Mr. Blue let out a long sigh as he walked through the halls of what remained of Silver Cell's base of operations, his crisp, clean suit looking out of place amidst the carnage. Debris, blood, and bodies were scattered throughout the facility, but the kills had largely been quick, clean, and surgical. They were dealing with a professional.

  Before he pressed forward, his team of escorts moved ahead, meticulously clearing each room for potential dangers. It was standard procedure, but deep down, Mr. Blue knew it was unnecessary. His quarry was probably halfway across the city by now. The only things left to find here were answers.

  The QRF teams were all but wiped out. The central office was a bloodbath. And the storage room with all the new toys? According to the supply manifest, they were down a number of Aethercite weapons, a prototype suit of "Oni" Aethercite power armor, and one high-value prisoner who had been their ticket to infiltrating the CivGrid network. Keystone was now compromised, all because Silver Cell had failed to do its due diligence.

  "Idiots," Mr. Blue cursed.

  Up in what remained of the central office, Mr. Blue pulled up the latest communication logs from Mr. Silver's terminal. A handful of messages between him and one of their field agents, followed by the initial report on one Gabriel Shaw: an unassuming GWOS veteran whom the Astra Gems had taken a sudden interest in. Mr. Silver had ordered him brought in for interrogation, hoping to use him as leverage against the Gems, but they had failed to identify Shaw as a metahuman threat. Sure, he was unregistered, but that was no excuse for such a monumental failure.

  With another sigh, Mr. Blue stepped away from the terminal, then looked down through the broken window where Mr. Silver's lifeless corpse lay still on the bloodstained command center floor below. "I warned you this obsession with the Gems would be your undoing, Mr. Silver," he said to the dead man. "You should have listened."

  Now, Keystone would have to pull back and delay its operations until the heat died down. They couldn't risk exposure. Not yet.

  Mr. Blue turned to one of his subordinates. "Escalate Gabriel Shaw to Code Black," he ordered. "Metahuman status confirmed. Do not engage. Observe and report only."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Send a message to the other cells. Tell them Silver has been taken off the board and issue a priority recommendation that all active field operations be suspended until further notice. We need to go dark."

  "Understood."

  With that, Mr. Blue turned and walked away, leaving the blood, the bodies, and the failure behind him. Keystone had endured worse. It would endure this. They just needed to play their cards right.

  ***

  The South End was thankfully quiet at this hour, all brick facades and curtained windows. A Rainforest delivery drone buzzed by somewhere overhead while the humming streetlights cast long shadows that stretched across the pavement. For a neighborhood in the heart of one of the most technologically advanced cities on the planet, it had an odd old-school charm to it.

  We kept to a steady, unremarkable pace, trying to look like two people walking home after a long night. Which I guess was true in a way. The armor wasn't exactly discreet, even with the helmet tucked under my arm, but a couple of cosplayer-looking weirdos wandering around on a Sunday night usually didn't draw a second glance in a city like Aurora Bay.

  Packet led the way for the most part, steering us block by block, but I did my best to make sure we stayed out of the open and on the lesser-traveled side streets. Old habits from the Army died hard.

  In my HUD, the CivGrid cameras all along the street had little red question marks floating over them, courtesy of the anti-tracker, or whatever it was, that Packet had given me. I was curious as to how it worked exactly, but now wasn't the time for questions.

  We had one close call with an ABPD cruiser that we handled with the dignity of two middle schoolers out after curfew, ducking behind a thick hedge as it rolled by. After that, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.

  Eventually, Packet stopped in front of the side entrance of a squat brick building. According to the faded sign out front, 'Bits & Bytes,' it had once been an internet cafe that, like many other small businesses in the city, went under during the COVID epidemic of 2020.

  Packet opened up a fuse box on the side of the building, flipped a bunch of switches in a specific order, then pushed a big red button. The lock on the door clicked open with a heavy thunk. "After you," she said.

  The inside of the cafe was a graveyard of dust-covered booths, tables, and scattered chairs. Anything worth stealing had been stripped long ago, but in the back, a reinforced door guarded a narrow staircase to the second floor. Packet placed her palm on a small scanner, and the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. The air that rushed out was cool and stale, with a faint hint of ozone and body odor.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The room at the top of the stairs was crammed wall-to-wall with high-end hardware, monitors, and enough loose cabling to wire a small nation. Exactly what you'd expect from a hacker's combination safehouse and living space. "Welcome to my humble abode," said Packet. "Well, one of them anyway."

  I let out a long sigh, took a seat on the couch, then unlatched my helmet and set it aside. The stale recycled air from the suit's interior rushed out as I pulled it free, and I greedily sucked in a deep breath of marginally cleaner air. "Well, it's not exactly the Ritz," I joked. "But it's one hell of a workspace."

  She nodded. "It's secure," she replied. "We can lay low here for a while until the heat dies down." She paused for a moment. "But a group like Keystone? I'd bet money they're gonna head underground for a while. Probably scrubbing that whole facility as we speak. They weren't planning for someone like you to come along."

  I leaned back on the couch and let out a long, weary sigh. "So, no Aethercite-powered assassins come after us for the foreseeable future?" I asked, somewhat hopeful.

  Packet shot me a look, her expression unreadable. "Let's just say they're a problem for down the road," she said. "I highly doubt they would confront you directly again. Not without a plan of attack, at least."

  "Great," I muttered.

  She plopped down in the chair at her desk and fired up her computer. Five monitors flickered to life, and several cooling fans whirred as the machine booted up. Then, she spun back around to face me, giving a long, scrutinizing gaze. "So," she said. "'Kingslayer,' huh?"

  "Yeah."

  "And just how many kings have you slain, exactly?" she asked.

  I gave a grim laugh. "It's more of an aspirational title, really," I said.

  "Aspirational," she repeated. "So, what? You got a bone to pick with The Man or something?"

  I leaned forward, resting my arms on my knees. “I've always hated how the people in power never seem to face the consequences of the decisions they make,” I said. “They start wars, tank economies, ruin lives, and then hide up in their ivory towers. All of the benefits and none of the burdens.” I met her eyes. “They think they’re untouchable. I want to remind them they can still bleed.”

  Packet let out a low whistle. "Damn," she said. "Some real V for Vendetta shit right there."

  I gave her a little chuckle. "Something like that," I replied. "But I'm not stupid. You can't just charge in and knock a king off his throne. They've got resources, people willing to die for them, and an entire rotten system rigged in their favor. So, you gotta whittle them down. Chip away at the pillars holding them up." I gave a small, humorless huff. "Problem is, I don't even know where to start."

  Her chair creaked as she leaned back, studying me like I was a complex piece of code she was trying to decipher. "This is all brand-new to you, isn't it?" she asked.

  "I mean, I'm no stranger to violence," I told her. "I've killed before. In the military. But being the bad guy is definitely new territory."

  Packet didn't flinch at the admission. "Well, if you're serious about 'being the bad guy,' you're in the right place," she said. "I can get you set up with some better tools. Untraceable comms. Dark web access. Secure finances. Everything you need to operate under the radar."

  I crossed my arms and leaned back into the couch. "What's the catch?" I asked. "What do you get out of helping me?"

  "Consider it an investment," she replied with a grin. "I'm part of a little hacker collective called 'Blacklight.' Are you familiar?"

  "Never heard of it," I replied, shaking my head.

  "No surprise," she said. "We're pretty small, but our overall mission is to expose corruption. In the government. In corporations. Especially corporations. We put the wealthy elite's dirty little secrets on full blast for the whole world to see." Her expression hardened. "But this surveillance state, this CivGrid bullshit? It's a fucking cancer. The people deserve privacy. Freedom from the corporate-government-run panopticon. So, we chip away at it, bit by bit, until the day it all falls apart."

  I raised an eyebrow. "And where exactly do I fit into all that?" I asked.

  "We aren't metahumans. We're just a bunch of computer nerds," she replied. "Hell, I've never even fired a gun before. So, a heavy hitter like you could really do us some good. Someone to act in the real world while we operate in the digital. Someone to tip the scales when subtlety isn't enough. Someone who can put the fear of God into a group like Keystone."

  I took a moment to let that all sink in. It felt...right. Maybe a little too right. But Blacklight's goals aligned with my own, in a way. They wanted to expose the rot that was eating away at the world's foundations, and I wanted to be the one to cut it all away. This was it. This was my chance to become a real supervillain. And yet, I couldn't help but hesitate. "It sounds... tempting," I finally said. "Can I have some time to think about it?"

  Packet nodded. "Of course," she replied. "You can crash on my couch for tonight. Sleep on it. In the morning, we can talk details."

  With that, she turned her attention back to her monitors, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she went to work on who knows what. I let out a long breath and collapsed into the couch, my legs hanging over one of the arms. Adrenaline and sheer willpower had carried me this far, but the bone-deep fatigue I'd been ignoring was finally taking hold.

  Lying there, staring up at the water-stained ceiling, I couldn't help but think about how my life had changed so dramatically since the start of the new year. A few days ago, I was just another washed-up vet trying to drown himself in a bottle of whiskey. Now, I was fresh off a bloody one-man rampage through a secret paramilitary base, in possession of a stolen prototype power suit, and seriously considering becoming the superpowered muscle for the local hacker collective.

  I had a chance to get my foot in the door to a world I'd only glimpsed from the outside. A chance to channel everything—the training, the powers, the rage—into something that just might actually make a difference. A chance to become Kingslayer, not just in name, but in deed.

  My thoughts drifted back to the Astra Gems, to Ruby. She was the one who had set all of this in motion, even if she didn't know it. And I still had to play my part in her story, to push her to become the hero she was destined to be. That part still left a sour taste in my mouth, but it had to be done if I wanted to stop the Coming Storm.