Night pressed down on the Ampers' safehouse like a lid, the distant thrum of protest chants leaking through cracked windows. Westvale still burned with argument—drones circling, sirens threading the smoke—but inside the concrete bunker only the low hum of equipment filled the silence.
A single strip of emergency light cast long shadows across the command room. The team ringed the central console, faces carved from fatigue and stubbornness.
Anna paced a tight line beside the holographic city map. Her voice cut through the stale air. "If we stay quiet, we let the President write the story. Vorath wins. Veynar disappears."
Brakkon leaned against the wall, arms crossed, expression granite. "You think marching into a White House ambush proves anything? They want a spectacle. They'll twist every word."
Slha flicked through news feeds, the shifting screens reflecting in her eyes. "Public sentiment's splitting faster than we can track. #Quish trends in one district while 'Crimson Threat' spikes in the next. They're already defining us, Anna."
Nullis, half-formed in the corner, murmured, "Visibility cuts both ways. Cameras don't forgive."
Uncors stood apart, almost lost in the shadows until his gold accents caught the dim light. "Invisibility isn't silence," he said, "I watch. I listen. The President's invitation is a net. Step in and we show them every weakness."
Acuent rubbed his temples, the faint blue of his implants pulsing. "Still, the people saw Quish stop the Juggernaut. If Grant refuses to appear, conspiracy feeds itself."
Xylo leaned forward, ice crusting the table beneath his palms. "And if he does appear, they'll freeze him in politics. I'd rather fight a Juggernaut than a senate committee."
Grant listened, head bowed, the red lightning along his suit whispering like a second heartbeat.
Hours bled away. The debate dulled to low murmurs, then to silence broken only by the faint tremor of distant crowds.
Grant rose. Crimson arcs traced his outline, painting the walls with fleeting light. "If there's a meeting," he said, voice steady, "I'll go. Alone."
Anna froze, fear and resolve clashing in her eyes.
"They want Quish," Grant continued, the red current flaring across his chest emblem. "Then they get me."
No one moved.
****
Washington lay silver under an autumn moon, the Potomac's slow shimmer reflecting the capital's sleepless lights. News crews clustered along Pennsylvania Avenue, their breath misting in the cold, bored chatter rising with the steam from street vendors' carts.
Then the sky split red.
A jagged streak of red lightning carved the night, too fast for the eye to follow. The sound caught up a breath later—a bass-heavy crack that rattled the White House gates.
Grant touched down on the South Lawn in a pulse of ozone and crimson glare. His suit drank the moonlight: matte black traced with burning red seams that pulsed like arteries. Across his chest, the Ampers' symbol blazed against the dark.
Secret Service agents surged forward, weapons raised but not fired. Earpieces crackled; the crowd's murmur spiked into shouts. Drones whirred, pivoting to lock on the figure whose arrival had shorted out the security grid.
Grant stood motionless, shoulders squared, eyes hidden behind the black mask. Red arcs chased each other along his gauntlets and boots, alive with restrained voltage. The smell of charged air drifted across the lawn, metallic and sharp.
From the portico, the doors opened with a deliberate hiss. President Evelyn Marte emerged flanked by a thin line of agents who held their ground but kept their weapons low. She walked with the unhurried confidence of someone who understood the theater of power.
"Quish," she called, her voice carrying cleanly across the damp grass. No microphone, yet every drone feed caught it. "Welcome to the people's house."
Grant inclined his head, the crimson emblem on his chest flaring in response.
The world seemed to pause: reporters leaning over barricades, agents gripping their weapons, millions of viewers watching a live feed that outshone every scheduled broadcast.
No one planned this moment, yet it unfolded like a script—two figures framed in moonlight and sparks: the nation's protector and its elected leader.
The Oval Office smelled faintly of polished wood and ozone. Crimson motes from Grant's arrival still danced in the air, flickering against the portraits of presidents past. Every piece of furniture—mahogany desk, antique rug—seemed sharpened by tension.
President Evelyn Marte sat at the Resolute Desk, posture elegant but unyielding. To her right stood Victor Vorath in a slate-gray suit cut with surgical precision, his expression a mask of courteous detachment. To her left waited Colonel Veynar, his uniform immaculate, brass gleaming under the chandelier. His eyes, however, held the cold focus of a rifle sight.
Grant remained on the far side of the carpet, crimson energy rippling faintly along the black seams of his suit. He neither offered a greeting nor removed the mask.
Vorath broke the silence first, voice smooth as a practiced speech. "Westvale still smolders, Mr. Quish. Billions in damage, hundreds injured. You brought down the Juggernaut, yes—but how do you intend to repay a nation for the chaos left behind?"
Grant's reply came low and steady, each word edged with static. "No Gifted owes reparations for a weapon we didn't create. Your Juggernaut was forged in secrecy and lies."
Veynar's lip curved almost imperceptibly. "Bold words from someone who leveled half a district."
Grant's gaze snapped to him, red lightning crawling across his shoulders. "Half a district was already leveled when I arrived. Tell me, Colonel—how many signatures did you forge to cover that machine's birth?"
The faint smile on Veynar's face didn't shift. "Allegations," he said evenly.
Before the air could ignite, President Marte raised a hand. "Enough." Her tone carried the weight of command. "Our concern is not to trade accusations but to prevent another Westvale. Mr. Vorath has pledged a restitution fund to help the victims. That is a path toward reconciliation."
Grant took a step closer, the lights dimming briefly as his presence charged the room. "Reconciliation built on silence. Built on shielding men who engineered a weapon to erase people like me." His eyes—two narrow embers—fixed on Veynar. "Why protect the ones who tore lives apart?"
Marte did not flinch. "Because the nation survives only if we move forward, not drown in blame. We investigate the crime, but we will not fracture the republic chasing every shadow."
Grant's voice deepened, the crimson current in his suit flaring like a storm front. "Then hear me clearly. Quish will not be your scapegoat. Not your soldier. And never your symbol of control."
The room vibrated faintly, picture frames rattling as if the old walls themselves acknowledged the declaration.
Vorath clasped his hands behind his back, unreadable. Veynar's eyes narrowed to slits. And President Marte—still calm, still unbowed—met the red-lit stare across the room, aware that millions would soon replay this moment frame by frame.
Grant's next words died in his throat.
A low vibration hummed inside his skull, deeper than any sound the room could make.
Protector.
The single word rolled through his mind like distant thunder.
The Core is in danger. You must meet me—now.
Celestius. The name reverberated without air, a pressure behind his eyes.
Grant stiffens. Red light flared in quick, jagged pulses beneath the seams of his suit, the floor lamps flickering in response.
President Marte leaned forward, voice sharp. "Quish? What is it?"
He turned to her, then to Vorath and Veynar, his gaze honed to a blade. "Whatever happens next," he says, each syllable a spark in the charged air, "understand this: Quish will not be seen again—until I choose to return to Earth."
Before the Secret Service could move, a crack of crimson lightning erupted across the Oval Office. Windows trembled in their frames, the presidential seal shimmered in a flash of scarlet, and Grant was gone—nothing left but the electric scent of ozone and a silence so sudden it seemed to swallow the room whole.
The echo of crimson thunder still trembled through the marble floors of the White House.
Outside, the press corps dissolved into chaos. News drones glitched with static, their lenses chased empty air where a lightning trail should be. Reporters shouted half-formed questions at Secret Service agents who could only shield the President and push the crowd back. Every network flashed the same banner within minutes:
QUISH VANISHES FROM WHITE HOUSE.
Inside the Oval Office, silence reclaimed the room.
President Evelyn Marte drew a long, steady breath, shoulders squared against the cameras beyond the door. Her face remained composed—presidential—but her fingers tightened imperceptibly against the edge of the Resolute Desk.
Victor Vorath stood motionless beside her. The polished confidence he carried into the meeting has thinned to a sharp edge. For the briefest heartbeat his eyes betray something colder than calculation—an instinctive flicker of unease, maybe even fear—before the mask reforms, immaculate as ever.
Colonel Veynar lingered where Grant had stood moments before. The soft hum of residual ozone curled around him. He tilted his head, lips barely moving, a near-smile playing at the corner of his mouth. It isn't a triumph.
"Madam President," an aide ventured from the doorway, voice tight. "Every outlet is live. They're demanding—"
"Let them demand," Marte said, her tone calm enough to quiet the room. "The nation just witnessed something unprecedented. We will respond—on our terms."
Vorath finally speoke, velvet-smooth again but lacking its earlier certainty. "The world saw power leave without permission. That…will not be forgotten."
Marte didn't answer. Her gaze stayed on the faint scorch mark etched into the carpet, the last trace of the Quish's lightning.
Above the White House, clouds rolled in without warning, echoing with a distant, unnatural rumble.
Far beyond the clouds, beyond atmosphere and stars, Grant tore through the void as a streak of scarlet light. Celestius's summons pulled him across the silent gulf between worlds, a gravitational certainty that tightens around his chest.
The Core waited. The fate of Earth—his Earth—rode with every beat of crimson energy as he plunged deeper into the endless dark, toward a meeting that will decide more than any nation's politics could ever reach.