247 Scrapyard Invasion [Chad/Tempest]
247 Scrapyard Invasion [Chad/Tempest]
I couldn’t believe I was doing this again.
I stood in front of the mirror and worked the black dye through my hair, fingers steady despite the irritation crawling up my spine. It wasn’t ordinary dye. I had synthesized it myself using trace amounts of my own blood so it wouldn’t interfere with my intangibility field. Foreign substances sometimes disrupted the way my secondary ability phased matter along with me. I wasn’t taking that risk while impersonating one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
The suit came next, tailored to resemble Eclipse’s usual cut. Sharp lines. Severe silhouette. The porcelain mask felt heavier than it looked when I lifted it.
My phone buzzed.
A group chat from the GDF lit up the screen. [Bar tonight? Don’t ghost again.]
I typed back a quick lie about being tied up with family matters. They sent back exaggerated outrage and beer emojis. If they knew I was moonlighting as Eclipse whenever he needed a body double, they would have lost their minds.
I would have lost mine.
But Nick had asked.
And the Company had taken my family in when things got ugly. The GDF had good people, sure, but it also had more leaks than a rusted submarine. SRC spies were practically a workplace hazard. Somehow the Company was harder to crack.
I owed them.
I yawned as I turned off the television. The screen had been showing a rebroadcast of Griffin debating the Führer. Even through a screen, that tension was suffocating.
I checked my watch and reread the mission parameters.
Simple.
Go to an address.
Kill everyone inside.
I stared at the line again, as if it might rewrite itself into something less insane.
“Let’s see,” I muttered behind the mask. “Scrapyard district.”
I stepped onto the rooftop and let the night air hit me. Aerokinesis lifted me smoothly while my speedster acceleration kicked in. The city blurred beneath me as I threaded through buildings, careful not to break the sound barrier too close to residential blocks.
It didn’t take long to reach the outskirts. The scrapyard sprawled like a metal graveyard, heaps of twisted steel casting jagged shadows under weak floodlights.
I slowed before entering the perimeter.
If I were Eclipse, I would probably blast straight through the roof and start killing.
I wasn’t that reckless.
The world had changed. Power ratings were climbing across the board. Fresh capes were popping up with strength that would have made veterans sweat a decade ago. I’d seen too many seasoned heroes get blindsided by some nobody with a new trick and a grudge.
You couldn’t afford arrogance anymore.
Villains always had it easier in one sense. It was simpler to destroy than to anticipate destruction. Right now, I was the villain. Not Tempest, the hero who showed up in blue and white.
I circled wide, scanning with controlled gusts of wind, feeling for pressure shifts, heat signatures, subtle irregularities. The place looked deserted, but that didn’t mean much. It was past midnight. Of course it looked dead.
A voice crackled in my earpiece.
“This is Silver. Do you copy?”
“Positive,” I replied quietly. “What am I walking into?”
“Probably a hiding base for the fake Eclipse’s backer.”
I frowned behind the mask.
“I’m not equipped to deal with a heavy hitter like that,” I said. “That’s the same guy who almost assassinated Nick, right? The one who went toe to toe with Griffin?”
I remembered sparring with Griffin once. She had decided the GDF needed “motivation.” I had lasted longer than most, but that wasn’t saying much. Recently, I had been the one doing the motivating.
Silver’s voice remained calm. “You are not alone. I’m sending Onyx your way. She’ll find you. Hold position.”
I exhaled slowly, watching the scrapyard from a rooftop stack of rusted containers.
“Copy,” I said.
I waited by the balcony of one of the apartments overlooking the scrapyard. The unit appeared empty from what I could tell. No heat signatures through the thin walls, no movement in the dust, no subtle vibration in the air currents that would suggest someone shifting their weight inside. I kept my breathing slow, porcelain mask hiding whatever doubt might have shown on my face.
Five minutes later, someone tapped my shoulder.
I nearly drove a left hook through their skull.
I forced myself to stop mid-motion, fingers twitching as I turned instead of striking. A woman with dark hair stood behind me, leather jacket creasing naturally despite the fact that she had no real weight. Onyx.
Nicole’s psychic construct.
She looked solid, but the air didn’t displace around her properly. She was more like a projection given intent and personality than an actual body.
“Easy,” she said, amused. “You almost hit me.”
“You almost deserved it,” I muttered. “Won’t the lack of a mask screw Nicole? I mean, it’s your face.”
“We’ll be fine,” she replied casually. “Psychic camouflage and all.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “Cameras don’t really adapt to suggestion.”
She rolled her eyes and conjured a porcelain mask over her face, the construct forming seamlessly over her features. It matched mine almost perfectly.
“Happy?” Onyx asked. “Now, the killing? What do we do about it?”
“We don’t even have a confirmed target to lash our powers at,” I replied. “Let’s try patience.”
Nicole had warned me about Onyx. She was the unhinged facet, the part that didn’t just tolerate violence but enjoyed it. If Silver was calculation, Onyx was appetite.
“I say we infiltrate peacefully first,” I continued. “We start killing only after we’re sure we’ve accounted for everyone inside. We can’t afford to leave witnesses. And if we do, we make sure they think I’m Eclipse, not some stand-in.”
Onyx shrugged beneath the leather jacket. “Either way works. The fake Eclipse already trashed my dear hubby’s reputation. We can’t have that. Only Nick gets to slander Eclipse.”
I stared at her through the mask. She was strange in a way that mirrored Nick too well. I used to think opposites attracted, but maybe it was more accurate to say the equally unbalanced found comfort in each other.
“I’m switching with Silver,” Onyx said. “She has better reconnaissance.”
Her form flickered and dissolved like smoke pulled into a vacuum. In her place stood Silver, blazer crisp, pencil skirt immaculate, silver hair falling neatly around her shoulders. She looked like she belonged in a boardroom, not a kill zone.
She pouted immediately. “I don’t want to work in the field.”
“I suggest you wear something easier to move in,” I said.
As a psychic construct, clothing didn’t technically matter, but presentation did. Silver sighed and her outfit rippled, reforming into tactical gear reminiscent of SRC special forces, complete with a rifle slung across her back and a bonnet mask with helm on her head.
I glanced at it. “Really?”
“The SRC has the most comprehensive paramilitary loadout,” she replied primly. “The Company and GDF could learn a thing or two.”
“I don’t know about the Company,” I said, scanning the building again, “but the GDF is mostly well-meaning volunteers. That doesn’t make them a paramilitary. If anything, they’re closer to a mercenary squad with a conscience.”
“That sounds like a downgrade.”
“Ignore me.”
Silver’s expression sharpened as she shifted focus, psychic senses extending beyond walls and steel. I felt the air pressure subtly change as she mapped minds inside the scrapyard complex.
“Multiple presences,” she murmured. “Basement level. Shielded. They’re expecting something.”
I adjusted my cuffs and stepped toward the balcony door.
“Good,” I said quietly. “Let’s not disappoint them.”
We found the ladder beneath a literal mountain of scrap.
It took a few minutes of careful wind manipulation to shift the lighter debris without making it obvious someone was clearing a path. Beneath twisted car frames and rusted sheet metal, a square of reinforced flooring gave way to a concealed hatch. The hinges were industrial grade, recently oiled.
“Matches the city blueprints,” Onyx’s voice came through the earpiece. “There’s a registered sublevel from before the scrapyard was privatized.”
“Of course there is,” I muttered.
I lifted the hatch slowly. A metal ladder descended into darkness, faint light flickering from somewhere below. The air rising from it carried the smell of oil, damp concrete, and something metallic underneath.
“How many?” I asked quietly.
There was a pause as Silver’s psychic field stretched.
“Roughly fifty-two,” she said. “Fifty-one. Fifty—”
She stopped.
“What?” I pressed.
“There’s fighting below.”
Before I could respond, boots scraped against metal. Someone was climbing up.
I stepped aside from the hatch, positioning myself so the first thing they would see was the porcelain mask.
A man emerged from the darkness and froze the moment his head cleared the floor.
He wore a gray uniform. Not standard military issue. No insignia. Functional, disposable. Part of his face was wrong. The skin on the left side had peeled back or fused away, exposing gray matter beneath, slick and pulsing faintly. It reminded me immediately of the attackers who had stormed the Company earlier that day. Nicole had me tour the place, and I couldn’t forgot the cadavers of the attackers shown to me. The ones theorized to be pawns of the Entity.
His eyes widened behind the deformity.
He never got to speak.
A root burst through his torso from below, punching out of his chest in a spray of dark blood. His body jerked violently as the root retracted, dragging him back down the ladder shaft.
Something massive forced its way upward.
The ladder groaned. Concrete cracked. The narrow opening warped as wood and chitin and something that wasn’t either shoved through. An enormous xenoform twisted itself upward, bark-like plating splitting around glowing veins of sickly green light. Its limbs were a hybrid of branch and bone, each movement accompanied by splintering sounds.
I stepped back immediately, wind pressure coiling around my legs for rapid repositioning.
Silver dove for cover behind a stack of scrap, her rifle already in hand even though it was just a construct. The way she held it still felt practiced.
The creature forced its upper body through the hatch, tearing the opening wider with contemptuous strength. More roots lashed outward, piercing metal as if it were cardboard.
“So much for a clean infiltration,” I muttered.
Silver opened fire immediately, psychic rifle barking in sharp, disciplined bursts.
“Retreat!” she shouted at me. “You have to get away! You only have one life—”
The tree creature lashed out mid-sentence. A thick root whipped across the scrapyard like a spear, shredding metal as if it were foil. Silver barely dodged, her form flickering as she vaulted up the mountain of scrap with impossible lightness. The root tore through where she had been a fraction of a second earlier.
I didn’t move yet.
I observed.
The creature’s structure was layered. Bark-like armor. Veins of luminescent sap. Limbs that shifted between rigidity and whip-like flexibility. It had brute strength, but it wasn’t mindless. It tracked Silver’s movement with deliberate focus.
“Third-party interference,” I reported into the earpiece, keeping my tone steady. “Some kind of tree monster.”
I repositioned behind a slab of rusted plating as another root slammed down, scattering debris in a violent arc. The mission objective hadn’t changed. We were here to send a message to the attackers who stormed the Company, the so-called accomplices of Paleman, pawns of the Entity.
Silver and Onyx were likely attached to me less for firepower and more for intel. This thing was not part of the original brief.
The tree creature hadn’t come from nowhere.
The NSD had claimed they were at war with similar entities while also dealing with internal rebellion. I had half dismissed it as propaganda.
Maybe I shouldn’t have.
“Retreat,” Onyx’s voice cut in through the earpiece.
“No,” I replied immediately. “Mission parameters stay the same. I’m going in.”
Before they could argue further, I moved.
I sprinted toward the torn-open hatch and jumped into the darkness the creature had forced open. Aerokinesis softened my descent, air pressure thickening beneath me so I landed in a controlled crouch instead of a bone-breaking drop.
“Basement level,” I reported. “Some kind of sterile lab. Single hallway. I’m seeing a lot of dead.”
The corridor stretched ahead under flickering fluorescent lights. White walls were smeared gray. Bodies lay scattered in pieces. Limbs torn free. Torsos ruptured. Heads crushed.
The common trait was unmistakable.
No red.
No blood.
Their insides were gray matter and fibrous sludge, just like the attackers at the Company.
Whatever the tree creature was, it had not been discriminating.
“I’m joining Silver to deal with the goddamn tree,” Onyx said sharply. “Delegating console operations to Nicole.”
“Copy that,” I replied.
A second later, Nicole’s voice replaced hers. It sounded groggy and then instantly wide awake.
“It’s me,” she said, then inhaled sharply. “Holy fucking shit.”
The suit camera must have been feeding her everything. The hallway looked like a slaughterhouse designed by something that had never understood human anatomy correctly.
I stepped carefully over a severed arm that crumbled slightly under the airflow of my movement.
At the end of the corridor, light flared.
A portal.
It pulsed with unstable energy, rimmed with jagged distortions that chewed at the edges of space. More bodies were piled near it, gray and broken.
Beyond the threshold, tree creatures forced their way through in waves.
On this side of the portal, a squad of heavily equipped soldiers had formed a defensive line. Their armor was reinforced, weapons high caliber and humming with charged rounds. They were firing continuously into the emerging mass of wood and chitin.
The soldiers weren’t shooting at me.
They were shooting at the trees.
I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered behind the porcelain mask. “I got to have the worst luck… Ugh… They better pay me extra.”