Officer Mondatta had failed to receive a confirmation of safety from the two officers who had been keeping watch a few floors below the rooftop. As such, she had taken an elevator up to meet with them on the twenty-eighth floor but was greeted only by another dark empty hallway of apartments. “This is Officer Mondatta. I don’t see the other officers here. I’m guessing they went up to the thirtieth floor to investigate the pool. I’ll use my Civ to see who’s up there, over,” Roxanne said to the public channel of other officers through her Unit.

User: Officer Roxanne Mondatta

Civ: Breatheye

The user is able to track people’s breath. Every time somebody within a hundred-foot radius breathes, the user is able to see it, showing their target’s breath light up even through walls. This occurs both when their target exhales and inhales. The user is also able to attack the air and store the force of their attacks inside it. Whenever somebody inhales in close proximity to the user after they’ve done this, the force will enter the victim’s body and severely damage their internal organs. The user can also do this to attack others, causing movements that have been missed to also transfer their force into the air and harm the attacker.

Roxanne could see the glowing orange outlines of four people breathing two floors above her. Three in what looked to be an elevator based on their position directly above the elevator on the floor, of which two looked to be children, as their breathing was closer to her, meaning they were shorter. One person was standing outside of the elevator, breathing in a fast and beleaguered manner while the others were slow, almost as though they were trying to hold their breath. The individual person seemed injured and caught off guard due to these facts, and the family seemed surprised and nervous. A few feet away from them, two figures had very deep and slow breathing. They were unconscious—probably the two other officers. The man above Roxanne was definitely Phantom Limb. “I found him. He’s on floor thirty, and he’s taken out two officers. He’s also been spotted by a family coming down from floor thirty as well. One of you cut them off and take them in as witnesses. I’m coming after this ‘Phantom Limb’ guy myself. Over.” As she spoke, Roxanne removed another silver mechanical gun from her holster and pressed the elevator’s up button.

Soon after Roxanne’s call, an empty elevator opened up in front of her, and she stepped in with her gun in her hand. She took a deep breath as she watched the family’s elevator go down with them still breathing, giving her a sigh of relief at their survival. As Roxanne rode the empty elevator upwards with her weapon clenched firmly in hand, she saw Phantom’s breath move into the elevator directly beside hers and begin to travel downwards. “Fuck.”

Phantom Limb thought he heard someone in the elevator beside him as he moved downwards, his suit sticking out like a sore thumb against the drab, utterly normal backdrop. He considered removing his suit in order to avoid another “medical bathing suit” situation, but somebody had already seen him with it on. If they could figure out his face as well, that would be an even bigger problem. Thomas was getting closer to floor fifteen. The LED counter above the door slowly counted down and finally began to stop.

As the elevator door opened, the two officers standing on the other side of it let out a sharp gasp of panic, drawing their silver guns from their holsters and aiming them at the far wall. A man in dark skintight clothes was being held against the mirrored back of the elevator by two phantom hands, gripping and covering his face and strangling him against the elevator. The man was clawing at the spectral hands—the very ones the officers had been warned about when being briefed about the assassin Phantom Limb. “Holy shit, they’re killing him!” the younger-looking one shouted as he struggled to figure out what to do with his gun. “Do we shoot?” he asked timidly.

“Mmmm . . . mplea . . . mhelpme . . .” the man moaned through muffled breaths. The older female officer began talking on her Unit as she ran towards the man, attempting to claw the hands away from him.

“Roxanne! We found someone. This Phantom guy is choking him! We’re on floor twenty!” she shouted, failing to rip the hands off of the man’s face and neck.

Roxanne looked downwards towards the elevator that had stopped on the twentieth floor and saw the scene unfold through their breathing. “Wait a second.” she whispered. The man wasn’t struggling to breathe at all. His breathing was fine. Calm even. “Jacobs, get the hell out of there. That’s Phantom Limb!”

Officer Jacobs took her hands away from Thomas, and he saw her face’s emotions transition from confused to shocked to furious as she grabbed her gun once more. “Phantom Limb, you’re under arre—” she said, her usual speech cut off by Thomas putting his mask back on and bringing the phantom hands around his face and neck into his right hand, before punching her square in the jaw at an incredible speed. Thomas’s right hand was glowing with purple energy as he stood up and flew towards the younger officer, grabbing his right arm and crushing it with ease in his energy-filled state. Phantom Limb’s punches created a shockwave that shattered the mirrored walls of the elevator and left glass around the bodies of the two more unconscious police officers as he dragged them into the elevator, their broken bones leaking blood and jutting out of their bodies. He was almost on floor fifteen.

“How the fuck did they figure out that was me?” he asked himself, puzzled. “That always works. What went wrong? Was I not convincing enough? No, somebody must have told them it was me. But how the hell did they know?” Thomas massaged his burning, agonized hands as he prepared to step out of the elevator. When the door opened a crack, a flying burning bullet came blitzing through the doorway at blinding speed, grazing—and scorching— the side of Thomas’s head.