Chapter 68 Comeuppance

I opened my eyes to a flat gray ceiling that smelled faintly of disinfectant and old metal, the kind of sterile smell that pretended to be clean while holding on to every stain. My body felt heavy and oddly light at the same time, like someone had removed the ballast from my bones and left the skin to remember gravity alone. The orange fabric rode up my ribs when I moved; printed across the chest in bold, utilitarian letters were the words DETAINEE-SRC and beneath them a smaller warning: Codename: Eclipse. Warning: Extremely Dangerous. I laughed then, a short, surprised sound that grew into something harsher and sharper than it should have. The sound echoed against the walls, and for a moment the room felt too small to hold the noise I made.

Adrenaline still hummed beneath my skin, jittering at the edges of everything I tried to do, so I leaned down into my Enhancer ratings and forced the clarity I needed. Detaching was a skill I’d learned the hard way by pulling the control knob, ratcheting down the panic, and locking the emotions in a vault where they couldn’t leak. It took effort, like holding a blade steady against a toothpick, but the pause arrived, cold and surgical. When I calmed, the room presented itself properly: a single narrow bed bolted to the floor, a metal door with a thick slit for an eye, and walls that didn’t ask questions because they already knew the answers.

I tested the physics anyway, because habit died slower than pain. I tried to run up the wall, phasing my feet into the concrete like I used to when I practiced tricks, expecting to blur up and across the surface. Instead, my momentum finished and I bounced back, my face meeting the wall with a wet crunch that painted the plaster with red. The impact rattled my teeth; blood warmed my mouth. I laughed again, a sound that had more edges now, each chuckle scraping the inside of my throat. “Hahahahahahaha! This is it. Huh? It’s done,” I said aloud, tasting copper and disbelief. The laughter faded into something like acceptance as I let my shoulders drop and sat on the bed, the metal frame cold beneath my palms.

The slit in the door opened, allowing two blue eyes to look down at me. “Do you remember me?” he asked, his eyes bored. I remained quiet, since  nothing I could say would make the past alter its course. He didn’t need my answer to continue. “Michael Hall, SRC Director, South Eastern Branch. I was there in your mother’s funeral.”

I remembered the funeral. As for Director Hall, I also remembered him making a speech, but his words eluded me back then.

“So,” started Director Hall. “What is it gonna be, Nick?”

The memory he invoked didn’t tug at me the way he probably expected.

“What difference does that make?” I asked eventually, because cruelty likes the sound of its own logic. “Because from where I am sitting, I can tell. It wouldn’t make a damn difference…”

Directory Hall paused a beat, as if expecting more from me, then he added plainly, “That I know your mother wouldn’t have wanted this for you.” The line was meant to be a lever, pull it and something would shift, but I’d been pulled and pushed so many times my joints clicked like old hinges.

“If you think you could guilt-trip me into doing what you want, give up,” I said, letting sarcasm edge the words. “The only regret I have is that I got caught. If there’s anything you should be doing right now, that would be to do your job. It’s like I don’t have a choice, anyway. Crow owns me now, and my every breath is his. You will get nothing from me, except the one I was owed.” Saying Crow’s name opened a bitter little cavern in my chest; the fact of that ownership tasted like rust.

Director Hall’s face softened. For a fraction of a second his features tried to look like empathy, then the mask dropped. “I see,” he said slowly, disappointment laced with the practiced patience of someone who had read this script before. “It’s disappointing, but fine. You will get what you were due. Enjoy what little peace you have now, because you will have none of it once the Warden claims you.” He turned away without another look, the slit closing with the same methodical indifference it had opened with.

I wiped the blood from my nose with the back of my hand, the motion small and useless and utterly human, and lay back on the thin mattress. The orange shirt rubbed loud against my ribs, the warning letters staring up like a brand. Outside the metal door, the facility hummed, voices filtered through ducts, footsteps that meant nothing and everything. I closed my eyes, letting my breath slow until it matched the ceiling’s gray impartiality, and thought of the one thing still important to me.

“Silver… Onyx… Mom…”

And Crow…

I swore, he’d get what was coming for him.

Three days bled into one another since I first opened my eyes under that gray metal ceiling. Thoughts of escape visited like dull, predictable ghosts, but the cell laughed at them: walls poured from a strange, hyper-dense concrete that warped powers in ways I hadn't seen before, floors the same, and tucked above that ceiling was genuine nullifier tech born from old-world engineering meant to silence even the angriest capes. I tested everything until my nose bled; the concrete took my phase like a sponge and spat it back. The routine was hollow and mechanical… eat, stare, and count heartbeats… until the alarms cut through the monotony and red lights threw the cell into frantic shadow.

At the first pulse of the siren I felt something else: a return, subtle and fierce, like a missing limb waking under anesthesia. My fingers tingled, then burned, and the old cold thrill that came with my power slid back into place.

The door cracked open and a figure filled the frame: long dark hair, ripped jeans, reversed eyes that made the room feel upside-down.

“What’s the date?” I asked, keeping my voice level.

“March nineteenth,” he said, casual as spit. “You were out longer than you think.”

I laughed. “What took you so long, then? Traffic?”

Crow smiled with those teeth that never reached his eyes. “Pecking order, Eclipse. Do remember your place. But you sure gave a show I couldn’t resist. You sure made me proud. So much that I’m willing to risk my neck to rescue you myself.”

“You didn’t have to bother, really,” I said. “Saving me? More like, you just want to continue using me… Isn’t that it? No way you are that generous…”

He tossed a ring with an M on it into the air and it spun like a token as he played with it. His grin widened as he revealed. “You are right in both accounts. I couldn’t have bothered. You are also right to think I want to use you, because you are useful. But the one thing you got wrong was that… I could be generous. You’ve got a role to play, and I’m good at giving people roles they can’t refuse. Eclipse, let’s build an Empire, together.”

Before I could answer Crow’s pitch, the shadow at the doorway shimmered and folded itself into shape. Promise appeared so suddenly, Crow was unable to react quickly. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” said Promise, voice cool. “Stay.”

Just like that, Promise shoved him inside my cell. Crow stumbled back into the corridor, cursing low and surprised. “Eclipse,” he spat, regaining himself, “What is the meaning of this?”

I turned the ring in my hand and felt its cold weight. For a second the nullifier hummed through the ceiling, a low pressure that made my skin crawl, then it amplified, pressing at the edges of my regained power.

“It’s your end, Crow…”

I watched Crow’s silhouette twist under the nullifier like a fish in a net, sparks of shadow dying off until he stood there, blinking, and baffled at how everything had conspired to corner him.

“No…” cried Crow. “No, this can’t be…”

I slid the ring onto my index finger; it fit like a promise. My powers hummed faint and wrong under the ceiling, but the Enhancer training sat in my bones. Muscle memory and violence remained within me, regardless of powers or what-not.

“Grit your teeth for me.”

I walked up to him and punched, clean and hard, right on the jaw. He tasted blood and surprise, and when he turned, fury flashed in those backward eyes.

“You been colluding with the SRC,” he spat, voice shredded. “You fucking traitor! Do you know what I do to those who betray me!?”

His shock made him reckless.

I grabbed his head and drove a knee into his face, his hands snatching my leg and trying to yank me off. I hooked my grip behind his skull, drove my other knee into his sternum, and used the motion to topple us both. We hit hard; metal echoed under our weight. I rolled on top, locked my arms round his throat from behind, and squeezed until his breath came ragged and shallow.

“This is for Silver,” I said, each word a stone. He clawed and flailed, but the nullifier made his strength a joke. I levered him up until one knee hit the floor and then slammed my heel down on the back of his right knee, a brutal, calculated stomp that made him howl.

Tears salted his face as he begged, “S-stop.” I didn’t. I kept the choke while I pressed until a clean, ugly sound cracked through the air… It was the break of bone.

“This is for my mom,” I whispered, voice calm enough to be cruel. “And it is going to hurt.”

I dragged him across the floor and forced him onto the narrow bed, folding his legs up against the cold wall so his hips sat weird and useless. He reached blindly, fingers scraping my sleeve, but he couldn’t touch me. I pinned one wrist under my right knee and the other under my left, bracing my weight, until he stopped wrestling with hope and started rattling with pain.

The nullifier puckered at my edges, but my Enhancer rating slowly overcame them.

I slid the heel of my palm under one of his thoracic vertebrae, propping and waiting, while my other arm cupped the back of his neck to keep his head from snapping free. I pushed… Not slow, not cruel for its own sake, but hard and final. Bones protested and then broke with a wet, decisive surrender. His upper spine buckled inward at a right angle, his chest folding like a discarded puppet’s.

He went slack, a broken thing whose body would never hold him the same again.

I grabbed him by the throat and dragged him across the cold floor, then mounted him hard so my weight pinned him flat.

“And this is for me.”

My first punch landed like a verdict; each follow-through blurred into the next until my knuckles tasted salt and copper. Blood smeared over the ring on my index finger and across my palm, sticky and hot, but I didn’t stop to count the hits or savor the sound.

“Die,” I let the motion take over… “Die,” punch after punch… “Die,” until his face was a ruined map of bruises and blood… “Die,” until his hands hung useless at his sides and his breaths came ragged and shallow.

“Die for me, will you?”

He whimpered something broken between spits of blood. “Thi—f n… ovfr… yft…” His words dissolved into a choking rattle.

I could feel the old training tighten in my limbs as I forcibly reclaimed my evolving Enhancer ratings, the coordination snapping back into place like a glove. Adrenaline surged on command, artificial and clean, and my body obeyed with frightening precision. I raised my hand, fingers curling, and nails lengthening with violent intent as I tweaked my hormones. One deep breath… and then I plunged them into his chest.

Crow screamed, a raw, primal howl that split the silence. Warmth erupted against my face. His blood sprayed. It was hot and metallic, but I didn’t falter. My fingers tore through muscle and bone, clawing deeper with every pulse of my heart.

“Don’t fight it,” I growled. “This is how it ends.”

His scream broke into sobs, then into silence as I wrapped my hand around the thrumming core within him. With one final pull, I ripped it free. His heart tore loose in a splatter of blood and tissue, crimson dripping down my wrist, dripping onto his lifeless chest.

I stood above him, chest heaving, heart still beating in my grip. This was victory. This was mine.

And Crow was no more.