“Okay, I’m going with the theory that he’s split his own body into pieces with each piece housing a polong of his,” Roderick said as he and Xiaoye arrived at the conference hall where Henry Sarathkumar was supposed to be giving his talk.

“No, he’ll be dead. He most likely got the ability to split his body parts after he made himself the vessel of his polongs,” Xiaoye replied.

As part of the plan to keep Henry Sarathkumar safe from Arthur Bray, Jason and his brother Andrew had changed the hall which the former was supposed to be speaking at from Hall 3A to Hall 1D. The conference halls at the ground floor had fire exits leading directly out of the National Conference Centre, allowing for a quicker evacuation. Meanwhile, Jason, FBI Agent Millhart and a few others had set up an ambush spot around and within Hall 3A, waiting for Arthur Bray to show up. The fact that Jason was no longer communicating was a bad sign, and Roderick could tell that Xiaoye was uneased by it.

“Sierra-3-1 to all, we’re at the power room. Something busted half the lights of the facility. We’ll see if we can fix them,” one of the Shades said through the radio.

“Roger that, 3-1. 3-10 to everyone, we have confirmed that there are more than one polong in the building. Be on the lookout. I repeat, there are more than one polong in the building. Also take note, we’ve lost contact with Inspector Jason and the Yanks.”

“Roger, 3-10.”

“Acknowledged, 3-10.”

As the two began their ascent of the stairs, a scream was heard, followed by one of their colleagues, a sergeant Roderick only know as Khoo, came crashing down on a food cart with three nasty lacerations across his chest.

“Shit,” Xiaoye muttered as she went to check for a pulse.

“Alive?” Roderick asked.

“Barely. The back don’t look good. Sierra-3-10 to all available police medics, we have an officer down outside Hall 1G, chest wounds along with suspected spinal injuries.”

“Sierra-3-15 responding. We’ll get him out,” someone replied.

“Roger that, thanks. C’mon, Roderick, let’s keep going.”

“What about him?” Roderick asked as he pointed at their injured colleague.

Xiaoye pondered for a moment, but then a burst of gunfire is heard followed by another scream of pain.

“Fuck… No choice, we have to go up,” she replied before heading up the stairs.

Taking one last look at the injured Shades, Roderick headed up the stairs, unhappy with the fact that he had to leave a fellow officer who had been injured behind

“Look, if it makes you feel better, that arsehole who crash-landed next to us just now was the kind of person who became a police officer just so he could legally walk around with a firearm. He’s a rotten bully whom Bradley’s been trying to get rid of, and the polong’s done it for him,” Xiaoye said to Roderick, probably trying to reassure him that they did the right thing even though it was in a somewhat twisted manner.

As the two got to the second floor, they found another Shades, a young Caucasian woman with a dislocated shoulder, being tended to by a READ medic who was himself bleeding from wounds on the back: Whatever attack he suffered tore through his Kevlar utility vest and left deep lacerations down his spine.

“Sergeant, that thing got us good,” the female Shade said.

“Easy now, you all right?” Xiaoye asked.

“Yeah.”

“Medic, you good?”

“Yes, ma’am, no need to worry about me,” the medic replied.

“Xiaoye, look at his back. There’s no way he’s all right,” Roderick said to Xiaoye while pointing at the combat medic’s wounds, with the cambion nodding in agreement.

“Sierra-3-10 requesting another medic to staircase at level two, near Hall… Hall 2F. READ personnel in need of medical assistance,” Xiaoye said into the radio as she continued up the stairs with Roderick.

“Sierra-3-5 received, coming over to assist,” Amirah’s voice is heard replying.

Another burst of gunfire is heard, followed by a shout and something heavy being thrown against a door or a wall. Roderick hissed as he tried to fight back the terror creeping up his mind, but Xiaoye placed one hand on his shoulder all of a sudden.

“It’s okay to be scared. Even I have my fears. But if anything, you need to let that fear transition into determination, not frustration.”

“Yeah, yeah… Okay, so which hall was it again? The one that Brother Sarathkumar was supposed to be speaking at?”

“Hall 3A, all the way at the end- Jason.”

Jason was sitting on the floor next to a pillar, a cut across his forehead and a broken rifle next to him, with a Shikra revolver in his hands which he was calmly reloading.

“Sir, are you hurt?” Roderick asked as he and Xiaoye went over to his side.

“No, but we’ve been stumbling around in the dark. I think one of the READ soldiers got killed just now, but I couldn’t see. Shit, we underestimated the target… He took out Sergeant Khoo, then his partner, and then it was chaos. It’s a hunt, but we’re not the only ones doing it.”

“What about Sarathkumar, sir?”

“Andrew and Farhan got him out, but now they can’t get back in. Every door and window leading out the building got sealed all of a sudden, no one’s getting in or out. They probably planning to use explosives to blow the doors open… I don’t think Bray knows his target’s already out of the building.”

An inhuman shriek is heard echoing through the corridor the moment Jason finished speaking.

“That son of a bitch… Too bad for him I’m already used to seeing his ugly face. That was how he caught Sergeant Khoo unawares. Flashed a hideous, half-rotten face at him and when he was stunned, impaled him on his claws and threw him over the railings. I saw him strike a medic who shielded one of our officers,” Jason explained as he finished loading his revolver.

“I don’t know about Khoo, but his partner’s safe. The medic’s injured but alive, though I think he might be in a bit of a shock: He doesn’t even realize he’s been injured, and his wounds look quite deep,” Xiaoye explained.

“One more reason to blow that bastard’s head apart… Agent Millhart went after Bray on his own. Not a good idea, if I may be honest.”

“Yeah, I think we can agree on that, sir.”

“C’mon, there’s three of us now. Judging by the shrieks, Bray is probably back in Hall 3A still thinking Sarathkumar’s hiding in there. Xiaoye will engage in close combat. Roderick, you and I will provide covering fire for her,” Jason said as he got up

“Good plan, sir.”

The three approached Hall 3A, where another round of gunfire is heard before one of the benches in the hall was heard being ripped off its bolts and hurled against a wall. Carefully opening the door, Jason and the other two peered into the room, where they could see Agent Millhart, another FBI agent and a READ soldier taking cover behind a wall while red strands of cloth were smashing up the place.

“Agent Millhart, what’s the situation?” Jason asked as he, Roderick and Xiaoye took cover behind an adjacent wall next to the trio.

“Five men down overall. That thing Arthur Bray is now, he, or it, whatever, is up on the ceiling trying to find us, but seems he’s having trouble seeing. Can’t believe everyone guarding the corridor got taken out within minutes…”

“Yeah. Situation’s quite bad.”

“But his target is safe?”

“Affirmative. READ got him out before the building got sealed. Shit, this guy isn’t messing around,” Jason muttered as he observed an FBI agent and four READ soldiers laid out all over the hall wounded and unconscious when the lights in the hall suddenly came back on, surprising everyone.

“Sierra-3-1 to all, we’ve fixed the lights.”

The lights and the call both came at the worse timing possible. Roderick felt Xiaoye pulling his shoulder backwards, falling on his back right before a bench crashed into where he was just a moment ago. Looking up, he could see the polong latched to a pillar like a lizard.

“Shit, it spotted us!” Roderick exclaimed, to which Xiaoye replied, “Excellent deduction, Sherlock, now move!” before pulling him up and running to the left side of the hall with Roderick and Jason following.

Using the red strands it was creating from its robes, the polong continued attacking its adversaries with the benches it had pulled loose from the floor. At one point in the fight, Roderick tried to shoot at it, only to get struck by one of the benches and thrown to the ground. As Xiaoye pulled him to safety, another bench struck Jason and Agent Millhart, causing them to collide with the other FBI agent and the READ soldier. Seizing the opportunity, the polong promptly buried them under an onslaught of flying benches, with only parts of the four men visible through gaps in the pile.

“Crap, we’re on our own… Roderick, stay here and get ready to flee if things go south,” Xiaoye said to Roderick before leaping an inhuman five metres into the air with a single bound, striking the polong with her left claw and knocking it off its perch.

“Let’s do this, you red bastard or bitch, whatever your gender choice is. Square go!” Xiaoye challenged as she used her Black Arts to create dust spikes along her left fingers.

In response, the polong shuddered, and seemed to shrink in size as two blobs of what looked like literal blood emerged from its body, and Roderick watched in shock as they transformed into polongs as well. Even Xiaoye looked like she had been caught off guard, for she took a step back as she glanced at the three, but then she shrugged and fired the dust spikes from her fingers, impaling one of them and pinning it against the wall before engaging in a melee with the other two.

Unsure of what to do, Roderick went to dig out Jason and the others who were buried under the pile of benches. The READ soldier had managed to get his upper torso out of the pile, but his back was facing the battle between Xiaoye and the polongs, so all he could do was shove as much benches off him and the others. With Roderick’s assistance, Jason eventually emerged from the pile, revolver in one hand and already trying to shoot the polong.

“Damn it, they’re moving so fast, I can’t get a clear shot,” the inspector complained.

“I think Xiaoye can handle herself, inspector. Let’s get you all out first,” Roderick replied when he heard Xiaoye cry out in pain.

Turning around, Roderick saw that the three polongs had combined back into one to better combat the cambion, and shockingly, Xiaoye had been overwhelmed. She was now tightly wrapped from shoulders to thighs in the polong’s red cloth, and the polong had sunk both claws into her shoulders, gripping and twisting them to inflict more injuries to its struggling captive who kicked at its stomach area without effect.

“Shit,” Roderick muttered.

“Help her, go!” Jason said to Roderick, passing the Shikra to him before shoving him forward.

Unsure of what to do, Roderick fired once at the polong but missed, although he managed to get it to turn its attention away from Xiaoye and throw red cloths out at his direction like a boxer throwing jabs. Roderick rolled out of the way and fired a second round. Again, he missed, and now he was pissed. Was his eyesight failing or was the gun’s recoil too powerful. However, as he looked up at the bound Xiaoye, an idea suddenly crossed his mind.

He was not sure if it will work, but Roderick knew it was a gamble he had to take.

As the polong threw its red cloth out again, Roderick deliberately allowed one to wrap around his waist. Snagging its prey, the polong pulled Roderick towards it and seized him by the neck, failing to restrain his arms which gave him the opportunity to grab its face despite his disgust and fired the remaining three shots of the Shikra into its chest. The polong showed pain at being shot, even howling after the third shot hits home, but after a few seconds, the bullets were forced out of its body and dropped to the floor.

“A very good attempt, but it is ultimately useless/Percubaan yang baik, tetapi ia tidak berguna,” the polong, now looking rather enraged, said with two voices at once, the male voice speaking English and the female voice Malay, but then the sound of cloth being ripped apart was heard, followed by the polong choking Roderick suddenly gasping, a look of shock forming on its face.

And then Xiaoye’s left claw burst out from the polong’s chest like an antlion larva popping out from its sand pit to seize its prey.

Roderick’s gamble paid off. Having suspected that the polong needed to concentrate on keeping Xiaoye tied up with its cloth, Roderick knew that even if the Shikra’s deadly silver bullets fail to kill the polong, the distraction it caused might allow his partner to break free, and she did. Still, he was quite shocked by Xiaoye’s brutal manner of dispatching the polong. The cold, ruthless expression on Xiaoye’s face did not waver as she withdrew her claw out of the polong’s chest, the latter’s expression of shock transitioning into pain and realization as the bindings restraining both Roderick and Xiaoye turned into liquid and splattered all over the place as the two were dropped, right before the polong itself collapsed face-first to the floor.

As the polong’s body melted away into its original form (essentially a puddle of blood taken from a dead body), both Roderick and Xiaoye find themselves staring at the blood-stained corpse of Arthur Bray, which was missing one arm, one leg and now a portion of his chest, laid out on the floor where his polong fell, the full extent of the use of black magic on his own body now for all to see: He was so skinny that his skin and flesh were pressing against his skeleton, his face gaunt to the extreme and his skin was a sickly shade of grey and green with pieces of it peeling off the body.

“Nice work, you two,” Jason praised Roderick and Xiaoye as he and the others, now free from the bench pile, approached.

“Yeah… Xiaoye, you all right?” Roderick asked when he saw what was in Xiaoye’s claws: The heart of Arthur Bray, partially crushed.

“Er… You weren’t supposed to see that,” Xiaoye muttered as she tried to hide the heart behind her, but Roderick and everyone else had already seen it and, excluding Jason and Agent Millhart, were turning around to puke.

“Inspector Jason Narayana to all officers and READ, SRE Delta has ended. Target exterminated,” Jason declared over the radio, sounding relieved that the crisis was over at last…