Chapter 67 Darkness

The echoes of the last explosion still lingered in the air, the docks trembling with the aftershocks of Rustraw’s demise. Smoke curled in lazy ribbons across the blackened sky, the scent of burning salt and iron hanging heavy in my lungs. I remained perched on the fallen power armor, mask turned toward the sea. The water looked calm, deceptively so, as if waiting for something beneath its surface to break free.

Then I saw him.

The Captain walked out from the shadows between two stacked containers as though he had all the time in the world. His outfit was unimpressive, almost laughably mundane, wearing a faded green fishing vest layered over a plain gray shirt, cargo pants hanging loose, and worn boots that had seen decades of sea spray. His skin carried the bronze hue of someone who had lived more years under open skies than roofs, and though his hair had grayed at the temples, his face defied the march of time. No sagging, no wrinkles beyond faint crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes. He looked no older than forty, maybe even younger, and that was why they called him the Old Man. Immortal without ever saying the word.

“You look like, you’d never suffered a claymore inside you… What’s your secret?”

He stopped in the open, hands tucked into his vest pockets, gaze steady beneath the smoke-choked dawn. “You’ve been busy,” he said, voice carrying easily without needing to shout. He was utterly calm, carrying the kind of tone that didn’t need to flex to command respect.

Crow whispered against my ear, mocking and gleeful.  “Finally, the Captain graces us! Shifter-9. Monster of the deep. Dragon of Markend. And so many more. He’s not some cheap bruiser or meat puppet. If he shifts, he becomes a serpent of the deep. Electricity, magnetism, flight… you’re in for it now.”

I tilted my head, mask angled like a predator curious about its prey. Inside, my grin stretched sharp. “So it takes this much blood to drag you out. Your men were getting tiresome.”

He didn’t flinch. His eyes held mine as though he were measuring something beyond what the porcelain revealed. “You’ve made your point. You want me. Well… here I am.”

The ground vibrated subtly as he rolled his shoulders, a ripple of energy already starting to hum through the air. The hairs on my arms prickled, static dancing faintly against my suit. Even before he shifted, his body carried the promise of storms.

I dropped lightly from the armor’s chest, boots clinking against the scorched metal before I landed on the cracked dock. My hand brushed against the cards tucked inside my sleeve, my thumb grazing the ridges like old friends. “Good,” I said, voice even. “Because I didn’t come here for goons. I came for you.”

The Old Man smirked faintly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Be careful what you wish for.”

The air thickened, electricity threading itself between the broken containers and shattered cranes. The Captain’s body flickered, outline warping as though reality itself strained to contain what was coming. His skin shimmered like scales beneath sunlight, his veins pulsing with a faint glow, and for the first time that morning, I felt the dock itself become smaller around me.

Crow whispered again, a hiss this time. “Now it begins! Show him what you got, boy.”

I rushed at him, cards already between my fingers, flicking them like razors through the morning air. Each one phased in and out, intangible until the final second. But the Old Man didn’t flinch. Scales rippled across his face, patches of blue and white glinting under the smoke, and when he opened his mouth, he exhaled lightning. My cards shuddered midflight, gaining unnatural weight, fluttering to the ground like paper caught in a storm.

Something felt wrong. I dove, phasing into the ground and reappearing a distance away, only to collapse to one knee. Static crackled across my skin, searing little sparks biting through my suit. My muscles twitched involuntarily, like my nerves were being rewritten.

The Old Man’s voice carried like thunder. “I didn’t survive the wars just to die from your arrogance, boy!”

His pants shredded as his body warped, bones snapping with grotesque precision. A long tail burst from behind him, lashing the dock with a metallic crack, his limbs folding into a predator’s stance. In seconds, he was running on all fours, his bulk deceptively fast. His mouth split open, and teeth shot out like projectiles as he spat them, launched with such force they whistled past me like railgun rounds.

I dodged, relying on raw movement, my body darting between the deadly hail. Phasing here felt suicidal. The files said the Old Man could alter the frequency of his electricity however he liked, cutting through telepathy, empathy, even my intangibility. If that was true, then he might as well have been a walking nullifier.

He closed the distance with frightening confidence, his tail whipping toward me. The barbed tip crackled, arcs of electricity snapping outward like live wires searching for ground. I fired my grappling hook from my left wrist, pulling myself out of reach at the last second. The hook dragged me skyward, air rushing against my mask. I had half a mind to phase the grappling hook through his flesh, but the thought died quickly. My grappling hook was the only reason I hadn’t been skewered yet. I couldn’t risk destroying my best lifeline.

I landed atop a nearby container, boots scraping the metal. My hand dipped into my suit, pulling grenades free. I lobbed them in quick succession, each one intangible until the moment they merge to flesh. But before they could even arm, the Old Man pulsed with another discharge. Bolts of electricity tore through the air, cooking the grenades dead midflight, their fuses silent.

I clicked my tongue, irritation bleeding into my voice. “Tch. Figures.”

The Old Man’s eyes glowed with faint amusement, though his tone was iron. “Last time, you had luck on your side. Now? Not so much for you.”

I vaulted off the container before he could blast again, landing on another stack a few meters away. My mind worked fast, evaluating the field. I was so tempted to leap into the sea. Down there, he wouldn’t be able to saturate the air with his electricity and ruin my phasing. The salt ions would absorb most of the current, dispersing his charge and dampening his range. I’d have an edge.

But then the other thought stabbed me. The sea was his domain. He didn’t just survive in it. He thrived! His cells went berserk in saltwater, his body adapting and mutating, growing harder, faster, and stronger. If I dived, I’d be trading one battlefield for his home ground. That wasn’t an edge. That was suicide.

“What the fuck?” I muttered under my breath, watching him reach into his vest.

The Old Man pulled a bottle of water free and drenched himself with it.

“Saltwater.”

That could be the only reason why he was drenching himself with such a thing.

His body swelled instantly, scales thickening, and shoulders broadening. He grew taller, arms elongating until his claws dragged against the steel. Then he roared, smashing through the container I stood on. Metal shrieked, collapsing beneath his weight, forcing me to leap once again to another crate before he crushed me beneath the debris.

The Old Man didn’t give me a second to breathe. He leapt right after me, his bulk moving with impossible speed. I phased into the container beneath my feet just as his body tore through it. Metal shrieked, the steel walls bursting outward, scattering potatoes in every direction like shrapnel. The air filled with the starchy dust of ruptured sacks.

I didn’t waste the opening. My hands tore my suit jacket free, the lining bulging with C4 packs Crow’s engineers had stitched in. The timer blinked red, already counting down from ten. I hurled it forward, letting it phase through his armored scales. The explosion tore him apart from the inside, blooming with a muffled roar. Flesh, bone, and scales ripped outward in a crimson spray.

I kept my body intangible, letting debris and gore pass harmlessly through me. Even so, I felt the shockwave reverberate in my chest, vibrating through my teeth. When I solidified again, the Old Man was still moving. His torso hung loose, chunks missing, but his willpower hadn’t died with the blast. He squirmed, dragging himself in a grotesque lunge, desperate to reach the sea. That was where he’d heal. That was where he’d thrive. I couldn’t allow it.

Before I could close in, two new figures broke from the chaos… It was Seamark’s reinforcements. One was Slipstream, clad in a blue jacket and a visor that shimmered faintly under the lights. Hydrokinetic-4, Speedster-4, and worse, Intangibility-2. She could slip through flesh and strip people of their moisture in the process. Not a pleasant way to go. Beside her skittered Dockrat, a Shifter-4, his body mutating into a greasy rodent form that stank of alleyways and garbage.

I wasn’t a fan of speedsters. They were fast, erratic, and in my experience, always more trouble than they were worth. So I honed in on Slipstream immediately. Speed had to be neutralized first.

My hand flicked a flashbang free. I lobbed it, already phasing myself. My eyelids clamped shut as the grenade went off with a sharp crack, flooding the dock with searing white light. Dockrat had it the worst; beast shifters always relied on raw senses, and when those senses got fried, they turned useless. His claws clattered against containers as he swung blindly, screeching his rodent scream.

Slipstream slipped, literally. Her footing lost against the scattered potatoes and cracked pavement, she skidded into the open. I opened my eyes, walked calmly in front of Dockrat’s wild swipes, his claws passing through me without resistance, and raised my voice just enough to cut through the chaos.

“I am here!”

Her visor locked on me instantly, and she rushed forward in a blur. I steadied myself, running the math in my head. She was quick, her intangibility slick and efficient, but mine ran deeper, closer to the molecular edge. I gambled on that difference.

She phased through me… and that was when I latched onto her power. To explain it in simple terms would be dishonest; what I did wasn’t simple. But in confusing words, I made her intangibility intangible. I reached inside her frequency and shifted it just far enough that her phasing betrayed her. Instead of passing cleanly, her body tangled.

Slipstream screamed as she merged halfway with Dockrat. Her momentum betrayed her, her speed becoming the weapon against her own body. She stumbled forward, falling face-first onto the concrete. Chunks of Dockrat clung to her frame, meat and bone fused grotesquely into her form. Dockrat himself shriveled instantly, his body collapsing into a husk as if every drop of water had been stolen from his veins.

“You should have just ran away,” I said pitifully. “Now, you die.”

I ended her misery with a stomp, her skull crunching under my heel. The sound was wet, final, and then silence lingered for only a breath.

The sea answered next.

A geyser erupted upward, a torrent of water breaking apart as something vast surged out of it. The Old Man returned in his full serpent form, scales gleaming wet in the morning light, his body stretching into the clouds. Lightning crawled across his skin like living veins, crackling louder than thunder. With a beat of magnetic force, the massive serpent rose into the sky, twisting against gravity as though the air itself bent to his will.

I ran after him, momentum carrying me over shattered crates and scattered debris, until my wrist snapped forward and my grappling hook shot out. The line caught, and I phased the hook into the Old Man’s scales, embedding myself into him. My body swung violently as he writhed, the serpent’s body coiling against the skyline.

It was the same as before, the same fight we had lived once already, except this time the sky was our battleground. His scales gleamed like armor, his mouth a cavern of teeth, his body a continent in motion. Lightning blasted outward in unpredictable arcs, ripping through the docks below, vaporizing metal and setting crates ablaze.

This time, the electricity burned. Not just the static sting I could shrug off. The current bit deep, rattling my bones, and making my nerves scream in rebellion. I gritted my teeth, phasing molecularly just in time for each surge to pass through me, but every flicker of his power ate at my endurance. My body faltered, dizziness sweeping through me. Blood trailed from my nose, dripping down the porcelain mask, staining it redder.

Still, I didn’t let go.

I climbed higher, grappling and phasing my way across his vast frame until the serpent’s head loomed before me, its eyes glowing like storm lamps. He thrashed, trying to throw me off, his roar a mixture of thunder and the sea’s rage. My muscles screamed, but I pushed forward, forcing myself deeper.

And then I phased inside.

The serpent’s body was a cathedral of muscle and bone, sparks flickering like stars across its insides. The stench of ozone clung to my tongue. My backpack thudded against my back with every shift of flesh, heavy with promise. The W54 still sat secure inside, compact, quiet, a monster in miniature.

On my wrist, another switch waited. I looked down at it, breathing raggedly. My thumb pressed.

The world went white.

The pocket nuke blossomed with a soundless roar, ripping through the Old Man from within. His body shattered in a storm of meat, blood, and lightning, the sky painted with his remains. Chunks of flesh rained around me as I fell, tumbling helplessly through smoke and gore.

I kept my body intangible, forcing every ounce of concentration to remain untouchable so the debris couldn’t crush me. But the fall itself dragged at my fading consciousness. My limbs refused to listen. My head swam. The air roared past me, the distant ground rushing closer… and closer.

The Old Man wouldn’t resurrect, not without the sea. His anchor was gone, his cells scattered, his myth torn apart by fire and fission. That much I knew.

But me?

As I fell, vision tunneling, fear gnawed at me… not of him, not of Seamark, and not of Crow, but of the possibility that when I closed my eyes now, I might never open them again.

Darkness took me.