192 No One Can Fix Him
I sat shackled inside the armored truck, my body wrapped tight in a straitjacket while a cold tal collar hugged my throat. With every pulse, it pumped null liquid straight into my system, a creeping numbness that dulled the edge of my powers without fully killing them. It was the latest toy from the SRC, the kind of bleeding-edge suppression tech Guesswork loved to smuggle when Spoiler needed an unfair advantage. Dragoness had done her part too. My back still throbbed dully, every bump on the road sending a reminder through my spine.
Six SRC special forces sat across from , encased in full combat gear, rifles magnet-locked to their armor. Directly opposite was Promise. She looked terrible. Her mask was gone, her silver-and-black costu torn and sared with soot, and her usually immaculate silver hair hung matted with ash against her face. She studied with tired eyes that still burned with anger.
“So,” she said at last, her voice rough, “what does it feel like when the tables finally turn?”
I would have answered if there hadn’t been a muzzle clamped over my face.
Promise glanced at one of the soldiers. “Remove it.”
“That’s against protocol,” the soldier replied imdiately. “The collar stays active, and the gag stays on.”
Promise’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t ask.”
Her telekinesis flared, invisible pressure snapping the restraints loose as the muzzle peeled away from my face. I rolled my jaw slowly, savoring the simple act of moving my mouth.
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “I was starting to feel stiff.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Enjoy the mont. This is probably the last ti you’ll feel anything but small.”
I chuckled, the sound low and amused. “Small?” I tilted my head as much as the collar allowed. “I’m actually quite well-endowed down the waist, if you catch my drift.”
One of the SRC soldiers snorted before quickly coughing into his fist.
Promise’s eyes flashed. “You’re disgusting.”
“Maybe,” I replied, smirking. “By the way, did you forget to put on makeup? You look like hell.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. Up close, I could see the strain etched into her face, the stress pulling her features tight. She spat back, “Your days are numbered. The Box isn’t a place soone with your reputation survives. The Monarchy will put a bounty on your head the second you step inside.”
She leaned forward, her voice dropping. “And if you sohow make it through the inmates, you won’t do a damn thing when you face the Warden.”
One of the soldiers beside her shifted uncomfortably. “Captain, it’s against protocol to engage with the cargo like this.”
Promise ignored him. She narrowed her eyes at . “Why are you smiling?”
I t her gaze and answered honestly. “Because everything is going according to plan.”
One might have asked why Eclipse would ever allow himself to be caught. Yes, there was the long-term plan—getting into the Box, freeing Windbreaker, recruiting from the inside, and stripping the place bare of anything useful. Still, did it really have to be this theatrical? And more importantly, why had the Rearguard involved themselves at all? What did they gain by taking down, other than handing off to New Vanguard so they could split the credit after doing almost nothing?
I spoke up, my voice calm despite the collar’s slow drip. “Tell sothing, Promise. Did Rearguard really toss onto New Vanguard’s lap just for optics?”
She scoffed. “Watch your mouth.”
“Was it because they’re corporate-sponsored?” I continued evenly. “Because it would look bad if they went any further? That it was only ‘right’ for a state-sponsored team like New Vanguard to deal with ?”
I paused, then shook my head slightly. “No. That’s not it.”
Promise folded her arms. “Then what is it?”
“It’s because they didn’t want to be humiliated like the way I’m about to do with you,” I said plainly. “Imagine it. Rearguard rising in reputation just as I tear New Vanguard’s image to pieces. You couldn’t allow that.”
She laughed sharply. “You overestimate yourself. Look at where you are right now.”
I smiled wider. “Exactly where I need to be.”
Before anyone could react, I focused inward, ignoring the ache in my spine and the suppressant crawling through my veins. Intangibility blood just enough. My body phased cleanly through the straitjacket, restraints falling limp as if I’d never been bound at all, while my naked ass was exposed to the air.
I leaned sideways, my form slipping into the SRC special forces soldier beside , my consciousness flooding his nervous system in a practiced, intimate rush.
I flicked the safety off and pulled the trigger.
The rifle barked, and a short burst of bullets tore into the man directly in front of . His body snapped back against the armored wall, blood spraying across visors and steel plating. At the sa ti, the soldier to my side reacted on instinct, jamming his thumb down on my trigger finger as he forcibly stopped and emptying his sidearm point-blank into the seams of my body armor. Pain flared, distant and muted through the possession, but it was enough to remind ti was short.
I abandoned the possessed body without hesitation, flooding its nervous system with electrokinesis and biokinesis at once. His brain cooked in a heartbeat, smoke curling from his helt as he slumped forward. I slipped into the soldier beside , my consciousness forcing its way through trained resistance and null-reinforced nerves.
I had no intention of leaving anyone alive in this armored truck. I’d like to keep my possession ability a secret as much as possible.
Still, these were SRC special forces. Null tal threaded through their gear and implants, and years of resistance training made my grip unstable. I felt it falter, like fingers sliding on oil. The man I was inside seed to realize it too. With a sharp, decisive motion, he raised his weapon, pressed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger.
I was violently expelled as his head snapped back.
The others didn’t hesitate. They piled on , boots and armored limbs crashing into my ribs as syringes stabbed into their own arms. Null liquid flooded their bloodstreams, glowing faintly beneath the skin, then another needle punched into my neck. The collar hissed louder, dumping more suppressant into my veins.
It was quick abd brutally efficient.
I ended up grappling with three of them on the floor, naked and half-suppressed, muscles screaming as the null crept deeper. Veins throbbed on my forehead, my vision pulsing red at the edges. Promise stood over us, breathing hard, her eyes bright with sothing ugly and satisfied.
“I’m so glad this is happening,” she said, almost laughing.
She raised one hand, her index finger glowing white-hot, and pressed it against my forehead. Pain exploded through my skull. Around , the soldiers injected again and again, plungers slamming down as Promise leaned closer.
“I’ll take my ti,” she murmured. “Slow.”
There was a script to all of this. I had written it myself, every act and every beat. I was its playwright, its actor, and its antagonist. If it worked, I would infiltrate the Box, pull Windbreaker out, recruit from the inside, and burn New Vanguard’s reputation to ash. Rearguard would rise in the chaos, and Alia’s place among heroes would be secured. I didn’t need to wear a hero’s mask to claim the status of a state-sponsored cape. To take Markend in full, New Vanguard had to fall, and that ant breaking relics like Promise.
I retched violently.
With biokinesis and enhancer working in tandem, I forced every drop of null out of my system. I puked it onto the truck floor, sweat pouring from my skin as the last of it burned away. My breath ca ragged, then steadied as power flooded back in, whole and roaring.
In a single thought, I phased the armored truck into the ground.
Promise reacted at the last second, grabbing onto as the world dropped away, probably trying to copy my intangibility to survive. I felt her power latch on and I crushed it. I overtook the copied intangibility and twisted, maiming her mid-phase, the motion almost gentle in its precision. When we erged, her head parted from her body as cleanly as a thought finished.
I phased upward again.
Sunlight hit my bare skin, wind brushing against as the ruined convoy screeched to a halt around the crater. Escorting capes stared in stunned silence. I felt exposed without my suit or mask, too human, but I left the rest of them to Spoiler.
I lifted Promise’s severed head by the hair, blood dripping onto the asphalt, and looked at the onlookers.
“Is that all you got?”
Among my escort detail were representatives from other city-states. Forward was there, Advance was there, and of course New Vanguard had sent their own. Promise had been one of them, until she wasn’t. Another was Garuda, wings spread wide even as shock froze him in place. The other was Chira—Alia—hovering in the air, her silhouette unmistakable.
Garuda was the first to move.
“You shouldn’t have done that!” he screeched as he dove, fury warping his voice as he folded his wings and ca down on like a teor.
I barely spared him a glance. My eyes were on Alia.
She hovered above the cracked asphalt with hawk-like wings unfurled, feathers burning in shades of orange, red, and brown. Her suit matched the palette, sleek and heroic, and completely at odds with the storm of emotions rolling off her. Anger. Shock. Betrayal. She hadn’t known I would kill soone. As far as she was concerned, this had been a containnt breach, an escape attempt she had to stop. If we’d staged so halfhearted struggle instead, it would’ve been inefficient, ssy, and worst of all, slow. She needed a clean break to establish herself, and I needed finality.
Garuda slamd into , wings snapping shut as we rolled across dirt and broken asphalt. His feathers hardened, edges sharpening into blades as he stabbed at again and again. Each strike ca with a ripple of force as he layered barriers through his wings, fluctuating fields that scraped painfully against my intangibility. Blood welled along my sides and shoulders, shallow but nurous cuts burning all at once.
“Stay down!” he roared as another wing drove into my ribs.
I grabbed his throat and held him there, close enough to see the panic bloom in his eyes. “You should’ve stayed out of it,” I said quietly.
I snapped my hand forward, intangibly slipping past flesh and armor. My fingers closed around his spine, and I pulled. There was a wet, final sound as it ca free. Garuda collapsed, wings spasming uselessly as he stared at , eyes wide and empty. His body still breathed, but nothing else worked anymore.
I stepped toward him, intent on ending it, when sothing hit from the side like a freight train.
Quickboots.
He ca in as a white blur, sweeping my legs out from under as the world lurched sideways. At the sa ti, darkness slamd over my vision, sudden and complete. I ground my teeth in irritation.
“Seriously?” I muttered. “What are you doing?”
The blindness had Shaman’s signature all over it, a psychic veil layered straight onto my perception. I rolled with the montum as Quickboots charged again, his speed cracking the air. This ti, I reached out and cast intangibility into him just long enough to phase his feet into the ground.
He hit an invisible wall and scread. I could feel his misery through my psychic perception.
As he struggled, I unraveled the blindness with empathy and telepathy together, peeling Shaman’s influence away thread by thread. Vision snapped back into place just in ti for to see Quickboots clawing at the asphalt, blood pooling where his legs had disappeared beneath solid matter. My intangibility between matter was not gentle. It was precise, and it was final.
I walked toward him, boots crunching softly, but didn’t get far.
Gunfire erupted.
SRC soldiers finally got their shit together, unloading into in disciplined volleys. The bullets bounced off my body like rubber, each impact stinging despite the tal composition. I grimaced. The null tal they were using was better than most, refined enough to still transfer force even when it couldn’t stop outright. I raised an arm to shield my eyes as rounds sparked off skin and pavent.
There was nowhere to hide. Just open road, wreckage, and too many eyes.
Forward had co with three capes: Quickboots, now screaming and immobile; Errant, the teleporter; and Curious. I didn’t see the latter two, which ant Errant had done the sensible thing and pulled Curious out the second everything went wrong. Advance had brought their own trio—Shaman, Order, and Jadesight. Shaman was clearly still hidden, likely using psychic camouflage to cloak the others sowhere nearby.
Then Alia’s voice cut through the chaos.
“Nick!” she shouted, hovering closer, her voice tight with emotion. “Is this really what you want?”
Without context, it was a pretty innocent question.
Anyone else might have taken it at face value. Alia and I couldn’t. We knew each other too well for that. Worse, I could feel her disappointnt clawing at through empathy, could hear the fractures in her thoughts even when she tried to keep them buried. Betrayal, anger, confusion, all tangled together.
It was a conversation I should have had with her long ago, one I kept postponing because it was easier to lie by omission. I felt remorse for how I treated her, real and sharp, but remorse didn’t change the reality that she was already too deep in this. Whether she liked it or not, she had crossed a line with us.
I let the bullets hamr into as I reached out with telepathy, bypassing the noise and the shouting. “What are you doing?” I asked her directly. “Why aren’t you sticking to the plan? Swwep in now, while I still have everything under control.”
Her response ca back raw and imdiate. “I should be asking you that,” she shot back. “This wasn’t the plan, Nick. You weren’t supposed to murder Garuda. You weren’t supposed to kill Promise.”
I didn’t soften it. There was no point anymore. “Leverage was supposed to be here instead of you,” I told her. “I wanted her here so I could kill her too. It would’ve made things easier for you. Cleaner. You’d take over without resistance.”
Her thoughts stuttered, a sharp spike of pain and disbelief. I felt it clearly, and I didn’t pull away. By now, she had to understand. If she didn’t, she would’ve been an idiot. I had been using her, shaping circumstances around her, and there was no reason to pretend otherwise. She didn’t have a choice moving forward, not after everything that had already happened.
“I’ll still keep our promise,” I added. “When it’s over, I’ll turn myself in.”
Her answer was bitter. “Why would I believe you?” she demanded. “You hid all of this from so easily.”
I exhaled slowly, feeling the impacts from the null rounds stacking up, fatigue creeping back into my limbs. “Because I’m tired,” I admitted. “I just want it to be over. And the truth is, I don’t even know how that happens anymore. Maybe it ends with the Entity. Maybe it ends in the Box.”
I stepped toward Garuda’s broken body. I could still feel his mind flickering, trapped and aware. Before I could act, a white blur shot past . Quickboots lunged forward, grabbed Garuda, and dragged him away in a grotesque crawl, moving on instinct and desperation alone. The strain from the null bullets made my vision swim as Errant appeared in a flash of distorted air, teleporting both Garuda and Quickboots out.
From one of the armored trucks, Shaman scread, “Retreat! Operation’s a failure! Let Eclipse go!”
An SRC soldier yelled back, “We’ll give cover fire!”
Alia stayed where she was, hovering in place, wings beating unevenly as if she couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee. Order stepped forward instead, a broad man with little armor and a massive mace. “Fall back!” he shouted at her as he swung from a distance. The energy burst slamd into , sending skidding across the road.
By the ti I stood and cracked my neck back into place, the convoy was already retreating in tight formation. One by one, the escort detail vanished until only Alia remained, suspended in the air above .
I looked up at her and said aloud, “You rember the na they gave . The Monster of Markend. That’s always been .”
Her voice trembled when she answered, “Was any of it real? Us? How much of it is just for the sake of the fight? How much of it is just… us? Tell it’s real, Nick…”
It was. Of course it was. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. In my worst monts, when loneliness and guilt threatened to tear apart, she had been there. When I was lost in the lawless, George had anchored . When I ended up in Wamond, and then that dieval world, it was Alia who kept grounded. I would have been lying to deny that.
So I chose the crueler truth instead.
“There’s no fixing ,” I told her flatly. “So you might as well grind your teeth and be over this.”
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