Lucifer burst from the crumbling sewer access point into the late afternoon gloom of a TriBeCa side street, dragging the compliant, but still restrained, Harley Quinn behind him.
He didn't waste his precious Tier 8 Force Field cooldown on the escape—he needed it for the inevitable final ambush from the Joker, or for the client handover.
"Raven, sewer access clear. I need immediate extraction at the secondary point—"
"Contact! Two hostiles are closing fast!"
Raven's voice snapped over the comms, tense and urgent.
"Tier 2 signatures. They're not Joker. They're too fast for ground transport, and one is airborne. They're hunting the contract."
Lucifer shoved Harley behind a rusted dumpster, his eyes scanning the rooftops.
The Fundamental Insight registered the truth immediately: the moment the Gold Rank contract went live and a successful extraction was confirmed, every major bounty hunter in the city would swarm the area.
A low, sonic boom hit the street, rattling the dumpster. Lucifer looked up just in time to see a streak of white and silver.
The first attacker was a blur of high-tech polymer armor—a female Speedster known in certain circles, employed frequently by black-market containment agencies.
She was moving at sound-barrier speeds, creating micro-shockwaves with every step.
The second was a heavy-set Filer, a man encased in a military-grade, twin-turbine flight harness, descending rapidly from a nearby skyscraper with a grapple gun aimed directly at Harley.
"Extraction compromised,"
Lucifer muttered, engaging his Tier 8 Force Field with a sharp mental command.
The translucent, high-sturdiness Force Field snapped into existence, encompassing Lucifer and the dumpster.
Force Field Duration: 3:59 remaining.
The Speedster hit the edge of the field first, not stopping.
The impact was phenomenal—a shockwave that cracked the asphalt ten feet in all directions.
The Force Field absorbed the Tier 8 kinetic energy without even flickering.
Lucifer felt only a heavy thud, but the sound alone was deafening.
"They aren't going to stop until they get the bounty!"
Lucifer realized.
The Flier, seeing the futile kinetic attack, changed tactics and fired the grapple gun.
The hardened steel tip impacted the Force Field, but instead of piercing it, the cable began to vibrate rapidly, heating up to cherry-red temperatures.
The Flier was attempting to use thermal energy and vibration to overload the field.
Lucifer couldn't hold this position.
The Speedster would circle and probe for weak points, and the Flier was attempting a sustained attack.
"Harley, stay down,"
Lucifer ordered.
He needed to disable one of them instantly.
The Flier was the greater threat due to the sustained attack, but the Speedster was too fast to target with the Lucifer's Sleeper.
He focused his Basic Empath on the Speedster.
The emotion radiating from her was pure "Professional Hunger"—no malice, just a ruthless desire for the payout. She was predictable.
Lucifer disengaged the Force Field instantly, dodging the heated grapple cable that whipped past him.
"Now, Raven!"
Lucifer activated his EMP Micro-Grenade. Instead of tossing it at the Speedster, he hurled it directly at the Flier's turbine exhaust ports.
The Flier, reliant on his massive thrust, couldn't react in time.
The EMP grenade detonated with a high-pitched fzzzt against the Flier's engines.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The turbines instantly short-circuited, screaming to a halt. The Flier lost all lift, his heavy armor becoming a dead weight.
"Mayday! I'm falling!"
The Flier screamed, tumbling toward the street.
The Speedster, momentarily distracted by the sight of her partner plummeting, broke her pattern just for a fraction of a second.
That was all Lucifer needed. He launched himself out from behind the dumpster, using his high-speed movement to close the distance. He didn't aim to fight; he aimed to delay.
He deployed his Tier 8 Force Field not around himself, but right in the Speedster's path, creating a sudden, Tier 8 physical wall on the street corner.
The Speedster, expecting an open street, hit the newly deployed wall at near-supersonic velocity.
The impact was so severe that her armor cracked, and she rebounded violently, slamming into a parked car fifty feet away. She was stunned, but not neutralized.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Lucifer yelled, pulling Harley from behind the dumpster and sprinting toward the secondary sewer access point, leaving the downed hunters in his wake.
"Well, that was exciting!"
Harley remarked cheerfully, despite the restraints.
"You've still got moves, Luce! But I gotta say, using a force field as a speed bump? That's new!"
Lucifer's Force Field Duration: 3:45 remaining.
"That was a countermeasure. They're coming back,"
Lucifer said, his face cold.
"We need to go deeper into the logistics chain."
They reached the sewer access point just as the Speedster began to recover, her armor grinding as she pushed herself out of the totaled car.
"Raven, clear my entry. We're going underground."
....
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