The streets of Veritas City were no longer veins of commerce; they had become arteries of fear. Following the public execution of Councilman Vance's reputation, the city's police force—the VCPD—had been placed on a Level 5 Tactical Alert. But conventional ballistics and Kevlar vests were useless against a ghost who could walk through vault doors and a shadow that could broadcast your sins to the world.
"Unit 4, status!" the radio crackled inside a heavy armored transport.
"Target spotted on 5th and Madison! He's… he's sitting on the roof of a moving cruiser, sir! He's eating a goddamn ice cream cone!"
Nicolai kicked his legs back and forth, the wind whistling through his neon-green hoodie. Below him, the police cruiser was screaming at eighty miles per hour, its sirens wailing in a futile attempt to signal an emergency that was already happening. Nicolai leaned forward, peering through the windshield at the terrified officers inside.
"Faster! Faster!" Nicolai shouted, though they couldn't hear him through the reinforced glass. "If you don't hit a hundred, I'm going to get bored!"
He took a slow, deliberate lick of his strawberry swirl cone. Suddenly, a streak of red light flashed from an intersection—a sniper round. Nicolai didn't even look. Pop.
In a micro-second, he was gone from the roof. He reappeared inside the backseat of the cruiser he had just been riding.
"Boo!"
The driver shrieked, swerving the wheel. Nicolai giggled, reached forward, and yanked the handbrake. The cruiser spun out in a violent 360-degree drift, smoke pouring from the tires. Before the car even stopped spinning, Nicolai was gone again. Pop.
He was now standing in the middle of the intersection, right in front of the tactical vans closing in. He blew a kiss to the lead vehicle. Pop. He was on top of a streetlamp. Pop. He was behind the tactical team, tying their shoelaces together while they were still aiming their rifles at his previous position.
"He's a teleporter! Range is roughly a hundred meters!" a commander barked over the comms. "Containment grid Alpha! Now!"
But it was like trying to catch smoke with a net. Nicolai wasn't just escaping; he was playing. He was treating the elite protectors of the city like NPCs in a low-level tutorial. To him, this wasn't a crime spree—it was the playground Fyodor had promised him.
A mile away, standing on the balcony of a skyscraper overlooking the chaos, Sigma watched the flickering blue and red lights through a pair of high-tech binoculars. He tapped his earpiece.
"Nicolai is overextending," Sigma said, his voice flat and analytical. "He's increasing his visibility. The probability of an 'Apex Response' has risen to 88%."
"Let him play," Fyodor's voice echoed in the earbud, sounding like it was coming from the depths of a cathedral. "The sheep need to see their dogs humiliated. It prepares the soil for our garden. Are the preparations for Ouroboros moving?"
Sigma turned away from the window. On a digital screen behind him, a complex architectural 3D model was spinning. "I've processed the data from the Chief of Police's secretary. I touched her arm at the coffee shop this morning. Every password, every floor plan, and the psychological profile of the Warden is now archived in my mind. But there is a variable we didn't account for."
"The Hunter," Fyodor murmured.
"Yes," Sigma replied. "The government has authorized the release of Detective Elias Thorne. He's already in the sector."
Back at the intersection, Nicolai was about to blink onto the hood of a SWAT van when the air suddenly felt heavy. It wasn't gravity; it was as if the very atoms around him had turned into molasses.
He tried to blink. Pop. Nothing happened. He was still standing on the asphalt. He tried again, his face scrunched in confusion. Pop. He only moved three inches.
"Hey! My legs are broken!" Nicolai pouted, looking around.
From the shadows of an alleyway, a man stepped out. He wore a long, tan trench coat and a battered fedora. He looked tired—dark circles under his eyes and a week's worth of stubble. This was Elias Thorne, a man whose ability, Kinetic Nullification, made him the natural predator of speedsters and teleporters.
"Playtime's over, kid," Thorne said, lighting a cigarette. His voice was like gravel. "Within fifty meters of me, nothing moves faster than a brisk walk. No blinking. No jumping. Just you and me."
The police officers, seeing Nicolai trapped, regained their courage and began to close the circle, their weapons raised.
Nicolai's playful expression didn't vanish—it morphed. His eyes widened, and a dark, jagged smile spread across his face. "Oh! A new rule! I love new rules!"
Even without his blink, Nicolai moved with the grace of a predator. He reached into his hoodie and pulled out two jagged combat knives. "If I can't jump to you… I'll just have to walk over and say hi the old-fashioned way."
Thorne exhaled a cloud of smoke. "You don't get it. I'm not just slowing you down. I'm shutting you down." Thorne raised a hand, and the air pressure increased until the asphalt beneath Nicolai's feet began to crack.
But Nicolai didn't look scared. He looked at Thorne with a terrifying, hollow intensity. "You're strong! Sigma would love to eat your brain. But Fyodor says… I'm the one who gets to break the toys."
Suddenly, a black sedan tore through the police barricade. It didn't slow down. It slammed into a cruiser, creating a path. The back door swung open.
"Nicolai! Extraction!" Sigma's voice called out.
Thorne narrowed his eyes and focused his power on the sedan, trying to seize its engine. The car groaned, its metal frame twisting under the invisible pressure. But then, Thorne felt a cold shiver down his spine.
He looked up at the skyscraper a mile away. For a split second, he saw it—a dark figure standing on the edge of the roof. Fyodor.
Fyodor wasn't using a power. He was just looking. But the weight of that gaze was so heavy, so filled with a cold, divine authority, that Thorne's concentration flickered for a fraction of a second.
That was all Nicolai needed.
With the pressure momentarily lifted, Nicolai lunged forward, not toward the car, but toward Thorne. He slashed a knife across Thorne's shoulder before the detective could react. Pop. The blink returned. Nicolai appeared inside the sedan, the door slamming shut.
"See ya, Grumpy!" Nicolai laughed, leaning out the window as the car sped away, leaving the police and a bleeding Thorne in a cloud of tire smoke.
Inside the sedan, Sigma was already typing on a laptop. "That was sloppy, Nicolai. You almost got neutralized."
"But did you see his face?!" Nicolai bounced in his seat. "He was so grumpy! I want to keep him!"
"He is a high-level threat," Sigma said, his eyes cold. "He will be a problem during the Ouroboros mission. I need to find a way to touch him. If I can kopyalamak (copy) his Nullification ability, the Triad becomes invincible."
From the shadows of the backseat, Fyodor's presence made the temperature in the car drop. He hadn't said a word since they picked up Nicolai.
"The Hunter is necessary," Fyodor finally spoke. "A world without a challenge is a world that stays stagnant. Let him chase us. Let him believe he is winning. It will make his eventual despair all the more… holy."
Fyodor looked out the window at the looming silhouette of the Ouroboros prison in the distance.
"Sigma, finalize the viral broadcast. Nicolai, sharpen your blades. Tomorrow, we don't just rob a bank or humiliate a councilman. Tomorrow, we break the cage and let the other monsters out."
The sedan vanished into the dark tunnels of the city, leaving Veritas City to wonder if the dawn would ever truly come again.