෴Midnight෴

෴Hex෴

෴Sasha෴

෴Paolo෴

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

Discovery

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

Midnight set Hex on her couch and took up a post across the room on the loveseat. While she slept, he pulled up the mental notebook screen and started looking over the notes he’d made on previous failures.

When he got hungry, he made food in her kitchen. She woke to the smell of brewing coffee and frying bacon. She could hear Raz in the kitchen, quietly talking to himself like he so often did.

“Hey, babe? You making enough for me?” she called out.

He coughed, cleared his throat, and replied in his ‘Doktor Midnight’ voice. “Yes, I made plenty.”

The events of the last few days flooded through her. “Sorry, I thought you were—”

He came into the living room carrying a breakfast plate and a cup of coffee. “Yeah. I get it. The Raz you’re looking for is in another castle. Let’s get some breakfast and we can get back to it.” He offered her the cup and plate.

She accepted them, studying his face. “When did you last sleep?”

He cocked his head to the side, “Hmm, yesterday, while you were off selling metal, I think?”

She pointed to the other couch. “So you napped for an hour on the side of a volcano? You need to finish breakfast, not have any more coffee, and get some proper rest! You don’t need to run yourself ragged anymore. You have people, resources. You need to start using them again.”

He blinked, then nodded absently, his expression making it clear he’d not yet internalized the return of his network. He brought her a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon as he activated several devices on his person.

While she ate, he checked in with his people.

Before she’d finished her plate, he rushed back into the room. “We have an address!” His business suit outfit was already shifting into the tight-fitting under-suit he wore beneath the heavy armor mass parked downstairs.

She paused her eating to answer. “Yep, I got the same info pack from Wraith you did. Is the address going to get away?”

He took a steadying breath and sat down. “No, no. I hear what you’re saying. I’m just happy to have some solid intel. Your friend Wesley does good work. I’ll make sure to bring him whatever tech we find.”

She nodded. “Good plan, but first, you need to chill, and get some sleep. I need to know what the hell happened to me out there. All my living aspects are released.”

He stopped bouncing his knee and nodded, “I—yeah. I didn’t realize he had such a large field of effect. We’d barely reached what I think of as the outer circle of his territory, when you just went down like you’d been clubbed.”

“Down to just one. I could have been killed.” She said it with a shiver as though the idea was something she hadn’t really thought about before.

She paused halfway through taking a bite. “Oh no. I need to do damage control at home. It’ll take me a few days until I can get all my aspects back up. I can’t go anywhere with you until I’ve got that sorted. Wouldn’t be much use right now, anyway.”

He looked her in the eye, “What can I do to help?”

She looked at her phone, saw the date, and sighed heavily. “You could find Raz.”

He nodded, “I’m working on it. You know how it is. I’m not good at that. I’ll make sure to stop in and make a big sweep on my way.”

“So odd,” she muttered softly to herself.

“What is?”

“No aspects out, except I can still sort of feel the dead one,” she replied.

He shook his head slightly. “Should I know what you mean by that?”

“Close your eyes,” she said.

He looked at her with a question on his face, then closed his eyes. In rapid succession, two naked Hex aspects appeared in the living room, and hurried to her bedroom to get dressed.

“You can—” she noticed he’d already opened his eyes, “—Enjoy the show, apparently. Well, that’ll take care of my parents and the kiddos, but until I recharge, I won't be teleporting much, and I’ll need time to bring the rest of my aspects up.”

“What did you mean by the dead one?” He insisted.

The Serena aspect came back into the living room wearing a sports bra and shorts. “I can feel one, the one that was with Raz. She feels dead, but isn’t releasing. I’m trying to think of a way to describe it to you, but we don’t have enough common frame of reference for me to explain it any better. The principal thing is that having a nonfunctional aspect out is going to make all this even slower.”

Midnight nodded. “Ok, I think I got you. Thanks for explaining.”

Both aspects in the room gave him an ironic stare. “Yes. Explanations are so helpful. You should keep that in mind, and maybe try to work that little epiphany into your own life,” with that, Serena vanished.

He leaned back and raised his hands as if to surrender. “You got me. I’m trying to do better.”

The Tavi aspect came out dressed in another set of combat gear. “I think I’ll come with you after all. You still need sleep though. Coffee isn’t going to cut it, You’re running yourself way too close to the edge.”

He started to shake his head and argue. She put a hand up and kept talking. “Hear me out! I have the address, I’ll go there, and have a discreet look around. I’m actually a lot more sneaky than a couple of tons of iron coming in at Mach 30 carving a trail of fire across the sky.”

He laughed, the sound breaking a subtle tension in the room. “Hey now, I don’t always go in hot,” he fiddled with his phone-like device, “Here’s the location. Can you get there?”

She looked at the address and smiled. “I’ve been to this city before. I could get there ahead of you. So you sleep, I’ll go have a look, and when you wake up, I’ll let you know what I found.”

He sagged back into the couch. “Ok,” he let out a jaw-cracking yawn, “sounds like a plan.”

He was asleep before she finished her bacon.

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

The next morning, Hex gave him the summary.

“My read on this is terrorism, or at least deniable acts of war, for hire. Looks like they specialize in airstrikes using repurposed civilian aircraft. We could use more information, but I’m seeing deniability jobs for all sides. This group is bad news. Honestly, if you don’t take them out, I will.”

“How did you figure all that out just by watching?” He asked around a yawn.

“You’ve been asleep for ten hours. I used enough aspects to figure out where several people there live, stole a device from one of them, got it to Wraith, and he got me inside their network. He’s scraping through all their data as we speak, but at this point, I already know enough that if you wanted to just go in hard and just wreck this place, I’m into it.”

“Have they done anything I’d recognize?” He asked.

“Yeah, probably too many. Here are two you’ll definitely recognize among the recent targets. Someone, probably US-based, paid them to do the precision bombing of a commercial building just outside Barcelona in the Castelldefels area. Judging by payment information, a different client, probably in China, paid them to execute a chemical weapon attack on a populated area near Kathmandu a day or two after.”

A wave of rising anger in him spilled out for a moment before he restrained himself with a visible effort. “Yes,” he spoke through clenched jaws, “I’m all too familiar with both events.”

“I thought you might be. The good news is we’ve got two notable locations,” she handed him a slim folder. “First up is a site along the western coast of England. It’s close enough to the Heysham Nuclear power plant to make any kind of frontal attack carry some extra risk. You come in hot there and you’ll have UK military scrambling along with a lot of boots on the ground. The last thing you need is another country actively against you.”

“You just said you’d be happy for me to go in hard and wreck the place,” he pointed out.

“She nodded emphatically. “And I would. If you want to go in and level the facility, take all their tech, and kill every last one of them, I’m down with that. I just mean you should avoid your flaming spear of death from the heavens move, and go in a bit quieter.”

He nodded. “Oh right. And the second site?”

“The other one is near the south end of Morocco. Looks like an airstrip, probably a munitions depot for carrying out these attacks. It’s listed as partially decommissioned, but no records of moving the munitions out. If those munitions are still there, we should go get them.”

He looked at the GPS coordinates, then the satellite photos of the second site. His eyes widened even as he clenched his jaw. “Yeah, I don’t think that site is worth hitting. Let’s focus on the first place.”

She watched the expressions on his face, then scowled. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He blinked, then nodded. “Well, that’s the site I got all the tech for your friend to go through. There aren’t any munitions there now.”

Her brow furrowed, then she shrugged. “Oh, ok. Why didn’t you say so?” She shrugged again. “Oh well, In that case, you’re going to like what I’ve got to tell you about the England location.”

She looked up to ensure she had his attention. “I know a place near there. A rusty old lighthouse right next to the plant. With a few more hops I was able to get a read on the place. They present like a shipping, import/export business, and from checking around, it’s probably even legit, at least on the surface. They also have armed security, which is already odd for the area, and very good physical and electronic site security. Oh, and I can’t be sure, but I think he’s got some people with abilities on his payroll.”

He looked over the write-up, reading over it with an intense expression.

A few minutes later, he looked up at her. “This is a superb write up. I didn't know you’re so good at this kind of work,” his tone was sincere.

She blushed at the unexpected compliment. “Thanks, I, uh. Well, Wraith did the cyber work. I just handled the physical surveillance and wrote it up.”

He nodded. “Still, it’s far beyond just competent. You’ve really gone above and beyond here. I knew I was wasting you on guard duty, but I didn’t realize how much of a waste it was.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t a waste at all.”

He surged to his feet. She stood up as well. They looked each other in the eye for a little longer than was strictly normal. She looked away first.

“There’s more food staying warm in the oven if you’re hungry. I’ve got five aspects out so far. It gets progressively slower the more I’ve got out, so number six won't be any sooner than tomorrow.”

He’d been moving toward the kitchen as soon as she mentioned food. He demolished the stacked plate of bacon, eggs, and sausage without saying another word.

While he washed the dish, he spoke, his tone full of caution. “I know you’re going to want me to go look for him again, but…” he trailed off as he dried the plate, clearly unsure how to proceed.

She took the dry plate from his hands. “I get it. I know he’s alive, but flyovers aren’t getting the job done.”

He put away the fork, then shook his head slightly and turned to face her. “How do you know? I—I didn’t want to say this,” he closed his eyes and shook his head again, “I still don’t, but I need you to face facts. I don’t want to give up either, but he’s alone in some of the most inhospitable terrains on the planet, and if you’d seen how many incursion beasts are roaming that area, I don’t think you’d be so optimistic.”

She nodded. “I did see. I went back to the incursion site. It’s all torn up, but looking around, I know he was there, and I think he’s got a chance. I think I’ve been directing your search pattern too close to the outpost.”

He returned to the living room and sat back down. “You have my attention.”

“When you told me there was a vehicle missing, that made me look at the place with a new perspective. What I found is a bunch of full fuel cans, and water cans and other gear is missing. I could see where they’d been, and they weren’t marked off in the inventory sheet right next to them.”

He shrugged. “So a soldier forgot to mark them down?”

She leaned forward and interlocked her fingers. “Forgot several times in a row for both sheets? I don’t think so. I’ll admit signatures get a little crazy in the days right before we came, which is consistent with what she told us about things going off the rails there.”

He nodded slowly. “That makes sense. I’ve seen it before though. People who haven’t already had a catalyst cascade event suffer a lot of ill effects spending time around an incursion near the end.”

“But! The check marks were still happening, and I have to assume that even soldiers under a lot of stress know that fuel and water are their lifeblood out there,” she paused, “hold up. What do you mean by the end?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, then rubbed at his temples for a moment. “They’re going to open for real, open all the way, and soon. Before you ask, I don’t know how soon. Too many things seem to affect the exact timing,” he looked at his own hands and clenched his fists, “Hell, the only reason I don’t kill Mercator anymore, is because doing it makes them open much sooner.”

She sat down across from him. “Ok, but why do you call it ‘the end’? I mean, you get that calling it that is kind of ominous right?”

He let out a shaky breath. “It should be. It is. I call it the end because three months from now is the farthest into the ‘future’ I’ve ever been, and even when I didn’t kill Mercator, I’ve had to bail out as soon as next week.”

She looked at him, mouth agape. “So you just–run away when it gets too tough for you?”

He started to reply, then stopped himself. “Look, I don’t like it either. You have no idea of the power we’re talking about. I can’t fight them all. Some of them I can win against, barely, but if they send the Champions I can’t fight, I leave to try again. I’ve come too close to death, too many times. If I lose, that’s it! Humanity is over.”

She got to her feet and started gearing up from the front closet. “Is it really that bad?”

He closed his eyes for a moment and shuddered. “In their language, their own name, ‘Megiror’ means ‘the devourers’ or maybe ‘those who consume’, it’s a crappy, highly idiomatic language. Anyway, one of the times I killed Mercator, and the incursions opened sooner, I had to watch as the world was reduced to a meat farm for them.”

“You just watched?” She said, an accusatory tone in her voice.

“Not just watched. One of the times I managed to kill Mercator early. That opened the incursions sooner, and then I lost the next fight.”

He shook slightly as his gaze went far away, thinking about the distant past. “One of the Megiror chained me to a rock. It carried that rock with them everywhere, gave me a front-row seat to the devastation they brought all over the globe. They acted like it was some kind of honor, but every night they’d let this incursion beast, a big bird of prey, have a few bites of my guts,” his hand reflexively covered his abdomen as he lost himself in the memory, “I already had regeneration, so by morning, I’d have healed up. I kept myself going by killing and eating the other small incursion beasts whenever they came within reach. The Megiror, of course, thought this was the height of entertainment. It felt like it went on forever.”

She shook her head in denial. “That’s terrible! But, even without you, people would fight back! The military would—”

“You’re not hearing me! Did you wonder why I knew who to talk to, and where to get a nuke at short notice? Because I’ve tried that. I’ve literally used a nuke at point-blank range and it wasn’t enough against one of them! We don’t have the ability to fight them yet!” His voice rose toward a shout before he noticed, and forced himself to relax.

“That time I killed Mercator early? That time I used a nuke. Yeah, I know what I said. A nuke can work on some of them. I thought maybe if I totally annihilated him things would be different. But the next one they sent, he was somehow so invulnerable that nothing could hurt him. It wasn’t even a fight. I couldn’t even scratch him. I’m not sure why he didn’t just kill me, but they seemed to love creating despair, so maybe it’s no surprise after all. Back then I had fewer ability chains, and a lot less practice with them.”

She sat in silence, just letting him get it all out.

“Sorry, it's just, this isn’t my first time around, and as interesting and downright weird as this time has been, it looks like it won't be my last failure,” his voice full of bitterness.

“I’m trying to wrap my mind around something,” she started. “What exactly, do you imagine happens when you go into an incursion and travel back in time? I’m not a physicist, but surely you’re not just interrupting all of reality?” She frowned at the thought.

He shrugged, “Great question, but I’ve posed similar questions to some of the brightest minds of our time, plus the brightest minds of a few generations back.”

She held up a hand. “Wait, wait, how far back can you go?”

He rubbed his face. “Oh, man. I have some theories about that, but no hard facts. I think the hard limit is either based on the incursions themselves, or there has to be a limit based on my velocity, or total incoming energy. No matter how hard I try, a physical form can only go so fast in the atmosphere. Maybe if I could transform into energy, it would be different. Even just telling you about the furthest back I’ve ever been, that’s a whole discussion right there. Do you really want to hear it?”

She looked at the time. “I’m still scraping data with Wraith, so why not.”

*** *** ***

So, this was loop number 17, if I recall. I could be wrong though, it’s been a while. I’d managed to kill Mercator myself, and thought that maybe this time, it could be over. I even had some ideas about how to deal with the totally indestructible guy if he came next.

I was so wrong. The very next champion just comes through like it’s no big deal. By then my abilities looked more or less like they do now. I should tell you, they all have these names. They sound kinda pretentious until you fight one.

They called this one ‘Rakkor the Iron Gate’. He could do everything I can with metal, but with way more power, if slightly less speed. The fight went about as well as you’d imagine. I got some licks in, but it was like trying to fight a person if you’re a wasp. Your stings might hurt, but one hit from them, and you’re done.

He was like me, in that he could attack faster than the speed of sound with his armor. Not as fast as me, but fast enough that it didn't matter in a close-in fight. That meant I practically had to dodge before the hits. One of the times I dodged, he hit me anyway, hard. My choices quickly narrowed down to hit the incursion, or hit a stone wall, and probably get hit again until I was a red paste. I added his impact velocity to mine and hit the incursion faster than I’ve ever hit one before or since.

When I hit an incursion, I’m imbued with a sort of energy. It isn’t exactly speed or velocity, but it feels like that. I don’t seem to have a physical body there, just consciousness and will.

Between the incursion and the other side is like some kind of everywhen between worlds. I can see bright spots all over. Some are close, some are farther away. I say all over, because that’s how it feels, but when I’m there, it also looks like they’re a series of bright points in a line toward an infinite horizon. The thing is, there are trails of light in every direction. Some are like trying to climb a wall made of oiled glass. You just can’t go that way. Some are fairly easy to move toward. That’s our past. The other side, though, it’s interesting. Before the gates open for real, it's like a wall. I just can’t get through, I can’t even go in that direction.

But once they open, which is usually when I have to use the incursion, the other side is there, but it’s like trying to walk up a smooth icy surface. It takes so much of that speed to get to it, I never quite make it.

Anyway, this time I hit the event horizon with more velocity than ever before. I’d got it in my head that if I just had more prep time, maybe I could change things somehow. So I aimed for one of the farthest points I could see. Much further than my speed would ever have taken me before.

What I didn’t realize was just how big of a gap there was between the last point I’d ever gotten to, that drops me back almost fifteen years, and the next one. I thought the points of light were close together, but I found myself running out of speed, surrounded by nothing, for as far as I could see. The only break from the nothing was the points of light behind me, that seemed like I’d barely left them behind, and the ones ahead of me, that still seemed impossibly far away.

So, I tried to turn back. To this day I don’t know if that was an even worse idea, or if turning back saved my life. When I was nearly back to the closest point of light, I ran out of speed. Imagine being a tiny fraction of an inch away from your goal, but you can’t move even the slightest bit. I don’t know how long I sat there, in the space between. For a while, I thought I would dissolve away. It seemed that only being sentient, or a consciousness, kept me from just vanishing. I felt like if I ever fell asleep, the void would absorb me, and I’d be gone.

I say I don’t know how long, because time was very odd there. The passage of time became very slippery. At moments time passed normally, then without warning I would feel hours or days had passed between the tiny flickers each bright spot emitted.

Eventually, I had an epiphany. I realized that if bullets and other projectiles got spit out, that meant they didn’t just vanish in here. So, I just wished I was back in the world, and I was.

No, that’s an oversimplification. It’s more like I tried for what felt like years to make the void expel me, and finally, something worked.

When I popped out, I was in deep space. After I got done panicking, I spotted Earth and accelerated toward it. That was a tense time. You know I carry a can of compressed oxygen and a CO2 scrubber in my armor. Back then I only carried the oxygen. It took me long enough to get back that I had to start turning more and more of my armor into high carbon alloys just to keep from co2 poisoning.

Sorry, I’m getting off track here. Let me cut to the chase.

It’s easy for me to forget that my flight speed is situational. I have pretty massive acceleration on and around Earth because I’m always pushing and pulling my armor mass, vs the huge amounts of iron in the Earth.

Out there it was a different story. Surrounded by the infinite nothing, I could barely feel the moon, and it was between me and Earth. Never been closer to dying than out there, running out of energy, air, and just about ready to give up. You mentioned coming in hard at Mach 30. Let me tell you. Mach 30 is nothing in space. It’s like you’re not even moving. I kept accelerating, and by the time I realized I was going too fast, I was probably going a significant fraction of the speed of light.

I’ll tell you the entire story some time, but just trust me, it was really close. I’d been trying to accelerate as hard as I could the entire time. When I finally got closer to Earth I realized I was going way too fast. I’d been scooping up all the metallic dust I could find to increase my mass the whole way back. By now I was a couple tons heavier than the start, and while it let me accelerate harder using the pivot points of the Earth and the Moon, it was also way too much to handle at that velocity. There’s no speedometer out there in the cold black. By the time I realized how fast I was approaching the Earth, I couldn’t drop my velocity enough. I gave it everything I had, but still couldn’t stop one of the bigger chunks from breaking away and impacting the Earth. Near the end, I had to let it go so I didn’t get caught in the explosion myself. I barely cleared the blast wave by going straight back up into space. Don’t think the irony escaped me either.

So there I am, hovering in space, looking down at where I just nuked Siberia and wondering whether I just started World War three. Eventually, the thought of fresh air and a drink of water that wasn’t badly recycled bodily fluids was too tempting, and I headed back home. That’s when I realized I was stuck in 1908.

Long story short, I just way overshot one time and things went pretty hairy on the way back. I did learn something from that trip. But I haven’t figured out a way to really have it help.

*** *** ***

He went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water. “I got way off track there. I guess the only answer I have for you is that I have no idea. It works, and I can tell it's all the same timeline, because things I did when I went back further than normal, still had happened, even after I looped again. I was worried about that at first. I thought I might be somehow leaving my entire reality behind, and either creating, finding, or splitting to a similar reality,” he paused, “You know what I mean?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Not even close. But I think I kind of understand. Why were you in space though? I don’t get that?”

His shoulders slumped, “The only thing I’ve come up with, is that those bright spots represent safe exit points. Places in time and space where an incursion made a hole at some point. Any time I come out of one of them, it’s always in the general area of an incursion, and of course, on Earth. My guess is that those holes, those exit points, they somehow stabilize the exit somehow, to keep two planets, or maybe realities in sync. I think, again, I think, that coming out in space was probably my best-case scenario for popping out of that void away from an exit. I could just as easily have landed in the sun, or hit a planet, or been so far out I couldn't even see Earth, let alone get back.”

He fell silent. She waited for nearly a minute before speaking.

“Well, I don’t know if that answered my question, but it sure gave me a whole book of new ones!”

“Yeah, I know you want me to explain more, and I’m trying. But from my perspective, it feels like explaining things always just creates more questions.”

He rolled his shoulders and popped a joint in his neck. “I’m getting antsy. Too much sitting around. I think that’s enough storytime. We can talk about this another time if you want. I need to have a talk with this McAvoy.”

She picked up a long, heavy, rectangular case. “Thanks, but I’ll skip the ride this time. You can meet me at the coordinates on the first page. I’ll be the hands to your Norn eyes. Don’t forget your promise to Sasha. Once we find whoever’s responsible, she’ll want her pound of flesh.”

He nodded, “I’ll head out and see you within twenty minutes to drop in cold.”

“Good, and don’t for a second think we’re done with this conversation.” She vanished.

Zero seconds later, she appeared in a sheltered spot along a rocky jetty near the target buildings. She had plenty of time to get into position and finish gearing up.

When ten minutes had elapsed, she started looking for him. At fifteen minutes she started to wonder what was taking so long. At seventeen minutes her audio clicked on. She sighed at the release of a concern she’d not realized she was carrying.

“Midnight actual on cold ballistic approach.” His voice almost drowned out by a hissing roar.

“Watchtower drones entering the area in approximately ten seconds,” Sasha replied

His reply was laced with a high-pitched whistling sound. “Smashdown in about twenty seconds. You with us Hex?”

She clicked the mic. “What took you so long?”

He chuckled. “Some of us still have to travel between different points in space. So people, just so we’re clear, I’m about to tear this place apart. We’re totally sure they’re the ones we’re looking for right?”

Hex smiled. “I’m in position. Sasha, I’ll be taking direction from you and Paolo.”

Paolo cut in. “Midnight sir, the man I saw with the target designator. I see him walking between the dock and the office building right now.”

Some barely contained strong emotion colored Midnight’s reply. “Good. That will make this much easier.” He growled.

Hex looked over at the target just in time to see the black figure fall straight out of the sky and hit the ground in front of the building. She heard and felt the impact from her vantage point several hundred meters out.

“So much for subtle,” she deadpanned to herself.

She watched through binoculars from several vantage points as Midnight crashed through every attempt at resistance. She and the Norns could hear everything through his open comms.

*** *** ***

Midnight hit the ground and instantly blasted the concrete dock into sand and loose rubble. He floated out of the wreckage and drifted toward the main office.

A man appeared at the door to the office building. A tiny sonic crack accompanied the lash of black metal instantly crossing the distance, wrapping around him until he resembled an onyx mummy, then yanking him toward Midnight.

The metal covering his head flowed away as he lifted the man toward his onboard camera. “Is this him?” Midnight demanded.

“Not him.” Paolo replied.

The man finally caught up to what had happened. “Let me go! I didn’t do anything! This is a viol—” the metal flowing over his face cut him off.

A few seconds later, Midnight set the skintight sarcophagus-like prison on the ground, ignoring the pleas and threats coming from the open grill faceplate.

When he turned back toward the office building, three young men came outside and faced him. They moved with a confident swagger he’d seen all too many times in people who’d managed to get an ability with combat applications.

Midnight looked at them and just shook his head. “Yes yes, you’re all very scary. You got some ability, and now you’re a world-beater. No doubt that’s why you’re working as hired muscle for a rent-a-terrorist. I’m sure you want to fight, but I don’t have time to deal with you.”

Something about his matter-of-fact delivery caused the brash confidence they’d come out with to fade instantly. Or it might have just taken them a few seconds to realize who they were looking at.

As one of them started to stammer out a directive to leave, three more lashes of metal entrapped them. A moment later, he verified with Paolo that it wasn’t any of them, then three more thin metal restraints lay on the ground.

As Midnight turned his attention to the office, he heard the groan of metal bending. One of them was slowly breaking out of the metal shell.

He touched down and walked over to the failing restraint. “Are you stupid? You didn’t even wait till I left.” He stood up, and wrapped the failing metal sheath in ten more layers just like it, alternating ductile and rigid alloys to form a highly durable shell.

“If you manage to get out of that one, you should run.” The menace in his voice made his meaning clear.

Inside the office, he found a man at a desk surrounded by computers and monitors. Paolo confirmed it was the man he’d seen atop the building.

“Are you McAvoy?” he demanded.

The man denied it. As he did, his eyes flickered toward the empty second office. Midnight trussed him up and strode into the second office. It was empty. He spun angrily, ready to revisit the topic with his prisoner. Then he fell through the floor.

A moment later, he keyed his mic with a long sigh. “Folks, we have a minor problem.”

Hex replied first, “No problems in sight out here.”

Sasha spoke up. “Is that… Is that him?”

The man shrieking in pain drowned out Midnight’s reply. He shoved an armored hand over the screaming mouth. “Yeah, it’s him. Who stands right under a trap door? Anyway, his leg is totally crushed. I’m going to amputate and cauterize it so he doesn’t die on the way.”

A moment later he came back on the comms. “Well, that made him pass out. Hex, do you mind handling site clean-up? I’m going to have my hands full with five prisoners. Are we even set up for prisoners?”

Hex chimed in. “Prisoners no. Medical care, yes. I bought the facility Chris is in, and moved some of your safe house people to work there. I’ll get the site scoured and sanitized as soon as you leave.”

Sasha spoke up again. “Don’t forget, when you’re done with him, he’s mine!” a savage edge entered her voice.

Midnight ascended into view, towing six slim pods resembling drop tanks forming the rough shape of a civilian aircraft as he flew out to sea due West.