Five silhouettes crouched behind brittle foliage, pressed low in a bush just outside the Pentagon’s periter. A cool Washington wind dragged across the grass like a warning sigh, yet none of them flinched.
Kai, black scruffy hair a tangled crown, knelt at the centre of the cluster. His red eyes glimred between leaves, burning like embers in a hearth left unattended—dangerous, unreadable, intense.
Beside him, Nadya stretched one thick arm to ease a cramp in her shoulder. Her orange hair was tied up carelessly in a bun that fought the wind and lost. Orange eyes, sharp and bright, swept the area ahead like twin suns rising behind storm clouds.
Lenny - the smallest of the group- sat cross-legged, knees trembling faintly. Blonde hair, ssy fringe, a timid-looking teen. His real body, a giant armoured lizard, lay dormant behind the illusion of a boy in a coat.
Amina hovered near the back, olive-toned skin soft against the harsh greys and blacks of the others. Gentle brown features, calm even when the world cracked. She fiddled anxiously with the hem of her sleeve, but her breathing was steady, patient, like a dic waiting for the inevitable.
And then there was Zeke.
Tanned, lean, athletic, dressed in a black tank top even in winter, like the cold itself feared him enough to keep its distance. Wiry, coiled, restless energy in every sinew. His foot tapped rhythmically on the mud.
’I really thought they were joking about the Pentagon, yet sohow I got roped into this shit.’
Elsewhere, London burned on Nyx’s monitors.
Here, Arica was quiet before the explosion.
And then the Pentagon lood in the distance.
It wasn’t actually in Washington; it is located in Arlington County, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C they had originally been heading to.
But it was close enough, and Kai and the others seed to be heading there on a whim. The only thing they were certain of was that it was the symbol of Arican military power.
The building was a brutalist colossus - five concentric rings of concrete, steel, and darkened reinforced glass. Each level stacked with military intent. The outer walls were slanted and thick, built like a bunker wearing the shape of an office. The famous pentagonal courtyard sat at the centre, a wide open void of clipped grass and a circular green heart cut into the structure like a wound left deliberately unbandaged.
A helipad, command staging ground, and ceremonial execution point for decades of governnt theatrics. After the Z Virus, the AMC had swallowed it whole. Every corridor, every server, every file cabinet now humd with military roots, mutant defence contracts, classified serum logs, and the records Kai needed to peel back his past.
It was a fortress even mutants whispered about.
Impenetrable.
Until today.
"Well," Zeke murmured, voice pitched low, "this is definitely going to get us all killed"
Nadya elbowed him. "Shut it. We’re ant to be stealthy, you twit."
A drone buzzed overhead.
They all froze.
It passed by, oblivious.
Isaac would’ve laughed at this. Sven would’ve rated their stealth 1.5/10 and called it generous.
Kai exhaled through his nose. "Right then. We do this now."
He rose slowly, leaves snapping under his boot. The others shifted with him, instinctively forming a semicircle of chaos agents waiting for the cue to detonate civilisation.
"So, this is how it’s going to be." Kai’s voice dropped to a calm that didn’t match the tremor in the sky or the storm in his eyes. "Lenny. I need you to go back to your lizard form and jump into the centre of the Pentagon to draw attention. Go on a rampage."
Lenny swallowed again. "Define a rampage."
"Be loud," Kai said. "Roar, break things, jump up and down. Just make them focus on you instead of the rest of us."
"Oh." He nodded slowly, understanding dawning like dread. "So bait."
"Correct."
Zeke snorted quietly. "What a sophisticated plan."
Kai ignored his comnt and turned his head toward him. The sudden attention made the man’s foot stop tapping. His spine straightened. Shoulders squared.
"Why are you looking at like that, blood freak?"
"You’re going to use your shockwave ability to cause a miniature earthquake." Kai’s eyes narrowed, imagining how things would go if everything went to plan. "We need as much destruction as possible."
Zeke blinked. "I do have limits, you know."
"Well, you’d better break past them," Nadya cut in with a grin.
"Front gate," Kai continued. "Then, Nadya, you’ll support Lenny alongside Amina. Versatile movent. Explosions. Mid-range combat. That’s all we need. Amina will be on standby for urgent healing."
Amina nodded once. No speech. No questions. She had a small gun strapped in her sock, though she doubted it would be of much use in combat. But her ability stayed ready - that was her way.
Zeke squinted at him. "And what are you going to do?"
The others didn’t share the question, but the curiosity hung in the air anyway. Like smoke waiting to be ignited.
Kai smiled.
A thin curve of the mouth.
A death on written in teeth and confidence.
"I’m going to go through the front door of the Pentagon and have so fun."
Zeke recoiled. "Front door? That’s suicide."
"That’s the point," Nadya said.
"Is it?" Lenny asked.
"It always is," Amina whispered.
Kai cracked his knuckles. ’Fifteen minutes,’ he thought. ’I need fifteen minutes. And after that? If I’m still breathing, we call it a bonus.’
"Amidst the chaos," Kai continued aloud, "I’ll look for any records of myself within the AMC and anything useful. After fifteen minutes, you all bail. It will get too risky. The Association will definitely be on us by then."
Nadya gave him a flat stare.
Not amused.
Not impressed.
Just dangerously loyal.
"Bail?" she echoed. "I don’t even know the bloody aning of the word."
Kai smiled again, softer this ti, but no less unhinged. "I know. That’s why I’d better be quick or we’re all fucked."
They rose in sync.
No countdown needed.
No dramatic send-off.
Just a silent agreent that read like thunder: we move, or we die.
The stadium infiltration team had been a hook.
This team was a hamr.
A hamr that Kai fully intended to swing through the front door himself.
’They’ll expect stealth,’ he thought, already crossing the first radar periter. ’So we give them chaos.’
Little did they know that was exactly what their deranged spectator was expecting...
-
anwhile, Nyx lazily turned his head away from the set of monitors covering London and leaned toward a fresh cluster of viewpoints. Drones near Washington. Periter radars. Five stupid idiots crouched in a bush.
"Oh, it’s finally starting," Nyx murmured, popcorn kernels clinging to his coat like snowflakes on evil.
’This will be a good amuse-bouche,’ he thought, grin widening into sothing wicked. ’Let’s see how they like my gifts.’
And then his smile sharpened into anticipation.
He didn’t just enjoy watching the stage unfold.
He enjoyed watching them realise there was a stage at all.
A stage they’d already stepped onto.
And sowhere in the distance, Kai had just kicked open the door of a fortress, thinking he was the hunter...
When really, he was the prey.
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