242 Explosion [Dullahan]
242 Explosion [Dullahan]
I hadn’t been idle since the last time I encountered Solstice, the Company executive with the irritating composure, and Griffin of the GDF. The invasion had been an unexpected variable, but after digging through every data trail I could intercept, I found no meaningful connection between it and Master Sequence’s schemes. If anything, it suggested the board was larger than I had initially calculated. The world was expanding in unpleasant ways.
I sat in a café directly across from the sprawling complex of Mirch University. Students passed through its gates in clusters, unaware of the rot beneath polished stone and academic prestige.
“Here’s your mocha,” the clerk said, sliding the cup across the counter.
“Thanks,” I replied, taking it and choosing a seat by the glass pane where I had a clear view of the main entrance.
Inside my head, George’s proxy AI spoke in its calm, synthetic cadence. “Securing camera footage in the vicinity. Facial recognition systems now reflect an altered profile. Your current appearance is inconsistent with prior records.”
“Appreciated,” I answered softly.
It was only a machine, but I had grown attached to it faster than expected. My ability to communicate with machines blurred the line between tool and companion. The more affinity I developed with a system, the more responsive it became. Even mundane devices seemed to hum differently when they liked me.
I opened my laptop and began deleting sensitive local files, transferring them into encrypted cloud partitions. Insurance. Evidence. Leverage. If negotiations with the Company soured, I needed something tangible to dangle.
The past few days had been productive. The Company was in a state of internal turbulence following an assassination attempt on Eclipse. His status remained inconclusive. Official silence. Controlled leaks. Conflicting whispers.
I operated under the assumption that Eclipse was alive but recuperating. If he was unable to meet me personally, then I would have to earn the Company’s trust through competence and utility.
That was why I had been tracking the fake Eclipse.
I enlarged several images on my screen. They were photographs captured from traffic cameras, security feeds, and civilian devices. Moments when the impostor removed his mask. The face was unmistakable.
Paleman.
He should have been dead.
I studied the angles of his jaw, the curvature of his expressionless stare. I had once assumed he was merely one of Light’s more grotesque creations, an obedient instrument. That assessment had been naive. His recent actions demonstrated autonomy, ambition even. Staging massacres. Challenging Eclipse in his own domain.
He was either emboldened or detached.
Neither option comforted me.
Infiltrating Mirch directly would have yielded clearer answers, but that was an unacceptable risk. Paleman was too dangerous. I had always sensed there was more beneath his blank exterior, something layered and patient.
My watch began blinking furiously against my wrist.
I frowned.
The device was a rough reconstruction based on fragments from George’s memory, a detector calibrated around a low-tier precognition framework. It did not predict events cleanly; it registered probability spikes associated with imminent catastrophe.
The blinking intensified.
I turned my gaze back to Mirch University.
My internal sensors picked it up before my eyes did. There were dangerous energy readings spiking erratically across multiple vectors. Spatial distortion. Thermal anomalies. Structural stress.
I was already moving.
I vaulted from my chair and dove behind the counter.
“Ma’am, what are you doing?” the clerk asked, confused and alarmed.
Mirch University exploded.
The blast hit harder than I calculated.
For a moment, everything went white, then silent.
I fainted.
When awareness crawled back, it did so through static and distortion. My auditory sensors rebooted first. I heard distant crackling, collapsing concrete, and scattered screams fading into nothing. Then vision returned in fractured frames.
The café was gone.
The entire block surrounding Mirch University had been reduced to rubble and flame-scorched ruin. Smoke hung thick in the air, laced with particulate ash and ionized debris.
The clerk lay directly in front of me.
She was dead.
Her skin was blistered and split, pinkish burns covering most of her exposed body. Her eyes were open but unfocused. I registered the biological cessation clinically, because processing it emotionally would have slowed my diagnostics.
I assessed myself.
My outer dermal layer had peeled away in several places, exposing metallic substructure beneath synthetic tissue. My right eye’s visual feed flickered erratically, resolution dropping to less than forty percent. Internal temperature regulation was unstable.
My regeneration protocols engaged automatically.
Unlike organic healing, mine was a hybrid process of self-repairing nanomaterial interwoven with biomechanical regrowth. Normally efficient. Now lagging. The damage had overwhelmed my energy reserves.
I replayed the explosion from memory buffers.
Energy spike. Spatial distortion. A delayed secondary detonation. This had not been random. It had been engineered.
I attempted to stand.
My legs failed.
Actuator damage. Structural stress fractures. Motor coordination offline.
This was bad.
Approximately ten minutes later, emergency response units arrived. Sirens cut through the haze.
“Oh my god, they’re all dead.”
“Hurry! Check on them!”
“The stench… it’s almost like barbecue.”
“Hey, don’t be insensitive!”
“Someone’s still alive!”
Footsteps approached. A young paramedic crouched beside me. His vitals spiked when he noticed the exposed metal beneath my ruined skin.
“I think it’s not human,” he muttered to someone behind him. “What do we do?”
At that exact moment, my hardlight facial construct failed.
The emitter had been damaged in the blast. The projection flickered, then collapsed entirely.
I was headless.
The paramedic screamed and fell backward.
I diverted remaining repair bandwidth toward mobility. Legs first. Movement was survival.
I pushed myself upright, joints grinding, and ran.
Or attempted to.
The crowd parted instantly. No one was interested in heroics against something half-metal and missing its head.
I did not get far.
A hardened cable snapped around my legs mid-stride. I fell forward with a metallic thump, cracking asphalt.
Without hesitation, I disengaged both legs at the hip joint, severing the connection points and rolling free as the cable tightened around detached limbs.
Before I could fully regain balance, SRC Special Forces flooded the perimeter. Black tactical armor. Null-tech enhancements. Weapons raised.
They opened fire.
Bullets filled the air.
None of them reached me.
A blur of blue and white intercepted every projectile. In less than a breath, a man stood between me and the firing line, palm open. Spent rounds clattered harmlessly to the ground from his hand.
Tempest.
His mask concealed most of his face, but his posture was unmistakable. Controlled. Efficient.
“This is connected to a case the GDF has been pursuing,” he said coldly. “Hands off her. Also, you should update your null tech. They are useless to me.”
An SRC commander stepped forward. “That is Dullahan. Former member of the Ten. We are taking her in.”
I frowned internally.
How did they know?
Master Sequence.
He must have tipped them off. I knew he had narrowed his focus onto me, but I had assumed I still had time. The fact that this escalation had not been more severe likely meant the Company and the GDF’s presence restrained him for now.
A new voice cut in.
“No, she’s not Dullahan. She’s Company property.”
It was a lie.
Technically, George resided within my system, but I was not George.
The speaker approached from behind the SRC line, a dark-haired woman in a pencil skirt and glasses. She wore a wig.But the bone structure betrayed her.
It was… Missive.
The precognitive hacker from the Ten. Younger than most of us had been. I didn’t expect to see another familiar face this soon. Was it luck? Probably fate. But I didn’t expect Missive to be with the Company now. Behind her were Company operatives in tailored suits, each carrying advanced energy weapons. They moved with quiet confidence.
The city was still unstable. The invasion had not fully concluded; sporadic skirmishes persisted. It had only quieted after Griffin defeated the enemy commander. I had watched the footage.
It was not an exaggeration to say Griffin might now be the strongest superhero alive.
Tempest glanced slightly toward the Company delegation, tension in his stance.
I remained on one knee, regeneration slowly reconstructing my detached legs behind me. Between the SRC, the GDF, and the Company, I had just become the center of a three-way standoff. And I was in no condition to fight any of them.
Missive adjusted her glasses slightly, though the gesture felt theatrical rather than necessary. “Are you going to continue being stubborn?” she asked the SRC commander evenly. “Or do you want this to be a fight? I don’t think it would be that hard to bury several faceless goons of the SRC.”
More Company personnel filtered into the perimeter, their suits immaculate despite the ash still drifting through the air. They positioned themselves with quiet coordination, energy weapons angled but not yet raised. The paramedics had already retreated. No one wanted to stand between three armed factions.
The SRC commander did not back down. “We need to question Dullahan as a suspect in the explosion. Look around you. Several blocks are gone. Yes, the invasion matters. It has to be dealt with. But that doesn’t mean we ignore this. The people of Markend still go to work. They try to make a living. They follow the rules because they believe heroes are protecting them. When those heroes are compromised, it’s our responsibility to step in.”
His glare shifted toward Tempest.
The invasion had primarily ravaged the western districts and had been contained there. The rest of the city, though shaken, remained structurally intact. The annihilation of an entire university complex filled with students was a separate catastrophe altogether. Public outrage would be inevitable.
I could not entirely fault the SRC’s position. From their perspective, I stood at the epicenter of the blast.
“Enough.”
The voice was calm and cold.
The single word carried through smoke and tension alike, and silence followed instinctively. Even the wind seemed to hesitate.
I froze.
Slowly, I turned.
He stepped forward from behind me as though he had always been there.
Eclipse.
He wore a pristine black suit, unmarred by ash. A porcelain mask concealed his face. There was no dramatic entrance, no flare of power announcing him. Yet the atmosphere bent subtly around his presence.
He leaned slightly toward me and whispered, “We’re going to talk later.”
It was the real one.
He had changed since I last saw him. There was weight to him now. Density. A dangerous stillness that felt deeper than before.
Eclipse straightened and addressed the gathered forces. “The SRC is done. The Company will be the new SRC. There will be a long overhaul after everything settles, but don’t worry. We’ll still hire you after.”
It was not a suggestion. It was a declaration.
The SRC special forces stiffened. Weapons snapped upward, sights trained on him.
One of them spat, “We don’t need to listen to a mass-murdering psychopath like you—”
He never finished.
Eclipse raised one hand.
Just a small upward motion.
Every firearm in the SRC line phased straight through gloved hands as if they were smoke. The weapons slipped from their grips and clattered onto the broken pavement in a chaotic metallic chorus.
No one had fired.
No one had even managed to flinch.
Eclipse lowered his hand slowly and spoke in an even tone. “Imagine if that’s you.”
One of the SRC soldiers reacted on instinct. He bent down, grabbed his fallen weapon, and tried to raise it again. He never managed to aim.
Eclipse merely flicked a finger.
The rifle phased halfway into the concrete and then vanished entirely as if erased from existence.
“There won’t be a second time,” Eclipse said calmly.
The soldier froze, color draining from his face. No one else moved.
“Let’s go,” Missive whispered to me.
She didn’t wait for my response. She hooked an arm around me and helped stabilize my half-repaired frame, guiding me toward a sleek black car that had pulled up during the standoff. Company personnel closed ranks behind us as we entered.
She took the driver’s seat and accelerated smoothly away from the devastation.
I turned slightly toward her. “Missive, what does the Company plan to do with me?”
She kept her eyes on the road. “It’s Mira now, not Missive. As for what to do with you, Eclipse will decide.”
In the rearview mirror, I noticed something odd.
Her eyes were glossy.
Tears streamed down her face, though she clenched her jaw as if trying to suppress them.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “It’s all me. I killed all of those people.”
That didn’t align with the Missive I remembered. Among the Ten, she had been the softest. Calculating, yes. Sharp. But not cruel. She had looked up to me once, almost like a younger sister seeking approval.
I could exploit that.
Or perhaps I simply did not want to.
“I don’t think you’re that kind of person,” I said carefully.
“You don’t understand,” she replied, voice trembling. “There was a portal inside Mirch. It was connected somewhere else. Another me was conducting an operation on the other side. We encountered Paleman. I… I…”
She swallowed hard.
“The other me triggered a self-destruct on the portal tech from that end. The explosion was supposed to be contained there. Controlled. But I didn’t expect the anchor on this side to destabilize like that. I didn’t expect it to cascade.”
The implications settled heavily.
Two linked systems. One overloaded. The feedback traveling across dimensions. Structural collapse amplified by underground infrastructure.
Helicopters filled the sky above us. Sirens wailed in overlapping frequencies.
I connected to nearby networks through passive signal interception. News feeds were already broadcasting aerial footage. The blast radius was enormous. The damage pattern suggested subterranean origin, an explosion that had begun below and ripped upward.
Red emergency lights reflected across Mira’s tear-streaked face.
Traffic halted ahead. Barricades. Law enforcement redirecting vehicles.
The car rolled to a stop.
Mira slammed her fist against the dashboard. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck! I screwed up! I screwed up! Shit! So many innocent people died, because of me. FUCK!”