somewhere in the bleak visibility. Soraya Singh runs between them, holding her hands up the same way her daughter does, generating an invisible shield of her own power despite being the one thing Kamala could never be, ordinary.

The beast halts at her command, his red pupils constricting as his nose picks up a familiar scent. He bows his head, pressing it against the only kind touch he can remember after a year alone in the dark pain. The werewolf whimpers and buries his large head in Singh's shoulders, howling to communicate agony from deep within the shell of a savage beast.

"Are you alright?" Singh asks, looking back as she buries her hands deep into filthy, matted fur.

"Please tell me that isn't him," Kamala says, clutching at the still healing wound on her shoulder split open from running, causing hot blood to seep into her coat.

"Those scars make you look exactly like him, but I know you're nothing like him," Singh whispers to the werewolf, reaching behind his massive head to scratch behind his ear, trying desperately to stop his momentum and keep his muscles from moving for long enough to get her children out of there alive.

"Actually, for once he's the spitting image, inside and out," a deep voice rings through crackling speakers echoing somewhere far above them.

Quinn pulls on Kamala's trench coat and points upward. Dietrich Ziegler smiles down at them from an observation deck attached to the side of the domed room. His face is severely marred from the last time Kamala saw him, but he's instantly recognizable by his deep red eyes and dark gray fur. They're the exact same eyes Singh is trying to placate from within the beast.

"Seeing the dead come alive is always a baffling experience, isn't it Kamala?" Ziegler asks.

The werewolf lurches backward, tearing into his own neck with his claws to fight the high-pitched ringing in his ear. His vertical pupils' contract to slits as he tries to wrestle free from Singh's embrace. She holds on closer, pulling the werewolf toward him,

"What are you doing to him?" Kamala demands, too afraid to move forward.

Singh presses her head against the wolf's and whispers, trying to pull him back, but she loses him.

Kill, Ziegler commands in an unspoken voice only the beast can hear.

It happens too quickly for any of them to stop it. As Singh's body is torn apart, hot blood rushes from her mouth as the werewolf pulls his razor-like claws back from deep within her abdomen. Singh lurches forward, a deep gurgling sound escaping her throat as blood fills her lungs. Gasping, she reaches for Quinn, tears stopping her eyes from seeing her for a final time as she collapses onto the cold ground. The werewolf retreats into the shadows at Ziegler's command. The elder wolf shudders from his observation deck as he witnesses one of his oldest friends slip away from him.

"You killed yourself the moment you betrayed me," Ziegler whispers.

"Go!" Singh shouts, blood sputtering from the corners of her mouth, causing her black fur to glisten with blood.

Kamala stands frozen in terror, the blood rushing away from her face as her heart sinks into an icy abyss within her own body. Shuddering, her knees buckle at the sight before her. She races forward, every one of her senses growing numb, from her vision to her hearing as Quinn's anguished shouts echo off the walls and into her deafened ears.

Singh's hands grow cold in Kamala's as she grasps them. The panther's body shakes uncontrollably. If she wasn't already too familiar with what a nightmare felt like, she'd question whether the sight before her was real.

"Kamala, look at me," Singh says, shuddering and looking up into her daughters' teary eyes.

Streaks of blood run down Kamala's pink hair as her mother combs it in her hands, painting it deep crimson.

Blinded with rage, Kamala turns to face the werewolf. She aims a blast at him, but she's struck by the werewolf's whip like tail as he leaps from the shadows.

She screams as fiery anguish ignites within her broken body. She rises to launch her attack at the wolf, but she finds herself unable to once she recognizes the face hidden within the beast, a face that has long haunted her dreams since she lost him on that mountaintop.

The werewolf is close to making a fatal leap for Kamala's neck when Ziegler instincts him to yield. The werewolf retreats back into the shadows.

"Quinn, go to her," Kamala urges, her adaptation close to being uncontrollable due to the surge of emotions flooding her heart as she forms a barrier between them.

"Quinn," Singh calls out weakly as all the sensation in her body slips away, a deep sleep overwhelming her and pulling her down to the depths of death. Too afraid to touch her, Quinn falls to her knees beside her, sobbing.

"It's going to be okay," Quinn says, unsure of who she's trying to reassure.

"Don't lie to me, I raised you better than that," Singh says, using her remaining strength to form a smile.

"My brilliant aster flower, how I would've loved to see you grow. The older you got, the less I saw of you. But that's how it goes. As my life dwindled, yours flourished until we stopped seeing each other as much as we needed to. I don't blame you. When I left India, I never wanted to go back, then it was all I ever dreamt about--

Quinn looks into her mother's empty eyes as she's pulled away by Kamala, seeing the life fade away from them. Tired of being an observer, Ziegler turns away into the dark hallway behind him, relishing in the success of his experiment, even if it cost him Singh. Having everything he needs to control the beast, he doesn't order anyone to stop Kamala and Quinn from escaping.

Even if they don't realize it yet, they're still trapped in his snare. They think they're escaping, but they'll end up right back in his clutches.

No matter how far they travel, they can't escape him.

Kamala and Quinn are blinded by bright light as they break through the final steel door and into a narrow alleyway of blackened brick walls. The sounds of a busy city rush in their ears as skyscrapers dissolve into focus. The clearer their vision gets, the more disorientated they are to find themselves in the heart of London and all it's mechanism.

Onlookers gasp as they wander by, blood dripping from their clothes onto the dirty pavement.

"We need to get off these streets, and fast," Kamala says, the only one of them not too shaken to speak.

Quinn holds onto her, relinquishing herself in his arms as they collapse behind a bright red dumpster. Kamala blasts apart a wall with her adaptation to close off the alleyway in case anyone was trailing behind them.

"What was that bloody thing?" Quinn asks, words escaping from her numb brain, "the thing that killed her, what the hell was that?"

"It can't be him," Kamala says to herself, pain assaulting her with every staggered breath. So many things are hurting all at once it makes her feel nauseous. Blood that once ran hot turns cold as the evening chill washes over them.

Her knees buckle as she collapses, leaning against the dumpster to catch her breath.

"Where do we go from here?" Quinn asks, "now that she's dead, there's nowhere left to go. Maybe if you asked your brothers for help, she'd still be alive!"

Kamala ignores her, unable to find anything left in her to continue fighting.

Later, as they wander through the back alleys of London for a place to spend the night in, Quinn pulls at Kamala's sleeves so their teary eyes can meet one another.

"It's not your fault," Kamala says as she holds her closely, guilty of everything that's become of her as they wander deeper into the city to the shelter of an abandoned hotel.

***

The next day, Kamala twirls a pen in her fingertips as she tries to concentrate through the soundless clamoring within her head. She hates how much this reminds her of when she lost Zephyr. The pain is the same, even if it comes from different sources. Her heart was crushed when she lost Zephyr because she lost what was already there, what they always had. Singh's loss hurts because of what could've been, what never was.

Now she has Zephyr again, but the agony is worse than if he were truly gone. Zephyr being in the clutches of death is much less frightening than for him to be in the clutches of Dietrich Ziegler.

The panther stares intensely into the barren landscape of unsown words, her sapphire eyes growing weary as she fades into the stark white page. She slumps in her chair, her whiskers the only thing scratching this surface of the sheet.

Kamala has a million words in her head, an entire lifetime of thought she wants her siblings to understand, but nothing can break the dam in her mind and force the ink to flow.

If only Indigo were there, then she wouldn't have to say a thing, they would know exactly what she's feeling.

She doesn't know where this path will take her, but her responsibility now is only to Quinn. She can no longer brave the world alone, as much as she wants to.

But all she can think about is saving what's left of Zephyr, and the pit in her stomach that arises when she realizes she may never be able to do that.

Kamala writes in her mother's bedroom, the pen in her left hand rapidly scratching the page as words snowball into an avalanche of thought.

In the adjacent room, Quinn rummages through her water damaged belongings, trying to find anything salvageable to take with her onto their journey. She thinks of Singh and the home she left behind. The only thing that made their slice of a row of uniform houses a home was the memories they shared within walls that are now torn apart and scattered all around them like rubble. Her mother is gone, and now their home is in ruins, what's left is the emptiness that comes after.

"We leave in ten minutes," Kamala calls out to Quinn as she takes a seat at the base of what's left of the staircase.

"When will I ever find the words to say?" Kamala asks herself, placing an envelope in her torn trench coat.

Quinn takes one final look around her bedroom. It feels small to her for the first time in her life, because she's been forced to outgrow too much in such a short amount of time. All of her belongings have been decimated by either the lightning or the deluge dropped to douse it. Quinn packs a change of clothes, some photographs and a journal. Even if it's destroyed, at least it's something that's still hers.

"Let's get out of here," Kamala says as Quinn makes it down the stairs.

On her way out, Quinn picks up a photograph of her mother, placing it in the pocket of her jacket.

Las Vegas, November 2013. Two years before the end of everything.

Indigo looks out into a glimmering oasis of a city. Every sound traveling through the hot midnight air makes its way into their long ears as lights flash far below them on the crowded street. If this is what freedom feels like, then it's the most painful feeling they've ever felt. On one hand, they're free to be whoever they want to be, dress however they feel and explore a world once inaccessible to them. But they will never be themselves unless they come clean, and spill forward revelation like blood from a deep wound they would rather stay sealed shut with illusion.

The rabbit leans against a glass balcony, allowing see through silk to fly in the arid wind like a flag draped over their naked body as they feel freedom against their soft fur. Orson Flores, the imposing buck they met while dancing in Los Angeles, types away on a computer, dressed only in his silver chain, a laptop pressed against his bare lap in the bed of the hotel suite behind them. Indigo never imagined they would follow someone into anything other than a few nights of fun, but it's now been five months of the same freedom that make them feel so trapped.

Indigo sits on the corner of the bed, allowing worry to weight them down. The buck rubs his tired golden eyes and grabs at the rabbit by their waist, causing them to squeak as he pulls them close.

"Is there something wrong?" Orson asks, whispering right in their ear as he wraps his arms around them.

"How long can this last?" Indigo wonders, more to themselves than to the buck making them melt with his tender touch.

"As long as you want it to," Orson says, pushing his maroon and gold hair from his eyes.

"That's what I'm afraid of. I want this to last forever."

Unable to keep anything balanced on his lap any further, Orson sets aside his work, pulling them into an embrace so loving, it's suffocating.

"What's wrong with forever?"

"Forever means there's time for the truth to slip out," Indigo whispers as the buck's large hands caress the silky fur all over their body.

"What truth? I already told you that I accept you for whoever you are. Every cute outfit I've ever seen you in is gone now, all that's left in this bed is you, and that's all there's to it," Orson says, his passion growing insatiable.

Indigo closes their violet eyes, allowing feeling to take the place of thought, but the more they envision the future, the more painful it becomes to accept anything other than fear from anyone.

"You don't know what I'm capable of, Orson. They call it an adaptation. What I do, the magic I perform, it's not all pleasure and rainbows. It comes from a dark place; one I hope you never see."

Orson kisses the rabbit's neck, gently biting with his teeth before releasing them, leaning against the edge of the bed.

"That's why I brought you here."

"If I can spill a truth, you can too," Indigo asks of him, knowing they could read the truth in his mind if they wanted to. "So, what is it that you do, exactly?"

"I'm in show business," Orson says.

Indigo falls into the older buck's embrace, sitting on his lap as the buck grabs their bare bunny rear.

"Good. I've always wanted to be a showgirl," they say, kissing the buck passionately.