Roy's truck rattled over the uneven road as dawn broke over Windom. Adam leaned against the passenger window, his forehead pressed to the cool glass, each bump sending jolts of pain through his battered body. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving him exhausted. His leg throbbed where Roy had stitched it, and every breath felt like knives in his ribs.
"You still with me, kid?" Roy asked, glancing over.
Adam nodded weakly. "Yeah. Just... tired."
"Blood loss will do that." Roy's eyes returned to the road. "Should really take you to a hospital."
"No hospitals," Adam mumbled. "Mom works there. They'd call her. Too many questions."
Roy grunted, not happy but not arguing either. "Your call. But those stitches aren't professional work. Could get infected."
"I'll be fine." Adam wasn't sure if that was true, but he couldn't risk exposure.
As they approached the outskirts of town, Adam directed Roy to take side streets, avoiding the main roads where early risers might spot them. The sun was barely clearing the horizon when Roy pulled over a block from Adam's house.
"This close enough?"
Adam nodded, gathering his strength to move. Every muscle protested as he reached for the door handle.
"Hold up." Roy's voice stopped him. The older hunter was studying him, his weathered face unreadable. "You're not done, kid. But you're not ready either."
Adam met his gaze. "What does that mean?"
"It means this life finds you whether you want it or not. Some people—" Roy paused, choosing his words carefully, "—some people are born into it. Blood calls to blood. But rushing in half-cocked gets you killed."
"I'll be more careful next time."
"There shouldn't be a next time. Not until you're older. Stronger." Roy sighed. "But I know that look. You're not gonna listen."
Adam managed a thin smile. "Probably not."
"Then at least be smarter." Roy reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a small metal flask. "Holy water. Keep it on you." He handed it to Adam. "And clean that wound. Twice a day. If it starts to smell or turn colors, get to a doctor. No heroics."
"Thanks," Adam said, tucking the flask into his jacket. "For everything."
Roy just grunted. "Get some rest. And kid... watch your back. That rugaru recognized you somehow. Might mean something, might not. But in this life, coincidences usually ain't."
Adam nodded and pushed the door open, biting back a groan as he eased himself out of the truck. He stood on the sidewalk, swaying slightly, as Roy pulled away without another word. The truck turned the corner and was gone, leaving Adam alone in the quiet morning.
The block to his house felt like miles. Each step sent fire up his leg, and the world kept tilting at odd angles. By the time he reached his backyard, he was drenched in sweat despite the morning chill.
The back door was unlocked, as always. Kate never worried about security in their small town—one of many things Adam had quietly fixed over the years, adding extra locks and protective measures that she never noticed. Today, though, he was grateful for her trust in Windom's safety.
He slipped inside, freezing at every creak of the old floorboards. The kitchen was dark and silent.
The house is empty. His mom is still at the hospital. He had time to clean up.
Adam made it to his room and closed the door with trembling hands. His backpack fell to the floor with a thud that sounded too loud in the quiet house. He peeled off his jacket, wincing at the dried blood that had seeped through his shirt. The rugaru's claws had caught him deeper than he'd realized.
He hid the silver knife under a loose floorboard beneath his bed, along with his torn and bloodied clothes. The evidence safely stowed, he stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the shower. The hot water stung his cuts but washed away the grime and dried blood. He watched red swirl down the drain, feeling oddly detached, as if it were happening to someone else.
Back in his room, Adam carefully cleaned the wound on his leg with peroxide, biting down on a washcloth to muffle his cries. Roy's stitches held, but the skin around them was angry and red. He wrapped it in a clean bandage, then swallowed three ibuprofen from the bottle he kept in his desk drawer.
Finally, he collapsed onto his bed, shaking with exhaustion and residual fear. The ceiling swam above him. He closed his eyes, waiting for the room to stop spinning. Sleep pulled at him, dragging him down into darkness.
His last coherent thought was that he'd survived his first hunt. Barely.
Heat. Unbearable heat.
He keeps remembering his past memories.
But today is different, instead of him watching the show.
He relive his original live, if he hadn't gotten his memories.
Adam clawed at his sheets, trying to escape the fire consuming him from within. His skin felt too tight, like it might split open at any moment. Voices whispered at the edge of his consciousness—some familiar, some ancient and terrible.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus..." The words tumbled from his lips without conscious thought.
Faces swam through his mind—Dean's stoic mask cracking when he thought no one was looking. Sam's desperate, puppy-dog eyes begging for understanding. Their father's absence—a wound that never healed for any of them.
Time lost meaning. Sometimes he was twelve, burning with fever in his bedroom in Windom. Other times he was nineteen, burning in an entirely different way as Michael's grace consumed him from the inside out.
A Pair of eye, as black as it can see, reflecting the monster.
"It's you," the rugaru's voice echoed in his mind. "It's you."
Adam's eyes snapped open, but the world refused to come into focus. His bedroom walls seemed to pulse with each beat of his heart. The protective sigils he'd carefully hidden beneath posters and behind furniture now glowed with an inner light, visible only to his fever-bright eyes.
"Dean?" he called out, confused and desperate. "Sam?"
But they weren't there. They'd never been there for him. Not when it mattered.
He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn't respond. Sweat soaked his sheets, yet he shivered uncontrollably. Something was wrong. This wasn't a normal fever.
Something happening to him, is it poison from the Rugaru??
Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe he was just going to die from an infection because he'd been too stubborn to go to a hospital.
"Adam?" His mother's voice cut through the fog. "Oh my god, Adam!"
Kate's face appeared above him, her expression shifting from concern to horror as she took in his state. Her cool hand pressed against his forehead, then recoiled at the heat radiating from his skin.
"You're burning up!" She pulled back his covers, then gasped at the bandage on his leg. "What happened? Adam, what happened to you?"
He tried to answer, but his tongue felt swollen, his thoughts scattered. "Mom," he managed. "I'm okay. Just... fell."
"This isn't from a fall." She carefully peeled back the bandage, her nurse's training taking over despite her panic. The wound beneath was inflamed, the edges puffy and discolored. "This needs a doctor. Now."
"No," Adam grabbed her wrist with surprising strength. "No doctors. Please."
"Adam, you're delirious. You have a dangerous infection. I'm calling an ambulance."
"It burns," he whispered, his back arching as if in pain. "Something's wrong. Inside me."
Kate pressed a cool cloth to his forehead. "It's just a fever, honey. You'll be okay."
But Adam's eyes were distant, seeing something beyond the room. "It's changing me."
Kate frowned. "What's changing you? Adam, what happened?"
But he had slipped away again, lost in fevered dreams that seemed to consume him from within. His skin wasn't just hot—it almost seemed to glow from the inside, veins tracing strange patterns beneath the surface.
Kate moved quickly, stripping the sweat-soaked sheets from around him, replacing them with clean ones. She brought cold compresses, antibiotics from her personal medical supplies, anything that might help. But the fever raged on, and Adam's mumbling grew more frantic.
"It recognized me," Adam continued, his eyes fixed on something only he could see. "What did it see? What am I?"
"Adam," Kate whispered, stroking his hair. "Who are you talking about? What recognized you?"
His eyes cleared for a moment, focusing intently on her face. "They're not what we think they are, Mom. They hide among us."
Kate's breath caught. "What? Who hides?"
"Monsters," Adam said, the word falling from his lips like a revelation. "They're real."
"Don't worry, Mom," Adam continued, his voice drifting again. "I won't let them get you. I'm changing everything."
As she watched, strange shadows seemed to move beneath his skin, following the pathways of his veins before receding again. His temperature spiked impossibly high, yet he showed none of the usual signs of heat stroke. This was something else..
Fear crystallized into something sharper, more focused. Kate rose from the bedside and went to her closet, pulling down a shoebox from the top shelf. Inside, beneath old photos and mementos, was a piece of paper with a phone number she had promised herself she would never use.
She stared at it, torn. Calling John went against everything she'd decided when she'd chosen to raise Adam alone.
With trembling fingers, she dialed the number, not even sure it would still work after all these years.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
"Winchester." The voice was gruff, suspicious, instantly recognizable even after twelve years.
"John," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "It's Kate Milligan. I need your help. It's about our son."
Silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken history.
"I'll be there tonight," he finally said, and the line went dead.
John Winchester arrived as the sun was setting, his black truck rumbling into the driveway like a storm front. Kate watched from the window as he stepped out—older, grayer, with new lines etched deep around his eyes, but still unmistakably the man she'd known briefly all those years ago.
She opened the door before he could knock.
For a moment, they just looked at each other, the weight of twelve years pressing down between them.
"Kate," he said finally, his voice rough.
"John." She stepped back, letting him in. No hug, no warmth. This wasn't a reunion; it was a necessity.
"You said it was about Adam," John continued, all business. "What happened?"
"He's sick. Feverish. Delirious." Kate led him through the house. "But it's more than that. He's saying things, John.."
John's shoulders tensed. "What kind of things?"
The old argument hung in the air, but Kate brushed it aside. "He's talking about... creatures. Monsters.."
John's expression shifted subtly, a flicker of something that might have been fear crossing his face. "Take me to him."
Adam's room was dim, lit only by the desk lamp. The fever had worsened, his skin flushed and dry despite the cool cloths Kate kept replacing. His breathing was shallow, labored.
John approached slowly, taking in the scene with practiced eyes. He noticed the protective sigils carved into the wooden bedpost, the Latin phrases scribbled on sticky notes and hidden behind the desk. His gaze lingered on the window sill, where a faint line of salt was barely visible.
"What the hell happened?" he asked, voice low and dangerous.
Kate shook her head. "I don't know. I was just finishing my night shift, then I found him injured. Maybe he got hurt and didn't want to tell me."
John gently pulled back the covers, examining the bandaged wound on Adam's leg. He peeled back the gauze, his expression darkening as he saw the distinctive marks.
"That's not a normal fever," he said grimly. "This isn't just an infection. He's been exposed to something."
"Exposed to what?"
John didn't answer. Instead, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small silver flask. He unscrewed the cap and sprinkled a few drops of clear liquid onto Adam's wound.
The skin sizzled faintly, a wisp of steam rising.
"What are you doing?" Kate demanded, reaching to stop him.
"Testing a theory." John's face was grim. "This wound wasn't made by any animal, Kate. Not any normal one, anyway."
"What does that mean? What happened to my son?"
"Our son," John corrected her, his voice tight. "And I think he got too close to something he shouldn't have known existed." He pulled out a small flashlight and gently lifted one of Adam's eyelids, checking his pupil response.
Adam's eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glassy with fever. For a moment, he stared at the face hovering above him, recognition slowly dawning through the haze of delirium.
"Dad?" he whispered, his voice cracked and dry.
John froze, something unreadable crossing his face—surprise, confusion, a flicker of warmth quickly suppressed.
And then Adam's eyes rolled back, and he slipped once more into unconsciousness.
John straightened, his face setting into hard lines. "I need to make a call," he said, striding from the room without looking at Kate. "And then you need to tell me everything you know about what Adam's been doing—where he goes, who he talks to, anything unusual."
Kate watched him go, her arms wrapped around herself. She looked back at her son—their son—burning with a fever she couldn't understand, caught up in a world she'd tried so hard to keep him from.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, though she wasn't sure if she was apologizing to Adam or to herself for the choices she'd made. For keeping his father away. For not seeing what was happening right under her roof.
In the other room, she could hear John's low voice on the phone: "Bobby? It's John. I need your help with an antidote... Yeah... No, it's complicated. Very complicated."