Chapter 120 Necessary Evils

It was deep into the night, the kind that hung too still andquiet. The city below looked half-asleep, its neon veins pulsing in dull rhythm. I sat on the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling into the dark, cigarette between my fingers. I’d never liked the taste of these things, but tonight the ritual mattered more than the act.

I focused inward, using a bit of my Empathy and turned it against myself, tuning my body, forcing it to feel what it shouldn’t. The little thump in my chest, and that chemical rush people talked about. It wasn’t real, but it was close enough.

“Does it bother you?” asked Silver. Her voice was gentle, faint, like wind on glass, but it always found me.

“Of course it bothers him,” Onyx cut in, sitting to my right, her tone sharp as ever. “Everything bothers him now. It’s his new hobby.”

I let out a humorless chuckle. “You two sure picked the right time to crawl out of my subconscious.”

Silver smiled faintly. “You mean your heart.”

Onyx rolled her eyes. “No, she means his trauma, like usual.”

When you thought you’d seen monsters, you always found worse. I’d fought serpent-dragons that crackled with plasma, faced schemers who could bend reality just by lying convincingly enough. I’d killed, I’d bled, I’d survived… and I’d thought that made me ready for anything.

Then Light happened.

A man who claimed to be a god from the future, who saw apocalypse as a second sunrise. And after seeing what Mother, the Witch, had shown me through her telepathic memories… I was left with one thought circling my mind like a vulture: What the fuck even are we anymore?

Onyx leaned back, staring into the sky. “You know, we should’ve stayed dead. Would’ve saved you a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “You should’ve.”

She looked at me. “But you didn’t let us, did you?”

Silver placed a spectral hand on my shoulder. “We remember when you still wanted to take over the Ten. Use their network. Maybe find us bodies again.”

“Wasn’t just for you,” I said.

Onyx laughed. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Nick. You wanted us back. You wanted someone back. It’s why we’re still here.”

Their presence wavered with the smoke, two ghosts made of memory and guilt.

Silver’s voice softened. “We miss your touch. The way you’d joke. The way you’d talk to us when you thought no one else could hear. You made us feel alive again.”

She smiled. “We want those days back, too. But Nick… we’re dead.”

The words hit harder than I wanted them to.

Onyx crossed her arms. “You have to let us go. You’re about to face something way beyond any of us. That Light freak? He’s not just another monster… he’s a walking storm that thinks he’s a savior. And you’ll need everything you’ve got to survive him.”

Silver nodded, her glow dimming. “We’re echoes. Fragments of what you lost. And as long as we stay, you’ll never use your full strength.”

Onyx finished for her. “Because of us, your potential will always be stunted.”

“Don’t let the past imprison you,” Silver whispered.

Onyx smiled faintly. “Think about it.”

Their forms began to fade, dissolving into the night air, into smoke, into nothing. I didn’t try to stop them. I took another drag, feeling the heat burn down my throat. The taste was bitter and metallic.

“I hope you don’t mind me joining you.”

The voice came quietly, almost hesitantly, and yet it pulled me back from my thoughts like a hand on the shoulder. I turned, and there John was, his trench coat still flapping faintly in the breeze. He had that same unreadable look on his face, the one he wore when he was trying not to look tired.

He sat beside me, close enough that I could smell the faint trace of rain and tobacco on his coat. From his pocket, he produced a matchbox, shaking it once before striking a match. The stick hissed, flared, then fizzled out. Again. Again. The third try ended the same.

I sighed and flicked my thumb. The small flame of my stolen lighter danced between us. “Here,” I said.

John leaned closer, letting his cigarette catch the flame. He inhaled, the tip glowing red before he exhaled a long, slow breath into the night. His gaze fell on the lighter.

“That’s familiar,” he remarked.

“You can’t have it back,” I said, folding the paper back into my suit jacket.

His lips curved slightly. “And here I thought I lost it.”

I shrugged. “Guess I’ve got sticky fingers.”

We sat in silence for a while, the city murmuring below us, faint hums of vehicles, distant music, the occasional bark of a dog. It all felt far away, detached.

He spoke first. “So you saw it then?”

“Yeah,” I said simply. “I saw it.”

I reached into my coat and pulled out the folded piece of paper I’d taken from his pocket after dinner. The letter was creased at the corners, the kind of wear that came from rereading it too many times. I handed it back to him.

“You can have this back,” I said. “But the lighter’s mine now.”

He accepted that trade with a faint nod.

My eyes lingered on the letter before it disappeared into his coat again. “This is a suicide mission,” I said. My tone wasn’t accusing. Instead, it was resigned, a quiet truth we both already knew.

John didn’t argue. He just nodded once. “Yes. It is.”

I took a drag, watching the smoke trail upward into the night. “No wonder it felt wrong,” I murmured. “All that talk about strategy, precision, numbers… I kept feeling like something didn’t add up. I had a hunch, but I didn’t realize it’d be on point.”

He was quiet for a moment, watching the city lights blink in the distance. Then I asked, “Did you tell the others?”

His head shook slowly. “No. It might destroy our strategy if I did.”

I stared at him, trying to read his thoughts, but his mind was guarded with walls built with experience and pain.

“But Tigress,” he added softly, “she’s aware. And she still chooses to come along.” He smiled faintly, a trace of admiration in his voice. “She’s got a heart of gold.”

I asked, “Do you really think we have a chance?”

John stared at the skyline for a long while before answering. The cigarette burned slowly between his fingers, a thin ember in the dark. “Frankly, no,” he said at last. “But it’s not my job to stop believing.”

He turned to me then, a faint smile forming under the shadow of his brow. “There’s always a chance it could work. Say, a miracle. Or maybe someone among us gets to pull in the middle of the fight, strong enough to contend with what we’re about to face.”

I exhaled a thin stream of smoke, watching it curl upward and vanish. “If you decided not to go through this,” I asked, “what would’ve been the result?”

He let out a tired chuckle, though there was no amusement in it. “If I pulled out now? I’d probably be ordered to clean up after the mess you lot make. Using the SRC paramilitary, no less. Maybe worm my way out to their mercy…” He shrugged. “Because I think the SRC wants us dead, Nick. Always did.”

He flicked the ashes off the edge of the rooftop, watching them scatter into the wind. “I have a feeling their cooperation with the Ten never really ended when the group went ‘independent’ under Mrs. Mind… or I suppose, Ning Light.”

John took another drag before continuing. “I don’t share this much with anyone, but I had a bit of history with the Ten. Back when I was locked in the Ward… you know it, right?”

I nodded. Everyone in the cape world knew about the Ward. A place where powered individuals were held, studied, and sometimes forgotten.

“I was offered a ‘privilege,’” he said. “A deal… freedom and protection in exchange for helping the SRC track the Ten. They used an outside channel for it… one of the Witch’s vessels. A mundane officer stationed inside the facility. Someone who wanted to turn against the Ten.”

My breath caught. I could sense he was telling the truth.

“At some point, the case fizzled out,” John went on. “I was released thanks to that deal and moved on with other work to buy my life back. Didn’t think much of it. But after a while, I started noticing things… reports, deaths. The SRC’s enemies were vanishing, one after another. Meanwhile, the Ten was thriving… Every informant, every contractor who got too close to the Ten.”

He paused, staring into the night. “I’d hate to say it, but the Ten is the SRC.”

“The upper brass intend to sacrifice us,” I said softly. “So they can keep using the Ten. Keep pretending there’s a balance.”

John gave a dry laugh. “You catch on fast.”

He took one last drag, exhaled through his nose, then flicked the cigarette away. The ember tumbled downward, fading into the dark.

“You want to know what I think?” he said, standing.

I looked up at him. “What?”

He adjusted his coat. “I think the SRC is a necessary evil. Maybe one of the last ones left that still bothers pretending it’s good. So I’ll do my best not to go against its tenets.”

He looked down at me, eyes calm but distant. “But if it’s my survival at stake or the lives of good people who still trust me, then yeah,” he said, voice low. “I’m willing to bend those tenets a bit.”

The wind howled across the rooftop, stealing his words as soon as they were spoken.

He turned and walked toward the stairwell door, coat trailing behind him like a shadow. I stayed there a little longer, staring at the ember trails fading in the dark and thinking of miracles, monsters, and the thin line between necessary and evil.

I liked the sound of that… a necessary evil.

What did that make Light, then? Necessary evil with a lightning halo? A prophet in someone else’s apocalypse? Mother hadn’t exactly denied his story about the future; she’d bared it to me like a raw nerve. For a while, I wanted to believe it was a lie. It was easier to swallow than the alternative, but my Empathy told me the truth: the fear in her mind, the way she’d stitched memory into narrative, the texture of someone who’d lived too many endings to invent one.

I still wanted to kill him.

That was simple enough. Dangerous, stupid, maybe impossible… but honest. If the world were going to end, what did it matter where I found meaning? I could die trying to pull him down, or die trying to find some version of myself worth keeping. Either way, at least I wouldn’t be empty. Oddly, the thought of a suicide mission felt like a promise. I was looking forward to the honesty of it.

Mother’s attempt to drag me into the shape of her plans disgusted me. It also worked. Maybe manipulation wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was a confession turned tactic. The things she’d let me see were ugly and true, and they had a gravity I couldn’t shrug.

I stayed on that roof until the sky paled and the city bled into morning. Somewhere below, a truck rumbled to a stop, the big supply rig that would carry us back toward Tenfold Keep. Missive had coordinated the refit. Three days' absence wasn’t enough to trigger suspicion from Light; he liked to believe he missed nothing. We were gambling on his arrogance.

I dropped off the rooftop, and Bunny was already there, just arriving on time. He looked different this time. He had cleaner lines, new plating, and all of the upgrades done. Money buys you perks; we’d paid in places that still hurt.

He’d redone his paint job to match me: black and white, a playing-card motif that made him look like a darn transformer. “So, how are you doing?” he asked. “Still, mentally stable, I hope?”

“I’m perfectly fine, Bunny. How about you?” I said, doing my best to sound like it.

“Strapping,” he answered. “Never been more worried for you than forever.

Mother came out of the doorway just then, hoodie up, the cheap fabric doing nothing to hide the way she moved like someone who expected violence for breakfast. She had a hand axe slung across her back and the hard silhouette of more tools pinned under her clothes. She was ridiculous and terrifying in equal measure.

She walked over to me, boots making soft sounds on the pavement. Then she reached into the coat at her hip and pulled out a plain porcelain mask. It was blank, pale, and expressionless except for two small slits for the eyes. The glaze caught the morning light and turned it almost holy.

“You can’t go without them,” she said, handing them to me. Her voice was softer than I expected, as if the old woman she once had been still learned how to be kind in private. “If you are going to kill Light, you will have to do it in style…”

“Oh, you just get me, don’t you?”