The rain hammered the dock like bullets, each drop exploding against the concrete in tiny bursts of spray. Rhett slid off the hitdevil's back, his shoulder separating with a wet pop that sent white-hot lightning down his arm. He rolled with the impact, concrete scraping skin from his palms, but forced himself to keep moving.
The hitdevil didn't even acknowledge him. It stalked Henrik with that same mechanical precision, a living missile locked onto its target. Nothing else existed in its world—not Rhett, not the rain, not the twenty-ton cargo container swaying from the crane's arm like a steel pendulum.
The cable wire lay coiled near the base of the crane, thick as his wrist and gleaming with rain. Industrial-grade steel, designed to lift tons of cargo. Perfect to catch the devil. But there was no hook in sight, just the frayed end where one had been cut away.
No time to find one.
Rhett grabbed the cable's end and wrapped it around his right hand, threading it between his fingers and around his wrist. The metal bit into his skin, already drawing blood. He pulled it tight—tight enough that it would hold even if his hand was torn apart.
Because it was going to be.
The hitdevil cornered Henrik against a stack of containers. This was it.
Rhett sprinted toward the creature, cable trailing behind him like a steel leash to attempt his insane, and frankly stupid plan to save Henrik. He leaped.
First Death: The Learning
The cable went taut too quickly, jerking him sideways with the force of a car crash. His right hand exploded—not metaphorically, but literally—ripping clean off at the wrist in a spray of bone fragments and arterial blood. Three fingers spun through the air like broken toys.
The pain was a living thing, white-hot and screaming. Rhett hit the concrete hard, his vision fracturing into kaleidoscope shards of agony. He tried to scream but only managed a wet gurgle, blood frothing from his lips as shock set in.
This is what it feels like to lose a hand, some distant part of his mind observed with clinical detachment. The nerves keep firing even when there's nothing left to fire from.
Death came as a mercy, darkness swallowing the pain.
Revival was not merciful. He gasped back to life with the phantom agony still blazing through his nervous system, even as his hand reformed whole and perfect. The memory of pain lingered like a ghost in his bones.
Henrik was still alive, barely dodging another swipe. The hitdevil's movements were patient, methodical. It had all the time in the world.
Rhett didn't.
Second Death: The Choking
This time he let more slack feed through his grip, aimed for the creature's neck. But he misjudged the distance, the cable catching him across the throat as it snapped taut. His windpipe collapsed with a sound like crushing eggshells.
The world went silent except for the wet, desperate gurgling of his own blood. He hit the ground with his neck bent at an impossible angle, his head lolling like a broken doll's. The taste of copper filled his mouth, thick and warm.
Suffocation is worse than losing a hand, he realized as consciousness flickered. You stay aware longer. You feel yourself drowning in your own blood.
Death. Revival. The metallic taste lingered on his tongue.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Henrik's voice cracked with genuine terror, watching Rhett's repeated resurrections like some grotesque magic trick.
"Trust me!" Rhett gasped, blood still fresh on his lips. He rewrapped the cable around his entire forearm this time, distributing the force. "I'm figuring it out!"
The lie came easily. He wasn't figuring anything out. He was just dying until something worked. Besides, he had a lot of lives to spare.
Third Death: The Severing
Better. He landed on the hitdevil's back, rolling forward as the cable whipped around its neck like a noose. For a moment, he thought he had it—but the angle was wrong, the physics cruel. When the cable pulled taut, it yanked him sideways instead of securing him.
His forearm nearly severed at the elbow, held together by threads of muscle and tendon. He could see the white gleam of bone through the torn flesh, could feel the warm pulse of blood painting the concrete beneath him.
The pain was different this time—deeper, more fundamental. Like his body was coming apart at the seams.
He died still gripping the cable, still trying to make it work.
Fourth Death: The Crushing
Fourth attempt. No more cleverness. He jumped straight onto the creature's neck, wrapped the cable around its throat twice, then looped it around his own waist. When it went taut, the force would pull him tight against the monster instead of away from it.
The impact shattered his ribs against the hitdevil's spine. He tasted blood, felt his organs shifting in ways they weren't meant to shift. But he held on, the cable biting deep into both their necks, locking them together in a grotesque embrace.
The hitdevil didn't even try to shake him off. It just kept advancing on Henrik, dragging Rhett along like a parasite.
Come on, Rhett thought through the haze of pain. Figure it out, Henrik.
Henrik's eyes darted between Rhett, the cable, and the crane overhead. The massive container swayed in the wind, twenty tons of steel waiting to fall. His expression shifted from confusion to understanding.
There.
Henrik changed direction, sprinting toward the dock's edge where concrete met the black harbor water. The hitdevil followed without hesitation, its massive form thundering across the rain-slicked pavement.
As they approached the edge, Henrik made a sharp right turn, his boots skidding on wet concrete. The hitdevil began to follow—but its bulk couldn't change direction as quickly.
It paused, shifting its weight.
That pause was enough.
The cable went taut with a sound like the world breaking. The cargo container swung in a massive arc, twenty tons of industrial steel and whatever cargo lay within. It struck the hitdevil with the force of a collapsing building.
Rhett felt every bone in his body break simultaneously. The collision turned him into paste between the container and the creature's spine, his consciousness fragmenting into a thousand pieces of agony. But the cable held, and more importantly—it worked.
The hitdevil, caught mid-turn and off-balance, was driven backward by the container's momentum. Its feet skidded on wet concrete, then found nothing but air.
They fell together, predator and prey, bound by steel and desperation.
Fifth Death: The Drowning
Rhett died on impact with the water, his pulverized body no match for the surface tension at that velocity. He came back to life already underwater, still bound to the hitdevil by the cable, watching the creature sink with mechanical determination.
The water was black and freezing, tasting of oil and rust and things that had died in the depths. Thirty feet down. Forty. The hitdevil thrashed, sluggish in the dense water, but its focus remained laser-sharp on Henrik somewhere far above.
Fifty feet. Pressure built in Rhett's ears like a slowly tightening vise. His lungs burned, but he could see the bottom now—a wasteland of silt and debris where the harbor met the sea floor.
The container hit first with a muffled crash, sending up a cloud of sediment. The hitdevil landed under it, and immediately the massive cargo box shifted, its weight settling across the creature's torso and legs.
Perfect. The hitdevil was pinned, trapped under twenty tons of steel with nowhere to go. It could survive down here indefinitely, but it couldn't move. Couldn't complete its mission.
Rhett unwrapped the cable from his waist with numb fingers, the steel having carved deep grooves in his flesh. The hitdevil didn't even notice him leaving—it was still trying to claw its way toward the surface, toward Henrik, even as the container held it fast.
We're the same, Rhett realized with crystal clarity as he kicked upward. Both of us too stubborn to know when to quit. Both of us willing to drown for what we want.
The surface seemed impossibly far away, a faint shimmer of light in the black water above. His vision tunneled, black spots dancing at the edges. His lungs screamed for oxygen that wasn't there.
Not going to make it.
His lungs gave out at forty feet. He inhaled water and died, his body going limp as it drifted upward like a broken marionette.
He came back to life at twenty feet, his corpse's buoyancy carrying him higher. The surface was close now—so close he could see the rain pattering against the water above him like a thousand tiny explosions of light.
Ten feet. Five.
Rhett broke the surface gasping, his lungs burning as they filled with precious air. The rain felt warm against his frozen skin, each drop a small miracle of sensation.
The Rescue
"Here! Rhett!" Henrik's voice cut through the storm. "Grab my hand!"
Rhett looked up to see Henrik lying flat on the dock, his good arm extended over the edge. His face was a mess of cuts and bruises, his left eye swollen purple, nose bent at an unnatural angle. Rain had plastered his brown hair to his scalp, washing away the blood in pink rivulets.
But his eyes—those calculating, always-tense eyes—now held something Rhett had never seen before. Fear. Not for himself, but for Rhett.
Rhett reached up with a shaking hand, his fingers finding Henrik's in the chaos of rain and waves. Despite the blood loss and exhaustion, Henrik was still strong—or maybe Rhett was just that skinny—but he managed to haul him up onto the dock.
They lay there for a moment, both breathing hard, rain hammering their bodies. Henrik's chest rose and fell in sharp, painful gasps. Rhett's entire body felt like it had been put through a blender.
"Don't tell me," Rhett started, his voice barely audible over the storm. "You were waiting in the rain? Just for little old me? You're gonna catch a cold."
Henrik barked out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. "I think a cold is the least of my problems." He gestured weakly at his dislocated arm and the collection of injuries painting his body. "And the hitdevil?"
"At the bottom of the deep blue sea," Rhett replied, pushing himself up on his elbows. "Bastard's impossible to kill, so I had to pin him down. He's too focused on trying to hunt you to worry about wriggling out of his cage."
Henrik nodded, something complicated passing across his face. "You could have just run. Left me to die."
"Yeah," Rhett said simply. "I could have."
They sat in the rain for a while, two broken men on a broken dock, listening to the thunder roll across the harbor. Somewhere far below, the hitdevil was still clawing toward the surface, still hunting, still failing.
Henrik nodded, and Rhett felt this scenario was all too familiar. Rhett was like the hitdevil, unkillable, at least permanently, and that led Henrik to binding him to prevent him from escaping, which was a lot like how Rhett had pinned the hitdevil down, though he didn't voice that silent thought out.
Changing the topic, he asked. "And Daimon?"
"Ran away. Too much of a coward to face a half-dead cockroach without his quirk." Henrik spat, though the barb felt to have lost its bite.
"So we're done here, I guess." Rhett said, shrugging. "The rain's not letting up any time soon."
As he said that, a bolt of lightning arced through the sky, and seconds later, the crack of thunder reverberated through the atmosphere. The cold wind following the rain sent shivers through his body, his teeth already chattering.
"Think we should head for a hospital?" Rhett said, trying to get his voice above the rain that was drowning his speech. "We need to patch you up-"
"Don't worry about that." Henrik spoke. "I'll live. For today at least. Once I get some rest in, then we can go to a hospital. Let's just go to an empty building and find somewhere to rest."
"And eat." Rhett grumbled, patting his skinny belly, the scene out of place with their scenario. In the distance, Rhett's torn limbs and viscera were splattered around during the chase, but he chose to ignore them. He still hadn't eaten anything for a while now. It was a miracle he was still alive.
Hoping they would run into no one else trying to kill them, they walked out of the dock and into the main city, all the while Henrik kept passing furtive glances at Rhett, wondering if having this man that would kill himself just to have him was a blessing or a curse.