Chapter 12
After the visit to the lawyer, the police station was behind me, and life returned to its school routine, even if it now felt like a bland imitation of normality. For over a week, Tony Stark had been conjuring up the cage for Zebediah and the new suit, for which I'd had to part with my hair and get a short cut. This forced lull, while the genius worked his magic, gave me time for other, equally important work.
In the evenings, my business began on the roof of an abandoned laundromat, where the stolen laptop could catch a weak signal from the city Wi-Fi. There, I wrote the article about the Maggia. The information beaten out of those two on the roof needed verification. I had to spend several nights, hidden by invisibility, observing their deals at the docks and secret meetings in restaurants. There was no point in interfering—just standard smuggling and turf wars, nothing requiring direct intervention, but perfect for gathering intel. Now all the facts had been personally verified.
Delving into the Maggia's dirty money inevitably brought the Hardys back to mind. Who were they? Officially, an investment fund sponsoring risky scientific projects and getting a share of the patents. Unofficially, the picture was hazy, but billions earned through entirely honest labor seemed like something out of a fairy tale. However, that thought was put on the back burner; I needed to finish what I'd started first.
After compiling all the data, I had to publish the article. The result after two days was discouraging: two hundred views, zero comments, and a grand total of five likes. Maybe I should have asked people to react at the end?
Topic: The Sopranos Today?
Author: Tactless
Danger: ★☆☆☆☆ Power:
★☆☆☆☆
They call themselves a "family," and like any loving family, they're ready to tear each other's throats out for an extra slice of the pie. We're talking about the Maggia crime syndicate. If the world, as they say, rests on three pillars, then this little world rests on three families.
Despite their tales of equality, the leading family is the Silvermane family. Silvermane is an old-school don. How old is he? No one knows for sure, but he definitely saw the start of World War I. Why is he still alive and on top? For the same reason his family dominates. Even if he's senile, he keeps up with the times. In a world ruled by superpowers, he modified himself, becoming more cyborg than human. What follows isn't fact, but a reasoned guess. He might have enhanced cognition and increased durability.
Moving on. The Hammerhead family. What a name. I suppose it sounded menacing in the fifties, but now it just makes you chuckle. The head of this family is a man who literally smashes walls with his head. If Silvermane adapts, this guy is a living anachronism. How he became the boss is a mystery, but apparently, to rule the criminal underworld, sometimes just being a complete psycho is enough. He's excellent at it.
And the third family. Unfortunately, all I could find out about them were rumors. And since I position myself as an honest author, we'll leave this topic for better times. But the very fact that almost nothing is known about them speaks volumes. They are likely the most dangerous of the three families.
Below is a map of New York. Red marks their 100% confirmed zones of influence. These are the main drug distribution points and warehouses with illegal weapons. Yellow indicates territories presumably also under their control; mostly small business racketeering and underground gambling dens. Good luck to everyone. #mafiososareassholes
Several dozen kilometers from New York, deep in the woods, Stark's robots had erected an underground facility. It wasn't just a cage, but a fully autonomous complex, serviced exclusively by machines. No human personnel—a precaution taken to the absolute extreme.
Tony was giving the final briefing. "Okay, there's a basic AI installed in the suit. Didn't have time for a full OS, so its functionality is minimal: navigation, communication with me, and threat analysis. Now, test the invisibility."
The suit, feeling like a second skin, dissolved along with my body. Finally, I could stop moving around the city naked.
"It works," Stark confirmed, looking at the empty space. "Good. Due to the target's specifics, I've blocked all audio inputs. Your only source of information will be the visor. Don't look him in the eyes, don't try to analyze his speech. If he turns out to be a telepath too... well, then we're unlucky. Keep your distance. Your intervention is a last resort, only if my machines start failing."
Trying on a new, custom-tailored purple blazer, Kilgrave was pleased. A few weeks in New York, and he had added another unique specimen to his collection: Luke Cage. Tough, impenetrable. Less mobile than Jessica, but as a living shield—flawless.
"I'll take it," he tossed to the tailor, who stood nearby with a fixed, empty stare. "Make sure no one looks for him. Also, forget me and erase the camera recordings."
This had become routine. He couldn't remember how many people he'd given similar orders to. A thousand? Two?
"Ah, yes, almost forgot," he added, already heading for the exit. "If anyone asks about me or sees my face in the news... kill whoever asked. If it's the latter—kill your family, then yourself."
He couldn't give permanent commands, but he could leave "triggers." Sleeper commands that could lie dormant in his victims' minds for years, waiting for their cue. This was how he constantly replenished his invisible army of the dead.
Leaving the shop accompanied by his silent guards, Cage and Jessica, he headed to a restaurant. "Lovely day, isn't it, Jessica?"
Before she could answer, something crashed down on him from the sky. A metal sarcophagus fell right on Kilgrave, slamming into the sidewalk with force. The panels sealed shut, trapping him in an airtight prison. Something sharp pricked his neck—an instant medical analysis—and a second later, a specialized sedative was injected into his bloodstream.
"LET ME OUT!" he roared, but his command hit inanimate alloy and died.
Passersby on the street froze, some in fear, some in curiosity, but everyone recognized Stark's tech. For safety, the crowd began to back away.
Jessica Jones and Luke Cage lunged for the sarcophagus, which was already beginning to lift into the air, but their path was blocked by four iron suits that dove down from the rooftops. They opened fire, but the shots were clearly calculated for containment. Energy blasts that should have pinned a normal person bounced off Luke's skin, harmless. Tony didn't want to critically injure his victims, clearly understanding they were under complete control and not acting of their own free will. Though, Luke could likely have withstood a much stronger hit anyway.
Luke, ignoring the shots, grabbed Jessica by the waist, spun around, and hurled her toward one of the robots. She flew like a projectile. The suit, easily calculating her trajectory, began to shift aside to dodge. By all calculations, she should have flown past. But Jessica twisted with impossible acrobatic precision and, literally pushing off the air, abruptly changed course. Her fist, turning into a battering ram, punched through the ultra-strong alloy in the robot's chest.
Three suits remained on the battlefield.
The sarcophagus disappeared into the sky, leaving only a rapidly fading contrail. The target was out of reach. For Jessica, the chase had lost all meaning. In that same second, the second command activated in her mind. "If I am captured and rescue is impossible... you must kill everyone around."
Without hesitation, without a single word, she and Luke split up. Two vectors of destruction aimed at the panicking crowd. Stark's robots immediately opened fire, but it was useless. Jessica moved with incredible speed, dodging the energy blasts, while Luke simply plowed forward, ignoring the shots that fizzled harmlessly against his skin.
Jessica reached the crowd first. Her hand shot out to strike a woman screaming in terror, but her fist slammed into an invisible barrier. The air in front of her filled with purple light, cracking from the point of impact.
Diego, appearing from nowhere, felt the reactive vibration run through his entire body. For the first time since that day in the mall facing the Abomination, his defense buckled under someone else's power. The blow wasn't as devastating, but it was strong enough to make the barrier crackle. It was clear: simply containing her wouldn't work. Worse, on the other side of the street, Luke Cage was approaching another group of people. The threat front had split, and he couldn't be in two places at once.
The decision was instant. Instead of a flat wall, Diego wove a purple cube around Jessica. Due to the speed, the structure was unstable, its facets shimmering. Without losing a second, he put all his strength into a push, and the cube, with Jessica trapped inside, flew straight at Luke Cage.
As expected, the barrier couldn't withstand her impact and shattered into shards of light, but the goal was achieved. Now both threats were in the same place, right in front of him. Stark's robots, obeying updated tactical analysis, redistributed their roles. Now they acted as support: creating a perimeter and guiding frightened civilians away from the epicenter.
Two stood before Diego. Two mutants, far from weaklings, their eyes devoid of will. He said quietly: "Yeah, this won't be easy."
He needed to test their strength. The space around Jessica and Luke compressed, weaving into two transparent spheres. Each was in their own personal prison. These barriers weren't infused with full power; it was just a way to assess exactly what he was up against. The result was sobering.
Jessica's blows were furious and fast. In normal life, she didn't possess such crushing power, nor the ability to push off the air, but Kilgrave's direct command to "unleash full potential" had removed all her body's subconscious limiters. The very first hit left a thin, barely visible crack on the sphere's surface. The next added another. She wasn't just flailing—she was methodically boxing the same spot, and with each hit, the cracks multiplied, weaving into an ugly web. She might be weaker than the Abomination, but her attacks were more frequent and precise.
Cage, on the other hand, was the embodiment of pure, unyielding strength. Slightly stronger than Jessica, he didn't waste energy on a hail of blows but simply pressed against the walls of his cage with all his mass. If he were alone, containing him would have been possible. But he wasn't alone.
With a deafening crack, the sphere around Jessica exploded into purple fragments. She pushed off the ground with such force that the asphalt beneath her foot cracked and sank. A flat barrier she likely would have broken through with sheer speed. So instead of a wall, a smooth, curved barrier grew in front of her, like on a racetrack. Jessica slammed into it and, obeying the laws of physics, followed the path of least resistance, changing her trajectory and flying off to the side.
At that exact moment, Luke Cage also broke free, simply pushing through the remnants of his barrier. Diego wasn't the same kid from the mall anymore; he understood his powers better. Instead of encasing himself in an energy-draining capsule, he wove a dense platform of purple light beneath his feet. When he stepped onto it, several thin barriers wrapped around his legs, anchoring him to the surface. In this fight, every unit of power had to be conserved. He rose smoothly above the ground, looking down at his two opponents. "Time to remember geometry."
Jessica pushed off the asphalt and leaped, her body soaring into the air, aiming straight for Diego. He had already seen what she could do, seen how she pushed off the air. For a split second, the thought of creating an ultra-thin barrier flashed through his mind—she would simply cut herself in half against such an obstacle. But killing a puppet was cruel.
Diego didn't dodge. Instead, he projected a shield in front of him, angled at 45 degrees. Rather than blocking the blow and absorbing all its energy, the barrier was designed to redirect it. Jessica's crushing impact turned into a glancing push, dissipating her inertia harmlessly. Previously, such a hit would have cracked the shield, but now it only vibrated slightly.
Below, Cage, realizing he couldn't reach the target in the air, turned and charged in the direction the robots were herding people. But Diego was ready. A small but sturdy barrier grew out of the asphalt right in front of Luke's feet. It wasn't very high. Due to his speed, Cage didn't have time to react and, tripping, crashed heavily to the ground.
Now Diego felt he controlled the fight. He parried Jessica's lunges while simultaneously keeping Luke pinned. But how long could this last? He could try to kill them, and he likely would succeed, but the situation didn't allow it. Because of the acoustic blockade in his suit, he couldn't even hear the emergency sirens announcing the threat level increase to Class Two.
After a few minutes, SOB and National Guard armored vehicles rolled onto the street. Soldiers took up positions. "MUTANTS! CEASE RESISTANCE OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!" a voice boomed through a loudspeaker.
No one stopped. Luke tried to get up, but the force field pressed him down. Due to the unstable footing on the cracked asphalt, he couldn't immediately break the barrier; it took time to find a stable position. He pressed his palms into the ground, leaving deep imprints. With a powerful push, like a push-up, he forced the force field above him to bulge. Through the created opening, he executed a quick roll, escaping the pressure.
The military, seeing their orders ignored, deployed sonic weapons. A wave of infrasound washed over the street, rattling windows. Normally, it would paralyze, forcing people to clamp their hands over their ears in agony. But not this time. Diego's personal barrier filtered the attack; he didn't even notice it. Blood trickled from Cage's and Jessica's ears and noses, but they didn't care. Programmed to kill, they ignored the pain.
"THEY'RE BEING CONTROLLED!" Diego shouted, realizing some attack had occurred. "NOTHING WILL STOP THEM! THEY'LL DIE FIRST!"
And then, in the ensuing pause, a man in a wheelchair rolled out from behind the cordon. He calmly looked at the two mutants preparing for another attack and said, addressing Diego more than the soldiers: "Really? Nothing?" With that, he tilted his head slightly. No gestures, no flashes of light. Just a mental effort. In that instant, Jessica and Luke froze. Their bodies went limp and collapsed onto the asphalt like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Diego, not understanding what had happened, hovered in the air. He looked around and met the gaze of the bald man in the chair. He was dangerous in a way neither Cage nor Jessica had been. He had neutralized two superhumanly strong mutants without moving. Diego looked at their still bodies—they were breathing.
Diego didn't know it, but at that very moment, he had witnessed the saving of two lives. Kilgrave's final, parting command to his puppets had been a self-destruct order in case of failure—they were supposed to die. But the man in the chair had intercepted control. He hadn't erased or severed the death command; it was still active in their minds, demanding their bodies immediately self-destruct. Instead, he had superimposed his own will over the other, taking direct mental control of their every breath, every heartbeat, the flow of blood through their vessels—all the vital processes that sustained their existence against the command to die.
Being near such a being was the height of recklessness. Diego's suit dissolved into the air, and, invisible, he began to move away from the scene.
All this time, Xavier had been observing from the sidelines, not rushing to interfere. His attention was fully focused on the mutant controlling the force fields. The professor's eyes saw the figure hovering in the air, but in the mental space, where Xavier was omniscient, there was only emptiness in that spot. And at the very moment Diego was about to fly away, Xavier directed a concentrated beam of his power at the point where his mind should have been, but encountered a solid, impenetrable barrier. It wasn't a mental shield, but something else—a barrier blocking his power itself. Xavier could have tried to brute-force his way through this defense, but he refrained. The outcome of such a mental attack was entirely unpredictable.
Arriving at the lab, Diego found Tony completely engrossed in data analysis. The main screen showed a real-time image of the sleeping Zebediah. Invisible, Diego materialized right behind his chair. "Boo."
Stark jumped in his seat. "Jesus Christ! Give a guy some warning!" A faint smile flickered across Diego's face. He walked around the chair and sat opposite him. "How's it progressing?"
Tony quickly recovered from the surprise. "I'll get you back for that. Okay, where to start... Well, good news: he's not a telepath. That's nice. Bad news: he's essentially a walking biological agent. He emits a modified virus that enters the bloodstream through inhalation. When he gives a command, the virus activates and hijacks control of higher nervous functions."
"Can it be recreated?" Stark shrugged. "Don't know. I started studying advanced virology five minutes ago. Give me a day or two, and I'll tell you for sure. As for his 'ritual'—it turned out to be ridiculously simple. A ring on his finger. A simple press once a day sent a signal through an encrypted channel to a server, which gave the 'all clear' to all the monitor apps. And yes, we absolutely cannot let this information leak. If the nature of his power becomes known, not only will the hunt for this virus begin, but all his sleeper agents around the world will receive their final order."
Diego frowned, thinking it over. "There might be a problem with that. When I was fighting his 'guards,' this bald guy in a wheelchair showed up. I don't know what he did, but he knocked them out from a distance without even moving."
"That was Xavier," Stark replied casually. "Class Four mutant, though by all rights, he should be Class Five. Planetary-level telepath. Hmm, anyway, he's considered one of the reasonable ones, so I doubt he'll go blabbing about this."
Suspicion made Diego narrow his eyes. "You're surprisingly calm. A telepath of that level appears in the city, and you, the guy who's paranoid about control, didn't even flinch. Developed a defense against mentalists?"
Tony grinned smugly. "What do you take me for? Of course, I did. It was the first thing I made when I found out they existed." He pointed to his temple. "Right here, under the skin, there's a psi-scrambler. It constantly generates and adds about a dozen false streams of consciousness to my mental 'broadcast.' To any telepath, my brain is like an old TV full of static. They prefer to steer clear. I've only met two, but my theory held true for both. And don't even ask, I'm not making one for you."
"Who was the second one?" Stark waved a hand dismissively. "Not a 'one,' a 'her.' You're not ready for that yet, but in short—let's just say, she's a snow-white BDSM domme." Diego had no response to that. "What?" "Like I said," Tony repeated, turning back to the screens, "you're not ready yet."