It was 4:30 p.m.
But time had no meaning now.
"Who are the scientists here?"
Callum's voice cracked through the air like a bullet tearing cloth. Sharp. Authoritative. No doubt. No hesitation.
Four shapes stepped forward.
The Helios Unit.
They moved in eerie synchrony, clad in ghost-white biosuits veined with clinical blue. Helmets mirrored the destruction behind them faceless, soulless. Their gloved hands flexed with surgical tension. At their waists blinked soft-blue comms silent heartbeats carved in chrome and silicon.
They looked like surgeons at the edge of the apocalypse.
And before them, two prisoners knelt.
Kai. Raven.
Faces streaked with soot and blood. Hands bound. Knees cracked against shattered concrete. Yet in their stillness defiance. Quiet fire.
Two of the Helios scientists approached.
From a chest holster, one retrieved a device long, silver, and disturbingly elegant.
The Veyron Needle.
A neural-lattice diagnostic probe. Illegal tech. Designed to detect anomalies in a person's bioelectric field. Reserved for Class-E threats. Creatures, not citizens.
The tip pulsed faintly violet light, like a dying nova.
The scientist knelt. Fingers under Raven's jaw.
A twitch. A breath.
The Veyron slid between her lips.
Whir.
The air trembled. The sound vibrated in the bones. A pulse subtle at first.
Then surge.
Raven's back arched like a drawn bow. Her spine snapped taut. Her mouth opened but no scream came.
Her eyes blazed.
Not fear.
Resistance. Power. Rage.
The Veyron shook violently in the scientist's hand. Light spiderwebbed down its length, veins of raw energy crawling across the chrome.
The Helios team froze.
Eyes locked.
No words. Only realization.
Then they turned to Kai.
Still as stone.
But that stillness had weight the pressure of a storm before the break.
The Veyron was inserted.
What followed wasn't detection.
It was detonation.
Light erupted.
Not glow. Not flicker. Not flash.
Explosion.
A sun born in ruin.
The Helios agents never screamed.
They didn't have time.
Their suits peeled away. Flesh scorched to vapor. Four shadows erased from existence.
Officers were flung like shrapnel thrown against walls, through windows. Screams vanished into wind. Storefronts buckled. Cars flipped. Streetlamps bowed. Power lines snapped.
The very air howled.
Then silence.
The kind that presses on your ribs. That hums in your teeth. That lingers after something sacred breaks.
Smoke drifted skyward like mourning spirits.
Buildings leaned. Glass whispered across the asphalt.
And at the heart of the crater
They stood.
Barely.
Raven, shaking. Eyes wide, pupils like pinpricks.
Kai, chest rising like a thunder engine. Lightning flickered behind his eyes.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The city had just seen gods rise from dust.
The world watched.
New York. U.N. War-Room.
Silence. Not even breathing.
A translator dropped his headset.
The Norwegian ambassador clutched a rosary.
"God forgive us."
Tokyo.
A spoon hit a bowl. Milk spread across tatami.
"He looks like… a kami," the girl whispered. "From the old stories."
Berlin. A pub.
Pints mid-air. Frozen.
"Is he an animal ?"
"No, mate."
"he is an animal with a human face."
Westbridge.
Lina Valen, hand to her mouth. Her son's face on-screen, standing in the wreckage.
"Kai…"
"My baby…"
Jonas sat beside her, stunned.
"He didn't survive it," he whispered. "He is it."
Comic books. Crushed soda cans. Sunglasses indoors because he's Mike.
Finger pointed at the screen like it owed him money.
"Did my man just go fighting while face-down in a dirt nap?! Who knows "
Sips. Beat.
"Nah. You don't get to skip algebra and unlock a damn quantum event. That's not how science or parenting works."
Kai's eyes burned with stormfire.
He rose barely upright, lightning whispering down his spine.
He looked at Callum.
Voice low. A whisper honed to a blade.
"You're not human."
Callum's stare never broke.
Kai stepped forward.
Glass crunched beneath his feet.
"You watched them die."
Another step.
"Your own team. You let them burn."
Smoke curled around Callum's cigarette.
"I don't see it that way."
"YOU MURDERED THEM!"
Kai launched fist aglow, rage unbound.
Air cracked as he struck.
But Callum caught it. Effortless.
Time held its breath.
Then
BOOM.
A left fist to the gut.
CRACK.
Kai flew.
Blood trailing.
He tore through a 40th-floor window.
INSIDE
Paper floated like ghosts. Phones rang. Screams.
"What the hell just crashed into the office?!"
Maya peeked over her cubicle, cobalt hair wild.
"Is that… a guy?"
"Nope," Jared muttered. "That's a corpse."
Alina crouched beside Kai.
"He's alive. Barely."
Doug fumbled with the office phone backward.
"Security!"
Maya:
"He flew through the window, Doug. Security's not tasering Thor."
Kai stirred.
A sound low. Wrong. Not human.
His eyes opened. Lightning danced inside.
Jared:
"Oh hell no. This is Endgame meets The Exorcist. I'm out."
Kai collapsed. Blood pooling.
Alina, whispering:
"Who did this?"
DING.
The elevator opened.
Callum.
Smoke trailing from his mouth. Hands in pockets. Calm as death.
He walked through the ruin.
Grabbed Kai by the collar
THREW HIM AGAIN.
More glass.
Another window.
More screams.
He crashed into the next building.
"Why is he doing this?!"
No answer.
Callum sprinted.
Leapt across the gap. Arms raised.
Final strike.
But
BOOM.
A red shirt. A fist like thunder.
Callum slammed into the marble, nose bleeding.
He rolled, stunned.
Looked up.
A figure stood.
Red shirt. Skull emblem. Black jeans. Grey hair. Violet eyes behind a matte-black mask.
And a voice like iron torn from the earth:
"Touch him again
and you die.