His answer wasn't verbal. He slammed a hand down on the largest crystal on his belt. It pulsed once, a blinding white light, and then unleashed a concussive wave of pure sound. It hit me like a physical blow, rattling the air in my lungs and shaking the arena to its foundations. The barricade I was standing on splintered beneath me. I was thrown back into the crowd, who swarmed over me instantly.
Pushing my way free, ignoring the grabbing hands, I knew I couldn't fight the symptoms anymore. I had to go for the disease. The belt. It was the source of the sound, the light, the control. The crowd wouldn't break free until it was gone.
My objective was clear, the path anything but. I stopped trying to contain them. Now, I used them. I launched myself forward, my feet finding purchase on a broad shoulder here, a bald head there. I was a stone skipping across a turbulent river of people. They swiped at my legs, but I was too fast, a frantic dance of survival and desperation.
I swung from a dangling microphone cable, arcing high over their heads. "Hey, Disco!" I shouted, firing a web-line straight at his waist. "Your light show is over!"
He just laughed, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated with power. He didn't even move to dodge. Instead, he tapped another crystal on the belt. A high-frequency pulse shot out, intersecting with my web mid-air. The strand didn't just break; it disintegrated, turning to dust. He was shredding my webs with sound.
I fired another, a thicker glob this time. Same result. A third, a rapid-fire volley. All of them were atomized before they got within ten feet of him. He was a fortress, and his moat was pure sonic energy.
He was toying with me. Letting me get just close enough to hope.
I landed on a stack of amplifiers at the side of the stage, my ribs aching from the earlier blast. I needed a new angle. As I crouched, preparing to launch myself from the side, he turned his attention to me. Another bass-heavy wave erupted from the belt, not a wide blast but a focused beam. It slammed into the speaker tower I was on. The world dissolved into a screech of feedback and a fracture of strobing lights. The metal groaned and buckled, and I was thrown sideways, my head cracking against a steel support beam with enough force to make my vision swim in a sea of black spots.
Pain flared through my chest. At least two ribs were cracked. I lay there for a second, the roar of the crowd and the pounding music merging into a single, agonizing drone.
Then I heard her voice again, quiet, intimate, and amplified for the whole world to hear.
"I am here."
I pushed myself up, my vision clearing just in time to see the final act of my personal tragedy. Elaine had reached the stage. She stood before him, extending her hand, not like a fan seeking an autograph, but like a devotee seeking benediction. Hustler took it, his smug grin returning at full force. He lifted her hand to his lips.
Her eyes were glassy, fixed on his, and her voice, my Elaine's voice, echoed through the arena, a hollow, devout pronouncement.
"I belong to the Hustler…"
The sound wave hadn't hit me this hard. The impact with the steel beam was a love tap by comparison. Those five words… they bypassed my suit, my muscles, my bones, and detonated directly in my soul. Every doubt I ever had, every fear I'd pushed down, screamed in my head. You weren't there for her. You were too busy playing hero to see she was hurting. You pushed her away with your secrets, and he just walked into the space you left open. You failed her.
For a moment, I sagged against the ruined speakers, the will to fight draining out of me like blood from a wound. I had lost. He had won. He had taken the most important person in my life, and she had gone to him willingly.
But then, a spark. A tiny, defiant ember of rage in the cold ash of my despair. Willing? No. Not her. Not my Elaine. He had twisted her, broken her will, and re-written her heart. This wasn't a defeat. It was a desecration.
I gathered every last ounce of willpower, every scrap of strength my aching body possessed. I pushed off the wall, ignoring the shriek of protest from my ribs. There was no plan, no strategy, just a desperate, a final, all-or-nothing launch. I flew across the stage, a human missile aimed at one target: the glowing, crystalline heart of his power.
He saw me coming. He'd been waiting for this. The smugness on his face wasn't just confidence; it was certainty. As I closed the distance, my hand outstretched, ready to rip that cursed belt from his waist, he laid his free hand on the central crystal. Elaine stood beside him, unblinking, a statue at her master's side.
He unleashed the bassline shockwave at point-blank range.
It wasn't a sound. It was the end of sound. It was a physical wall of force that hit me with the power of a bomb. The world exploded. Lights shattered overhead, raining down like deadly confetti. Speakers blew out in showers of sparks and smoke. The very stage beneath my feet cracked. The force hurled me backward, end over end, my body a rag doll in a hurricane.
I crashed into the far wall of the stage with a sickening crunch. I felt more than heard the bones in my left arm snap. My head slammed against the brick, and the world went grey. My mask was torn across the side, the cool night air a shock against my exposed skin. I lay in a heap, limp and broken, every nerve screaming in a symphony of agony.
Vaguely, I heard the roar. It wasn't pained or panicked. It was ecstatic. Worshipping. They were cheering for him. For my defeat.
Hustler raised his arms, a god-king basking in the totality of his control, his victory absolute.
My vision tunneled, the edges blurring to black. The roaring faded to a distant hum. But one image remained, burned into my retinas, the final panel of my failure. Hustler, triumphant. And beside him, her hand held firmly in his, was Elaine.