The night was moonless, a perfect shroud for the work to be done. For weeks, the Sage Grove Center had been a collection of data points on my monitors, a web of digital ghosts and drone footage. Tonight, it was a physical reality, a sprawling complex crouched in the heart of the Pennsylvania wilderness, utterly oblivious to the storm that was about to break over it.
My preparation had been absolute. Every guard rotation was memorized. Every camera's blind spot was mapped. Every patient's file was a dossier of threats and opportunities committed to my enhanced memory. I knew this place better than the people who worked here.
I sat in the driver's seat of my untraceable sedan, parked in a dense thicket of trees a mile from the facility's perimeter. The final pieces of my plan were falling into place.
[Showtime, Boss,] the System's voice echoed in my head, its usual humor sharpened by an edge of anticipation. [The dungeon is prepped, the mobs are sleeping. Time to clear the instance and get that sweet, sweet loot.]
"Let's just hope the drops are worth the effort," I replied. "Because if I'm walking into this mess, I'm not leaving empty-handed."
I looked into the rearview mirror, my own face staring back at me. I activated my Shapeshifting power. The unsettling sensation washed over me as my bones shifted and my facial features re-formed. In seconds, the face looking back was utterly anonymous, a man of average height, with plain features, brown hair, and the kind of forgettable face that would vanish from memory the moment you looked away.
Over this new face, I pulled on my simple black mask, adding a final layer of anonymity. My attire was the same functional gear I used for all my operations.
I left the car and moved through the woods with the unnatural silence of a predator. I reached the perimeter fence, a twelve-foot-high chain-link barrier topped with razor wire. I simply shrank and slipped through one of the links in the fence.
I scurried across the manicured lawns, a tiny shadow darting between the security lights. My drone surveillance had given me a perfect map. I knew the location of the main ventilation hub for the entire facility, an unassuming maintenance building set fifty yards away from the main asylum.
At my current size, the gap under the door was a gaping cavern. I slipped inside. The air was filled with the loud hum of the massive air circulation units. I navigated the maze of machinery, found the primary intake duct, and returned to my full size.
From my inventory, I retrieved the high-yield canister of CX-9. The nozzle was custom-fitted for this exact purpose. I attached it to the duct, the magnetic clamps locking on with a satisfying thunk. I set the dispersal timer for ten minutes, a long duration to ensure an inescapable concentration that would neutralize even the most durable Supes.
With the timer set, I shrank back down to the size of an insect and found a perch on the ceiling, waiting for my silent weapon to do its work.
The gas was completely invisible. The facility's own ventilation system became my accomplice, pumping the potent anesthetic into every room, every cell, every hallway. I watched through the network of micro drones I had positioned earlier, their feeds displayed on my phone interface.
Guards on patrol simply slumped to the floor, their rifles clattering beside them. Nurses at their stations collapsed forward onto their desks. Inside the patient rooms, the chaos and the screaming that had been a constant audio backdrop simply… faded away. The entire facility fell into a deep slumber.
I returned to my full size in the ventilation hub, a ghost in a sleeping machine. I entered the main asylum building through a service corridor, using my phone to bypass the electronic lock with a quick burst of Spencer Industries code. My first targets were the remaining security personnel in the central control room. I found them slumped in their chairs. Two silenced shots from my Spectre pistol ensured they would never wake up.
My next target was a significant one. Lamplighter. I knew from the staff rosters that he was on the night shift in the east wing. I moved through the silent hallways. I found him in the orderly's station, passed out with his head on a desk, a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey beside him.
The former member of The Seven. The man who had burned Mallory's grandchildren. A pathetic shell of a Supe, reduced to this. There was a certain poetic justice in what I was about to do.
I reached out, my hand hovering over his head. I activated my Cryokinesis.
The air around Lamplighter instantly dropped to sub-zero temperatures. A thin layer of frost bloomed on his skin, on his clothes, on the desk around him. I pushed the power further. The frost thickened into a solid sheet of ice. His body was encased in a tomb of his own making. The pyrokinetic ended his miserable life frozen solid, a monument to his own failure.
With the staff neutralized, I turned my attention to the patients. The real reason I was here.
I moved from cell to cell, a methodical reaper. The patient files I had downloaded were my checklist.
The "Tongue Patient," a man whose only power was a grotesque tongue, was dispatched with a single stab to the brain stem with my carbon fiber knife.
The "Phasing Patient" presented a unique challenge. She was unconscious, but her power was still active. Her body was flickering between a solid and an intangible state. I couldn't stab a ghost. So I waited, my Super Soldier senses tracking the rhythm of her phasing. In the split second her form became solid, my knife darted out, ending her miserable existence.
The "Acid Vomit Patient." The "Wall Punching Patient." The "Zapped Lights Patient." One by one, they met the same quiet end. They were Vought's mistakes, their failed experiments, and I was the janitor cleaning up the mess.
Then came the more dangerous ones, the unnamed Tier 4s my scans had identified. One was a man with a rock-like hide. The knife wouldn't work. I simply placed my hand on his head and using my own Tier 4 Superhuman Strength, applied a brutal pressure. His reinforced skull cracked like a nutshell.
One was a woman who could generate concussive blasts. I froze her lungs solid from the outside. Another was a man with enhanced senses so acute he could hear a heartbeat a mile away; a precise icicle formed from the moisture in the air and plunged through his temple ended his watch. Each one was a potential threat, and each one was eliminated with the same detached efficiency.
Another had some form of low-level pyrokinesis. Even unconscious, the air around his body was hot. I used my Cryokinesis to instantly snuff out his power, flash-freezing him just as I had Lamplighter.
Cindy, the powerful telekinetic, was a major threat. I found her strapped to a bed in a reinforced solitary cell. Even unconscious, there was a palpable aura of power around her. I froze the entire room solid, encasing her and the bed in a block of opaque ice, ensuring that even if she woke up, her power would be useless. Then, and only then, did I approach and deliver the final blow.
Love Sausage was in the next cell. The sight of his… power, even while inert, was as ridiculous as the stories suggested. I dispatched him with a professional detachment that bordered on boredom.