Chapter 68 Couppance
I opened my eyes to a flat gray ceiling that slled faintly of disinfectant and old tal, the kind of sterile sll that pretended to be clean while holding on to every stain. My body felt heavy and oddly light at the sa ti, like soone had removed the ballast from my bones and left the skin to rember gravity alone. The orange fabric rode up my ribs when I moved; printed across the chest in bold, utilitarian letters were the words DETAINEE-SRC and beneath them a smaller warning: Codena: Eclipse. Warning: Extrely Dangerous. I laughed then, a short, surprised sound that grew into sothing harsher and sharper than it should have. The sound echoed against the walls, and for a mont the room felt too small to hold the noise I made.
Adrenaline still humd beneath my skin, jittering at the edges of everything I tried to do, so I leaned down into my Enhancer ratings and forced the clarity I needed. Detaching was a skill I’d learned the hard way by pulling the control knob, ratcheting down the panic, and locking the emotions in a vault where they couldn’t leak. It took effort, like holding a blade steady against a toothpick, but the pause arrived, cold and surgical. When I cald, the room presented itself properly: a single narrow bed bolted to the floor, a tal door with a thick slit for an eye, and walls that didn’t ask questions because they already knew the answers.
I tested the physics anyway, because habit died slower than pain. I tried to run up the wall, phasing my feet into the concrete like I used to when I practiced tricks, expecting to blur up and across the surface. Instead, my montum finished and I bounced back, my face eting the wall with a wet crunch that painted the plaster with red. The impact rattled my teeth; blood ward my mouth. I laughed again, a sound that had more edges now, each chuckle scraping the inside of my throat. “Hahahahahahaha! This is it. Huh? It’s done,” I said aloud, tasting copper and disbelief. The laughter faded into sothing like acceptance as I let my shoulders drop and sat on the bed, the tal fra cold beneath my palms.
The slit in the door opened, allowing two blue eyes to look down at . “Do you rember ?” he asked, his eyes bored. I remained quiet, since nothing I could say would make the past alter its course. He didn’t need my answer to continue. “Michael Hall, SRC Director, South Eastern Branch. I was there in your mother’s funeral.”
I rembered the funeral. As for Director Hall, I also rembered him making a speech, but his words eluded back then.
“So,” started Director Hall. “What is it gonna be, Nick?”
The mory he invoked didn’t tug at the way he probably expected.
“What difference does that make?” I asked eventually, because cruelty likes the sound of its own logic. “Because from where I am sitting, I can tell. It wouldn’t make a damn difference…”
Directory Hall paused a beat, as if expecting more from , then he added plainly, “That I know your mother wouldn’t have wanted this for you.” The line was ant to be a lever, pull it and sothing would shift, but I’d been pulled and pushed so many tis my joints clicked like old hinges.
“If you think you could guilt-trip into doing what you want, give up,” I said, letting sarcasm edge the words. “The only regret I have is that I got caught. If there’s anything you should be doing right now, that would be to do your job. It’s like I don’t have a choice, anyway. Crow owns now, and my every breath is his. You will get nothing from , except the one I was owed.” Saying Crow’s na opened a bitter little cavern in my chest; the fact of that ownership tasted like rust.
Director Hall’s face softened. For a fraction of a second his features tried to look like empathy, then the mask dropped. “I see,” he said slowly, disappointnt laced with the practiced patience of soone who had read this script before. “It’s disappointing, but fine. You will get what you were due. Enjoy what little peace you have now, because you will have none of it once the Warden claims you.” He turned away without another look, the slit closing with the sa thodical indifference it had opened with.
I wiped the blood from my nose with the back of my hand, the motion small and useless and utterly human, and lay back on the thin mattress. The orange shirt rubbed loud against my ribs, the warning letters staring up like a brand. Outside the tal door, the facility humd, voices filtered through ducts, footsteps that ant nothing and everything. I closed my eyes, letting my breath slow until it matched the ceiling’s gray impartiality, and thought of the one thing still important to .
“Silver… Onyx… Mom…”
And Crow…
I swore, he’d get what was coming for him.
Three days bled into one another since I first opened my eyes under that gray tal ceiling. Thoughts of escape visited like dull, predictable ghosts, but the cell laughed at them: walls poured from a strange, hyper-dense concrete that warped powers in ways I hadn't seen before, floors the sa, and tucked above that ceiling was genuine nullifier tech born from old-world engineering ant to silence even the angriest capes. I tested everything until my nose bled; the concrete took my phase like a sponge and spat it back. The routine was hollow and chanical… eat, stare, and count heartbeats… until the alarms cut through the monotony and red lights threw the cell into frantic shadow.
At the first pulse of the siren I felt sothing else: a return, subtle and fierce, like a missing limb waking under anesthesia. My fingers tingled, then burned, and the old cold thrill that ca with my power slid back into place.
The door cracked open and a figure filled the fra: long dark hair, ripped jeans, reversed eyes that made the room feel upside-down.
“What’s the date?” I asked, keeping my voice level.
“March nineteenth,” he said, casual as spit. “You were out longer than you think.”
I laughed. “What took you so long, then? Traffic?”
Crow smiled with those teeth that never reached his eyes. “Pecking order, Eclipse. Do rember your place. But you sure gave a show I couldn’t resist. You sure made proud. So much that I’m willing to risk my neck to rescue you myself.”
“You didn’t have to bother, really,” I said. “Saving ? More like, you just want to continue using … Isn’t that it? No way you are that generous…”
He tossed a ring with an M on it into the air and it spun like a token as he played with it. His grin widened as he revealed. “You are right in both accounts. I couldn’t have bothered. You are also right to think I want to use you, because you are useful. But the one thing you got wrong was that… I could be generous. You’ve got a role to play, and I’m good at giving people roles they can’t refuse. Eclipse, let’s build an Empire, together.”
Before I could answer Crow’s pitch, the shadow at the doorway shimred and folded itself into shape. Promise appeared so suddenly, Crow was unable to react quickly. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” said Promise, voice cool. “Stay.”
Just like that, Promise shoved him inside my cell. Crow stumbled back into the corridor, cursing low and surprised. “Eclipse,” he spat, regaining himself, “What is the aning of this?”
I turned the ring in my hand and felt its cold weight. For a second the nullifier humd through the ceiling, a low pressure that made my skin crawl, then it amplified, pressing at the edges of my regained power.
“It’s your end, Crow…”
I watched Crow’s silhouette twist under the nullifier like a fish in a net, sparks of shadow dying off until he stood there, blinking, and baffled at how everything had conspired to corner him.
“No…” cried Crow. “No, this can’t be…”
I slid the ring onto my index finger; it fit like a promise. My powers humd faint and wrong under the ceiling, but the Enhancer training sat in my bones. Muscle mory and violence remained within , regardless of powers or what-not.
“Grit your teeth for .”
I walked up to him and punched, clean and hard, right on the jaw. He tasted blood and surprise, and when he turned, fury flashed in those backward eyes.
“You been colluding with the SRC,” he spat, voice shredded. “You fucking traitor! Do you know what I do to those who betray !?”
His shock made him reckless.
I grabbed his head and drove a knee into his face, his hands snatching my leg and trying to yank off. I hooked my grip behind his skull, drove my other knee into his sternum, and used the motion to topple us both. We hit hard; tal echoed under our weight. I rolled on top, locked my arms round his throat from behind, and squeezed until his breath ca ragged and shallow.
“This is for Silver,” I said, each word a stone. He clawed and flailed, but the nullifier made his strength a joke. I levered him up until one knee hit the floor and then slamd my heel down on the back of his right knee, a brutal, calculated stomp that made him howl.
Tears salted his face as he begged, “S-stop.” I didn’t. I kept the choke while I pressed until a clean, ugly sound cracked through the air… It was the break of bone.
“This is for my mom,” I whispered, voice calm enough to be cruel. “And it is going to hurt.”
I dragged him across the floor and forced him onto the narrow bed, folding his legs up against the cold wall so his hips sat weird and useless. He reached blindly, fingers scraping my sleeve, but he couldn’t touch . I pinned one wrist under my right knee and the other under my left, bracing my weight, until he stopped wrestling with hope and started rattling with pain.
The nullifier puckered at my edges, but my Enhancer rating slowly overca them.
I slid the heel of my palm under one of his thoracic vertebrae, propping and waiting, while my other arm cupped the back of his neck to keep his head from snapping free. I pushed… Not slow, not cruel for its own sake, but hard and final. Bones protested and then broke with a wet, decisive surrender. His upper spine buckled inward at a right angle, his chest folding like a discarded puppet’s.
He went slack, a broken thing whose body would never hold him the sa again.
I grabbed him by the throat and dragged him across the cold floor, then mounted him hard so my weight pinned him flat.
“And this is for .”
My first punch landed like a verdict; each follow-through blurred into the next until my knuckles tasted salt and copper. Blood sared over the ring on my index finger and across my palm, sticky and hot, but I didn’t stop to count the hits or savor the sound.
“Die,” I let the motion take over… “Die,” punch after punch… “Die,” until his face was a ruined map of bruises and blood… “Die,” until his hands hung useless at his sides and his breaths ca ragged and shallow.
“Die for , will you?”
He whimpered sothing broken between spits of blood. “Thi—f n… ovfr… yft…” His words dissolved into a choking rattle.
I could feel the old training tighten in my limbs as I forcibly reclaid my evolving Enhancer ratings, the coordination snapping back into place like a glove. Adrenaline surged on command, artificial and clean, and my body obeyed with frightening precision. I raised my hand, fingers curling, and nails lengthening with violent intent as I tweaked my hormones. One deep breath… and then I plunged them into his chest.
Crow scread, a raw, primal howl that split the silence. Warmth erupted against my face. His blood sprayed. It was hot and tallic, but I didn’t falter. My fingers tore through muscle and bone, clawing deeper with every pulse of my heart.
“Don’t fight it,” I growled. “This is how it ends.”
His scream broke into sobs, then into silence as I wrapped my hand around the thrumming core within him. With one final pull, I ripped it free. His heart tore loose in a splatter of blood and tissue, crimson dripping down my wrist, dripping onto his lifeless chest.
I stood above him, chest heaving, heart still beating in my grip. This was victory. This was mine.
And Crow was no more.
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