155 Dome & Leverage

Two hours earlier, I’d gotten the message from Bunny: [Guesswork’s back.]

It was a Sunday, and I was half-slouched on my apartment couch in gray sweatpants, a faded shirt, and the lingering smell of instant coffee. Sundays were supposed to be the one day I pretended I was normal. That illusion never survived contact with reality.

Guesswork returning meant opportunity. It also meant risk.

If I wanted to move forward, I needed him to feed Continuity false intel. Nothing blatant, just a nudge sideways. Enough misdirection to pull eyes away from Windbreaker and me while keeping everything looking routine. With the small window Bunny gave me, I updated Guesswork on our next steps.

Windbreaker, of course, had agreed instantly, since we already made earlier arrangements. Revenge was a language he spoke fluently. Continuity had taken everything from him: his wife, his son, and his freedom. I didn’t need a speech. All I had to do was remind him of the absence where his life used to be.

Yet the whole time, something in me twisted. I kept feeling like I wasn’t choosing anything anymore. I was following tracks someone else had carved. The cracks across my body pulsed faintly when I looked down.

They were its mark.

The Entity’s.

Back to the present.

I was watching some game show that made human stupidity feel staged instead of tragic when the air buzzed.

A sharp zap cut through the room, followed by the faint hiss of ozone.

Three small orbs dropped from above, each the size of a fist, matte shells pulsing with soft blue light. I didn’t flinch.

“Phase Three,” I muttered. “Good work, Bunny.”

Phase One was Guesswork’s deception.

Phase Two was Windbreaker drawing aggro to stretch Continuity thin.

Phase Three belonged to me.

I stood and changed into jogging pants and a plain white shirt. They were unremarkable and forgettable. Then I collected each orb and phased them gently into the ground until they disappeared beneath the concrete.

From the hallway, Amelia’s voice cut through: sharp, impatient.

“How long are you gonna take?”

“Coming.” I grabbed a few gadgets and stepped out.

The car door slammed behind me as I slid into the passenger seat. Amelia gripped the wheel hard enough to blanch her knuckles. Her tiger hoodie, bright orange and pulled tight, combined with the black half-mask made her look like a committed vigilante.

I glanced down at my own low-effort disguise: a dark bonnet with holes in it. I looked less like a hero and more like a guy on his way to rob a corner store. Memories.

“You know where to go?” I asked.

“I got his scent.”

She hit the accelerator. The tires shrieked, and as the car shot forward I felt a smirk tug at my mouth.

“When did you even get Continuity’s scent? Don’t tell me you sniffed his, uh… you know…”

Her eyes widened beneath the mask. “What the fuck? No! Of course not!”

“But—”

“No.” She glared at me like I’d suggested a felony. “Don’t remind me about that thing, you bastard.”

I chuckled. “Then how—?”

“Guesswork,” she said abruptly. “He brought me something of his. A personal item. Said it might help me track him if things went south. Or at least help me avoid him.”

I leaned back, letting that settle. “Smart man.”

“Cautious,” she corrected. “Continuity’s dangerous. He wanted me prepared.”

That tracked. Guesswork always had contingency plans, sometimes for contingencies you didn’t know existed. Outside, red and blue lights began flashing across the windshield. Amelia slowed, swearing under her breath.

Ahead, a cluster of police cars blocked off an entire city block.

We rolled to a stop behind a row of parked vehicles.

“It’s here,” Amelia murmured.

“Where?” I scanned the scene.

She pointed toward a squat building of concrete and glass beside the park.

The crowd was thin and restless. Police shouted through megaphones, “Clear the area! Move back! Don’t interfere with the scene!” Their voices were flat, routine. Somewhere in the distance something detonated, a deep boom that rattled loose tin roofs and sent pigeons exploding into the air. Someone screamed. The police pretended they hadn’t heard it.

Civil order was always good at pretending.

I handed Amelia an earpiece. “Comms. Wear it.”

She clipped it in, jaw tight. The city smelled of exhaust and wet concrete; adrenaline always turned it into a metallic ozone tang for me.

“Status?” I asked Bunny.

“I’m mapping the area and overwriting trace signatures for Windbreaker,” Bunny whispered through the line. “Local capes are being suppressed by SRC–press interference. If multiverse-hopping tech leaks, it’ll be hell. Guesswork just neutralized two information operatives, one cape, one former SRC spec ops. Three capes are still on Windbreaker, two heavy hitters. I’ve deployed hard-light drones to fake a trail; they’ll think he double-backed.”

Amelia snorted. “They’ll figure it out soon anyway.”

She wasn’t wrong. Best-case: Windbreaker shakes the tail, passes the data to a safe courier, rejoins us. Reality tended to chew up best-cases.

“Let’s move,” I said. “Keep me updated, Bunny.”

As Amelia accelerated through the intersection, she asked, “What are we expecting inside?”

“We’ve got two capes,” I told her. “Continuity’s our target. Reverses cause and effect. I confirmed it from Windbreaker’s memory. The other’s Glitch. Think Bunny, but with a physical hologram for a body.”

The elevator carried us to a floor higher than the adjacent building. When the doors sighed open, we slipped to a wide window with a clean downward angle.

“Ready?” I asked. “Afraid of heights?”

“I can’t believe I’m trusting you with my life,” Amelia said, but she still stepped forward.

A maintenance worker wandered past, giving us a confused half-stare. I scooped Amelia into my arms, less graceful than I wanted,and the guy blinked at the ridiculousness of the scene.

“Please don’t mind us,” I said, tone just casual enough to shut down questions. He kept walking.

I phased.

That moment always felt uncomfortably intimate, my atoms slipping through air like water through open fingers. I matched the timing I’d stolen from Windbreaker’s memory: third-from-top office, window sensor blind spot, an HVAC ductline leading straight to the server room.

I rematerialized with the force of a dropped anvil onto a wooden table. Splinters bit into my palms. Static danced across my skin in blue motes.

Continuity looked up, surprise first, followed by slow, meticulous hate.

I didn’t give him time.

I threw Amelia toward him and she shifted midair, Tigress form erupting out of her with a snarl. Null-claws extended, eyes hot and predatory. She launched forwarad, but her strike collided with a white-hooded figure that blinked into existence with a crack of light. The hoodie moved like corrupted code. He kicked Amelia across the room with enough force to crater the drywall. She slid down, shook it off, and rose again, blood at her lip, her growl low and feral.

“So this is Glitch?” she spat. “Wearing that hoodie should be a crime.”

“Same to you, punk,” Glitch rasped, his voice glitching at the edges. He looked stupid and lethal all at once. “I will kill you.”

Continuity didn’t move. He only watched.

We had one shot.

I reached into my pocket and pulled a small device, my modified flashbang. Null-core soldered into the casing, seeded with a synthetic Bunny-virus. Near Glitch, it would scramble his photonic frame. Near Continuity, it would punch a feedback spike into his kill-switch protocols and free the capes leashed to his bombs.

I threw it.

The arc was perfect.

Continuity smiled. “Arrogant,” he said gently. “Let me teach you something. Murder is only bad if you can’t get away with it. Now, you are all dead.”

The invisible dome expanded.

A pale shimmer rippled outward from him, a hemispheric bloom of reversed logic. The air vibrated with the sensation of time being thumbed backwards, like the ruffle of a book page against my teeth. The flashbang hit the floor, slid two inches, and tapped a baseboard.

It didn’t arm. The null-core stayed inert, as if cause and effect had been quietly told no.

Continuity’s gaze met mine, scalpel-cold.

“You were arrogant,” he repeated. The dome hummed, settling over the room and washing noise out of Glitch’s projection. “Mistakes like this are educational.”

“That’s one strange power,” Amelia breathed behind me.

Glitch spat, a smile curving beneath his blindfold. “I’ll kill all of you.” He conjured a dented baseball bat with a flick of his wrist, as casually as lighting a cigarette. “This’ll be enough to beat you to death.”

I still had toys left in my pockets.

Continuity’s voice slid across the room like silk wrapped around iron. “You used intangibility. Phased through the ceiling. I know it’s you, Eclipse. And you, woman, tiger shapeshifter. Tigress. Colluding with a thief at this hour. What do you want?”

He shouldn’t have known. Amelia’s hood made her stand out, sure, but the rest was guesswork. He was fishing and casting nets, pretending he’d already caught us. Still, the doubt he sowed would spread.

Glitch’s frantic whisper jolted my ear. “Boss, lost contact with the surveillance cameras at your residence… Vector has entered the chase for the stolen data. No way. No way.”

It was Glitch’s comms bleeding into mine, his link to Continuity cross-wired through the same channel. It was all thanks to Continuity.

I breathed into the mic. “Is that true?”

“It’s true,” Bunny replied. “Vector has jurisdiction. Heavy reputation. City gave him leeway after the Wamond Incident seven years ago. Fewer SRC restrictions. He can move as he pleases.”

Good. Vector’s involvement boxed Continuity in. It also cracked a door open for us.

I raised my voice just enough to carry. “Tell the ‘wolf’ to hand the stolen data to Vector and then clear the scene. Now.”

The room detonated with emotion.

Continuity’s expression snapped, calibrated fury replacing the smug veneer. “YOU, ECLIPSE!” He yanked a gun from under the table and fired.

I’d anticipated it. I twisted aside, the bullet slicing clean air where my shoulder had been. Phasing saved me from the rest. Glitch blinked out, his momentum erased by whatever digital-thread logic kept him tethered to the physical world.

“Watch my back,” I told Amelia.

Glitch reappeared behind me, bat already descending. Amelia met him mid-swing, claws sliding against photonic solidity. The impact sounded like wood splitting. She tanked the hit without falling. The bat shouldn’t have had that kind of weight for a hologram, but Glitch wasn’t pure illusion. His physics were stitched from something deeper.

I reached into the pocket dimension sewn into my pants and pulled a small railgun. A jury-rigged monster: scavenged parts from Dr. Sequence’s lab, electrokinetic manifolds married to a guidance array tuned to my electricity. It should’ve hummed alive against my palm.

Instead it fizzled, spitting smoke where the capacitor should’ve glowed.

“No power can exist within my presence,” remarked Continuity.

The metallic taste of failure hit instantly.

Glitch grinned, static chewing at the edges of his words. “Conditions are met.”

He flicked his hand upward. The room followed. Everyone’s gaze wanted to rise, tugged by a soft compulsion, an artificial reflex. For a fraction of a second, my head obeyed.

I forced it down.

Continuity watched us with surgical calm. He reached under the desk again and drew a sniper rifle. He raised the rifle at me with the measured focus of a man running a controlled experiment. The dome around him hummed, an unseen engine rewriting cause and effect as it pleased. Here, bullets could decide not to exist. Charges could refuse to prime. Events arrived pre-edited.

“Hey,” I said. “Want to see something cool?”

I had something, too.

“Don’t be too surprised. Researcher-5 doesn’t look like much, but it’s different if you’ve got a few hundred blueprints stuffed inside your skull.”

Slowly, calmly, I palmed a detonator.

A blunt brute of a trigger wired to an old SRC field relay I’d stolen months ago. It was modified, frozen, and armed with strange technology. If I was lucky, it would even crack the dome’s outer edges.

I lifted it slightly so he could see.

“Do you know where this is connected to?” I asked, voice flat. The room narrowed to the breath between us. “Do you want to find out what it does?”