CHAPTER 88: CH 88: MONSTERS.

"You shouldn’t have come."

Whilst still on the floor, Aegon forced his hands to remove the peg bullets stuck to his chest. ’Where the hell did the guy come from?’

He turned back to the man who was looming above him and saw as the gun twisted back into a simple cigarette stick.

Breathless, Aegon turned to him. "Who are you?"

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · •

Name | UNKNOWN. / [ Alias: Omniblade. ]

Faculty Of Mechania | Affinity: Matter-manipulation.

Rank: Ascendency.

Matter-manipulation: The ability to perceive, alter, and rearrange the physical structure of substances at the atomic and molecular level.

[ But only by touch and due to due mental strain, can only be done on simpler objects, hence the cigarette. ]

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · •

"You’re a hitman." Aegon said dragging himself up. "Great. Who are you here to kill anyway?"

Omniblade shook his head slowly. "You."

Aegon straightened instantly. Right hand already warming up to fire, left hand inching closer to the communicator on his belt.

Omniblade’s eyes dipped to see his left hand. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you."

He did. He moved quickly, left hand grabbed the device and pushed the button while his right provide cover by blasting the hitman with fire. "Hello?!" He called out in panic.

He took a step back. "Yes, this is Aegon—"

Before he could finish his words a shield shot out from the fire, hit his head, knocked him down and tossed the communicator away.

[ Aegon?! Aegon? What’s wrong?! ]

But Omniblade was already walking towards the communicator, on the way he grabs the shield and it shrinks into a voice changer.

He picks up the communicator, places the changer next to his mouth and cleared his throat. "Kheum... Are you there?" The voice coming from the changer was indistinguishable from Aegon’s.

[ Aegon, is everything alright? You sounded pretty distressed there. ]

"Oh, I’m good. Just had a hard time finding this crazy guy but I did and we’ll be done soon." Omniblade said, never taking his eyes off Aegon.

[ Alright, thanks. When you’re done just come back to the agency, okay? ]

"Sure, no problem." He said finally before ending the call.

The silence after the communicator clicked off was heavier than the electricity had been.

Aegon pushed himself to his knees, head ringing from the shield-blow. Blood, warm and insistent, trickled from his hairline.

He watched Omniblade toss the communicator aside. The device skittered across the linoleum, coming to rest near a gurney parked against the wall.

"Who hired you?" Aegon rasped, buying seconds as his mind raced through a shattered catalogue of pain and possibility.

Hospital. Fourth floor. Medical wing. Oxygen lines. Chemicals. Flammable everything. My fire is a liability here. His touch is his weapon.

Omniblade didn’t answer. He simply raised the cigarette to his lips, took a deliberate drag, and blew out a plume of smoke that didn’t dissipate.

It coiled around his hand, hardening, compressing, and elongating into a slender, foot-long rod of polished gray material. A baton.

"Great," Aegon muttered. He lunged, not at Omniblade, but to the side, toward the wall.

His right hand flared, not with a torrent, but with a focused jet of searing orange flame aimed at the red pull-box of a fire alarm.

Omniblade moved. He was faster than his bored demeanor suggested, crossing the distance in a blur.

The baton whistled through the air, aimed not at Aegon’s head, but at his flaming wrist. Aegon yanked his hand back, the blow glancing off his forearm with a sickening crack.

"GRRRH!" He cried out, the fire sputtering. But it was enough. The baton’s tip, superheated by the near-contact, glowed red.

The alarm didn’t sound. Instead, with a sharp hiss, the entire sprinkler system in the ceiling erupted. A sudden, drenching rain filled the hallway.

"Should’ve just stayed in school, kid." Omniblade scowled, the first real emotion flashing across his face. The water sizzled on his hot baton.

Aegon, soaking wet, gasped at the shock of cold water on his burns and bruises. But he was moving, exploiting the distraction. He phased.

His body became a ghost, an insubstantial shimmer. He let himself fall backward through the gurney behind him.

Omniblade’s follow-up strike, the baton now morphing mid-swing into a sharp, hooked blade, passed through the space Aegon’s solid chest had occupied a moment before, embedding itself in the gurney’s metal frame with a shriek of tearing metal.

Aegon solidified on the other side of the gurney, panting.

Phasing through complex objects was dizzying; he felt the brief, nauseating cold of the stainless steel in his stomach. But he’d gained a weapon.

He shoved the gurney with all his weight and failing strength, sending it crashing into Omniblade.

The hitman grunted, knocked back a step. "All you so called heroes disgust me."

He wrenched his blade-free—it was a knife now, the cigarette stub barely visible at its hilt.

Aegon didn’t answer. He grabbed the nearest object on the wall—a chrome fire extinguisher secured in a case.

He smashed the glass with his elbow, ignoring the new lacerations, and heaved the heavy cylinder.

He didn’t throw it. He blasted it with a concussive burst of flame from his good hand.

The extinguisher became a rocket. It shot, spinning and roaring, down the hallway straight at Omniblade’s chest.

For the first time, the hitman looked surprised. He couldn’t transform what he couldn’t touch. He dropped and rolled.

The extinguisher shot over him, slammed into the wall at the corridor’s end, and exploded in a massive, billowing cloud of white chemical powder. The world vanished in a choking, blinding fog.

Aegon stumbled backward, coughing, his eyes burning. He heard Omniblade coughing too.

This was his chance. He had to close the distance. To touch him. Fifteen seconds. I just need fifteen seconds.

He charged forward, using the gurney as a guide through the fog. A shape coalesced in front of him—Omniblade, wiping his eyes. Aegon reached out, fingers straining for the man’s coat.

Omniblade sensed him. The cigarette-knife in his hand melted, reformed. It didn’t become a shield or a blade. It became a net, a web of fine, wire-like filaments that he cast forward. It settled over Aegon, and at Omniblade’s mental command, the wires constricted.

Aegon screamed as the molecularly-sharp threads bit deep into his suit, through his soaked costume, sawing at his arms, his chest.

He was trapped, held fast. He tried to phase, but the pain was too all-consuming, focus impossible.

"Next time, don’t protect monsters who parade as heroes."