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DATE:29th of August, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Concord Metropolis
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We went straight to the roadside and flagged down a taxi. The driver was a middle-aged man with a cheap suit and cheaper cologne, the kind that smelled like chemicals trying to impersonate sandalwood. He glanced at us through the rearview mirror, eyes lingering on my scars for a moment too long before looking away.
I leaned forward, pulling a few extra bills from my pocket. "I'll pay you double if you move fast."
He didn't need more convincing. The moment I settled back, he slammed the accelerator.
A fast driver, I must say. He reminded me of Alice.
The aggressive way he took corners. The way he ignored traffic lights…. Alice used to drive like that. Pretty callous of the other participants
Hmmm. Gosh, that bitch…
I felt my jaw tighten. My hand curled into a fist against my knee.
Whatever. I couldn't waste my thoughts on her.
She'd made her choice. I'd made mine. We were done. The sooner I stopped letting her occupy space in my head, the better. It really wasn't worth it
I had to get answers from Crater.
That was the priority.
The taxi veered hard left, throwing me against the door. I steadied myself, watching the city blur past the window. Buildings gave way to warehouses, streetlights becoming sparser. The pavement turned rougher, cracked and uneven.
We arrived in a rough neighborhood, like all other industrial areas, really. Rows of corrugated metal structures, faded signage advertising businesses that had probably closed already, chain-link fences sagging under their own weight.
I suppose it wasn't fair to judge, considering the earlier attack.
Mordo's zombies had torn through here recently. The signs were obvious if you knew what to look for, and I did.
I didn't see corpses around, but the damage was certainly great.
A lot of the buildings had signs of flames. Black scorch marks crawled up brick walls like creeping vines. Windows were blown out, glass glittering on the pavement like scattered stars. One warehouse had collapsed entirely on one side, the roof caved in, exposing charred beams underneath.
I remembered one of the zombies Mordor made was a fire hero wielding black flames.
Nasty stuff. Black flames consumed instead of burned. They ate through matter like acid, leaving nothing but ash and that distinctive oily residue. The way it clung to surfaces, refusing to wash away. The way it smelled, sulfur and burnt copper, with an undertone of something rotten.
This neighborhood reeked of it.
I hadn't met this hero in particular, but the flame thrower was a Ventian Invention and this black variety too. The fact that a hero received this as an ability is a sad coincidence.
The taxi slowed as we approached a particularly damaged intersection. A lamppost had been knocked over, lying across the road like a fallen soldier. The driver navigated around it carefully, muttering something under his breath in a language I didn't recognize. Eastern.
"Stop here," I said, tapping the back of his seat.
He glanced at the meter, then at me. "You sure? This place looks-"
"I'm sure."
Anyway, I had him leave us about five minutes away from the warehouse.
No point advertising our arrival. If Crater was smart he'd have lookouts. Or traps. Or both. Walking in from a distance gave me time to scan for problems before they became fatal.
I handed him the fare plus the extra I'd promised. He took it quickly, eyes flicking to the burned-out buildings around us, then back to me.
"You need a ride back?" he asked, though his tone suggested he hoped the answer was no.
"We'll manage."
He didn't wait for me to close the door fully before pulling away, tires screeching slightly on the broken asphalt. Within seconds, the red taillights disappeared around a corner, leaving us standing alone in the industrial graveyard.
I adjusted my collar and started walking.
The warehouse wasn't hard to spot, Mundi had sent me the precise coordinates in the meantime, but even without it, the place stood out. It was one of the few structures that looked intact, or at least mostly intact. Three stories, flat roof, loading bay doors facing the street. Pretty classic for a secret meeting.
Suspicious really… Why would they make it so obvious? Arrogance perhaps?
Maybe they thought this place was remote enough that no one would bother checking. Or maybe they'd gotten comfortable. No one was really hunting them. Or the ones that did weren't making an impact.
Either way, their mistake.
I kept my pace steady, hands in my pockets, eyes scanning. The street was empty, but that didn't mean I was alone. Shadows had a way of hiding things like people or cameras, worse. Even in a ruined district. No, especially in a ruined place. You don't tend to check on damaged things.
My boots crunched over broken glass. The wind carried the scent of ash and rust.
No tension in my shoulders. Just a calm feeling settling over me like a weighted blanket. The kind of calm that came before violence. Really, it was inevitable.
It was almost pleasant.
Pamela was silent behind me. I'd almost even forgotten that I brought her from how relaxed I was.
Her footsteps were light, barely audible against the cracked pavement. She'd stopped asking questions a block back, maybe sensing that now wasn't the time for conversation. Smart. Or maybe just scared. Hard to tell with her, she oscillated between grief-stricken widow and cold pragmatist depending on the hour and it was starting to bother me.
I glanced over my shoulder. She was trailing about three meters back, arms wrapped around herself despite the warmth of the evening. Those branded clothes were certainly out of place, but it wasn't like my own suit made sense in a warzone.
"Quicken your pace," I said quietly. "And stay low."
She nodded, hunching her shoulders and closing the distance between us. Now that I paid more attention, her eyes were wide, darting to every shadow, every broken window. She wasn't built for this. Twenty years as a ghost must have made her forget what it felt like to have a body that could bleed.
Too bad. She'd wanted back in. Now she got to experience all the joys of mortality again.
We approached the warehouse, keeping close to the walls of the adjacent buildings. The loading bay doors were shut, but light leaked through the gaps. Someone was home.
I heard commotion.
Muffled voices. The scrape of boots on concrete. A metallic clang, like something heavy being dropped. At least two people, maybe more. Hard to gauge through walls.
I motioned for Pamela to stop, pressing myself flat against the corrugated metal siding of a nearby structure. She copied me, breath coming faster now, panic creeping into her posture. Or was it anticipation?
Peeking through the holes in the wall, I saw a man in a green and yellow costume talking with some military grunts. Probably part of the traitorous garrison.
The hero, if you could call him that, stood with his back to me, gesturing animatedly as he spoke. His costume was garish, the colors bright. A green bodysuit with yellow accents running down the sides, some kind of stylized emblem on the chest I couldn't make out from this angle. He looked like a traffic sign had mated with a bad comic.
The soldiers around him were dressed in the standard Unified Kingdom military fatigues. They were green and grey urban camouflage, equipped with tactical vests and rifles slung over their shoulders. They weren't at attention, but they weren't relaxed either. One was smoking. Another was checking his watch.
I numbered about ten men including the hero.
Two clustered near the hero, listening to whatever speech he was giving. Four more spread out along the far wall, standing near crates stacked haphazardly. Two by the entrance we couldn't see from here. One near what looked like a makeshift desk covered in maps and equipment.
But was he really Crater?
The green uniform of the soldiers was pretty clean for a regiment that had gone rogue. No blood stains, no tears or other signs of the firefight they supposedly went through during the attack. Their boots weren't scuffed. Their vests looked freshly issued.
Was the backing of the Combine that strong? Or these were the reserves?
Strong enough to outfit deserters with brand-new gear? To keep them fed, armed, coordinated? That took resources. Money, infrastructure, logistics. Just how many of the regional barons had rebelled?
Those suits heroes wore certainly were stronger than regular gear, but why would he show his identity so easily?
He wasn't wearing a mask. I could see his profile now as he turned slightly, a square jaw, short-cropped hair, maybe late thirties. Confident. Too confident. The kind of confidence that came from either being very good or very stupid.
I recognized the costume from my earlier scrolling.
Green and yellow, earth manipulation powers. Crater. Had to be. The internet had flagged him as a mid-tier hero and a promising star in entertainment.
At least this confirmed it.
I pulled back from the gap in the wall, mind already working through the logistics. Ten hostiles. One with powers that could turn the ground beneath me into a death trap. No backup. No heavy weapons. Just a handgun with limited ammunition and a ghost-woman who could maybe see things I couldn't.
Not great odds.
But not impossible.
I made a mental note of the plan and put it into action.
If I gave Crater even a second to react, he'd bury me in concrete or collapse the building on my head. The soldiers were secondary threats.
Crater was the most difficult to subdue as he can control dirt and stuff… I assume also concrete and cement?
It would have been simpler to ask someone from the legion, but I didn't have the contacts on Pamela's phone. "Earth manipulation" covered a lot of ground. Could he just move soil, or could he shape metal-reinforced concrete? Could he sense vibrations through the ground? Did he need line of sight, or could he work blind?
Too many variables. Didn't matter. I'd committed.
I pulled the handgun from my waistband, checking the chamber. Fully loaded. Seventeen rounds. I had one spare magazine in my pocket. Thirty-four bullets total.
Enough.
I breathed in, feeling time slow down.
The sensation was almost comforting. The world stretched like taffy, colors deepening, sounds dropping an octave. My heartbeat became a slow, rhythmic drum. Each breath took an eternity.
Ash in the air. Time bending to my will.
I stepped through the gap in the wall, moving with deliberate calm. The soldiers were frozen mid-motion, one mid-sentence, mouth open, another lifting a cigarette to his lips.
I shot the first green-clad man in the head.
The suppressor I didn't have made the gunshot obscenely loud in the frozen moment, but it didn't matter. He wouldn't hear it. None of them would. Not until I let them.
I adjusted my aim. Second soldier. The one by the crates. Center mass, no, head. Cleaner. The bullet left the barrel in slow motion, spiraling through the air, trailing gunpowder residue like a comet's tail.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
I moved between them like a ghost, stepping over frozen boots, around outstretched arms.
Sixth soldier, near the desk. He'd been reaching for his radio. Too slow.
Seventh. Eighth. Then the ninth.
Then I reloaded.
My hands moved automatically, muscle memory taking over. Magazine out, fresh one in, slide release. Three seconds in real-time. An eternity in this stretched moment.
I turned toward Crater.
He was mid-gesture, one hand raised, mouth open in what was probably a laugh or a boast. Arrogant bastard. Didn't even have his guard up.
I shot him in the right shoulder joint. Then the left. Then both knees.
The bullets hung in the air for a heartbeat before continuing their trajectories, embedding themselves in flesh and cartilage. I wanted him immobilized, not dead. Not yet.
Then I aimed for the lower chest, twice, just below the ribcage. For a slow death. Painful too. It gave me time to ask questions before he bled out.
I stood no chance against Crater if he used his powers.
So I didn't give him the chance.
I exhaled.
Time snapped back like a rubber band released.
The world erupted into chaos.
He fell to the ground and tried to clutch his chest near the wounds.
His hands scrabbled uselessly at the holes in his costume, fingers slipping on blood. The fabric was already soaked through, dark stains spreading across the green and yellow like spilled ink. His breathing came in short, panicked gasps, the kind that said his lung was compromised, filling with fluid.
Good.
He sent a wall of pillars of concrete towards me, but they were too unguided so I just dodged.
The floor erupted in jagged spikes, concrete tearing itself free from the foundation with a sound like bones breaking. They shot upward in a chaotic spray with no pattern or aim, just desperation. One passed close enough to my face that I felt the air displacement, the rough stone grazing my cheek.
I sidestepped, letting momentum carry me left. Another pillar shot up where I'd been standing a half-second earlier. Then another. Then three more in quick succession, forming a forest of misshapen spears.
He was panicking. Wounded animals always did.
The pillars stopped growing after a moment, jutting up at odd angles like broken teeth. Crater slumped further, his remaining strength bleeding out with every heartbeat.
I glanced over my shoulder. "Pamela. Get in here."
She was still pressed against the wall outside, face pale, eyes locked on the carnage. Nine bodies. Nine pools of blood spreading across the concrete, merging into one dark lake. I suppose happening all at once added to her surprise.
"Now," I added, sharper this time.
She flinched, then stepped through the gap, arms wrapped tight around herself. Her shoes reddening from stepping into a puddle. She didn't look down, nor at the faces. Just kept her eyes fixed somewhere past me, on nothing.
"Look around for any signs of necromancy," I said, gesturing vaguely at the warehouse interior.
She shook her head, not in refusal, in confusion. "What am I looking for?"
"How should I know? Anything that feels wrong. You said you could see things. Prove it."
She swallowed hard, then nodded. She stepped over the bodies carefully and started scanning the room. Her eyes moved evenly between the walls, floor, crates and ceiling.
I turned my attention back to Crater.
He was still on the ground, one hand pressed against his chest, the other twitching weakly at his side. His face was pale, lips tinged blue. Shock setting in.
He started screaming. "Who-who the fuck are you?!"
His voice cracked halfway through, shrill and desperate. It echoed off the metal walls, bouncing back at us in fragmented pieces.
I chuckled, unable to help myself. The absurdity of it. "And people give me trouble for my memory… How do you not even remember my face from a week ago? Didn't you 'save' me?"
He blinked, eyes unfocused, trying to place me. Blood flecked his lips as he coughed.
"Hmm? Didn't you 'save' me?" I prompted, crouching down to his level.
Recognition flickered across his face-then fear. Dread.
"You-you're-"
"Carter," I finished for him. "Though I suppose introductions are redundant at this point."
He raised his arm weakly, fingers trembling, trying to summon another attack. The concrete beneath me rumbled faintly.
I shot his arm three times before he could activate his powers.
The bullets punched through his forearm in quick succession, bone, muscle and tendon. His hand spasmed, then went limp, flopping uselessly against the floor. He screamed again, higher this time, more animal than human.
I stood, pointing the gun at his head. The barrel was still warm.
"The reason I'm here is obvious," I said, voice drab. "You took something that was mine."
He stared up at me, chest heaving, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Please-please don't-"
"Where is she?"
"I don't-"
I pressed the barrel against his forehead. "Emily. The AI. Where did you take her?"
His eyes went wide, pupils dilated with terror. "I was forced! I didn't-they made me do it!"
"Who?"
"Your enemies! They-uh-they said if I didn't help, they'd kill my family… my wife, my daughter-ah-I didn't have a choice!"
"Who specifically?" I asked, applying more pressure. "Names."
"I don't know names! I just-there was a woman, she coordinated everything-uh-tall, blonde, some kind of military higher-up… she didn't tell me her name."
Just then, I heard a scream behind me.
Not Crater's. Higher. Pamela's.
I spun around, gun already raised.
Pamela was standing rigid, eyes wide, mouth open in a silent gasp. A hand, it was gray, textured like stone… it was protruding from her chest. Fingers splayed, knuckles pressing against the fabric of her shirt from the inside out.
Behind her stood a man in a black military uniform.
His hair was decolored with remnants of black here and there. His irises were white. Even his skin had an ashen quality, like he'd been carved from granite and given the barest suggestion of life.
He reminded me of someone.
The hand retracted smoothly, pulling free from Pamela's back with a wet, grinding sound of flesh tearing and of bone scraping against stone. She collapsed immediately, hitting the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
The man didn't look at her. He looked at me.
I breathed in again.
The world slowed. Colors deepened. Sound dropped.
But as he took his hand out of Pamela's chest fully, his eyes tracked my movement.
Still, in the slowed time… he moved??!!
Not fast. Not fully. But his head turned slowly, incrementally following me as I shifted position. His hand, still dripping with blood and viscera, began to rise.
I know who he was!
The decolored hair. The ability to function even if partially in my stopped time.
He was another agent from Albion!
The people under Naomi Sayahara. Was he a remnant under Deus?
His hand finished rising, fingers curling into a fist. The stone texture spread up his arm, covering his shoulder, his neck, creeping toward his face like living armor.
I barely managed to dodge another strike from his stone hand by jumping back.
His fist cratered the floor where I'd been standing, concrete exploding outward in a spray of dust and shrapnel. The impact echoed like a gunshot, reverberating through my ribs.
I exhaled.
Time snapped forward.
The man straightened, pulling his fist from the crater, and locked eyes with me.
"Carter," he said, voice rough and gravelly. "You're harder to kill than I expected."
I shot him a few times, moving backwards, but he shielded with the stone hand as he approached.
The bullets sparked off his palm like fireworks, metal meeting rock, ricocheting at angles. One buried itself in the wall behind him. Another hit a crate and splintered wood. The rest just chipped away at his stone armor, leaving shallow divots that mustn't have posed a threat.
He didn't slow down. Didn't even flinch.
Just kept walking forward. His other hand was flexing at his side, fingers curling and uncurling… preparing.
I kept firing. Five rounds. Six. Seven.
Empty.
Click.
He closed the distance just after I could reload into the half empty mag.
I dodged his hand, ducking under a swing that would've caved in my skull. The air displacement ruffled my hair. My right arm raised instinctively, fingers wrapping around the hilt of the shortsword hidden at my side.
I tried to stab him in that single motion, aiming for the gap between his ribs.
But he grabbed the blade with his stone hand.
The metal screeched against rock, the edge biting into his palm but not penetrating. He didn't bleed. Just held it there, locked in place, like he'd caught a fly mid-air.
Then his right hand, now also stone, punched my left hand away.
The impact was brutal. My fingers went numb instantly, the gun flying from my grip and skittering across the floor into the darkness near the crates. Pain shot up my forearm, sharp and immediate. I felt something crack, the wrist, maybe, or a knuckle.
Didn't matter.
We exchanged a few blows in that position.
My free hand went for his face. He blocked with his shoulder. I twisted, trying to wrench the sword free from his grip. He pulled back, dragging me forward off-balance. I drove my knee toward his gut. He turned, taking it on his hip instead.
Close-quarters. Brutal. No finesse.
He was stronger. Heavier. The stone coating gave him mass I couldn't match.
I was faster if barely, but my body was failing me.
Eventually, he pushed me onto the ground.
My back hit concrete hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Stars burst behind my eyelids. The sword was still between us, both of us gripping it, but he had leverage now. Gravity was on his side.
My body hadn't fully healed from the past injuries caused by the ventium explosion.
The burns. The fractured ribs. The internal damage I'd been ignoring because I didn't have a choice. All of it came back at once, screaming, demanding attention. My muscles trembled. My grip weakened.
He held me there, leaning his full weight into the blade, trying to cut my neck by pushing it downward.
The edge pressed against my throat, not breaking skin yet, but close. I could feel the cold steel. My arms shook with the effort of holding him back.
He screamed. "I will end you! For her! For what you did!"
His voice was raw, cracking with emotion. Rage. Grief. Something uglier beneath it.
I met his eyes. white, like clouds. Familiar.
"I don't even remember how she looked," I said.
It was true. For me, faces blurred together after a while. The dead stopped being people and started being obstacles. Anonymous. Interchangeable.
His expression twisted, fury boiling over into something feral.
But as we struggled like that, I wasn't scared.
I was actually thinking.
Decolored hair. Can bypass slowed time… that wasn't just any agent.
The pieces clicked together.
I audibly chuckled, catching his attention.
The sound bubbled up unbidden, dry, mocking, completely inappropriate given the blade at my throat. But I couldn't help it. The absurdity of it all.
His eyes narrowed, confusion flickering across his rage. "What's so funny?"
"Minerva?" I asked, still smiling. And people think I'm heartless!
He froze.
Not completely. But his pressure on the blade eased, just a fraction, just for a heartbeat. His pupils dilated. His jaw clenched.
"Yeah, that's the one!" I said, grin widening. "The bitch whose head I stomped a few weeks ago."
His entire body went rigid.
"Can't believe you're related to such a stain," I continued, letting the mockery drip from every word. "What was she, your sister? Cousin? She had the same shitty decolored hair. Same arrogant attitude. Thought she was clever, too, tried to bait me by bombing a mall full of civilians." The idiot.
His breathing came faster now, ragged and uneven.
"Didn't work out for her, though. I killed her and her partner. What was his name? Doesn't matter. They both died screaming. Well-" I paused, tilting my head as much as the blade allowed. "-she didn't scream much after I caved her skull in. Hard to scream without a functioning brain." Yeah, her partner whined more.
This made him fume.
His face went red. Veins bulged at his temples. The stone texture spread further, creeping across his chest, his arms, consuming him in rage made manifest.
"You-you fucking-"
But I used the gap in his attention to turn us around.
My hips twisted. My legs hooked around his. I drove my shoulder up and sideways, using his own momentum against him. And stone certainly is heavy. We rolled, concrete scraping against my back, his weight shifting, and suddenly I was on top.
I spun the blade in our shared grip, angling the tip toward his throat, and almost pierced his neck.
The point pressed against the soft flesh just below his jaw, drawing a single bead of blood, bright red against gray skin.
His eyes went wide.
He kicked me backwards, legs driving into my stomach with enough force to lift me off the ground.
I flew back, hitting the floor hard, the sword clattering from my grip. Pain exploded through my ribs.
He scrambled to his feet while letting go of the sword entirely.
I rolled onto my side, ignoring the pain, eyes scanning desperately for-
A rifle.
There. Five meters away, half-hidden in shadow near the corpse.
I scrambled for it, fingers clawing at concrete, dragging myself forward.
But instead of coming after me, he ran towards the hero.
Crater was still on the ground, barely conscious, drowning in his own blood.
The Albion agent reached him in three strides, grabbed him by the collar, and jumped over him-
As I raised the rifle and started shooting at them-
Reality rippled.
The air bent wrong, folding in on itself like paper creased and flattened. Light distorted. Space compressed.
They teleported away.
My bullets punched against stone, then through empty air, hitting nothing, embedding themselves in the far wall.
Gone.
The warehouse fell silent except for my ragged breathing and the wet, labored gasps coming from Pamela's crumpled form near the entrance.
I think a few rounds hit him, but he was wearing a vest so they were surely meaningless.
I lowered the gun, still gripping it tight, and stared at the empty space where they'd been.
"Fuck."