The old warehouse by the docks was a tomb of rust and shadows, stinking of saltwater and decay. I dumped Graviton's unconscious form onto the concrete floor. The fight had taken more out of me than I wanted to admit. Every muscle ached from the brutal gravity assault, and my head pounded from the effort of overpowering his formidable will.
"He's secure," I reported into the comms. "The bank is swarming with response teams. They'll find the driver asleep and a lot of broken marble, but no body."
"Good," Butcher's voice crackled back. "Now finish it. We need that power."
I looked down at Graviton. In hypnotic slumber, he looked almost peaceful. The sharp, calculating arrogance was gone from his face. He was just a man. A man who could warp gravity to tear people apart, but a man nonetheless.
The ethical gymnastics were getting exhausting. Justify, execute, absorb, repeat. The cycle was wearing a groove in my soul.
I knelt beside him. There was no rage left, no righteous fury. Just a grim necessity. I placed a hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. Then I called the black lightning.
It was different this time. Slower. More deliberate. The energy crackled over him, stopping his heart with a final, merciful suddenness. As the golden stream of his power flowed into me, the sensation was overwhelming.
Gravitokinesis.
It wasn't just strength or speed. This was a fundamental understanding of a force of the universe. I could feel the weight of the air, the pull of the earth, the delicate balance that held matter together. I flexed a finger, and a stack of rusted oil drums thirty feet away crumpled into a tiny, dense cube with a shriek of tortured metal. I waved a hand, and I floated gently off the ground, effortlessly negating gravity's pull on my own body.
Twelve powers.
I felt... heavier. Not physically, but metaphysically. The responsibility, the sheer mass of the abilities I now carried, was a palpable weight. Graviton's disciplined, clinical mindset settled over my own like a layer of frost. Killing was now a tactical equation. Efficient. Clean.
When the team arrived ten minutes later, I was still hovering cross-legged six feet in the air, testing the new power's limits.
"Bloody hell," Butcher muttered, staring at the crushed cube of metal.
I lowered myself to the floor. "It's done. The gravity manipulation is... profound. It changes everything."
"Can you stop A-Train?" MM asked immediately, ever the tactician.
"I can make him weigh ten tons with a thought. Or make the air in front of him as solid as a wall. Yes. I can stop him."
Hughie looked from the cube to Graviton's lifeless body, which I had discreetly covered with a tarp. "So what now? Homelander knows you can do this. He let you take Graviton."
"He didn't let me," I corrected, the new coldness in my tone making Annie flinch. "He used him as a probe. To test my capabilities, my tactics. Graviton was a data point. Homelander now knows I can overpower a high-level strategic thinker in a direct confrontation. He's assessing the threat level."
"And what's his conclusion?" Frenchie asked.
"That I'm a significant threat that needs to be eliminated with extreme prejudice," I said flatly. "But he won't come himself. Not yet. He's a narcissist. He'll send someone else. Someone he thinks can handle me. He'll keep throwing assets at me until he finds my limit or runs out of pawns."
"Then we use that," Annie said, finding her voice. "We use his arrogance against him. We keep taking his pieces off the board until the board is empty."
"Exactly," I said. "Echo is next. Her sonic powers are a direct counter to many of The Seven. If Homelander is going to send a team, I want to be ready for them."
The plan was set, but the mood was grim. We were no longer rebels striking from the shadows. We were a rival army engaging in open warfare, and the general of the opposing side was a god who was patiently, methodically, learning how to destroy us.