The click of the safety catch sounded like the crack of a whip in the suddenly tomb-like silence of the warehouse. The smell of ozone and coppery fear mingled with the acrid scent of sweat and gunpowder residue. Simon and Olsen froze, backs to each other, trapped between the pulsating black abyss with green eyes in the box and the unseen threat in the darkness behind them.
"Don't move!" a rough voice barked. A powerful flashlight beam hit them in the face, blinding them. Behind the beam loomed a stocky figure in a security guard's uniform, a pistol trembling in his hand. "Olsen? You? What the hell are you doing here at three in the morning? And who's this guy? Trying to steal stuff?"
Arthur Olsen gasped, trying to shield his eyes from the light. "Bill? It's me! Arthur Olsen, manager of Tenebris Wharf! We... we're checking a former tenant's belongings! Alex Varnava! I have permission!" His voice broke into a shriek.
"Permission? At night? Through a broken lock?" Guard Bill stepped closer, the flashlight beam darting to the open container, to the box on the shelf. "And what's this...?"
His words died in his throat. His flashlight beam fell on **the box**.
The black, pulsating mass was no longer just swirling over the edge. It had elongated into a neck-like shape, and at its apex, two **perfectly clear, green-fire glowing eyes** had formed. They were enormous, almond-shaped, with vertical slit pupils. They weren't looking at Simon or Olsen. They were staring directly at Bill. There was nothing human in them – only endless, hungry cold and the awareness of fresh prey.
"Jesus Christ…" Bill whispered. His face under his own flashlight beam turned deathly pale. The pistol in his hand shook violently. "WHAT IS THAT?!"
*The Guardian's ashes - the key.* Simon's thoughts raced. The scattered silvery-black ash lay on the floor, shimmering ominously. *Key to what? To release?*
"Bill, don't move!" Olsen shouted, but it was too late.
The guard snapped. Instinct overpowered reason. He screamed – an inhuman, animal sound of terror – and **fired**. Not aiming. Blindly. Towards the nightmare.
**The shot** boomed in the confined space of the warehouse, deafeningly loud. The bullet whistled past Simon's head by centimeters, ricocheted off a metal beam above the box, showering sparks.
The clot of darkness with glowing eyes – the **Guardian** – didn't even flinch. The bullet seemed to simply *disappear* into its black substance without a trace. But the shot was the spark in the powder keg.
The Guardian's green eyes flared with furious light. The black mass **lunged** forward like a tentacle, incredibly fast. Not at Bill, but at **Olsen**. He was closer. He was *marked*.
Olsen screamed, jumped back, tripped over a container, and crashed onto the concrete floor. The tentacle of darkness whistled over his head, striking the shelving behind him. A metal shelf support as thick as a finger **bent** with an awful shriek, as if hit by a sledgehammer.
"Run!" Simon roared, grabbing the stunned Olsen under the arm and yanking him up. His own flashlight beam caught Bill's face in the darkness – contorted with the madness of fear. The guard fired again. And again. Bullets whined in the dark, one shattering glass on a nearby shelf, another ricocheting somewhere deep into the warehouse.
"He's crazy! Get out of here!" Olsen, finally finding his feet, bolted towards the exit, dragging Simon with him. Simon managed to grab **Varnava's notebook**, lying on the floor, and shove it inside his jacket. The box with the mummified eye and the Guardian's clot remained on the shelf – the focal point of unspeakable evil.
Bill, seeing them move, shifted his fire towards them. "Stop! Stop, bastards!" – his scream merged with the howl of bullets. He fired blindly, in panic, without aiming. Bullets rang loudly off the metal around the fleeing men, sparking, but missing.
Behind them, the **Guardian** detached from the box. The clot of darkness with green eyes dropped to the floor like a blob of tar and immediately **began to crawl**, stretching out, gaining on them with the speed of falling shadow. Cold hit like a wave. The smell of ozone and rotting flesh filled their nostrils. Shelving on either side of the runners began to frost over with **rime**.
"There! The arch!" Simon saw the faint light of streetlamps filtering through the half-open warehouse gates. They were still twenty meters away.
A blood-curdling scream came from behind. Bill. The Guardian's green eyes had caught him. Simon, glancing back while running, saw the nightmare: the clot of darkness coiled around the guard's leg like a boa constrictor. Bill thrashed, fired point-blank into the black mass – to no effect. His scream turned into a gurgling rasp as the darkness crawled higher, enveloping his body, extinguishing his flashlight. The Guardian's green eyes watched Simon and Olsen, continuing the pursuit even while consuming Bill. It was a *warning*.
Olsen, sobbing with terror, tumbled out of the gates first. Simon jumped after him, a sharp pain piercing his side – a ricochet? Or the Guardian's cold? He grabbed the heavy gates, trying to slam them shut.
**BANG!**
Something enormous and impossibly heavy slammed into the metal from inside. The gates buckled inward like foil. A **dent** the size of a car wheel remained at the point of impact, the metal edges torn as if by claws. Through the gap flashed **green lights**, full of unquenched rage.
"The car! Faster!" Olsen, forgetting pain and fear, was already scrambling behind the wheel, starting the engine.
Simon dove for the passenger door. He looked back at the warehouse. The gates shuddered from another blow. From beneath them, a **black fog** was already creeping out, insidious and cold. He jumped into the car. "Drive!"
Olsen floored the accelerator. The car shot forward, tires screaming on the wet asphalt. They sped out onto the deserted embankment, leaving the "Old Quay" storage and its black inhabitant behind. Simon watched in the side mirror. The black fog didn't emerge beyond the gates, but from the gap between the gate and the frame, two green lights burned, watching their escape.
They drove a couple of blocks before Olsen turned into a dark alley and killed the engine. The silence was deafening. Only their ragged breathing and pounding hearts filled the car. Olsen dropped his head onto the steering wheel, his shoulders shaking.
"Bill… he…" he whispered.
"He died the second that… thing touched him," Simon rasped. His hand involuntarily clenched the bag with the fabric scrap at his chest. The same cold. The same entity. *One entity.* "We… we released it. Partially. Opened the box."
"What now?" Olsen's voice was hollow.
"We need to understand what 'The ashes are the key' means. And…" Simon fell silent. In the rearview mirror, he saw movement on the embankment, near the turnoff to the warehouse. Not the police.
Two black, angular **SUVs** without markings pulled up sharply at the entrance to the "Old Quay" compound. Doors opened. **Six people** emerged, dressed in identical dark tactical gear without insignia. Their movements were swift, precise, wordless. Professionals. They didn't look like police. Their bearing suggested familiarity with much darker affairs.
*Special Branch.* Simon's heart sank. The same ones who had covered up Daniel's case.
One of them, apparently the commander, gestured with his hand. Two stayed by the vehicles; four moved towards the deformed warehouse gates. They carried not just weapons – something resembling compact flamethrowers and strange devices with antennas, flickering with a dull blue light.
"Look," Simon touched Olsen's shoulder.
They watched, holding their breath. The operatives approached the gates. One aimed the blue-light device at the dent. The device blinked alarmingly. The commander said something. Two operatives readied flamethrowers; the other two raised compact devices resembling grenade launchers, but firing not grenades, but bolts of bright, white light.
Suddenly, from the gap under the gates, a **tentacle of black darkness** lashed out, swift as a whip! It darted towards the nearest operative – the commander himself.
The operative didn't jump back. He **thrust his left arm forward** like a shield. The sleeve of his jacket stretched taut. Simon, peering intently, saw something incredible: the skin on the man's arm beneath the fabric **turned red**, became unnaturally dense, knotted. Veins bulged, turning into blue cords. It seemed the arm **grotesquely swelled** for an instant, becoming monstrously powerful.
**CRACK!**
The tentacle of darkness struck precisely the outstretched arm. A sound like a sledgehammer hitting raw meat echoed. The operative **staggered** from the force of the blow but **stayed on his feet**. His grotesquely swollen arm was now covered in a layer of **shimmering rime**, but seemed unharmed. He didn't even cry out. His face remained stone-like under his hood.
"He… he caught the blow…" Olsen whispered, not believing his eyes. "With his hand…"
"And not just caught it," Simon murmured, freezing with new horror. The operative shook his frost-covered arm; the rime fell away. The arm under the fabric looked normal again. "They… they *know* what this is. They know how to fight it. And they… aren't quite human."
An earsplitting roar – a mixture of animal hiss and metal screech – came from inside the warehouse. Green eyes flashed in the gate's gap, furious. The operatives opened fire. Not with bullets. Bright white bolts of light slammed into the gates, flaring blindingly where they met the black darkness. The sound resembled red-hot metal plunged into water. Flashes of blue fire from the devices merged into a continuous flicker. The smell of ozone became so strong they could smell it even inside the car.
"We need to get out of here. Now," Simon tore his gaze from the nightmarish spectacle. "While they're busy with *it* and haven't found us."
Olsen, still pale, nodded and started the engine. The car slid quietly out of the alley and dissolved into the London fog, carrying witnesses to a new phase of the nightmare and the key to a mystery that now seemed even more terrifying: *Who were these people? And what had they done to that operative?* The answers, like the Guardian's ashes, lay somewhere in the darkness.