The hall is a wreck. Overturned tables, shattered glass, the echo of alarms. Aya helps Aiko sit up, checking her arm. Liza is tending to Katya’s bruised shoulder. Samira, still dazed, sits on the floor with an ice pack. “I just saw… three moons… and they were spinning.”

  Aiko grins despite the pain. “Yeah, well, at least you’re still seeing stars, not graves.”

  Amelie stands in the corner, arms crossed, eyes scanning the door Yuno smashed through. She’s calculating, cold, her mind already in containment mode.

  “She’s gone. No point chasing now. She’s fast and smart. By the time we regroup, she’ll be miles ahead.”

  Kanzaki knelt beside Yamada’s body. His hands trembled as he steadied himself. “I’ll… notify the police. We’ll need to frame this as a containment breach, not a murder. Otherwise-”

  He doesn’t finish. The implications hang in the air. Michelle stands frozen, blood on her sleeve from trying to help the others. Her expression is unreadable, eyes locked on the broken body. Milena watches her carefully, reading the guilt. “You have to call him, Michelle.”

  Michelle nodded. “I know.”

  Everyone knows who she means — her father. The man who believed this was a step toward salvation, not a nightmare. Michelle finally turns away from Yamada’s body, pulls out her phone, and dials. As it rings, her hand trembles slightly.

  We thought we were saving her. We just built something we don’t understand.

  The line connects. She closes her eyes, steadying herself.

  “Dad… there’s been an incident.”

  ***

  The lab has been cordoned off. Police lights throw red and blue over the clean glass. Inside, the Fangs move like professionals in a house of ghosts. Milena crouches by a console, extracting files, while Liza bags physical samples. Michelle watches the door, the ledger case of the day feeling heavier than it did in Tratpur. Professor Kanzaki stands by the console, pale but composed. A man who’s seen his life’s work fracture and is trying to assemble the pieces without shattering more lives.

  “I will remove anything that points back to this,” he said quietly. “I will close off the access logs, scrub the timestamps. I will take responsibility for the exposure. I don’t want headlines that mention Tojo and this.

  “We won’t bury evidence,” Milena replied. “We’ll copy and secure everything. For now, you do what you can to limit public attention. We’ll take the data offline and move it to encrypted drives.”

  “Keep a line open, professor,” Michelle said. “If anything moves, tell us.”

  “You have my word.”

  He waits until the last drive is encrypted, then steps back toward the lab’s core. He hesitates before deleting a small, single bag of files. Not out of complicity but out of damage control.

  ***

  The team drives to Kamakura on rumors and leads. They knock on doors, follow CCTV clips and talk to local contacts. The seaside town offers humanity in the form of small tea shops and wary neighbors; the news there lands like ice. A local bulletin flicks across a phone screen: Kamakura — Triple Homicide; family found murdered; suspect missing. The silhouette in the grainy CCTV looks like Yuno. Her face has already become a rumor.

  “She killed her family?” Trella asked.

  Maya’s voice was soft. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. When she wanted to be gone, she chose to cut the last strings attached.”

  No one says the obvious, that a child capable of what they’ve seen could weaponize grief into method.

  The team split into small groups, asking questions at clinics and orphanages, checking the rail lines and ports. Milena re-runs the Tojo datasets, looking for anything useful. Kanzaki sends quiet messages. He is sincere and broken by the same grief the Fangs carry. They′ve chased a dozen false leads. Each lead collapsed. Local police departments cooperated, but here capitalism, bureaucracy and jurisdictional friction slow everything down. Yuno is twenty-four hours ahead of them and then forty, then hundred. And Michelle? She just felt guilt for everything that happened.

  The Fangs stayed for several weeks. But at the end of week three the unspoken decision settled between them.

  “We did what we could,” Michelle said quietly. “We copied the files. Kanzaki scrubbed the traces. We alerted international contacts. But she’s gone. We have to go home.”

  “We didn’t fail,” Trella said. “We... contained what we could.”

  “We′ve learned enough to know how dangerous this is. That is not nothing,” Milena said looking at the hard drives.

  They close their notebooks, pack fast, and move like people who have carried a corpse and are still carrying the weight.

  ***

  The team is back in Mexico. Two days of stillness, cicadas, warm wind, the smell of dust and salt. For once, the girls are allowed to be quiet. No drills, no debriefs.

  Aiko’s outside on the terrace doing slow Tai Chi, her face bruised but composed. Samira’s half asleep on the couch with an ice pack crooked over her broken nose. Trella scrolls news feeds, every headline feeling wrong somehow. Milena sat at the table with her laptop open but untouched. She’s been staring at the “encrypted transfer complete” message for an hour. Michelle moves around the room, restless, waiting for the next order that isn’t coming. Then her device chimed. A secured notification flashes: “LANG. — REQUESTING LIVE CONNECTION.”

  Michelle exchanges a glance with Milena, then accepts. Lang’s face appears in crisp resolution. She’s calm, collected, and looks like she’s been awake for days but refuses to show fatigue.

  “Hello, ladies. You all look… remarkably intact. That’s good to see. I heard things got complicated in Japan. I’ve received the preliminary report. We’ll talk about that later. For now, I want you to know something clearly: You are not on any wanted list. Not domestically, not internationally. Your travel clearances remain intact.”

  That makes the girls exchange wary looks. They’ve been expecting fallout, not leniency.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “That’s… surprising,” Michelle said. “We left a body behind. A crime scene.”

  “Yes,” Lang replied evenly. “And the Japanese authorities are pursuing a suspect they describe as “a fugitive minor.” Nothing about the Tojo project, nothing about you. That wasn’t easy to arrange. Let’s just say favors were called in.”

  “You’re protecting us?” Milena asked.

  “I’m protecting the mission,” Lang said. “And you’re still part of it. You’ve earned a pause. A real one. And Michelle… your father has approved your return to Maryland.”

  That draws silence.

  “Odenton?” Michelle asked.

  “Yes. The orphanage facility remains at your disposal. We’ll call it a quiet base of operations. You’ll find the system and access codes unchanged. Let’s say it’s waiting for you to… make it home again.”

  Lang’s tone is deliberately neutral. Neither warm nor cold, but under it lies something that feels like foreshadowing.

  “I’ll brief you properly when you arrive stateside. But for now, take this as both a courtesy and a warning: You’re off the grid, but not forgotten. And the world’s about to get much louder again.”

  She leans back, the signal starting to fade. “Welcome home, Fangs. See you soon.”

  The screen went dark. The room is quiet again, filled only by the low hum of the air conditioner.

  Aiko looks at Michelle. “Did she just call that… home?”

  Michelle doesn’t answer immediately. She just stares at the black screen. “Yeah… Home.”

  The girls share a long, heavy silence — not dread, not relief — just the strange gravity of a new beginning waiting somewhere far away.

  ***

  The next day… The vans slow on the narrow road. Familiar pines, the faint smell of rain-soaked earth, the old sign still crooked by the gate: ST. HELENA ORPHANAGE.

  Talia parks and cuts the engine. For a moment, no one moves. The building looms quiet and dignified. The place looks frozen in time. Aiko leans forward from the back seat, eyes half-narrowed. “Looks smaller than I remember.”

  Trella smirks. ”That’s because you’ve spent years kicking people through walls, not walking through doorways.”

  Aya lets out a low grunt, stepping out first. They start unloading — a few duffels, one crate of equipment, nothing more.

  Milena stays back, gazing at the building’s facade. She’s quiet. “When we left… I didn’t think we’d see this place again.”

  “None of us did,” Michelle replied.

  They entered the house. Dust particles float in the sunlight spilling through the windows. Someone — probably Ferguson’s people kept the lights functional, but the place has that smell of abandonment. Liza runs a hand along the wall, smiling faintly. “Nothing has changed. Even the crack above the door’s still there.”

  Talia taps her tablet. “The security grid is still online. Ferguson must’ve kept remote maintenance active. Everything’s running.”

  “Good,” Katya said. “At least we don’t have to sweep for bugs.”

  They split up. Half went upstairs, the others checked the kitchen and armory. It’s muscle memory: the old Fang rhythm. Samira’s sitting on the counter, munching cereal straight from the box. “I missed American snacks. Japan had rules about sugar.”

  Michelle leans on the doorway, arms crossed, watching her team move through the familiar rooms like ghosts. There’s comfort here, but also the weight of what came before. Milena walks in, checking a datapad. “The facility is stable. Power grid, med bay, comms hub… everything’s alive. Almost feels like it was waiting for us.”

  Michelle glances toward the window, the Maryland dusk settling in. “Maybe it was.”

  The girls sit scattered around. Tired, quiet, but calmer than they’ve been in weeks. Mei-Ling’s drawing, Liza’s cleaning her sidearm out of habit, Trella’s half asleep against the wall. Michelle looks over them, then at Milena beside her. “We’re not staying long. Just enough to reset, restock.”

  “You think Lang will send us out again so soon?”

  “She didn’t call us back just to check in. Tomorrow we’ll visit Lang. Let’s see what she wants from us.”

  ***

  The next day the Fangs visited the NSA headquarters as requested. They step into the briefing room, eyes adjusting to the brightness of it. Deputy Director Lang stands waiting, calm but firm. Williams and Dawson are already seated. The girls line up instinctively. Old habits.

  “Girls, welcome. I’m glad to see you all in one piece. I’ll cut straight to the point. I may have sounded harsh during our last call, but after reviewing all the reports from Professor Kanzaki and young Ms. Williams… you did remarkably well.”

  “With respect, ma’am,” she said, “it doesn’t feel like that. People died.”

  “Yes,” Lang replied. “But from what I’ve read, that outcome was inevitable with or without your involvement. You handled the situation professionally.”

  Samira snorted under her breath. “Yeah… professionally we got our asses kicked.”

  Lang smirks faintly. “Nobody even knew there was a patient zero. You exposed something hidden deep inside Tojo’s walls. The mission was a success in its own right. The research is secured and from what I understand, the only person alive with full data is doctor Dragovi?. A very safe place, I presume.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Then you’ve done more than anyone could have hoped for. You’ve ensured that no enhanced humans will ever surface again. And for that we owe you a great deal of gratitude.”

  She opens a small case on the table. Inside lie several silver badges.

  “I’d like to offer you something: NSA junior badges.”

  The girls exchange glances.

  “You’re not official agents. Most of you are still underage, but these carry weight. I’ve already offered full positions to Mr. Williams and Mr. Dawson. They said their answer depends on yours.”

  Aya crossed her arms. “The deal with the CIA didn’t go well. How’s this any different?”

  “The CIA saw you as tools for their dirty work. I see you as equals. You went to Japan not as assassins, but as investigators and you worked with precision and integrity. Not even the Japanese authorities couldn’t find the girl, but you made an impression. I don’t need a pack of killers. I want a team that’s resourceful, intelligent, and strong in both body and mind.”

  “Sounds nice. What’s the catch?” Mei-Ling asked.

  “There isn’t one. You’ll have the same rights and obligations as anyone in this agency. And when you enter adulthood, I can offer you full positions.”

  “And if we don’t like the job?” Aya asked.

  “Then you walk away. No strings attached. Only one limitation.”

  Aya sighed. “Here we go.”

  “You won’t be allowed to take any contract killings or extralegal missions. And you must obey both U.S. law and NSA protocol.”

  “I think we can live with that. I assume we’ll still have supervisors?” Trella asked.

  “Since you’re underage, yes. That’ll be Mr. Williams and, once cleared, also Mr. Dawson. You’ll report directly to me.”

  Michelle took a breath. “Understood. Could we have a moment alone?”

  “Of course. Call me when you’ve decided.”

  Lang, Williams, and Dawson step out. Silence fills the room. Michelle turns to the girls.

  “I think we should take it. Considering her reputation, having Lang as our boss isn’t bad at all.”

  “Let’s vote,” Trella said. “We’ve always decided as a team. I say yes.”

  “Yes,” Aiko said immediately.

  “We’d get to protect people,” Mei-Ling added. “I’m in.”

  “I liked Odenton,” Samira said. “And this gives us purpose again. Yes.”

  “I just go with the flow,” Katya shrugged.

  “I’m scared of losing our freedom,” Aya admitted. “But if she means what she says… I’ll try.”

  “As long as I keep my potions,” Liza said. “I’m in.”

  “Count me in,” Anya said.

  “I have doubts,” Amelie said quietly. “But the group decides. I follow.”

  “After all the idiots I’ve worked for,” Maya said, “this sounds like an upgrade.”

  “New tech opportunities?” Talia grinned. “Absolutely.”

  “Me too,” Milena said.

  Michelle nodded once. “Then it’s settled.”

  The door opened as Lang returned. Michelle straightened. “Deputy Lang, we accept.”

  Lang smiled and slid the badges forward. “Then welcome aboard, Black Fang.”

  The girls look at their new badges — reflections of silver and promise. For once, the future felt open.

  Lang folds her arms and smiles faintly. “Oh, there is one more thing I forgot. You all must go back to school.”

  The room goes silent for two seconds. Then several faces twist in disbelief.

  “…Excuse me?” Aya said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Samira asked.

  “Not at all. You’re brilliant, skilled, and experienced, but you’re still minors. If you want your training and credentials to mean something legally, you’ll need to finish your education.”

  “So,” Mei-Ling said slowly, “from black ops to algebra?”

  “Pretty much,” Lang said.

  “You’re saying they’ll have to attend a normal high school?” Michelle asked.

  “‘Normal’ is flexible,” Lang replied. “The local academy already cooperates with federal training programs. You’ll blend in, get a proper cover identity and live like regular students when off-duty.”

  Michelle sighed, half amused, half resigned. “Alright, girls. Looks like we’re back to backpacks and homework.”

  “Consider it part of your rehabilitation. The world needs you capable — and stable.”

  “Stable… that’s gonna take more than geometry,” Trella muttered.

  The girls exchange glances. A mix of disbelief, amusement, and the faint spark of a new beginning.