149 Old Bonds
I ca to work on ti, as always.
The morning sun through the Wamond Chronicle blinds did nothing to clear the small, poisonous thought at the back of my head: Continuity had asked to kill Alia. Kill Tigress. It sounded absurd when I said it aloud in my head, and worse when I imagined the act. I’d killed before, clean and necessary; this felt different. The vision kept returning. It was stupid and intrusive: a life I didn’t rember choosing, a wedding with Alia in a bath of light that was all wrong. Maybe it was the Entity’s prank. Maybe it was a mirror held up to a future I didn’t want. Whatever it was, it added a sar of doubt to the question.
Still, doubt was a luxury. I filed it away and walked into the newsroom with the sa blankness I used on everyone: a borrowed smile, a clipped ‘Good morning’, and a tap of the ID to the scanner. Work kept the vultures at bay.
The day moved in predictable rhythms from phone calls, trimming copy, formatting press releases, and chasing a council clerk for a quote that would never co. Alia stayed near, slipping into the patient senior role she’d perfected. She corrected my commas with the sa brisk efficiency she’d used on the field; there was sothing almost tender in the way she fussed over a headline.
After lunch, they introduced a new hire.
The bullpen humd with the small, hungry gossip that kept offices lubricated. “Another newbie?” soone muttered. “We get a new face every other week.” Conrad from tech snorted; Ellis in editorial raised an eyebrow. The Chronicle wasn’t that big, so how did HR keep finding fresh bodies?
They didn’t know the half of it.
I was more concerned with the shape of things in my gut.
Alia led the blond man through the rows like she’d done with the week before. He moved with the contained energy of soone used to being noticed. He had broad shoulders, clean cut, and an air of practiced calm. He introduced himself with a practiced, easy charm.
“Hi, I’m Chad Hamil,” he said, voice steady. “I’m one of the new—uh—newbies. Hope we get along.”
What the fuck was with SRC, and their stupid alias system?
Chadwick Hamilton. Forrly Windbreaker. He smiled at like an honest neighbor. I saw the hostility under the skin instantly. My psychic reach touched the edge of it; he didn’t try very hard to hide the heat. He wanted to know I mattered to him. That mattered more than he realized.
Funny thing: I had reasons to hate him, too. Windbreaker’s father had been a na in my history I never liked seeing on a death list, but I had added it there myself. I had killed Windbreaker’s father. I’d done it in self-defense, but I didn’t think people would even want to hear my explanation.
When the introductions thinned and the bullpen drifted back into its routine, I clapped Chad on the shoulder and grinned. “Forgot already?” I asked, loud enough that a few heads turned.
“You two know each other?” Ellis asked, leaning on the divider.
“Classmates,” I said, shrugging like it was a confession of boredom. “We were best mates in high school.” Conrad’s face betrayed skepticism; he was the kind that slled bullshit for sport.
Chad forced a smile. “Yeah, estranged for a bit, you know how it goes,” he supplied, eyes flicking to mine. “Good to be here.”
I pushed a little harder, voice light and rciless. “You wound for being so cold, Chad. Honestly, your father was a hero to … role model stuff. I always aspired to be like him.” I said it with a ridiculous sincerity that made Chad wince.
At the ntion of his father, the mask almost cracked. Heat spiked at the edges of his composure, but he hid it with a practiced blink. The old Chad was gone. This man was cleverer; his grief had been folded and stitched into composure. He traded raw emotion for control. That ant patience and, worse, foresight.
We spent the rest of the day working. I answered emails and drafted a short piece on a school board hearing. Alia checked on like a guardian, dropping a few notes on phrasing and deadlines. Chad kept to his station. I watched him while pretending to write; he watched back the sa way. Two predators circling in civvies.
When the clock ran its last minute and people began packing up, I rose and walked over to Alia’s desk. I handed her my car keys. “Go ho first,” I told her. “I’ll deal with it.”
She glanced up, suspicion and sothing like concern knitting her brow. “You and Chad have a bad history,” she said flatly. “Don’t bring into this.”
“I don’t want you involved,” I replied. “Protect my damn car. I’ll sort this myself.” My voice didn’t waver. “Because if I knew petty, he’s one… I’d be so pissed if sothing happens to my car.”
She hesitated, then clipped the keys into her bag. “I don’t think you should kill Windbreaker,” she said, not as a moral lecture but as a warning from soone who’d learned the hard geotry of consequence.
“I’m not planning to act on sweep-and-burn impulses,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
Her eyes bored into mine for a long second. “You’d better,” she said finally, voice low. “You’re playing with a live wire, Nick. I don’t know why he’s here, but it’s definitely SRC business.”
I shadowed Windbreaker through the city the entire afternoon, keeping just enough distance to be forgettable. Chad always carried himself like he was just strolling, casual hands in pockets, chin tilted like he was bored with everything and everyone. But every ti I tried to read him deeper, I hit a wall. His thoughts were blocked behind sothing firm, disciplined, and trained. The emotional field around him wasn’t closed, but it was managed.
He knew how to keep his mind to himself.
Which ant he knew how to keep secrets.
My empathy was becoming sharper these days. If telepathy was the art of hearing the mind, empathy was the art of reading the heart. And the heart never lied, even when the mouth did.
Chad moved from a convenience store to a bookstore and to a street food stall. Barely bought anything. Just… looking around. Browsing. Browsing , maybe.
Was he leading on? Or did he genuinely have nothing better to do than window shop like an indecisive tourist?
I blinked just once, and I lost him.
My senses spiked.
I’m on a one-way street. There were neither pedestrians nor sound, except a faint whistle of wind. My spine tensed and I threw myself forward as a wind-loaded palm cut through where my back had been. The impact against the brick wall behind cracked stone, dust bursting outward.
Chad was already behind , gleefully following through.
I moved to counter, stomped down on his foot, and my foot phased through. I hadn’t turned intangible. That was all Chad.
He spun, elbowing toward my neck, his whole body accelerating into a blur. I flicked my intangibility on at the last second, letting him ghost through . I stepped forward to untangle our forms and faced him, both of us solid again.
“So,” I said, breath level, “you work for Division 5?”
“Yep,” Chad answered without hesitation. Cheerful, even. “How about you be a dear and stay still? Let punch you just once, and then we’ll call it even.” He pointed a finger at like we were discussing lunch plans. “Welco to the club, by the way.”
Last ti I saw Chad, he didn’t have intangibility. Now he was mixing speed, wind manipulation, and phasing like it was his birthright.
No way in hell I was letting him land a punch. Intangibility was lethal in skilled hands. With the right angle, I could peel soone’s skin off with a touch. The idea of him having a punch tuned to shatter whatever part of it connected with?
No. Not happening.
Chad tilted his head, smile thinning. “So, you and Alia?”
My jaw tightened. “What’s that got to do with you?”
“I just think it’s a sha.” He shrugged lightly. “She’s one of the closest things to a real hero I’ve ever seen. And then there’s you. I imagine she must be disgusted. I an, I feel like choking just sharing the sa air.”
Ah. So that was his angle.
“How’s Daddy doing?”
His smile cracked.
“Oh wait,” I continued, voice soft and poisonous, “he’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “You stabbed him right through the chest.”
“And exposed every cri he ever committed. Public record, docuntary, and podcasts analyzing how he was a murderer and Crow’s favorite little sidekick. Really ruined the whole family legacy thing.” I clicked my tongue. “Honestly? I think your dad and I would’ve gotten along. Sha fate put us on opposite sides. I feel bad for you, though. His son, playing pretend hero, was trying not to drown under the weight of what he was born from. Rough.”
Chad’s jaw twitched. I didn’t stop.
“I an… what now? Hero career down the drain? Doing under-the-table work for the SRC? They pay well for attack dogs, I hear. Not as fun as being adored by crowds, but hey, rent’s rent—”
“Shut up.”
“Oh? You gonna cry?” I leaned forward slightly. “Want to call Mommy for you? Or should we dig her up too and ask how she feels about all this? I heard she committed suicide… But man, I feel you…”
“If you don’t shut up,” said Chad with nace, “I’ll kill you.”
I shrugged, unbothered. “Oh no. I’m so dead.”
Chad flicked his fingers up, and the air under raged. Aerokinesis, neat little gusts piled into a column ant to lift clean off my feet. It whooshed, a sudden pressure that should’ve rattled every bone in my body.
Only it didn’t. The wind slamd through and folded around nothing, because I phased through it.
After Light, I’d trained to phase through energy and matter from solid, liquid, and gas, because electricity had taught that everything could be walked through if you knew the trick. Wind was child's play compared to lightning. I let the gust buffet my suit and kept my feet planted.
I kept taunting him. Because it was fun.
“Hey,” I said, rocking my shoulders like a man who’d just been nudged by a breeze. “Rember when you nearly nabbed ? You were so hotheaded that you almost wrapped a leash around yourself. Good tis.”
“That won’t happen again,” he said, eyes flat.
We closed the distance. and him, limbs becoming punctuation marks. Intangibility didn’t make us harmless. On the contrary, it made the fight obscene. Elbows would pass through ribs and find shoulder blades; a shifted angle could an a lung would be sheared or a tendon torn. So we danced with the void. He leaned on his speed, slipping like smoke between my guard; I leaned on empathy, that thin, insistent sense of intent buried under muscle.
We traded contact that should’ve been nothing. Our limbs moved through each other and then tried to snap into flesh, only to find nothing. It was ssy and glorious and stupid, limbs tangling to each other.
At one point, I leaned my empathy into him and threaded my telepathy around it, turning the two together into a small surgical migraine, like a vice. It’s a cheap trick, and it worked. He faltered. For half a beat, he crystallized into solidity.
I struck.
A clean crack under my fist. Nose, cartilage giving way. Blood painted his lip.
“Nick one, Chad zero,” I said, louder than the fight strictly needed.
I followed with a one-two, asuring each hit with the cold arithtic of a man who’d enjoyed violence. He backed and, smartly, used distance. His intangibility felt different. It was denser, almost tuned. It reminded of Light.
“Hey, pussy,” I called, leaning down as he created space. “How’s your girlfriend? Cindy? Mindy? Maybe I’ll go back to Markend and plow her for you when you're dead.”
Yep, I’m starting to fall in love with shit talking, as aningless as they were. Still, it had proven itself effective. My words flared sothing in Chad. It was anger.
“Get my wife’s na out of your mouth,” he said, voice low, as he went to superspeed and rushed at in a straight line.
Perfect timing on my part. I tid electrokinesis to a fraction of a second and combined it with empathy’s fine accuracy. The lightning sent him sprawling off-balance and tripping over himself on the pavent. I closed, stepping over his chest.
“Bye, Chad,” I said, beginning to phase him into the pavent.
Then the collar at my throat constricted like iron. My intangibility faltered at the touch. Sothing searing and nullifying burned against my skin as tiger-like hands caught my throat. Before I knew it, I was face-first on asphalt.
Alia moved like a hunter with a bone to bury. One hand had my collar; the other plucked Chad by the scruff and slamd us both into a filthy alley wall. Impact scread through my ribs.
She had pinned, breath hissing between her teeth. Her features shifted, and sothing feline slid over her face. Her eyes glowed with sothing predatory.
“What the fuck were the two of you idiots thinking!?” she snarled, voice rough as gravel and twice as sharp.
My head bobbed where it was on the pavent; I tasted copper. And for a split second, I felt relieved I’d handed her my car keys before I decided to shadow Chad. I could’ve really killed the guy. “Sorry,” I said around the grit. “I didn’t think Chad was that weak after so long. We just… had to throw hands, you know?”
Chad spat a sar of blood and looked offended. “What the fuck did you say?”
I lifted my chin and smirked, croaking, “Oh… he’s hard of hearing, too.”
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