Chapter 126 Kill Yourself

I didn’t expect Mrs. Mind to be capable of sabotaging powers. When I entered the tenth floor, she immediately used her telepathic abilities to make me phase through the ground and drop to the next floor. It could’ve been dangerous. If she had gotten the timing right, I might have been fused halfway into the concrete. It would be instant death, no question. I had to raise my mental guard higher from now on.

As for Dr. Sequence… I didn’t have much pity for him, but he’d been strangely pleasant to talk to. Among the Ten, he was the only one who’d shown me a lack of paranoia… or maybe that was his way of hiding how afraid he really was. My Empathy could tell he always carried a dull hum of anxiety beneath his manic cheer.

Onyx’s voice came through my head, sharp and teasing.

“Oh my god, Nick, are you sympathizing with him? The man made people into meat sculptures.”

Silver, gentler, added,

“Don’t feel bad about him. He killed a lot of people. You did what you had to.”

The creature that had once been Assessor finally stopped gnawing on what little remained of Dr. Sequence. Its torso-mouth dripped with blood, the tongue slapping wetly against the floor. Then, slowly, the thing turned toward me, eyes wild, three of them burning with something between rage and grief.

With a faint breath, I extended my Empathy, tugging at the fragments of the consciousness that used to be Assessor. It was an old trick Silver and Onyx had helped me refine, pulling the last scraps of a personality out of madness.

“Eclipse! Eclipse!” the monster screamed, its voice distorted, gurgling through too many throats.

I flinched. There was still something human inside that voice. I had to be careful. Dying here wasn’t an option anymore. Mother said her precognition could only carry one extra person with her, “plus one.” The implications were terrifying. It meant she could only rewrite a limited number of mistakes. I didn’t want to test our chances against Light. If I died again, there might be no coming back.

The monster lunged.

“IT WOULDN’T WORK!” it roared.

Its claws came down like scythes. I phased into the floor, slid through cold steel and dust, and emerged several meters away. The creature’s third eye pulsed, then fired a blinding beam of kinetic energy. The walls exploded around me in a burst of sparks and shrapnel.

“THIS IS YOUR FAULT, ECLIPSE!”

I dove behind a shattered console, drew my modified paintball gun, and exhaled slowly. I tuned the density of my intangibility, then fired a volley of shots, each bullet phasing through the monster before I solidified them. The specialized chemical mix detonated inside its flesh, dissolving muscle and bone from within.

The sound it made was… indescribable.

“Ecli—pse—h-help—me—”

The creature’s mouths screamed, gurgled, and wept all at once as its body melted into slush. The tongue lashed wildly, the third eye burst like a rotten fruit, and its clawed hands tore at its own face in desperation. The air filled with a nauseating mix of acid and blood as the monster’s scream broke apart into wet sobs.

Then silence.

I holstered the gun, eyes lingering on the puddle that had once been Assessor. He’d managed to keep his personality alive longer than expected. Maybe he’d used what was left of his telepathy to hold himself together… to die as a person, not as a monster.

“Guesswork here,” came the voice through my earpiece, breaking the silence. “Ning’s done cleaning up the fodder. He’s heading for Missive now.”

I sighed and leaned back against the wrecked console, watching smoke rise through the broken ceiling.

“Then I have to work quickly,” I murmured. “Here’s to me hoping that he’d take longer finding you, guys….”

I didn’t lie to Light when I said we were going to play a game. I could’ve lied and left a fake clue and led him in circles, but that wouldn’t have worked. Once he realized he’d been deceived, he’d stop caring altogether, and the moment he stopped caring, everything we’d planned would fall apart. We needed him to care. We needed him invested.

So, I planted something real, a piece of paper, nothing fancy, with coordinates written in my handwriting. It was a real location. A place where he could find the next clue. It was enough to keep him chasing ghosts for another fifteen minutes, maybe more, before the futility sank in. I just had to finish what I’d started before then.

“DUCK! DUCK!”

Guesswork’s voice shouted in my earpiece.

I didn’t hesitate. I dropped flat, and a cleaver-shaped blur sliced the air above my head. The gust it left behind was sharp enough to sting my face. I spun around, cards already in hand, and flung them in a wide arc. The air rippled as the edges sliced through it.

But Paleman wasn’t there anymore.

He’d been behind me one second, gone the next. The space he’d occupied was nothing but empty light. I reached out with my Empathy, pushing the field to its edge, trying to feel him. Nothing. Not even the faintest spark.

That was really bad.

The SRC’s power classifications were trash, and their records of these people were inaccurate as fuck. I’d long stopped trusting their records, but this? This was beyond what they’d observed. I guessed whether the SRC and the Ten were colluding in reality. It made sense.

“Any ideas on Paleman’s ratings?” I asked quietly, sliding a card between my fingers.

“No idea,” Guesswork replied. “But he’s got multiple. Think overlapping or redundant powers… all probably similar in potency. What’s your situation?”

“Ninth floor,” I said, scanning the shadows. “Can’t detect him with Empathy. I’m going down.”

I phased through the floor, letting the cold concrete pass through my chest as gravity carried me down to the first level. I landed in what was left of the lobby, the same one where Thirdhand and I had fought. The air smelled of burnt steel and wet dust. The space was open now, less cluttered, less blind spots, but also eerily quiet. I had no idea if Paleman had followed.

“Proceed with the plan,” Guesswork said in my ear. “Finish this as quickly as possible. We’re sending you the rest of the team.”

“Are they going to be fine?” I asked.

I couldn’t help thinking of the ‘line of death’ Guesswork had warned us about. No one had explained exactly how it worked, just that crossing it meant instant death for anyone without protection.

John’s voice came through next, calm but grim. It seemed he had finished his assessment of the so-called line of death. “It’s Mrs. Mind’s power, telepathic heart attack, more or less. The line’s a mental tripwire. Anyone below a certain resistance threshold drops dead the second they cross it. Of course, unless they are with the Ten.”

“I’m not exactly with the Ten anymore.”

“You’ll be fine,” John said. “You’re a high-level Empath. I’ve got my mental shielding, Nullblade’s got his null rating. Hover and Tigress are staying back. We’ve also got a few SRC soldiers left to support.”

That was cold. Those “soldiers” were the same ones we’d used as bait earlier. Disposables in body armor. I didn’t know if that made me complicit or just numb. Still, I didn’t say anything. The silence that followed was enough of an answer.

Through the broken glass doors at the far end of the hall, reality twisted like someone wringing out the air. A wormhole tore open, shimmering blue light spilling across the cracked floor.

Out of it marched the SRC special forces. They were helmeted, armored, and rifles drawn. Behind them came John, expression unreadable as ever, and then Nullblade, his ginger head catching the light like a flicker of fire.

“Clear!” shouted one of the SRC special forces as they fanned out across the ruined lobby. Boots clanged on fractured tile, rifles sweeping every corner that could hide an ambush. The air still smelled of burnt wiring and blood.

“Try the elevator,” said John, voice calm but sharp with authority.

One of the soldiers moved to the doors and pressed the call button. The red indicator light blinked once, then went dark.

“It’s dead, sir,” the soldier reported.

“Manual override?” John asked.

Another soldier jogged forward, slinging his rifle behind his back. “On it.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a compact rappel gun fitted with an industrial prying claw. The sound of the mechanism snapping open echoed through the hall. Metal groaned as he wedged it between the doors.

“Lift’s jammed tight,” said Nullblade, crouching near him. “Feels like it’s locked from the top floor.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier,” I asked, “if Wormhole just gave us a lift? You know, teleport us up?”

John turned his gaze toward me. The look in his eyes said he’d been expecting that question.

“Guesswork advised against it. The Ten have more tricks waiting for us. We don’t want to teleport straight into a death trap.”

“Figures,” I muttered.

Before I could say more, static filled my earpiece, followed by Bunny’s panicked voice.

“Nick, brace yourself, Dullahan’s back—”

The rest was swallowed in a sharp crackle. Sparks seared my cheek as the earpiece overloaded and died. I ripped it off, throwing it to the ground. The others weren’t so lucky.

Across the room, every SRC trooper flinched at once. Their comms screamed with feedback, then exploded inside their helmets. Tiny bursts of electricity and smoke shot out of their visors. The sharp smell of burnt flesh filled the air.

“Off! Take them off!” shouted one of them.

The soldiers clawed at their helmets, yanking them free. Beneath, their faces glimmered under the dim light, with chrome streaking across their skin and implants glinting like polished knives. A few looked barely human anymore, more machine than man.

Then came the roar of an engine.

I looked up.

Through the shattered glass doors outside, Dullahan drifted in on her black bike, the tires screaming against the floor as she swung the barrel of her mounted gun toward us.

The first volley hit before anyone could react. Bullets tore into walls, furniture, and armor, shredding everything in their path.

“Move!” John barked. His telekinetic barrier flared into existence just in time, a faint shimmer of air deflecting the barrage. The rounds ricocheted harmlessly to the side. “Stay where you are! Find cover, quick!”

Nullblade ducked low, longsword drawn but restrained by John’s command. The SRC soldiers scrambled, diving behind overturned desks, vending machines, and piles of debris. The whine of the bike’s motor reverberated through the lobby.

Then Dullahan tossed something.

A small metallic cube rolled across the floor, bounced once, and split apart into dozens of smaller cubes. Each one clattered like tiny mechanical spiders before sprouting spindly metal legs.

“Oh, that’s not good,” I muttered.

The spider-cubes skittered toward the nearest bodies, our fallen soldiers, most coming from Light’s slaughter.

“Shoot the cubes!” I yelled, drawing my sidearm and firing. My shots hit a few dead-on, bursting them into shrapnel, but there were too many. Way too many.

The SRC troopers focused their fire. Their rifles spat bullets after bullets, the sound deafening. For every cube destroyed, three more slipped past, crawling over the corpses of their fallen comrades. Then the dead began to move. Their eyes flashed red, muscles jerking with mechanical spasms. The rifles they still clutched turned, not on Dullahan, but on us.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…” I hissed.

John ducked behind a half-crushed vending machine, telekinetic shield shimmering around him. Nullblade crouched by the remains of a refrigerator, eyes blazing as he tried to spot Dullahan’s position.

I dove beneath a broken sofa, letting my intangibility take hold just enough to blend into the shadows, masking my presence with Empathy. The sound of gunfire roared across the lobby, nullifier rounds tearing through the air and reducing cover to dust.

Dullahan’s bike-mounted machine gun spun up again, raking the entrance in a solid stream of lead. The SRC soldiers screamed as their shields broke. Some used their fallen comrades as cover, others crammed themselves into the pried-open elevator shaft.

And still the cubes kept moving, resurrecting the fallen one by one until half the room was filled with walking corpses in black armor.

The roar of Dullahan’s gun sputtered and died. Smoke drifted through the broken entrance as she reloaded.

Her voice came through the haze, cold and sharp as steel.

“The SRC has no place here,” she said. “You should’ve stayed in your cities. Now, you will all die here, unremembered… If you want a painless death, you might as well kill yourself now.”