241 Beware the Dead [Spoiler/Mira Alice]
“Hey, wake up, Spoiler,” Dragoness said beside , using my cape na instead of Mira. “Co on, you’re the team leader, right?”
I opened my eyes slowly, my vision swimming for a mont before settling. My neck hurt from sleeping upright in the passenger seat. I grabbed the energy drink from the console and chugged half of it in one go, the artificial citrus burn dragging back to alertness.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just woke up. You said it was my turn to sleep, but what are you doing sleeping? What if we missed sothing? We need to be at full readiness.”
“We’ll be fine,” I replied, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “You’re going to be the muscle anyway. And I was using precognition before I knocked out. Nothing new in the imdiate future. Also, fix your tone. I’m your superior at work.”
“S-sorry,” she muttered. “But we’re the sa age.”
I rolled my eyes. “Acting cute won’t work on .”
She huffed and crossed her arms, her draconic pupils narrowing slightly in the dim light of the dashboard. Outside, the neon sign of Hotel Savoir flickered, casting red and gold over the wet pavent. Midnight traffic was thin. Perfect conditions for monsters to act.
My precognition operated along three axes: past, present, and future. Most people assud it was simple foresight. It wasn’t. It was partitioning consciousness, stretching identity across temporal anchors and maintaining coherence between them. It was exhausting.
Right now, the body in the car was my future instance, the one closest to branching probability. The “present” was inside the hotel, disguised as staff, wearing a black-and-white uniform and a polite smile. The “past” was positioned in Markend, a safety asure if anything went wrong.
We could swap positions at will, overwrite continuity, or generate a new branch if necessary. The cost was cognitive strain. The more I pushed, the more the edges of myself blurred.
We had already had a chaotic month. Markend nearly fell apart. My clone there fed updates: Nick stabbed by a copycat, multiversal invasion, Chad announcing the existence of other worlds to everyone with a screen. It would have been reasonable to pull the team back ho.
But reasonable was not the sa as correct.
Sothing worse was here.
Dragoness leaned forward and peered at the hotel. “I still don’t get why we’re waiting. We know what they’re doing.”
“We suspect,” I corrected. “Suspicion isn’t enough. If we move without irrefutable proof and we’re wrong, we lose jurisdiction here permanently.”
“They’re eating people, Spoiler,” she said, her voice tightening. “That’s not suspicion. That’s evil.”
Cannibalism.
Hotel Savoir specialized in exclusivity. Gourt experiences. Rare clientele. Hidden nus. The victims were mostly newly pulled capes, disoriented, still experinting with abilities they barely understood. The hotel would lure them in with promises of guidance, community, and ntorship. Then they would be subdued.
Processed.
Cooked.
Served.
The chefs were brainwashed or compartntalized so deeply that even under torture, they had no conscious awareness of what they were preparing. On an alternate tiline, Hover and I had abducted one and interrogated him. Hover had gone further than I liked. We still got nothing actionable. No confession that would stand.
Because the real mind behind the hotel never touched the knives.
Dragoness clenched her jaw. “Back in my world, we had warlords and tyrants. But this? This is just… disgusting.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
Inside the hotel, my present instance smiled at a guest while scanning the dining hall. Aura readings were suppressed. Surveillance was layered with subtle psychic interference. Whoever ran this place was cautious and competent.
Jacob’s shadow-self brushed against my present self, folded into her shadow, acting as muscle and safety net. Through him, I felt a faint pulse behind the refrigeration units. A room that did not exist in official blueprints.
“There,” I murmured.
Dragoness glanced at . “What?”
“I found the divergence point,” I said. “Three minutes from now, soone important moves. If we let it play out without interference, we’ll get visual confirmation.”
“Of what?”
I focused, splitting awareness, watching probabilities cascade.
“Of the slaughter room, probably.”
Her nostrils flared. A thin wisp of smoke curled from them before she forced it back down. “Honestly, this is just bizarre. What connection does Savoir have with Mirch? A hotel and a university. No matter how I think about it, I can’t make a connection. So what if the head of Mirch has frequent visitations here… Wait, don’t you think he might be one of the custors?”
“We cannot assu these things,” I replied evenly. “There always needs to be evidence.”
It was easy for to say. I could literally peek at the future, past, and present. Discipline was the only thing stopping from abusing that advantage recklessly.
“They found the basent,” I said.
Dragoness straightened imdiately. “T-tell what’s happening?”
When I said I could see the present, I ant it in a literal sense. Within a certain radius, I could observe anyone or anything in real ti, layering perspectives like transparent sheets over reality. From the car, I scanned through corridors, dining halls, staff rooms, kitchens.
Except for one place.
The basent.
That area was occluded, like a blind spot carved deliberately into the world. Psychic insulation. Dense. Intentional.
“Calm down,” I told her. “Your hubby will be fine.”
She flushed instantly and looked away. “Please don’t tease . My brother—I an Jacob—is already conflicted about our relationship and…”
She trailed off, realizing this was neither the ti nor the place. The two of them were hopelessly tangled in feelings neither fully understood. It was better they were separated right now. Space allowed clarity. Technically, it wasn’t incestuous; they weren’t blood-related, and their past circumstances complicated labels even further.
I sighed softly. “He’ll be fine. He’s very good at espionage. He’s registered under several entirely different cape identities and no one has ever connected them.”
That was not an exaggeration. Jacob’s shapeshifting was so refined he could share aspects of it temporarily. His infiltration work bordered on art.
Inside the hotel, my present-self stood near the service corridor while Jacob, rged with my shadow, peeled himself free and reshaped. Flesh rippled silently as he transford into a mber of upper managent, a face I had morized through past observation.
His power always felt unsettling from my perspective. Though my alternate selves were technically clones, each of us perceived ourselves as the original. Even knowing intellectually that the body in the car was the primary anchor, my past and present iterations believed the sa about themselves. Identity was a rotating throne.
Through the “present” , I watched Jacob step toward the restricted hallway leading to the basent entrance.
That was when he encountered the master of the hotel.
The man stood calmly beneath the dim lighting, hands clasped behind his back. Stitches ringed his forehead in a crude halo, as if soone had opened his skull and sewn it back together after rearranging what lay inside.
I felt my shoulders tense.
Ensureal.
Once a respected telepathic hero. Freelance consultant for law enforcent. Vanished without explanation years ago. Now here, running a cannibalistic operation behind a luxury facade.
He wasn’t alone in his fall. Several staff mbers matched the profiles of missing journalists, models, minor politicians, and even the owner of Mirch University. All had disappeared from public life before resurfacing in proximity to Savoir. Replaced or rewritten.
Ensureal tilted his head slightly, eyes sharp with unnatural awareness.
“What are you doing here?” he asked Jacob, voice smooth but edged. “It’s closing ti.”
Through my layered perception, I felt his mind brushing outward, probing for inconsistencies.
I narrowed my focus, reinforcing Jacob’s ntal profile with subtle temporal smoothing. A small correction in the imdiate past. A minor adjustnt in how his footsteps had sounded. A recalibration of breathing rhythm.
Dragoness whispered urgently, “Is he suspicious?”
“Yes,” I replied quietly. “But not certain.”
Inside the corridor, Jacob gave a polite nod in his borrowed form. “Apologies, sir. I was told to check inventory discrepancies in cold storage.”
Ensureal’s gaze lingered a second too long.
We could have played it safe. My precognition showed dozens of clean exits where Jacob turned around, apologized, and walked away without raising suspicion. Ensureal would have let him go. We would regroup, reassess, and try again later.
But we did not have that luxury.
Whatever was hidden in that basent was being moved, and it was being moved quickly. Over the past week, I had observed an unusual spike in deliveries. Large, sealed containers were brought in through private service entrances. They never left. No outgoing manifests. No waste logs. No corresponding financial trail.
They vanished.
Either the underground structure was vast enough to swallow that volu of cargo without trace, or they had portal technology installed below.
I leaned toward the latter.
Savoir had accumulated half a dozen ergency survey reports from the SRC over the years. Suspicion. Anomalies. Disappearances. Nothing conclusive. Each attempt at deeper investigation had been quietly stalled from within the organization itself.
Pushback like that ant compromise.
If anyone could cut through it, it would be us, the GDF. But for that, we needed proof.
I had already used a telepath to sweep the periter weeks ago. Nothing. The basent was shielded beyond conventional psychic reach. Even my own perception had failed to locate its physical anchor until tonight’s divergence window appeared.
This was our only chance.
I did not hesitate.
Through my present-self, I moved first. I shoved my hand on Ensureal’s throat before he could react and say more. Jacob handed a hatchet into my grip from his shadow. The blade had a monomolecular edge, thin enough to ignore most material resistance.
I sliced through my own wrist.
Pain flared, bright and sharp.
The severed hand, still shoved to Ensureal’s mouth, regenerated instantly. Bone extended, muscle threaded, flesh blossod outward. A full duplicate of erupted from the contact point, expanding with explosive force from his skull.
It had to be done that way.
Ensureal’s skin had been modified. Post-hero career augntation. Invulnerability ratings embedded in the dermal layer. Attacking from outside would have taken too long and risked psychic counterattack. Internal replication bypassed that.
He died without ever fully understanding what happened.
The newborn clone landed smoothly, already shifting as Jacob gave her a piece of his shadow. Flesh rippled as she adopted Ensureal’s exact appearance, down to the stitched forehead. She stripped his clothes with efficient precision and dressed herself.
The original body, my present anchor, dragged the remains into the janitor alcove. Blood was rewound from exposed surfaces using micro-temporal corrections. Jacob assisted in cleanup before dissolving from the scene.
“They’re in,” I told Dragoness quietly. “Be prepared to storm in if necessary. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Inside, the basent was immaculate. Pristine white floors. Stainless steel surfaces. It felt more like a research laboratory than a slaughterhouse.
Personnel in lab coats walked past my disguised clone, each wearing wide, almost euphoric smiles.
“Good morning!”
“We await the ssiah!”
“Happy working!”
“For the ssiah!”
“I love the ssiah!”
Their cheerfulness was wrong. Artificially elevated. Devotional.
So faces I recognized. Scientists who had vanished years ago. A biodical engineer we had once abducted during my ti with the Ten. I rembered Light handling that contract personally. We had delivered the target to a client without asking questions.
A slow, cold realization ford in my gut.
This place was connected to sothing much older.
The portal apparatus sat at the center of the largest chamber. Its architecture was unlike SRC gates, unlike NSD transit rings, unlike anything the Company had reverse-engineered. It felt organic in design philosophy, curved, almost grown rather than built.
“Leave here, Jacob,” my clone said quietly. “I need to see where this leads. I’ll be fine as long as my other bodies exist.”
“Copy that,” Jacob replied before slipping fully into shadow and withdrawing.
Alone, my clone approached the device. I fed her probability threads, guiding adjustnts in sequence. Trial and error blended with future sight. One configuration produced catastrophic overload. Another led to a void pocket. A third stabilized.
The portal opened.
And soone stepped through.
My clone froze.
He was no longer wearing the trench coat I rembered. Instead, he wore a tailored black suit. In one hand, he held a porcelain mask. Where his face should have been was a smooth, pale surface devoid of eyes, nose, or mouth.
Recognition hit like ice water down my spine.
“Paleman,” I whispered from the car, my voice barely audible. “How are you alive?”
Every version of felt the sa tremor at once.
“Holy fucking shit—”
The mont I recognized him, I fed catastrophic paraters into the portal core.
Inside the basent, my clone forced the machine past every stability threshold I had carefully balanced monts ago. The energy signature spiked violently. Lab personnel turned in confusion, their smiles faltering for the first ti.
Then everything went white.
The explosion tore upward through the hotel like a spear.
I was already moving.
I kicked the car door open and sprinted toward the entrance as the ground shuddered. Glass rained from upper floors. Fire belched from shattered windows. Shockwaves rippled across the street.
Dragoness didn’t hesitate. She burst from the vehicle mid-stride, bones cracking and reforming as she expanded into her full draconic form. Crimson scales rippled over her body. Wings tore through the air with a thunderous snap.
“Code eleven!” I shouted into the comms. “Code eleven! I need backup now!”
Debris hurtled toward . I dashed and dove behind a tal mailbox as a slab of concrete smashed into the pavent inches away. The impact rattled my teeth.
I peeked around the corner.
Paleman stood in the middle of the smoking ruin.
Unhard.
His suit was scorched but intact. The porcelain mask dangled from his fingers. His faceless head tilted slightly, almost curious.
Then the flesh began to move.
Tentacles burst from his back, shoulders, ribs… They were slick, pale appendages whipping outward with grotesque grace. Dragoness lunged, claws first. He t her mid-charge. A tentacle coiled around her forelimb and yanked. Another sliced across her side.
Scales ripped free.
Her roar shook the street.
“This can’t be,” I muttered. “Paleman should be dead. Nick killed him, didn’t he?”
“Oh, but he’s not.”
The voice ca from my right.
I turned sharply.
The small LED billboard beside the bus stop flickered. Streams of zeros and ones cascaded across the display, arranging themselves into the crude shape of a face. Two hollow eyes. A jagged mouth ford from binary strings.
It shouldn’t have had speakers.
Yet it spoke.
“He’d been the real boss of the Ten all along,” the digital face continued cheerfully. “Not Mrs. Mind. Certainly not Light.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The pixelated grin widened. “The original Dr. Sequence would have been hurt by your tone, you know? Ha ha ha ha~!”
“Dr. Sequence?” I felt cold despite the flas roaring behind .
“It’s Master Sequence, you little shit!” the screen screeched, distortion crackling through the audio. “And I’m soon going to remake the world! Join us! We’re still recruiting. There’s a seat left just for you!”
The pavent split.
Spider-like machines erupted from sewer grates, walls, even beneath parked cars. Sleek black bodies. Multiple articulated legs. Each one disturbingly reminiscent of Dullahan’s constructs.
They sward toward .
Several exploded mid-leap.
I looked up.
Hover stood on the edge of a nearby building, bow drawn, expression calm. Another arrow loosed, curving unnaturally midair before piercing three machines in a single arc.
Redscale burst from the subway entrance, red scales gleaming under streetlights. He ramd into the swarm like a battering ram, claws shredding tal limbs.
“Let’s go, ma’am!” he shouted before charging deeper into the tunnel to intercept more erging units.
Above us, Dragoness took flight, wings beating hard enough to scatter smoke. She inhaled deeply and unleashed a torrent of dragonfire.
The flas engulfed Paleman.
For a mont, I allowed myself to hope.
Then the fire parted.
He stood untouched at the epicenter, tentacles retracting slowly. He wasn’t fighting her anymore.
He was staring at .
Even without eyes, I felt the focus.
His head tilted, and though he had no mouth, his voice erupted directly into the air around us. It was distorted and layered, as if scread through a thousand throats at once.
“TeLL EcLipSE I wiLL bE cOMIng fOr hiM!”
The words reverberated through bone and glass alike.
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