Chapter 90 Luck or Blessed?

I dropped to one knee, skull splitting under the weight of psychic pressure. It wasn’t John this time… Paperbag’s telepathy scraped at my mind like claws on glass, trying to dig deeper, and melt me from the inside.

She stepped forward, heels clicking on the floor, voice sharp with satisfaction. “You cost me my very cozy job,” she said, her words pushing harder than her power. “And then my promotion, lined up so perfectly for me. Now…” She tilted her head, the paper bag rustling. “…I’m going to take it all back, with you as my prize.”

Behind her, the three naked men shrieked and scrambled for the door, slamming into each other in their panic before bolting outside. Paperbag didn’t even glance their way. Her attention was fixed on me like a predator savoring the meal.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” she purred.

I phased down through the floor before she could make good on her promise, breaking her line of sight. The air lightened as her pressure dulled, though the echo of it throbbed in my skull. I emerged just outside the house and ran low along the wall, heart pounding, hoping the sniper couldn’t lock onto me with all this cover.

Silver’s voice rang sharp in my head. “Look out!”

I twisted aside just as steel hissed through the air. It was a longsword, inches from severing me. Sparks of hostility flared bright in my empathy.

A young man with ginger hair stood in front of me, face twisted in fury.

“This is for killing my idol!” he spat. “This is for Sword Meister!”

I flicked my stolen cards, phasing them as I hurled them. They struck him, harmless, glancing away as if his skin rejected the intangibility itself. I ducked back as the blade slashed once, then again, each strike so fast it belied the sheer weight of the weapon.

Onyx’s voice came low and certain. “He’s got a nullifier rating on him.”

I knew. I could feel it. The sword’s edge wasn’t just steel. It carried the promise of cutting even what I thought was untouchable. My intangibility wavered, unsure. One misstep and I’d be bisected like anyone else.

The ginger brute advanced, blade slicing arcs through the air, each one meant to kill. I dodged narrowly, sweat prickling, and mind racing.

Onyx whispered in my ear, calm in the storm. “Rely on your Empathy, Nick. That’s the only way you’ll win this.”

I dodged, the sword’s gleam never leaving my sight.

If this continued, it would be the death of me. I needed to flee, but they were being so annoying.

I let my empathy reach in and twist the chemistry of my body with adrenaline spiking, cortisol tempered, and muscles tightening like coiled wire. My Enhancer ratings obeyed, and bone and keratin answered. Fingernails grew sharp and black as obsidian on each finger, hungry and dangerous.

Ginger’s face split with surprise when the first slash opened across his cheek. Blood spat, and the world narrowed to the hot shock of metal and motion. I ducked under his follow-through, slid behind him, and aimed the nails for the soft valley at the base of his skull, throat or brain, either would stop him.

“What did I tell you about staying with the plan?!” a voice barked, high and furious, and a man in a bonnet mask hit me with a haymaker out of nowhere. He’d blinked into being, either teleport or the kind of invisibility that lets you move unseen. I let the blow phase through my shoulder like wind, and shoved my hand up. My nails met his neck and slid like knives; his head dropped, slack and red.

“Sir!” shouted Ginger.

“Fuck,” cried Bonnet Mask as he disappeared again.

Ginger’s stab almost fatally connected. Instead, it grazed my ribs. The pain was a clean, white line that spread slow and hot. I felt the nullifier aura in his blade, an ugly little cheat that let steel find flesh that should not be hittable. My fingers searched his eyes, found wet, terrified pupils, and my nails dug in right where I planned to finish him.

Just a bit more, and I’d dug on his brain, but…

“Sniper!” Silver screamed.

I pulled my hands away and phased through a wall in a practiced slide, then through another house like I was made of smoke. My lungs burned with the effort. A crack blew overhead, and I saw the flyer, a man suspended in the air, legs tucked, a rifle braced in his arms. The sniper rifle spat fire, and the world screamed close; I folded into a roll along a roofline as the bullet chewed the air where my head had been.

The bonnet-masked man reappeared in front of me, whole and grinning as if my nails had been nothing more than an itch. His throat had knitted back smooth… Probably a regenerator, or some trick. I hurled cards, every one phased and crafted to tear, but each one dropped limp to the ground at his feet like discarded trash.

“Die, you fucker,” said the bonnet-masked man as he disappeared again.

The left house detonated inward. The gray-skinned brute I’d seen earlier bull-rushed out, larger now, mass swelling as if he’d eaten half the street. He smelled like iron. He moved like a mountain that had learned to sprint.

I tasted exhaustion in my mouth, metal and salt.

“I’m so tired.”

The brute’s first fist connected with my ribs. I let it. I phased him through me, an ugly, practiced flip, and used the momentum to drive him downward with my intangibility. Flesh and mass and whatever hunger he carried sank through soft earth like a blade through butter. The ground swallowed him. He didn’t stop. He buried himself, deeper and deeper, until the world closed over him and the yard became a small, trembling mound.

I phased him through the ground deep enough for him to ensure he wouldn’t easily dig his way out, even if he managed to survive it.

Still, the forcible use of my power tore into me. I coughed, warm blood spattering my lips. My nose trickled and then spouted; I tasted iron. I spat onto the dust, breathed hard, and a laugh that was mostly pain cracked in my throat. I was alive, and bleeding, and fuzzy at the edges.

Paperbag arrived with no fanfare, with John trailing behind her. A third person appeared with them, a young woman, maybe twenty, electricity dancing off her knuckles in tiny blue arcs.

“You’re going to pay for what you did in Markend,” said the electric woman, voice tight with something like righteous hunger. “I am going to kill you for what you did to my friends!”

“Do I know you?” I asked, slowly. My head scraped with a dozen hostile voices and the taste of metal. A flyer in the sky swung up, a man braced with a sniper rifle too close for comfort.

She smiled without humor. “I’m Thunderbolt.” Ah. Vanguard.

Thunderbolt kept talking, like giving a sermon. “I practiced countering intangibility so much just for you, changed frequency bands in my discharge, and learned to make electricity that tears phase. I can kill you.” She sounded proud and terrified and certain in the same breath.

Silver’s whisper came thin and fierce. “N-Nick… Please tell me you have a way out…”

Onyx’s urge was just as loud. “Nick… tell us what to do…”

There was no time for debate. I salted my gut with a small, private prayer. “Lend me your strength, Silver. Onyx.” I let my empathy fold inward, sharpened and cruel. I fed that feeling outward as if it were a weapon, the way John had shown me: not words but intent, a low volcanic pressure tuned to murder.

Thunderbolt flinched. Her fingers twitched, lightning sputtering as I showed her the many ways I could kill her from where I was standing, reminding her of how I murdered her fellow heroes.

“Is there a problem?” Paperbag asked plainly. “Tiff?”

I twisted the empathy like a key and then reversed it, hiding my presence under a smear. It was the closest I could get with empathic invisibility. I threw a card: a Joker, weightless, phased, and it punched the air at Paperbag’s forehead. The card struck; the paper bag reddened where a thin line of blood bloomed. Confusion flared across her posture, enough to crack the mask.

“Snap out of it, Tiff!” John barked.

Thunderbolt answered with lightning. Blue fire split the air toward me. John’s fingers fired telekinetic bullets in the same breath. I phased along the ground and reappeared behind Thunderbolt, palming the change of presence like a sleight of hand. I swapped our empathic signatures, brief and surgical, so John’s tracking felt wrong for a second, a misread on his instruments.

A new crack sounded above us. Sniper fire took Thunderbolt clean in the shoulder-neck line; she didn’t get up. The air tasted like ozone and burned hair for a heartbeat. I saw the flyer jerk as the shot landed, saw Thunderbolt fall, and saw life go blunt at the edges.

I lunged at John then, moving in a predatory manner. I slid to his back and used him as a shield against the airborne shooter, my palm pressed to his sternum, and my fingers ghosting toward his throat. My nails were cold; my touch was near-knife.

Up close, he smelled like old coffee and regrets. His eyes sharpened with panic and something like recognition.

“You saved me once,” I whispered into the hollow of his ear, not a threat but a promise of what it could have been. “That’s why I’m not going to kill you.”

I phased through the ground, leaving John’s voice muffled and distant. When I surfaced again, it was into the stale stench of an alleyway. My lungs burned, my knees wobbling as I staggered into a sprint. The town twisted around me until I found the motel, its familiar chipped sign looming over me like salvation.

I slipped through the wall and into my room. My jacket lay crumpled on the chair, the old ratty leather that still smelled faintly of smoke and blood. I pulled it on, half-panicked, and half-determined to leave at once. Sparks crawled along my arms, stray volts from Thunderbolt’s earlier strike, numbing the skin and setting my nerves on fire. My side throbbed where the ginger bastard’s sword had grazed me.

I pushed open the door, eyes hunting for Silverside. That was when I heard the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked.

Bang! Bang!

Pain shot down my legs as the bullets tore clean through my knees, searing fire racing up my bones. I tried to phase, but the rounds carried nullifier ratings, anchoring me and forcing me to bleed like anyone else.

“Nick!” Silver’s voice cracked.

“Get up!” Onyx shouted, furious.

I looked up through the haze, and there he was… the man in the bonnet mask, handgun steady, barrel leveled at my forehead. My pulse stuttered. He didn’t hesitate. He squeezed the trigger.

The shot never landed.

Silverside screamed alive with a mechanical roar, engine howling like a beast uncaged. The bike hurled itself forward without a rider, steel frame colliding with the gunman. He slammed into the wall, weapon spinning from his grasp. Before he could recover, Silverside reared its rear wheel and slammed it down on his head. The engine revved, the wheel grinding mercilessly. Bone snapped. Flesh burst. The sound was grotesque, wet, and bloody.

I froze. My throat caught. The wall was painted in streaks of gore, the man’s body unrecognizable under the churning wheel. Silverside’s machine cry echoed like laughter from the grave.

Breath slipped from me in shallow gasps. My vision blurred, nausea clawing at me. Every nerve screamed from the drain of intangibility, and every injury compounded into weakness. My knees trembled, blood pooling warm at my shins.

Onyx steadied me, voice sharp but oddly gentle. “Move, Nick. Don’t stop.”

Silver’s tone trembled, soft and desperate. “It’s okay… we’ll get you out… you’ll be fine…”

They hauled me up in the only way they could, lending me strength I couldn’t summon. I stumbled forward, half-dragged, until my hands found Silverside’s frame. The bike rumbled beneath me like a living thing. My eyes rolled heavily, edges darkening. Silver’s reassurance and Onyx's defiance were the last things I clung to. The engine screamed. Silverside launched forward, tearing through Redford’s streets, carrying me into the wind. My body gave way, slumping over the handlebars, and the world faded to black as the machine carried me away.

"Don't you die on us, Nick."