Chapter 256. The Shadow of the Vault
The temptation had been too much for them. While the rest of the world mourned or cleaned the blood from the pavement, these small-time crooks had scavenged the tools of gods from the gutter. They had crept through the ruins of New York under the cover of a moonless sky, thinking they could strip the city's bones before the authorities noticed.
They were wrong. The NYPD had descended like a hammer, their sirens muted but their presence overwhelming. Blue and red lights flickered against the soot-stained windows of the bank, a silent countdown to a siege.
The lookout, a wiry man with a nervous twitch, clutched his Chitauri rifle so hard his knuckles were white. He scrambled back toward the vault where his crew was working, his boots clicking loudly on the marble floor.
«Rod! Boss! It's a goddamn circus out there!» he shouted, his voice cracking with a fear that hadn't been there ten minutes ago. «The cops are everywhere! You said they'd be too busy hauling alien trash to notice us!»
Rod, a mountain of a man with a shaven head and a yellow tank top that stretched over his tattooed muscles, didn't look up from the bags of cash. He was the one who had found the cache of alien rifles near the ruins of Grand Central. He had seen what those guns could do to a police cruiser, and it had gone to his head. He thought he was a king now.
«Shut your trap!» Rod growled, finally standing up and slinging a heavy bag over his shoulder. He grabbed his own rifle, the weapon humming with a low, sinister vibration. «I don't care if the whole precinct is out there. These guns cut through steel like butter. Those cops make thirty grand a year; they ain't gonna die for a bank's insurance money. We walk out, we aim, they run. Simple.»
«Yeah, simple...» the lookout muttered, but his eyes drifted toward the dark corner of the lobby. «Wait... Boss? Is that you?»
The crew froze. From the deep shadows of the corner, a figure detached itself from the darkness. As the man stepped into the dim light of the security lamps, the air in the room seemed to grow cold.
It was Rod. Or rather, a perfect, mirror-image twin of Rod, wearing the same yellow tank top, the same tattoos, and the same mocking sneer.
«What in the hell...?» one of the robbers gasped, his jaw dropping. He swung his alien rifle toward the newcomer.
«It's a trick! Kill him! Kill that freak!» the real Rod roared, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Panic, cold and sharp, replaced his bravado. He didn't stop to think; he just leveled his weapon and squeezed the trigger.
Vwoom!
A bolt of searing blue-white plasma tore through the air. The other robbers followed suit, unleashing a barrage of alien energy that illuminated the bank lobby in a strobe light of destruction.
But the double didn't die. He didn't even slow down. With a grace that was entirely un-human, he blurred through the air, weaving between the bolts of energy as they slammed into the walls behind him, sending showers of sparks and pulverized marble into the air.
Outside, the police officers flinched at the sound of the explosions. «They're tearing each other apart in there,» a sergeant whispered, signaling the SWAT team to move into position.
Inside, the fake Rod was a ghost. He closed the distance in heartbeats. The robbers scrambled to reload or aim, but it was too late. The double didn't punch them. He didn't shoot them. He simply reached out with a calm, deliberate hand and brushed the barrels of their weapons.
The effect was instantaneous and terrifying.
As his fingers touched the alien alloy, the sleek, high-tech rifles didn't explode—they dissolved. The metal turned to a fine, grey dust, slipping through the robbers' fingers like hourglass sand. Within seconds, the «god-tier» weapons they had banked their lives on were nothing more than piles of grit on the floor.
«My gun! What did you do to my gun?!» Rod screamed, staring at his empty, trembling hands.
The double offered one last, chilling smile, then turned and walked back into the shadows. He didn't look back as he melted into the darkness of the vault's rear passage.
Before the criminals could even process the impossibility of what they'd seen, the world turned white.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
A series of flashbangs detonated in quick succession, the roar of the blast stealing their hearing and the light searing their retinas. The SWAT team swarmed in, boots thudding on the tile, their tactical lights cutting through the smoke.
The robbers were on the floor, weeping and clutching their ears, offering no resistance. They were cuffed and dragged away, leaving behind a scene that baffled the forensic teams for weeks: a vault full of money, a few scorched walls, and several neat little piles of mysterious, extraterrestrial sand.
A block away, in the mouth of a damp, narrow alley, the figure of «Rod» stepped out of the shadows. He paused for a moment, his form shimmering and shifting like a heat haze, before vanishing into the night.
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