"Even for a hero, don't you think that's a little too on the nose?" The Beastmaster shot back, but there was an obvious edge to it. Water vapor in the air crystallized as the new players came into view.
Rhett painfully craned his head to see what was going on. He changed his direction to the left because he heard the screams coming from the right, but the arrival of what the Beastmaster called hero sent a jolt of something close to hope through his broken body.
Were they being saved?
The temperature plummeted so fast that Rhett's breath turned to crystals before it left his lips. The subway tunnel—easily forty feet wide with curved concrete walls that disappeared into darkness on both ends—became a freezer. Frost spread across the tunnel walls like living veins, crackling and hissing as it consumed the moisture-soaked concrete. The puddles of blood beneath him began to crystallize at their edges, turning from crimson liquid to ruby glass.
Two girls emerged from the darkness of the right tunnel, their footsteps echoing off the vaulted ceiling twenty feet above. One wore a purple and blue parka, brown combat boots, and had silvery light-blue hair that shimmered like ice crystals in the faint light of the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Her breath came out in visible puffs, each exhale creating a small cloud that lingered in the air like fog from a glacier.
A slow mist seemed to roll around her boots, pooling along the tunnel floor as if the air itself had cooled to the point of condensation due to her presence. Was this her quirk? The entire temperature-lowering thing? The concrete beneath her feet developed a thin sheen of frost with each step.
The second girl—a fairly tall, slender young woman in what looked like a military academy tracksuit—trailed behind her. Her face was soft and round, with deep ocean-blue eyes that darted nervously between Henrik and the massive beast. She had a look of uncertainty around her, like she didn't want to be here, like she'd rather be anywhere else in the world. If the first girl was a hero, Rhett mused through his pain-addled thoughts, the second one was her reluctant sidekick.
Henrik, apparently, did not share Rhett's optimism that these new heroes might be here to save them.
The two girls' sudden appearance caused Henrik and the Beastmaster's battle to cease. Even the Colossus monstrosity had stilled, its massive form casting shadows that danced across the tunnel walls as it waited to see what made these two girls confident enough to interrupt a fight with something so gigantic. The creature's breathing was a wet, rattling sound that echoed through the concrete chamber.
As they came fully into view, Henrik's face paled even further—if that was possible—as if he recognized them. His eyes widened, but not in fear. Something closer to guilt.
"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." Henrik repeated tensely, his voice cracking on each repetition, as if the two girls were somehow more of a threat than the monster he had been facing. His hands shook as he gripped his remaining weapon.
His eyes met Rhett's, and Rhett could tell what he was thinking without Henrik having to voice it.
They needed to get out of here. Now.
Before Henrik could take a step in Rhett's direction, the second girl stepped forward. With her hands clasped together in front of her chest, she took a deep breath. A powerful beam of pressurized water shot out from her palms, the sound like a fire hose under extreme pressure.
The beam struck the beast's relatively less guarded underbelly. It cut through scales and flesh like butter, and an arc of red blood shot into the air like a crimson fountain, splattering against the tunnel walls and ceiling.
The beast let out an unnerving roar of pain that sounded almost human as it swung its massive body recklessly, trying to destroy everything in its path. Its claws scraped against the concrete walls, sending sparks flying and leaving deep gouges in the stone.
The first girl put a pale hand on the second one's shoulder and said aloud, her voice carrying an arctic chill, "Don't worry, Marina. I will take care of the beast and its master."
Then her pale blue eyes—cold as winter morning sky—landed on Henrik, and her gaze and voice somehow turned even colder. "You deal with that traitor."
After that, Rhett couldn't even hold his head up anymore. Not only had he lost copious amounts of blood, but now he had hypothermia to deal with. The air was turning more frigid by the second with no sign of stopping, the temperature dropping so fast his body couldn't compensate. The blood pools beneath him were already coagulating and freezing in sheets of velvet ice. He could no longer feel his limbs, and he suspected frostbite was already setting in on his fingers and toes.
"So... cold," he muttered through blue lips, his voice barely audible. He couldn't even process what was happening around him anymore. All his bodily functions were failing him, shutting down one by one like lights going out in a house.
"I just... I need to... go to sleep," he thought as the cold hands of death caressed him with familiar fingers. He placed his head against the cold concrete floor, feeling the frost bite into his cheek as his eyes drifted shut.
Pain was not a problem anymore. Almost nothing seemed to matter anymore as he closed his eyes and began the descent into darkness.
He died. And died. And died. And died.
Death was not something Rhett was unfamiliar with anymore. It had become something of a companion to him. An ally, even. He relied on it—relied on the fact that his pathetic self could do nothing on his own, that he was nothing without the ability for death to have no permanent grasp on him.
That didn't mean he enjoyed the process of dying. He had accepted its inevitability, the way most people accept taxes or bad weather.
He never really had a fear of death. He only saw it as a natural thing. Nothing is permanent. Entropy and the heat death of the universe and whatnot. His childhood was too bleak for death to become scary anymore.
But now, as he faced it repeatedly, he couldn't help but absolutely and completely loathe it.
He was dying. Over and over and over again. Each death lasting microseconds before his body attempted to regenerate, only to be killed again by the same source.
The mechanics of his quirk were simple. If he died, his body would be regenerated back to its original form, healthy and whole.
But in situations like drowning, where he would still be stuck in the water even when he had died, there would be no space for regeneration, since the source of his death was still present. Still killing him.
That was what the cold was doing. It was only increasing, and increasing, like a slow-motion avalanche of frost. And he was only dying, caught in an endless loop of cellular death and rebirth. The microsecond when his body was about to be resurrected, the freezing air would kill him again. And again. And again.
The cold wasn't just temperature—it was a living thing, crawling through his veins like liquid nitrogen, crystallizing his blood from the inside out. His lungs filled with ice crystals that shredded his alveoli. His heart stopped, restarted, stopped again. His brain cells burst as the water inside them froze and expanded.
Each death was a symphony of agony played in fast-forward. Nerve endings screaming. Organs failing. Consciousness fragmenting and reforming only to shatter again.
It was tearing apart his soul and consciousness, piece by microscopic piece.
He could barely tell the difference between life and death anymore. The boundary had become a revolving door spinning so fast it was just a blur.
'At least it was different from the Iron Knight,' he thought as the blood vessels in his brain began to frost over again. 'At least then I was making progress, moving forward, even if it was minuscule.'
Now, he was like an ant stuck in a glass jar, scrambling against smooth walls with no hope of escape. Unable to do anything about his situation except experience it, over and over, in all its crystalline horror.
Why was he so useless? Why couldn't he think his way out of this? Why was his only solution always to die and hope for the best?
"I'm sorry, Lucille," he muttered quietly through trembling blue lips, the words forming ice crystals as they left his mouth. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
"I'm sorry, Leon. I'm sorry, Casey. I'm sorry, Ryoji. I'm sorry, Am—"
"Are you alive? Oh wait, I guess that's a stupid question. You can't really die, can you?"
The voice came from above him as his ears struggled to pick up the sound through the ringing in his head. Soon he realized that he wasn't so cold anymore—the killing cold was still there, but it was distant now, like a storm viewed from inside a warm house.
Henrik.
He had picked him up, holding him awkwardly between his left arm and ribs, his grip shaky but determined. He had stopped Rhett from his endless cycle by removing him from the frost zone, heating him up with the steam he generated from his gun friction and his body exerting itself against the cold.
But even that was running thin. Henrik was running away from the second girl—Marina, the first girl had called her—but the cold was still getting closer, creeping after them like a slow-moving glacier.
Meanwhile, Rhett's regeneration was finally working properly. His right arm was growing back through the cauterized wound painfully, muscle and bone knitting together in a display that would have made anyone else sick. But in a matter of seconds, the limb was back to normal. He flexed his fingers almost happily, grateful to feel the familiar sensation of having a complete body.
The bruises and gashes on his left hand were healing too, the skin knitting together like time-lapse footage of a wound in reverse. Soon, his broken kneecaps and the miscellaneous injuries were gone, leaving only the memory of pain.
His left arm was still tied to his torso with the nylon rope to incapacitate him, but his body was now back to normal. He could feel his body again—every nerve ending, every muscle fiber, every heartbeat. All the pain from the injuries he had accumulated over the past days was completely gone, replaced by the simple relief of being alive and whole.
This was the first time he had died in the last 24 hours. A new record, if he could say so himself.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I almost miss dying," Rhett forced a bitter laugh, despite the traumatic death loop he had just faced. Like he said, he kept his sunny personality wherever he went, even when that place was hell.
Henrik shot him a weird, almost disgusted look as he kept running, his breathing labored and wheezing. Sweat mixed with blood on his pale face.
'Why is Henrik even bothering to save me anymore?' Rhett thought, studying the older boy's gaunt profile. He no longer needed Rhett's immortality for bait, so was he just doing this out of the goodness of his heart?
Rhett hadn't known Henrik for long, but that didn't seem very Henrik-like based on his personality so far.
Henrik was even shedding his weaponry—different types of guns falling from his flesh and clanging uselessly to the concrete floor—just so he could deal with the extra weight Rhett posed. Each discarded weapon represented a piece of his power, his ability to fight back, abandoned for the sake of carrying someone.
"Why?" Rhett asked suddenly, his voice hoarse. "Why are you—"
Henrik's eyes met his for just a moment—a flash of something raw and desperate—before he looked away. No answer came.
Before Rhett could dwell any longer on the question, something wet and powerful slammed into them from behind.
At first, it felt like they had been hit by a brick wall moving at highway speeds. But when they were forced flat against the tunnel floor, sliding across the concrete on a wave of water, Rhett realized it was some kind of fluid. A massive surge of water that hit them like a tsunami in miniature.
He quickly sat up and brushed what looked and felt like water from his body. Next to him, Henrik was struggling to get up too, the water making him slip against the ground, his dislocated shoulder hanging at an odd angle. But the voice from behind forced him to come to a halt.
"Henrik. Stop."
The voice was controlled, commanding, and yet there was an edge of tiredness and frustration in it that spoke of old wounds and older disappointments. Henrik painfully turned around to face their opponent, his movements slow and reluctant, like a man facing his execution.
It was the girl that the first girl had called Marina. Her deep blue eyes—the color of ocean trenches—pierced into Henrik's with an intensity that made the air between them feel charged. The water that had hit them was already beginning to evaporate from Henrik's heated skin, but new moisture was already condensing around them. Their breath was already turning white in the cold air.
Rhett's heart pounded as he got to his feet, wondering about his fate. There was no way Henrik was winning this fight. The dude looked completely exhausted and somehow even more skeletal and pale than before, if that was possible. His eyes were bleeding from burst vessels, and his left shoulder hung at that unnatural angle. He sported multiple gashes and bruises all over his exposed skin, each one a testament to how close he was to collapse.
Marina, on the other hand, looked relatively okay. Her military tracksuit was torn and stained, like she had seen her own share of fights, but she stood straight and strong. Her breathing was steady. Not to mention that she had landed a solid, devastating hit on the monster that Henrik had risked his life fighting without managing even a single dent.
Henrik didn't even seem to have any more ammunition left. His body, which had been producing weapons like a living arsenal, was now just producing steam and heat. He was completely running on fumes, a car sputtering on the last drops of gas in its tank.
'Why can't the people on my side be stronger?' Rhett whined internally as he processed his next move, trying to think of something, anything, that might help.
But then he began to think. Marina could have sliced them in half with another pressurized water jet. She could have crushed them against the tunnel wall or drowned them where they stood. Instead, she had splashed them with a large body of water to slow them down, to stop them from running. She wasn't here to kill them, despite the first girl's command to 'deal with that traitor.'
"Just stop fighting, Henrik. Stop running away," Marina said, and now sadness and disappointment were crawling into her deep ocean-blue irises, turning them into pools of hurt that reflected years of unanswered questions. Her voice broke slightly on the last words.
The tunnel fell silent except for the distant sounds of the ice girl's battle with the beast. Water dripped from the ceiling. Henrik's ragged breathing echoed off the concrete walls.
"We don't have much time. I need to talk to you."
Marina took a step forward, her hands unclenched now, hanging at her sides. Vulnerable. The gesture of someone who had put down their weapons.
A pause. Silence stretched between them like a taut wire. She looked at him—really looked at him—taking in his broken state, his bleeding eyes, his desperate exhaustion. She took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"I need to know why you left."