Chapter 203

Countdown to Escalation

Carmen sat in a white room with nothing but a chair and a speaker mounted on the wall. The glass in front of her was dark from this side, reflecting her own face back at her. Despite a week of spa treatments and pampering, she looked tired after just two days of power testing and training. They all did.

She straightened in the chair and waited.

The speaker crackled.

“Are you ready to begin, Carmen?”

“Yes.”

“Good. First, let me inform you that there are three of us on this side of the glass.”

The word formed in her mind before she could stop it. An instinct, sharp and immediate, like pulling her hand from a hot surface.

Lie.

“Lie,” she said.

“Very good. There are seven of us.” A pause. Rustling papers, or maybe a tablet being adjusted. “I am in charge of this session. My name is Jane.”

Lie.

“Lie.”

“Correct. My name is Dr. Reema Khatri.” The woman’s voice carried the clipped efficiency of someone who had done this hundreds of times. “What are my skills, Carmen?”

Carmen frowned. This was different from the binary snap of true or false. She was being asked to reach for something deeper, and whatever lived inside her now responded sluggishly, like a muscle she didn’t know how to flex.

“You’re some sort of psychology or brain-focused researcher. You handle awakenings involving the mind.”

“Very good. I specialize in cognitive and perceptual awakenings. To my right is a man who excels at martial arts. How would you grade his skills?”

“I can’t even see him.”

“Don’t waste my time trying to hide your capabilities, Carmen.” Dr. Khatri’s tone sharpened. “We are fully aware at this time that you and your companions are members of Grimnir. The Sheikha has already ensured your secrets will be kept once you leave. I’m quite annoyed about that, by the way. It means I’ll lose access to the information I learn during our time together, which affects my research.”

Carmen blinked. The sensation washed through her, warm and clean.

Truth.

“Truth,” she said quietly.

“Yes. Now answer the question.”

Carmen closed her eyes. The feeling was faint, filtering through the glass and the wall like sunlight through deep water. She couldn’t see the man, but something about him registered anyway. A weight. A density of experience that her new senses translated into impressions.

“He’s dangerous. Highly competent.” She searched for more, grasping at the edges of what her power was telling her. “Some sort of security.”

“Excellent. He’s a Tier 1 superhuman, and our on-site security captain.”

The snap came again, but muddied. Uncertain. Like hearing a familiar word spoken in a thick accent.

“Lie… I think.”

“Very good. Which part was the lie?”

Carmen sat in silence. She replayed the statement in her mind, trying to separate the pieces. Tier 1. Superhuman. Security captain. The sensation had been there, but she couldn’t isolate which word had triggered it.

“Which part, Carmen?”

“I don’t think he’s a Tier 1.”

“Incorrect. He’s not superhuman at all. He is, however, a Tier 1 mundane who has spent thirty years in close protection. His skills are exceptional for a baseline human.” Another pause. “Your ability to detect deception in compound statements will improve with practice. For now, you’re identifying the presence of falsehood but struggling to isolate it within layered information. This is normal for your stage of development, though the limits of your Assessor power remain unknown until we push you beyond them.”

Carmen exhaled slowly.

“Moving on.”

***

Talia sat on the balcony outside her room, legs crossed, tablet resting on her knee. The island breeze carried salt and warmth.

She made a call. Waited three rings until it was answered.

“Hey.” Alice’s voice was cautious. It always started that way. The girl had spent too long treating every call as if it might be the one that ended badly.

“Rabbit. How are things?”

“Same as yesterday. Grandmother’s hip is bothering her again. I told her to stop trying to clean the apartment, but you know how she is.”

Talia did. She’d reviewed Alice’s living situation thoroughly after Alexander’s visit. The apartment was barely livable. Cramped, overheated from the server racks that still lined the walls. The grandmother needed medical attention that Alice couldn’t afford without the income AEGIS provided.

Until Grimnir intervened.

“I have something to discuss with you,” Talia said. “And I need you to listen before you react.”

A pause. “That’s never a good start.”

“It’s not bad. I want to move you and your grandmother.”

Silence.

“Alice?”

“Move us where?”

“Somewhere safe. A facility with medical resources, housing, and people who can look after your grandmother while you work.” Talia kept her tone measured. She’d learned that Alice responded better to information than reassurance. “It’s called Astra Omnia.”

“The resort space station?”

“Yes.”

Another pause. Longer this time. Talia could hear the girl’s breathing change as she processed it.

“Are you serious?”

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“Yes. Your value to me has grown considerably since we started working together. The Ascended Dynamics operation proved that. But I can’t keep relying on someone whose living situation is one knock on the door away from falling apart.”

“That’s…” Alice trailed off. Then she whispered. “I saw the news, you know? He killed hundreds of people. I checked the sources because it was AEGIS, but it’s true. Him and your friends.”

Talia sighed. She’d been worried about that. But she’d also prepared an answer. “I could tell you about the men, women, and children those people kidnapped. I could also tell you what they planned to do with them. Or the list of other, equally horrific crimes they committed over the years.” She paused. “But I promised I would tell you the truth, even if there were things I had to withhold. That was part of our deal. So instead, I’ll tell you that there was one man in particular we were there to rescue. Someone whose skills made him valuable to AEGIS. And they took him, tortured him into using his powers, even though he already worked for them.”

“You rescued him… because his skills were also valuable to you?” Alice asked after a moment.

It was a little game Talia had taught the young woman. To read between the lines.

“Yes. I know that sounds cold, but that is why we were there.” Talia’s voice pitched low. “However, when we saw what those people were doing, our reason no longer mattered. Any of us would have done what Alexander did. Even me.”

Alice swallowed. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I know Alexander scared you. It’s why you’re hesitant. AEGIS hunting you down is the other reason.” Talia smiled. “I want you to understand that we saved fifty-three people that night. Complete strangers. The others knew they were going up against twice their number in AEGIS superhumans, and they didn’t even hesitate. The only reason I wasn’t there myself was that you and I were busy with the infiltration.”

Talia let the silence stretch for a moment. “We would do the same for you, Alice. Alexander can be a little intense to those who don’t know him, but he is no threat to you. He was just very ready for a fight that night when you met him. I think he was expecting hardened operatives. Or a superhuman hacker.”

Alice let out a short, surprised laugh. “Instead, he found me. The idiot who locked herself in a metal cage.”

Talia snorted. “Yeah, that was pretty funny.” She waited a few heartbeats. Let the Rabbit realize she’d never been in any danger by the simple contrast of the two incidents. “So?”

“You’re sure that AEGIS won’t find us?”

“I promise you’ll be in the safest place you can be.” Talia stared out over the tops of the trees, at the ocean beyond their island. “Besides, AEGIS is soon going to be far too busy to even remember you exist.”

Alice let out a slow breath. “Alright. What should I do?”

***

Annie launched herself off the ridge with everything she had.

Her legs bulked beneath her as the partial transformation kicked in, Spinosaurus muscle fibers winding through her calves and thighs like coiled steel. The ground cracked under the force of her jump. She shot upward, wind whipping past her face as she cleared the treeline in a heartbeat.

At the apex, her wings snapped open.

MetaMetal flowed from the muscles along her shoulder blades, extending outward and flattening into broad, overlapping plates. They caught the air with a jarring lurch that rattled her teeth.

Then she started to fall.

“Come on, come on, come on.”

She flapped. Hard. The wings beat downward with a heavy metallic whump that sent her lurching back up, overcorrecting. She tilted sideways, flapped again, tilted the other way.

She knew what she looked like. A panicked chicken launched from a catapult. Augustus had been kind enough not to say it. Alexander had not.

Another flap. This one caught the air better, or at least didn’t send her spinning. She leveled out at maybe a hundred feet, losing altitude in a slow, ungainly descent. Each wingbeat bought her a few seconds of height before gravity clawed it back.

She was managing it. It took three powers to orchestrate, but she was going places. Slowly. MetaMetal Adaptation for the wings. Density Flux Control to keep herself light enough for the wings to actually matter. Partial Saurian Form transformation for the launch power.

Every time Annie landed, she repeated the process. It didn’t matter how long it took. She would spend the next month doing nothing but flapping if she had to, because there was no way in hell she was letting Alexander go after Flashpoint alone. Each day she roamed further before circling back. Whatever had taken the corpses was out here somewhere.

She launched herself aloft again. The Beastworld stretched out beneath her as grassy hills ended at a sharp incline, the cliffs far below giving way to patches of dry scrubland as the terrain changed.

Ahead, cracked earth stretched in every direction, reminding her of nature documentaries about the Sahara. Flat and barren. Nothing interesting to see. Which made it easy to spot anything that didn’t belong.

Like the pillars.

Annie frowned. Dozens of dark columns rose from the flats in the distance, maybe half a mile ahead. Tall enough to be visible against the pale ground, spaced unevenly. She hadn’t seen anything like them during her previous scouting runs.

She adjusted course with an awkward banking maneuver that nearly flipped her upside down, then settled into a long, descending glide toward them. Her wings shuddered with each flap as she fought to maintain altitude.

The pillars were wrong. So was the ground.

Annie narrowed her eyes and pushed lower, squinting against the wind. It took her a few seconds to figure out why.

The pillars and the surrounding ground were crawling with activity. Hundreds of segmented, dark-shelled forms with six legs skittered in every direction. They formed a living carpet of armored bodies flowing across the dry flats.

Each one was easily the size of a deer. The largest were closer to a rhinoceros.

Annie’s wings missed a beat. She dropped ten feet before catching herself with a frantic flap.

“I knew it,” she muttered, a grin spreading across her face. “Giant ants. Oh man, Alexander is going to look so stupid when I—”

Something splashed against her left wing.

“What the shit?”

Annie twisted around, trying to look over her shoulder without losing more altitude. Something green and bubbly was eating away at the metal of her left wing. As the first holes appeared, the acid eating through faster than she could process, she heard a buzzing sound overhead, closing in.

She glanced up just in time to see two more blobs of acid raining toward her, fired by two giant flying ants.

With a thought, metal consumed her body, flesh and blood phasing out to safety. She threw her arms up, catching one blob, the other flying harmlessly past.

Her arms began to melt. Half of her left wing broke away.

“Oh, fuck—”

She fell.

“Assimilate!”

***

Augustus hovered thirty feet above the clearing, perfectly still.

It had taken him days to get here. Days of failed incantations, backfired attempts that left him singed or flat on his back, and one particularly memorable evening where he’d launched himself sideways into a wall.

But he’d cracked it. The flight spell held steady beneath him, a constant thrum of energy cycling through his body that responded to his intent. Up. Down. Left. Right. Forward. Back. Each direction required a subtle shift in focus, redirecting the flow rather than fighting it.

It was slow and deliberate. But functional.

He raised the wand in his right hand and pointed it at a tree on the far side of the clearing. A massive thing, easily two hundred feet tall, with a trunk wider than a car.

His left hand came up. The spellbook materialized above his palm, pages already flickering. They stopped on one page, resumed, stopped on another, then a third. Runes lifted from the parchment like light peeling away from a surface, before snapping across the gap to the wand. They locked into orbit around its tip, rotating.

Gather. Amplify. Pierce.

The same combination he’d used in Dubai to punch through a limestone cliff face. That had been at night, against two men who hadn’t known what was coming. The fireball had burrowed through solid rock before detonating, exploding the tunnel entrance and ending the fight before it began.

This time, he had one more thing to add.

Augustus flicked the wand in three quick motions, the tip tracing a shape in the air ahead of it. The rune ignited where he drew it, hanging in space. A fourth element layered onto the casting.

He fired.

The fireball erupted from the wand, tearing through the suspended rune as it passed. Its effect was immediate. The spell doubled in size and intensity, roaring across the clearing with enough heat to distort the air in its wake.

The impact shattered the trunk. Then the tree groaned, leaned, and toppled with a thunderous crash that sent birds scattering from nearby trees. The ground shook as two hundred feet of timber came down, flattening undergrowth in a wide swath.

Augustus lowered the wand and allowed himself a small, satisfied nod.

He still had a long way to go. Managing runes while maintaining flight while aiming a spell accurately was the kind of multitasking that made his head ache.

It was nothing new to him, though. Hard work was something he’d always excelled at. The real problem was that he was getting old. Young him would have shrugged off this kind of effort, then done it a few more times to prove a point.

He was contemplating a second target when Annie’s voice cut across the channel they’d kept open.

“Auggy, I need help.” A pause. “And your word that you’re never, ever going to tell Alexander about this.”

Augustus was already moving, the flight spell carrying him back toward the gateway as he accelerated. “On my way. What’s the situation?”

“Giant ants.”

He waited for more.

“…with acid.”

Augustus sighed. He was definitely getting too old for this.

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