Chapter 259: The Faraday’s

Seeing him walk toward them in person hit differently than watching the clips online.

Abigail and Dickson had heard the news of Adam's death back at Sector 516, and it hadn't been easy to process. They hadn't known him long, the time they'd spent together was short by any measure. But a life-threatening situation had a way of compressing things, forging bonds faster than months of normal interaction ever could. When word came through that he was gone, it had settled on both of them heavily.

So when the footage from Dead Man's Valley started circulating, the reaction had been immediate. They hadn't debated it for long. Abigail's family, the Kelvins had practically pushed them out the door themselves, seeing the opportunity clearly even before Abigail had fully processed what she was looking at. A mid-tier sector trip to Tristan wasn't a difficult logistical ask, not for people with their resources.

Getting into the manor, though that was the part they hadn't been sure about.

Eden's presence in the mid-tier regions was significant enough that showing up at their front gate felt like a gamble. Influential groups didn't typically open their doors for people who weren't already connected. But they had tried anyway, and somehow the gate had opened, and now Adam was ten feet away and closing the distance.

He stopped in front of them.

His eyes moved from Abigail to Dickson and back again. He'd already used Connect on them the moment he recognised them through the console, more instinct than deliberate choice. His senses had developed well past the point of needing it for basic recognition. He could perceive the soul directly now without pulling on his second talent at all. But old habits ran deep.

A smile crossed his face, easy and genuine.

"What brings you guys here?"

Abigail composed herself quickly, but not quickly enough that Adam didn't notice the pause. He had changed since Sector 418, she hadn't been prepared for how much. She cleared her throat and kept her voice steady. "We just wanted to meet up. See how you were doing."

Dickson nodded along. "Yeah. It hit us pretty hard when we heard you died." He paused, then added, "I didn't really believe it, though. Not with you."

Adam studied them both for a moment. There was more to the visit than a casual meet-up, that much was obvious. But there was no malicious intent behind it. Just genuine shock at finding him alive, and something else sitting underneath that he could dig into later. He let it go for now.

"Well, since you're already here," he said, "might as well join us for dinner."

He led them inside, and the reaction was immediate. The moment they stepped through into the main building, both of them went still. The essence concentrated inside the manor was on a completely different level from the entrance grounds; it was dense and layered, the kind that didn't belong in a mid-tier region at all. It felt like walking into the territory of something monstrous.

Adam glanced back at them and smiled. "Welcome to my humble abode."

"Stop trying to act cool and come finish your food before it goes cold." Felecia's voice carried clearly from the dining room without any effort at all.

Adam said nothing.

Abigail said nothing.

Dickson said nothing.

Adam sighed. "Ignore her. She's drunk."

"I am completely sober." Felecia's voice again, immediate and flat.

Adam chose not to respond to that one. He gestured for Abigail and Dickson to follow and led them through to the dining table, where the full team was laid out in front of them for the first time.

The two of them took it in slowly.

Ivy, known across the mid-tier regions as Nigato, the greatest inventor the sector had produced, her reputation said to rival those of the upper tier. Felecia, head of security for Eden, a fighter with a well-documented tendency to ignore her own safety entirely once a battle started. Scott, a man whose background remained largely unknown even to people who followed Eden closely, but whose power level was anything but unclear.

And then there was Remedy.

Head of the Eden Group. Nothing else needed to be said. The look that crossed Abigail's face said it clearly enough. Dickson wasn't doing much better.

Adam watched their expressions and felt something flicker through his mind. They hadn't reacted to him like that when he walked out to meet them. He turned the thought over once, then let it go with a quiet internal laugh.

He pulled out a chair, dropped into his seat, and gestured to the two empty spots beside him.

****

Dinner wrapped up without incident, Remedy and Adam behaved themselves this time, to the visible relief of everyone at the table.

One by one the team members excused themselves afterward, each drifting off to handle their own business until only Adam was left with the two visitors. He took them outside, through the side entrance that opened into the manor grounds, and led them along the garden path at an easy pace. The tension from the arrival had settled. The conversation found its rhythm naturally, catching up on old times, filling in the gaps since Sector 418.

After a while, Adam glanced at Abigail. "So how has it been? With the family?"

The shift in her expression was immediate. A small frown crossed her face and she turned to look at him directly, like she was deciding how much to say. "To be honest," she said, "it hasn't been good."

Adam slowed his pace slightly. "What's the problem?"

She told him everything. Dickson filled in a detail or two along the edges but mostly let her talk. By the time she finished, the garden had gone quiet around them, nothing but the ambient sound of the grounds filling the space between her last word and Adam's response.

So that was the hidden agenda.

The Faraday clan, the same family responsible for trapping all of Sector 418 behind the barrier, had become active again. Adam listened to the summary on the surface while processing what he already knew underneath it. He knew more about the Faradays than Abigail realised. He knew they were connected to the secret organisation called The Family. He knew The Family had a Saint quietly backing them from the shadows. That part he kept to himself. Telling them that wouldn't help, it would only frighten them.

He turned the situation over in his mind, working through the angles. The Alliance's operation must not have swept up all the Faraday members when it had the chance. Or The Family itself had moved to protect the survivors. Either way, loose ends had been left running.

Adam had a score to settle with The Family. That had been true for a long time. The reason he hadn't moved on it yet was simple he hadn't been powerful enough to do it without consequences he couldn't absorb. He had leaned on Saint Julius Nova's backing to make them stand down temporarily, buying himself time. But he had always known that arrangement had an expiration date. They would retaliate eventually.

Maybe it was better to move first.

He looked at Abigail. His expression had settled into something focused and deliberate, the easy pace of the walk still in his steps but the weight of the decision already forming behind his eyes.

"Alright," he said. "Tell me everything that happened. Every detail."

****

Deep inside a dark forest, far from any sector boundary, a building sat abandoned in name only.

Inside its main hall, torches lined the walls and bodies packed the floor men and women standing shoulder to shoulder, all of them bearing the same crest, all of them carrying the same bitter weight that came from months of running. The Faraday family had once commanded an entire sector. Now they operated out of a rotting structure hidden behind treelines and silence.

At the front of the hall, Johnathan Faraday stood tall.

He was the head of the family. The man whose own son had detonated himself to generate the barrier that locked down Sector 418, turning it into a trap. The loss hadn't broken him. If anything, it had sharpened him into something colder and more deliberate than he had been before. He let the room settle before he spoke.

"We are a noble family," he said, his voice carrying easily to every corner of the hall. "A family with purpose. Purpose that was preordained long before any of this."

The gathered members responded without hesitation murmurs of agreement rippling through the crowd, heads nodding, shoulders straightening. They believed it. Every one of them. The Faradays had been at war with the Kelvin clan for years, and not once had they viewed the Kelvins as real opponents. Pests. Obstacles to be cleared when the timing was right.

But the fall had changed the logistics, if not the mindset.

After their involvement with the Sector 418 barrier was exposed, the Alliance had moved fast. What remained of the Faraday family had scattered, gone underground, and started doing something that would have been unthinkable six months earlier, robbing Kelvin businesses to fund their survival. A family that had looked down on the Kelvins for generations, now picking their pockets from the shadows just to keep the lights on.

The shame of it sat in every room they occupied.

But the Kelvins weren't who they were angry at. Not really. That anger had a specific address.

Johnathan turned to the screen mounted on the wall behind him and raised one hand toward it.

"The great devil," he said. The words came out low and deliberate, each one placed carefully. "The one who brought ruin to our family is alive."

The image on the screen filled the hall.

It was a photo pulled from a martial arts licensing database standard registration shot and plain background.

Adam stared out from it in a black tank top darkened with sweat, a headband across his forehead with two words printed across the front.

Never Surrender.

The hall went very quiet.