Chapter 65

THE GOOD (BAD) DOCTOR

Alexander closed his eyes and reached into the security panel, unlocking the door.

The mechanism clicked softly. He eased the door open, peering through the crack. Dr. Miller stood with his back turned, tablet in hand, still addressing the alien strapped to the medical frame. The creature’s musical voice rose in what might have been a question or plea.

Miller chuckled. “No, no. You misunderstand the nature of progress.”

Alexander’s jaw tightened. His emotions had been building since the elevator, pressing against his ribs like something alive. Then he’d brought them under control. Now they surged again.

He gripped the door with Metallokinesis and ripped it from its hinges.

The steel door spun through the air like a massive saw blade, whistling as it cut toward Miller’s spine. It would bisect him. End the fight before it began.

The door passed through empty space.

It cleared the alien’s head by inches, the creature’s eyes tracking its flight, before embedding itself in the far wall with a shriek of torn metal.

“I was wondering when my uninvited guest would reveal themselves.”

Miller’s voice echoed from three different points in the room. Alexander spun toward the closest source and found nothing. The doctor stood two feet to the left, adjusting his coat casually.

“I recognize you.” Miller tilted his head, studying Alexander like a specimen. “You were in one of those annoying briefings. You’re part of the... Grim Nears? Or something equally dramatic.”

“Grimnir,” Alexander corrected, reaching for the metal surgical tools scattered across nearby tables.

“That’s it! One of the escaped Class R’s from the prison. How fortuitous. I will enjoy studying how your powers work.”

The scalpels Alexander grabbed felt wrong in his telekinetic grip. He hurled them anyway. One of them clattered harmlessly against the wall, missing Miller by a wide margin, while the others didn’t so much as twitch.

Miller hadn’t moved. Or had he? And why had the others refused to move?

“Your aim needs work,” the doctor said, his voice now coming from behind.

Alexander whirled. A line of fire traced across his cheek near the edge of the mask. He slapped a hand to his face, feeling wetness. Blood. When had—

Another cut, this time nicking his ear. The pain exploded through his skull like someone had taken a blowtorch to the side of his head. He swung blindly, sending a metal tray spinning across the room, hitting nothing but air.

“Pain is just electrical signals, you know.” Miller’s voice drifted from somewhere to the right. Or was it the left? “Your brain interprets it how I tell it to.”

A slash across the back of his neck. Shallow, barely breaking the skin, but it burned like acid eating through muscle. Alexander stumbled, grabbing at his neck, then ducked as something whistled past his head. He felt the impact of the same metal tray against his skull, sending him reeling, but when he looked, there was nothing there.

“The wounds are minimal,” Miller continued, that academic tone never wavering. “But the experience? That’s entirely under my control.”

Alexander lunged toward the voice, fingers crackling with electricity. His fingers closed on empty air. A cut opened across his ribs, slicing through the jumpsuit, and he bit back a scream. This one felt like his entire chest had been flayed open.

“Fascinating, isn’t it? How perception shapes reality?”

He was never where Alexander looked. Never where the sounds originated. Every attack missed, every grab came up empty. The frustration mixed with pain, building into something desperate.

The scalpel caught the back of his hand.

Alexander’s world went white. His hand felt like it was being fed through an industrial grinder, bones splintering, tendons shredding, nerves screaming in frequencies he didn’t know existed. His knees hit the floor. A scream tore from his throat as he fell against the medical frame.

Through the haze of agony, he felt something touch his arm.

The alien. One of its mismatched limbs had transformed back into what must be its natural form, long and thin, and had stretched far enough to make contact, straining against leather wrist straps. Spiral-pupiled eyes met his for just a moment.

Then the limb began to change.

It started at the shoulder, where thick metal restraints held firm, but below that point, the arm swelled. Gray skin roughened, thickened. Delicate fingers merged and expanded into something massive and cylindrical, snapping the leather restraints keeping its hand down. Within seconds, the alien had an elephant’s leg where its arm should be, bulging out from under the metal shoulder restraints.

Metal began flying through the room. And Alexander wasn’t controlling it.

Surgical instruments, trays, anything not bolted down lifted and hurled itself at Miller. The attacks were wild and uncoordinated. A tool passed through where Miller appeared to stand. Others embedded into the walls. The alien’s musical voice rose to something like a shriek.

“Even my greatest success remains a failure.” Miller sounded genuinely disappointed. “Look at you. Fragmented power, a weak Will. You can barely—”

Alexander tuned him out, turning his thoughts inward.

The pain in his hand had dropped from agony to a sharp sting. Just a shallow cut across the back of his hand, bleeding but hardly life-threatening. He sucked in a breath, mind suddenly clear.

Miller isn’t where he appears to be.

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Droney hovered exactly where he’d left it, recording everything. If Miller’s power was to distort people’s perception, then there shouldn’t be any distortion there. Through Technopathy, he could access its feed, see what it saw.

Seeing through a camera feed wasn’t difficult. Not when he could relax, close his eyes, and let his own senses fade into the background.

Doing so in combat could be fatal, though. So, he tried something different.

The overlay of two different visual inputs made his stomach lurch. Like trying to walk while looking in a mirror. But there, Miller stood three feet from where Alexander’s eyes placed him. The doctor’s attention was split, perhaps trying to manage illusions for both Alexander and the alien.

Alexander reached out with Metallokinesis and seized the refrigeration unit against the wall. His real eyes showed the fridge tilting toward empty air. Droney’s feed showed the truth.

He hurled it at Miller’s actual position.

The unit caught Miller in the chest, driving him backward into the wall with a crack of breaking tiles. The doctor grunted, the first genuine sound of discomfort he’d made.

“Clever,” Miller wheezed.

Alexander didn’t answer. He was already grabbing more metal, his own ability overpowering that of the alien’s in an instant. A metal table flew next, pinning Miller’s legs. Then the shelving units, twisting as they wrapped around him. Medical equipment, oxygen tanks, anything with metal became part of the growing prison.

“You’re the real monster here.” Miller’s power spiked through Alexander’s mind. Waves of fear crashed over him, so intense his hands shook. “Listen. Can you hear them?”

Annie’s screams echoed through the room. Raw, agonized, desperate. His friend was dying somewhere, calling for help, and he was here playing with—

No. Alexander forced himself to see through Droney’s eyes. To hear through its microphones. Annie wasn’t here yet. Couldn’t be. Not enough time had passed. It was a lie, like everything else he was seeing, hearing, and feeling.

“Your team is already dead.” Defeat pressed down on him like a physical weight. “You’ve already failed them. Failed yourself. Failed—”

Something broke through the artificial emotions. Not anger. Not fear. Not even defiance.

Ambition.

It burned through the false feelings like a firestorm. Alexander didn’t really care about being a hero, didn’t care about being adored or beloved of the masses. He was content just doing right by the few he truly cared about. Justice and revenge? Sure, he’d gladly take those along the way.

But they paled in comparison when measured against what he really wanted.

He wanted to win. He wanted to stand at the apex, and he would not fall here. Not to this monster. Not when his Dream had barely begun.

His Will crystallized, sharp and undeniable.

Alexander walked to the abstract metal coffin he’d built around Miller. The doctor was still talking, voice muffled by the twisted steel, trying different manipulations. Fear. Shame. Despair. Anger. They washed over Alexander and broke against his ambition like waves against rock.

He placed his palms against the metal.

Miller’s Constitution had protected him so far. It felt on par with Flashpoint’s when last they’d faced him. Perhaps this was what it meant to be a Peak Tier 2 with incredible resistance to physical damage. The metal prison hurt him, but couldn’t kill him. Not alone.

Alexander drew on his Electrokinesis and reached out with both hands, placing them against the crushing metal coffin.

Lightning roared down his arms and burst from his palms. Unlike the usual focused, deliberate stream of power he wielded, this time he channeled it without restraint, straining to maintain control over it as it left his body, rushing through conductive metal and finding the soft, vulnerable flesh trapped beneath.

Miller’s academic tone finally cracked. A sound escaped the metal tomb: pain, real and unfiltered.

Alexander pushed harder. The metal groaned, compressing further under his Metallokinesis. Electricity coursed through every inch. He felt Miller’s resistance failing, that superhuman durability crumbling under the combined assault.

The doctor’s powers failed. Alexander’s senses snapped into perfect clarity for an instant, showing him the room as it really was. Then the field surged back, weaker, desperate. Then gone again.

The screaming stopped.

Alexander maintained the flow for another few seconds, making sure. He’d learned that lesson early on.

When he finally stepped back, his legs nearly gave out. Every muscle trembled from the exertion. Sweat soaked through his jumpsuit.

The alien made a sound; haunting and musical, almost like a question.

Alexander looked at the creature, then at the mass of twisted metal that had become Miller's tomb. Blood seeped from between the compressed sheets, pooling on the white floor. Velvety golden serum leaked from the wreckage of the fridge too, the precious liquid mixing with crimson. He hadn’t noticed it the chaos, and so the problem of sourcing serum for Talia remained to be solved.

He reached into the tomb with Metallokinesis, cracking it open and feeling through the wreckage until he found what he needed. The heavy metal key pulled free with a wet sound.

“Alex?” Talia’s voice crackled through comms. “Status?”

He had to swallow twice before he could answer. “Research wing secured. The doctor’s dead.”

“Copy. We’re almost to you. Just a heads up, but Annie rescued a bird. Says it’s a member now.”

Despite everything, Alexander smiled. “Of course she did.”

“Augustus said the portal will be ready in a few minutes,” Annie said, cutting in. “And Chilli is coming with us!”

“Understood.” Alexander turned toward the alien. Those strange, shifting pupils tracked his movement, intelligent and aware.

He swept his senses across the alien, feeling the pulse of suppression collars. Five of them. But nowhere to be seen. Tilting his head, he focused and narrowed it down until he understood.

They were all inside its body. Grafted to the being’s arms at the shoulders, legs at the hip, and around its thin, fragile-looking neck. They felt different too. Not full-suppression fields, like the one he’d found wrapped around his own neck.

Feels like a lifetime ago.

These were more like… sluice gates. He hesitated to disable them, unsure what they were really doing, and what the repercussions of releasing the suppression would be.

“I’m going to release you,” Alexander said softly. “I’m trusting that you won’t do anything to harm me or my friends who are about to arrive.”

The alien spoke again, with the same musical quality. Alexander wished he understood. The creature had helped him. Distracted Miller at the crucial moment. Even though it had been an effort to save its own life, Alexander could appreciate the act all the same.

With a thought, he released the metal restraints, snapping locks and flipping open the catches. Then he reached down and carefully undid the leather restraints at the ankles and one remaining wrist.

A hand touched his arm. Not the elephant leg one, but one that looked like its normal arm. The touch was gentle, almost grateful.

Then the alien’s eyes closed, as if its breathing steadied into something like sleep.

Alexander stood there for a moment, key heavy in his hand. Dozens of cells waited. Other subjects, other victims of Miller’s experiments. Evidence they needed.

But looking at the alien, tortured and exhausted but still trying to communicate, he reconsidered what really mattered here.

“Talia,” he said into comms. “How much time do you think we actually have?”

“Unknown. But with Santiago knowing we’re here, every extra minute is a risk.”

Alexander nodded to himself. He knew Annie would say that doing the right thing was always worth the extra risk. Augustus and Talia wouldn’t want to leave knowing what was down here.

Droney floated closer, almost as if it was checking on him. He frowned. There was something different about how it moved. As if it had just done something with purpose, or a touch of awareness.

It would have to wait though.

“I’m going to open all of the cells,” Alexander said over the comms. “We’re taking the survivors with us.”

Silence met his words, finally broken by Annie.

“Hell yeah! Rescue mission!”