"Angelo! She's not waking up! Angelo, help her!"
Percy's voice echoed through the mansion of the Fernandez family.
Angelo, the CEO who usually managed million-dollar crises with a flick of his wrist, knelt beside them, his face as white as his silk shirt. He wasn't a doctor, but he knew the signs of a body in total shutdown. He pressed a clean cloth to her head, his jaw tight. "She's in a deep syncope, Percy. Her brain... it just turned off. We have to move. Now!"
As Percy gathered her limp, fragile body into his arms, a small, cold object tumbled from beneath her pillow and skittered across the floor. It was a black, button-sized device. Percy's eyes locked onto it for a split second—a stylized Viper etched into the plastic.
His blood turned to ice. It wasn't Keifer's tech. It was the mark of the men who had been hunting their father for a decade. They had been in her room. They had watched her sleep.
"Get the car," Percy roared, his voice vibrating with a lethal, protective fury. "We're going to Peralta Hospital. Clear the roads, Angelo. I don't care who you have to call!"
While Percy was racing through red lights, Keifer was slumped against the wall of his own hallway miles away. He had spent the entire night in a grueling battle of wills with his brother, Keigan, finally coaxing him into a fitful sleep at dawn.
Keifer's eyes were bloodshot, his designer shirt wrinkled and stained with sweat. He pulled his phone from his pocket for the hundredth time. The OTJ101 app was a cold, mocking gray.
[LAST SEEN: 04:12 AM]
[STATUS: OFFLINE]
"Why didn't you charge it, Jay?" he whispered to the empty hall. "
He felt a gnawing, hollow dread in his gut. He was the "King of Ulupong," the boy who built a digital cage to keep her safe, yet he was currently blind. He couldn't see her heart rate. He couldn't see her location. He was just a boy staring at a piece of glass and metal while the air around him felt thinner by the second.
His phone suddenly buzzed. It wasn't the app. It was a frantic text from Ci-N: "Keifer, check the Peralta Hospital emergency logs. Angelo just checked in a 'Female, Jasper Jean Fernandez Mariano' It's her. Something happened. Keifer, she's not waking up."
Keifer didn't even grab his jacket. He sprinted for his car, his mind screaming. He had watched her heart rate hit 140 before the phone died. He had seen the warning. And he had stayed behind to deal with his own family while hers was falling apart.
Peralta Hospital's private wing was a fortress. Angelo had bought the entire floor within twenty minutes of arrival, placing his own security detail at every elevator. The halls were silent, smelling of sterile chemicals and the cold scent of high-end air conditioning.
Inside the ICU, the only sound was the rhythmic, mechanical hiss-click of the ventilator. Jay Jay looked impossibly small in the center of the vast hospital bed. Wires were taped to her scalp, and a tube was eased into her throat to help her breathe.
Aries stood at the glass window, his forehead pressed against the cold surface. The anger he had carried at dinner was gone, replaced by a hollow, haunting guilt. "I didn't even say goodbye," he whispered, his tears blurring the sight of his sister. "I just walked out and left her alone in the dark."
Percy stood behind him, his hand closed tightly over the Viper tracker. He heard the elevator ding. He didn't even have to look to know who it was.
Keifer came down the hall like a ghost, followed by the rest of Section E. They looked like a funeral procession. Ci-N was clutching a bag of Jay's favorite crackers, his eyes swollen from crying. Edrix and Rory had their tablets out, but their hands were shaking too much to type.
Percy turned. He didn't hit Keifer. He didn't have the energy for a fight. He simply held up the small black device.
"You and your 'plan,' Keifer," Percy said, his voice a low, terrifying rasp. "You were so proud of your app. You thought you were the only one watching her."
Keifer took the tracker. He recognized the frequency immediately. It was a mirror-link. "The Vipers," he breathed, his face turning a sickly shade of gray. "They... they used my signal. My encryption. They rode my back-end code to find her room."
The realization hit him like a physical blow. He hadn't protected her. He had been the lighthouse that guided the wolves to her door. He had been so obsessed with her heartbeat that he forgot to check who else was listening to it.
"She's in a 'Silent Sleep,'" Percy said, looking back at the window. "The doctors say she's stable, but her brain is refusing to wake up. It's like she's hiding, Keifer. Hiding from all of us."
-
The hours stretched into a long, agonizing day. Section E didn't leave. They sat in the expensive leather chairs of the Peralta waiting room, a row of broken boys.
Keifer's eyes never left Jay Jay's unconscious face.
Ci-N was sitting on the floor, sorting through his notes, whispering to himself. "I have the Physics homework. I have the colored pens she likes. If she wakes up and I don't have the pens, she'll be annoyed. She has to be annoyed."
David and Yuri stood by the doors, their usual cool attitudes replaced by a grim, silent watchfulness. They weren't just students anymore; they were a wall of bodies between Jay Jay and whatever was coming next.
Inside the room, Angelo sat by the bed, his laptop closed for the first time in years. He held Jay Jay's limp hand, his thumb tracing the small scars on her knuckles. "The company can wait, Jay," he whispered. "I'll fire the whole board of directors if you just squeeze my hand. Just one squeeze."
Suddenly, the monitors inside the room began to pulse with a frantic red light. A sharp, high-pitched alarm echoed through the wing.
"Her pressure is dropping!" a nurse shouted.
The boys scrambled to the glass. They watched as doctors rushed in, their voices sharp and clinical. They saw the blue curtain pulled across the window, cutting off their view.
"NO!" Keifer shouted, his hands slamming against the glass. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare shut me out!"
Thump.
The sound of the defibrillator charging was a low hum that vibrated in their teeth.
"Clear!"
Through a gap in the curtain, Keifer saw Jay Jay's body jolt upward, a fragile bird tossed by a storm.
Thump.
"Clear!"
Keifer fell to his knees in the middle of the hallway. He didn't care who saw him. He didn't care about his reputation as the "Boss." He buried his face in his hands, the guilt finally crushing him. He had spent months trying to control her life, trying to keep her in a digital box, and now he was watching her slip through his fingers like water.
"Please," he sobbed into the cold linoleum. "Take the plan. Take the company. Take my life. Just let her stay."
Percy stood by the door, his eyes fixed on the red light above the entrance. He wasn't crying. His face was a mask of rage, hard regret. He reached into his pocket and felt the cold steel of his own weapon. He made a silent vow: If she didn't come back, he wouldn't stop until every person with a Viper tattoo was buried under the earth.
The silence that followed the third shock was the loudest thing any of them had ever heard. It lasted for ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
Then, a tiny, weak beep.
Then another.
The curtain was pulled back. Angelo stepped out, his silk shirt wrinkled and his eyes wet. He looked at the boys, then at Percy.
"She's back," Angelo whispered, his voice cracking. "But the doctors say it's a 'Silent Coma' now. She's breathing, but the wall she's built around her mind... it's thicker than before. She's still not coming home yet."
Keifer looked through the glass. Jay Jay was still there, a tiny, pale flame in a dark room. He looked at Percy, and for the first time, there was no rivalry between them. There was only a shared, desperate hope.
"We aren't leaving," Keifer said, his voice returning with a sharp, lethal edge. "Section E stays here. We'll be her voice until she finds hers again."
Percy nodded, sitting down in a chair next to all of the boys. Outside, the sun began to set over Manila, but in the halls of Peralta Hospital, the longest night of their lives was only just beginning.
-
Peralta Hospital did not feel like a place of healing; it felt like a cold, white tomb. Jay Jay lay in the center of the ICU bed, looking smaller than she ever had in the HVIS hallways. The rhythmic hiss-click of the ventilator was the only thing filling the silence.
Angelo, the CEO of the Fernandez Company, stood at the foot of the bed. He had traded his suit jacket for a sharp, clean silence. He didn't pace, and he didn't cry. He stood with his arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the monitors with the same cold, analytical focus he used to run his global empire. To him, this wasn't just a family tragedy—it was a security breach he intended to seal.
Percy and Aries were positioned on either side of Jay's bed like twin pillars. Percy's jaw was set so tight it looked like stone, his hand resting near Jay's shoulder but not touching, as if he were afraid she might shatter. Aries, the fire in his eyes finally replaced by a haunting guilt, held her limp hand, his thumb tracing the scars on her knuckles.
Keifer stood at the threshold of the room, his foot hovering over the line where the hallway tile met the room's linoleum. He looked desperate, his eyes bloodshot and his hair a mess.
"I need to be in there," Keifer whispered, his voice cracking.
Percy didn't look up, but his voice was a low, firm warning. "Stay back, Keifer."
"Percy, please—"
"No," Percy interrupted, finally meeting Keifer's eyes. "Angelo and I talked to the specialists. Her syncope was triggered by extreme emotional stress. Every time she saw you at school, her heart rate spiked. If she wakes up and the first thing she sees is the boy who caused all this... it might trigger a total relapse. Your presence is a trauma, Keifer. For her sake, stay on the other side of that glass."
Keifer flinched as if he had been struck. He looked at Jay Jay—his Jay—and realized that his love had become her poison. He stepped back, the invisible wall between them feeling miles thick.
The rest of Section E was huddled in the hallway, a mess of rumpled uniforms and tear-stained faces. Ci-N was still clutching the bag of crackers, and Edrix was staring blankly at a dead tablet.
Angelo stepped out of the room, the heavy glass door sliding shut with a clinical hiss. He looked at the boys, his presence commanding and strict. He wasn't their friend; he was the head of the Fernandez house.
"Go to class," Angelo said. His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of an executive order.
"We aren't leaving her!" Ci-N protested, his voice high and watery.
"You are students," Angelo replied, his eyes narrowing. "Jay Jay worked hard to return to HVIS. If she wakes up and finds out you all failed your semester because you were sitting in a hallway, she will never forgive herself. You want to help her? Then be the Section E she's proud of. Go. Now."
The boys grumbled, but Yuri and David stepped forward. David looked at Keifer, then at the room. "Boss is right," David said quietly. "We're just a crowd right now. We'll go, we'll handle things at school, and we'll be back the second the final bell rings."
"Kit, Eren, let's move," Yuri added, his face grim. "We'll keep a seat for the Mutya. We'll make sure nobody forgets who she is."
One by one, they filed out, leaving Keifer alone in the hallway with the brothers.
*****************************************
Hiiii I'm sorry for not posting for sooo long
The mutya IS going to be cheerful and happy again don't worry we just need patience
Love u all pls commentt <3 🙇🏻♀️
Ur fav author ~ Ghina 🧚🏻♂️✨