Basically what it says on the tin. It's about superheroes and their problems, their victories, their highs and their lows...
Heroes is a collaborative universe first started by @thegrayonealways and picked up by me.
The stories feature a colourful cast from all walks of life, featuring diverse characters in various ways. E.g. LGBTQ+, neurodiversity, disability, gender expression and ethnicity.
Though these themes are rarely the main focus and I forget character descriptions sometimes so feel free to shoot an ask if you wanna know more...
What makes Heroes truly collaborative is the fact that multiple people have contributed characters and storylines, starting with Gray and I, and later also the wonderful @dr-abitat-blog and lastly the amazing @illustriousshadow
My name is Max, I use she/they pronouns, at the time of writing this post I'm 26 years old. My main blog is @whumpsmith and I also run @villainsview.
I've been writing since I was 13, and I've worked on Heroes since 2016, so the story and characters are very near and dear to my heart.
Other fun facts are: after a brief stint in assembly I now work part-time as an administrative assistant in education, I'm married to the sweetest, funniest guy, we both have ASD, when I'm not writing I embroider or nap.
Book 1 - Heroes (24 chapters) complete!
Character Guide
Book 2 - Wendigo's Truth (30 chapters)
Character Guide (Coming soon!)
OC posts from main:
Aiden
Phil
Mirage
Black Cat
Wendigo
Luke
Book 3 - The Madness Returns
My Lord, part 2
My Lord | 001 | 002 (in progress)
Whumptober 2024
(Lawd there's so many and they all feature Book 50 characters....)
Achilles Heel
My Lord extra
If there is an interest in requests, I might consider opening them in the future.
finished commission for @whumpsmith !!! this is her OC, Alexei, who is part of a story she's writing over at @heroescore! thank you so much for commissioning me, Max. it was a pleasure drawing your boy!
want me to draw for you? $15 commissions are still open!
if you are against proship/profic, you will be blocked. even if you don't identify as an 'anti'. you are supporting fascism and that is not tolerated here.
It took several days and multiple trips to evacuate all supers from Clancy’s facility. Not because there were so many of them, but because some of their conditions proved a logistical nightmare. Staying behind, Slade was able to have Brain wake up from his coma to make transport easier, but they were unable to safely wake Cyber, so a medical transport had to be arranged. As for the others, families had to be found and notified, and while some were reunited, others would…never be the same.
Tyler insisted on being present when Oracle’s parents arrived to claim her body, wanting to tell them how they never would have escaped without her bravery and kindness, but he couldn’t get a single word out past the lump in his throat as he grieved with them.
Mirage once again found herself confined to a hospital room, but at least this time she was visited daily and frequently by Cat and Aiden, who also updated her on everything going on at the ranch. After all, there was plenty to talk about with the tension between its newest visitor and the residents.
Having literally nowhere to go, Bos decided to invite Ian to stay at the ranch while Slade was still around, even though Tyler, Alexei and Sylvester strongly disagreed. Ian was severely uncomfortable with the arrangement as well, knowing that he caused them a lot of pain and that they would probably never forgive him for it.
“I feel bad for him,” Aiden said after Cat updated Mirage on the drama, “he carries so much guilt, I feel nauseous just going near him.”
“Are you sure that isn’t just the blood loss?” Mirage checked.
“No, that’s a different kind of nausea,” Aiden said, scratching the bandage on his arm until Cat smacked his hand away from it.
“Anyway,” she said, “Phil is finally eating solid foods without crying. He really wanted to come, but he still needs his naps.”
“Oh, poor thing,” Mirage said, “is he still not sleeping well at night?”
“Yeah,” Aiden said, “whatever happened in there really did a number on him.”
“Well, maybe I’ve got something to cheer him up,” Mirage said, “I might get discharged tomorrow~”
“Finally,” Cat said, “congrats.”
“Thanks! Anyway, I was thinking I’d go to that ranch and take Phil home, back to New York,” Mirage continued, “familiar environments and all that…what do you guys think?”
“Are you sure you should use your powers over such a distance so soon?” Aiden asked.
“It’ll be just one jump,” Mirage said, “and don’t you think it’d be nice to be back home before the holidays? I mean, Christmas is next week already!”
“Is it?” Aiden asked, pulling out his phone to check his calendar.
He hadn’t even realised how far they were into December, though granted the California weather didn’t exactly help.
“We should probably ask Phil what he wants,” Cat said.
Aiden nodded in agreement.
“Yeah. Maybe he’s not ready to go back yet. He did get haunted by Wendigo back home.”
“Oh right,” Mirage said, “did no one tell him that it was actually Nori?”
“Slade talked to him,” Aiden said, “and he’s still pretty busy here too, with Cyber’s condition, and he’s still letting Ian feed off of him to make sure he doesn’t snap again.”
“Maybe we should take him to New York too,” Cat said, “Ty and Al don’t want him around, and he can continue to suck Slade’s blood.”
“I think Slade was considering that, yeah,” Aiden said, “just have to find him a place to stay. It’d be kind of a dick move to let him wander the streets.”
“We’ll think of something,” Mirage said, to which Aiden got up.
“I’m sure we will,” he agreed, “I’m gonna go say hi to Mr Ecker before circling back.”
“Oh, tell him hi for me,” Mirage said, waving him off.
Aiden headed towards the elevator, since Brain was being taken care of by a different department. He woke up from his coma just fine, but his muscles had atrophied quite a bit from all those weeks laying in bed, so he had a lot of recovering to do before they could even begin to consider a return journey to New York.
Still, he was in high spirits, and he was more than happy to see Aiden, even though he was catching his breath from using a walker to make it to the bathroom and back.
“Oh Aiden…thanks for visiting…again,” he wheezed.
“Don’t mention it, Mr Ecker,” Aiden said, “maybe just save your breath…”
Ecker laughed, and took a moment to compose himself before attempting to get more comfortable in bed.
“I talked to my son this morning,” he said, “apparently he’s taken over my cafe.”
“Yeah,” Aiden said, “I probably should’ve told you sooner, but it just seemed weird to bring up work after everything.”
“That’s fair,” Brain said, “though it would’ve been nice to know that my son, who I hadn’t spoken to in years, was in town.”
“I’m sorry,” Aiden said, “it’s just that so much has happened…I may have kinda forgotten that your son showing up was a bit of a big deal.”
“It’s alright,” Brain said, “you’re forgiven. Could you pour me some water?”
“Thanks…and of course!”
Aiden sighed relieved, getting up and pouring a cup of water for Brain.
“Speaking of unannounced visitors…how are you doing?” Brain asked, while Aiden had his back turned.
They didn’t need to make eye-contact to know what they were talking about. Aiden put the water pitcher back down, keeping his back turned.
“He came out…Nori’s power somehow enabled him,” he said quietly, “I’d already been having migraines and nightmares before that, though. Pretty much ever since your arrest… A-anyway he got injured fighting Ian, and Cat dressed the wound wrong on purpose. I was able to regain control after he lost enough blood.”
“And have you heard from him since?” Brain gently asked. Aiden shrugged.
“Sometimes I think I do, or I think I see him in my reflection,” he said, “but it always happens so fast, it might just be my imagination.”
“I see,” Brain mused, “let’s just keep an eye on it, and hopefully by the time you need it I’ll have regained enough strength to help you.”
“Thank you, Mr Ecker,” Aiden said, “but don’t rush your recovery for my sake.”
“Oh I wasn’t planning to,” Brain said, “I’m going to take full advantage of the Californian sun until New York finally warms up.”
Aiden couldn’t help but laugh, before chatting a bit more. About Mirage’s eagerness to go home for the holidays, about the tension at the ranch and the situation with Ian, and he even managed to pry a bit until Aiden revealed he’d kissed Slade, but that was about all he would reveal. It just felt too awkward discussing it with his boss, as well as one of Slade’s oldest friends. Besides, it had just been a simple kiss on the cheek. He briefly thought back to that moment, and wondered if Brain was thinking about saying “I told you so,” just as they theorised.
But he would never know, for Brain stayed wisely quiet and shortly after Aiden had to take his leave as Skye texted that she would arrive to pick him up in about ten minutes. Aiden promised to visit frequently while he was still staying at the ranch, which Brain seemed grateful for.
When they got back and helped Skye to carry in some groceries, one of Bos’ SUVs pulled up and Andy and Tyler got out, both of them wearing rather formal and dark clothing, to which Aiden remembered Tyler was supposed to attend Oracle’s funeral today.
“How was it?” Skye gently asked.
Tyler shrugged.
“I dunno,” he said, “her parents said she would’ve loved it but…I never really got the chance to know her well enough to tell.”
“I’m sure she certainly would appreciate you attending,” Skye said, “come on in, I’ll make you some tea and a snack.”
“I’ll take something to go,” Tyler said, “I don’t want to be in the same building as him.”
“Alright, suit yourself,” Skye said with a shrug, before heading inside.
Tyler huffed and sat down on the porch. Aiden wasn’t sure what to say to him, so he just followed Skye and Cat inside. There, they found Bos and Phil, the latter just receiving a cup of tea.
“Thanks,” he said, warming his hands a bit on the cup, while Bos turned to the others.
“Oh hey!” he said, “if I’d known you’d be back already I would’ve boiled more water.”
“I’m good, thanks,” Cat said, “Mirage sends her love,” she added, sitting down next to Phil.
“How is she?” Phil asked, perking up slightly.
“Thinking about you, mostly,” Aiden said, sitting down on his other side, “she said she might get discharged tomorrow and she wanted to know if you’d like to go home with her…back to New York.”
Phil bit his lip a bit, taking a sip from his tea to give himself a little bit more time to think on his answer.
“I’m not sure,” he finally said, “I know Wendigo wasn’t real, but…it was real to me, and all of that happened in New York…”
“It’s okay,” Aiden said, “I’m sure it’ll be easy to convince Mirage to wait a little longer. I mean, she wanted to be home for Christmas, but…home isn’t just a place now, is it?”
“...I wouldn’t mind skipping Christmas altogether,” Phil admitted.
“Oh! Why don’t you celebrate with us?” Skye said, “we didn’t exactly plan for anything big, which seems appropriate after everything. Just an excuse to get everyone together.”
“That might be easier said than done,” Bos said, looking at Tyler on the porch through the window.
“Give him time, he’ll come around,” Skye said.
“And we'll take some time to think about that invitation,” Aiden said.
Phil nodded in agreement.
“Maybe um…maybe I can tag along to the hospital tomorrow?” he said, “to pick up Mirage? I might be able to convince her to not rush off when she’s still healing.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Cat said.
“Should I get her flowers?” Phil asked.
“Ew,” Cat said, “she’d love that.”
Both Phil and Aiden managed to laugh a bit, a feeling they’d both missed…
The next day Phil tagged along to pick up Mirage, stopping on the way to buy her flowers. It really didn’t take much to convince her to take things a little slower, and there was plenty of space at the ranch, even if that meant squeezing extra beds into the guest rooms. Though, Cat’s room already had two beds, so Mirage bunked with her, Aiden had been more than happy to share his room with Phil, while Slade possibly got the best deal by sharing his room with Ian, who apparently didn’t sleep at all.
Instead, he spent the nights roaming around the ranch, just taking in the sights which he didn’t dare do during daytime when there was a risk of running into one of the boys who obviously didn’t want him there. In fact, the only one who seemed to have taken a real liking to him was Skye’s dog, King, who was more than happy to trot along with Ian as he roamed around the ranch. Long walks were his favourite pastime after all, and Ian was glad for the company, even if he never considered himself much of a dog person, a vampire rarely was…but that’s a story for another time.
Come morning, he returned to the house and helped Skye to prepare breakfast, eager to at least do something useful, and eager to learn how to use a modern kitchen. It also helped him get a better grip of modern English, and her cookbooks gave a good idea of modern spelling as well.
Once the others woke up and began joining them at the breakfast bar, he’d politely serve them coffee or tea before slinking back to his room to avoid discomforting anyone, particularly Tyler, who still made it very obvious that he didn’t want to have him around.
The others were nicer though, especially the visitors from New York, though that mostly had to do with the fact that he didn’t kill someone they knew who helped them escape a secret government facility and reunite them with the body of their advanced home assistant.
That’s right, Cyber — although still in coma — was finally being restored to his former glory, now that Tyler was back home and more than happy to use the work as a distraction from his trauma, and now that they knew where the boy’s body was, it wasn’t that hard to restore and even improve the system.
The disembodied voice sounded less robotic now, and much better understood nuance and even joked with the residents at the ranch. They worked closely with Slade in their attempts to guide his mind back to his body to wake him up, but to no avail. Cyber’s own calculations indicated that his mind was still too fragmented, strung together by lines of code that had no place in a human mind.
To console Tyler after the failed attempt, Bos put in a request for Cyber to receive at-home care, so they could personally ensure that his body would be safe while working towards a solution.
To prepare for that, however, meant that Slade and Ian were now to share a room with Aiden and Phil. After a long debate about using a futon or not, Phil decided to just share the bed with Aiden, so Slade could have his bed, and Ian didn’t need one anyway. He mainly used the room to hide during the day, so they could make it work just fine.
And just like that, it was Christmas. It hadn’t been much on their minds at all, yet before they knew it they were decorating a tree last-minute in an attempt to get into a festive spirit, to leave it all behind them.
Even Tyler made an effort, sneaking away from the others and knocking on the door of one of the guestrooms before pushing it open. As expected he found Ian inside, trying to make sense of one of Skye’s cookbooks, though he put it down as Tyler walked in, getting up and politely inclining his head, not looking up until he realised the boy stood right in front of him, which was the closest they had been since arriving here.
“I…can I help you?” Ian slowly asked, glancing back up at Tyler.
He was holding something behind his back, which would make anyone nervous after the amount of hostility he had shown.
“I want to talk,” Tyler said, “I’ll try to keep it simple so you can understand.”
Ian nodded, that seemed simple enough, and he knew better than to interrupt someone who wanted to have his say, even if he had to take a shaky breath first and gather his thoughts.
“I don’t think I can ever forgive you for killing Oracle,” Tyler eventually said, “but seeing how different you are here than you were back then, I can at least try to understand, I guess…”
Ian nodded again. That was already a lot more than he would ever dare to ask. And then Tyler revealed what he had behind his back; a gift, wrapped in red and green striped paper. It wasn’t perfectly wrapped, because that simply wasn’t one of Tyler’s strong suits, but at least it hid what was inside.
“Go on, take it,” he said, when Ian only stared at it.
He gingerly took the gift, turning it over in his hands, wondering what it could mean.
“Normally we don’t give or open gifts until Christmas morning,” Tyler said, “but I figured it’d be better if you had this sooner.”
Ian hesitated still, but after an encouraging nod from Tyler, he carefully unwrapped the gift and pulled out a book.
“It is…a dictionary…” he quietly said, reading the text on the cover.
“It’ll be easier to learn modern English from this than from a cookbook,” Tyler said, “and um…”
He trailed off for a good few seconds, before regaining his train of thought.
“And I talked to Al and Sly. They are willing to forgive you, now that Sly is feeling better.”
Ian nodded again, but something didn’t feel quite right.
“I beg your pardon,” he quietly said, “but did you just faint?”
“What? No, I’m still standing, aren’t I?” Tyler said, looking down at himself.
“You paused mid-sentence…something was off,” Ian said.
Tyler blinked, before clearing his throat.
“Cyber, did I just have a seizure?”
“You might have experienced a short absence seizure, but it is impossible to say for certain without specialised equipment,” Cyber replied.
“It was an unusual lapse in consciousness,” Ian pointed out.
Tyler shrugged.
“Not to me,” he said, heading back towards the door, “anyway…see you at dinner I guess, I dunno.”
“Oh, I don’t eat…” Ian said, but Tyler had already closed the door behind him.
Ian blinked, before looking back down at the dictionary with a small smile.
Although Ian was very moved by Tyler’s semi-invitation to join everyone for dinner, he still couldn’t bring himself to face everyone, and instead slipped out while everyone was eating to do some more roaming.
Meanwhile at the dinner table, rather than eating, Phil was absent-mindedly poking his vegetables while staring at the tree they’d just finished decorating. Aiden sat across from him, noticing his mood and exchanging glances with Mirage and Cat before deciding to speak up.
“Penny for your thoughts, Phil?” he asked.
Phil looked back, forcing a smile.
“They’re not worth that much,” he said, “I was just thinking, maybe when Jo feels better we should go home.”
“What do you mean when? I feel fine,” Mirage said.
“That’s the pain killers talking,” Cat said.
Phil ignored her.
“It’s just that…if my nightmares tell me anything, it’s that Wendigo is going to haunt me wherever I go, so might as well try to deal with that whilst getting our lives back on the rails,” he said, “but to do that we should probably travel back to said rails…if you know what I mean.”
“I get it,” Aiden said, “I’m sure Haze is getting tired of looking after our apartment.”
“Doubt it,” Cat just said.
“Not much to look after,” Mirage added.
“We’d have more to look after if you didn’t steal our cup,” Phil said.
Mirage gasped so hard it hurt her stitches.
“Ouch…I keep forgetting I still have to return that,” she said, rubbing her chest a bit.
“We’re never getting it back, are we?” Aiden said, to which Phil snickered a bit, while Mirage began sputtering about the whole new set of dinnerware she bought them.
After dessert, and after helping Skye wash up, Bos started pouring drinks. Coffee, tea, wine… but Slade declined for now and said he wanted to get some fresh air instead before heading outside. Aiden wanted to follow him, but he was helping Skye make coffee. Phil caught his look, however, and pulled him away from the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Well, I was making coffee,” Aiden said, a little confused.
“No, I meant— Ugh, just go talk to him. I know that look,” Phil said, giving Aiden a nudge.
Aiden rolled his eyes, handing Phil an empty cup before heading outside as well.
He found Slade just around the corner on the porch, where they had a much better view of the setting sun. He was leaning on the railing, admiring the view, possibly wishing he’d remembered to bring his pipe to smoke, so he was happily distracted by Aiden as he joined him, leaning on the railing as well.
“A little birdie told me,” Slade began, before Aiden could say anything, “that Phil is finally ready to go home.”
“Was the bird named Jo?” Aiden asked.
“Yes, actually,” Slade said, sounding impressed, “she wanted to know if I would be tagging along as well.”
“And…are you?” Aiden asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Slade said, “there’s still much to do and to arrange. I can’t just abandon William, not when I just today promised I’d stay with him until he was allowed to travel again.”
“That’s fair,” Aiden said.
“And it allows me to keep a closer eye on Clancy and whether he won’t break our contract,” Slade added.
Aiden nodded, looking down at his hands for a moment.
“This won’t be the last we see of him, will it?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Slade said with a sigh, “people like Clancy are like a persistent weed in your garden. You can remove it whenever it pops up, but it will never be truly gone until you can tear out the roots.”
“I’m not sure I even want to know where Clancy’s roots lie,” Aiden said, “I mean…the army…Counterintelligence…”
“Don’t think too much about it,” Slade said, “we don’t have to worry about it until the weed pops back up.”
He put an arm around Aiden, pulling him a little closer.
“Now let’s just live in the moment for…well, a moment and enjoy this lovely sunset,” he said. Aiden nodded, leaning against him a bit.
“Should we be looking directly at a setting sun, though?”
“Hush, Love, just look at the sky above it instead.”
“You know,” Aiden said, a little out of breath, “when I set out for New York I never imagined, not even in my wildest dreams, that I’d end up breaking into a secret government facility to play tag with a vampire.”
“You’ve killed dinosaurs, but this is where you draw a line?” Cat asked.
“No, that’s also on the list,” Aiden said, “why does my nose keep bleeding—”
He was cut off when Cat suddenly slapped her hand over his mouth, gesturing for him to be quiet. She had a point though, they were hiding after all, crouched behind a row of desks while keeping their ears open for any movement.
Mirage had left them there to go check on Sylvester on another floor, but with Aiden bleeding from a fresh wound on his arm, as well as his nose, they were probably easy to track by a creature designed to sniff out blood. Things stayed quiet though, so Cat lowered her hand and gestured for Aiden to follow as she began making her way towards the hallway.
“Your nose is bleeding because I punched you…twice,” she said, voice lowered just in case.
“What?” Aiden hissed, “I know Amon can be a jerk, but did you have to go for the nose?”
“He was literally asking for it.” Cat said, deeming it safe enough to stand up fully, but still contacting Bos just to be safe, “Where’s our hungry little friend, Bos?”
Aiden wasn’t sure what to say, until he caught his reflection in a door window, and he could’ve sworn he saw a smug grin, so he turned back, but it was just him.
“What is wrong with you?” he said.
“Stop talking to yourself, three-brain,” Cat said, “don’t give them a reason to try and keep you here. Come on, we’ll meet Slade and Al at the elevator.”
“What about Mirage and Sly?” Aiden asked, quickly following her.
“Also on their way,” Cat said, “Killjoy is on another floor, we’ll regroup and then hopefully with Slade’s blood we can finally deal with that sucker.”
“Pun intended?”
“Duh.”
They were the first to arrive at the elevator, soon after joined by Mirage and Sylvester, who both looked a little worse for wear — or rather, a lot worse for wear. Mirage had to lean on Sylvester for support, and he handed her off as soon as he got the chance.
“Take her,” he panted, to which Aiden quickly wrapped her arm around his shoulders and tried to support her as best as he could.
“You should’ve stayed in hospital,” Cat said.
“And miss out— Cough! Miss out on all this?” Mirage replied quietly.
“Can you breathe okay?” Aiden asked worriedly.
Mirage spat out some blood.
“Nope,” she said, blood trickling down her chin and dripping onto her suit.
“Okay, she’s benched,” Aiden said, “when the elevator gets here I’m taking her upstairs to be treated.”
“No, let Sly take her,” Cat said, “he’s tired too, but you’re overpowered even when you’re tired.”
“So is that vampire apparently!” Aiden said, “besides, when the elevator gets here, so does Slade and we can see if feeding it fully really will placate it, and then maybe you don’t need me anymore.”
“And what if we do?” Cat said.
Aiden rolled his eyes.
“Okay, you got me there,” he said.
“I’ll be fine…in a sec,” Sly said, “thanks for asking.”
Cat rolled her eyes, trying to think, of a way to tell him off when down the hall a door was thrown open and the vampire came stumbling through, immediately snapping its head in their direction.
“Careful he’s fast!” Sly said, before changing into a large black bear again in an attempt to block the creature.
Aiden backed away with Mirage, while Cat stepped in front of them and pulled out her staff as a last line of defence — just in case. They watched how Sly stood up on his hind legs, roaring in warning while the vampire hissed at him…and then charged at him.
With a tired roar, Sly managed to push him back, but only for a minute, before the vampire managed to throw him aside. He smacked against the wall, turning back into his human form and not moving.
“Shit,” Cat hissed.
“C-Cross…” Mirage coughed, “w-we need Cross.”
“Give me a caffeine booster” Aiden said, needing the extra energy.
Mirage nodded and pulled a pack from her pocket, handing it to him. He quickly took one, chewing and swallowing. He couldn’t quite feel the effects yet, but hopefully it would kick in when he needed it. For now, all he needed to do was to transform so he could conjure up anything to defend himself and Mirage with, or to back up Cat.
And it would probably be necessary, as Cat whistled on her fingers to try and lure the vampire away from Sylvester, who seemed a lot more interested in him now that he’d taken human form and wasn’t fighting back.
“Hey!” she yelled, smacking her staff against the elevator doors to make more noise, “Over here you son of a bitch!”
“Help…her!” Mirage wheezed.
Aiden nodded, dropping her a little unceremoniously so he could back up Cat — and just in time too. The moment he joined her side and conjured up a shield, the vampire was already on them. It was so insanely fast. He managed to slam it against the wall, before it grabbed a hold of the shield and began pushing back. It was insanely strong too, pushing Aiden back far too easily.
“Son of a bitch,” Aiden hissed.
“You got him?” Cat asked.
“Does it look like I got him?!”
“Going low!”
Without thinking, Aiden jumped so he wouldn’t get caught up in Cat’s attack, and sure enough, as soon as his feet left the ground she slid underneath him both tackling the vampire as well as whacking him in the face with her staff.
Aiden caught himself on the wall, before using it to kick off, folding out his wings to blind the vampire before slamming into him. He conjured up a set of chains, wrapping them around the vampire, but he easily squeezed out and then used the chains to throw Aiden against the wall. The impact dizzied him, and he slumped to the floor not too far from Sylvester.
Cat huffed as that meant she was the last one standing, but that didn’t hold her back at all. She tore off her cape, and as the vampire darted at her again she managed to throw it over him while stepping aside just in time, and getting about three good whacks in before he managed to claw her cape off of him.
Ding!
The elevator couldn’t have opened at a better time. Cat backed away a bit, grabbing a hold of Slade and yanking him out, using him as a shield as the vampire attacked again. Slade could only yelp in surprise and confusion before the vampire grabbed him and went right for the throat.
“Jesus, you didn’t even hesitate,” Nori said, stepping out of the elevator.
“Did you?” Cat asked, “Before committing multiple atrocities against my friends?”
Nori rolled her eyes and grabbed her radio to report on the situation.
“Killjoy took the bait, Mirage and The Beast are down for the count. So is Cross— Oh no wait, he’s getting up.”
“I’m good,” Aiden said, though as he pushed himself up his shoulder protested painfully.
“Stay down, your arm looks loose,” Alexei said as he knelt down to check on Sylvester.
But Aiden ignored him, using his good arm to push himself up and get to his feet, peering over at Slade who gasped for air as his throat healed, while the vampire still had his teeth locked in the side of his neck.
“S-Slade?!”
Slade groaned in reply.
“Hgnn…this is highly uncomfortable!” he forced out, “Alexei, pomoshch’! Help!”
Alexei quietly promised Sylvester he’d be right back, kissing his forehead before getting up and walking over to Slade. He checked the grip strength of his arm, before grabbing the vampire by the back of his neck and pulling him off of Slade with relative ease.
“Buffet is closed,” he said, pinning him down to the floor, pressing his knee into his back.
He hissed at him, but didn’t try to buck him off. Aiden limped past them in a bit of a wide circle to check on Slade, crouching beside him.
“Slade, are you okay?” he asked.
“Ooh…I’m dizzy,” Slade said, rubbing his eyes, “lift my legs up, Love, I need blood in my brain.”
“I don’t have enough blood left in my arms for that,” Aiden deadpanned.
“I’m not being dramatic,” Slade pouted.
Aiden rolled his eyes, using his good arm to hold at least one of Slade’s legs up. Of course internally he was relieved that Slade didn’t seem to be too badly affected by losing God knows how much blood.
Meanwhile the vampire began squirming a bit underneath Alexei’s grip, whimpering and talking — to his ears — some kind of gibberish.
“He’s talking,” he said, “...I think.”
“Well?” Nori said impatiently, “what is he saying?”
“Give him a moment, Al’s got him,” Cat said, pushing past Nori to help Slade sit up.
“Thank you, las,” Slade said, rubbing his eyes a bit, “can you read his aura, Love?”
“I couldn’t before,” Aiden slowly said, but he looked over to check anyway.
“Alexei let him go,” Slade said, getting to his feet with Cat’s help.
But Alexei didn’t listen, frowning at Slade instead.
“Are you sure?”
“Davai, Alexei,” Slade said a bit more sternly.
Alexei shrugged and slowly got up before letting go of the vampire and backing away, making sure to stand between it and Sylvester. But he didn’t try to attack them as soon as he got free. Instead he carefully peered up at Slade, and when he didn’t seem to be preparing to hurt him or something like that, he carefully got onto his hands and knees and scrambled backwards until he hit the wall.
He sat up, pressing himself against the wall as his eyes darted between the others. The lower half of his face was covered in blood, dripping onto his tattered and stained shirt. His hands were also covered, smearing blood on the wall and the floor where he’d crawled.
“Arite, keep your distance everyone,” Slade said, stepping forward while the others stepped back.
He crouched down trying to get the vampire to focus on him without feeling threatened.
“You’re arite,” he gently said, gesturing for the young man to calm down, “Ich weiss nicht, wie sehr sich Deutch im Laufe der Jahre verändert hat, aber sprechen Sie Englisch?”
He made sure to speak slowly, but the vampire seemed at a loss, right up until the last word.
“E-Englischå?” he asked, voice so quiet it was barely a whisper, and all of a sudden they could almost understand him.
“It hath byen years,” he whispered, “everythyng sounds so strange…”
“It certainly has been,” Slade gently said, “but surely with some adjusting we’ll be able to understand one another just fine with time.”
But the vampire shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes as he hugged himself.
“I-I cannot understand,” he said, shaking his head.
“Hush,” Slade gently said, slowing down his speech again, “you will understand. You will understand me with time. Now…take a deep breath.”
The vampire took a very shaky breath, sniffling a bit, as he still nervously eyed the others, and their injuries, and the blood trail leading right towards him. He sobbed, looking back at Slade.
“B-bidde…Gnade bidde,” he pleaded.
Slade just gave him a sympathetic look.
“Wie heissen Sie?” he asked, “your name,” he added.
“I-Ian,” the vampire replied shakily, “Ian Peters.”
“Arite, Ian,” Slade gently said, “I am Dr Douglas Slade, and I am on your side. Just give me your hand, and I will make sure no one will harm you — Ich werde dir Gnade erweisen, ja?”
He offered his hand, but Ian didn’t move, looking between Slade’s face and his hand. Seeing he was still hesitant, Aiden slowly sat down on his knees next to Slade.
“Salvus,” he just said with an encouraging nod.
Ian seemed to understand, and carefully reached for Slade’s hand. They both slowly got up and Slade put his other hand on top of Ian’s, squeezing his hand gently.
“Salvus,” he repeated, before glancing at Aiden, “how’d you know he might understand Latin?”
“Well, he sounded a little Shakespearian and I figured if you spoke some form of German and English at that time, you might be schooled enough to know a decent amount of Latin too,” Aiden said with a shrug, “never thought I’d use my bachelor’s like this, yet here I am.”
“What does ‘Salvus’ even mean?” Cat asked.
“It means he’s safe,” Aiden said, “contextually it means it’s safe to trust Slade.”
“Is it?” Alexei asked.
They looked over, and found he was cradling Sylvester in his arms.
“Och,” Slade said, “let me see—”
“No, I’ll check him,” Cat said, “Mirage is in a worse state.”
“Oh Lord I nearly forgot,” Aiden admitted.
“Well she did leave against medical advice,” Slade said, “Ian, stay with Aiden. I have to help our friend, I’ll just be right over there.”
He pointed in Mirage’s general direction, and moved Ian’s hand to Aiden’s shoulder. Ian seemed to understand and nodded, glancing at Aiden as Slade hurried off.
“M-medicus,” he said quietly.
Aiden nodded.
“Yes, he’s a doctor.” he replied, discreetly observing Ian’s aura now that it was becoming more and more clear, “You look exhausted…maybe you want to sit? Um…sede?”
He demonstrated by sitting down on the floor. Ian observed him, and then nodded before following his example and sitting on the floor next to him. He slowly tried wiping his hands on his pants, quietly speaking up a bit.
“My latyn ys not verray excellent,” he said.
Aiden smiled.
“Neither is mine,” he admitted, “reading Latin is easier than speaking Latin.”
It was very faint, and Aiden didn’t catch it at the time, but after processing his reply, Ian almost smiled. But a genuine smile felt so foreign to him, it brought tears to his eyes once again. He let them silently roll down his face while he waited for Slade to return. The world around him seemed to slow down, passing by in a blur, while the sounds and voices of the others were muted, as if they were talking on the surface while he was deep, deep underwater.
“Ian.”
He snapped back to reality. The kind man from before was back, and he was talking to him, but Ian couldn’t quite follow what he was saying. The man seemed to notice, and just held out his hand.
“Come,” he said.
Ian somewhat sheepishly took his hand and got to his feet. He looked around, realising there were a lot less people around. The other young man he’d spoken to had gone. It was just the heavy-sounding boy, the soldier girl, and Dr Slade. The last two flanked him as they took him towards the elevator, the heavy boy stayed right behind them. Ian could tell he just wanted to keep them in his sights. He didn’t blame him for it. He didn’t trust himself either.
He shuddered as they stepped into the elevator.
He just knew it.
He wasn’t safe.
They were going to take him back down there, leave him chained up to starve, and they would inevitably destroy themselves in another cycle ignorance. Another layer to his purgatory. He still didn’t know what he’d done to deserve it, but no matter how much he prayed, the universe still seemed to have it out for him.
With that line of thought, it was quite a shock when the elevator started moving upwards. Ian blinked, watching the number in the display slowly decrease rather than increase. He glanced at Slade, but he stayed quiet.
“The General is not going to like this,” Nori commented.
“Whether he likes it or not is about the least of my concerns,” Slade said, “you don’t treat human beings like this, and that’s final.”
“You’ve seen him, he was barely human.”
“Was being the operative word. Also he can hear you.”
Ian quickly cast his eyes down. Eavesdropping was wrong. It was very, very wrong. He quickly found a muddy footprint to stare at on the floor and tuned out their voices, not wanting to get into trouble after getting this far.
Ding!
The elevator doors had only begun to open and he could already hear the cocking of guns, smell the powder ready to be ignited, and the stress-sweat of several men and at least two women. He hissed instinctively, baring his fangs that were still covered in blood. It unnerved the heavy boy and the soldier girl, but Ian couldn’t help himself. Slade, however, just put up an arm, half holding him back and half shielding him.
“Easy,” he said, “he’s harmless.”
“They don’t take orders from you,” Nori reminded him.
“Well they ought to,” Slade said, “remind me how many people have died since I stepped in?”
Nori rolled her eyes.
“He’s not going anywhere near the general unless he’s cuffed,” she said, holding out her hand, to which one of the soldiers handed her a set of handcuffs.
Ian seemed to flinch at the sound of them, so Slade stopped Nori.
“Let me do it,” he said.
Nori raised a brow, but handed him the cuffs, just to see what would happen. Ian seemed apprehensive, but Slade just made sure not to move too fast, holding up the cuffs to show them to him first.
“I shan’t let them hurt you,” he said, “salvus, remember? Trust in me.”
Ian hesitated for a moment, before reluctantly holding out his hands. Not like these flimsy cuffs could do much to hold him, but they made him feel vulnerable either way. Thankfully Slade was gentle, not closing them too tight, before taking his arm and guiding him out of the elevator. The soldiers reluctantly let them pass after receiving a signal from Nori and further escorted them to the command centre.
Phil and Tyler were relieved to see their friends unscathed, even though they had been able to follow everything on the monitors and through the radio. Phil was worried about Mirage, but as Cat walked in and joined them he couldn’t ask about her. He didn’t have to.
“Medic said they just gotta redo her sutures,” she quietly said, “she’ll be fine…until I get my hands on her for being so stupid.”
Phil nodded in agreement, before taking a relieved sip of the water they had given him. Tyler, however, seemed a little less relaxed, hugging himself as he watched Ian warily.
“Why would you take it here?” he hissed.
Cat shrugged.
“I just assume Slade knows what he’s doing,” she said.
“You can’t be serious,” Tyler said.
Cat just shrugged again.
“It’s worked out so far,” she said, “he got that kid to stop attacking and killing everyone.”
“For now,” Tyler scoffed.
“Sit down, Malysh,” Alexei said, pulling out a chair, “if you work up too much you will get seizure.”
But Tyler wasn’t the only one who was getting worked up. General Clancy looked like he was about to pop a vein when Slade walked in with Ian so casually. He glared at them, before aiming his glare at Nori.
“Lieutenant, what is the meaning of this?” he asked.
“I tried to tell him you wouldn’t agree, but he insisted,” Nori said.
“Why of course I did,” Slade said, “because I believe you ought to see the undeniable proof that your methods are inhumane and ineffective. Starving this poor young man until he loses his mind and then calling him a monster for it? I’m glad our deal releases all your prisoners to my custody, because I’ll see to it they’ll never return to you.”
“That one is an exception,” Clancy said, “it’s been in our custody before this project even started.”
“Then you should’ve included that exception in our contract,” Slade said.
“I did,” Clancy claimed, “I very clearly stated that all supers acquired in my mission are to be released to your custody. Killjoy was acquired long before that by a different department.”
“So what?” Slade asked, “you need to sign for his release? Go right ahead then.”
“Why on earth would I do that?” Clancy asked with a scoff.
“Because if you don’t, I will come at you with a force unlike you’ve ever seen before,” Slade said, “and I ought to let you know, we got into this place by splitting the bloody sea! Do you really want me to escalate that, General? For I’ll make damn well sure that everyone knows that you were responsible.”
Clancy looked like he wanted to hit Slade. And he really did want to. But he also knew he couldn’t win this argument, let alone the resulting fight if he doubled down. He didn’t have the authority to start a war either, and he really doubted Slade was bluffing about their strengths.
“Fine,” he hissed, “but if it sets even so much as one foot out of line, I’ll know exactly where to find it.”
“He has a name,” Slade said, holding up his hand for the keys.
Clancy scoffed, before nodding towards Nori. She sighed, rolling her eyes as she dug a set of keys from her pocket and tossed them at Slade. He caught them, and turned around to unlock Ian’s handcuffs again, sending him a reassuring wink before handing the cuffs and keys back to Nori.
“Arite,” he said, “now let’s discuss our passage back to the mainland.”
Mirage felt like she was going crazy. She wasn’t very good at being in hospital, since her main assignment was to just lay there and rest. The first couple of days it was doable. She was exhausted and in pain, sleeping off the pain relieve most of the time.
But now they switched her medication, and she was much more awake. Her brain couldn’t handle lying around and doing nothing, but the staff didn’t allow her to get up and walk around. She had a TV at her disposal, but she’d never been much of a TV person. She fidgeted with the buttons that controlled the tilt of her mattress, but she was told off by the nurses. She texted with Cat, but she rarely had good news to report. She tried to get up for a walk, but apparently the nurse in charge had been watching her like a hawk and immediately told her off for that too. Then she gently tucked her into bed and let her know lunch would be served soon.
Mirage sighed, her face pulling in pain as breathing was still an issue. Especially deep breaths were hard. But the human body had the annoying tendency to need those quite regularly.
“Knock knock~!”
Mirage looked over at the door and smiled. She recognised his face, but his name slipped her mind. She knew his alias, of course. But everyone knew Ranger, and calling him that without his disguise would just be rude.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” she just said.
“I should be telling you that,” Ranger said, closing the door behind him and pulling the chair in the corner closer to the bed, “how are you doing?”
“I’m going crazy, dude,” Mirage said, “there’s no news of Phil, I’m not allowed to do anything, and breathing normally really hurts!”
“That’s a good thing,” Ranger said, “it means you’re still alive.”
“Did I thank you for that yet?” Mirage asked.
“Several times,” Ranger said, “and like I said every time, don’t worry about it.”
“You’re right, I have better things to worry about,” Mirage said, “Cat still hasn’t heard anything of Phil…”
“I know,” Ranger said, “Slade is keeping me up-to-date too. But it’s only a matter of time before they do something crazy and bring him back home, okay?”
Mirage nodded, trying to imagine what level of crazy they would come up with. — And then it was like a light went on in her mind. Ranger frowned concerned as he watched Mirage’s expression change from worried to…almost manic. She slowly turned to look back at him, with a creepy smile on her face.
“I need your help,” she said.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Ranger said.
“I haven’t even told you what I need yet!” Mirage said.
“Whatever it is, you didn’t think of it until after I mentioned crazy, so I don’t trust it,” Ranger said, folding his arms.
Mirage bit her lip, before explaining her plan anyway.
“I need to get back to my lab so I can figure out a way to heal faster so I can teleport over there and help,” she said.
“I already declined,” Ranger said.
“Oh come on!” Mirage pleaded, “I’ll take it easy once I’m at the lab, I can sit down on a chair while I work! Please? I would do the same for you!”
“It could be dangerous,” Ranger said, “your stitches could tear and you could get all kinds of trouble internally and die before you even realise it.”
“Oh please,” Mirage said, “I actually have a medical degree, I’ll know if something’s wrong.”
“You’re a doctor?” Ranger asked. Mirage nodded.
“Yeah,” Mirage said, “I studied medicine before going down the path of pharmaceutical science, I never did a residency so I’m not licensed to practice, but that’s beside the point. I think I’d recognise an internal bleeding if I had one, now help me get to my lab!”
“Fine,” Ranger said, rolling his eyes, “but if Slade asks, I had nothing to do with it— And you have to talk to the nurse and sign the AMA waver!”
“Deal,” Mirage said, forgetting about half the promise immediately after.
Ranger called her a cab and made sure she made it to her lab okay, before getting kicked out as she needed to get into the zone. Of course she wasn’t able to invent a miracle healing drug in such a short time frame, but she did work on a stronger version of her caffeine booster, and something to remedy the pain without making her drowsy.
So as soon as Cat texted her that they were finally going somewhere that night, she was as good as ready to follow them, slowly changing into her costume so she wouldn’t be recognised, and then trying to track Cat’s phone so she had the exact coordinates of where to go, but all she could find was her last-known signal, as the app they used to find each other just showed her as offline.
Oh well, maybe she was somewhere without a signal, and her last known location was a good enough lead. She picked up the syringe she prepared earlier that evening, and searched for a vein in her arm while tying it off with a rubber band, before injecting the solution into one of her veins.
She discarded the syringe once it was empty, quickly taping some gauze over the injection site and rolling the sleeve of her costume back down. Then she swallowed the pill she just made with some sterilised water and fixed her mask in place while waiting for everything to kick in.
After about twenty minutes of fidgeting with her gloves, she could finally breathe a little easier, and her heart rate was starting to get a little on the high side. Okay, in hindsight, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea… better hurry and find her friends before she would collapse. She double-checked the coordinates and teleported.
The first thing that hit her was the intensely salty air, followed by a spray of water as a wave splashed up to the side of the landing platform she found herself on…in the middle of the ocean?? No wait, she could see the mainland in the distance, and behind her another coastline even closer by. Next to the platform was a small building, shielding the entrance to an elevator. Mirage looked up, but the building clearly stopped there, so down it was.
She teleported one floor down, finding herself in some sort of canteen. The lights were shut off, and the windows offered a view of the rough waters sploshing around the building. Mirage shrugged and went another floor down, only to find some sort of dormitory with twenty-something beds and footlockers.
Still no sign of anyone.
She checked her watch. Wouldn’t this be the exact hour that everyone would be asleep? Hopefully her friends were okay. She popped down another floor, and another, and another. She felt like she could go on forever, but after only nine floors, she finally came across a familiar face—Two even!
She was so happy to see her friends, whilst they seemed surprised and a little dishevelled. Cat just grabbed her arm and yelled for them to move, so Mirage just followed the previous pattern and took her and Aiden one floor down, causing the two of them to breathe a sigh of relief, before demanding an explanation.
Mirage decided not to tell them the whole truth. That could wait. It seemed they had more important matters to deal with first. The word vampire intrigued her greatly, but above all she wanted to see Phil, even after Cat assured her he was fine.
Slade honestly didn’t know what to think about Mirage showing up. On one hand he was certain this would lead to complications for her health, while on the other…
“This is good,” he said, wanting to at least seem he was still in charge in front of the General, “with Mirage’s teleportation we can really turn the tide on your vampire.”
Clancy nodded, taking the radio back from Slade and talking into it.
“Mirage, extract Soldier Zero. I repeat: Extract Soldier Zero.”
“Copy that,” came Cat’s reply, and on the cameras they could see her instructing Mirage, before the super popped out of existence, grabbed Alexei, and popped back into existence right there in the command centre.
“There we go,” Mirage said, patting him on the back, “can I just say? It’s so great to meet you. Your story is so interesting!”
Alexei didn’t answer, he just rolled over in the opposite direction and began throwing up.
“Someone get a mop,” Clancy said, “how is this going to turn the tide? Do you want to nauseate that thing into submission?”
“No,” Slade said, “but Mirage’s teleportation will help us overcome its speed. How’s that contract coming along?”
“We’re printing it now, sir!” one of the techs replied from the copier, tearing out the small stack of paper as soon as it was finished and bringing it over.
Meanwhile Phil got up from his chair, shuffling over to see Mirage, until she noticed him and popped up right in front of him in the blink of an eye.
“Phil! I’m so relieved to see you!” she said, giving him a hug.
Phil couldn’t help but to tear up a bit as he hugged her back. He had so many things to say to her, but the cramping in his jaw had gotten unbearable. Mirage noticed his silence and let go to look at him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“His jaw is locked, someone should be on their way with a muscle relaxant,” Slade said, while reading through the concept of the contract.
“Okay, you’re going to be just fine.” Mirage said, stroking his cheek a bit, before frowning as she looked around, “Hold up. Why are we working together with the guys that kidnapped you? With the guys who shot me?”
“That’s need-to-know, ma’am,” Clancy said, crossing something out in his version of the contract.
“Slade actually negotiated our freedom in exchange for helping them with the vampire they can’t control,” Tyler explained, checking on the damage to Alexei’s leg, “I think I can restore power if I re-route these wires…”
“Do it,” Alexei said, “Sly needs me.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Amon killed the soldiers who shot you,” Slade added, gesturing at Nori, who was still out cold.
“That doesn’t make me feel better at all, they were just following orders, weren’t they?” Mirage said, “Oh, I should get Aiden some sugar. Cat said he lost a lot of blood.”
“Help them keep the vampire distracted while I work out the details of our agreement,” Slade said.
“Got it— Oh, where could I get some fruit juice?”
“Galley’s on the second floor, ma’am,” one of the soldiers answered.
Mirage nodded, giving Phil another hug before disappearing again.
Phil sat back down in his chair, a little closer to Nori than he was comfortable with, though she seemed pretty harmless while she was unconscious… And then she began stirring as she finally came to. Seeing this, Phil quickly got up, tapping Slade on the shoulder.
“One sec,” Slade just said, “your muscle relaxant is on its way— How would you interpret this paragraph?”
He pointed at a piece in the contract, but Phil didn’t look at it. He just gave Slade a look, waiting for the old healer to remember why he ordered a muscle relaxant for him. Slade blinked and then nodded.
“Right,” he said, “sorry, long night.”
Phil nodded, before pointing at Nori, who had opened her eyes at this point, groaning a bit as she tried to sit up. Slade quickly handed his papers to Phil and walked over, gently nudging her to lie back down.
“Take it easy, las. You’ve had a rough night,” he said.
But she didn’t take it easy as she recognised Slade. Instead she just shot up with a start, looking around to try and gather what was going on. Why weren’t the intruders detained? Why were two detainees not in their cells? Her eyes fell on the general, and he just gestured at her to calm down.
“Stand down, Lieutenant,” he said.
“With all due respect, sir,” she said, slowly getting to her feet, “what the hell is going on?”
“Dr Slade here has offered to help us subdue Killjoy in exchange for some leniency,” Clancy recapped.
“In exchange for immunity,” Slade corrected, “Nori, listen—”
“Sir, you can’t trust him,” Nori said, ignoring Slade as she pushed past him to talk to Clancy, “you told me yourself how he can’t be trusted.”
“Which is why we’re setting up a contract to make sure he holds up his end of the deal,” Clancy simply said, while Slade seemed a bit perplexed.
“What did you tell her?” he asked, folding his arms.
“Nothing she didn’t already know,” Clancy just said.
“You think you’re so wise just because you’re ridiculously old,” Nori said, “but you’ve already proven that you don’t know anything!”
“Settle down, Lieutenant,” Clancy said, but Slade held up his hand.
“No, let her speak her mind,” he said, “I want to hear what I’m so clueless about.”
“You’re always preaching about doing the right thing, but when my father came to you for help, you ignored him!” Nori said, “You ignored him until he snapped and killed my mother! And then as soon as you return there’s dinosaurs on Broadway! Subway trains crashing in Central Park! Dragons on the loose! And so-called accidents where people get send to Hell!”
Phil shrank a bit at the last example, while Slade didn’t seem fazed at all.
“Okay, I was only present for two of those, and the dragon was not even my idea,” he said.
“That’s not the point!” Nori said, “The point is if you let supers run around unchecked, bad things happen!”
“Bad things like stalking someone with images of your late father until they think they’ve gone mad?” Slade asked.
Both Nori and the General suddenly looked rather guilty. Phil stared at them in disbelieve. All the apparitions…had they been staged somehow?
“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out, las?” Slade asked, “Don’t you remember how close we all used to be? We all know exactly how your powers work, and the moment Ranger figured out the link, you gave the order to shoot him out of the air.”
“Cross caught him, he’s fine,” Nori said, hesitating only a little bit.
“Yes, no thanks to you,” Slade said, “I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, but you’re no saint either. The sheer disrespect of using your late father’s image like that. Your mother must be rolling in her grave. I’m very, very disappointed in you, Nori.”
“Hm, da,” Alexei said quietly, while Tyler was trying his best not to laugh.
“Don’t worry, Nori,” he said, “our dad uses that line all the time, and it never lasts longer than an hour.”
“He’s not— That’s not what’s happening here!” Nori sputtered, before turning back to Slade, “you’re disappointed? You?! You abandoned me!”
“Abandoned?! We’ve all been looking for you ever since you disappeared from hospital!” Slade said.
“I— What?” Nori said, before turning back to the general, “you said no one came for me after being comatose for three months!”
“I’ve never lied to you, Lieutenant,” Clancy calmly said, “that is, if you asked the right questions.”
“You never even questioned him?!” Slade asked.
“I was fifteen and I just lost my entire family, back off!” Nori snapped, “and you! You manipulative fucking asshole!”
She now turned on Clancy too, tearing off the name tag on her uniform and throwing it at his feet.
“I’m going to help subdue Killjoy, and then I’m getting the hell away from both of you!”
And with that she turned around and stormed out of the command centre. All the personnel that had been staring at them quickly returned to work, pretending like they hadn’t seen the entire fight. Clancy cleared his throat as he turned back to Slade.
“Are you sure you want to sign for keeping an eye on all known supers? Because that’ll include her too,” he said.
“Oh I’m sure,” Slade said, “since you obviously haven’t got a single handle on things. Now let’s review this…”
They made a couple of adjustments to a lengthy text. It was the kind of process that only someone with a bureaucracy kink would thoroughly enjoy, whereas Slade, the general and the lawyer vehemently did not.
And neither do I — So basically it all boils down to Slade promising to make sure no known supers would step too far out of line by misusing their powers either on purpose or repeated accidents (they’re still human. They’re permitted a margin of error). And Clancy promised to not persecute them without a valid warrant through the proper channels, and certainly not without consulting Slade first.
The only real advantage the general got out of this agreement was to avoid a public scandal and a court martial, which was honestly worth it at his age.
Slade was relieved either way as they finally signed, so he could finally take care of business. First he treated Phil, chewing out the nurse for taking so long to bring a single syringe, before making a complete 180 in personality and gently explaining Phil what the injection would do, before managing to inject the solution inside the syringe in his cheeks with minimal discomfort.
Meanwhile Tyler managed to fix Alexei’s leg with a bit of rewiring and some duct tape, carefully getting him back to his feet to see if he could stand on it.
“How’s that?” he asked, staying close in case Alexei would lose his balance…not that he could catch him if he did.
“Weird,” Alexei said, “but not impossible.”
“Good enough,” Tyler said, “just promise me one thing…go easy on Sly.”
“Nyet,” Alexei said, “if he’s dead I will revive just to kill again.”
Meanwhile one of the techs nervously approached Clancy with a fresh print, handing it over. Clancy looked at it, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was at first glance.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Uh, the other day Lieutenant Rider asked to have some sound recordings of Killjoy’s cell analysed by a linguist, sir,” the tech explained, “these are the results. Apparently it’s a type of German. Swabian? The linguist also mentioned Upper German. I only really just skimmed through it…”
“Did he manage to translate its ramblings?” Clancy asked.
“Yes, he was asking for forgiveness,” the tech said.
Clancy rolled his eyes. Of course he couldn’t forgive all the bloodshed. But then the tech continued.
“The linguist mentioned a repeating pattern of key phrases…it’s been praying, sir.”
“What kind of demon would a monster like that pray to?” Clancy scoffed.
“Uh…Abnoba, sir,” the tech said, “some Gaulish forest goddess?”
“That complicates things,” Slade said.
“Why? Because it has sentience?” Clancy asked.
“There was no doubt about that,” Slade said, “I was sort of hoping he spoke English, or at least French, maybe Russian…I’m decent enough at German but Swabian is a dialect I cannot understand nor speak.”
“Right now it doesn’t speak at all,” Alexei said, “take down first, then we can figure out communicating with it.”
“You actually think you can communicate with it?” Clancy asked.
“How do I put this nicely?” Slade said, calmly rolling up his sleeves, “how many times do I have to prove that I’m simply better at handling things than you are?”
Clancy looked like he was going to blow a vein, but Slade just turned away and gestured at Alexei to follow him. They left the command centre, finding Nori waiting for them in the corridor. She was still quite mad, but at least she kept her word and followed them to the elevator to help them deal with the vampire. Slade used his earpiece to contact Cat.
“Which floor are you on now?” he asked.
“Sly managed to chase it back down to the fifteenth floor, but we’re not sure how long he can hold it back,” Cat said, “Mirage is beginning to tire.”
The group in the elevator had a good idea of what to expect as the doors rolled open, but it was still a tad overwhelming when seven or eight soldiers trained their guns on them and started yelling.
“Hands where I can see them! Don’t make any sudden moves!”
Alexei kept his head cool, standing in the door opening and shielding the others with both himself and Nori.
“You would shoot colleague?” he said.
“Drop the hostage!”
“She’s not hostage,” Alexei said.
“Haven’t you been tracking us on your cameras? We rescued her,” Cat said.
“After assaulting her,” Amon reminded her.
Cat wanted to punch him again, but the sudden move might agitate the soldiers, so she settled for a glare, getting a shit-eating grin in return.
“Last warning! Drop the hostage!”
“Nyet,” Alexei said, “go ahead and shoot. Or did General not permit lethal force? You think we don’t know how army works?”
“Is he right?” Cat quietly asked.
“Yup,” Tyler said, “his codename is Soldier Zero for a reason. Though he was an experiment in the Russian army…”
“I can hear you,” Alexei reminded them, but what they could also all hear was the message coming through one of the soldiers’ radio.
“The general commands to NOT open fire on the intruders! I repeat; do NOT open fire on the intruders! They are to be escorted to the command centre. I repeat; they are to be escorted to the command centre!”
The soldiers exchanged glances, before one of them shrugged and lowered his weapon, and then they all did the same, stepping aside so they could leave the elevator, before leading the way, watching their flanks and their backs so they all made it to the centre safely.
The supers stayed quiet, not quite trusting things until they could see Slade. Phil stuck close to Cat, and she kept an eye on Amon, knowing he was just itching to do something stupid. But he behaved, for now.
When they entered the command centre, Slade seemed just as relieved to see them as they were to see him.
“Thank goodness,” he said, looking them all over, before focusing on Nori, “clear a table, she needs medical attention.”
“This is still my facility,” Clancy reminded him.
“But I’m the one with the medical degree,” Slade said, “if you still want everyone to make it out of here unscathed you ought to give me some leeway.”
“...fine,” Clancy said, gesturing at his men to clear a table.
Then he turned to the rest of the group and pointed at Amon.
“Detain that one.”
“What?!” Amon said, but he was the only one to protest as two soldiers almost immediately grabbed him and wrenched his arms behind his back.
Instead, Alexei carefully laid Nori on the table that had been cleared so Slade could examine her, while Cat sat Phil down in a chair so he could wait his turn. Tyler stuck close to Alexei as he gave Clancy and all the soldiers a suspicious look. What was stopping them from trying to detain all of them? What was stopping them from double-crossing Slade?
“Seriously, no one is going to stand up for me?” Amon said.
“As if you’d need us to,” Slade simply said, checking the burn wound on Nori’s neck that Amon had left behind, “this is going to have to be cleaned. Other than that all we can really do is wait for her to regain consciousness. Pupil response seems normal, though, so I’m not too worried about any brain damage…”
“Did you not see what happened to the other soldiers that tried to fuck me up?” Amon threatened.
“Oh we saw,” Clancy said, “but this time you’re severely outnumbered. One wrong move and I’ll order my men to fire at will.”
“Would you really put Carter at risk like that, Slade?” Amon snarled.
Slade finally looked up at him.
“Would you?” he said, “if he dies, then so do you, and there isn’t a body nearby that couldn’t easily resist your possession, or is that not the reason you tend to go exclusively after infants when looking for a new host?”
“Maybe I’ve gotten stronger since then,” Amon sneered.
“If that were the case you would’ve escaped already,” Slade calmly said, turning to Phil, “what did they do to you, lad?”
Phil couldn’t answer, his jaw beginning to cramp up again and his throat was screaming for some liquid.
“Lockjaw,” Cat explained, “I tried massaging it out, but he might need something better.”
“Nothing a little injection can’t fix,” Slade said, “may I take a look at your medical supplies?”
“We keep a digital inventory, I can ask one of our doctors to bring something up to you,” Clancy said, “but first, we have a situation you promised to help deal with.”
“I can multitask,” Slade said, “do we have eyes on it?”
“It’s in the stairwell, sir,” one of the tech’s reported, “it’s heading upstairs!”
“It’s attracted to fresh blood and live bodies,” Amon said, “where did you find this thing?”
“That doesn’t concern you,” Clancy said.
“He was around when vampires were created, so far he knows more about them than any of us combined,” Cat said, “just tell him and we might learn something useful.”
“And how do you know he’s not lying?” Clancy asked.
“We don’t,” Slade said, giving Amon a glare, “but it’s better than going in blind.”
Clancy gave Slade an annoyed glare, before nodding at one of the techs.
“Pull up the Killjoy file,” he said, before turning back to Slade, “it’s the only asset I didn’t acquire myself. From the top of my head…I believe it was captured somewhere in the eighties.”
“Wait,” Alexei said, “if it’s in stairwell, then where is Sly?”
“I don’t see any other bogeys on surveillance, sir,” one of the other techs reported, “all other assets are accounted for.”
Alexei rolled his eyes, activating his earpiece again.
“Bos, where is Sly?” he asked.
“Last I saw him he turned into something small to get away, so I assume he’s still hiding,” Bos said, “no news is good news.”
“Okay,” Alexei said, though he didn’t seem too happy, “we’re gathering more information. Hopefully we can stop it before it hurts anyone.”
“Before it hurts anyone else,” Tyler quietly corrected.
He was staring at some blood drops on the floor, thinking back to his first encounter with the vampire again.
“I got the file, sir!” one of the techs reported, “Killjoy was apprehended in the late eighties and moved around to different classified locations, usually leaving behind a large death toll. Asset was considered too powerful, but numerous attempts at execution were unsuccessful.”
“What did they try? Lethal injection?” Amon asked, “they’re undead, of course that won’t work.”
“I-it doesn’t specify,” the tech stammered, “a-anyway, the latest entry is the general’s order to weaken it before attempting another execution.”
“How did you try to weaken it?” Slade asked.
“We just stopped feeding it,” Clancy said with a shrug.
Amon snorted, earning a glare from the general.
“Come on,” he said with a snicker, “you can’t be that stupid! Hahaha!”
He started doubling over in laughter, until Alexei lost his patience and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, effortlessly lifting him off the floor. The soldiers that had been holding him somewhat awkwardly let go and stepped back, while Amon tried to stop laughing.
“Oh wow~ You really are strong,” he said.
“Get. To. Point.” Alexei growled.
“Listen, listen,” Amon quickly said, “there’s only two reasons why nosferatu get feral. They either weren’t raised right, or they’re starving.”
“Congratulations, General. You played yourself,” Cat said.
“Well,” Slade said, “I probably would’ve tried the same. Generally any living creature doesn’t last very long without a source of nutrition.”
“Yeah okay, so we designed these to be able to withstand that,” Amon said, “the only part that gets weakened by starvation is whatever humanity is left in them— Can you put me down now?”
“Nyet.”
“Okay.”
“Amon, focus,” Sade said, rubbing his own temples a bit, “how do we stop something that cannot be weakened?”
“I dunno,” Amon said, “when I said “we designed this” I meant the royal we. I wasn’t actually there.”
“We could feed it?” Tyler suggested, “strengthen the human part of it and hope it isn’t royally pissed at being held captive for decades.”
“What are you going to feed it, genius?” Amon asked, to which Alexei shook him as a warning.
“Don’t talk to him like that!”
“Ack!”
“Calm down, he’s right,” Tyler said, “I am a genius~ This facility had two fully decked-out hospital floors, there’s bound to be a blood bank.”
He looked back at Clancy to confirm, but he just looked back at the techs, and one of them nodded.
“Yes, but…it was mostly depleted after it last got out,” he said, “I’m not sure there might be enough to satisfy it.”
“Could we have more flown in?” Tyler asked.
“Out of the question, I’m not taking that risk,” Clancy said, “the first floor is all there is to keep that thing from getting out and wrecking more havoc.”
“There’s a plan C~” Amon said, smirking at Slade, “we got ourselves an immortal and bottomless blood-bag right there.”
“I hate to admit it,” Slade said, “but he’s right. It’s worth a shot.”
“Let’s just get that contract in order before in case it doesn’t work,” Clancy said.
“We can buy you some time,” Cat said, “you said the first floor is the last line of defence, but ideally we want to keep it away from the seventh as well as this floor. Besides, one of us is still missing, and we don’t leave anyone behind.”
“Let me come,” Amon said, “without me you don’t have a single fighting chance.”
“They have me,” Alexei said.
“Oh yeah, you’re pretty evenly matched…in this arm. But what will you do if it gets a hold of your other arm and sucks you dry?” Amon said.
Alexei growled annoyed, but then put him down.
“He’s coming,” he said, “his arm is still bleeding. He’s good bait.”
“That settles it then,” Clancy said, “you three try and keep Killjoy away from the upper floors, the doctor and I will finalise our deal, and then we send him down in an attempt to satisfy its hunger.”
“I suppose that’s the best we can do,” Slade said, “oddly enough, it’s not the strangest thing we’ve done today.”
“Give them a radio so we can stay in touch,” Clancy ordered.
“I’ll inform Bos,” Slade added, “if things get too risky I want you three to retreat.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Amon said.
“As if you wouldn’t make a run for it when things get too dangerous just to spite me,” Slade said, before leaning towards Cat, “keep an eye on him.”
“Been doing that since he showed up,” Cat just replied, before taking a radio from one of the soldiers, “okay, let’s go. We’ll take the elevator to the tenth floor and try to lure it there.”
They headed back to the elevator, escorted by two soldiers who were very happy to be dismissed once the doors slid closed. As the lift began to descend, Cat pulled out her phone, checking her messages. They probably didn’t get any service at their location, but even before they got there, Mirage had already stopped responding to her messages for a while. Hopefully she was just finally getting that rest the doctor ordered.
She put her phone away again and decided to focus on the mission. Distract the vampire and hopefully figure out what happened to Sylvester, and also make sure Amon didn’t kick up any trouble in the process. What was the worst that could happen?
Ding!
The doors slid open, and they stepped onto the empty tenth floor. They looked around, but there was no sound of the creature. Cat grabbed the walkie they had given her, pressing the button to talk into it.
“Where is it now?” she asked.
“It’s on the thirteenth floor and still moving up,” came the reply.
Cat nodded, turning to the others.
“Okay, Amon stay in this corridor and draw its attention. Alexei go over there so you can grab it from behind if you have to,” she instructed.
“What about you?” Amon asked.
“I’ll stay out of your way,” Cat said with a shrug.
Amon rolled his eyes, looking at the bloodied black cloth around his arm. Was it supposed to leak so much past it? And how long had it been doing that? He glanced at the trail he had been tracking from the elevator and shrugged. If that wouldn’t attract a vampire, he wouldn’t know how else to lure it in. He waited for Cat and Alexei to take their positions, before getting closer to the stairwell doors.
“Oh jeez!” he said loudly, “somehow I’ve ended up here all by myself! And oh dear look at all that fresh blood! What a waste to have it all dripping on the floor like that!”
Alexei rolled his eyes from his hiding spot, using the earpieces to keep in touch with Cat.
“Do I have to cover him?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cat said, “he’s an ass but Carter’s life depends on it.”
“Fine. I’ll try.”
Creak…
Amon raised a brow as he looked around. What was that sound? Did it come from the stairwell or somewhere else? Was it one of the others? He looked back at the stairwell door, finding a pair of red eyes peering at him through the little window. He sighed. This was going to hurt again.
The door suddenly blew open as the vampire pushed through it at an immense speed, reaching Amon before he even had time to throw up a defence. It grabbed him by the shoulders and rammed him against the wall behind him, leaving cracks in the concrete. Before it could take another bite out of him, though, Amon managed to grab a hold of its hair, yanking its head back.
It hissed at him, clawing at his arm to try and get him to let go, but Amon just put his free hand on its throat and tried to pin it down. The vampire instead managed to wrench its head from his grip and tried to bite into his wrist, but then Alexei suddenly appeared behind them, sticking out his leg to trip them both.
Amon quickly conjured up a dagger, using that to replace his hand on the vampire’s throat and stabbed it right through to try and pin it to the floor. Then he grabbed its left wrist, while Alexei stepped on to its right arm. It let out a gurgling snarl, spitting up some blood, but didn’t manage to throw them off.
“Huh,” Amon said, “that was easier than I thought…it would be…”
He blinked as he realised his vision was blurring, but it was already too late. The vampire wrenched its hand free and grabbed Amon by the throat, throwing him off before Alexei could stop it. Then it pulled the dagger from its throat and stabbed it in Alexei’s leg instead. It didn’t hurt, but it immediately lost function, freeing its other arm as Alexei fell over, unable to keep standing. The vampire scrambled back a bit, putting some distance between itself and its two assailants as its throat healed, before getting up and hissing at the one closest to him, which was Alexei.
The teen tried to at least sit up, so he could defend himself with his good arm as the vampire targeted him, when suddenly a small, black bird zoomed past his head, turning into a large bear right in front of him. The bear roared, standing up on its hind legs to make itself appear much larger.
“Sly!”
He could barely hear himself over Sylvester’s roaring, but it seemed to be doing the trick. The vampire hissed at him, but backed away as he knew better than to try and take something that big head-on.
Meanwhile on the other side of the corridor, Cat got out of hiding near where Amon had landed, who was groaning as he shook his head.
What was wrong with him?
Cat helped him sit up.
“That was embarrassing,” she said.
“Shut up,” Amon said, “something’s wrong…”
“You’re only figuring that out now?” Cat said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nobody trusts you, did you really think I was just going to let you roam around?” Cat said, grabbing his arm and showing the badly dressed wound.
“You bitch,” Amon said, as it dawned on him.
The light-headedness made sense now. He’d been losing too much blood.
“Go back to sleep now,” Cat said, “we’ll figure things out from here.”
“Fine!” Amon hissed, “good luck surviving that thing without me!”
And then he passed out. Cat made sure he didn’t hit his head on the floor, laying him back down gently and began wrapping a new piece of her cloak around his arm, making sure to do it properly now as Amon’s dark features melted away and Aiden thankfully returned.
“Cat, what on earth?!” Slade hissed through her earpiece.
“What?” Cat replied, “he was going to turn on us eventually. It just made sense to do it first.”
“Is he okay? Is he breathing? How’s his pulse?”
“Calm down, he’s already waking up,” Cat said.
And sure enough, Aiden was stirring a bit, before blinking his eyes open, looking a little dazed. He had a splitting headache, and the roaring echoing through the hallway wasn’t helping. He vaguely recognised a familiar face and somewhat clung to her, shaking a little as he tried to put together what had happened.
“W-what the fuck…what the fuck?”
“I’ll explain everything, but for now we should get our butts moving before we draw any attention,” Cat said.
Aiden gulped and nodded, letting her help him to his feet. Something big and hairy was standing in the distance. Was that what they were avoiding?
“Okay, stay quiet,” Cat said, wanting to wager their chances to make it to the elevator about halfway down, before Sylvester would drive the vampire too much in that direction in an attempt to keep it from going after Alexei. They just had to stay quiet to avoid detection—
Plop!
“Hey guys!”
Cat froze, while Aiden gasped. Mirage of all people had suddenly appeared before them. Behind her, a pair of red eyes snapped in their direction. Why was she here? How? Why now of all times? It didn’t matter. They had no time to lose. Cat tightened her grip on Aiden and reached for her friend.
“MOVE!”
Mirage didn’t need to be told twice, grabbing a hold of Cat’s hand and taking them one floor down. The hallway looked similar, but the vampire, Sylvester and Alexei were still a floor up. Cat let out a relieved sigh, before smacking Mirage on the arm.
“What are you doing here?! You’re supposed to be in hospital!”
“I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to do something!” Mirage said, “did you find Phil? Is he okay? Aiden why aren’t you in disguise?”
“I don’t know, I just woke up,” Aiden said, before gagging as he nearly threw up.
“We found him, he’s safe,” Cat quickly relayed, “we’re trying to distract a vampire so Slade can make a deal with the guy that runs this place, but Amon was weakened from bloodloss and I think Alexei is hurt so now all we really have is Sly.”
“Okay,” Mirage said, “can you contact them? We’re only one floor down. If they can’t regroup I’ll get them.”
“We have earpieces,” Cat said, though at that point the walkie she was carrying crackled to life as well.
“Mirage, you should not be here,” Slade’s voice said.
Mirage snatched the walkie from Cat’s hands before she could say anything, while next to them, Aiden checked his ears, wondering what happened to his earpiece.
“Don’t worry Slade, I signed a waver,” Mirage said, “popped a caffeine booster and traced Cat’s last-known phone signal. Now how about we go deal with that vampire, huh?”
“Okay guys, Keavy identified Phil as the guy in cell number nine,” Bos said, “but he’s got some sort of device on his face, so stay sharp.”
“This isn’t Saw, dude,” Tyler said, “it’s just something to keep him from talking so he can’t use his powers to escape. They use all sorts of different methods, the other two prisoners on this floor are drugged out of their minds.”
“Why I ought to give this general a lecture on human rights,” Slade said, “what kind of maniac signs off on an induced coma without there being any medical reason whatsoever? Does the Hippocratic oath mean nothing to nobody anymore?”
“Can you wake them up?” Bos asked.
“Yes of course I can, but I shan’t, it’s too risky,” Slade said, “I’ve got soldiers banging on the door and only two hands. It’s safer to just let them be.”
“Will you need backup?” Bos asked, “the others are only minutes away from regrouping.”
“Actually I reckon it would be better if I turned myself in,” Slade said, “perhaps I can speak with the general, find a way out that doesn’t involve pretty much starting a war. None of us need that with a demon on the loose, and apparently some kind of vampire.”
“Slade, you could get hurt,” Bos said.
“I’ll heal,” Slade replied, “listen, if we didn’t have something to bargain with, don’t you think they would’ve cornered all of us already? All I want to do is find out what that is and whether it’s worth it.”
“...you have a point,” Bos said, looking over the cameras, “they’ve blocked off the stairwells, but they’ve got no guards at any elevator. It’s like they’re expecting you guys to deal with the vampire.”
“That’s a start,” Slade said, “arite, I’m going to pocket the earpiece so I won’t be able to hear you anymore, but I’ll get back on as soon as I’ve come to a solution.”
“Okay,” Bos said, “I trust you know what you’re doing…before you go, Cat and Amon encountered it, but managed to escape with Nori. There’s your bargaining chip.”
“Thank you,” Slade said, before disappearing from the line.
Bos and Keavy could only watch as he took out his earpiece and headed over to the door to announce his surrender.
Meanwhile Tyler, Alexei and Sylvester came up to the ninth cell, finding the door had a keypad for a lock.
“Do you know code?” Alexei asked.
“Did you know the code for my cell?” Tyler countered.
“Good point,” Alexei said, looking the door over for weak spots, before beginning to tear it from its hinges.
“Let me go in first, he might remember me,” Tyler said, remembering the time they passed each other at the elevator on his first day down here.
Alexei just nodded, tearing the door off with a last pull and stepping aside so Tyler could head inside to face a very confused Phil.
“It’s okay,” he said, “remember me? I told you your friends were looking for you? Well…they’re here. They found us.”
Phil got up from his chair, peering at the two boys behind Tyler, but he didn’t recognise either of them.
“Okay they were here,” Tyler said, “but Slade barricaded himself in the ICU, Aiden is apparently possessed by a demon and Cat ran off to figure out how to deal with a vampire.”
Phil pressed his hands together, tapping them against the contraption locked over the lower half of his face as he looked down towards a corner of the room. That sounded exactly like his friends.
“Do you want me to see if I can take that thing off of your face?” Tyler offered, pulling out Alexei’s small toolkit again.
Phil nodded eagerly and sat back down so Tyler could hopefully figure out a way to get the gag off.
“Oh my god, an electromagnetic lock?” Tyler mumbled, “no wonder they can’t even keep a vampire contained, I could probably tank this entire building with a small EMP.”
“We’re not allowed to do that,” Alexei said, “sea goddess said she would kill us.”
Phil stared at Alexei, before looking back at Tyler, but he just shrugged.
“I’m making a list of things to unpack later,” he said.
Phil nodded and held still again. Some fiddling later, there was the sound of a zap, and for the first time in days, he could feel the contraption loosen. Tyler carefully unlatched the two halves and pulled them away, putting them on the little table that Phil had been using as a desk.
Phil took a relieved breath, not even caring that the air felt like sandpaper in the back of his throat. He could breathe again. His jaw was so sore, he couldn’t even close his mouth, but when he tried to stretch it a bit to alleviate the soreness he suddenly felt the entire lower half of his face cramp up. Sharp jabs of pain shot from his cheeks to his ears and he let out an involuntary whimper as he reached up to grab his face, tears springing to his eyes.
“Wait, I should’ve known that could happen,” Tyler said, “just keep breathing, it might pass in a few minutes.”
“Ty, we need to keep moving,” Alexei said.
“I know, just give him a minute,” Tyler said.
Alexei was about to agree, but then something exploded a couple of floors below them. The boys all stared at each other as they heard the distinctive sound of a bomb going off, some dust coming down from the ceiling.
“We might not have a minute,” Alexei said, “Sly, help him stand. Ty, davai.”
“Okay, let’s get you back to your friends,” Tyler said, stepping back so Sylvester could help Phil stand up.
His legs were fine, but the pain was disorienting, so Sylvester was more of a guide than a crutch. Tyler made sure to stay close to them, knowing how awful it could be to feel alone. Alexei led the way as they headed towards the elevator, though he halted the group as the elevator stopped on the floor and the doors opened. Tyler and Sylvester had no qualms to huddle behind Alexei, though they all relaxed as it was just Cat and Amon, both looking a bit dishevelled and one of them bleeding.
“What happened?” Alexei asked.
“Ran into Amon’s stupid little pet project,” Cat said, “but we got Nori.”
“I told you, I had nothing to do with that experiment,” Amon said, “unless that grenade didn’t kill it, then it’s impressive enough to stake a claim.”
“I don’t like you,” Alexei said, before reaching for his earpiece to activate it, “Bos, do you have eyes on vampire?”
“Uh, give me a second,” Bos replied, “someone set off a grenade that took out most of the cameras.”
While he did that, Phil pushed past Alexei, craving to see a familiar face, even if he wasn’t too happy with one of them. He ignored Amon for now, simply hugging Cat and squeezing her a bit, refusing to let go.
“Okay, I missed you too,” Cat admitted, somewhat awkwardly patting his back, “now let go.”
But Phil didn’t respond, only trembling a bit as he kept hugging her. Cat frowned and pushed him off to take a better look at him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Lockjaw,” Tyler said, “they probably kept him gagged since he arrived here, maybe even before.”
Phil gave a small nod, face pulling in pain a bit.
“Okay, turn around. I got something that might help,” Cat said, already pushing Phil in the right position.
He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but he definitely didn’t expect her to start massaging his neck, working her way up to his jaw. It was a bit painful, but in a good way.
“This should help a little, but you should definitely still take it easy until a doctor can take a look,” Cat said.
“Mhm,” Phil hummed with a nod.
“How’d you know that would help?” Tyler asked curiously.
“I work as a concierge at my boxing gym, lockjaw happens a lot if people don’t know how to guard properly,” Cat said, “don’t talk unless absolutely necessary or the sudden movement might cramp you up again.”
Phil nodded, honestly just glad it didn’t hurt anymore. His throat was much too dry for talking anyway, but he couldn’t complain really. They probably had other things to worry about, such as the demon having taken charge of his friend’s body again, or the unconscious Lieutenant in the elevator.
He glanced back at Tyler, deciding to join him in listing things to unpack later. Especially when they could hear a door being thrown open. They all looked down the corridor, watching how a somewhat disfigured man came stumbling out of the stairwell.
“Damn we were not fucking around when we made those things,” Amon said, “just back into the elevator slowly, I’ll chuck another grenade to slow it down.”
“No!” Tyler hissed, “there’s other prisoners on this floor. No explosives! Just get in the elevator and close the doors before it recovers enough to speed up!”
“You guys are the worst,” Amon said, but he complied, backing into the elevator with the others. Tyler started spamming the button to close the doors, and everyone’s heart rate started slowing down again as they began to close, when at the last second a bloodied hand grabbed a hold, and forced them to open again.
“F-fuck!” Tyler gasped, while Cat immediately extended her staff and jabbed at the vampire in an attempt to force it back.
Instead it just grabbed the pole and tried to yank it from her hands, nearly pulling Cat with it until Alexei grabbed the staff with his left hand to stop them. Sylvester turned himself into a bird, flying past Alexei and clawing and pecking the vampire’s face until it let go of the staff. Alexei pulled it back inside the elevator and started spamming the button to close the doors now, hoping Sylvester could make it back in time…but he didn’t. The doors closed, and the last they heard was the roar of some kind of animal.
“He will be fine?” Alexei asked, after a moment of silence.
“Yeah, even the feral ones should know they get nothing from animal blood,” Amon said, “unless they evolved in the past millennium…”
Alexei glared at him.
“We could help him,” Cat said.
“Nyet,” Alexei said, “we go upstairs to help Slade, bring the girl as peace offering. Bos, which floor?”
“They’ve taken him to the fifth,” Bos answered, “he’s in Clancy’s office. The elevator is under guard. They know you’re in there.”
“We’ll be okay, we have hostage,” Alexei said, pressing the button for the fifth floor, “keep eye on Sly. Let us know if he needs help.”
“He’s doing well so far,” Bos said, “that vampire doesn’t seem very eager to fight a grizzly.”
Alexei seemed relieved, before crouching down and picking Nori up, slinging her over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Tyler asked.
“Making it look like rescue so we don’t get shot on sight,” Alexei said.
“Not if you carry her like that, that looks like kidnapping,” Tyler said, “try bridal carry.”
“...What?”
“Yaknow, when she’s draped over your arms,” Tyler said, “Cat—”
“Absolutely not,” Cat cut in.
Tyler quickly lowered his arms. Luckily Alexei figured it out without demonstration, adjusting his hold on Nori, before the elevator doors opened as they reached the fifth floor…
Meanwhile Slade’s surrender hadn’t been too bad…yet. They didn’t cuff him, just kept their guns trained on him, but he stayed calm as they took him to some office, keeping him under guard until the general showed up. He slowly got behind his desk and sat down, Slade having to resist rolling his eyes at the attempt at intimidation.
“You have some balls, doctor,” Clancy eventually said, “breaking into a black ops facility through the trash… How’d you do it?”
“With severe repugnance,” Slade said, “I don’t suppose you have any wet wipes on you?”
“No,” Clancy said, clearly annoyed, “do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
“Oh I think I’ll be arite,” Slade said, crossing his legs, “I’m immortal. I can survive the two biggest threats in this facility. The people I arrived with have a decent fighting chance I reckon…but you and I both know there isn’t enough ammunition in this place to save you and your men. You can’t even spare them to go after my associates, can you?”
“I think that proves the point I want to make,” Clancy said, “you supers are too dangerous to be roaming around unsupervised.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to make an enemy out of us?” Slade asked, raising a brow, “I haven’t even brought the cavalry and your entire operation is in shambles.”
“Maybe if you had brought the cavalry, you wouldn’t have been so stupid as to release an uncontrollable monster,” Clancy said, “if that thing escapes this facility, who knows what it will do?”
“I doubt it will be even half as dangerous as the demon your Lieutenant accidentally released,” Slade said, “who we also cannot risk escaping.”
“What do you mean?” Clancy asked, “we have him on camera working with your people.”
“For now, yes,” Slade said, “I’m not quite sure how they managed to convince him, but he’s a loose canon. One that we were able to control until you took away both the fail safes we had in place to keep him contained.”
“Why on earth would you let such a dangerous individual roam free?” Clancy asked.
“Because it’s an evil entity that has taken possession of an innocent civilian’s body,” Slade said, “trying to contain it with your methods is ill-advised. You’d be meddling with forces you cannot possibly comprehend— You are meddling with forces you cannot comprehend. Your systems are infected with a technopath’s consciousness, a hyper intelligent teenager managed to get out of his cell, and we haven’t even classified intelligence as a power. Your funding was obviously cut because you have no idea what you’re doing!”
“But you do?” Clancy asked, “so the erratic cannibal who murdered his own wife and took a bite out of his own daughter and then proceeded to manipulate several other psychotic supers into kidnapping a child in order to destroy one of the greatest cities in this world was all part of your plan? Or was it part of your plan to put him in the path of an even more dangerous individual who couldn’t even control his powers and ended up messing with the very fabric of reality on a fluke?”
“That was very much not part of any plan,” Slade admitted, “I suspect you’re not seeing the complete picture—”
“I don’t need to see a complete picture to know you don’t have any more control than I do,” Clancy said, “I’ve been cleaning up after you ever since you came into the picture. Why else do you think Miss Rider would be working for me?”
Slade nearly lost his composure, fully losing his poker face as he got up, staring at the general in disbelieve.
“You,” he said, “you took me six years ago? Took Nori? You’re the one Crosby was so afraid of?”
“I’m just a cog in the machine, doctor,” Clancy said, gesturing at his men to settle down as they got alarmed by Slade suddenly getting up, “if I don’t find a way to prevent incidents like Wendigo, they’ll replace me with someone who will. And I’ll seem nice compared to them.”
“So what do you propose?” Slade asked, having an inkling of where this was going.
“You don’t want that demon to get out, I don’t want that vampire to get out…but since your demon took out my best soldier, I don’t have the manpower to take it down,” Clancy said, “I’m not afraid to admit that your little group and their powers give you the upper hand. I think we can contain the situation without losing any more lives.”
“And what do we get in return if we do?” Slade asked.
“I’m willing to negotiate some leniency for the crimes you’ve committed getting here,” Clancy said.
“I’m not settling for anything less than immunity,” Slade said, “and the freedom of all your prisoners.”
“They’re not prisoners—”
“They’re being held against their will,” Slade said, “that is a human rights violation against your own people. You think I don’t have the right contacts to get you court-martialed?”
“I’m not letting any of them go if you can’t guarantee we don’t get another Wendigo,” Clancy said.
“Only I can,” Slade said, “I know my community, and in my position as their doctor I have their trust, and I can resolve any conflicts before they even arise. Now I admit, I’ve made a mistake with Wendigo, but you have to understand that his situation was unique, and your covert meddling with us only fed into his paranoia.”
Clancy leaned back in his chair, thinking for a second, and then dismissing the two guards so they could talk more privately.
“What do you propose?” he asked.
“I propose to let me handle it,” Slade said, “if I suspect anyone’s powers might pose a risk I can mitigate it with proper training or even medication, and if that doesn’t work, then you may step in and try things your way.”
“You do realise I’ll be keeping a close eye on you to make sure you do have it all under control, right?” Clancy asked.
“Aye, but last I checked surveillance is a lot cheaper than keeping a facility this size running,” Slade said, “you won’t have to beg for funding, and we don’t have to embarrass you by fighting our way out.”
“You’re awfully confident,” Clancy said.
“Naturally,” Slade said, “you either agree to my terms, or fall very, very deep with the loss of many lives on your name, a mass escape, and irreparable damage to an expensive facility.”
Clancy got up as well, towering over the old healer even from across the desk, but Slade wasn’t easily intimidated by that, knowing he was in the right.
“Very well,” Clancy finally said, “if you can handle the vampire and your demon without any more bloodshed, I’ll let everyone walk out…but I want your end of the agreement in writing.”
“Do you have a lawyer to notarise?” Slade asked.
“Follow me to the command centre and I’ll call one to set it up,” Clancy said, “while they’re working on that I’ll tell my staff to cooperate with your people. I know you’re all in contact with each other somehow, so it’d be nice if you could do the same.”
“What are we? Amateurs?” Slade said, pulling the earpiece from his pocket and showing it, but not putting it in yet, “you first, General.”
Clancy was expecting something like that, so he’d already picked up his phone to call the command centre.
“I need you to send the following message to all staff,” he said, “do not open fire on the intruders or escapees and have them safely escorted to the command centre. I repeat: do not open fire on the intruders or escapees and have them safely escorted to the command centre.”
He put the phone down again, and waited for Slade to make his move as well. Slade nodded, putting his earpiece back in and pressing the button so they could all hear him.
“I’ve reached an agreement with the general,” he said, “do not engage in combat and let the soldiers escort you to safety. We’ll have to work together if we want to walk out of here.”
“Oh my God, did you sell your soul?” Bos replied.
“Possibly,” Slade said, “but don’t worry about that. We have a new mission, so let’s focus on that first. Is everyone accounted for?”
“Sly is still on the twenty-seventh, everyone else just arrived on the fifth floor,” Bos reported.
“Arite, well they’ll be escorted to the command centre and I’ll head there to to explain things,” Slade said.
“Can’t wait to hear it,” Bos said, “you heard him guys, Slade’s taking the lead.”
Tyler had always disliked the colour white. Usually because it was just too bright on his tired eyes, especially on a screen. He also found white lacked imagination and warmth. A blank canvas to be filled with anything, preferably as soon as possible too. White got dirty much too easily, any speck of dust would immediately become an eyesore. White clothes never lasted long, always stained with one thing or another within a day; oil, dirt, grass, sometimes even blood. Even when he sat inside all day, the white would inexplicably turn yellow, not to mention possible food spills.
But now, to his dismay, he was surrounded by white. The floor, the walls, his clothes, even the food. Plain white rice served in a white bowl, and a white cup with some sort of milk. The lights were bright and always on, and they hadn’t even bothered to find white furniture to fill the room. Instead they just padded the floors and walls so he could lie down comfortably wherever, and even the inside of the door was padded.
And that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst about this new cell was the silence. The padding on the door blocked any sound from the outside, so all he had was his own thoughts really, which he normally didn’t mind, but after everything that had happened that landed him here, he wasn’t too glad for the company for a change. He felt responsible for all the deaths he had caused, and he didn’t even know for sure if it did anything to help him at all. Only time could tell, but he’d lost track of it.
All he knew was that he had about three meals since they locked him in there, each less appetising than the last one. He couldn’t sleep to pass the time faster, haunted by the image of Oracle’s last moments each time he closed his eyes. He also struggled to tell whether the occasional flashes he saw were hallucinations or a warning for something bigger to come, which didn’t help his nerves at all. They already refused to give him any medication, who was to say they wouldn’t just neglect him entirely after what he did?
Was this going to be the end?
Was this his end?
All alone, surrounded by his least-favourite non-colour.
Clang!
Tyler sat up with a start, staring at the door. Did he really hear that, or did he hallucinate it?
CLANG!
It happened again, much louder this time. Tyler pressed himself in his corner, wiping his face dry and staring anxiously at the door. It didn’t swing open like usual. Instead it was torn completely from the frame and thrown aside before a familiar figure stepped inside.
“Bos, I found Ty,” Alexei reported, but as he stepped closer to his brother he didn’t respond.
Tyler was hesitant, clutching his chest as he just stared at Alexei. Seeing this, Alexei took a knee, his usually focused expression softening a little.
“Tyler, it’s okay,” he said, holding out his hand, “let’s get you home.”
“Y-you’re really here?” Tyler asked.
Alexei nodded.
“Da,” he said, reaching out his hand.
Tyler slowly reached out to touch it, then he grabbed it, and then he lunged forward to hug him. Alexei nearly lost his balance, but managed to stay upright, making sure to use his good arm to hug back.
“Thank fucking god,” Tyler murmured, “for a second I thought I’d finally gone insane— What is that smell?”
“We broke in through waste disposal,” Alexei explained, pulling back a bit to better check on Tyler.
The bags under his eyes had somehow managed to get worse, but other than that he seemed unharmed. Alexei shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around Tyler, before helping him to his feet.
“I-I need my meds,” Tyler said, “they said they’d change them so I had to wait a few days, but they never gave them, a-and now I’m seeing things, just like right before a big one.”
“If that happens we’ll be here for you,” Alexei said, walking Tyler out of the cell and into the corridor where Sylvester, Cat and Amon were waiting.
Tyler first recognised and hugged Sylvester, thanking him before turning to Cat.
“E-even you,” he said, “thank you.”
“You get one hug,” Cat said, somewhat awkwardly patting him on the back as he hugged her next.
He managed a small smile as he let go of her, turning to the last person, but he didn’t hug him. He didn’t even really know him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Bored,” Amon said, “I thought this was a prison break? Where is the riot?”
“Ignore him,” Cat said, pulling something from her pocket and handing it to Tyler: an earpiece.
“Where’d you get a spare?” Sylvester asked, not remembering handing out any extras.
“I swiped it from Aiden when he passed out,” Cat said.
“I-is he okay?” Tyler asked, “who else is here?”
“That remains to be seen,” Cat said, giving Amon a warning glare.
“Besides us there’s Slade and Bos on comms,” Alexei said, “and I think Cyber too, but he sounds different.”
“Oh my god,” Tyler gasped, quickly putting the earpiece in and pressing the button, “Cyber? Bos?”
“Tyler!” Bos replied, “oh thank sweet baby Jesus— Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m okay, just tired,” Tyler said, pulling Alexei’s jacket a little tighter around himself, “what do I have to do to get us out of here?”
“I would really appreciate some access to the cameras,” Bos said, “I used your thumb drive to get into the system, which is how I got the earpieces to work even though our own signal is being blocked, and how I knew where to find you— But everything else is a lil above my paygrade.”
“Okay,” Tyler slowly said, “did you say you managed to get Cyber on the line?”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t sound right, so I told him to conserve energy…or RAM?”
“Okay, let me think for a sec,” Tyler said, rubbing his eyes a bit, “I think…um…”
Sylvester suddenly grabbed his arm, helping him stay on his feet as he swayed a bit.
“You don’t say,” Sylvester said, though as Alexei grabbed Tyler’s other arm, their brother suddenly shook his head as he regained his footing.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, “what were we talking about?”
“Camera access,” Bos said, “but if Cyber can tell how you’re doing, that means he can already see you! Cyber, can you relay the camera footage to me?”
“Processing… P-P-P-Processing.”
“Take it easy, buddy,” Bos said, “Slade, how are his vitals looking?”
“Getting increasingly closer to a concerning range,” Slade replied, “I am entirely in uncharted waters so I’d recommend to take it easy on these kind of demands.”
“Okay, after getting access to the cameras, no more questions for Cyber,” Bos said, “we’ll do everything ourselves from then on.”
“We should keep moving while waiting,” Cat said, “I don’t want to be here when Nori wakes up and finds her lackeys had their brains blown out.”
“I could’ve solved that for you,” Amon said.
“Shut up,” Cat said, “stay where I can see you.”
They headed back towards the elevator, where Nori was still out cold. Cat checked her pulse, just in case, but she was perfectly alive, much to Amon’s dismay. Tyler was mortified by all the blood, being once again reminded of his own mistakes, but they had to keep going.
“We need to get elevator working,” Alexei said, “or we need to risk opening stairwell door.”
“Um…search the soldiers, we’ll need a keycard,” Tyler said, tearing his eyes away from all the corpses, “and a code, if they haven’t changed it…”
“What if they changed it?” Sylvester asked.
“Then I’ll need some tools,” Tyler said.
“Check my pockets,” Alexei said, rolling one of the dead soldiers over with his foot so he could find his keycard.
Tyler felt inside the pockets of the jacket Alexei had given him, finding a small case with small pins and screwdrivers. A case he always carried with him in case his arm or leg needed some tweaking on the spot. Hopefully it would be enough to tackle the keypad.
Alexei handed him a keycard, and Tyler called for the elevator, the doors immediately rolling open as it hadn’t moved from its position yet. Tyler stepped inside, swiping the card in the reader and trying the code he had memorised during his first walkabout…but it didn’t work. He rolled his eyes, getting down on his knees to be on eye-level with the keypad as he used one of the pins to get the front off.
“How did you guys manage to get here anyway?” he asked, needing a distraction from his thoughts as he worked, “where is here even?”
“We’re underwater,” Alexei said, “a building off the coast of island um…San Nicolas?”
“The naval weapons testing island?” Tyler said, “but Clancy is with the military.”
“Maybe that’s why they built next to the island instead of on it,” Sylvester said.
“So how did you get here without being blown to smithereens?” Tyler asked, “Did Andy fly?”
“In a storm,” Cat said, “she air-dropped us on the island and then the sea goddess went all Moses to create a path straight to the trash disposal.”
“Where the fuck was I when all that happened?” Amon asked.
“Wherever the fuck you are when you’re not here bothering us,” Cat replied.
“I like to sing show tunes on repeat to annoy Carter, so I was probably doing that,” Amon said with a shrug.
“Okay seriously, who is this guy?” Tyler asked, jumping a bit as he zapped himself, but it got the elevator working, and they started heading to the twenty-seventh floor.
“He’s the demon who possesses Aiden,” Cat said, “he wanted to help with the prison break so he’s on our side, but don’t turn your back on him. I don’t trust him.”
“...that’s a lot to unpack,” Tyler said, “I’ll do that later.”
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Bos suddenly got a pop-up on his screen, showing Slade in the medical bay in the facility, reading through the patient charts to make sure they wouldn’t be neglected while he had barricaded himself in there. Then another screen popped up, and another and another as Cyber slowly patched him into the entire surveillance system.
“Fuck yes! Keavy come here, I’ll need extra eyes,” Bos said, scanning for the rest of the party.
Keavy quickly rolled her chair over.
“Does that mean I can talk to the others now?” she asked.
“Only when absolutely necessary,” Bos said, “there they are with the others…Jesus Carter, that’s a look.”
“Who else do you need eyes on?” Keavy asked.
“Clancy, Nori and the thirtieth floor,” Bos said.
“Clancy is on the fifth it looks like,” Keavy said, pointing at one of the screens, “and if they’re in order then this is the thirtieth floor…it’s empty though?”
“Wait, what?” Bos asked, pushing her aside so he could take a closer look, “which ones?”
“These four,” Keavy said, pointing them out, “empty room, empty hallway, some kinda power station, another empty hallway by the elevator, oh and the stairwell. Also empty.”
“Yikes,” Bos said, before pressing on his earpiece, “uh, watch your backs guys, I finally have access to the cameras and whatever was on the thirtieth floor isn’t there anymore.”
“That explains why no more soldiers are coming after us,” Alexei replied, “we’ll try to hurry. Which cells are occupied?”
“Uh…hold on, I’m still doing this manually,” Bos said, peering back at the other screens again.
“These three,” Keavy pointed out.
“Thanks,” Bos said, before relaying the info to the others, “cells five, seven and nine are occupied, if they only have active cameras in occupied cells.”
“Only three?” Sylvester said, “this place looks like it’s built for much more…”
“That was the plan,” Tyler said, “we were just the first of many, but they were shut down after I let that monster out.”
Amon coughed and doubled over after Cat punched him in the stomach.
“Sorry,” she said, “but maybe we can add it to the list of things to unpack later.”
Tyler quickly wiped at his eyes.
“Y-you’re right,” he said, “before we free everyone, we need to come up with a good plan. We can’t exactly go back out the way you guys came with two coma patients, and we can’t drag everyone along as we fight our way out topside, not to mention you apparently released that thing again, a-and it’s safer for them in the cells.”
“Tyler,” Alexei said, “did you see it?”
Tyler hugged himself and shrugged.
“S-sorta? It was dark,” he said, “but it was fast…and strong…it wasn’t human.”
“Oh great, that only leaves us with billions of other options,” Amon said.
Cat kicked him against the shin this time.
“He’s right though,” she said, “if we want to figure out what we’re up against, we’re going to have to narrow it down.”
“I have a hunch, but…you’re going to laugh,” Tyler said.
“I never laugh,” Alexei said.
Tyler managed a small smile at that, before nodding and taking a deep breath.
“I think…it was a vampire,” he said, “I-I mean, it had red eyes, and the speed and strength, a-and there wasn’t any blood, everyone looked so pale and Oracle she had this bite mark on her neck. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the only thing that makes sense!”
“I buy it,” Cat said, “I mean, I’m standing next to a demon.”
“Last I checked nosferatu went extinct though,” Amon said, to which they all turned to him.
“So they…are real?” Tyler asked.
“Why do you sound surprised?” Amon said, “I’m a higher demon, you think I don’t know about demon shit? — Yes, nosferatu or vampires are a type of demon…sort of. They’re more like a failed experiment to convert humans into demons, but they were too much of a hassle to maintain so we just let them burn themselves out for a couple of centuries, though I guess that didn’t really work out either. You guys are so fucked.”
“Maybe not,” Cat said, “Nori can stop it, her men were bragging about it.”
“Didn’t we just abandon her?” Alexei asked.
“I’ll go back for her,” Cat said, “meanwhile you guys free Phil. His powers will come in handy either with the vampire or the general. Hell, if he says the right thing he can get us all out of here scot-free, including the other two on this floor. But until then, we leave them where they are, if that’s safer for them.”
“That’s like the opposite of a prison break, have you guys done this before?” Amon said.
“Shut up,” Cat said, “you’re coming with me. I’ll need the firepower in case your science project shows up and Nori is still out cold.”
“It wasn’t my science project,” Amon said, “I had my own shit going on, like figuring out how to survive without a body while being chased by some bitch-ass angel.”
“Oh boohoo,” Cat just said, “do you want to blow shit up or not?”
“...yes.”
“Then come on.” Cat said, heading back towards the elevator, waiting until the others were out of earshot before continuing: “Besides, Phil might disapearify you on sight, but your knowledge on the vampire thing is a bit too valuable.”
“Ooh, you like me~”
“I like not being killed by a vampire, I could’ve asked Alexei to join me instead. He’s obviously stronger than you, except he can’t pull fully functional weapons out of his ass,” Cat said, trying the elevator to see if Tyler’s rigging had left it functional without a keycard— and it was. Score.
“Actually I think the scruffy kid that keeps turning into random animals would be a better match,” Amon said.
“...really? Why?”
“Because nosferatu don’t give a shit about animals,” Amon said, “they can’t digest their blood, and have you ever seen a lion smack the shit out of someone? Even with its enhanced strength and healing it it’ll take a good few seconds for a nosferatu to get back up from that.”
“And you’re telling me this now?” Cat said.
“You didn’t ask! You just assumed I was your best bet because I know a couple of things and know how to use a gun. This is on you.”
Cat just ignored him and relayed the information to the others.
“Amon says vampires don’t care for animals, so if shit hits the fan, you’re the man, Sly,” she said.
“Nice,” Sylvester said.
“Hold on, we’re taking advice from Amon now?” Slade cut in, “Cat you cannot trust him, he’s probably up to something!”
“He is,” Cat agreed, “to get out of here, which we all want, so…might as well work together for now and figure out the rest later.”
“Oh for the love of— Just be careful, las. Or this will end very badly, mark my words,” Slade said.
“I know,” Cat said, “it’s just that we don’t have much of a choice.”
Ding!
“Gotta go, time to retrieve your wayward goddaughter.”
“Wait what—”
But Cat stopped listening as soon as the elevator doors rolled open. Nori was right where they had left her, but at the very end of the corridor, stood a figure, with red-glowing eyes looking right at them.
“Oh right,” Amon said, “they’re attracted to the smell of freshly-spilled blood.”
“You need to work on your timing of revealing information,” Cat said, “what do we do?”
“We can probably close the door in time—”
“Not an option,” Cat said, “as much of a bitch as she is, we leave no one behind.”
“Ugh, I was afraid you’d say that,” Amon said, “okay, grab the girl and get out of here. I’ll cover you.”
“How can I be sure that you will?” Cat asked.
“You can’t,” Amon said, “sticking to your goddamn morals might just kill us both,”
“Then let’s make it a cool death at least,” Cat said, before darting out of the elevator.
Amon rolled his eyes, unfolding his wings and using the back wall to push off as he flew over her and intercepted the vampire that tried to charge straight at her. Cat could hear some sort of ungodly screech coming from down the corridor as the two collided, but she paid it no attention as she grabbed Nori and began dragging her back towards the elevator. She positioned her just around the corner, next to the door, so she wouldn’t be an easy target for any outside threats, before reaching for the button to close the doors, but she didn’t press it.
“Let’s go!” she called out.
Amon was surprised she even waited for him, but not entirely ungrateful. He only barely managed to fight the vampire off enough to conjure up a gun, emptying an entire round of bullets into its chest before getting the hell out of there, flying back towards the elevator and readying a grenade.
“You didn’t kill it?” Cat asked, repeatedly pressing the button to close the doors.
“Not for a lack of trying,” Amon said, tossing the grenade through the closing door.
And sure enough, just as the doors closed, they could hear something slam against it, just before the grenade blew up, shaking the entire cabin and causing the lights to flicker a bit.
“So, where to now?” Amon asked as soon as things quieted down.
Cat released a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding.
“Back to the twenty-seventh,” she said, “the others should’ve freed Phil by now, then we should rendez-vous with Slade and figure out how to clean up this mess.”
Amon nodded, reaching for the right button, to which Cat noticed the chunk of flesh missing from his arm, and the blood dripping on the floor.
“Jesus,” she said, “is Carter going to turn into a vampire now?”
“What? No, you’re thinking about rabies,” Amon said, “which he also can’t get because I’m too awesome to get sick.”
“Are you too awesome to bleed out too, or should I get you a bandage?” Cat asked.
“...maybe a good idea,” Amon said, to which Cat tore off a piece from her cape and wrapped it around his arm to try and staunch the bleeding a bit.
“I hate not knowing what’s going on,” Slade said as he and Alexei snuck back into the stairwell to climb to the seventh floor.
“You trust them, right?” Alexei asked.
“Of course I do,” Slade said.
“Then they’ll be fine,” Alexei said, “if you don’t trust them, then you wouldn’t let them go without you.”
“You’re very wise for your age,” Slade noted.
“I had to grow up early.” Alexei said, before reaching for his earpiece, “Sly, we’re on floor seven. Is safe?”
There was an excruciatingly long moment of silence before Sylvester finally answered.
“It is now,” he said, “go right to the elevator and then enter the doors across from it.”
“Got it,” Alexei said, gesturing for Slade to follow him, “davai.”
Slade just nodded, following Alexei through the door. They headed right until they came across the elevator and headed through the doors. Slade could tell right away that they’d found the ICU.
“This is it,” he said, “Alexei, block the door somehow. Find any other entrances and block those too. Sylvester, where are you?”
“Here,” Sylvester said, stepping out from behind a curtain, “there’s a guy here with the same name as Tyler’s programme.”
“Right,” Slade just said, “I need you to find something to restrain these soldiers, just be careful not to make their injuries worse, we just don’t want them to be able to call for help and alert anyone to our presence. Still, nurses tend to check up on patients periodically, so we won’t have much time regardless.”
“Much time for what?” Sylvester asked, pulling open cabinets to find something that would get the job done.
“You’ll see,” Slade said, approaching the curtain that Sylvester had been hiding behind and pulling it back to reveal Cyber’s body.
He looked at all the machines monitoring his vitals, and came across one that he didn’t recognise. He looked it over for a second, before talking into his earpiece.
“Bos, I found him, but there is some sort of computer connected to him,” he said.
“So that’s how Tyler got him to send a signal,” Bos replied, “okay, describe the computer, what’s going on on the screen?”
“Uh…nothing?” Slade said, “there’s no brain activity either. Are you sure this will work?”
“Well…no, I wasn’t there when it happened,” Bos admitted, “maybe there’s an on-switch? Are all cables plugged in?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Slade said.
“Let me see,” Alexei said, having finished blocking both entrances by wrapping a metal pole around the door handles.
He found the on-off button and managed to turn the screen on, but it still didn’t show much.
“Hm…it looks like computer in Ty’s garage,” Alexei reported, “no text, just one line, blinking.”
“Ooh, like command,” Bos guessed, “crap. Um…try typing anything, see if it responds.”
Alexei pushed Slade aside a bit more, typing a simple message.
Hello?
He pressed enter, and suddenly there was a spike in brain activity. Slade’s mouth fell open.
“It’s like he’s waking up,” he said, “my name is Dr Slade, can you hear us, lad?”
“It’s doing something,” Alexei reported, watching as lines of code appeared on the screen too fast for him to read.
“What’s it doing?” Bos asked.
“I don’t know, is Tyler’s language,” Alexei said with a shrug.
“Ugh, maybe I should’ve sent you to free him first,” Bos groaned, though his voice dropped off a bit as there was a crack in the line, followed by some distorted noise, until finally they could hear a familiar disembodied voice in their ears, though his speech wasn’t as fluent as they first heard.
“Tyler. Is. In. Emotional. Distress.”
“Cyber? Is that you?” Bos asked.
“V-V-V-Voice. Identity. Confirmed. Eren. Bos.”
“Oh god the lag you poor thing,” Bos said, “Cyber listen, save your energy, I just need you to do the last thing Tyler told you to do. Do you remember what that was?”
“Waaait a minute,” Sylvester said as he joined Alexei and Slade a Cyber’s bed, “this guy is our Cyber?”
“It’s a long story,” Slade said, “and it’s not mine to tell, but yes. The computer programme that runs your house and this young man are one and the same.”
“Awesome,” Sylvester said.
“It’s not,” Alexei said, “he’s in pain. You can hear it.”
Slade just nodded as they listened to the distortion on the line as Cyber struggled to answer Bos’ question.
“Are you guys ready?” Bos checked, “we don’t know what we’re about to release.”
“It can’t be worse than the other possible threat,” Slade said, “do it.”
“Alright. Stay safe everyone. Cyber, execute.”
“Executing. Warning. Tyler. W-W-Warning.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get Ty,” Alexei said, “floor twenty-nine. Sly, davai. Slade, are you staying or coming?”
“I’ll stay here,” Slade said, “this is my area of expertise. I’m too rusty in combat.”
Alexei just nodded, unblocking the door they came in through and heading out, followed by Sylvester in the form of a black bird. Slade hurried over to the door and closed it again. He couldn’t bend a pole around the handles, but he could at least stick one through in an attempt to block anyone from coming in.
He looked around to check if Sylvester had done an adequate job from preventing the injured soldiers from calling for help, finding he had tied their wrists to the bed frames with unused tubes or torn sheets, and the button that was normally used to call the nurse had been placed well outside their reach.
That left only two patients untouched; Cyber and Brain. Slade picked up their charts and began reading through the notes to find out what to do next, when suddenly an alarm started blaring loudly. So whatever Cyber had done had worked…
Meanwhile on the twentieth floor, Cat and Aiden had managed to fight their way back to the stairwell and headed further down, but they were still being chased by soldiers, when suddenly the alarm started blaring.
“Oh great, now even more of them will show up,” Cat grumbled.
“We’re almost there!” Aiden said, spotting a sign indicating the twenty-seventh floor.
They turned to go down the next staircase, when a tin can suddenly dropped at their feet.
“Oh no you don’t!” Cat hissed, picking it up and throwing it up through the gap between the railing in the middle.
Aiden conjured up a shield and held it up to protect them both from the bright flash and loud bang as it went off, sending a couple of soldiers rolling down the stairs above them.
“Was that a grenade?!” Aiden gasped, letting Cat pull him along as she continued.
“It was just a flashbang,” she said, “idiots.”
They hurried down a couple more flights, before finally reaching the twenty-ninth floor. Cat threw the door open and hurried through, while Aiden slammed the door shut behind them.
“We need to lock it!” she said.
“Stand back,” Aiden said, conjuring up a flaming sword.
It burned so hot it gave off a very bright light, so Cat had to shade her eyes while Aiden used the heat to melt the lock and the door’s hinges, sealing it shut with world’s worst welding job.
“Alright, that should slow them down,” Aiden said, the sword disappearing again as soon as he dropped it.
Cat nodded, reaching for her earpiece to finally contact the others again.
“Bos, we made it to the twenty-ninth floor. Which way now?”
“Oh shit you made it,” Bos replied, “is Aiden with you?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” Aiden said, “the way?”
“Okay go right, go past the elevator and then take a left,” Bos instructed, “but be careful, we freed the thing on the thirtieth floor, which is quite close to you.”
“We heard,” Cat said, “Cross welded the door shut and there’s a bunch of soldiers in the stairwell so that should distract it, whatever it is.”
“Oh,” Bos said, “did you hear that, Al? Can’t take the stairs.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Alexei replied, “I’m using elevator shaft, is faster.”
“Hold on, let me see where the elevator is currently,” Bos said, “now that Cyber is…somewhat online I can see a whole lot more information, even if some of it is a little corrupted.”
However, as Cat and Aiden passed by the elevator, the doors suddenly opened. Aiden quickly conjured up a shield, just in case, while Cat took cover behind him.
“Elevator is down here!” she hissed.
“Hold your fire,” a familiar voice said as she and three soldiers exited the elevator.
Aiden didn’t drop the shield though.
“Ah fuck, it’s Nori,” Cat quietly relayed, before peeking from behind the shield.
“I thought we shot you out of the sky,” Nori said, now recognising Cross.
“No, you shot Ranger out of the sky, I made sure you didn’t kill him,” Aiden calmly replied.
“Isn’t he your family, you psychotic bitch?” Cat asked.
“This isn’t about me,” Nori simply said, “I would’ve been here waiting for you, but I expected you to go after Mr Winter first, so I was waiting on the wrong floor~”
“Shouldn’t you go deal with the thing on the floor below us that we just freed?” Cat pointed out.
“It can wait,” Nori said, “did you really think we’d be stupid enough to just use one security measure that can easily be bypassed by a corrupt technomancer?”
“It worked the first time, didn’t it?” Cat pointed out.
“Okay enough talk,” Nori dismissed, “let’s see what scares you, kitten~”
“I ain’t scared of nothing,” Cat said, stepping from out behind the shield to try and keep Nori’s attention on herself, “unless your powers could affect real people, but even then I doubt you can reach as far as New York. No one, is that strong, sister.”
“You’re right,” Nori said, “so I suppose your brother will be spared for now. So how about your friend~? What does an angel dream of at night?”
“You don’t want to know,” Aiden said, instinctively backing away a step.
“Yeah you better listen to him,” Cat added, “trust us, it’s not worth it.”
Nori just smirked, their aversion to the idea just making a whole lot more tempting to do it anyway, but she couldn’t act on her own. She grabbed her radio.
“Permission to proceed, sir?” she asked.
Aiden and Cat exchanged glances, but they couldn’t find a way out that wouldn’t result in a shoot-out. Aiden could already feel the familiar throbbing pressure in the back of his head.
“Cat…”
“I want to see what he can do, but try and keep him in one piece, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir~” Nori said sinisterly, putting her radio away again and fully focusing her powers on Aiden to see what he was so afraid of…
But to her surprise nothing manifested. Not out of thin air at least. Instead, Aiden let out a pained yell, nearly collapsing as Cross’ powers seemed to melt off of him. Cat instinctively caught him, keeping him on his feet, until he passed out fully. She noticed his hair beginning to darken even further, to which she promptly dropped him and took a few steps back.
“Great,” she said, “are you happy now?”
“Confused, mostly,” Nori said warily, “what’s happening?”
Though at that point “Aiden” began laughing as he slowly sat up, stretching a bit, to which Nori realised he looked very different.
“Finally! I can stretch my legs again,” he said, getting up before looking around, “where the fuck am I?”
“Secret government facility,” Cat said, “we were in the middle of a jailbreak.”
“Oooh~ Fun!”
Nori rolled her eyes and whistled on her fingers to get the pair’s attention back.
“Who are you? Identify yourself!” she demanded.
Amon turned to her with a grin, setting a step in her direction, completely ignoring the three soldiers with guns trained on him.
“Oh honey,” he said, “I’m the nightmare you tried to summon~ Why the long face? Am I not what you expected?”
Nori just huffed and snapped her fingers…but nothing happened. She tried it again, the glare on her face faltering again as she instinctively set a step back.
“Why aren’t you going away?” she asked.
“Because I’m not some figment of imagination that you can summon and dismiss at your whim,” Amon said, “I’m real, baby.”
Nori scoffed, quickly reaching for her taser, but Amon was faster, grabbing her wrist and twisting her arm on her back. He took the taser from her, pressing it against her throat and turning it on. With a scream, the lieutenant went down, and Amon dropped her unceremoniously to the ground before turning to the three soldiers who now surrounded him.
“Let’s dance~”
“Fuck it,” one of them, said, “fire at will!”
However, before any of them could pull the trigger, they were suddenly blinded by large shadows that sprouted from Amon, knocking them back and obscuring their enemy from view. In the chaos, Amon conjured up his own guns, disposing of the soldiers quickly. One, two, three shots followed by the thuds of three bodies. Amon grinned victoriously as he contracted his wings again, aiming both guns at Nori next—
“Stop!”
He glanced up, finding Cat standing in front of him, taking a fighting stance. Amon smirked.
“You won’t stop me,” he said, changing his voice and appearance to look more like Aiden, “aren’t we friends—”
Wham!
The demon recoiled from the impact as Cat’s fist collided with his face. He stumbled back, dropping his guns and his disguise as he fixed his nose.
“Ow…” he slowly said, “I felt that.”
Cat didn’t reply, maintaining her stance while Amon laughed, but it wasn’t his usual sinister laughter. Instead he let out a more unhinged cackle as he wiped some blood from underneath his nose.
“Ahahah! Wow!” he said, before turning back to Cat with an uncanny gleeful expression on his face, “Do it again!”
“...what?” Cat asked, nearly dropping her guard.
“I have been trapped inside peoples’ heads for thousands of years, and on the rare occasion that I can stretch my legs I want to feel everything, including pain!” Amon said, “But people are always holding back because I look like their fucking friends now PUNCH ME AGAIN—”
Wham!
She didn’t do it again because he asked, but because he was yelling in her face…mostly. Either way it did the trick. Amon seemed happy and he calmed down a bit, grinning after he spit out some blood, looking back up at Cat.
“I like you,” he said, licking some blood off of his bottom lip.
“You gonna help me with this jailbreak then?” Cat asked, “there’s a bunch of people locked up here who deserve to stretch their legs.”
“Those were gonna wear off eventually, you’re gonna have to come up with something of more value and then maybe I’ll behave,” Amon said.
Cat thought for a second, when they suddenly heard a heavy thud coming from the elevator.
“If you behave I’ll ask the crazy strong Russian dude to hit you,” Cat said.
Amon narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“How strong?” he asked.
Another heavy thud sounded from the elevator. Cat just inclined her head in its direction and Amon turned around to watch how the doors were slowly forced open by Alexei, the metal crumbling a bit like aluminium foil in the grip of his prosthetic hand. He stepped out of the elevator, a large black bird sitting on his shoulder, and looked around.
“What happened?” he asked.
Amon turned back to Cat, holding out his hand.
“We have a deal,” he said.
Cat shook his hand, before turning to Alexei and Sylvester.
“Guys, meet Amon,” she said, “he’s a demon who possesses Carter. He’s on our side now, but don’t turn your back on him.”
“...I don’t even want to know,” Alexei said, “are you hurt?”
“We’re fine,” Cat said, “we best stick together for now. Where’s Slade?”
“He stayed with patients,” Alexei said, “I think he’ll be fine, but just in case let’s hurry. We free Tyler, then go up to floor twenty-seven with elevator to free others. Then we go back to floor seven for Slade and the last two.”
“Okay, lead the way,” Cat said. Alexei nodded, following Bos’ directions to find Tyler’s cell, while the others followed.
“So Slade is here too huh~?” Amon asked, “since he’s immortal, it doesn’t technically count if I kill him, right?”
“Only if you wait until we’re sure we don’t need his medical knowledge,” Cat said, knowing very well that with two comatose prisoners, they would definitely need that knowledge.
“Whatever happened here in the last couple of days, it must’ve been abysmal enough to make people leave in a hurry,” Slade concluded, after Aiden showed him the bloodstain he’d found.
“Is there still anyone left though?” Aiden asked anxiously.
He gestured at the progress bar on the screen, and once it had fully filled, several windows opened with lines of code running through them, before they could all hear a crackle in their ear pieces.
“Hello? Hello? Does anyone copy?”
“Bos! We’re here,” Alexei quickly replied, “did you get in?”
“Oh thank baby Jesus— Yeah I’m in, but I had to route communications through the local servers so I might get detected soon, but I’m just glad you’re okay. Is everyone okay?”
“Da, we’re all here,” Alexei said, “but this place is strange, Bos. There’s no soldiers yet, and we found blood too.”
“Okay, give me a second to look through the files,” Bos said, “I don’t have Cyber backing me up, so I have to do things manually, bear with me.”
“Take your time, it’s like ghost town in here,” Alexei said.
“I’m gonna scout around a bit more, just in case,” Sylvester said, before turning into a fly again and zooming off.
Meanwhile the others listened to Bos hum as he clicked through several files and skimmed through the documents and texts inside.
“Hmm…oh, security logs~ Let’s see…it seems there was a security breach two days ago, the same night that Tyler managed to send us the coordinates.”
“Unless it was literally Jesus, could we leave Him out of it?” Aiden asked.
“Sorry, I just came across the casualty rate,” Bos said, “whoever broke out killed forty-two men, one asset, and injured seventy-nine others— Oh shit, of which twenty-nine later succumbed to their injuries, and fifteen are still in critical condition as of…three hours ago.”
“Do I even want to know what an asset is?” Slade said.
“I’m looking, I’m looking,” Bos said, “but the files are riddled with just numbers or fucking code words, or names?”
“Find map first, you can read through info later,” Alexei said.
“Right, blueprints,” Bos murmured, clicking around a bit more, “while I look for that, could you guys figure out which floor you’re on?”
“I’ll have a look,” Cat said.
“Arite, Aiden go with her,” Slade said.
Aiden nodded and followed Cat as they left the office space to figure out which floor they were on, making sure to avoid the cameras of which they knew were still working. To do so, they ended up in another office space, but without cubicles this time, just a lot of desks. In this space, each desk had been wiped clean, empty drawers left open, but chairs neatly pushed in to keep the walkways clear, one of them leading straight to an elevator. Cat promptly walked over and pressed a button, but the elevator didn’t respond.
“Darn,” she said, “I guess we need a code or whatever.”
“Let’s find some stairs instead,” Aiden said, “they’re not usually far from the elevator.”
Cat nodded, though before they could decide in which direction to start searching, the elevator suddenly whirred to life.
“Hide!” Cat hissed, but Aiden was already running in the opposite direction as her and dove underneath one of the desks.
Cat did the same, putting as much distance between the elevator and the hiding spot as she could to avoid being found. Hopefully the elevator would just pass by, or if someone got out on this floor, hopefully they would just walk through and head off, not noticing them.
When she heard the doors rattle, she wagered a peek and spotted three soldiers and a familiar young woman stepping out. She couldn’t see the elevator’s floor sign from that angle, so she pushed herself deeper underneath the desk to hide, keeping her ears open for the footsteps and voices of the four figures.
“Eyes open, guys. We don’t know who we’re dealing with until we find them,” the young woman said.
The group halted for a moment.
“Does that really matter, Lieutenant?” one of the soldiers asked, “I mean, you took down that monster from the basement without breaking a sweat. And what could be worse than that?”
“Anyone who is prepared to face their fears would be worse,” the Lieutenant replied, “now let’s go. We’ll start at the camera that was covered and we’ll fan out from there.”
“Yes ma’am,” it echoed, before their footsteps led out of the room and slowly died away.
Cat didn’t waste a second, pressing the button on her earpiece to warn the others.
“Heads up, guys, we have four guys on this floor looking for us,” she said, “they know we’re here, but not with how many or who.”
“Thanks, las, you two be careful,” came Slade’s reply.
“There’s more,” Cat said, “they’re being led by Nori Rider and they were talking about a monster in the basement that she managed to subdue.”
“Probably the breach that caused all those deaths,” Slade mused, “no matter. I need you and Aiden to stay as far away from her as possible. Especially Aiden.”
“What did I do?” Aiden asked, confused.
“It’s not you I fear, Love,” Slade said, “it’s what she can do. Ah knew her powers would be something to be reckoned with when they started showing when she was only six years old—”
“Now’s not the time to be nostalgic, old man!” Cat hissed, “What was it again? She can show us nightmares or something?”
“No, no, she manifests your own worst nightmares,” Slade said, “brings visions from your subconscious into reality where they can hurt everyone. Do you understand the implications if she decides to use that power on Aiden?”
“...Amon,” Aiden just said, after swallowing the lump in his throat.
“Aye,” Slade said, “so for your own sake, stay away from Nori.”
“Got it,” Aiden said, “we’ll continue looking for stairs, and head wherever Bos tells us to go as soon as he figures out where we have to go to free Phil, or Tyler. Whoever we come across first.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Cat said, “but we best do so quietly. We’ll be in touch when it’s safe.”
“Copy that,” Slade replied.
Cat rolled her eyes a bit at the lingo before crawling out of her hiding place and getting up, spotting Aiden across the room as he did the same. She approached him, checking over her shoulder before whispering at him.
“You good?” she asked. Aiden nodded.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, “you heard what else she said. When someone isn’t afraid to face their fears that means trouble for her, which implies that whatever manifests usually isn’t even that strong— Not if you’re willing to fight it at least.”
“Something abstract could be difficult too,” Cat said with a shrug, “my worst nightmare is something happening to my brother, but he isn’t even around, so…just stick close to me, I’ll kick her ass if she tries to mess with you. Or else I’ll kick Amon’s ass.”
“I hope you will, I don’t want him to hurt you,” Aiden said.
“Don’t get sentimental or I’ll kick your ass too,” Cat said, “come on, there’s literally a sign for stairs over there.”
She marched off, following said sign. Aiden smiled to himself, before following after her.
Meanwhile Slade cleared his throat a bit awkwardly as he turned back to Alexei, who shot him a questioning look, but didn’t actually ask anything.
“We need to hide somewhere,” he said, “they’ll be coming this way eventually.”
“I’ll turn screen off but leave the drive plugged in,” Alexei said, getting up and doing exactly that, before pressing the button on his earpiece,
“Bos, how is that map coming along?”
“I’ve got the blueprints, but I can’t guide you anywhere if I don’t know where you are at this moment,” Bos replied, “just hide anywhere while I try to figure out what the monster is they were talking about.”
“Curiosity kills cats,” Alexei said, gesturing for Slade to follow him as he headed towards the corridor they came from.
It would be their only way out after all. But as they headed that way, they could hear footsteps approaching. Slade quickly pulled him back, heading towards a door with a bathroom sign on it. It wouldn’t last them very long he imagined, but it was better than nothing. Alexei seemed to realise the same thing, making sure the door was closed properly before whispering into his earpiece.
“Sly! We need distraction, we’re cornered!”
“They have guns though, I don’t really wanna get shot at!” Sylvester replied, before immediately changing his mind, “Oh wait. I have an idea.”
“Wow, wow, wow,” Bos cut in, “what are you planning, Sly?”
“No time to explain,” Sylvester said, “but if you don’t hear back from me, don’t order any calamares.”
“Fucking hell not again,” Bos sighed.
“Again?” Slade repeated.
Alexei just shrugged.
“I’ll check on him after, but for now we need distraction,” he said, “and we can’t stop him anyway.”
“You’re right,” Bos said, “while you wait, I think I figured out what broke out the other day.”
“We have to listen since we can’t go anywhere else, right?” Alexei said with a sigh, making sure not to press the button this time, so Bos couldn’t hear.
“Might as well, yes,” Slade said, while Bos had already begun talking.
“Okay so I can’t really open the file because it’s password protected, but the security logs clearly state that something or someone named Killjoy broke out of a high-security cell on the thirtieth floor, caused all those casualties, before being subdued ‘before it would regain its full strength.’”
“So we stay away from thirty-eth— From floor thirty, got it,” Alexei said.
“Not really,” Bos slowly said, “another security log states that Tyler has been transferred to the twenty-ninth floor.”
“And do we know where we are yet?” Slade asked.
“Tenth floor,” came a whispered reply from Aiden, “Cat and I are in the stairwell, but we don’t know how safe it is.”
“Ooh hang on I got something on that too,” Bos replied, “so after all the casualties the facility apparently received an order to reduce staffing to the minimum requirements to handle seven assets and a lot of floors were put out of commission, including the tenth.”
“Which floors are still in use?” Slade asked, “it’ll narrow down the search for the others, unless all prisoners are kept on the twenty-ninth floor?”
“Oh no, don’t worry, I’ve found exactly where everyone is being kept,” Bos said, “just before Tyler was transferred they also transferred Brain and another asset from the twenty-third to the seventh floor, and if I look a couple more days back I can see Phil checked in on the twenty-seventh floor. He wasn’t relocated after the break-out.”
“So prisoners are somewhere between floor twenty-three and floor thirty?” Alexei checked.
“Except for two, it looks like the seventh floor is the med bay,” Bos said, “I think it’s best if you take that part on you, Slade. Al you escort him. The floor is still operational and will be guarded.”
“Got it, we’ll go as soon as Sly clears way for us,” Alexei said.
“Then we’ll start on the twenty-ninth floor,” Cat said, “we’ll be far away from Nori.”
“Alright, since you’re already in the stairwell, just head down,” Bos said, “everything between the tenth and the twenty-seventh floor is as good as empty.”
“We’re not going up?” Aiden asked.
“No, the floor numbers are technically negative, so the further down you go, the higher the numbers get.”
“Oh, okay. Down we go then,” Aiden said, following Cat down the stairs.
“Be careful, Love. We don’t know what state we’ll find them in,” Slade said.
“If I need a doctor I’ll call you, okay?” Aiden assured.
“Stop flirting on the main channel, it’s gross,” Cat said, “keep up, Carter.”
“I wasn’t flirting,” Aiden huffed under his breath, though he quickened his pace to keep up with Cat.
On the other side of the tenth floor, Nori and the three soldiers were trying to figure out who had broken into the facility. Knowing the waste disposal hatch had been breached, and having seen something covering a camera on the tenth floor, they started at the supply closet where the trash chute was located, but all they found was some kind of wet trail leading out of the storeroom and down the corridor.
The three soldiers looked at Nori to see if she wanted to investigate. She shrugged and began following the trail. As they turned the corner, they came across a large, red, slimy octopus.
“That’s our breach?” one of the soldiers said.
“...should we shoot it?” another asked.
“No,” Nori said, rolling her eyes as she approached the animal, “they say these octopi are intelligent enough to dream…”
“...Please don’t manifest an animal’s nightmares, I don’t want to know what that looks like,” one of the soldiers said, “can’t we just put it in a bowl and toss it back in the ocean? These things can’t survive long outside of the water, right?”
“They can’t,” Nori said, “and they also can’t break open a reinforced steel door and make their way up the garbage chute before the water even gets high enough.”
Without warning she suddenly pulled something from her belt and jabbed it against the octopus, to which all its arms spasmed as it seemed to jump away from her. She pulled away the device, which was a simple taser.
“Oh come on, you won’t let me shoot it but you electrocute the poor thing to death?” the first soldier said.
“Wait for it,” Nori said, putting the taser back on her belt.
Sure enough, after the octopus stopped spasming, it began morphing. For a second it seemed like it was melting until they realised it was just changing shape until it had turned into a young man, still hissing in pain from being tased as he glared up at the young Lieutenant.
“You bitch!” he said.
“I know you,” Nori just replied, “you’re one of Eren Bos’ little scoundrels, aren’t you? …Why are you naked?”
“Ever seen an octopus wearing pants?” Sylvester said, sitting up.
As he moved, the three soldiers immediately armed their weapons, to which the young man only laughed and got to his feet.
“You won’t shoot me,” he said, “your general finds my powers much too interesting~”
And sure enough, Nori didn’t allow them to shoot, not even as he turned around, slapping his own bare ass before turning into a black bird and flying away.
“You two, go after him,” Nori said, pointing at the two soldiers to her left, while gesturing for the soldier to her right to follow her, “and you come with me the other way. Obviously he’s not working alone and just trying to distract us.”
She headed back to the office space where they were planning to search before, but Sylvester’s distraction had done its job and Slade and Alexei had managed to make their way to the stairwell and began climbing up to the seventh floor.
They paused at the eighth, when Sylvester finally caught up with them in the shape of a black panther carrying a sack in its mouth. He dropped it before turning back into a human and beginning to pull some clothes from his sack.
“Always works~” he said proudly.
“What does?” Slade asked.
“He confuses them by being animal, then naked human, then running away,” Alexei explained.
“Ah, the element of surprise,” Slade said, “I was already wondering, your clothes didn’t need replacing when we got in here.”
“Because I’m a shapeshifter by changing my own matter and anything that touches me. My clothes become my fur or scales or just part of my skin,” Sylvester explained, finding his earpiece at the bottom of the sack and putting it back in his ear.
“I’m alive, Bos,” he announced.
“Please tell me you didn’t do the naked thing again,” Bos said with a sigh, “you’re gonna get an indecent exposure or sexual harassment charge one day!”
“Which is much worse than breaking into secret facility,” Alexei said sarcastically, to which Sylvester fist-bumped him.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Bos said, “just go scout ahead for Al and Slade. I really miss Ty and Cyber, they would’ve already had control of the surveillance…”
“Alright, let’s hope these suckers don’t carry bug spray,” Sylvester said, before turning into a fly and zooming off.
“And granted that the coast is clear,” Slade said, “where do we proceed on to next?”
“Um…that, that depends. Where are coma patients usually kept?” Bos asked.
“Depending on the cause they can be anywhere, but generally they’re kept in the ICU to monitor vitals while the underlying cause is treated,” Slade said.
“Okay, ICU, that’s easy,” Bos said, “literally just straight across from the elevator, clever design.”
“Indeed,” Slade said, “I suppose we just have to wait and hear back from Sylvester to see whether we can make that cross…can he hear us?”
“Da,” Alexei said, “he will answer when safe, or return to us.”
“Arite,” Slade said with a nod, before pressing the button on his earpiece again, “this seems like a good time to ask for an update. How is it going, Aiden? Cat?”
“There’s so many stairs,” Aiden replied, “we just passed the twentieth floor, so we’re almost there. Praying we don’t run into anyone.”
“You didn’t pray hard enough!” Cat hissed, stopping in her tracks when she heard footsteps and heading back, dragging Aiden along as they sought refuge on the twentieth floor.
They hurried through a short corridor, before ending up in the communal space. The lounge seats and dining table were now covered in plastic sheets to keep the dust off as the floor had been closed off.
“Now what?” Aiden asked, realising it was a dead end and it wouldn’t be easy to circle back in case someone came after them.
Cat just shrugged, staying out of sight from the elevator and stairs at least, keeping her ears open for any more footsteps and chatter.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Keavy snuck into the garage to bring Bos a cup of coffee, both to support him as well as to try and sneak an update on her brothers and their new friends.
“I added some extra sugar to keep you going,” she said, handing him the cup.
“Thanks, Keavy, I really needed that,” Bos said quietly.
“How’s it going?” Keavy asked.
“It’s going,” Bos just said, “is Andy back yet?”
“She just landed,” Keavy said, “the jet took some damage in the storm so she’s giving her a full check-up.”
“Well, that was to be expected with such an insane plan,” Bos said with a sigh, “don’t worry though, they’re on the right track.”
“Can I stay and watch?” Keavy asked, “please? Not knowing is killing me!”
“Alright, alright, no need to be dramatic,” Bos said, “if your promise not to talk you can grab an earpiece.”
Keavy happily pulled up a chair and grabbed one of the earpieces to listen in on everything. Bos shook his head a bit, taking a sip of his coffee before focusing back on his screen and realising something had changed.
“Oh no,” he said, quickly reaching for his own earpiece to talk to the others, “Cat, Aiden, a security alert just went out for the twentieth floor. What’s going on?”
“Someone was coming up the stairs so we went to hide here, but I guess the cameras were still working,” Aiden replied, “this floor is a dead end, we can’t get back to the stairwell without a confrontation.”
“Then you might as well make some noise to draw attention away from the seventh,” Bos said, “Al, Slade, the ninth floor should be safe to hide out on. I have a feeling the stairs are about to get busy.”
“Got it, going back down,” Slade replied, gesturing for Alexei to follow him as they both turned around to go back the way they came.
Meanwhile in the control room Cat and Aiden had indeed been spotted and were being tracked using the still-active cameras in the prisoner lounge. Clancy was peering at the screen along with the techs, tilting his head as he couldn’t quite figure out who they were.
“Have we ID’d them yet?” he asked.
“Uh…the female appears to be a hero who goes by the alias Black Cat, that’s about all we know, sir,” one of the techs answered, “we’re running facial recognition for the other guy, but that might take a while.”
“Narrow it down to family and friends of our prisoners, that should get you a result faster,” Clancy said.
“Yes sir, I’ll set up a new search, sir,” the tech said, beginning to type away on his keyboard.
Clancy nodded and picked up his radio.
“Lieutenant, has your team caught the shapeshifter?” he asked.
“They just came to admit they lost sight of him,” Nori replied a few seconds later, “we haven’t found anyone else on this floor either. I suspect they’ve already infiltrated further.”
“Indeed,” Clancy said, “twentieth floor, one fifth-rank super and one bogey.”
“An unknown super?” Nori asked, gesturing for her men to follow her as she headed towards the elevator.
“We don’t even know that,” Clancy said, “he’s not wearing a costume unlike the girl he’s with. Does the alias Black Cat ring a bell?”
“Yes, she tried to prevent Winter’s kidnapping alongside Mirage and Ranger,” Nori said, “I’ll proceed with caution until we identify the other guy.”
“Good plan,” Clancy said, “known or not, he got in here and he’s working together with Black Cat and the shapeshifter, possibly more. I’m sending more men down to back you up.”
“Yes, sir,” Nori replied, clipping her radio back to her belt as they reached the elevator.
The ten or fifteen soldiers that Clancy sent down were logged in the same system that had detected Cat and Aiden in the first place, unknowingly alerting Bos to their exact plans. He chugged the coffee for a much-needed energy boost, before warning the others.
“Cat, Aiden, the system just logged an order to send…I’m counting fifteen, give or take— They’re sending fifteen soldiers to the twentieth floor as backup for Lieutenant Rider.”
“What?” Aiden hissed, “didn’t we go all the way down here with the express purpose of staying away from her?”
“You’re going to have to explain that one,” Aiden said.
“Tyler used um…an inside connection to break out Killjoy. I can guide Al and Slade through the process of doing that again and Nori will have no choice but to respond to that instead because she was the one who dealt with it the last time too.”
“And how long is that going to take?” Aiden asked, “because she could be on that elevator!”
“Uh, stall her!” Bos just said, “Al, Slade, as soon as the coast is clear make your way to the ICU. Slade, you know what you’re looking for.”
“Aye, just waiting for things to quiet down on the stairs,” Slade replied, talking a bit hushed, “Aiden, whatever you do, don’t give her a chance to target you.”
“Maybe I’ll take her down first, who knows?” Aiden said, letting himself transform into Cross as they could hear the elevator getting closer, “I kicked fucking dinosaur ass, what’s a couple soldiers?”
“Hell yeah three-brain!” Cat said with a grin, to which Aiden rolled his eyes.
“Language, Cat!” he said.
“Really?” Cat said, “you can say fucking dinosaur ass but I can’t say Hell?”
“Just don’t swear with any religious connotations,” Aiden said.
“Jesus Christ, just when I thought you were cool again.”
Tyler sighed as he stared off into the distance a bit. So much had happened in the past hour, or maybe more. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since two soldiers dragged him into this office, sat him down on a chair, cuffed his hands in front of him and left.
He had plenty of opportunity to pick the cuffs open with anything on the desk before him, but he couldn’t will himself to do it. He didn’t even want to turn on the computer on the desk to figure out what exactly was going on. He didn’t want to know about the carnage he was responsible for.
He was exhausted, but every time he closed his eyes he could see Oracle’s face. She’d looked so kind, so compassionate, even in death. She’d looked peaceful, in a way, but he still couldn’t stand to see it on the inside of his eyelids. So staring it was.
There was a chip in the lacquer that covered the desk, revealing it’s original light wood shade, rather than the dark and aged look it was supposed to have.
The door behind him opened with a soft click, and slow, heavy footsteps entered the room as the door fell closed behind them. Tyler kept his eyes aimed at the chipped lacquer as the figure sat down at the desk. He could feel their eyes burning on his skin, but he simply didn’t have the energy to look up.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
He recognised Clancy’s voice. This was probably his office. That made sense. Lieutenant Rider did tell the soldiers to take him to the general. That didn’t make it any easier to will himself to look up, though. If anything, he didn’t think he could face the man at all right now, knowing he’d probably been in the wrong.
“You unleashed a five-hundred year old evil in my facility, killing dozens of good men,” Clancy continued, “we have to fly in new medical supplies and dozens more will likely die just waiting for those. Not to mention you lost us a very valuable asset—”
“She has a name,” Tyler interrupted.
He wasn’t quite sure where he found the energy, but he was glad to have said it. Clancy’s glare hardened as he leaned forward, an arm resting on his desk.
“So did my soldiers,” he hissed, before sitting back, “administrative staff are being evacuated now. The situation is under control for now and the vampire is locked up again in its old cell, but my staff is being reduced to bare bones, so I literally don’t have the manpower to handle any more of your goddamn antics.”
Tyler went quiet again, not responding much and still not looking at the general. The older man sighed, and continued.
“Apparently I can’t even trust you with the other assets, so I’m transferring you to a different floor and revoking all privileges.”
After having that said, he got up and opened the door, two soldiers already waiting for him. Clancy didn’t even say anything, he just held the door open and gestured for the two soldiers to come in. They nodded, pulling Tyler to his feet and taking him out into the corridor. The three of them had to squeeze past a stream of people walking single file, all seeming anxious and saying something about catching the last boat, but Tyler didn’t think too much of it.
The soldiers took him back to the elevator, swiped their card, and punched in a new code. Tyler could tell it was a new one, but he couldn’t be bothered to figure out what it was exactly. It was definitely better to just stay put and wait for Bos to find them. He only looked up to see where they were taking him, growing a bit nervous when the elevator descended past the twenty-seventh floor. For a brief moment, he thought he was going to be sacrificed to the vampire, but then the elevator stopped at the twenty-ninth floor, and the soldiers dragged him off of it and into an empty corridor.
It was much like the cells on the floor where he was kept previously, only the doors had no little window in them, the walls and floors were very white, and the lights seemed much brighter than in the rest of the facility. When did they restore the power anyway?
The soldiers took Tyler into a tiled room at the end of the corridor, where two more soldiers were waiting for them, armed with…hoses? Tyler nervously glanced around as he was uncuffed and pushed further into the room, and he nearly tripped over a drain in the floor.
“Get undressed,” one of the soldiers ordered.
Tyler turned back to face them.
“W-what—”
He immediately regretted the hesitation, as he was suddenly barraged with two strong streams of cold water. He stumbled back further until his back hit the tiled wall, he turned his head away to avoid inhaling any, before sliding down onto the floor to try and make himself as small as possible.
Still, by the time the water finally stopped, he was drenched. Ill fitting clothes now stuck uncomfortably to his skin, which felt numb from the cold water and now the cold air hitting it too. He watched a trail of red run over the white tiles as the water swept it away down the drain, and he realised he’d gotten some blood on his clothes somewhere in the chaos from last night.
“Are you gonna listen now?”
Tyler’s head snapped up, finding four soldiers peering down at him, two of them holding a hose ready to hit him again. He quickly fumbled with the hem of his wet shirt, peeling it off of his chest to he could pull it over his head. He tossed it aside and kicked off his shoes while trying to undo the button of his pants.
It took some effort, his hands trembling from the cold by now, but when he finally got it he quickly kicked his pants off and threw it aside as well, hugging his knees as he sat back against the wall and peered at the soldiers, but they didn’t seem satisfied. One of them even rolled his eyes.
“All of it,” he said.
“Why—”
The water hit him square in the face this time, and he had to shield his head with his arms just to be able to cough up the water he’d inhaled in his gasp. Luckily it didn’t go on as long this time, and he was able to take a proper breath of air when the hose was turned off again. Still these men didn’t play around, so after he’d caught his breath, Tyler shakily reached for the hem of his underwear and started pushing it down.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” one of the soldiers commented.
Tyler refused to respond or look at them, only one having the decency to turn away, while the other three simply just didn’t care much.
“Now get to your feet and put your hands against the wall.”
Tyler took a deep breath, using his hands to cover himself as he got to his feet, before reluctantly putting them on the wall after turning his back on the soldiers. He had a growing suspicion of what was going to happen next, and braced himself before he could feel the two streams of water on his back again as they hosed him down.
He wasn’t sure what the purpose was, other than to humiliate or even dehumanise him, or maybe the cells on this floor didn’t have showers of their own? Either way it sucked, but now that he had complied, it didn’t take too long, and after the water finally stopped they even gave him a clean, white towel to dry himself off, and even let him hold on to it for modesty while figuring out his size for his dry clothes.
Tyler noticed that everything was white, even the underwear. On second thought, even the grout between the tiles and the plastic covering the drain was white. The hoses were white too. The only splash of colour being the green uniforms of the soldiers. It also explained why this floor looked so bright. The light just wasn’t being absorbed by anything and reflected off of everything. He wasn’t sure what the purpose was exactly, but he could tell it didn’t bode well for the rest of his stay in this hellhole.
After getting dressed in a white, somewhat oversized T-shirt and a white pair of sweatpants, two soldiers dragged him away again. No shoes or socks to keep his feet warm, but that would soon be the least of his worries. Somewhere halfway down the corridor, they opened one of the cells with the keypad and pushed him inside.
The first thing Tyler noticed was that it was significantly smaller than his previous room. There was no bed, no desk, no dresser, no toilet or shower. Just bare, white walls and floors. Padded for a smidgeon of comfort, but frankly he didn’t find anything comfortable about the whole room. He felt claustrophobic and lost at the same time, but as he turned around to protest his new accommodations, the door already closed in his face, forming just another featureless white wall.
He stumbled back a bit, falling onto the floor as his heart rate and breath suddenly spiked. The white walls felt like they were closing in on him, and he couldn’t quite breathe. But he also recognised the pressure as something else, to which he remembered he hadn’t had his medication for several days, and he probably hadn’t slept all night by now.
He anxiously looked around, but couldn’t see a camera or anything, the bright ceiling lights only blinding him. He covered his head with his arms as he laid down, curling into a ball as he tried to force himself to calm down. If he had a seizure now no one would know, and the last thing he wanted was to die alone, in captivity, of a fucking seizure.
He wasn’t quite sure whether he had a seizure or not. He sure felt tired enough, but that might as well have been caused by everything else. The important thing was, when he opened his eyes again, he was still alive. Tyler blinked a bit and slowly sat up, making sure he wasn’t dizzy, before sitting with his back against the padded wall.
How much time had passed?
Some or none at all?
Did he even pass out or not?
Everywhere was too bright to look, so it took him a moment to realise a new item had appeared in the small room. He saw it by pure chance, having just decided to lie down again to shade his eyes with his arm, when he noticed the white tray that had appeared by the door.
On it was a white plate with plain, white rice, a white spoon to eat with, and a white cup with milk to drink. After scooting closer to the tray, Tyler picked up the spoon and poked the rice with it.
“Note to self,” he said quietly, “research if deprivation of…colour is some sort of pervasive torture method.”
He took a bite of the rice, pulling a face as it was dry and cold. Not very edible at all, but he had to hang in until Bos would find him, so he reluctantly emptied the plate, and then the cup, before dragging himself back into a corner away from the door, closing his eyes and trying to imagine some colour instead…but all he could envision was the colour red, like the blood that was shed because of him…
Meanwhile the General had taken a much-needed power nap, still re-tying his tie as he headed towards the main control room on the fifth floor, not too far from his office and quarters.
“Status?” he asked, as he walked into the room, finding a monitor that wasn’t working and using it as a mirror to straighten out his tie.
“The last ship is on course to the main land, concluding the evacuation, sir,” one of the techs summarised, “Killjoy is secured on the thirtieth floor, and the other assets are all accounted for and in their appointed cells.”
“How is McLagg settling in his new room?” Clancy asked, turning to the feed from the security cameras.
The tech pulled up the room in question, showing the young man in the blindingly white room.
“Looks like he’s awake, sir,” he said, “much calmer now.”
“Good,” Clancy said, “I should’ve started with this from the beginning…where is Lieutenant Rider? Send her to my office. And I could use some coffee.”
“Yes sir,” the tech said, locating the young woman in question and placing a call to the room she was in.
Clancy headed back to his office, tidying his desk a bit while he waited for her and his coffee.
The lieutenant showed up first, hair still damp and she had an excuse ready why.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting, I was in the shower,” she said.
“That’s okay,” Clancy said, “sit down, Lieutenant. You must be exhausted after taking down that vampire last night.”
“Thank you, sir,” the young woman said as she sat down, “I am a little, but not because it took a lot of effort. It was just… a long night, sir.”
“Tell me about it,” Clancy said with a sigh, when there was another knock on the door, before a soldier stepped in with two cups of coffee.
“Your coffee, sir, lieutenant.”
“Thanks,” the young woman said, taking a cup, while Clancy just waited for the soldier to place his on his desk before shooing him out the office with a wave.
He sighed again, before taking a sip.
“So, lieutenant,” he said, “how’d you get him to return to his cell so willingly in the end?”
“The same way I get everything done for you, sir,” the lieutenant replied, “I conjured up his worst nightmare and let it manifest…”
“What could a creature like that have nightmares about?” the general scoffed, “what unspeakable horrors did you conjure?”
“It was…just some guy, actually,” the lieutenant said, frowning a bit, “with old-timey clothes and a vitamin D deficiency.”
“Well,” Clancy said, “the tests suggest he is over five hundred years old, so probably someone he knew from the past. Childhood trauma or something.”
“That’s common, yeah,” the lieutenant agreed.
“Speaking of which,” Clancy said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now, but how do you feel about your father being…right? You told me yourself your last memory was of him babbling about government conspiracies.”
The lieutenant seemed a bit taken aback by the question, but she couldn’t not answer.
“I know very well he was right,” she said, “but he was wrong to call it a conspiracy, or to try and fight against it. If the things he did to his friends weren’t proof enough, there’s also what happened last night…if we let people and things with that much strength run around unchecked, innocent people are going to get hurt… It’s like my uncle used to say, if I remember things right…we have to protect those who can’t protect themselves.”
“And which uncle would that be?” Clancy asked.
The lieutenant bit her lip, a little reluctant to answer. Clancy leaned on his desk as he sat forward a bit, talking…surprisingly gently.
“Nori,” he said, “I won’t get mad.”
“It was…Slade, I think,” the lieutenant admitted, “I’m not sure, it’s all blurry.”
“Maybe you need more rest, lieutenant,” Clancy said, “I’m placing you on leave, so you can regain your strength…in case we need it again.”
“Thank you, sir,” the lieutenant said, “oh, what about Winter’s…treatment?”
“I think he can use a break too, he’s been sufficiently placated,” Clancy said, waving his hand dismissively, “if not, I’ll know where to find you to conjure more visions.”
“Of course, sir,” the lieutenant said, taking that as her cue to be dismissed, she got up and left the general’s office with her coffee, stifling a yawn in her hand before taking a sip.
However, rather than going back to her quarters, she headed into the command centre, heading over to the surveillance corner and peering over the different screens.
“Um…are you looking for anything specific, ma’am?” the tech asked.
The lieutenant nodded.
“Show me Killjoy,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll put it on screen five, ma’am.”
The lieutenant nodded again, looking at said screen as the image changed from one of the corridors, to the bunker-esque cell on the thirtieth floor. Held in place with heavy iron chains and shackles sat a small, pale figure, still covered in the blood of its latest spree. Rocking back and forth on its knees, as much as the chains would allow, mumbling something incoherently.
“I hope its not trying to summon any demons in there,” the tech commented.
“Have you ever considered recording the audio and send it to a linguist?” the lieutenant asked, “someone familiar with medieval languages…”
“Uh…is that an order, ma’am?”
“Just a suggestion,” the lieutenant said, “ask the general.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
Now that things had settled down, the cleaning up could begin. Survivors but seriously wounded were evacuated as soon as they were stable, floors that would no longer be in use were closed and, excess staff was dismissed and deployed elsewhere.
Clancy was left with just enough to handle his current guests, and luckily none of them tried to kick up any further trouble. It seemed Tyler had learned his lesson, and with a combination of an uninspiring environment, medication in his food, and limited contact he was probably too busy trying not to go insane to think of another escape attempt.
Phil also seemed to settle in his routine, no longer fighting the guards or the doctors administering his nutrients, and peacefully scribbling away in his notebook while in his room. The coma patients had been moved to the staff med bay so they could close the prisoner med bay, and both were in stable condition. And lastly, the two remaining supers that were still allowed in the communal area were too drugged out of their minds to notice Oracle’s absence, or Tyler’s for that matter.
He regretted the loss of his staff, both dead and alive. Because that meant it would take some time before he could proceed with the rest of his plans, which was to hunt down and find more supers that needed to be kept an eye on, but that was placed on the backburner for now. Instead he had to work with what he had, and since there was nothing else to do, he had plenty of time to figure out how to do exactly that.
One of the techs informed him of the lieutenant’s suggestion to have Killjoy’s mumblings analysed and translated, so he allowed them to record it and to find a linguist who could translate without needing context.
Other than that he focused on making sure their limited staff was working with the best efficiency, and he wanted to organise a memorial service for those that lost their lives, preferably on the landing pad on the surface. The fresh air might do the majority of them some good. However…
“What do you mean it might not be possible?” Clancy asked, after one of the techs denied his suggestion for a topside memorial service.
“Sorry, sir, but this afternoon’s weather data is showing a hefty storm incoming,” the tech said, showing said data.
Clancy frowned as he looked at the shapes on the map.
“It didn’t look like that this morning,” he said.
“Yeah it’s pretty sudden, meteorologists are freaking out across the board,” the tech said, “maybe it’ll blow over during the night, but for now things are gonna be rough out there.”
“Alright, keep me updated,” Clancy said, before spending his time to come up with an alternative plan for a service.
He took a short break to have dinner, but as he sat down in the mesh hall with his food, he was approached by one of the techs with a rather anxious expression on his face.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Um…we just lost contact with the mainland, sir,” the tech said.
The general rolled his eyes.
“It’s just the storm,” he said, “see if you can radio San Nicolas to see if their connection is still intact.”
“Right away, sir,” the tech said, hurrying off again.
The general nodded and finally took a bite from his dinner. He wasn’t too worried about the storm and its complications. He knew what he was getting into when he was assigned to a facility that was built on the ocean floor, with only a small portion topside. It wasn’t odd to see large waves rolling over it during high tide, so some storm damage was just to be expected.
He couldn’t lie awake over some bad weather, but unfortunately it was something else that kept him from getting into bed in time yet again. Alarms went off, and for a second he feared the worst, before composing himself and heading to the control room to see what was happening.
“Now what?” he grumbled, the different alarm beeps in the control room beginning to sound too familiar too him.
“We’re not sure, sir,” one of the techs said, “the sensors on the south side of the structure are going crazy for some reason. It’s probably the storm though…”
“What elevation?” Clancy asked.
“Uh…all of them?”
“That shouldn’t be possible from just a storm,” Clancy said.
However, before the techs could come up with an answer, another alarm suddenly started blaring.
“Now what?!” the general snapped.
“Uh, we have a breach, sir. At the waste disposal hatch,” one of the techs said, “but we’re not taking on water, so it might be an error?”
“Maybe the current is messing with our sensors,” another tech suggested.
“What current?” the general asked sharply, “there’s never been a current on the south side of the structure.”
“M-maybe the storm made one? I dunno…”
“The weather doesn’t influence ocean currents!” Clancy said, “it’s ocean currents that influence weather! Now figure out what’s going on before I throw you down the trash chute to take a closer look!”
“No can do, sir,” the first tech said, “we’re taking on water now. The second failsafe is being locked. If we throw anything down the trash chute now it’s just gonna pile up in the chute itself.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Clancy sighed, “pull up all the camera feeds, look for anything suspicious.”
“But not all cameras are back online yet, sir—”
“Just work with what we have!” the general barked, taking a step back to look at all the security feeds as well.
As he did so, Lieutenant Rider arrived as well, tying her hair back in a quick bun.
“What’s going on, sir? Did Killjoy breach again?” she asked.
“No, the thirtieth floor is still secure,” Clancy said, “but there was an exterior breach in waste disposal.”
“...ew?”
The general shot her a pointed glare, when one of the techs suddenly pointed at one of the screens.
“Something’s covering the lens, sir!” he said, “I mean, it’s just a spider, but you said anything—”
“What floor?” Clancy cut off, losing his patient very rapidly at this rate.
“Uh…tenth, sir!”
“Go check it out, Lieutenant,” Clancy said, “bring a radio.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on channel two,” the lieutenant said, grabbing said radio from one of the charging stations and turning it on as she headed off to figure out who or what had breached their extra secure facility this time.
“This…is the sea goddess?” Slade asked quietly, observing the young woman that was looking around the room.
Her blonde hair was long and unkempt, sun-kissed and tangled, still damp from the morning surf. Some of it had soaked into the oversized T-shirt she was wearing, creating a wet stain on her back. ‘Oversized’ was an understatement. The shirt looked more like a dress, covering and hiding the shorts she wore underneath. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and had tracked a notable amount of sand inside.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Aiden said in response to Slade, while Skye simply did her duty and offered their guest something to drink.
“I’ll take water,” Neptune responded coolly, looking out the open doors at the patio.
Skye nodded and went to grab a glass, to which Bos approached Neptune next.
“So um…this is my house,” he said somewhat awkwardly, “do you like it?”
“It’s grotesque.”
“It’s solar-powered.”
“...it’s tolerable,” Neptune corrected, before turning back, “is this everyone?”
“Yes, let me introduce you,” Bos said, “you’ve already met Aiden, and Cat in the car. This is their friend, Dr Slade, my partner is Skye, and these are Andy, Alexei and Sylvester.”
“I’m not gonna remember any of that,” Neptune said, “do you really think you can get inside a military facility with these puny humans, Kansas?”
“Oh Lord,” Aiden said, a bit taken aback by the nickname, “um…yeah? I know at first glance we don’t look like much, but…surely you know there are humans who also qualify as powerful? Much like yourself?”
“Most of them don’t even come close,” Neptune said, “except you…”
She pointed at Slade.
“There’s something about you…”
“Well,” Slade said, “I am immortal, apparently. I was born over two hundred years ago. I very much doubt you were, else we would have crossed paths before.”
“No, that’s not it,” Neptune said, “maybe I just don’t like you.”
Cat snorted while Slade grumbled something about not pleasing everyone. Skye handed Neptune the glass of water she asked for, which she threw back and finished in one go.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m only going to explain this once, so pay attention. The place you want to get into is built mostly under water and into the sea bed. Construction damaged a large and integral part of local corals, and damage to the facility will only make things worse, so you guys are gonna do this my way, or not at all, understood?”
“That should be no problem,” Alexei said, “if we can get inside easy.”
“There’s two ways inside,” Neptune said, “the front door; an opening on the platform where their ships dock or helicopters land. Or, the waste disposal hatch— That’s the one thing you’re allowed to destroy, make sure they can’t dump their fucking trash in my ocean again.”
“We are not entering through waste disposal,” Slade spluttered.
“We might have to, the front entrance is likely to be heavily guarded,” Bos said, “where is the waste disposal?”
“Near the seabed to avoid detection from the surface,” Neptune said, “they’ll never expect anyone to enter that way.”
He held up his hand to show Neptune his prosthetic while also lifting his pant leg to show that was a prosthetic at risk of rusting too.
“Then why are you on this team?” she asked.
“Because those two prosthetics make him ten times stronger than all of us combined,” Bos explained.
“Got it,” Neptune said, “waste disposal it is. I can probably get you there without getting your feet wet, but it depends on how fast you can run.”
“That would depend on the distance,” Andy said.
“I think, from the top of my head, about three miles?” Neptune said, “that is, if you can make it to San Nicholas and depart from the northwestern shore.”
“Sounds doable,” Cat said.
“Except it isn’t,” Bos said, “San Nicholas is a Navy weapons testing and training facility. They’ll see us coming from miles away and probably have some sort of protocol in place to warn Clancy too.”
“I’ll cover you with a storm, if you think you can travel through one,” Neptune said.
“I can fly under the radar and we can drop the team,” Andy mused, “it’s risky, but doable if you deploy your chute as soon as you leave the plane.”
“Hold up!” Slade said, “are you suggesting we fly through a storm, and then jump in the same storm, and then enter an underwater facility through their waste disposal?”
“Yeah, were you not paying attention?” Neptune asked.
“Am I the only one worried about the ridiculous amounts of risks we’ll be taking just before breaking into a highly secured facility?”
“You didn’t seem that worried when we all mounted a dragon to go kick someone’s ass,” Cat said.
“Vhat?” Alexei asked, slipping into a deeper accent in his surprise.
“That was different,” Slade said, “that was just one guy and some henchmen and we knew exactly what we were up against and where to go. This time we’ll be going in blind.”
“Aren’t you immortal?” Neptune asked, “what are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid for others,” Slade said.
“You guys asked for my help and now you’re whining it’s too dangerous?”
“He’s just worried that people will end up getting hurt,” Aiden mediated, “but Slade…I’m willing to face the risks— Not to mention me just being there can mitigate the risk of jumping from a plane I guess?”
“Alexei and Sylvester both have experience with low-altitude jumps too,” Bos said, “and once inside if you can find a computer I can use some of Tyler’s programmes to have a look through their systems and figure out a map of the place.”
“We all want to do this, despite the risks,” Aiden said, “I could never forgive myself if we didn’t even try. Now it’s up to you, but we could probably use your experience in case we get cut off from Bos once we’re in there.”
Slade sighed, thinking for a second, before turning to Bos and Andy.
“Is flying and parachuting really the only way?” he asked.
“It’s the best we can do on short notice,” Andy said, “if it helps I can push you out the plane?”
“I might need a push, yes.” Slade said, before sighing deeply, “Very well. They’ll not harm us unpunished.”
“That’s the spirit,” Cat said.
“That settles it then,” Neptune said, “the storm will begin after sundown, so you’ll have the cover of darkness and bad weather. Meet me on the northwestern shore of San Nicholas, and I’ll provide a mostly dry passage towards the facility. But it is a temporary one.”
“That gives us…four hours to prepare,” Bos said, “I’m gonna test communications.”
“I’ll get the plane flight ready,” Andy said.
“Oh, will you need a ride anywhere?” Bos asked.
“Just take me back to the beach,” Neptune said.
“Okay, Skye will drive you,” Bos said, before promptly walking off to get started on preparations.
“I better update Mirage,” Cat said, pulling out her phone.
Aiden nodded, before heading after Neptune as she headed outside.
“Wait,” he said, catching her on the porch, “I um…I want to thank you, for your help. We couldn’t pull this off without you.”
“Just stick to the deal, Kansas,” Neptune said, “we’ll bring Hell right to their doorstep.”
Aiden just nodded as she walked off, before turning around and heading towards his room, shaking his head a little at her words. If only she knew…
Their four hours crept by slowly, yet at the same time they passed so fast, they never felt quite ready as they piled into a van to get to the hangar faster. Keavy tagged along to see them off, a bit annoyed that she’d been at school and missed out on meeting Neptune, but mostly anxious about the rather ambitious plan they had come up with.
“Please all come back in one piece,” she said as they pulled to a stop by the hangar, where Andy was just taxiing the jet to get it ready for takeoff.
“They’ll be fine,” Bos assured her as everyone got out, “so long as they stick to the plan. Slade, if comms fail, you’ll be in charge.”
“If the plane doesn’t fail before that,” Slade said.
“It’ll be okay, Slade,” Aiden assured him.
“I’m not too sure about that,” Slade replied, inclining his head at something behind him.
Aiden turned around, and in the far distance they could see flashes of lightning. They were so far away, they didn’t even hear them until much later, and when they did, the rumble was so nondescript, it might as well have been a truck passing somewhere nearby.
“Have you ever seen anything like that?” Aiden asked.
“A man-made storm?” Slade said, “no, I can’t say I have.”
“You still haven’t,” Cat interjected, “we’re not dealing with a man, we’re dealing with a goddess.”
“Are we really?” Slade asked, turning to Aiden.
“I’d rather not risk getting smote when boarding a plane that is about to fly into a storm,” Aiden said, “because to agree would mean denouncing the Lord, who I’ve only worshipped since I can remember, while to disagree would mean making an enemy out of someone who can do that!”
He pointed at the lightning storm in the distance, which seemed to have gotten significantly bigger…and closer.
“I think you better take off before the storm gets too close,” Bos said, just as Andy opened the door and unfolded the stairs so they could get on.
“Let’s go!” she yelled over the sound of the engines.
Cat started moving first, Aiden following and Slade following reluctantly after. Alexei and Sylvester waited for Bos and Keavy to wish them good luck before getting on as well, Alexei getting the stairs and the door behind them.
“Detach the stairs so we don’t lose them when you guys jump out,” Andy said, “debrief them on how that’ll work and wait for my mark. Sit down for takeoff.”
Alexei nodded, calmly detaching the stairs while the others sat down and buckled up. Aiden glanced out the window, waving somewhat sheepishly back at Keavy as she was waving both arms to see them off, before turning to Slade, who’d sat down next to them and was already anxiously gripping the armrest as the plane began speeding down the runway, which was about as bumpy as when they landed on it.
“It’s nice of Keavy to see us off,” Aiden commented, trying to distract him.
Slade nodded.
“Aye, she reminds me a lot of Lilean,” he said, before jumping a bit as they heard a loud clunk by the door, before seeing Alexei carefully carry the stairs past their seats to put them somewhere secure.
“How so? Tell me,” Aiden said, sticking to his distraction strategy.
“Um,” Slade said, “well she’s very involved with her siblings, but the first thing I noticed was her face— The resemblance is uncanny.”
“I guess that proves the genetics then,” Aiden said, “she has your eyes though.”
“Has she?”
Slade seemed surprised, more so than stressed, so Aiden smiled as he nodded in confirmation.
The shaking got less and eventually settled as the plane took off, and once the turbulence had settled, Alexei got up and made sure everyone could see him.
“Okay, listen,” he said, “we are about to do two things Bos always tells us to avoid. We are jumping from low altitude, and we are jumping in rain.”
“Nice,” Cat said, “any tips for a beginner?”
“Make sure to be holding cord when you jump, you have to open parachute immediately after going outside,” Alexei said, “rain will hurt, and wind will be hard, so Sly will try to help get everyone to the ground safely. He can turn into big bird and stay in the air until everyone is on the ground safely.”
“Oh um, I can fly too,” Aiden added, “so like, if you need help…”
“Good, more chance we can all land alive,” Alexei said, “okay, next is communication. Sly, davai.”
Sly got up and opened a suitcase, beginning to hand out small earpieces for everyone to wear.
“Turn on and make sure you can hear both Andy and Bos, that means you’re on right channel,” Alexei said, “there is button on the side, push to talk to everyone else. Take turns testing them.”
“We should get these in New York,” Cat said, “it’d be easier for supers that work in groups often.”
“I can discuss it with the police,” Slade said, fiddling with the earpiece before testing it.
“We’re beginning our approach,” Andy announced, after everyone had made sure their earpiece was working.
The turbulence got worse as she flew into the storm. They could feel the wind pulling on the plane, and at one point they could’ve sworn they dropped a couple feet. The beeping and alarms from the cockpit wasn’t too reassuring, but Andy seemed calm and determined, while the rest of them just tried not to get thrown around as they were fitted with a parachute, save for Sylvester and Aiden.
“Don’t think, just jump and pull,” Alexei advised, waiting by the door as he fitted a pair of goggles over his eyes.
“We’re nearing the drop zone!” Andy informed, “open the door and wait for my signal!”
“Hold on to something,” Alexei advised, before opening the door.
Almost immediately the door was ripped from its hinges and Alexei had to hold onto the frame so he didn’t get thrown out himself. Lightning cracked right next to the plane so loudly it deafened them all, and ice was pelting those who stood closest to the door.
“NOW!” Andy yelled over the roaring of the wind, and without further ado, Alexei jumped first.
Cat followed after, unable to contain her excitement. Slade was up next, but he seemed to hesitate. Remembering, his earlier words, Aiden gave him a shove, before jumping after him to make sure he would be able to deploy his parachute in the chaos.
As he jumped, the cold wind and icy rain were blocked somewhat by a warmth that spread over his body as he transformed into Cross, before unfolding his wings of light. He was immediately blown off course by a strong gust of wind. He managed to recover, quickly looking around to find the others.
Above him, the biggest raven he’d ever seen circled menacingly, riding the winds with ease. Below him, he could only barely see three chutes being blown in three different directions by the winds. The raven— Sylvester, dove towards the one going the furthest off course, so Aiden focused on the other two.
His own wings and the lightning helped him see, and he realised Cat was drifting off towards the rather violent-looking waves below them. He quickly dove after her, and once he had a hold of her, she detached her parachute so he could fly her to shore where they’d agreed to meet with Neptune.
As per usual, he dropped her in the sand, before landing himself only a couple feet further. As they did that, Alexei touched down near them with his parachute, immediately beginning to free himself from the pack, before contacting Andy.
“We made it!” he announced, “well, almost. Sly is bringing in Dedushka.”
“I heard that!” Slade replied over his earpiece, dangling from the parachute that Sylvester had grabbed with his talons to just fly him back to the correct landing zone.
He put him down surprisingly gently, before transforming back into his human form and dropping himself into the sand, shaking his head a bit to get the hair and sand from his hair.
“Now what?” he asked, having to yell a bit over the wind.
“Where is Neptune?” Alexei asked.
“She said she’d meet us here, right?” Slade said.
Aiden nodded, peering out over the ocean, when another lightning bolt struck the sea, lighting up the frighteningly large waves, as well as a relatively small figure on top of one of them.
“Incoming!” he warned, bracing himself, only to see the wave crashing onto the beach on either side of them, but missing them completely.
Another flash of lightning pretty much blinded them, and once their eyes adjusted they could see the water receding again, and Neptune now standing before them, her hair loose and blowing in the wind, and her surfboard under her arm.
“You’re alive,” she said, “good.”
“We haven’t been shot at either, so I assume the storm did its job,” Slade said.
“How do we get to the place now?” Alexei asked.
“I’ll make you a path,” Neptune said, “I’ll move the water aside, but I can only do so for a couple of seconds or it’ll do a lot of damage. I won’t be able to see you, so don’t fall behind. Got it?”
“Did you just say you’ll move the water aside?” Aiden sputtered.
“Yes, pay attention,” Neptune said, turning around and beginning to walk into the water.
The others followed, stopping by the water line, which began to slowly recede. They stepped forward further, while Neptune stuck her board into the sand and rubbed her hands together before spreading her arms wide. More lightning struck, as if lighting the path before them. They could see the water split apart slowly. Not receding, but beginning to form walls of waves as violent as those on the surface.
“How far was it to the facility again?” Cat asked, beginning to stretch a bit.
“About three miles,” Slade said, “I hope I’m back in shape enough for this.”
“Seven versts is not a long detour for mad dog,” Alexei said.
“Stop yapping and just go!” Neptune snapped, prompting them to start running into the ocean.
Once they’d run deep enough, they were shielded from the wind, but above them they could still hear the thunder, and occasionally a wave would rain down on them, as if the ocean itself was trying to slow them down. They jumped down sudden drops in the seabed, and scrambled back up sudden walls. Behind them, the path closed as soon as they’d passed it, threatening to swallow them up if they didn’t hurry, which was a decent motivator to keep going.
Lightning occasionally flashed above them, timed almost perfectly so they could see any obstacles in their way and avoid it. Having two sets of wings on their team helped them traverse the larger gaps even faster, and ensured that no one got left behind.
Finally, with the last crack of thunder and a large bolt spreading through the clouds far above them, they could see the mysterious facility they were supposed to break into. The waste disposal hatch that Neptune hated so much was right in front of them, but as they approached, there was something else too.
“I think I can hear alarms?” Aiden said.
“Maybe it’s for the storm?” Slade said, “either way, there’s literally no way back, so let’s push on. Can you get this open, Alexei?”
“Da, one sec,” Alexei said.
He banged his right hand on the door a couple of times in a couple of places, before settling on one spot and pulling his left hand back, and severely denting it with a single punch. The dent created a large enough opening at the side, allowing Alexei to grab a hold of the hatch’s panel and tear it off.
Before them, a large and dark space that reeked of…well, it just reeked. Behind them, a wall of ocean beginning to close in on them, which would probably flush out the space in front of them. They had no time to hesitate.
Alexei headed in first, pulling a flashlight from his pocket to light the way. Aiden grabbed a hold of Slade’s arm and had to drag him inside as they followed after, and Sylvester and Cat closed the line. They all looked around for a way out, until Sylvester suddenly turned into a humming bird and headed up somewhere. Some kind of long chute. He returned an owl, and turned into a human again to relay what he’d found.
“There’s several hatches in that chute, we better hurry and get through them before they’re closed off because the hatch was breached.
“Okay, take rope,” Alexei said, pulling a tightly wound, thin but sturdy-looking cable from his belt and unwound it a bit. He handed one end to Sylvester, who turned into an owl again and flew up the chute with the rope.
“The water is about to come flooding in here,” Slade said, “and I, for one, am not looking forward to rolling around in a mixture of sea water and whatever we’re standing in that smells so rank—”
“Just give him a minute to anchor rope,” Alexei said, pulling on it as a test.
It didn’t immediately come falling down, so he gestured for Slade to come closer.
“Start climbing, davai.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I’m climbing,” Slade said, grabbing a hold of the rope and beginning to pull himself up, with a little help from Alexei as he pushed him until he was too high up.
“Okay, ladies first,” he said, offering for Cat to go next, but she declined.
“I climb faster than these two, let them go first,” she said, pushing Aiden forward.
“Yeah she has a point,” Aiden said, also needing a hand to get started.
It didn’t help that the rope had some sludge in it in some places where Slade had pushed himself up with his feet, but Aiden decided not to comment on it.
Back at the bottom, an alarm suddenly started blaring as the ocean water crashed against the side of the building and started streaming through the hole they left behind. Cat was wise enough to grab a hold of Alexei, and he wrapped his prosthetic arm around her so she wouldn’t be swept away as the water crashed into them. Aiden had only just made it into the chute as the rope suddenly pulled to the left, smacking him against the side. He nearly slid down a bit, and looked down to see the rather violent stream beneath them. Over the roar of the water, he just about heard the whir of something mechanic moving, and realised there was another hatch at the bottom of the chute that was beginning to close.
“Fuck— Cat! Alexei! Climb!”
“Hold onto me!” Alexei said, beginning to pull both him and Cat up with his left arm, moving just about fast enough.
Aiden pulled himself above the closing hatch, using it as a ledge to stand on and began pulling on the rope to speed things up. Once they were high enough, Alexei lodged himself between the wall of the chute and the hatch, slowing it down so Cat could climb through, and finally himself as well, before it closed and blocked the water from entering the rest of the facility.
The three of them caught their breath for a moment, before looking up to see where the rest had gone. The next hatch wasn’t too far up, and with some pulling from the front and pushing from behind they all managed to squeeze through, collapsing on the floor of a small room as they caught their breath further.
“Where are we?” Cat asked.
“Looks like a supply closet of some sorts,” Slade said, plucking a roll of toilet paper from a shelf.
Alexei found a stack of small towels and shrugged off his jacket so he could attempt to dry his arm to minimise any possible rusting later on.
“Now what?” Aiden asked, turning to Slade.
“Now we carefully push on,” Slade said, “I don’t hear any footfalls outside that door, so it’s likely they haven’t discovered us yet. Bos said we had to find a computer and plug in his doohickey so he could find a map of this place?”
“Then we start with that,” Alexei said, “Sly, can you take a look around?”
“Yeah, just wait here,” Sylvester said, before turning into…a fly.
He slipped underneath the crack at the bottom of the door, and disappeared.
Only a moment later, the door opened and Sylvester stepped back in, in his human form.
“Coast is clear,” he said, “fuckin’ no one is around, and only half the cameras are working.”
The others were a bit perplexed, but the smell from the waste disposal that they’d brought with them was beginning to choke up the oxygen in the supply closet, so they gladly piled into the hallway. They were met with a pressing silence, broken only by the buzzing of a defect fluorescent light as it flickered over their heads.
“...are we in the right place?” Aiden asked.
Slade shrugged, pressing on his earpiece.
“Bos? Can you hear me?” he asked, but they were met with static on the other end.
“Our signal is being blocked,” Alexei said, “Sly, which cameras are broken? Let’s go in that direction to find a computer.”
“Around this corner is still safe,” Sylvester said, beginning to lead the way.
The others followed him through the eerily quiet hallway, walking silently, occasionally pausing as Sylvester turned into another inconspicuous critter to scout ahead. At one point he blocked one of the remaining working cameras as a large spider while the others hurried past it, until finally they came across a large open space with cubicles and desks…and computers.
“Well, take your pick,” Cat said, looking around.
“Why is there a basic office in a place like this?” Aiden said, “or better yet, why is it abandoned?”
“Maybe they evacuated because of the storm?” Slade coined, trying to turn on one of the computers, but he couldn’t get it to work.
“I hope not,” Cat said, trying another computer, “that might mean we ran all that way for nothing.”
“Let’s just get Bos into system and he can figure it out,” Alexei said, also trying a computer, “ah, davai, I got one.”
Slade hurried over with the USB drive Bos had given him, while Aiden continued to explore around the empty office, trying to find any clues on what could’ve happened, when he came across an empty cubicle, with a hole in the back wall, the desk and computer on the other side were trashed, and there was a…lingering smell. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, as he headed around the row of cubicles to take a look on the other side.
As he approached the broken desk again, he realised there was a stain in the carpet, something crusty and…sticky? In hindsight he shouldn’t have touched it with his bare hands, but he couldn’t stop himself, and he only regretted it after bringing his hand closer to his face, and realising he now had half-dried blood on his fingers.
It was quiet that afternoon. You could cut the tension with a knife, and it almost sounded like Skye was doing just that, chopping vegetables for dinner slower than usual. The thumping of her knife on the cutting board was the only sound in the kitchen as Keavy and Alexei, who she had just picked up from school, were quietly sipping tea and exchanging memes.
Through the open doors they could see Aiden pace across the courtyard, while Slade was leaning on the porch railing, trying to think of the right words to help him calm down, when on the other side Cat exited the gym and simply threw her towel at him.
“Sit down, Carter. You’re gonna wear yourself out,” she said.
“Like you’re one to talk!” Aiden replied, throwing the towel back at her.
Cat just caught it and slipped into her room to take a shower before dinner.
“Come on, Love,” Slade said, “some tea will do you good.”
He didn’t wait for an answer and turned back to head inside so Aiden wouldn’t get a chance to decline. The young man sighed, before following him, sitting down at the breakfast bar with the teens while Slade boiled some water.
“Aiden,” Keavy said, “why does Gramps call you ‘Love’?”
“I…don’t know?” Aiden replied, “he’s just always done so.”
“He just…randomly gave you a pet name?” Keavy asked.
Aiden wasn’t sure how to answer when Alexei saved him.
“Keavy, your essay,” he said, “is due tomorrow.”
“I know,” Keavy groaned, “I just can’t be bothered with ancient history. I don’t understand why people are so obsessed with ancient Egyptians, like, just because they knew how to do math and stack rocks?”
“Well, actually,” Aiden gently interjected, “their hieroglyphs are the second oldest form of writing and it’s the ancestral script to systems we still use today such as Latin and Cyrillic.”
“Oh,” Keavy said, “...may I use that in my essay?”
“Of course,” Aiden said, “I’ll try to google the book I got that from so you can cite a source with that too.”
“Cool, thanks,” Keavy said, noting it down, “I thought you were a barista though.”
“I studied theology just before we met and Latin was part of the curriculum,” Aiden said.
“So you could tell us about their gods more?” Alexei asked.
“Kids, the point of writing essays is that you do your own research,” Skye said.
“Talking to an expert is a kind of research,” Keavy said.
“Only I’m not really an expert,” Aiden said, “I did drop out before graduating…but I can point you to some great online resources?”
“I’ll take it I guess,” Keavy said.
“Keavy, say thank you and get changed before dinner,” Skye said.
“I was going to!” Keavy defended, before beginning to gather her things, “thanks Aiden,” she said, before heading off towards her room.
“She misses Tyler,” Alexei said, gathering his things as well, “he is like brother to us.”
“I can tell,” Aiden said, “I know what it feels like…Phil is like a brother to me too. It’s not my place, but, maybe your sister can do with a hug?”
“I think I can help with that,” Alexei said, before heading off as well, followed closely by Sylvester in the shape of a large black cat.
“You’re very good with kids,” Skye commented, cleaning up their cups while Slade took Keavy’s empty seat and handed Aiden a fresh cup of tea.
“Oh thanks,” Aiden said, “well, it helps that I can always see a bit of a cheatsheet around them. And sometimes it feels like I was only a teenager myself yesterday. I wouldn’t know how I would deal with younger kids though.”
“I think you’d do just fine with your cheatsheet, Love,” Slade said, “what do you see when you look at children? Are their auras different?”
“It differs,” Aiden said, “on average they’re brighter, but sometimes I pass a kid on the street with an aura duller than that of most adults and that’s a bit disheartening…”
“Oh the poor things,” Skye said sympathetically.
Aiden nodded.
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s kinda like why I love babies the most. Their auras are so pure, still untouched by the horrors of this world.”
“I just like the way they smell,” Skye said.
“I keep hearing that, but I’ve never gotten the chance to test that theory,” Aiden said, “I can already see the pedo accusations.”
“If I ever have one, you can smell it, no questions asked,” Skye said.
Aiden snorted a bit in his tea, but nodded.
“Thanks,” he said, finishing his sip.
He checked the time on his phone. Bos said he could figure out the coordinates before dinner, and it looked like dinner was almost ready.
The silence returned as they anxiously waited, the only words exchanged between Slade and Skye as he helped her cook and she gave him instructions. Andy almost walked into the sliding front doors again, still getting used to the fact that they had to be opened manually since Cyber crashed. She washed her hands and grabbed a drink, while at the same time Cat came in from the patio and sat down next to Aiden, her hair still wet from her shower.
“Any updates?” she asked.
“No, still waiting,” Aiden said, “did you hear anything from Mirage?”
“We’re texting,” Cat said, “she’s pissed.”
“I can imagine,” Aiden said, “if she were here we’d know what to do next once Bos figures out the coordinates, but now I’m not so sure. It depends on what he finds I guess.”
“We got this,” Cat said, “all of us together have a brain about as big as Mirage’s. Besides, you can’t handle teleporting yet anyway.”
“I mean…I kinda have three brains,” Aiden said with a shrug.
“That’s the spirit—”
BONK!
Skye gasped as she was the only one to see what happened, while Slade looked up and immediately dropped the mushrooms he had been cleaning to spring to action.
“Andy, give me a hand,” he said, hurrying towards the front door.
Aiden and Cat turned around, quickly catching up when they saw Bos lying on the porch by the front door, grabbing at his forehead, his face twisted in pain.
“Did he just run into the door?” Cat asked.
“Yeah,” Aiden said with a grimace.
“Yikes,” Cat said, “I think he’s gonna need ice, Skye.”
“R-right!” Skye said, seemingly still shocked as she opened and searched the freezer.
Meanwhile Slade and Andy picked Bos up and escorted him inside. Aiden quickly got up and pulled out a chair from the dinner table so Bos could sit down.
“Son of a bitch,” he grumbled, while Slade gently pried his hands away.
“Let me see, lad— Ooh, that’s going to leave a bruise…”
“I’ve got ice!” Skye quickly announced, wrapping a towel around an ice pack as she hurried over, but Bos started swatting everyone away.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, we can worry about my head later,” he said, “I’ve figured it out!”
“Don’t be stubborn and take the ice, Eren!” Skye hissed, swatting him too and pressing the icepack against his face.
“Ow, ow, fine, sorry,” Bos said, hissing a bit in pain.
“Arite, tell us what you’ve found, and then I’ll have to ask to borrow some tools to make sure you haven’t got a concussion,” Slade said.
“Right,” Bos said, “the coordinates lead to somewhere among the Channel Islands, and I skipped it at first because it was somewhere in the middle of the water, until I remembered last year I was testing a new drone and accidentally uncovered an unmapped island, or so I thought until the state informed me that I was mistaken and I didn’t think much of it anymore, but I looked back at the picture and the coordinates almost exactly overlap.”
“So an island that the state claims doesn’t exist?” Cat asked, “That’s sus.”
“Right?” Bos said, “we need to take a closer look at that island.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Andy asked, “we go anywhere near that island and Clancy will wipe us all out.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Bos said, “did you guys hear the rumours about a super who is believed to be a sea goddess or a reincarnation of such?”
“If it were in any way significant I believe I would’ve heard of it,” Slade said with a bit of a scoff.
“Um…do you mean Neptune?” Aiden asked, “believed to be a reincarnation of Poseidon?”
“Yes, her!” Bos said, “we can ask her for help…maybe.”
“Hold on,” Slade said, “where did you hear about that?”
“Oh, my professor at St Joseph’s mentioned her,” Aiden said, “we wound up talking about the worshipping of some supers, but that’s not important right now…”
He awkwardly trailed off and cleared his throat.
“Right,” Slade said, “well if she’s as powerful as the ancestry she claims to be a part of, she could investigate the unmapped island for us without rousing any suspicion.”
“In theory, yes,” Bos said, “but she’s…a little eccentric.”
“He means weird,” Andy said, “and rude, and she don’t trust humans.”
“Is she…not human?” Slade asked.
“She looks human,” Bos said, are there records of non-humans that I should know about?”
“It’s a long story,” Slade said, “so how do we convince someone who’s unlikely to want to help us?”
“Maybe you can talk to her, Carter,” Cat suggested, “you know gods and stuff. Whether she’s legit or delusional…you’ll speak her language.”
“Well,” Aiden quickly said, “I’m not sure I focused more on monotheistic religions, and there’s also the question of who she believes he is, because although similar both Poseidon and Neptune are two different gods from different religions, not to mention the fact that some would say the Greeks got their gods from the Egyptians—”
He got cut off as Cat smacked her hand on his shoulder.
“You got this, three-brain,” she said.
“Yeah, you can’t just tell us Latin was derived from hieroglyphs and point out the origins of Roman and Greek mythology and then still claim you aren’t more qualified for this than any of us,” Skye gently said.
“You’re also a people person,” Slade said, “you’ve got your cheat sheet too.”
“Okay fine, I’ll give it a shot,” Aiden said, “how fast do you think we can meet?”
“We’ll go to the beach tomorrow,” Bos said, “so what’s for dinner?”
The next morning as they sat down for breakfast, Bos joined them with a clear and fresh bruise on the side of his face, taking a paracetamol with his morning coffee.
“Can’t wait to get Tyler back so he can fix the door automation,” he sighed.
“Are you okay to drive?” Aiden asked.
“Yeah I can still drive you to the beach,” Bos said, causing Keavy to gasp over her toast.
“You’re going to the beach?!” she asked, “can I come?”
“Absolutely not, you’re going to school,” Skye said.
“We’re just going to see if we can recruit Neptune to help us find Ty and the others,” Bos explained, “I’ll let you know how it went after school, okay?”
“Fiiine,” Keavy sighed, taking a last bite before getting up to get ready.
Alexei stole her leftover toast before getting up as well.
“Just let me know whenever you’re ready and we’ll go,” Bos said.
“Oh, could you take King with you, please?” Skye asked, “you know he loves the beach.”
“I’ll go find his leash,” Bos said, getting up while Aiden hurried to finish his cornflakes.
“Did you tell our King yet that he has a furry namesake?” Cat asked.
Aiden nodded, swallowing his bite.
“Yeah, he loved it,” he said, “did you wanna tag along to meet Neptune?”
“No,” Cat said, “people say I’m brash, probably not the best match.”
“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Aiden said, “but do whatever you feel more comfortable with.”
“...maybe I’ll come and keep my distance,” Cat said.
“That works too,” Aiden said, “is that okay with you, Bos?”
“What is?” Bos asked, trying not to get jumped by the large German shepherd after he got excited seeing his leash taken out.
“Cat is coming with us,” Aiden said.
“Oh yeah, sure. Slade are you coming?”
“I think I’ll pass,” Slade said, “but keep me updated.”
“Would you like to tag along dropping Keavy and Al at school instead?” Skye offered, “I can show you around the city a bit after.”
“Oh, I might take you up on that,” Slade said.
“Well, have fun and pray for me,” Aiden said, handing his empty bowl over to Skye and getting up.
“You’ll do just fine, Love,” Slade assured him, “but before you go, Bos, how many fingers am I holding up?”
“I thought you said I wasn’t concussed?” Bos responded, “you said so yesterday.”
“One can never be too sure,” Slade said, “so how many fingers?”
“Three. Can I go now?”
“Aye, well done.”
Cat and Aiden exchanged a glance and both tried not to laugh as they followed Bos outside, pulled forward by King as he enthusiastically headed towards the SUV they usually used when bringing him along.
It was early, so it was still rather quiet on the beach, save for the early birds. People going for a morning jog, swim, perfect Instagram picture, searching for buried treasure, or surfing on some rather large waves.
“Man,” Aiden said, looking around as they trodded through the loose sand, “it’s like an episode of Baywatch.”
“What?” Cat asked.
“You know, old show about lifeguards?” Aiden asked, “they had scenic transitions where they would show the beach at different hours of the day?”
“I don’t…it doesn’t ring a bell,” Cat said.
“Eh, I only know it because my mom had a DVD box set,” Aiden said with a shrug.
“Okay grandpa.”
“I’m twenty-one?”
“Yeah,” Cat said, “you’re ancient.”
“What?” Aiden sputtered, “I thought we were the same age?”
“I’m sixteen—”
“What the fuck?”
“Play nice kids,” Bos interjected, “Aiden, you see that group of surfers over there?”
He pointed at a group in the water, though rather than surfing they were mostly sitting on their boards and watching and cheering on someone tackling a particularly big wave.
“I see them,” Aiden said, “which one is Neptune?”
“The one on the wave,” Bos said, patting him on the shoulder, “good luck.”
He walked off, Cat following after, leaving Aiden alone on the shoreline, wondering how he was supposed to talk to someone who was currently in the water. But luckily the waves seemed to calm down only five minutes later, and the group of surfers called it a day and peddled to shore.
They’d noticed him watching them, of course, but he didn’t get more acknowledgement than a polite nod from some of them. It didn’t matter. He kept his eye on the one Bos had pointed out; a young woman, blonde, her hair wet and the lazy bun sagged miserably, but she didn’t seem to mind, or even care. She unzipped her wetsuit as she carried her board under one arm, wringing her arms out, switching her board to the other arm in the process so the upper part of the suit hung around her waist. She’d noticed Aiden looking at her, as she was looking directly back at him and approached.
“The fuck do you want?” she asked.
Aiden winced a bit, not off to a good start.
“Sorry,” he said, “are you Neptune? A friend of mine referred me to you…”
“Yeah, and?”
He could tell she was impatient, annoyed, on edge even.\
“The friend being Eren Bos,” Aiden explained, “um…let’s not beat around the bush. I— We need your help investigating an unmapped island to find some missing people—”
“The world is overpopulated. What’s a couple less?” Neptune replied coldly.
“Because people care about them?” Aiden said.
“And I care about the environment,” Neptune said, “the less humans the better.”
“Okay,” Aiden slowly said, “I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but we’re talking about a group of people that kidnapped someone from New York, flew them to Los Angeles, and keep them somewhere made invisible to the general public, twice. So who knows where else they’ve been, using Lord knows what kind of resources just to hold one person captive on a very illegal basis, so since you apparently rule over every single ocean that covers our globe, surely you’ve noticed something up around an island that doesn’t even show up on Google Maps!”
Neptune tutted, looking him up and down. Aiden couldn’t quite identify the colour her aura was giving off now, so he wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Uh…s-sorry, I’m Aiden Carter,” Aiden quickly said, stammering only a little bit.
“And where are you from? Originally?”
“I was born in Kansas,” Aiden answered, “why?”
“I’ve never been to Kansas,” Neptune said, “what’s it like?”
“Um…in one word? I’d say it’s very diverse,” Aiden said, “my mom would take me on outings to the Little Jerusalem Badlands, and in the park there are these massive rock formations, and she taught me that millions of years ago all that land was actually covered by an ocean— I was homeschooled because I was sick a lot, but that’s beside the point.”
“The Permian Sea,” Neptune said, “not a lot of humans know that everything they have was given to them by the ocean.”
“I think they are more aware than most people realise,” Aiden said, “water deities, whether that be related to the ocean, rivers, rain or springs are common across a myriad of religions— even scientists agree that life as we know it began in the ocean, and even in the modern Abrahamic religions water is a force to be reckoned with.”
“Not the so-called God that supposedly sent the water?” Neptune asked, cocking a brow.
“That’s up to the individual to decide,” Aiden said tactfully, “I didn’t come here to defend my personal believes, I came to ask for your help. We’re just trying to save innocent people who have been wrongfully arrested by the military or something for all the wrong reasons.”
“Oh the fucking military,” Neptune said, rolling her eyes, “why didn’t you lead with that? Idiot human— Yeah fuck those guys.”
Aiden blinked at her reaction, it seemed somehow he’d managed to win her favour?
“Yeah, the military,” he said, “so…you’ll help?”
“Let’s see,” Neptune said, “the so-called island you can’t find on your damn maps isn’t an island at all, it’s a man-made structure that simulates an island at the surface. I wasn’t around when they built it and they destroyed a very old coral reef, but I haven’t wiped their stupid building off the map yet because having all that debris in the ocean would do even more damage.”
“They built a building…under water?” Aiden asked.
“Yeah, the fucking audacity,” Neptune said, “I don’t know what the rest of your plan is, but if you even think about damaging it, I will drown you.”
“I’m sure we can come up with something that doesn’t involve us damaging either the building or the environment,” Aiden said, “but in order to do that we’ll need more details.”
“I can tell you all the details. You got something to write with?” Neptune said.
“Uh…I have my phone?” Aiden said.
“Good,” Neptune said approvingly, “fuck paper. You humans can’t even keep your own environment intact…”
Some hours later, Aiden had to go and find Bos and Cat at a beach cafe that they’d passed on their way from the parking lot. He sat down with a sigh, stealing Bos’ coffee and taking a sip.
“Apple pie?” Cat asked, offering a bite from her piece.
Aiden declined with a shake of his head.
“You were talking with her for hours,” Bos said, “hopefully productively?”
“Yeah, she told me all about your island,” Aiden said, “but it may be better to discuss this while everyone is there.”
“Hey, well done three-brain,” Cat said.
“Who all needs to be there?” Bos asked.
“Whoever you were planning to invite along?” Aiden said, “from what I understood it’s a pretty big place we’ll be trying to get into, so we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“Well,” Bos said, “Usually Tyler, Alexei, Sylvester and Andy do all the work and I coordinate from a distance, but I assume you, Cat and Slade will be involved too?”
“Obviously,” Cat said, “were you planning on calling anyone else?”
“Well…Neptune will be there too, so I’m kind of assuming that will be enough muscle,” Aiden said, “though I’m not sure she’ll be entirely involved save for making sure to throttle us if we do any damage to the structure’s surroundings.”
“Will she be at the briefing too?” Bos asked, seeming to grow a bit nervous.
“Yeah, she’s grabbing her things and then she’ll come with us,” Aiden said.
“Oh my God,” Bos said, “I better pull Al out of school then…”
He pulled out his phone to call ahead, while Cat put her empty plate aside and got up.
“Finally some progress,” she said, “if we’re lucky we can be kicking ass before the end of the day.”
“At the end of the day,” Aiden said, “cover of darkness and all that— we’ll explain when we get back to the ranch.”
“Alright, let’s go, Bos,” Cat said, taking Aiden’s arm and heading back towards the car, while Bos hastily pulled some bills from his wallet and handed it to a waitress before nearly forgetting to untie King’s leash from the chair so he could follow after.
Skye gently blew on her ladle before trying a bite of the sauce she was preparing for dinner when she suddenly heard a dull thud behind her, before the door was slowly opened.
“Still not used to the manual doors, Andy?” she asked, without looking over.
“Not a word,” the woman replied.
Skye stopped herself from laughing before turning around, only to be met by two long faces. Her own mood immediately dropped.
“So did you find any more information about the codes in the manifest?” she asked.
“No,” Slade said with a sigh, “and we nearly got caught too, so…not a very good morning for us.”
“I’m sorry,” Skye said, “how about some tea?”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Slade said, “how is Aiden?”
“Still in his room,” Skye said, “he didn’t eat much from his breakfast tray so I warmed up some soup for lunch, though I doubt he’ll have much of an appetite with that migraine.”
“No, indeed,” Slade said, “only I worry it’s not the migraine that keeps him from eating.”
“Oh we’re all upset about losing Tyler, but Aiden lost an important lead to his friend too,” Skye said, “but cheering him up might be more effective from you or Cat than from any of us.”
“Aye, that too,” Slade just said, not elaborating much despite the confused looks from the two women, “and how is Bos getting on?”
“Still going through Tyler’s notes,” Skye said, “I should probably bring him some tea too…”
“Oh, allow me,” Slade said, “I wanted to have a word with him anyway.”
“Oh, sure, I’ll make you a tray.”
She started boiling water for tea, getting a pot, two cups and some cookies ready on a tray.
“You don’t have much of a preference for flavour, do you?” Skye checked as the water finished boiling.
Slade shook his head.
“I’ve yet to discover a flavour of tea I don’t like,” he said.
“Then I’ll just use Eren’s favourite for you both,” Skye said, scooping some dried leaves into a tea egg and leaving it in the pot, pouring the hot water over it.
She gently put the lid on and rotated it a notch to lock it in place. Slade then took the tray, heading back outside and into the garage where Tyler still had some computer stuff lying around. Bos was bent over a stack of written notes, old coding textbooks, his own laptop and Tyler’s computer. He’d dug up a pair of glasses for the occasion, the screens casting a blue reflection in them as he frowned at a box of what looked like gibberish to Slade.
“That can’t be right,” he murmured, digging out another textbook and flipping to the index, “what did I press?”
“Sounds like you can use a break,” Slade said, gently placing the tray on the last empty corner of the desk.
Bos sighed, leaning back in the chair as he took the glasses off.
“This is on me,” he said, “when you work in robotics you need to know some coding, but I haven’t kept up with any of it since Tyler could just get things done much quicker and now I can’t even figure out how to reboot his shit.”
“Well, even if you haven’t kept up, you still know more about it than me,” Slade said, pouring him a cup of tea and handing it to him.
“And some help that is,” Bos sighed, “thanks.”
He gratefully took the teacup, tossing his glasses on top of some of the notes. Slade curiously picked it up.
“I didn’t know you had bad eyesight,” he said.
“I don’t,” Bos said, “those just filter the blue light from the screen, else I get tired too fast. And I can’t afford to be tired right now.”
“I know what that feels like,” Slade said, pouring his own cup and adding some milk.
“Your friends aren’t coping too well,” Bos said, “Cat hasn’t left the gym all day and Aiden hasn’t left his room.”
“Aye, I heard,” Slade said, “I’ll do what I can, but first there’s something I ought to tell you about Aiden.”
“Oh?” Bos said, sipping his tea, ready to hear it, but Slade seemed hesitant.
“Only, it isn’t quite my secret to tell and I’m sure he’ll be very cross with me if he finds out,” he said.
“I mean…do you think it’s more important that I know than that you two stay friends?” Bos asked with a shrug.
“It’s complicated,” Slade said, “I’m afraid I might not know him well enough to say I know for certain it’s better to pick either option.”
“Okay, still very vague,” Bos said, “let’s narrow things down a bit; is there any danger involved that I should know about?”
“...yes,” Slade admitted.
“To himself or to others?”
“Both, to be quite frank.”
“Including my family?” Bos asked, raising a brow.
“It’s not his fault,” Slade said, “he’s possessed by a demon and in times of stress when his mind is more fragile said demon might surface.”
“...okay,” Bos slowly said, processing, “possessed by— Are you sure?”
“Oh quite sure,” Slade said, “it’s a long story, but he’s been worried about it since Phil disappeared and now with all our leads gone…”
“I see,” Bos said, “well…I guess the best we can really do is keep an eye on him until we either have to kick his ass or we can finally kick Clancy’s ass.”
“The man who arrested Tyler,” Slade remembered, “you never told me how you knew him.”
“Through Tyler mostly,” Bos said, “he’s still a minor so any business the government wanted to do with him had to go through me. Clancy’s name is on a lot of the correspondence. I could always tell he had it out for Ty…”
“It’s not your fault,” Slade said gently.
Bos shook his head.
“I know that, but it still feels like it is,” he said, reaching for his glasses and putting them back on, “okay, let me just go back a few steps and see if I can make sense of these scribbles.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Slade said, “I better go check there aren’t any demons lurking.”
“If you need backup, ask for Alexei, he can take a hit,” Bos said, not looking up from the notes and slowly trying to type in a line of code according to the vague instructions.
Meanwhile Slade finished his tea, politely placing his cup in the dishwasher before heading over to Aiden’s room. He knocked gently, but upon receiving no reply, he pushed the door open anyway. Aiden was sitting by the window in a comfy chair, looking out over the landscape.
“How’s your migraine?” Slade asked.
Aiden shrugged, so at least he acknowledged him. Slade stepped further into the room, closing the door behind him and sitting down on the edge of his bed.
“Or did you just want to be left alone?”
“Kinda, I guess,” Aiden admitted.
He tore his eyes away from the window and looked back at Slade.
“It’s our fault, isn’t it?” he said, “Tyler wouldn’t have gotten arrested if we didn’t ask for his help?”
“Honestly? I doubt that,” Slade said, “from what I heard the man who arrested him had been after him for a while now. It would’ve happened regardless of our situation.”
“Still, it feels like every time we get a step closer to finding Phil we’re forced to take two steps back,” Aiden said with a sigh, “I can’t sleep at night.”
“I know it’s hard to think very highly of yourself right now,” Slade slowly said, “but I can’t help but think how strong you are, shouldering all these burdens and you’re still standing.”
“I’m sitting—”
“In a manner of speaking, Love,” Slade said, “any other person would’ve been carted off to the looney bin already.”
“What can I say?” Aiden said, “years of practice, I guess…having to deal with Amon’s shit that got blamed on me.”
“...is he talking to you now?” Slade gently asked.
“I see him in my dreams,” Aiden said, “I feel his presence like— Like he has his hands, squeezed around my throat.”
He brought up his own hands to show what he meant.
“I can still breathe, but the threat is there. He’s trying to wear me out so he can overpower me, a-and he’s getting better at subduing Michael too. I can’t rely on him too much, I need help…I need Phil…”
His voice broke a bit as he looked out of the window again, taking a deep, somewhat shaky, breath in an attempt to calm himself.
“We’ll find him,” Slade said quietly, “and until we do, it might be better if you don’t isolate yourself. He knows you’re at your best when surrounded by others, so he’ll try to make you feel miserable enough to want to be alone.”
“I’d be bad company,” Aiden said.
“We all are a bit,” Slade admitted, “so that’s something we’ll all have in common. Now Skye’s already decided to bring you a tray for lunch, but I’d love to see you at dinner. I’ll keep a seat free for you. Arite?”
Aiden sighed, but he looked back at Slade and nodded. Satisfied, Slade got up, patting him on the shoulder encouragingly before leaving him be.
And sure enough, while Skye was serving dinner that evening, Aiden joined them too, sitting down next to Slade in the seat he’d saved as he said he would. He was fairly quiet throughout the meal though, but then again, so was everyone. Skye asked Keavy and Alexei about homework, hoping either of them might need help with anything, but they were both too clever as she was met with shrugs or even an “I already finished before class ended.”
“I see,” Skye said, turning to Bos instead, “have you given up for the night, Eren?”
“No, just taking a break,” Bos said, “I think I might stay up all night. I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”
“If you’re sure,” Skye said reluctantly.
“Is there really nothing we can do to help?” Keavy asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Bos said, “just try to focus on school. They’ll be more sympathetic if you’re at least present.”
Keavy rolled her eyes a bit, but didn’t protest.
“If it helps, I can look through the hangar again, see if there’s anything you missed?” Andy offered.
Bos nodded gratefully.
“I doubt it, but I’d appreciate it if you could take a look,” he said.
“I was wondering,” Aiden quietly spoke up, “if trying to reboot everything takes up so much of your time, maybe I could help by doing some stuff around the ranch? Take at least that worry away.”
“Uh…yeah that would actually be super helpful,” Bos said, “I mean, you’ve already shown you know your way around the horses. Skye can tell you everything that needs to be done.”
“We can help too when we get out of school,” Keavy offered, while Alexei nodded in agreement.
“I’m not sure I’ll be of much help, but I could keep you company at least,” Slade said.
“If you promise not to get in my way,” Aiden said with a hint of a smile.
The next morning, Aiden hadn’t gotten too much sleep, but he still dragged himself out of bed early. Skye had given him a quick rundown on everything that had to happen, and he wanted to get a head start. Unsurprisingly, both Slade and Bos were already up and having breakfast as well, neither of them looking like they had slept much. He quietly joined them at the breakfast bar, to which Slade offered him a piece of his toast.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, while Aiden gingerly took a slice with jam on it.
“I got some,” he said, “you?”
“No, I’m afraid I ended up joining Cat in a round of exercise,” Slade said, “she hasn’t slept a wink either.”
“Okay, but she never did before anyway,” Aiden pointed out.
Slade shrugged, while Bos abandoned his granola, only bringing his coffee as he headed off to continue his attempts at rebooting Tyler’s system.
“I guess he really didn’t sleep much either?” Aiden asked.
“No,” Slade said, “he’s been quiet all morning. Best let him be.”
“He’s very frustrated,” Aiden said, “but there’s also some fear…”
“Why of course, he’s worried about Tyler,” Slade said, but Aiden shook his head.
“Fear and worry look different,” he said, “maybe someone should talk to him…”
“I could try later, but I think he needs space for now,” Slade said, “so…what does your schedule look like today?”
“Oh I’m letting the horses out so I can clean their stables,” Aiden said, “do you want to help, or are you really just keeping me company?”
“Well…I suppose I could roll up my sleeves,” Slade said, though Aiden could tell he was rather uncomfortable at the idea of it.
Once he’d forced some food down, he headed outside with Slade in tow. They entered the stables, and Aiden remembered where the tools were kept from when he helped Bos the other day. Slade kept his distance for now, especially when one of the horses seemed rather restless as Aiden opened its stable. Soothing it was no issue. He easily got it to calm down so he could put a harness on its head and attach the lead to it, leading it out of the stable and towards Slade.
“Hold on to this, don’t worry, she doesn’t bite,” he said.
“I know how to handle a horse, I was born before the invention of the automobile, you know,” Slade said, taking the lead, and only grimacing slightly as the horse started sniffing him a bit.
Aiden shrugged.
“I guess? You just seem uncomfortable,” he said.
“Do you have any idea how many bacteria I could pick up in this place?” Slade said, “there’s a reason death rates were much higher back in my day.”
“Yeah and then they figured out how to wash hands and now everyone is fine,” Aiden said, “just take a deep breath, be nice to the horse, and I’ll be right back with the others.”
“I’m fine,” Slade insisted.
“Uhuh,” Aiden just said, before walking off.
Slade sighed, remembering that Aiden could tell exactly how he felt no matter what he did.
“You know most people prefer to hide their emotions so they seem more dependable, right?” he said.
“There’s no one else here now,” Aiden replied, “I know you’re dependable, you don’t have to put on a brave face.”
“Oh no, but I must, else the horses get restless,” Slade said, wagering a pat on the horse’s nose, which it seemed to enjoy. “There’s a good lad…”
“That’s a mare!” Aiden informed him, before coming out with another horse and handing Slade another lead.
“Well, there was a fifty-fifty chance,” Slade said with a shrug, taking the other lead and now having to try and hold off two horses trying to sniff him.
“They’re not very shy, are they?” he said.
“That’s a good thing,” Aiden said, “I know you can heal anything, but it would still suck if you got kicked by a horse.”
“This probably surprises you, but I wouldn’t know,” Slade said, “I’ve never been kicked by a horse.”
“Really?” Aiden asked, leading a third horse out and handing Slade yet another lead, “one more,” he added.
“Yes, the horse my mentor rode for emergencies was very calm and cuddly, much like these two,” Slade explained, “and when I grew up every time I had to handle a horse there were stablehands and other staff nearby to do most of the work really.”
“Well, I’ve never been kicked either, but that’s because my parents taught me how to recognise the warning signs and how to calm a horse down when it feels threatened by you,” Aiden said, “like this one, he’s a bit nervous…it’s okay, boy…”
“Do you miss it?” Slade asked, jumping a bit along with the other three horses as the one Aiden was trying to soothe kicked against the stable wall.
“Miss what?” Aiden asked, stepping back a bit to give the horse some space.
“Home,” Slade said, “your parents.”
“...New York is my home now,” Aiden said, “of course I miss my parents, but it’s better this way. I’ve hurt them one too many times.”
“Of course,” Slade said, deciding not to press the matter further.
The last horse calmed down too, allowing Aiden to put the harness on its head and attach a lead, gently walking it out the stable.
“Do you need me to take one?” he asked.
“Oh no, I’m fine. Just lead the way, I’m sure they’ll follow,” Slade said.
“The ease of herd animals,” Aiden said, “oh be careful though, Bos said they tend to try and run as soon as they’re in the pasture and they forget that you need to take the lead off first.”
“I’ll brace myself,” Slade said, simply letting the horses lead him along as they followed behind the horse Aiden was leading.
And sure enough, as soon as they caught sight of the fence, two of the three horses already got restless, but Slade managed to keep them under control, even as Aiden opened the fence.
“Ho there ladies,” he said, “you can gallop to your heart’s content after I’ve unclipped you.”
He managed to do so just in time, to which they enthusiastically sped off into the pasture to get to the best patch of grass to graze on. Slade peered around a bit as he freed the third horse, while Aiden unclipped the lead from the fourth one and closed the fence.
“Is there enough grass for them to graze on?” he asked.
“For four horses? Yeah,” Aiden said, “come on, unless you want to climb over the fence to get out.”
“I can climb a fence,” Slade said, waiting for Aiden to close it before showing off his fence-climbing skills, though he stayed seated on the edge.
“What’s next?” he asked.
“Next we clean the stables so the horses have a nice clean bed to return to after grazing all day,” Aiden said, “do you need a hand getting down, old man?”
“Oi…”
Aiden chuckled a bit, but still held out a hand to help him down. Slade took it, not because he needed it, but because he wanted to. Though as he was about to slip off the fence, one of the horses that hadn’t run off yet suddenly bumped its head against him, causing him to fall. Aiden managed to catch him just about, hugging him awkwardly as he tried to help him steady his footing.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes— To quote you; This never happens,” Slade said, seeming rather flustered.
Aiden tried not to laugh, not too hard at least, making sure he was steady on his feet before letting go.
“Come on,” he said, “those stables won’t clean themselves.”
“Oh joy…”
Aiden ended up doing most of the work. He could tell Slade was uncomfortable, not to mention woefully overdressed. He didn’t mind, though. He welcomed the distraction. He could turn his brain off and just focus on scooping and raking dirt out of the stables. He couldn’t even hear the others, so he felt safe enough to grab a pitchfork to refresh the stables with a bed of straw. He filled the feeding racks with fresh hay to nibble on for the night, and then swept the walkway so no one could trip or slip over anything.
Slade just watched him— Nay, he was staring at him.
Aiden stopped sweeping.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Slade said with a small smile, “I was just admiring the view.”
“What?” Aiden said, looking down, “I’m sweaty and covered in bits of hay.”
“Well, yes, but you look more at peace than I’ve seen you in days,” Slade said, “I noticed it when we first met. There’s a sort of serenity about you when you’re focusing on work…I’ve missed seeing it.”
“It’s not easy being serene with everything going on,” Aiden said, wringing his hands around the broom handle a bit, “but I just don’t know what else to do right now.”
“That’s arite,” Slade said.
Aiden smiled a bit.
“I like how you say that,” he said, “I mean— I know you can’t help it, since it’s just your accent, but…I still like it.”
“Really?” Slade asked amused.
Aiden shrugged, coughing awkwardly.
“Y-yeah, like, the way you roll your R’s but— F-forget it, I’m just being stupid.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Slade said, “accents can be very tantalising, some more than others. I’ve never felt much for the American accent that you hear in the movies, but the little drawl that you speak with—”
“No, you’re just being nice,” Aiden said, shaking his head, “there’s nothing tantalising about me.”
“I beg to differ,” Slade said, stepping closer.
Aiden gripped the broom handle tighter, looking over Slade’s aura and biting his lip as he could feel his own heart rate speed up. Slade plucked some straw from Aiden’s hair and stepped even closer, but before he could try anything else, Aiden suddenly stepped away, gasping a bit for air as he realised he’d been holding his breath.
“I-I’m sorry,” he said, looking away too, “I’m not ready…”
“No, I ought to apologise,” Slade said, “it would be inappropriate, perhaps a bit unsanitary.”
“Yeah,” Aiden said, “it’s just not right without Phil or Mr Ecker here to say ‘I told you so!’”
“William would never say that,” Slade said, “he would probably think it though.”
“Oh definitely,” Aiden agreed, having calmed down enough to look Slade in the eye again, “thanks,” he added.
“Whatever for, Love?”
“For being you,” Aiden said with a shrug, “I can’t really put it in words…”
“Then don’t,” Slade said.
Aiden blinked.
“Don’t…use words?”
“You know what they say,” Slade said, “a picture paints a thousand words, actions speak louder than words…sometimes we simply don’t need them. So…go ahead.”
Aiden hesitated, trying to decide on what exactly to do without using words. He nearly dropped the broom, so he put it aside, took a deep breath, and then turned back and kissed Slade. It was really just a peck on the cheek, but it counted to him. He turned away again as soon as he did it, not wanting to see his reaction before he got a chance to respond. He could feel his face flush as he processed what he just did, while Slade stepped closer behind him, talking into his ear.
“I told you so~”
“Slade—”
SLAM!
Aiden quickly stepped away from Slade as the door was thrown open with such vigour he couldn’t help but to feel caught. It was just Bos though, and he didn’t seem to concern himself with what they had been doing at all. No, he looked more frantic, but not in a negative way.
“It’s working!” he said breathlessly, “I got it to work!”
“Brilliant!” Slade said, “...now what?”
“I’m not actually sure, it’s just spitting numbers at me and I’m too tired to make any sense of it,” Bos said, “I need some fresh eyes just to make sure I’m not missing something obvious.”
“Well I just finished so I’m coming,” Aiden said, “Slade?”
“Yes, of course,” Slade said, “can’t promise I’ll be much of help though, but I’m willing to try.”
They followed Bos back to the garage where the terminal he had been working at was indeed spitting out seemingly random numbers at a fast pace.
“Huh,” Slade said, seeming as baffled as Aiden felt, “can you— Could you pause it, so I can actually see the numbers?”
“No, it’s not responding to anything,” Bos said.
“Hold on,” Aiden said, pulling his phone from his pocket and just…taking a picture of the screen.
He showed it to Slade.
“How’s that?”
“Too small, do you have a magnifying glass?” Slade said.
“Just zoom in,” Bos said.
“Yes, that’s what a magnifying glass does,” Slade said.
“Oh my God— Just give it here, I’ll put it on my screen,” Bos said, pulling Aiden’s phone from their hand and plugging it into his laptop.
“Um…could you maybe not use the Lord’s name in vain?” Aiden asked.
“If we can miraculously figure this out then I’ll apologise to Him,” Bos said, putting his laptop back on the desk and stepping away so they could all look at it.
Aiden tried his best, but they really only looked like random numbers to him. Slade leaned in a bit to peer a little closer.
“Could they be coordinates?” he asked.
“Coordinates aren’t that long,” Bos said, “you only need seven digits for centimetre accuracy, eight if you want millimetres.”
“Yes, I know,” Slade said, “the numbers repeat every sixteen digits. Right there, and here again, see?”
Bos blinked, then pushed Slade aside to check. He also looked back at the terminal, finding the same sixteen numbers repeating.
“Jesus Christ,” he sighed.
“Hey!” Aiden said.
“I meant Thank you, Jesus Christ!” Bos quickly corrected, beginning to type away on the laptop, “I don’t know which number is the start and whether it’s a negative number or not, so I’m gonna have to try different combinations manually until I find something that makes sense.”
“Perhaps cross-reference them with the stops that showed on the plane manifest?” Slade suggested.
“Good idea,” Bos said, “um…get me some coffee and I think I’ll have a definitive location before dinner.”
“That I can do,” Aiden said, “come on, Slade. You’ll distract him.”
He grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the garage so Bos could work in peace and hopefully finally get them within arm’s length of finding their friends.
Tyler waited three hours after his light turned off, keeping track by counting the seconds in his head as he pretended to be asleep, or at least trying to get some sleep. He wondered whether the camera feed from his cell would be constantly observed, and how fast anyone could realise that he was escaping. He hadn’t been able to test any response times, so he would just have to be fast either way.
At the third hour, he still waited a couple of minutes, listening closely for any signs of life in the corridor, before deciding it was now or never. He slipped out of bed, making his way over to the door and punching in the key code. The door unlocked without any issue, though the bleeping echoed through the empty corridor a bit.
Tyler winced, but tried not to let it stop him as he slipped outside and speed-walked towards the elevator. He fished the soldier’s keycard from his pocket, praying it hadn’t been deactivated for being missing, and swiped it through the reader and punching in the second code. The elevator whirred quietly, before the doors slid open with what seemed like an enormous racket. He checked over his shoulder and got in, pressing the button for the twenty-third floor.
The doors closed again with just as much noise in the quiet night…or simulation thereof. He had no idea what the actual time was, but it didn’t matter. He was more worried that it almost seemed too easy. His heart pounded in his chest as he watched the number slowly decline as the elevator ascended, until it stopped at the twenty-third floor.
As the doors opened, he nearly froze in fear, catching the back of a group of soldiers and nurses. They were facing away from him, but if only one just glanced behind. His eyes darted around, recognising the ICU sign and remembering there were no locks on that door. He quickly darted across and slipped inside, checking no one was around to catch him before releasing a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. He kept the door open a crack, listening for the footsteps to die away before daring to close it and take a better look around.
Two beds were occupied. Tyler didn’t immediately recognise any major injuries, yet both were hooked up to respirators, IV’s and several screens monitoring all their vitals. He shuddered, remembering Oracle’s words when she told him some people were being kept on this floor in a coma. He approached one of the beds, trying to see if he recognised the middle aged man on it. Someone had left a binder with his information on his nightstand, so he took a peek inside it, finding his name address and even alias.
“Brain…New York,” he quietly mused, “you must be one of the other people Slade and his friends are looking for.”
He put the binder back down, gently grabbing the man’s hand to see if he would respond, but there was no strength in his grip. It wasn’t even really a grip at all.
“Hang in there, your friends are coming,” Tyler said, “I just need to get a message out to them. There’s a way somewhere on this floor, I just need to find it.”
Suddenly the equipment acted up slightly, but it wasn’t Brain’s. Tyler glanced over at the other bed, where another figure lay on their stomach. He gave Brain’s hand a squeeze as goodbye before checking on the other patient. He looked at the one machine that was beeping, and realised it was the EEG, monitoring the person’s brain activity. Said activity seemed to have suddenly increased. Tyler frowned, finding this person’s chart at the foot of their bed and taking a peek inside.
“Simon Barshall…Cyber?”
Tyler nearly dropped the chart, looking back up at the young man in the bed. He couldn’t see his face, but there were more wires connecting him to more machines than the other guy, and some of them definitely weren’t medical.
“I-it’s you,” Tyler said quietly, shakily putting the chart down and reaching for the young man’s hand, “Cyber…can you hear me?”
Now I know what you’re thinking — “Hold on? Wasn’t the sophisticated AI at the ranch also named Cyber?” — Well, yes. But to explain that part, we have to go back in time for about two days, just after the system crashed, while Tyler was feverishly trying to reboot it, and Bos expressed the severity of the situation to Slade in private. The old healer followed him inside his clinic, where a cat was yowling and three dogs were barking, all distressed by the sudden blackout. Slade watched Bos soothe his furry little patients for a moment, before speaking up.
“So what is it I need to know about Cyber?” he asked.
“Well, we always introduce him as a very sophisticated programme, but it’s actually far from the truth,” Bos said, “in actuality he’s a human consciousness that got scattered across the internet and Tyler has been slowly piecing him back together.”
“Forgive me for sounding old-fashioned, but how on earth?” Slade replied, blinking a bit.
“Powers,” Bos said with a shrug, “the world is evolving, and supers are evolving along with it. Technomancy is a relatively new term, but Cyber proves it’s a legitimate power.”
“Well,” Slade said, “I do suppose anything is possible. But how does even a technomancer get his consciousness scattered across the internet?”
“You of all people should know that each power has its limit,” Bos said, “there’s things even Rasputin can’t lift, creatures Ranger can’t summon, things that Zero can’t freeze, powers Carnivore couldn’t replicate, and there’s even things you can’t heal from…not without assistance at least.”
Slade reached for his throat for a brief moment, awkwardly clearing his throat.
“I suppose,” he said, “you seem to know an awful lot.”
“I do my research,” Bos said, “well…actually Cyber did, but that’s beside the point. Tyler first noticed him as an anomaly in a line of code or something. I don’t know the exact details, but one day he came to me and said he thought someone was in trouble, but we would have to heavily upgrade our systems to help them. I’m talking exabytes of information processing—”
“I haven’t a single clue how large that is,” Slade admitted.
“Do you have a bit of an idea how much a gigabyte is?” Bos asked.
“Is that bigger or smaller than a megabyte? Because I remember my kids raving about their music players being able to hold a couple hundreds of those in pop songs,” Slade said.
“A gigabyte is about a thousand megabytes,” Bos said, “and to put it in perspective, if a single gigabyte is about the size of the earth, then an exabyte is about the size of the sun.”
“I see,” Slade said, “and such a thing exists?”
“It cost me a fortune, but I do have a datacenter with that kind of processing power,” Bos said, “we were going to use it to store Cyber’s consciousness once we’d collected all of it, and then disconnect him from the internet to see if that could guide him back into his body, but there’s a bit of a problem with that.”
“You don’t have his body?” Slade guessed.
“Yeah,” Bos said, “and this crash either means we have to start again from scratch or worse…”
“If I had known the risks beforehand I would’ve found another way to gather information,” Slade said, but Bos shook his head.
“I knew the risk,” he said, “and I authorised it anyway…but I have faith that Tyler can get things running again, if he doesn’t panic too much.”
“Right,” Slade said, “but in the meantime I’d still like to consider some good old-fashioned sleuthing. I’m quite good at sitting still and waiting patiently, but I too have my limits.”
“I understand,” Bos said, “I’ll talk to Andy, she might have some ideas about following up on that manifest.”
“I’d appreciate that, thank you,” Slade said, “and let’s hope that’s it for setbacks.”
Famous last words. Tyler was arrested later that same day, leaving his work on restoring Cyber’s network unfinished, or so he thought. Now that he stood over the body that they had tried and failed to find, and seeing the brain activity on the EEG, Tyler knew that not all hope was lost yet. Not only that, but Oracle led him here for a reason. He took a closer look at the machines that he didn’t immediately recognise as medical equipment, and realised there was a terminal attached to one of them.
“Oh my god,” Tyler gasped, “they’ve been using you…that’s how they discovered you…”
He carefully booted up the terminal, and the brain activity spiked even more, before settling at a more steady amount as lines of code began running across the screen. It seemed rather basic, so with a couple of commands Tyler quickly uncovered an extensive history, which included an alert that he recognised as his own hack, but more recently it seemed a kind of override was uploaded to somewhere in the base. He skimmed through the commands as he slowly scrolled through, frowning a bit as he looked back at Cyber’s body.
“You manipulated the camera feeds?” he asked, “to cover my escape?”
The lines of code suddenly scrolled away rapidly, leaving only a single phrase on the screen.
You’re welcome…
“You brilliant son of a bitch,” Tyler said with a relieved sigh, “okay. So you can hear me. Good. I met this girl who can tell the future, and she led me to you and gave me two things to do. You need to ping our location to Bos, and you need to unlock the thirtieth floor.”
A series of commands began appearing on the screen rapidly, and Tyler laughed triumphantly. He turned back to Cyber’s body gently grabbing his hand.
“Thank you,” he said, “we’ll get you out of here buddy. As soon as Bos knows where we are he’ll come for us. For now, just hang in there, okay?”
He glanced back at the terminal for his answer, finding the lines of code disappearing again to make way for another phrase.
Unlocking lvl 30 will activate alarm. Execute?
“Hang on,” Tyler said, “I just want to see your face first.”
He sat down on the floor, checking the space underneath the bed before finding a spot to lie back and look up. Cyber’s face was peeking through a hole in the cushioned bars that supported his head, a hole had been cut in his throat to pump oxygen into his lungs with a small tube, leaving his face pretty much untouched. Still, he looked like only a ghost of his former self, and not at all like the pictures he had found of himself from before his accident. Tyler nearly teared up, but there was no time for that now. He quickly wiped at his eyes and nodded.
“Okay,” he said, “execute.”
He closed his eyes, getting a moment to brace himself before alarms began blaring, the lights that had been dimmed for the night returning to their daylight brightness so everyone could see clearly in this emergency situation…whatever it was.
Meanwhile General Clancy was just about to settle in his quarters for the night when the alarm suddenly went off. With a sigh, he buttoned up his shirt again and headed towards the main control room to see what was happening. Multiple bells and whistles were going off in there beside the main alarm, and he had to shout over all the noise to figure out what got everything in such a state.
“What is happening?” he yelled.
“We have a breach on level thirty, sir!” one of the techs answered.
“How is that possible?” Clancy asked.
“We’re still working on that, sir, but for now we have to contain it.”
“Right,” Clancy said, “send a squad in with Lieutenant Rider, and bring Oracle here, she can tell us where it’s going to be.”
“What about the other prisoners, sir?”
“They should be safe in their cells. I want at least six men to escort Oracle,” Clancy said, “and make sure they all are in their cells. Now!”
All the techs quickly scrambled to their assignments, one of them flicking through different live feeds of the occupied cells, before gasping almost audibly.
“Uh sir?”
“What?”
“McLagg is not in his cell…”
“What?!” Clancy snapped, “where is he then?”
“I don’t know sir—”
“Then FIND him!” Clancy shouted, “rewind the footage until you see where he went.”
“Th-that’s the thing, sir,” the tech spluttered, “I did and one moment he’s there and the next he isn’t.”
“Show me,” the general growled.
The tech nodded and scooted aside a bit so Clancy could see his screen. He rewound the footage for a moment before playing it at a normal speed. They could see Tyler trying to sleep, when suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” Clancy grumbled, “check every other camera and tell everyone to keep a look out for him. Check the logs, he might’ve managed to get onto the network somewhere.”
“Yes sir!”
Meanwhile the other prisoners didn’t get a single explanation or reassurance about the alarm, only a sudden wakeup in the middle of the night and no respite from the relentless blaring of sirens. As ordered, they were all left inside their cells, for their own safety, except for Oracle, who found seven soldiers on her doorstep, which seemed to surprise her initially.
“Oh,” she said, “this changes things.”
The soldiers paid it no mind, and began escorting her to the stairwell, to keep the elevator clear for emergencies.
At the same time, Tyler realised he couldn’t stay in the ICU. There were too many people running past, and whatever he had unleashed, he suspected this floor would get busy soon, so he slipped out after making sure no one could spot him, and tried every door until he found one unlocked. It was some sort of supply closet, and he nearly tripped over a mop bucket, so hopefully no one would need to do any cleaning any time soon. He tried to calm his breathing as he listened to the shouts from the soldiers running past, and he realised they sounded rather panicked.
“Where is it?!”
“It’s breached containment, it’s on one of the other floors!”
“Where is Oracle? I can’t reach the team sent to escort her!”
“Check the stairwell!”
Tyler blinked as he pieced together what was going on. It seemed something had been locked away on the lowest level of the facility and now that it was free, everyone was losing their shit.
Okay.
Could be worse.
But he couldn’t stay in a supply closet. Maybe he could go back to his cell? No one seemed to be looking for him in the chaos, and the doors might be strong enough to keep him safe. Yeah, okay, that seemed like a plan.
The running and yelling outside the door stopped, so Tyler carefully poked his head out and once the coast was clear, he found his way to the stairwell, which was thankfully also unlocked. He could hear people running above and below him, but he decided to take his chances and headed down.
Fortunately his way stayed clear, and signs clearly indicated which floor he was on. Once he made it to the twenty-fifth floor, however, he nearly tripped over a man. He caught himself on the railing, half-sprawled over one of the soldiers. He meant to apologise, but then he realised the lifeless look in the man’s eyes, his face twisted in fear, skin pale as if he had been drained from blood, but there wasn’t enough blood on the stairs to support that claim. Just a few blotches.
Tyler gulped as he picked himself up, peering down the stairs before he would trip again, and finding more pale, dead soldiers sprawled on the steps and the landing between staircases.
“What the fuck,” he gasped quietly, trying not to linger for too long, when he came across the last body.
She was slumped against the wall, skin as pale as the others, her curly brown hair messier than usual. Tyler stopped dead in his tracks, guilt squeezing tight around his chest and dropping a heavy weight in his stomach.
“O-oh my god,” he said quietly, “what have I done?”
He knelt down next to her, not even entirely sure what he was doing as he gently re-positioned her to lie down, squeezing her limp hand as he carefully removed his hand from her head and stroked some of her curly hair out of her face. Then he noticed a trickle of blood on her shoulder. He pushed some more of her hair aside, revealing a pair of fresh puncture holes, very reminiscent of a cheap fantasy movie.
“No fucking way…”
And then the lights turned off. The alarm stopped screaming. And Tyler found himself in complete darkness and silence. He gulped, not daring to move as he thought he remembered the stairs being right behind him, and he didn’t want to fall down.
He listened for any sounds, but all he could hear was his own heart pounding in his chest, his own panicked breathing, and a very soft, very subtle but steady dripping. Then there was a soft whirring, before a dark, red light turned on and slowly brightened.
Okay, so the facility had just lost power and switched to an emergency system. He had to get back to his cell while he still could. Whatever had happened would be the soldiers’ problem.
He gently placed Oracle’s hand on her chest, grateful and saddened. She’d helped him so much even though they just met…he wiped at one of his eyes real quickly as he got up and turned to head further downstairs to get back to the twenty-seventh floor, only to freeze in place as he realised there was a figure standing at the bottom of the stairs. He couldn’t see their face in the dimmed light, but he heard a deep, low hiss.
Tyler didn’t wait to figure things out. He immediately turned tail and ran onto the twenty-fifth floor, slamming the doors shut behind him. He didn’t wait to see if that would slow the creature down and sprinted towards the elevator. A loud crash sounded behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the door fly off of its hinges. He sprinted past another hallway, catching a glimpse of a group of soldiers.
“Hey!” one of them shouted.
Tyler didn’t stop. He could hear them begin to give chase, heavy footfalls from their boots, until they were muted by gunfire and a fearful shriek. They didn’t deserve to die that way, but their deaths slowed down the figure chasing him, allowing Tyler to make it to the elevator alive.
He slammed against the doors, nearly dropping the keycard as he pulled it from his pocket and feverishly swiped it and punched in the code. Another strangled scream sounded behind him, but the doors opened and he stumbled inside. He had no choice but to turn around to view the buttons. He didn’t know what floor to go to, but there was a button to close the door that he repeatedly pressed while daring to take a glance down the corridor.
The figure was holding one of the soldiers in some kind of chokehold, before letting go of him, to which he fell limp on the floor. The elevator doors rattled deafeningly, turning the figure’s attention back to him. But it was too far away to make it in time— Until it wasn’t.
In the blink of an eye, the figure suddenly stood right in front of the elevator. Tyler stumbled back with a shriek, catching a glimpse of fiery red eyes before the doors thankfully closed, and the elevator began riding up without him having to press any buttons, the lights flickering ominously while he caught his breath and tried to process what had just happened.
The elevator slowly kept going, until it finally slowed to a stop on the seventh floor and the doors opened again. Waiting for the elevator was a young woman and another group of soldiers, all threateningly staring down at him. Tyler recognised the young woman from the footage he’d analysed at home, but he was still processing. He vaguely remembered Oracle’s warning, to stop running away from the soldiers when things turned red.
He gulped.
“H-help me…” he forced out.
“Get him to his feet,” the young woman ordered, “did you come across Killjoy?”
“W-what?” Tyler sputtered while two solders pulled him to his feet and held him in place.
“Killjoy,” the young woman repeated, “the creature you helped escape.”
“I-I…there were corpses in the stairwell,” Tyler said, “O-Oracle was…th-they were all exsanguinated, a-and there was a bite mark— What the fuck did you have locked away on the thirtieth floor?!”
“A vampire,” the young woman simply said, “a feral one. All the blood it’s drinking is on your hands. What floor was he on?”
Typer paled a bit at the accusation. Why would Oracle ask him to free something so dangerous? Getting herself killed and him nearly too. One of the soldiers holding him gave him a nudge when he didn’t answer right away.
“Uh…t-twenty-five,” Tyler said, “th-there was another group of soldiers…”
“Take him to the general,” the young woman ordered, “we know it’s using the stairwell so use the elevator. The rest of you come with me. We have to subdue it before it drinks enough to regain its full strength.”
“Yes ma’am!” it chorused, most of the group taking off after the young woman, while the two holding Tyler took him back into the elevator, going further up to face the consequences of his actions.
It was hard to tell the time. Everywhere he was allowed to look there were no clocks. There were no windows to see the sun. All Phil had to go off of in terms of a schedule were when they dragged him back to the 23rd floor for a feeding.
The feedings were the absolute worst. Not because of the straps on the chair or the empty feeling in his stomach, but because the moment the doctor left him alone, he could hear cowbells. The cowbells from Wendigo’s costume, and he suspected he was watching him just outside of his line of sight.
He could tell from the chill that washed over him and the pounding in his chest, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t cry for help. All he could do was sit there and watch the lights flicker, fearing the moment he would feel his breath on his skin—
And then the doctor returned. The IV was disconnected but the catheter was left in. The soldiers undid the straps and dragged him back to his feet. Phil didn’t bother to look at the corner behind him. He was afraid to do so. He kept his stare aimed ahead of him as they dragged him back to his cell, where he was reunited with his notepad…only he had no one to talk to.
They decided he didn’t need food, therefore he didn’t need to be in the communal area, so he never met any of the others. Never saw them in passing either, until after his third or fourth goddamn feeding. They took the elevator back to the 27th floor. Phil still hadn’t gotten used to the empty feeling in his stomach, and he was feeling weak, leaning on the two soldiers for support.
When the doors slid open, the familiar landscape of a corridor filled with too many doors was interrupted by two other soldiers escorting a young man in handcuffs. Phil didn’t recognise him. They never got the chance to meet, after all, but the young man’s eyes widened as if he recognised him instead.
“Phil?” he said, “I mean— Mr Winter!”
Phil couldn’t respond, and the soldiers didn’t seem too happy about the interaction either, beginning to pull them away from one another as they switched places in the elevator.
“My name is Tyler!” the young man said, grunting in effort as he tried to pull free from the soldiers, “you don’t know me, but I know your friends!”
The elevator doors were beginning to close. Phil tried to take a better look at the young man over his shoulder, but the soldiers started dragging him along faster.
“They’re with my family! They’re coming for you!” Tyler managed to shout, before the doors closed, and silence returned to the corridor, broken only by the echo of their footsteps, and the clang of metal as the door to his cell was unlocked.
The soldiers dumped him unceremoniously in the chair by his desk, the notepad still collecting dust on top of it as he still couldn’t use it to talk to anyone. He took a moment to collect his thoughts. Whoever that young man by the elevator was, he did give him a little spark of hope. He said his friends were coming for him.
Did that mean they were okay?
He had a vague memory of Mirage collapsing, but he didn’t quite trust his own mind right now. Tyler hadn’t quite been able to give him a timeline on when his friends would come, not that it was very easy to keep track of time anyway. It didn’t matter how long it would take. Knowing they were coming was the only assurance he needed.
After another moment of deliberation, Phil picked up the pen and began writing on the pad. He had no one to talk to currently, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have things to say. He had a lot of things to say, especially to his friends. He expressed his gratitude for their unwavering support, how they were willing to spring to his aid no matter what.
He made sure to write in shorthand. No one else needed to know what he was scribbling about. Especially not the lengthy declaration of love to Mirage. He could always re-do that one when he was ready; When he was sure she at least felt a smidgeon of the same way.
Either way, hopefully writing all his thoughts down would help him hold on to a thread of his sanity until his friends would show up. Hopefully some time earlier than in the nick of time, unlike last time.
Meanwhile Tyler was escorted up to the tenth floor for his introduction to the General, though he already knew him. He suspected the man just wanted to gloat as the two soldiers pushed him down in a chair and handcuffed him to the table. Then they left him to glare at his own reflection in the one-way mirror. He just knew the general was on the other side, making him wait five or ten minutes before finally stepping through the door himself.
“How are you settling in, Mr McLagg?” Clancy asked, closing the door behind him, and standing on the other side of the table.
“Don’t fucking start with the nice cop bullshit,” Tyler said, “you baited us.”
“I have no clue what you’re referring to,” Clancy said, “but I will admit, I sleep a lot better at night knowing you’re safely stowed away until we’ll actually need your expertise.”
“Is that what you’re doing here?” Tyler asked, “you store anyone you feel threatened by here until you can use them against your so-called enemies.”
“Or protect them from being used against us,” Clancy said, “either by an enemy, or them becoming an enemy on their own.”
“We had a deal,” Tyler said.
“Of course we had,” Clancy said, “I like to keep my enemies close, but some ought to be kept closer.”
“You bastard!” Tyler hissed, his handcuffs rattling as he tried got up.
“I understand you’re upset, but you’ll get used to it soon enough,” Clancy said calmly, “I’ll let you settle in first and let this little rudeness slide until you have a better idea of the rules, but one foot out of line and you’ll lose privileges.”
“What about my fucking freedom?!” Tyler snarled.
“I guess we can take the handcuffs off during lunch or when you’re in your room,” Clancy said.
“You mean when I’m in my cell.”
“Potato, potahto,” Clancy said with a shrug, “are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Your loss,” Clancy said, getting up and opening the door, gesturing for the two soldiers that escorted Tyler there to come back in.
The young man didn’t struggle, but gave them a foul glare as they freed him from the table and cuffed his hands behind his back to walk him back to his cell.
They left him alone for a couple of hours, and just as he was beginning to regret denying a meal, the soldiers already returned. He was handcuffed again, but he didn’t struggle as much.
“What time is it?” he asked, “I need to take meds—”
“Quiet!” one of the soldiers just barked, before proceeding to ignore him as they dragged him to the elevator.
Tyler wisely stayed quiet as they slowly ascended to the twentieth floor. He didn’t know what awaited him, but he remembered his chat with Clancy happened on the tenth floor, so it couldn’t be that. No, instead they took him through a short corridor, which ended in a wide open space.
There were a couple of other people inside, some warily looking up as the soldiers entered. The cuffs were removed, and they gave him a shove inside before leaving and shutting the door behind him, locking him in with the others. He knew it was locked because he tried the door.
“It’s no use, the door only unlocks with a code.”
Tyler turned back, finding a young woman with very curly brown hair standing before him. She was wearing the same plain ill-fitting clothing as the others, and most notably, she wasn’t looking directly at him, just in his general direction. Tyler blinked a couple times.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I go by Oracle,” she replied, “take a deep breath, you’re safe in this room.”
“No I’m not,” Tyler said, “I told them I need my medication around this time, probably even earlier.”
“You’re not going to have a seizure,” Oracle said, holding out her hand, “walk me to the buffet?”
Tyler somewhat awkwardly looked around, noticing the buffet set-up in the back of the room. The food smelled and looked bland, but at least they were being given something to eat. He somewhat sheepishly took the girl’s hand, and helped her find her way, deducting that she was blind, but not entirely so.
“You can see the future?” he asked.
“To an extend,” she said, “I can also see the past, just not the present.”
“That’s an impressive power,” Tyler said.
Oracle smiled.
“Thank you,” she said, “the General thinks I’ll be able to warn him for trouble, but no matter how I explain, he just won’t understand it doesn’t work that way. The future is too uncertain.”
“Then how can you be certain I won’t have a seizure?” Tyler asked.
“Well…not during dinner anyway,” Oracle said, “I know stress can make it more likely. I know your name, and how you got here. And I think you might hold the key to getting us out here too.”
“I think I did,” Tyler said, “but then I got arrested…I doubt Clancy will let me anywhere near a computer.”
“Yes…but it’s not a computer you seek, is it?” Oracle asked, “it’s a person.”
“I was looking for Phil, yeah,” Tyler said, looking around, but he wasn’t among them.
“Poor Philip,” Oracle said solemnly, “he won’t be joining us for any meals. He cannot eat if they want to keep his power contained.”
“I figured,” Tyler said, “that’s horrible…”
He looked over the somewhat limited food options, unable to will up an appetite for any of it. Oracle grabbed a plate and a little bit of everything and handed it to him, before filling up another plate.
“You must eat, you’ll need your strength,” she said quietly, “Clancy will stop at nothing to keep you docile.”
“I think he’s already started by not giving me my meds,” Tyler said, “what has he done to you?”
“Enticing me with gifts and privileges, but I always see right through him,” Oracle said with a little smirk, “do you see the two people on the sofa?”
Tyler glanced over at the little lounge corner. Another young woman sat upside down, her blonde hair sprawled out over the floor as she gazed off into the distance with unfocused eyes. The young man next to her seemed to be giggling to himself, also miles away from the real world it seemed.
“Do I want to know?” Tyler asked.
“Let’s just say they’re over-medicated,” Oracle said quietly, “and I already mentioned Philip, they’re keeping people comatose in the medical bay, and don’t even get me started on poor Lieutenant Rider.”
“Nori Rider?” Tyler asked, “isn’t she working for the general?”
“Only because he made her believe it was right,” Oracle said, “he’ll try to convince you too…help me sit down before I embarrass myself.”
“Oh, of course,” Tyler said, quickly pulling out a chair for her so she could sit safely.
He sat down across from her, watching her eat for a moment.
“You seem…strangely unaffected by all this,” he noted, “how long have you been here?”
“Much too long,” Oracle said, “but not as long as the poor man on level thirty.”
“Do I want to know?” Tyler asked.
“No, but you must,” Oracle said, “you won’t have much time.”
“Uh…”
“Eat,” Oracle encouraged.
Tyler sheepishly took a bite of some flavourless peas, immediately missing Skye’s cooking.
“You’ll miss this too, before long,” Oracle said.
“That’s not very reassuring,” Tyler said.
“I know, but there’s no other way,” Oracle said, “I know you’re already plotting an escape. Don’t try to take others with you, but also don’t head directly to the surface. Head for the twenty-third floor instead. You’ll know what you’re looking for and what to do once you find it.”
“Okay,” Tyler slowly said, “and let me guess, this conversation never happened?”
“If the general asks I was merely assuring you that your brothers and sister will be fine without you,” Oracle said, “but one more thing.”
“Please don’t predict my death,” Tyler said.
Oracle chuckled softly.
“Not even Death can accurately predict when he ought to show up.” she said, “No. When you make it to the twenty-third floor, unlock the thirtieth floor.”
“Is the server room on the twenty-third floor?” Tyler asked, “because I can take over the entire building once I hole up in there.”
“No…well, sort of? I think you understand better than I.”
“I mean, just any computer connected to the same network will do,” Tyler said with a shrug.
“You’ll understand when you find it,” Oracle just said.
“Are you being cryptic because the future is uncertain?” Tyler asked.
“No, it’s just more fun that way,” Oracle said.
Tyler nodded.
“I guess they don’t have TV in here,” he said.
“It’s so hard to get any entertainment,” Oracle said.
Tyler shook his head a bit, but however her powers worked, she was very good with them. He did already have a plan, having pieced it together as they talked. He managed to empty his plate, biting off a prong from his plastic fork and tucking it between his jaw and cheek for now. He wouldn’t need it right away, but it would be good to have.
After everyone had finished eating, they were escorted back to their cells, one by one. Tyler noted he was the only one in handcuffs, though whether that had to do with him being new or not he didn’t quite know yet.
Either way, he carefully observed as much as he could on the way back down to the cells. Cameras and their angles, how the elevator was operated and how cells were opened and closed. He’d noticed before that the elevator required a card and a code. It seemed he would need a couple more rides to figure out whether each card had its own code, or whether the cards and codes were more universal.
The cells were easier, they just locked with a code, and from the sound of it it was always the same.
Having no entertainment whatsoever in his cell, he easily picked up on any sounds coming from the corridor, and listening to the keypad bleeps he could tell each door likely had its own code. To decipher the elevator took only two more trips, keeping a good eye on the soldiers’ nametags. It was a different man every meal, but the code was the same.
Good to know.
Oracle didn’t give him any more cryptic hints other than when they first spoke. Instead she actually asked about his siblings, and quietly assured him they would indeed be fine. His arrest hadn’t threatened the rest of the family, which was a relief. The only worry left on his mind was his medication, or lack thereof.
Despite Oracle’s reassurances, he couldn’t help but to feel like a seizure was lurking just around the corner. They didn’t normally scare him so much, but he was surrounded by strangers who might not know what to do, or uncaring soldiers. He suspected this was part of Clancy’s strategy to get him to comply, and since Oracle hadn’t mentioned a timeline, he figured he ought to act sooner rather than later.
He kept the fork prong on him, hiding it in his mouth most of the time, not trusting the camera in his cell. It was hard to tell the time, but he could predict when the next meal was about to be served when he began hearing keypad bleeps in the corridor.
Upon hearing the first bleep, he got up from his bed and headed to the bathroom, which was the only place where the camera didn’t reach. He took the prong from his mouth and hid it between his fingers, flushing the toilet without having used it as he heard the door open, and running the tap for a couple of seconds before stepping out.
Two soldiers were already waiting, one of them dangling the handcuffs. Tyler rolled his eyes and held his hands behind his back, waiting for them to cuff him and begin dragging him towards the elevator. While the soldiers were distracted with typing in their code, Tyler got out the prong and prayed that it would reach as he picked at the cuffs, keeping a side-eye on the keycard that had been used.
He had to be quick, and quiet for now. He masked the soft click of the cuff unlocking with a cough, immediately kickstarting the next part of his plan.
“Got a dry mouth all of a sudden,” he said, faking another cough, “I think I might…” he trailed off, blinking a couple of times before slumping against one of the soldiers.
“What on earth—”
“Put him down, on his side,” the other soldier said, grabbing his keys to take the cuffs off.
In the chaos, they didn’t realise one of the cuffs was actually already unlocked, allowing Tyler to swipe and pocket the other soldier’s key card as they tried to lay him down on his side in the limited space inside the elevator.
“Hit the button, we’ll take him to the med bay instead.”
“Got it.”
Tyler waited for the distinctive click, before groaning quietly and beginning to stir. The elevator stopped, and he could feel one of the soldiers step over him before he blinked his eyes open, acting all groggy as he moved to sit up, but the other soldier pinned him down.
“Stay down, we’re getting you a medic,” he said, “do you pass out like that often?”
“Hrm…what?” Tyler said, rubbing his eyes, “yeah…epilepsy. I’m supposed to be on medication…”
“I’m sure the doctor can explain,” the soldier said, reaching over to press the button to keep the elevator doors open.
He continued to hold him down until his partner returned with a doctor, who gave Tyler a quick examination before allowing him to get up.
“Take him this way,” he said, “I’ll give him a quick check up and if all is well he could still catch dinner.”
“Just give me my meds and I’ll be fine,” Tyler said, “you know everything else about me, I bet you know that too.”
“We do, but the general ordered to switch you to different medication,” the doctor said, “but because they can react negatively to the medication you were previously on, we’re letting those flush out of your system naturally first.”
The doctor’s revelation nearly distracted Tyler from his main purpose, which was to take a good look around now that he was in the med bay. Right by the elevator, he spotted a nurse passing through a door with what looked like empty IV bags. There was a sign marking the door as ICU entrance, and there didn’t seem to be a lock on it. They took Tyler past that, into a generic exam room, and sat him on the bed while the doctor washed his hands and grabbed a little flashlight to shine into his eyes.
“Why did the general order me to switch meds?” Tyler asked, trying not to get too annoyed with the flashlight.
“Beats me,” the doctor said, “are you photosensitive?”
“I always am, right after a seizure,” Tyler said, “flashes aren’t usually a trigger though.”
“What are your usual triggers? I could recommend to reduce those until we can get you started on your new meds.”
“I don’t know, it’s usually random,” Tyler said honestly, “but fatigue and stress increase the odds.”
“Hmm…I’ll recommend additional supplements with your diet and a longer sleep cycle,” the doctor said, “for now though, you seem fine.”
“It was a small one,” Tyler said.
“So is he cleared, doc?” one of the soldiers asked.
The doctor nodded.
“Yes, but keep an eye out for additional seizures,” he said, “if he has another one within half an hour declare a medical emergency.”
“If I feel an aura I’ll try to warn you,” Tyler said.
“Not so stubborn anymore now, are you?” the other soldier commented.
“I prefer not to die from seizures,” Tyler said, “but your general can still suck a fat one.”
The soldier looked like he wanted to hit him, but he held back while the doctor was in the room. He scoffed, shaking his head.
“You’d think if he were trying to start a new race he would at least leave out genetic failures such as a predisposition for a seizure disorder,” he said, “but no powers were even listed on your file. What makes you so special?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Tyler said, “or are you just jealous you didn’t make the cut?”
“Get him out of my sight before I prescribe a tranquilliser,” the doctor said, rolling his eyes.
Tyler slipped off the exam bed and let the soldiers escort him back to the elevator, taking a look at the cameras on the way back, though he was a little distracted by the doctor’s words still. Clancy was trying to start a new race? He’d already basically admitted that he was stockpiling supers to use them as weapons against a possible enemy, but of course stockpiles only made sense if they were sustainable.
Were they planning to experiment with cross breeding supers somehow? Was that what the department’s mission stood for? Were they meant to be the start of a carefully selected übermensch?
The look on Oracle’s face when they brought him to the communal space for dinner told him all he needed to know. It was a good thing he managed to grab the keycard. And an even better thing that they didn’t seem to notice. He grabbed a plate and filled it with the same bland food option that had been available the previous day, and sat down across from Oracle.
“I’m making a move tonight,” he said, “so if I’m not here for breakfast…”
“You’ll have succeeded,” she finished quietly.
Tyler nodded, growing just a tad nervous.
“Will we meet again?” he asked.
“I can’t tell,” Oracle said, “so let’s just not say goodbye.”
“I can live with that,” Tyler said, “I’ll see you around— Wait…”
“Yeah I won’t see you regardless,” Oracle said with a chuckle, “but I like what I have seen, in your past and possible futures. So I’ll give you a last cryptic bit of advice; when you see red, don’t run away from the soldiers.”
“Let me guess, it’ll make sense in the moment?” Tyler asked.
“You’re smart enough to figure it out,” Oracle assured him.
“The one thing I can always count on,” Tyler said with a nod, “thanks, that actually makes me feel a little better.”
