234 Copycat? [Alia]
I finally arrived at Markend after the news of Eclipse’s rampage reached , and the city felt wrong the mont my boots touched the ground. George insisted it wasn’t Nick. He sounded confident, almost annoyed that anyone would think otherwise, but trust in the Company was always a complicated thing. Still, I was willing to trust Nick. I had to.
Those who understood the relationship between the GDF and the Company were shaken to their core. This hadn’t been a slow escalation or a warning ignored. It happened too suddenly. Not even our think tank or the precogs we kept on rotation had seen it coming, and that alone terrified more than the bloodshed itself.
I landed beside the building where the massacre occurred, my crimson wings folding back into my body as the stench hit full force. An SRC agent rushed toward , nearly tripping over debris in his haste. “Ma’am, I’m glad you’re here,” he said, breathless. “It’s total chaos.”
“I can see that,” I replied flatly.
Mutilated body parts littered the area, scattered with no discernible pattern. The gore was excessive, deliberate, and intimate in a way that made my skin crawl. The Company claid it was a copycat, but my people were already whispering doubts. The evidence, at least at first glance, felt too clean and too cruel.
“Bring to where it started,” I ordered. “Brief on the way.”
The agent moved ahead of , swallowing nervously before speaking. “It began around 10:29 p.m. The mayor was giving a speech—”
“I saw the broadcast,” I cut in. “Leave that part out.”
He nodded and continued more carefully. “We deployed psychic forensics imdiately. They’ve been recovering residual impressions and fragnted mories from witnesses and victims. The accounts are… consistent. Eclipse appears, kills the mayor, and then continues killing indiscriminately.”
We reached the center of what had once been a banquet hall. Now it was little more than a butchered ruin, the floor slick and ruined beyond repair. Before I could kneel and examine anything myself, a sharp voice interrupted us.
“Hey, hey, what’s the aning of this?” A senior SRC agent strode toward us, irritation dripping from his tone. “This is an SRC-controlled site. GDF or not, you should leave this to the professionals.”
His gaze flicked sharply to the younger agent escorting . “We’re going to talk about this later.”
The younger agent visibly flinched.
“This is beyond your scope,” I said evenly. “If this really is Eclipse—”
“We can handle it,” he snapped, sneering openly now.
I frowned. He was either dangerously incompetent or had sothing to gain by keeping out, and neither possibility sat well with .
Before I could respond, a police officer stepped in, holding up a docunt. “Markend P.D. officially requested GDF consultation,” he said calmly. “Please don’t give us a hard ti, agent. We both know who’s intruding on whose cri scene.”
The senior agent grimaced, muttered sothing under his breath, and stord away. “Bunch of arrogant know-it-alls,” he scoffed as he left.
The younger agent nodded apologetically toward us before hurrying after his superior.
The officer turned to and extended his hand. “Detective Gary Newman. Nice to et you, Griffin.”
I shook it. “In uniform?” I asked, glancing at his badge.
“Yeah,” he replied with a tired smile. “Supposed to get an award for mundane valor tonight, actually. Funny thing is, I was on a restroom break when this happened. Sounds suspicious, I know, but I wasn’t the only one. Still, no one else in the departnt wanted to touch this, so they sent .” He laughed softly, the sound hollow and self-deprecating.
“What’s their problem?” I asked, pointing with my chin on the senior agent scolding his junior.
“Rumor is the senior SRC agent was up for a promotion,” Gary said. “That might be off the table now, since the mayor’s dead. He was part of the security detail, from what I heard.”
I glanced back toward the retreating agent. “If he was that close to the case, shouldn’t soone else be assigned?” I paused. “No offense to you, detective.”
“None taken,” Gary replied. “SRC’s stretched thin these days. Or maybe they just don’t want the wrong people asking the right questions.”
Honestly, I didn’t think I could trust Gary. He said it himself: he was supposed to receive an award for mundane valor tonight, probably presented by the mayor personally. Yet the mayor ended up dead, and Gary just happened to be in the restroom when it all went down. That detail gnawed at . If he were an award recipient, he should have been seated close to the mayor, not tucked away sowhere out of sight. Either he had devilish luck, or he knew sothing was coming. Neither option sat well with .
I let out a slow breath. Paranoia wouldn’t help now. Jumping at shadows never solved anything, and if I started distrusting everyone on instinct alone, I’d drown in my own suspicions. I needed facts, not vibes. I needed to return to basics.
“Can you walk through what happened?” I asked.
Gary nodded and led the way. We climbed onto the stage, stopping just short of the podium. Chalk marks outlined where the mayor had died, crude and clinical against the polished floor. Blood stains soaked into the surface, and there were fragnts I refused to look at too closely. Brain matter had splattered far wider than I expected, as if violence itself had wanted to leave a signature.
“The mayor suddenly twisted his neck,” Gary explained, his voice steady despite the carnage. “Then Eclipse appeared right where he was standing. As if that wasn’t enough, Eclipse plucked the mayor’s head clean off the spine using intangibility. I suspect invisibility or teleportation explains the sudden appearance, but witness accounts are strange. So say the mayor twisted his own head first, and only after that Eclipse manifested and removed the skull. It suggests mind control, maybe. What do you think, Griffin?”
It wasn’t mind control. I knew that much with uncomfortable certainty. What he described was far closer to Eclipse’s possession ability, the one that allowed him to override a body from the inside. Functionally, it looked like mind control, but the chanism was far more invasive and far more personal.
“You’re pretty observant, detective,” I said instead.
“Thanks,” Gary replied with a faint smile.
I closed my eyes for half a second and focused on my senses. The sll of power lingered thick in the air, unmistakable to . Every power had a scent, a kind of taphysical fingerprint, and this one was burned into my mory. It was Eclipse’s. Nick’s. That realization sent a chill through my spine.
That was the part that scared . If this was a copycat, then why did it sll like him? Power signatures were not easy to fake, not at this level. Either soone had gone to impossible lengths to replicate Eclipse’s presence, or Nick had truly been here.
“Can you tell if there were any other peculiarities?” I asked carefully. “Anything at all related to Eclipse, even if it seems unrelated.”
Gary hesitated, then nodded. “There was so news earlier this morning about an Eclipse sighting. Soone caught video evidence. Sothing about… girl scouts?”
“Elaborate,” I said, my tone sharpening.
He pulled out his phone, scrolled through several clips, and handed it to . The footage was grainy, fild from a neighbor’s window, shaky and unfocused. Still, it showed enough. I recognized the figures imdiately, and my heart skipped in a way I didn’t appreciate. Those won… weren’t they Nick’s wife? Or wives? I wasn’t even sure what the correct term was anymore.
“That’s not Eclipse,” a voice said suddenly.
I turned to see an SRC agent standing a short distance away. Bleached hair, handso face, posture too relaxed for soone who supposedly didn’t belong here. It was Abner. We didn’t acknowledge our prior acquaintance.
“Who are you?” Gary asked, suspicious.
“My na’s not important,” Abner replied easily. “This isn’t even my jurisdiction. I just took a look because it’s Markend. This place is basically my second ho. Anyway, do you want so intel?”
I nodded before Gary could object. “Feel free to share. Don’t keep us waiting.”
“Around the sa ti that video was taken,” Abner continued, “there was another Eclipse sighting inside an SRC facility. We don’t know if the Eclipse in the video caused this massacre, or if the one we detected inside the facility is responsible. That’s the problem.”
Gary frowned. “An SRC facility? Is there any chance you can tell us which one?”
Abner didn’t hesitate. “SRC armory.”
My blood ran cold.
“Missing items?” I asked.
Abner shook his head. “None on record. If anything was taken, it was probably unofficial. Sothing off-the-books.” He paused, then added, “Anyway, my boss wants to see you.”
By boss, he didn’t an the SRC’s upper brass. He ant Nick. Abner had always been Nick’s person, long before layers of affiliations and cover identities complicated things. I nodded and turned to the detective.
“Next ti,” I said. “I’ll contact you if I find anything new.”
“Yes, ma’am. Copy that,” Gary replied, giving a short nod.
Abner led to a sedan parked just outside the cordon. He took the driver’s seat, the engine humming to life as we pulled away from the scene. The city blurred past the windows, and for a while neither of us spoke. The silence pressed in, heavy with unasked questions.
“How are the Godslayers?” I finally asked.
The Godslayers were separate from both the GDF and the Company, a loose but deliberate initiative. A group of capes who had, by democratic agreent, accepted that the Entity might require their deaths to be stopped. Abner was mostly responsible for screening their mbers. Recruitnt was never easy. You couldn’t sell a cause when the price was likely extinction.
“As expected, recruitnt’s tough,” Abner said. “The trick is finding people who’ve had Entity-adjacent experiences. There are more than you’d think. Strange disappearances, impossible gaps in mory, places where causality just… slips. I’ve been studying the Entity more closely, and I think I’m onto sothing. There’s a pattern among those who’ve glimpsed it and the situations it creates.” He exhaled. “Anyway, we can talk more about that later. Right now, the Company’s pretty rattled by this Eclipse copycat. And the SRC armory… yeah, that’s sothing we need to talk about.”
“What’s in the SRC armory?” I asked.
If nothing official was missing, then whatever this was had to be important enough to hide in the first place. Dangerous enough that even the SRC didn’t want it acknowledged.
“Multiverse hopping technology,” Abner answered, “or at least parts of it. Components. Prototypes. Either we’re dealing with an opposing organization that knows far too much, or there’s so kind of trick involved. And since Eclipse is the face of the Company, this copycat is doing real damage to its image.”
Despite being an SRC agent on paper and a core cog in the Godslayers, Abner had always aligned himself with Eclipse first. His loyalty wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t for show. I couldn’t help but envy Nick for having soone like that at his side.
Abner popped a pill and swallowed it dry. The naturalization procedure still wasn’t finished with him. Since he originated from a different world, he had to undergo long-term conditioning just to exist here safely without contamination.
“We’re here,” Abner said as the car rolled to a stop.
He stepped out first and opened the door for . We headed inside the building together, the atmosphere shifting the mont we crossed the threshold. The place was quiet in that deliberate, controlled way that always made my skin itch. The elevator doors slid open, and to my surprise, Eclipse was already waiting inside.
“Boss,” Abner said with forced cheer, a little too quick, “just on your way up?”
Eclipse nodded once. “Yeah. Let’s get this over with.”
I stepped in beside him. Up close, everything about him looked right, from posture to presence, yet sothing felt faintly off, like a familiar song played half a note too low. “How’ve you been?” he asked casually.
“Busy,” I replied, keeping my voice neutral.
Abner tapped the elevator panel, the doors closing with a soft chi. The car began to ascend. I studied Eclipse from the corner of my eye, searching for inconsistencies that might explain the unease crawling up my spine.
“So,” I said, “are we expecting anyone else, or is this the eting?”
“Yeah,” Eclipse answered.
That was it. Just yeah. No elaboration.
“What do you think about the copycat?” I pressed.
He paused, fingers flexing once at his side, then said thoughtfully, “Probably used so kind of cloning technology.”
Abner shifted behind us. I could sll it then, sharp and unmistakable. Fear. A thin sheen of sweat had ford on his brow. Abner had precognition. He didn’t sweat unless sothing had slipped past even that.
I turned slightly toward Eclipse. “So who else is going to be there—”
The elevator doors opened.
Nick stood on the opposite side, dressed in civilian clothes, a hoodie pulled halfway up as if he’d just been dragged out of sothing mundane and unfinished. Confusion flickered across his face as he saw us.
Then a pale tendril erupted forward.
It stabbed Nick clean through the gut.
The motion was so sudden that even Abner’s precognition failed to trigger. Nick staggered, dropping to one knee as blood spilled from his mouth. He tried to phase, instinctively, desperately, but the tendril held firm, anchoring him in place like reality itself had betrayed him.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. My body locked as the Eclipse standing beside twisted his head around in a full, impossible rotation until his eyes t mine.
They were wrong. Empty in a way Nick’s had never been.
“Alia,” he said softly, his voice layered, intimate, and ancient all at once. “I missed you, darling. Can you die for ?”
Reviews
All reviews (0)