Officer Roxanne Mondatta heard a loud crash above her, which she guessed was the sound of glass shattering. She had been assigned with a handful of officers to patrol this building after they caught word that a notorious assassin would be attempting to carry out a job from this position. But none of them had guessed that the famous Phantom Limb would be stupid enough to go through the glass roof and drown himself in a pool as he bled out. She was standing on the first floor of the thirty that this building had, accompanied by two other officers, all of them wearing dark blue police uniforms. “Roxanne, did he really just shatter the glass roof and try to come in through there?” one of the males asked, turning to face her. Her eyes remained dead set on the ceiling, listening for other telltale sounds.

“I doubt it. It’s most likely a distraction, or even a trap to convince us to drop our guard. I’ve seen the way this guy works before, and while I’ve never faced him, I know he’s no man’s fool.” she responded. “Besides, one of the other officers will most likely spot him and call us on one of their Units. We have no need to move from our current position.”

* * *

Two uniformed officers were standing over the pool, looking at the thick, knife-sized glass shards, which floated near-invisibly in the clear water. What was a lot less invisible was the trail of thick red blood that led away from the pool and towards the main door. “Did this fucking idiot really not know there was a pool here?” one of the officers said to the other with a mean chuckle in his voice. The other one looked back at the trail of blood they had seen when coming upstairs to investigate the crash. It led away from the pool towards the door, and it was open by the time, they had gotten upstairs, but the trail of blood stopped dead. It didn’t go down the stairs.

“I think this guy might be smarter than we think. And the trail stops at the door, which means we don’t know where he is or what he could be doing.” the other responded, returning his gaze to the pool.

“I’ll tell you exactly what he’s doing.” the first one answered, laughing at the remains of Thomas’s botched entrance, shutting his eyes as he laughed. “He probably left the way he came in and is now bleeding out in some back alley. Mission accomplished. Let’s go home.”

The two turned around, only to see two glowing purple hands grab each one of them by the neck and throw them back into the pool full of glass. Thomas hopped down, just out of view of the rooftop and saw his phantom hands holding the officers’ sputtering bodies under the water.

“Quit thrashing. I’m not going to kill you. And I removed the glass. Most of it’s inside my bones anyways.” Thomas jumped down to the side of the pool, cushioning his fall on a beige beach chair. “You know that break-the-ceiling-thing certainly wasn’t your smartest tactical move, but it had its benefits,” he said, lifting the officers out of the pool with his glowing hands floating around their necks. They now were unconscious. Thomas gently lowered them onto the chairs and began drying himself off with a towel before walking back down the stairway. Thomas walked into a dark hallway lined with elevators and pushed the down button, knowing that he’d need to get to about the fifteenth floor if he wanted a clear shot at his mark’s apartment.

Thomas was removing his mask briefly to wring some water out of its tape when suddenly, one of the elevator doors opened, filling the dark hallway with a blinding golden light. And the silhouette of a middle-aged man with red hair in large swim trunks with two children at his side appeared.

* * *

Thomas had opened up a dating app on his Unit, his vision filled with images of single guys in Neonight City. “God, I can’t believe I made such good jokes about that stupid documentary and nobody was around to hear them. This is the real reason I go on dates . . . because if a joke falls in my apartment and nobody is around to hear it, is it funny?” He took another sip of his tea. “And sex.”

He decided to turn the documentary back on through his Unit, not for any sort of scientific curiosity but mostly because he liked the soothing timbre of the narrator’s voice. It was good for him to unwind with tea and a documentary—some nice wholesome relaxation.

“Using a Civ places incredible energy demands on the body, which is why most people can only support just one. But this allows for a higher amount of overall Civ users, of which there are many. Virtually every individual possesses some sort of Civ; however, the vast majority of them are used for simple utility—party tricks. Some, however, grant the user incredible abilities, and virtually every individual who works to defend themselves or others possesses one that is completely unique to them. There is, of course, one drawback: because of the Civ’s location in the brain, it is impossible to remove one without killing the user.”

Still boring, Thomas thought, turning it off once more and staring blankly out at the lonely interior of his apartment. He went over to his bedroom and sat down on his rock-hard mattress, which was barely large enough for just him. His bedroom was dingy and dark, with gray slabs of what looked like concrete serving as his walls, which were decorated with posters of various musicians. He didn’t listen to any of them; they were simply something to fill the space. He wasn’t interested in going to sleep quite yet, though, as he reached under his bed to pull out a small bottle full of a blue-and-pinkish liquid. It was unmarked, aside from a piece of masking tape over the bottle’s exterior with a music note drawn on it in sharpie. He sighed, holding it in his hand, contemplating it. “Man, sometimes, I wish something would change up my life. I’d take anything to escape this dull monotony. Just one adventure.” He looked out his bedroom window at Neonight’s de facto skyline.

* * *

“It’s a . . . medically prescribed . . . bathing suit.” Thomas stared ahead through his mask at the family preparing to go for a late-night swim, towels bunched in their arms and goggles adorning their shocked expressions. “You know what? Pool’s closed actually. Yeah. Crazy. Came up in my medically prescribed bathing suit and some asshole had shattered the ceiling and got glass in it! I asked the two cops who were there what happened and all they said was, ‘We don’t know, we were just picking out the glass and now we’re going to take a nap. Nice bathing suit, by the way.’ And then they took a nap, so . . . I don’t know guys.” Thomas tried his best to do a good cop impression. The family kept a shocked expression on their faces, and the dad turned his gaze to the large silver gun on Thomas’s waist. “This is also, uh . . . medically . . . prescribed. You know, I’ll catch a different one, I think. Have fun with your kids and go back to bed or whatever,” Thomas said as the elevator doors shut in front of him and another elevator arrived a few seconds later.