The stairwell hummed with the low electrical buzz of emergency lighting, a pale yellow that made every step look like it belonged to a faded photograph. Shinso descended without urgency. Panic always sprinted; truth walked.
Floor 47: muffled alarms.Floor 46: someone shouting into a comm line, voice quivering.Floor 45: silence thick enough to chew.
He stopped for a second, leaning his shoulder against the cool metal railing. His breath fogged faintly in the chilled air. A funny contrast. The city was burning with attention right now, and he was standing in an empty stairwell that smelled faintly of dust and expensive cleaning products. The world had such a talent for missing the point.
The earpiece buzzed again.
He sighed, dug it out of his pocket, and clicked it on.
"You really love picking nights like this," a voice muttered. Older. Tired. Someone who'd spent too many years believing in systems that didn't believe back. "Shinso, tell me you didn't just hijack the Skyline broadcast."
"I didn't," he said, stepping down another flight. "I hijacked three."
A sharp inhale. "You're not giving me a lot of room to defend you here."
"You stopped defending me two years ago," Shinso replied, tone level, no accusation. Just truth. "This is cleaner. No confusion."
He reached the landing for Floor 42. Red strobes pulsed behind the door window like a failing heartbeat.
The voice in his ear hesitated. "People are calling this terrorism."
"People call anything they don't understand terrorism." He adjusted the strap of the small pack slung over his shoulder. "Give it a day. Someone will rebrand it as activism with moral ambiguity."
"I'm not joking."
"I'm not either."
A second of dead air. Maybe two. Then the line clicked off. Good. He didn't need apologies or warnings tonight. He just needed to finish what he started.
Shinso pushed open the door to Floor 42.
The hallway was chaos. Security personnel scrambled between comm panels. The smell of burnt circuits drifted from a fried console. A young woman in a headset nearly dropped her tablet when she saw him.
"Stop! You're— you're not authorized to—"
Her voice cracked under its own fear. Shinso lifted one hand, palm open.
"Breathe," he said softly.
She did. Shoulders loosening, eyes widening with that familiar slackening that came when someone's mind tilted toward the cadence of his voice. Not full control. Just enough to pull her out of panic.
"Where's the director?" Shinso asked.
"Conference suite," she answered in a dreamlike murmur. "Trying to call the Commission."
Shinso nodded. "Lock the exits behind me. Then forget you saw me."
Her fingers flew across her console, sealing the fire doors with a clunk. Then she blinked hard, disoriented, as he walked past her.
Every step felt like threading a needle between who he used to be and whatever he was becoming tonight. He didn't enjoy using his quirk on civilians. But fear turned people dangerous even when they meant well. He wasn't here to hurt anyone.
Just to stop the machine long enough for the world to notice its gears were grinding bone.
He reached the door to the conference suite. Voices spilled through — frantic, clipped, desperate. Papers rustled. Someone cursed. Someone cried.
Good. They were finally feeling the weight of their own silence.
Shinso placed his hand on the doorplate.
The city was listening.
He pushed the door open.
The conference suite looked nothing like the slick glass miracle it pretended to be in the Skyline marketing reels. Up close, it was a war room dressed as a boardroom: stacked files, glowing screens, three security feeds frozen on Shinso's face as if his existence alone had crashed their system.
Director Kamizuru stood at the center table, tie loosened, hands trembling as he tried to dial a number he clearly wasn't meant to call. Three other executives hovered behind him like guilty shadows.
They reacted late.
First came shock. Then indignation. Then the scramble to mask both behind legal vocabulary.
"You— you can't be in here," Kamizuru stammered. "This facility is under Directive 12 lockdown. Entering is a federal—"
"Crime?" Shinso finished. "You know what else is? Running human trials without consent."
That shut him up.
One of the executives, a woman with a polished blazer and dead calm eyes, stepped forward. She looked like the type who could survive a PR meltdown without smudging her mascara.
"Mr. Shinso," she said, voice steady. "Let's discuss this rationally. We can settle everything off-record. You're upset, and understandably so. But exposing internal security protocols on a public stream jeopardizes—"
"Children," Shinso interrupted.
Her jaw twitched.
He walked further inside, letting the door fall shut behind him. The sound echoed like a gavel.
"You're not upset because I exposed a protocol," he said, scanning the glowing monitors until he found the one he wanted: a folder labeled W6 Rehabilitation Program, locked behind superficial encryption. "You're upset because I exposed the truth."
"Those records are sealed," another executive barked. "You have no legal right to access them."
Shinso shrugged. "You sealed them. I unsealed them. Seems fair."
He tapped the console once. The encryption peeled away like wet paper.
A paused video filled the largest wall screen: a small clinic room, fluorescent lights too bright, a boy no older than nine strapped to a reclined chair, quirk-suppressant nodes wired to his temples. A doctor's gloved hands hovered over a control dial.
Kamizuru lunged for the console. "Turn that off! Do you have any idea what you're—"
Shinso didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"Stop."
Kamizuru froze mid-step, fingers inches from the power switch.
The room went silent.
The executives stared at their motionless superior with dawning horror. Shinso didn't savor the moment. There was nothing satisfying about proving he could puppeteer the powerful. It only confirmed what he already knew: they had never feared what he might do, only what he couldn't be controlled to do.
Shinso stepped toward Kamizuru. "Say the project name."
The man's throat worked once. Then:
"Quirk Compliance Initiative… Ward Six."
The words landed like falling steel.
Shinso leaned in slightly, not menacing—just present. "How many subjects?"
Kamizuru's voice cracked. "Thirty-six."
"And how many reported injuries?"
"Twenty-one."
The PR woman closed her eyes, just once, like she was trying to blink away the version of reality where consequences existed.
Shinso released Kamizuru from the verbal tether. The man stumbled backward, shaking, suddenly aware of his own limbs again.
"Why are you doing this?" Kamizuru whispered, desperation leaking through every syllable. "You wanted to be a hero. You trained for it. You fought for it. Why sabotage everything now?"
Shinso looked at him the way a tired storm looks at a fragile city.
"I didn't sabotage anything," he said. "I just stopped helping you hide the wreckage."
The hallway outside erupted—footsteps thunderous, a rising wave of uniforms and weapons. Hero agency patches flashed between the glass panels.
Shinso exhaled slowly. "And right on schedule."
The door burst open.
Three pro-heroes stormed in—mid-tier types, but competent. Their eyes flicked between the frozen video, the trembling executives, and Shinso standing calm at the center of it all.
"Step away from the board, Shinso," the lead hero ordered. "Hands where we can see them."
He wasn't hostile. Just scared of making a mistake history would remember.
Shinso held out his hands, palms open. "I'm not here to fight."
"That's not what it looks like," the second hero said, glancing at Kamizuru, who immediately pointed a shaking finger at Shinso.
"He hijacked the entire building's broadcast! He used his quirk on me—on security—he committed treason!"
Of course he did. They always went straight for the most dramatic word available.
The lead hero motioned for the others to flank.
"Shinso," he said calmly, "let us take you in. You'll get a hearing—"
"You know that's not true," Shinso replied. "By sunrise, the Commission will have rewritten every part of this. I'll be labeled unstable, dangerous, radicalized. And you'll be ordered to agree."
The hero swallowed hard. Maybe he understood. Maybe he wished he didn't.
Shinso stepped backward toward the glass wall.
"I'm not running," he said. "I'm just not playing your script."
Then he tapped a small device clipped beneath his sleeve.
The emergency shutters exploded open, flooding the room with the roar of city wind.
Shinso fell backward—
—then caught the cable line he'd anchored three hours earlier.
A controlled drop. Clean. Calculated.
The heroes sprinted to the ledge, shouting his name, but he was already descending into the neon haze of the lower skyline, rain slicing past him in silver streaks.
The whole city watched him fall.
None realized he was choosing the direction.
The cable hissed against metal as Shinso slid down the face of the skyscraper. Wind clawed at his coat, turning the descent into a vertical storm. Neon signs warped into streaks of electric color. Below him, the city roared—sirens, engines, a thousand gasps from people watching a man fall with intention.
He didn't look down. He didn't look up. He just counted.
Seventy meters.Forty.Twenty.
The moment his boots hit the lower maintenance ledge, the impact rattled through his bones. He bent his knees, absorbing it in one practiced motion. The cable snapped loose behind him, dangling like a severed thread.
He paused just long enough to breathe.
There was a strange quiet here, halfway down the tower—a blind spot between surveillance grids. The perfect pocket of space where the city forgot to watch.
He pulled the hood over his hair, wiped the rain from his eyes, and stepped into the maintenance hatch he'd unlocked earlier.
Inside was a service corridor dripping with condensation, lined with humming machinery and old wiring. The fluorescent bulbs flickered in half-hearted protest. He walked anyway. He'd gotten used to light not wanting to cooperate around him.
The corridor opened into a forgotten loading bay at the building's rear. Crates sat abandoned, dusty under the damp. A single bike leaned against the far wall, matte-black, silent, unassuming.
Shinso approached it and tugged the small tracker from underneath the seat. He crushed it under his heel. The heroes would be at the base of the tower by now. The Commission's orders would already be flying. They'd fan out, interview witnesses, replay the rooftop feed a hundred times trying to figure out where the moment slipped out of their hands.
They'd call him rogue. Then threat.Eventually, liability.
He swung onto the bike but didn't start it yet. Rain drummed the concrete in uneven rhythms. His pulse synced with it, steady, certain.
A vibration in his jacket pocket. Someone was calling.
He almost ignored it. Almost.
The caller ID wasn't a hero. Wasn't a government line. It was a name he hadn't saved, because he didn't need to. He knew the pattern of those numbers like a bruise that never healed.
He answered without speaking.
A breath crackled on the other end. Not angry. Not panicked. Resigned.
"Hitoshi," the voice said quietly. "You really did it, didn't you."
His fingers tightened around the phone. He didn't close his eyes, but the thought tempted him.
"I told them," Shinso replied, "and they chose not to listen. So yes. I did it."
"You just declared war on the entire regulatory council."
"No," he said. "They declared war the day they decided truth was too inconvenient to keep above ground."
A pause. The kind that stretched not from disbelief, but from someone counting the cost of caring.
"Are you safe?" the voice asked.
He almost laughed. Not out of humor—out of the strange tenderness of the question. Something small in his chest shifted, then settled again.
"For now."
"You need a place to stay."
"No." His tone softened. "I need distance. You know that."
Another pause. This one heavier. Then:
"Don't make yourself into something you can't come back from."
He didn't promise anything. He couldn't. He hung up gently, as if being gentle could erase the inevitability of what he'd started.
Shinso slid the phone back into his pocket and finally turned the key in the bike's ignition. The engine rumbled to life, low and private, like a thought he didn't want the world to overhear.
He revved once.
Before he pulled out, he glanced at the towering skyline behind him. Up there, lights flashed behind the glass—the frantic motions of a system scrambling to patch itself. Heroes leaned over railings searching for him. Executives tore up documents that wouldn't save them. The Commission drafted statements to frame the narrative.
They still didn't understand.
He wasn't trying to disappear.
He was trying to make them see.
Shinso pushed off, tires cutting through the thin sheet of water on the concrete. The bike shot forward, swallowed by an alley too narrow for pursuit. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. The city felt different already, tense and shifting, like a machine about to recognize its own malfunction.
As he merged into the midnight traffic, the broadcasts began. Every street billboard flickered to life, replaying the moment Kamizuru confessed. Every radio station received an anonymous file packet. Every social feed lit up with the footage he'd forced into the world.
He rode past screens showing his own silhouette framed in stormlight.
A villain.A whistleblower.A threat.A necessity.
The city hadn't decided yet.
But it would.
At a red light, Shinso lifted his chin into the rain, letting it sting his skin sharp and cold. Somewhere in that sting was a promise:
This wasn't destruction.This was the opening note.
He accelerated as the light turned green.