The Shadow is no longer a shapeless silhouette; it has fully formed.
A man stands before Grant, clad in a black supersuit, sleek and angular, veins of faint crimson energy pulsing beneath its plates. His mask is smooth, featureless, save for two burning slits where eyes should be. His presence feels heavier than the void itself.
Grant takes a step back, fists clenched.
"If this is my mind… how are you here?"
The masked figure tilts his head, voice resonant, calm but edged with something colder.
"I'm not just here. I've always been here. Because I am you, or rather, what you will become."
Grant shakes his head violently. "No. That's not—that's not possible."
The Shadow ignores the protest, stepping closer. The air around him ripples with faint crackles of red static.
"I'm your future. There's a war coming. A war has already begun. Taskforce V hunts our kind with no mercy, no hesitation. Your father…" The voice falters for the briefest instant, then steadies. "Your father died in one of their raids."
Grant's chest tightens. The words echo with too much certainty, too much weight to dismiss.
"…You're lying."
The Shadow spreads his hands, and the void bends, conjuring frozen fragments of memory: soldiers with rifles blazing white light, a blackened ruin, the echo of a man's scream. The images dissolve before Grant can fully process them.
The Shadow lowers his arms.
"I sent Rook back to accelerate what you must become. Without you, all of us are doomed. But…" His voice hardens, venom sparking beneath the calm. "…It also accelerated them. Messing with time is tricky; it sends ripples across the timeline, and so, the Juggernaut Protocol was activated, twenty-five years earlier than it should have been."
Grant's breath catches. He can't form words. The void hums with low thunder, and the black mask stares at him without flinching, like a reflection carved from inevitability.
****
4 Years Earlier
The infirmary lights burned cold white against steel walls, the quiet thrum of machines the only rhythm in the room. Grant lay motionless on the table, his chest still, skin pale. Around him, the Ampers gathered, their faces set in shadows of doubt and grief.
Rook's gloved hand gripped the table edge until the alloy bent beneath his fingers. His voice was gravel, cracking under weight.
"This is not what was supposed to happen."
Across the room, Brakkon's growl rumbled low, his arms folded, his eyes hard.
"Kid was no messiah after all."
The silence that followed was jagged, unbearable.
Then, with a rasp of breath, Voltair stirred. His eyelids fluttered open, blue light flickering faintly in the veins of his body like storm currents waking in a broken sky. He sat up slowly, disoriented, and the first thing he saw was Grant's lifeless form, surrounded by the hushed tension of his comrades.
No hesitation. Voltair reached for the staff at his side. The metal sparked alive at his touch, veins of lightning crawling down its length. He placed it gently against Grant's chest.
A flare of electric-blue light coursed through the boy's body. Muscles seized, back arched, lips parted in a soundless scream—then he stilled, collapsing into stillness once more.
But the monitor chimed. A pulse returned. Weak, fragile, but real.
Voltair lowered the staff, his chest heaving. His eyes, still dim with exhaustion, lingered on Grant with something between relief and sorrow.
"He'll live," he whispered. "He helped me; something within him woke me up. He is a hero."
****
Three Weeks Later
The infirmary was quiet again, only the whisper of machines filling the air. Shadows pooled in the corners as Anna slipped silently through the door. Her gloved hands clenched tight at her sides.
She approached the cot where Grant lay, unchanged, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm.
For a long time, she just stood there, watching, her face unreadable. Then, hesitantly, she reached out, hovering a gloved hand above his.
"You…" Her voice was almost too soft to hear. "You're the only one who never looked at me like a threat."
The words trembled with something she rarely allowed anyone to glimpse. Vulnerability. Loneliness. A plea carved into silence.
Her hand hovered closer, not quite touching.
"They told me that they are going to do their best, but I…" She swallowed, her mask of control slipping. "I need you."
She lingered a moment longer, then slipped back into the shadows, leaving only the faint hum of machines and Grant's steady, unconscious breathing.
****
The white void rippled as the Shadow raised a hand. Space bent, peeling open into a tall, shimmering window.
On the other side lay Kudin's med bay; sterile light, machines humming, Grant's own body lying still upon the cot. His chest rose and fell shallowly, tubes webbing around him.
Three figures circled in sharp voices: Aldus, Acuent, Slha.
Kudin, steady but weary, adjusted monitors with ritual care. "His body endures, but the tether weakens. Every day, he drifts further."
Aldus, arms crossed, eyes burning with conviction: "Then we strengthen the tether. There is something woven differently in him, Voltair told us so; if we abandon that, we abandon everything."
Acuent's voice cracked like lightning against steel, "You put faith in threads and riddles, Aldus. Four years. Four years of resources, of watch, of risk… all for a boy who has not once moved. He is no longer an asset. He is an anchor dragging us under."
Slha, perched against the wall, fingers flicking across a data-slate, chimed in fast, biting: "And let's not forget, keeping him alive means burning every ounce of Kudin's focus. We could've upgraded the safehouse three times over by now."
Grant flinched, pressing his palm against the window's surface. "No—stop—" But his voice bounced back, hollow, swallowed by the void.
Then the door hissed open.
Anna slipped inside, her cloak brushing the floor. She stood rigid, listening to their words, her eyes narrowing, jaw set.
Acuent turned, cool as a storm. "Anna. You know this as well as I. He is gone. Kudin props up a corpse, nothing more."
"Don't," Anna said, her voice low, trembling.
Aldus tried, gently, "We only debate the strain, child. None question your loyalty—"
"Loyalty?" Her voice cracked. "You think this is loyalty? You think I sit here every day for four years because of duty?"
The room stiffened.
Her breath hitched, breaking through her mask. "I'm here because he mattered. Because he—" Her fists clenched. "But you'll never understand that. All you see is a ghost you can tally in your damn ledgers."
Acuent's gaze sharpened, cruel in its precision. "And what are you clinging to, girl? Four years of silence. Perhaps it is time you admit the truth. He's not coming back."
Anna's composure fractured. She spun toward the door, voice ringing sharp with hurt:
"You think I'm clinging to a ghost? Then fine—he's dead to me!"
The door slammed shut behind her.
Grant slammed his hands against the glass, desperate, breath ragged. "Anna! No! I'm here! I'm right here!"
But the window remained silent, unmoved.
The Shadow's voice slid behind him, calm, merciless:
"They can't see you. They never will. Not unless you take what's waiting inside you."
Grant's knees buckled, forehead pressed against the glass as Anna's shadow vanished down the corridor. His voice broke in a whisper: "Don't leave me."
The window flickered, then dissolved back into white nothing.
****
2 Years Earlier
The door to the med bay opened with a muted sigh. Anna stepped through, taller now, movements sharper, carrying herself like someone used to fighting. She slipped off her gloves as she approached the bedside, sitting in the same chair she had worn threadbare over two years.
For a moment, she just watched him, his still face, the way his hair had grown longer, the way his hands rested as though in uneasy sleep. Then, softly:
"Hey, Grant. It's me."
Her voice trembled with fatigue but steadied with will. "I'm stronger now. Everyone's training harder than ever. They say Taskforce V is escalating. Raids are worse. Deadlier."
She leaned closer, lowering her voice like a confession. "Slha's built these… decoys. Little ghosts of herself. They confuse scanners, throw off drones. It buys us time, but she burns out quickly using them."
Her fingers brushed his wrist, lingering a second before she pulled back. "Kudin rigged up a new stasis field. Stronger. Keeps you stable, even when your vitals dip. He says it's not forever, but… it buys us days we wouldn't have otherwise."
Her mouth twisted, remembering. "Astegger and Brakkon? They're running hard ops now, straight into Taskforce lines. I hear the reports. I see the scars when they come back. They're pushing themselves past the edge."
She fell quiet, eyes flicking over his sleeping form, the flicker of the stasis light reflected in her pupils.
"I'm not telling you all this to… I don't know. Perhaps I just need someone to listen. Someone who won't judge."
Her hand hovered again, almost touching his fingers, then she closed her fist tight, pulling back into herself.
"I can't let go, Grant." Her voice broke on the words. "Not when the world's turning sharper, darker. Not when you're the only one who ever looked at me like I wasn't some… weapon waiting to explode."
She leaned down, pressing her forehead gently against his arm. Whispered, desperate but steady:
"So don't let go either. You hear me? Don't let go."
The machines hummed. The stasis light pulsed. He didn't move.
Anna sat there a long while, eyes closed, as though trying to will her words into him, to anchor him through the silence.
****
Back To The White Void
Grant's voice cracked as he backed from the figure in black. "Why am I still here? Why didn't I die?"
The Shadow tilted its masked head, like studying prey. A faint hum filled the void, the static rolling into a low thunder.
"You should have died. Your body was broken. But something… unusual happened."
The white floor beneath them rippled like water. Images surged up, the accident with Voltair, the storm of energy swallowing Grant whole, his body convulsing in a pool of lightning and blood.
Grant flinched. "Stop—"
Shadow ignored him. "Your biology saved you. A regenerative trait buried in your cells… not just healing. Adaptive… evolutionary."
Grant stared at his hands, flexing, trembling. "I'm a freak."
"No," Shadow's voice boomed, layered with static. "You're a survivor. The surge from Voltair did more than revive you; it rewired you. Burned the delay from your body's healing. Now your cells regenerate in moments."
Sparks of red lightning crawled across Shadow's arms as he spoke, his tone sharper.
"But that wasn't all." He lifted his hand, and the scene shifted again, not Voltair's strike this time, but the staff itself. The relic pulsed, its dark core writhing with unseen matter.
"When Voltair's staff touched you, it carried with it more than stormfire. Neural accelerants. ATP-synthase enhancers. Trace compounds that should have killed you… Instead, they fused into you. And when mixed with the staff's dark matter? They made something new."
The scene froze: a spectral image of Grant's veins glowing, a storm of energy racing through him.
Shadow stepped closer, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. "They gave you speed. Not just the legs. Not just running. Your body moves faster, heals faster… and your mind can keep up."
Grant swallowed, his throat dry. "So I'm supposed to what? Run circles around Taskforce V?"
The mask tilted again. "You misunderstand. Out there, you are broken. Sleeping. But here—" He spread his hands, and the void cracked with arcs of red and white lightning, the ground stretching endlessly. "Here, your mind is unbound. Every second you remain in the coma, I can teach you. Every lesson you learn here, your body will remember when you wake."
Grant looked around at the infinite horizon, at his still hands. "This is… training?"
"This is survival," Shadow said. The static flared, buzzing like a swarm of insects. "When you wake, they'll already be hunting you. You won't have time to learn slowly. So you will learn here. With me."
Grant hesitated, torn between fear and something sharper stirring in his chest.
Shadow leaned close, red sparks dancing across his visor. "Your father's blood made you Gifted. The staff made you more. I will make you unstoppable."
The whiteness of the void bent and twisted, folding in on itself. Shapes emerged, jagged and incomplete at first, then sharper. The floor cracked beneath Grant's feet, splintering into shadows of walls, ceilings, and debris.
When the light settled, the void had transformed. He stood in a ruined Ampers safehouse, twisted steel and shattered consoles scattered like a battlefield frozen in time. Red light spilled through broken windows, casting jagged shadows across scorched walls. Smoke and sparks rose in small whorls, and the distant echo of alarms hummed through the hollow air.
Grant's chest tightened. "This… this is real?"
The Shadow stepped beside him, the black mask gleaming as red veins of lightning arced along his armor. The static hum that had followed him through the void intensified, wrapping the space in an oppressive energy.
"It is," Shadow said, voice low but resonant, carrying the weight of inevitability. "This is what happens if you do not become more. Every choice you delay, every second you waste… this is the world waiting for you."
Grant's eyes darted around, taking in the destruction: holographic consoles melted, walls scarred with energy burns, bodies of unnamed Gifteds frozen in eerie silence. The vision pulsed like a heartbeat, throbbing with the reality of failure.
Red lightning cracked across the ceiling, sending shards of burning energy streaking down. Grant staggered back, shielding his eyes, but the Shadow's presence kept him rooted.
"You survived when you should have died," the Shadow continued. "Now you will train. Here. Now. Every ability you possess, every thought, every motion… sharpen it. Master it. Because the world outside this void will demand nothing less."
Grant's voice trembled. "I… I don't even know where to start."
The Shadow's hand rose, and the ruin shimmered, pulsing with red energy. "You start now. The clock began the moment you fell. And every second you hesitate, the Juggernaut waits, Taskforce V waits, and the world bleeds."
A jagged bolt of crimson lightning erupted from the void's ceiling, racing toward Grant's feet. The air vibrated, the thunderous static locking around him. He stumbled, knees buckling, heart hammering.
The Shadow's mask reflected the red arcs. "Do not fear. Channel it. Let the storm teach you."
Red lightning cracked again—faster, sharper, consuming the scene in brilliance. The void trembled, shadows twisting and converging, and Grant's scream echoed into the nothingness.
Then, in an instant, the world went silent.
The void was empty. White. Infinite. But the pulse lingered—like a heartbeat counting down.
And the training had begun.