177 Six Months Ago
177 Six Months Ago
The first thing that returned was the white.
An endless, devouring white.
I remembered standing in Continuity’s office when he lost control of his power as a burst of impossible light swallowing every corner of the room. One moment the world had color and weight; the next, I was trapped inside an identical office drained of everything. The walls were ivory-smooth, too perfect to be real, as if carved from blank paper. Space folded and twisted, crushing inward like a fist around me and Nick. I felt my bones snap. I felt my breath vanish. I felt myself die.
Or so I thought.
That day cracked my life open, steering me toward a destiny I never asked for.
Growing up, I only wanted to be like my father, a detective who could peel back lies and reveal truth from the smallest clues. I loved the work more than anything. But when I pulled, my mother tore that dream away. “Too dangerous for a child,” she said. So she shoved me into Watch, the kiddie cape program, the training ground for tomorrow’s heroes. It was the height of irony. I pushed through the ranks, made it to the front line with Leverage and Windbreaker, and became a face the city could trust.
For a long time, I thought that was who I was meant to be.
Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine I’d end up working with a man like Eclipse.
Over six months ago.
I woke to the sensation of cold water seeping through my clothes. My lungs burned, and when I gasped, damp air rushed in. I lay on a muddy riverbank, disoriented and shivering. Something pulled at my arm… No, someone.
It was Nick.
He clung to me with what little strength he had left.
I dragged him fully out of the water and flipped him onto his back. His body was a map of bruises, fractures, and torn muscle. His chest didn’t rise. His pulse was gone.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, kneeling over him. “You can’t…”
I pressed down on his chest, counted steady compressions, breathed for him, and refused to stop until a faint flutter finally twitched beneath my fingertips. His breath returned in a broken gasp, only to faint the next second.
“That was close…”
I exhaled shakily.
“Where is this place?”
My last memory had been the crushing pressure of Continuity’s collapsing space tearing everything apart. I should have been dead. Nick, too. But here I was, completely intact. No bruises, no fractures, not even soreness. Somehow, I had come out of that impossible space without a mark.
But Eclipse looked small and broken beneath my hands.
I stared at him, stunned by how fragile he appeared.
My claws slid out on instinct with razor-sharp tiger talons curling from my fingers. One thrust to the throat would end everything. My lost career. The shattered mask of Watch. The tragedy that ended the life I built. All the pain tied to his name. It would all go silent.
He was the cause of everything.
Yet… if it weren’t for him, Sunstrider’s crimes would never have been uncovered. The golden hero who had fooled us all would still be carving up innocents under the wing of Crow.
I stood at the edge of that choice, claws trembling.
“Planning to do something rash?”
The voice came from behind me.
I turned sharply, claws raised, and froze.
A man in a lab coat stood a few paces away, calm and strangely familiar, as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.
I withdrew my claws at once, hoping he hadn’t noticed the way they slid out when I thought no one was watching. I wasn’t in my cape persona, and the last thing I needed was some stranger matching me to Tigress. The man in the lab coat stood a few steps away, short and wiry, with messy white hair sticking in every direction.
“The name’s Albert,” he said with a cheerful tone completely mismatched to the situation. “But you can call me Dr. Time. Or just ‘doctor,’ if that’s the cup of your tea.”
My pulse spiked. His face clicked into an old memory, something I’d skimmed in a classified file while researching cases likened to Eclipse. Rumors said Dr. Time once possessed the same type of intangibility Eclipse had. If so, I was facing someone who could reach inside my chest and pull something out.
“Calm down,” he said as if sensing the tension rolling off me. “I’m not here to harm you. I only want to help.”
“Stay where you are,” I warned, shifting my stance a little to block Nick’s unconscious body behind me.
“Harmless,” he insisted. “Promise. I only have Researcher ratings right now, you know?”
I scoffed. “You’re the same lunatic who phased hearts out of people. Hardly harmless.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “That was a long time ago. Ancient history. Besides, most of the people I extracted hearts from are still alive.”
My stomach tightened. Still alive. I remembered the SRC report about one such heart recovered as part of a deal. It hadn’t decayed. It had functioned, alone. The analysis labeled it a hybrid expression of intangibility and teleportation, the sort of power no sane person would use to surgically remove organs from living clients as collateral for business deals.
Dr. Time stepped closer to the riverbank, eyes flicking to Nick. “I know what happened,” he said quietly. “If you want answers, I can give them. But you’ll need to let me help you first.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why would someone like you help us?”
He pointed directly at Nick. “Because Eclipse can’t die yet. I need him alive.”
I froze. “And what if I don’t care?”
He gave me a flat look. “Then postpone any ideas of killing him, at least until he’s useful. You were thinking about it, weren’t you?”
Heat crept up my neck. I hated that he was right. I hated that he could read it off me like I was an open book.
He continued, “Look. You don’t trust me, and you shouldn’t. But he’s dying, and you’re in no state to drag him anywhere. So let me help, or watch him fade.”
I swallowed. I didn’t trust him, and not by a mile. Every instinct screamed danger. But I could also tell he wasn’t lying. If anything, he sounded annoyed that Nick was dying at an inconvenient time.
“Fine,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Help him. But if you do anything that even hints at hurting him, I will kill you.”
“Fair,” he said with a shrug, as if this were a regular negotiation between friends.
Then he unsheathed a dagger from his coat pocket.
“Trust me,” Dr. Time said. “I can help.”
“With a dagger?” I asked, staring at the blade like it was some kind of sick joke.
Dr. Time brightened, as if pleased by the question. “A special dagger,” he said. “The person stabbed with it is healed through stimulated regeneration. Simple concept, complicated work.”
Before I could argue, he pulled out a second dagger, sliced a line across his own palm, and held up the bleeding hand. “Observe.”
He drove the special dagger straight into the wound. The flesh rippled. The blood stopped. The skin knitted back together until not even a scar remained. He sheathed the normal blade as if this display were no more interesting than tying his shoes.
I stared, speechless. I had never seen technology or a power operate like that.
“Fine,” I said at last, stepping aside. “Help Nick.”
I kept my distance, far enough that he’d have trouble lunging at me, but close enough that I could strike if he tried anything. Dr. Time crouched next to Nick, pressing along his ribs, legs, and spine as if memorizing every break and bruise through touch alone.
“All right,” he said calmly. “I’ll begin.”
He sliced gently along bruises, letting the dagger’s glow soak into the tissue. Each cut sealed itself moments later. Then he glanced back at me. “Deep one coming up. Try not to scream.”
I didn’t scream, but I flinched every time the blade plunged into Nick with a wide, quick motion meant to reach shattered bone. My claws pricked against my palms each time.
“What is that dagger?” I asked. “How can it heal like that?”
“Hybrid power,” he answered while working. “Regeneration mixed with biokinesis. Marvelous combination.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “Items don’t have powers. Tech can imitate things, but not this. Not… that level.” As someone who could smell powers, I knew what I saw.
He shrugged lightly. “They’re forged from the blood, bone, and organs of capes. Of course they have powers.”
A chill swept through me from head to toe.
I’d read about bioengineering, the high-end, borderline-illegal kind, but nothing in those reports came close to this. Watching him stab and heal Nick felt unreal, more like magic than science. As he worked, I questioned him in cautious bursts, and he answered with rambling explanations about impossible things. None of it seemed believable, not until he casually mentioned that this wasn’t even our world anymore.
Eventually, he wiped the blade clean and sat back. “Done. He’s alive, but in a coma. He needs proper rest. He’ll wake up in time, but not today.”
“We have friends,” I said, forcing calm into my voice. “People who can help. We don’t need—”
Before I finished, he unsheathed another dagger and slashed downward at empty air. A tear opened in space, revealing rolling grasslands under a bright sky, and beyond them, a thriving village.
Dr. Time slipped his arms under Nick and lifted him effortlessly. For someone so small, so frail-looking, he carried Nick like he weighed nothing.
“Follow me closely,” he said as he stepped through the opening.
My breath caught. The portal wavered like a sheet of light.
I followed him through.
I adapted faster than I thought I would. The world Dr. Time dragged us into was nothing like home. It was quiet, dim, and stuck in an era that reminded me of medieval reenactments with real hunger and real danger. Yet, after a couple of days, the strangeness sank into familiarity.
Even without psychic senses, my beast instincts were sharp enough to sense when someone lied, and the doctor rarely did. He hid details, yes, but whenever he spoke about the suppressed power ceiling of this world or the nature of the multiverse, the tone was steady and earnest. He told me only what he believed I needed to know, which was both reassuring and infuriating.
My days settled into a routine. I cleaned Nick’s body, kept watched over him, and helped Dr. Time’s villagers with chores. When I had spare hours, I relearned the bow. Dad had taught me to hunt with one long before I pulled, and even later, archery contests were part of my teenage life. Muscle memory returned quickly. The draw, the breath, and the point of release. My old rhythm resurfaced with ease.
Dr. Time had promised to help us return home, but it came with a condition: kill a certain someone. As compensation, he said the reward would be generous. Suspiciously generous.
After dragging a freshly killed boar to the village and handing it to the butcher, I made my way to his “lab”—a cleaned-out stone building set at the forest’s edge, filled with tools and odd instruments that didn’t match the world’s backward level of tech. He was hunched over a workbench when I stepped inside.
He didn’t turn. “What do you want, Amelia?”
“I want you to make me stronger,” I said without hesitation. “Strong enough to matter when we go back.”
He looked up at me slowly, eyes flicking with recognition, as if he’d been waiting for those words. “Finally,” he said. “I wondered how long you’d take, before you asked me something like this. I thought you’d never ask.”
I crossed my arms. “So you can do it?”
“Oh yes,” he said with a small grin. “Very much so. I can bring your powers closer to the source. With enough time, you could even surpass Light.” He paused. “But I want something in exchange.”
Of course, he knew Light. I told him, after all. I wasn’t surprised. Over the past few days, I had learned how he operated. He didn’t give favors. Ever.
“What’s the request?” I asked, prepared for something strange, but not the kind of strange he delivered.
He leaned forward, lowering his voice until I felt the breath of his words against my ear. “Help Eclipse kill himself.”
I pulled back slowly, my heartbeat thumping loud in my chest. Of all the possibilities I had imagined from assassinating some tyrant, hunting a monster, or sabotaging a group, this was not one of them. I had wrestled for years with the idea of killing Nick myself, and I had never gone through with it. Hypocrisy? Cowardice? Some mixture of both. But help him kill himself?
“What does that even mean?” I whispered. “Why would he want—why would you want—”
Dr. Time merely gave a small shrug. “Think over it.”
In the end, I accepted his offer. I still wasn’t sure whether it was desperation, trust, or sheer recklessness that made me nod, but when Dr. Time slid the needle into my vein, I didn’t pull away. The liquid burned cold, like ice water spiked with electricity. He watched the injection with a surgeon’s calm and explained it was a Chimera power-mutate he had cultivated for years. It was potent, volatile, and capable of granting a power that could theoretically rival the strongest godlike beings in the multiverse if the host survived the development process.
“It’s a power that grows when you survive things that should kill you,” he said. “You know the saying: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. In this case, quite literally.”
Six long months followed. Every few weeks he pumped more of the shimmering liquid into my body. He took measurements, samples, and notes. He monitored every reaction, every shift in muscle density, every flicker of instinct. Yet through all of it, I didn’t feel different. No rush of energy. No new reflexes. Nothing. Dr. Time only assured me that its effects would fully manifest once we left his world.
And he was right. The moment we crossed over, the moment breathed in the oxygen of home again, something inside me broke open and wings tore out of my back in a single violent surge. The Chimera had awakened.
Now, in the present, all that felt like a distant, surreal memory.
We sat under a fancy umbrella outside a Markend café, enjoying the rare moment of peace. I wore a crop top and jeans, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon while sipping a cold smoothie. Nick sat across from me, fiddling with a digital camera he claimed he “just bought.” A lie. The thing looked like it had been dropped, kicked, and drowned at least twice.
He kept snapping pictures of pedestrians, the street, the skyline, and anything that caught his attention. Markend had its pockets of beauty, and he was trying to capture them. Of course, he could’ve just been taking measure of the place where we’d do our next operation, but I hadn’t heard anything about robbing the local bank.
As fearsome as Nick was, he was also human.
I leaned back. “What’s with the camera? New hobby?”
He didn’t look up. “Something to look back on in the future.”
My heart tightened. The future. I had wanted to tell him everything ever since the day we returned from the doctor’s personal request and the truth of what Dr. Time wanted from him. If he used his possession, he’d definitely know. Should I let him? In the end, I kept my silence. The doctor had warned me: the choice was mine, but ignoring it meant I’d reap what I sowed.
Nick noticed the shift in my expression. “Problem?” He finally looked up, wearing clothes that actually made him look put-together for once.
“What do you mean by the future?” I asked quietly. “Didn’t you promise me you’d turn yourself in?”
He deflated like air leaking out of a balloon. “Even prison is still a future.” He gave me a small, gentle smile. “Would you visit me?”
That mischievous glint in his eyes was unmistakable. He was guilt-tripping me. And he was good at it.
“That’s enough out of you,” I grumbled as I grabbed his smoothie, shoved it against his mouth, and forced the straw between his lips.
He sputtered but drank.
“Hold your own drink,” I said. “My hand’s getting numb.”
He took the glass, still smiling.
I looked away and murmured, almost too softly, “I might break you out if they don’t give you a pardon after saving the world or something.”
Nick leaned in. “What’s that?”
I punched him in the shoulder.
He laughed.