Chapter 109 Breaking Point

The ride back to the Tenfold Keep was long and quiet. The plains stretched endlessly, wind bending the tall grass in rippling waves, the forests at the horizon dark as ink. The hum of Bunny’s engine was the only sound, broken by the occasional crackle of sand under the tires. No one spoke… Missive was lost in her thoughts, Lovelies stared out into nothing, and I kept my focus on the skyline where the Keep rose like a black spire in the middle of nowhere.

When we finally arrived, the walls shimmered with invisibility, faintly visible through my mask’s filters. We parked near the entrance, detached the sidecar, ascended through the elevator, and reached the tenth floor. Mrs. Mind’s office was exactly as I remembered.

I stepped forward, mask still on, and gave my report.

“Assessor is dead,” I said. “The mission is complete.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And how did this come to pass? Explain.”

I met her gaze through the mask and kept my voice level. “I was forced to abort when SRC and Assessor showed up. I ran. I didn’t kill him myself, but he’s dead. I’ll confess: I hired a few helping hands to make sure he wouldn’t get up again.”

Mrs. Mind’s displeasure wasn’t subtle. Her telepathy flared as a cold pressure against my skull; a thousand tiny judgments pressing inward. She inhaled and, with a calm that barely concealed a coil of fury, said, “And what of my message?”

I shrugged in the way I had learned to shrug at authority. “And what? To hurt the Monarchy? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they are the victim… or at least unrelated to the entire fiasco, except Assessor’s misleading us about their involvement.”

She stepped closer, voice tightening. “Then that makes the SRC the target of our… wrath. You should’ve killed someone from them to make an example. What is this, Eclipse? Are you getting soft?”

I let out a short, sharp sound that was almost laughter. “Soft? Me? You don’t know the soft me, and for your information, I’m the new guy here… you know shit about me. Here’s some advice: be clear on your instructions. I did what was required… kill Assessor. He’s dead.”

She bristled, and the telepathic pressure rose into a sharper, more insistent edge. Her words hissed at me through the thin static in my mask. “You don’t understand, Eclipse… We got a reputation to protect…”

I decided to be a jerk about it.

“Well, excuse me,” I said, voice sharp enough to cut through the telepathic tension in the room. “It’s not me with the shitty intel.”

Lovelies, lounging by the doorway with that smug, too-perfect face of hers, tilted her head and said, “You should be more respectful when talking to the boss.”

Mrs. Mind didn’t rise to it. Instead, she sighed, the kind of sigh that carried both irritation and boredom, like she was tired of pretending to care. “It’s fine, Lovelies. I am done with you, Eclipse. Clearly, you are not comfortable with authority. You are free to go and leave us if that’s more comfortable for you.”

I scoffed, spitting out the words like poison. “What’s this? I’m getting fired?”

She didn’t blink. “Do I have to spell it out to you?”

I crossed my arms. “Missive is coming with me.”

Her voice turned cold, telepathy creeping at the edges again. “No, she isn’t.”

“Why?” I asked, knowing full well she wasn’t going to give me an honest answer, not with how her mind pulsed like a thousand-layered whispers, scheming behind that child’s face.

“It’s not for you to decide,” Mrs. Mind said.

“I want to leave with him,” Missive said.

“...”

I hadn’t expected to get fired over this, but that was fine; I wasn’t walking away without Missive. “What? Cat got your tongue?”

Ning appeared from one of the sofas in a flash of electricity. “You can’t do this to us, Eclipse… What’s this about, Mrs. Mind? Surely you won’t shoo away Eclipse just because he has opinions. We are better than that, right?”

I had a bad feeling about this.

Ning kept talking. “Now, we should be friends together. Dr. Sequence is working on the science right now to teleport the building away. With Assessor betraying us to SRC of all things, we can’t expect our location to be safe now, can we?”

“No need to worry about me, I am leaving with Missive,” I said.

“No,” Ning answered.

Lovelies’ voice came lazy and sharp. “Oh my god… You were the real shot-caller all along…”

“You would mind your tongue, Lovelies, if you want them intact,” Mrs. Mind snapped.

Ning gave an exaggerated sigh. “It’s fine, I’ve been thinking of coming clean for some time now. Now, I won’t bore you with my origin story, but yes, you are right, Lovelies, I am indeed the shot-caller here, the boss of the boss, hidden mastermind and all.”

“We've got all the time in the world. So yeah, I think I’d like to hear your story,” I said.

“No, I don’t think we have all the time in the world,” a man in a trench coat said, stepping through a wormhole. John walked through, accompanied by Wormhole. He glanced at Mrs. Mind. “Long time no see, old friend.”

Mrs. Mind stood up, panic thin under her composure.

Ning waved a hand toward Assessor and half-laughed. “See, that Assessor is a real bastard, I must say… How did you find us? Is it Assessor, please tell me, it’s Assessor.”

John turned to me. “No… Assessor was adamant on not knowing your base of operations… I guess he is more afraid of you than us… But he told us everything he knew, about you, about the betrayal, and all.”

Betrayal.

John stepped closer, offering his familiar, tired smile. “I am going to make a deal with you, Nick, for one last time… Help me finish the Ten and I am willing to push for a privilege to you, ensure you don’t go to prison, and even work for us in the future.”

Ning scoffed. “How about no?”

He vanished in another burst of electricity and reappeared in front of Missive. I didn’t have time to move.

Ning grabbed her face. She screamed. The air arced, and the sound was electrical and immediate It was followed by a sharp, terrible snap. Ning laughed as current ran through her, voice bright and awful: “Oh, my lovely little Missive… see you next time, I guess…”

Mrs. Mind’s reaction was a flat, irritated sound. “So annoying.”

Missive fell to the ground, motionless.

I blinked, and the office, the walls, and the scent of ozone and blood were gone.

The next instant, I was standing under a washed-out sky, the wind biting dry across the dunes. Sand stretched endlessly around me. Bunny stood beside me, black and chrome gleaming under the sun. The supply truck we were supposed to bring back to the Tenfold Keep sat nearby, as if it had never moved at all.

I turned to the bike’s dashboard.

October 8, 2025. Wednesday. 3:03 p.m.

My stomach sank.

“It has to be you,” Missive said behind me. It was the same tone and the same words she’d used before when she offered that deal. Her voice trembled with the same quiet desperation. “Because you’re the only one who won’t get me killed.”

Bunny’s digital voice chimed from the speakers, blunt and mechanical. “That’s just suspicious.”

I stared at Missive. The sand crunched beneath my boots as I took a step closer. Things started to line up from the inconsistencies, her so-called regeneration, and her talk about other versions of herself. It all pointed here. But the more I pieced together, the more questions tore at the seams of my understanding.

“I’ve been here before,” I said quietly. “You just died.”

Missive’s lips quirked into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Good,” she said, voice steady now. “Then we can start over again.”

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” I said.

Missive’s eyes flicked toward me, her expression calm. “First,” she said, brushing the sand off her knees, “how about a reintroduction?”

I raised an eyebrow, already hating where this was going.

“I am not Missive,” she said.

The wind stilled for a moment, like the world itself was holding its breath.

“Then who are you supposed to be?” I asked, my hand resting on the grip of my gun, though I didn’t draw it.

“I’m Mrs. Mind.”

I restrained the urge to shoot her right there. “That isn’t funny.”

“It isn’t meant to be.” Her tone didn’t waver. “Missive has many versions of herself… but three primary personalities: the past, the present, and the future. I used my powers to… upload myself into her. However, as you can see, things didn’t go the way I expected them to.”

She paused, the sunlight catching in her eyes like shards of glass. “In the end, I was almost erased, if not for Missive taking pity on me and not killing me outright. She could have easily overwhelmed the version of me that invaded her, considering what her powers are capable of. But she didn’t. That’s the only reason she can still maintain control of her powers.”

Her voice softened, taking on that same patient tone she used in the Keep when she was Mrs. Mind. “Now, I know you have a lot of questions. We’re safe here. No one’s listening. Feel free to ask, Eclipse.”

“Should I still call you Mrs. Mind?” I asked, my voice dry.

She smiled faintly. “No need. To avoid confusion, call me Mother.”

“Mother?” I echoed. “That’s presumptuous.”

“Because that’s what I am to Missive,” she replied smoothly. “I am her mother… and the powers that used to belong to Mrs. Mind… she now also wields them. Dormant, weaker, unstable, yes, but present. With me on her side, she could become more. Ever heard of power-mutate transference?”

I stayed silent, my thoughts drifting toward Silver and Onyx, the fragments of people inside my head, and how I carried their Empathy. Maybe I had been walking proof of that same concept all along.

“Why does it matter?” I asked finally. “And what would Mrs. Mind achieve by copying herself into Missive? From what I’ve heard, Mrs. Mind couldn’t copy herself into another cape… because of the power-limit.”

Power-limits. Every cape hit one eventually. Some called it a design flaw in the universe; others said it was nature’s way of keeping balance. Powers couldn’t coexist freely. Each ability was bound by its derivation, the source logic of its creation, and once the derivation reached saturation, no new ability of a conflicting type could form.

That was why some powers simply refused to overlap. A person couldn’t be both intangible and invulnerable; the mechanics clashed at their foundations. A speedster could master kinetics to a researcher’s rating but would never manifest telepathy, since the derivations were incompatible. Even when powers evolved, they did so unevenly. No two powers of the same class ever maintained a perfect one-to-one ratio.

It was the universe’s cruel joke: no matter how gifted you were, there was always a barrier you couldn’t cross.

“That’s why she almost died,” Mother said, her tone cold but measured, as though she’d rehearsed this explanation countless times. “And do you really think she did it out of her own volition?”

She looked out into the dunes. The desert wind hissed between us, brushing across her hair, but her expression was older, sharper, and haunted by a wisdom that didn’t belong to that young face.

“Now she’s trapped in the body of a little girl,” she continued, “with little ability to grow more than what her shell could offer. Not to mention, her memories were damaged, her recollection of dates, events, and her life before is faulty at best. She truly has become a pathetic existence.”

Her eyes hardened, and for a second, I could feel the echo of power behind them, the ghost of what Mrs. Mind once was.

“She was formerly known as the Witch,” Mother said. “A Telepath-12 powerhouse capable of turning an entire city into her soldiers, rewriting personalities, constructing false gods of her own design. She’d been a blight to the Monarchy since ancient times, and she was old enough to be your grandmother thrice. Now, she’s stuck at Telepath-9, forced to answer to a manchild with machinations for world domination.”

“Ning,” I said quietly.

Otherwise known as Lightning. the so-called real shot-caller, if what I’d seen back at the Keep hadn’t been some elaborate illusion.

Mother tilted her head, a small, bitter smile playing at her lips. “It seems you’ve been attentive. My memory stops at the moment of Missive’s death. In order for her to avoid that fate, we need your help.”

I folded my arms. “Why not just leave now?”

Her gaze softened, but her voice didn’t. “I can’t. Ning owns Missive the same way he owns Mrs. Mind. Don’t underestimate his powers, Eclipse. To call him a Speedster-7, Electrokinetic-7, would be an understatement to the extent of his abilities. He’s... evolved. His powers branch through electrical fields, thought currents, and even psionic traces. He’s found ways to turn people into circuits for his network.”

I grimaced. “And what do you expect me to do about that?”

“I need you to kill Mrs. Mind,” she said plainly. “And then Ning… in that order. Possibly, the rest of the Ten afterward, if necessary.”

I stared at her, the air between us buzzing with tension. “I know I’ve asked this before,” I said slowly, “but I’m going to ask again. Why me? Is there a reason for you to show me… that future? Your death?”

“It’s my way to convince you,” she said. “To prove that I can show you your future. The current Missive couldn’t… she’s too fragmented. But with my help, she could. The last time, I lied to you by omission, but now, I’m telling you the full truth.”

I thought about that. About her. About all of them… Dullahan, Lovelies, Mrs. Mind, Ning, and the whole mess I’d gotten myself tangled in.

Finally, I asked, “If I say no… what would you do?”

Mother smiled faintly, her expression unreadable. “I guess,” she said, “we die together.”