Unheroic Life of a Certain Cape

204 Hospital Terror [Two-D]

The left-side wall finally gave way with a grinding crack, chunks of stone tearing loose under sustained force. The pressure changed instantly, heavier, more deliberate, and I knew the fodder phase was over.

“Brute,” I said, tightening my grip on the mounted gun. “Ready yourselves!”

A massive figure pushed through the dust, muscle layered under some kind of shimmering barrier. I opened fire immediately, the machine gun hammering rounds into the shield. Sparks and ripples spread across the surface, but it held.

“Shielded,” I snapped. “Focus fire isn’t—”

Vibe’s hand lifted slightly.

The brute’s head detonated mid-step, sound compressing inward before bursting outward. The body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the barrier flickering out of existence and revealing another man behind him, thinner, panicked, already trying to raise his own defense.

Elena’s voice cut cleanly through my head.

“Cover your eyes. Now.”

“Eyes!” I barked aloud.

Halo didn’t wait. Light erupted, searing and absolute, flooding the corridor. Even with my eyes shut, it burned white behind my eyelids. When I opened them again, the second man was already retreating, his barrier wobbling as he stumbled backward.

Terra moved before he could escape. A wall surged up behind him, rough and unyielding. He slapped his hands against it, breathing fast, trapped.

“Terra,” I said quietly.

Another wall rose from the opposite side.

The stone closed in, slow and merciless, until there was a wet crunch and nothing left between the slabs.

I exhaled and scanned the counters flickering in my vision.

[Urbanite – 0]

[Candyland – 74]

[Foresthome – 36]

That Foresthome number kept climbing.

Outside this place, I had been a thief long before I was an executive here. I had learned early, learned fast, and built a reputation that made people nervous just hearing my name. That kind of momentum came with arrogance, and arrogance eventually came with consequences. Lockworld had a way of grinding that out of you.

That was why I didn’t relax now.

Urbanite capes fell easily because of what they were. Gameboy’s so-called miracle, power handed out like loot, diluted and shallow. People who never Pulled, never suffered for their abilities, never learned the instincts that came with surviving a first real fight. Secondary powers lacked depth, and without depth, there was no mastery.

The elevator chimed again.

“Incoming,” Halo said, already raising her weapon.

The doors opened and a man stepped out carrying a bazooka. He fired without hesitation.

“Terra!” I shouted.

A wall slammed up just in time. The explosion shattered stone and sent debris flying, fragments cutting across the lobby. I felt grit rake my cheek as I ducked.

Elena’s voice sharpened in my mind.

“Something dangerous. Fast.”

Vibe tilted her head, listening past the chaos.

“Speedster,” she said. “And aerokinetic. Together.”

Vibe shoved Elena aside a heartbeat before a man in dark robes appeared where she had been, sword already swinging. The blade cut empty air.

Halo scoffed. “God, that’s edgy.”

She fired a concentrated burst of light straight into his eyes. He screamed, but the aerokinetic reacted instantly, unleashing a gale that tore through the lobby. We were lifted off our feet, slammed back hard.

Terra staggered, breathing heavy. Moving that much earth that fast always took its toll.

I flattened myself, literally.

My body slipped into two dimensions, peeling away from depth and thickness, sliding along the floor like a shadow torn loose. I reappeared beneath the speedster and reached out, tapping his foot.

His leg collapsed into a flat plane, pinned to the ground as if reality itself had pressed him there.

“What the—” he started.

Halo laughed and emptied her Uzi into him, the recoil rattling through the air. The aerokinetic turned to run. Behind Halo, the bazooka man had reloaded.

The weapon exploded in his hands, unsure why did that happen.

I snapped back into three dimensions and swung the mounted gun toward the retreating aerokinetic, cutting him down in a spray of sparks and blood. Before the echo faded, the right-side wall burst open.

Vibe didn’t say a word. The man’s head simply ceased to exist, sound folding and crushing it from within as she sued her powers in full blast.

Silence followed. For a long moment, nothing moved. I straightened, shoulders tight, and finally allowed myself a breath.

“Good work,” I said.

It had been good work, at least on the surface. The silence after the last kill felt earned, heavy with spent adrenaline. Still, my eyes kept drifting back to the system overlay, and the numbers made my jaw tighten.

[Urbanite – 0]

[Candyland – 5]

[Foresthome – 1]

Those were the survivors. That alone was bad enough, but the kill count beneath it was worse.

[Urbanite – 0]

[Candyland – 85]

[Foresthome – 47]

I exhaled slowly, keeping my voice steady.

“This isn’t over,” I said. “Not even close.”

Almost fifty kills. One cape. I tried to imagine the kind of power, control, or brutality required to rack that up alone, and nothing I knew from Foresthome fit cleanly. Perry was dangerous, yes, but this felt different, wrong in a way I couldn’t quite articulate.

Vibe shifted suddenly, backing away from us with her hands half-raised.

“Don’t come near me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please. I don’t think I’m… I don’t think I’m right.”

Halo snorted, trying to cut the tension.

“Okay, that’s not funny.”

“Elena,” I said sharply. “What is happening?”

Vibe swallowed hard, eyes darting as if the air itself were closing in on her. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered. “Something happened when I was separated. I can feel it. It’s loud. It’s too loud.”

Terra frowned, stepping closer despite herself.

“What’s the problem, Vibe? Talk to us.”

Vibe’s face crumpled. She clutched her head and screamed, the sound raw and panicked.

“It hurts!” she cried. “It won’t stop. It’s so noisy!”

Halo’s bravado vanished. “What’s happening to her?”

Elena’s voice came fast and strained. “She’s using her acoustokinesis on herself. I don’t know why, but it’s feeding back. If this continues, she could kill herself.”

Before I could reach her, Vibe went silent. She collapsed bonelessly to the floor, eyes rolling back as her body went limp.

I was already kneeling, fingers at her neck.

“She’s alive,” I said after a beat. “Pulse is steady.”

Terra looked between us, unsettled. “Then what the hell was that?”

Halo shook her head. “Psychic interference. Mind control. It has to be.”

“I don’t know,” Elena said, frustration bleeding through her mental tone. “I didn’t feel any tampering. No hooks. No foreign presence.”

The lights flickered.

A scream echoed through the lobby, sharp and close.

“Formation Z!” I barked. “Back to back. Now!”

We snapped into position just as the lights surged back on.

Halo was gone.

“—Halo?” Terra called, panic creeping into her voice. “This isn’t funny!”

Elena sucked in a breath. “Two-D. Vibe’s body is gone too.”

My teeth ground together as the implications slammed into place. One moment they were there, the next erased, clean and silent. Whatever was hunting us didn’t need spectacle.

“I’ve never heard of a Foresthome cape like this,” I said. “When I saw the kill count, I thought it had to be Perry. His skillset fits. His mind fits.”

I shook my head slowly.

“But this?” I continued. “This isn’t him.”

The lights blinked again, slower this time, like a taunt.

“Elena,” I said quietly, “push your awareness. Everything you’ve got.”

“I already am,” she replied, voice taut with effort. “I started the moment Vibe acted strange. There’s nothing. No distortion. No presence. It’s like… it isn’t there at all.”

I tapped the side of the tripod-mounted machine gun, and the weapon flattened itself instantly, collapsing into a two-dimensional sticker that peeled free from reality. I folded it once and slipped it back inside my jacket, the fabric barely bulging. In its place, I drew another sticker and pressed it against my palm, letting it bloom outward into the solid weight of a shotgun.

Elena broke the silence first. “This is suicide,” she said flatly. “Whatever we’re facing isn’t something we can brute-force. We should retreat.”

Terra swallowed hard, her usual composure cracking. “I don’t want to die,” she muttered. “Not here. Not like this.”

I tightened my grip on the shotgun and shook my head. “I’ll protect you,” I said. “That’s not negotiable.”

Elena turned toward me, eyes sharp despite the fear pressing in around us. “We’re fighting blind, Two-D. That’s the problem,” she said. “Survival has to be the priority now, not pride or objectives.”

She hesitated, then continued more quietly. “You could survive this. With your power, you could escape Urbanite entirely if you had to. If it comes down to it, you have to leave.”

Her words stung because they were rational, and Elena had always been the rational one. That was why her saying this carried weight, even when I hated every syllable.

“We learn what we can,” she went on. “We observe. We adapt. And if there’s no other choice… you leave us behind.”

Terra cursed under her breath, anger and fear tangling together. “I hate that plan,” she snapped. “But… yeah. It’s probably our best shot.” She looked straight at me then, jaw tight. “If it goes bad, promise me you’ll avenge us.”

I didn’t answer right away. These weren’t just teammates. They were my sisters, forged through thefts, escapes, and nights where survival depended on trust. The idea of walking away from them felt worse than dying.

Before I could speak, a voice slid smoothly into my head.

“There’s no need for all this tension,” it said. “The others are still alive.”

I stiffened, though I wasn’t surprised. Telepathy had a particular texture, and this one was clean, confident, and invasive.

Elena reacted instantly. “Don’t listen,” she said aloud. “Psychics lie. That’s rule one.”

The voice chuckled, unfazed. “I’m not lying,” it replied. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

Suddenly, the air felt crowded. Not physically, but mentally. My thoughts brushed against others, unfamiliar yet painfully close.

Vibe’s voice burst through first, distorted and panicked. “Please… someone help me! It hurts, I can’t make it stop!”

Then Halo, sobbing, her bravado stripped bare. “I just want to go home,” she cried. “Please. I don’t want to die here.”

Terra’s breath hitched. She looked at Elena, eyes wide and desperate. “Is he telling the truth?”

Elena clenched her jaw, sweat beading at her temple as she pushed her awareness outward. “I… I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “I can’t confirm it. But I can’t deny it either.”

The lights began to flicker harder, the rhythm turning erratic, like a dying pulse. One by one they burst with sharp cracks, glass raining down and dissolving into darkness, until only a single bulb remained above us, humming faintly as if mocking the quiet. Terra shouted that he wasn’t scaring her, her voice too loud, too forced, and it echoed strangely in the hollowed lobby.

I thought I saw something move at the edge of that light and fired on instinct. The shotgun roared, the recoil biting into my shoulder, but the blast hit nothing but empty air. I frowned, cycling the pump as my heart hammered, and said through clenched teeth that if we were making a run for it, then I wasn’t leaving anyone behind this time.

“Elena,” I called, forcing steadiness into my voice. “Give me something. Anything.”

There was no answer. The silence stretched, thick and wrong, until Terra’s breathing spiked.

“She’s gone,” Terra said, panic cracking her tone. “She’s just—she’s gone. Like she was never here.”

I swung the shotgun toward Terra without thinking, adrenaline overriding reason, and she froze when she saw the barrel leveled at her chest. “What are you doing?” she asked, terror wide in her eyes. “Two-D, what does this mean?”

Behind her, the light bent. A silhouette peeled itself out of the darkness, tall and indistinct, as if reality itself refused to commit to its shape. I fired. The projectile tore straight through the shadow, shredding nothing, accomplishing nothing. A second later, the thing grabbed Terra from behind, and both of them vanished as if swallowed by the dark.

Something in me snapped. I screamed for him to come out, firing again and again, shells clattering uselessly to the floor as the echoes swallowed my voice. There was no return fire, no movement, only the hum of the last remaining light.

A voice drifted out of the dark, calm and amused. “Breathe,” it said. “You’re spiraling.”

“What do you want?” I shouted back, my throat raw. “If this is about the cancer cure, I’ll destroy it myself. No one gets it. No one wins.”

The voice chuckled softly, almost kindly. “I don’t care about the cure,” it replied. “If I could hand it to you wrapped in a bow, I would.”

I turned and ran for the exit, already slipping into the edge of my power, flattening myself toward two dimensions to phase through the door. Before I could commit, the silhouette condensed in front of me, snapping into the shape of a man, solid and sudden. His hand closed around my throat, lifting me just enough for my feet to scrape uselessly against the floor.

I ripped a sticker free from my jacket and slapped it into existence, the handgun blooming into weight and metal. I emptied it into him at point-blank range, the shots passing through as if he were made of fog. Even when I forced my power into the bullets, flattening them into lethal planes that could shred intangibility-class capes, they did nothing.

He wrenched the gun from my hand and crushed it, the fragments dissolving before they hit the ground. Under the lone light, his face was finally clear, his eyes cold and utterly indifferent as he held me there with one hand.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said evenly. “I just want to talk. And if you’re smart, we’ll make a deal.”