Part 1: The First Flame
Location: Abandoned Freight Hub, Brooklyn Docks Time: Midnight
The old freight hub didn't stand a chance.
Riven and Logan moved like twin storms, silent until the violence erupted.
By the time the first Hydra lookout spotted movement, it was already too late. A flash of claws. A neck snapped like brittle wood. Blood sprayed across rusted metal.
They breached the side entrance with brutal precision. Inside, five guards sat around a broken table playing cards, guns resting nearby. Riven didn't hesitate. He lunged.
His fist caved in the first man's skull with a single punch. Another tried to reach for his weapon—Riven grabbed the man's jaw and drove it into the table edge. Teeth shattered. Blood soaked the wood.
Logan pounced on the third, claws raking through the man's torso with a wet, meaty tear. The last two scrambled for cover, but they didn't get far.
Riven picked up the card table and hurled it like a discus, crushing one against the wall. The other tried to run. Logan tackled him, drove his claws straight through the spine, and whispered, "Cowards bleed the same."
Gunfire erupted from the catwalk above.
Riven didn't flinch. He turned his head slowly, eyes glowing with restrained fury. He raised one hand. A section of rusted support beam ripped from the wall with a metallic shriek and swung like a whip across the catwalk.
The first man folded backward at the waist, spine cracking audibly. Another was thrown screaming off the edge, landing in a jagged pile of crates with a sound like glass and bone.
"Still think you can't control it?" Logan muttered, dragging a body off his claws.
Riven didn't answer. His hand was shaking again.
They moved forward through dark corridors stained with oil and soot. This place wasn't just abandoned—it had been a cage once. The walls held the scent of fear and bleach.
A lone Hydra scientist appeared at the end of a hallway. His lab coat was soaked with something dark. He turned and ran. Riven blurred forward, caught him by the collar, and slammed him into the concrete.
"How many were kept here?"
"Please, I don't know—"
"Wrong answer."
He crushed the man's knee with his heel. The scream echoed down the corridor.
Logan pulled open a nearby metal door, revealing rows of empty cages. Some were small. Too small. Each one had scratch marks on the inside. Dried blood. Children's drawings in chalk, half-erased.
Riven stared at them.
His jaw clenched until it hurt.
Down in the lower levels, alarms began to wail—manual triggers activated. Someone had noticed.
They didn't stop.
More guards came. Better armed. More disciplined. Riven didn't care.
One fired a round at him—it tore into his shoulder, but he didn't even stumble. He drove forward, tackled the shooter, and slammed his head into the floor repeatedly until it left a crater.
Blood covered his forearms. His breath came in hisses.
Logan skewered two more in a single charge, impaling them against a wall.
"How many did you say were left?" he growled.
Riven didn't reply. He was already ripping another gun from a soldier's hands and beating him to death with it.
In the lab below, a technician screamed into a radio before Riven's telekinesis grabbed the equipment and crushed it into a dense ball. The man begged.
"Please, we were just following orders!"
"So were they," Riven said, gesturing at the cages upstairs.
Then he snapped the man's neck.
The fight lasted six minutes.
Seventeen bodies.
Zero mercy.
When it was over, only the flickering of damaged fluorescent lights remained. Blood pooled in corners. The air stank of copper, smoke, and death.
Riven stood over the last body, shaking. Not from exhaustion.
From restraint.
Logan lit a new cigar, blood dripping from his claws.
"That all of 'em?"
Riven looked at his trembling hand. The rage hadn't left. It never would.
"For now."
And without another word, they moved on.