I stood in the doorway of the guest suite, watching Kimiko sleep. She was curled on her side, one hand tucked under her pillow. The moonlight filtered through the sheer curtains, casting a pale glow over her face. She looked peaceful, a stark contrast to the violence that defined her waking life.
I stepped back, allowing the heavy door to click shut with a sound no louder than a heartbeat.
I walked quietly down the hall to my office. The screens of my command center were already active, bathing the room in a cool blue glow. On the main monitor, two profiles were pulled up, the result of three hours of digital hunting earlier that evening.
"Two targets," I murmured, my eyes scanning the live data streams I had hijacked. "Mesmer and Splinter."
[Mesmer? The washed-up child actor?] the System's voice buzzed in my head. [I thought we were hunting big game. He's basically in a walking mid life crisis.]
"He's a loose end," I thought back, typing a command to sync the GPS data to my phone. "In the original timeline, he betrays The Boys to Homelander for a chance at redemption. He's a rat. And rats carry diseases."
I tapped the second profile. "Splinter. A bi-product of the Sage Grove experiments who slipped through the cracks years ago. He's a narcissist with a cloning ability."
[Ah, I see. You want the loot. Fair enough. Telepathy and Cloning. That's a solid utility build.]
I reached the garage. Instead of the sedan, I chose a nondescript black motorcycle. It was easier to weave through traffic, and easier to ditch if things went sideways. I pulled on my helmet, the black visor sliding down to mask my face.
My tracking algorithm had locked them down. Mesmer was stagnant in Queens. Splinter was active in Chelsea.
"Let's go."
Mesmer's apartment building was a depressing block of brick in a neighborhood that smelled of old garbage and broken dreams. I parked the bike two blocks away and approached on foot, melting into the shadows of the alleyway.
I checked my phone. The GPS signal from Mesmer's phone was stationary. Third floor, apartment 3B.
I reached the fire escape. In a blink, I was the size of a large beetle. The rusted metal of the fire escape ladder became a towering structure of iron. I jumped, my Tier-1 Strength propelling my tiny body upward in a blur. I kicked off the wall of the first landing, then the second, my movements were light. I finally landed on the third-floor balcony with a soft tink.
I scurried under the gap in the window frame.
The apartment was a shrine to a dead career. Posters of "The Mesmerizer" covered the walls, a smiling young boy who had the world at his fingertips. The man sitting on the stained beige recliner bore little resemblance to that boy. Mesmer was balding, overweight, and currently weeping softly into a glass of amber liquid as the TV blared the canned laughter of a sitcom from the nineties.
I moved across the carpet, a tiny predator navigating a forest of synthetic fibers.
[Target Scanned: Mesmer. Tier 4. Telepathy.]
I reached the leg of the recliner. The fabric was rough, providing easy handholds. I moved to the back of his neck. The skin there was pale and sweaty.
"No ice tonight," I thought. "Vought is looking for a Cryokinetic. Let's give them something else to worry about."
I punched.
It was a normal punch that obliterated his spine, instantly severing the cord and pulping the brain stem.
Mesmer went silent as his body convulsed in a violent spasm before going completely limp. The glass slipped from his fingers and fell to the carpet with a dull thud.
His head lolled forward at an unnatural angle. The TV continued to play.
[Supe Neutralized: Mesmer (Tier 4). Power: Telepathy. Choose Option: Retain or Convert?]
"Retain," I commanded silently.
[Power 'Telepathy (Tier 4)' successfully integrated.]
The sensation was immediate. It felt like walking into a crowded room after wearing earplugs for a year.
I jumped down from the corpse, landed on the carpet, and scurried back to the window. I slipped out into the night air, leaving the apartment exactly as I had found it.
———-
The club in Chelsea was a neon lit temple of excess. The bass from the music thumped against my chest even from the street. My intel placed Splinter here, using a credit card under an alias I had flagged hours ago.
I shrank down in the shadows of a dumpster in the alley, becoming a speck of dust in the wind. I slipped through the crack under the heavy steel service door.
The interior was a chaotic assault on the senses. Strobe lights flashed, bodies writhed on the dance floor. I navigated the club, sticking to the walls and the ceiling pipes to avoid being trampled by the giants dancing below. I found the VIP corridor, guarded by two massive bouncers. I crawled right over the shoe of the one on the left and slipped under the velvet rope.
I checked the doors. Room 4. This was it.
I found a vent near the ceiling and squeezed through the grate. I looked down. The room was dimly lit by red mood lighting. In the center, on a large leather couch, was a scene of pure narcissism.
There was one blonde woman. She was clearly exhausted. And all around her were five identical men. Splinter had cloned himself four times. They were all engaged in a hedonistic frenzy with that blonde.
[Target Scanned: Splinter. Tier 4. Cloning.]
[Okay, yeah. That's gross,] the System noted.
"Focus," I replied.
I scanned the group. Four of the Splinters were sweating profusely, their movements frantic. One looked smug and relatively fresh, sitting back slightly and holding a bottle of champagne.
That was the original. The clones did the work and the original took the glory.
I reached out into the girl's consciousness. It was a frantic buzz of noise. She was tired, drugged, and wanting it to be over.
I pushed a single thought into her mind.
'Sleep.'
Below me, the girl's eyes fluttered. Her head lolled back against the leather cushion and her body went limp.
"Whoa," one of the Splinter clones said, pulling back. "Is she out cold?"
The original Splinter laughed. He took a swig from the bottle. "Guess she couldn't handle the firepower, boys. Too much man for one girl."
He high fived the clone nearest to him. "Damn straight. We wore her out. My cardio is insane."
"Firepower," I repeated in my head. "Let's test that."
I dropped from the vent and fell through the air, a tiny projectile. I aimed for the original. He was leaning back, the bottle to his lips, his throat exposed.
I landed on his collarbone. He didn't even have time to flinch. I drove my fist into the side of his neck.
The impact was like a bullet. I punched a hole straight through his jugular and into his windpipe. Blood erupted in a high-pressure spray, coating the clone sitting next to him.
The original Splinter dropped the bottle. He grabbed his neck, making a gurgling sound. His eyes bulged.
As the original's brain began to panic, the clones reacted instantly. They screamed in unison, clutching their own necks as if they could feel the phantom pain.
"What the—" one clone shouted, then flickered.
As the life drained from the original Splinter, the clones began to destabilize. Their skin turned gray, then translucent. The biokinetic energy that sustained them was snapping back to the source.
One by one, they collapsed into piles of gray sludge that evaporated into steam.
The original Splinter fell off the couch, thrashing on the floor, his blood pooling on the expensive rug. He looked around wildly, trying to see his attacker, but there was nothing there. Just an empty room and a sleeping girl.
I watched him die from the top of the couch. It took less than a minute. When his heart finally stopped, the last wisp of steam from the final clone vanished.
[Supe Neutralized: Splinter (Tier 4). Power: Cloning. Choose Option: Retain or Convert?]
"Retain."
[Power 'Cloning (Tier 4)' successfully integrated.]
I felt a strange sensation of multiplicity in my mind, a feeling that I could be in more than one place at once.
"Clean up."
I scurried down to the floor. I avoided the blood. I checked the girl. She was deep in a telepathically induced slumber. She would wake up with a headache and a memory of passing out from exhaustion. She would find a dead body and call the police. The narrative would be simple. A drug-fueled heart attack or an aneurysm during sex. Or, if the autopsy found the hole in his neck, a freak accident.
I made my way to the door. I slipped underneath it, out into the thumping corridor, and navigated the maze of feet back to the exit.
The ride back to the penthouse was faster. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the cold satisfaction of a job well done.
I parked the bike in the garage and took the elevator up. The penthouse was quiet. I checked the time. 4:00 AM. Kimiko was still asleep.
I went to my office and sat down, peeling off the helmet. I could feel the new powers sitting in my mind like loaded weapons.
Telepathy. Cloning.
"Graves is going to lose his mind," I said softly, a smile touching my lips. "He's looking for an unregisted Cryokinetic. Now he has a tiny assassin who kills with invisible bullets."