Location: Crestwood City — Cafe District / Taskforce Command Center / Downtown Screens / Lacera Firm
Time: Late Night — The Convergence
---
The Stream
VidFlash had gone into overdrive.
@Tecno_Wizard: "can't believe he's doing it again. making a public appearance while the whole PD is on his tail. this is either insane or genius"
@HorriefViwer: "now that is straight up ganger energy. bro really said 'watch me'"
@Still_Skeptical: "this might be a ruse, fellows. who knows whether that Elijah is still alive anyway. could be a body double"
@ChaosEnjoyer: "would you shut it sheesh. always negative. let the man cook"
@Team_Elijah: "want to see some bodies"
@WaitWhat: "guys i know someone near that cafe. it's real. it's happening right now"
@MindBlown: "the whole city is watching one man and he's just sitting there drinking capachino. what timeline is this"
---
Downtown
On the giant plaza screen, the live feed from the news chopper showed the cafe from above—the ring of patrol cars, the SWAT transport, the officers crouched behind their vehicles with weapons raised.
A man on a bench looked up with a hot dog halfway to his mouth.
"They're really doing it," he said. "They're really raiding a coffee shop."
"Look at the screen," said the woman beside him. "That's Ninth Street. That's my Ninth Street."
"They've got choppers. Two of them. Police and news."
"Whole city's going to burn."
"Going to? It's already on fire."
---
The Apartment Stairs
Across the river, on the concrete steps of a walk-up apartment building, three young people sat with their phones out, watching the same stream.
"Are those implants?" one of them asked, pointing at the screen. "Look at them. All of them have those glowing things in their necks and wrists."
"Those aren't implants," said the second. "Those are the new aethernova things. The base kids get them."
"Right, right, the circuit things. They're basically steroids with extra steps."
"I heard the higher the rank, the brighter they glow."
"So the ones glowing brightest are the scariest?"
"Probably. Look at the one in front. She's not even glowing that much and everyone's walking behind her like she's the boss."
"That's the chief. Sarah. She runs the taskforce."
"She looks like she runs everything."
@Still_Skeptical: "guys don't tell me you all still believe all this crap. what if it's all some shitty psyops"
@Team_Elijah: "you're the psyops. endless complaining"
@WaitWhat: "it's real. i know someone around that place. they've confirmed it. cops everywhere"
@ChaosEnjoyer: "if it's real then we're watching history. if it's fake then we're watching the best fake ever made. either way i'm entertained"
@MindBlown: "the chief just walked out of the truck. she's got a full suit on. that is NOT normal gear"
---
The taskforce came out of the armored vehicles in a single, practiced wave.
They moved like water finding a crack in a wall—spilling from the doors of the transports, forming a line, closing the gaps between the cars. Their suits were black and matte, scuffed at the knees and elbows. Small nodes at their collars and wrists lit up as they stepped into formation, and the air around them changed—tightened—like the whole block had taken a breath and was holding it.
The officers nearest the barricade felt it, though none of them had a name for it. Their skin prickled. Their ears popped. Somebody muttered "what is that?" and got no answer.
Sarah stepped out of the lead transport last.
Her suit was already formed around her—sleek, dark, with a faint reddish glow running through the seams. Around her the air did something none of the others' air did. It went still. Not quiet. Still. The way a pond goes still when something very large has just gone under.
At her back stood Zane, Kira, and Santra—three shadows with three different glows, each one carrying their own kind of weight. Zane's was bright and eager. Kira's was tight and neat, like a knot in a rope. Santra's was calm and wide, the way a wall is calm and wide.
The officers looked at them and did not say anything.
Some of them understood, in the way that ordinary people understand weather: that something large was about to happen, and that they should stay out of its way.
@Tecno_Wizard: "are those the ones from the base? the real ones?"
@WaitWhat: "yes. taskforce. all of them are circuit bound. the chief is a fully realized one. i read about it"
@Still_Skeptical: "you read about it on a conspiracy blog"
@WaitWhat: "no i read about it on the news"
---
The Megaphone
Sarah raised the amplifier to her mouth.
"THIS IS CHIEF SARAH OF THE INVESTIGATE AND CAPTURE TASKFORCE. THE ENTIRE AREA IS SURROUNDED. THERE IS NO STUNT YOU CAN PULL RIGHT NOW THAT WILL SAVE YOU. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP. SLOWLY. DO NOT DO ANYTHING CLEVER."
The street went quiet.
The choppers circled. The officers held their line. The civilians in the alley behind the cafe pressed flat against the wall and tried not to breathe.
And then, from inside the cafe, a voice.
"Oh, really, chief?"
The door opened.
A figure in a dark coat stepped out—not rushing, not crawling, not in any way a person who had been caught. Just walking. Hands in pockets. Glasses on his face. He stopped at the top of the three short steps that led down to the sidewalk and looked out at the ring of guns the way a man looks at a garden.
Every officer on the street took one involuntary step backward.
@HorriefViwer: "IT'S HIM"
@MindBlown: "IT'S ACTUALLY HIM"
@Tecno_Wizard: "what chalk or drift has this dude been taking. does he see himself as some kind of superhero or what"
@Team_Elijah: "no drugs. that's just him"
@ChaosEnjoyer: "the whole PD is pointing guns at him and he's standing there like he's waiting for his coffee"
@Still_Skeptical: "ok. even i'll admit. that is strange behavior"
Behind the figure, in the doorway, Tyla Aniston leaned against the frame with her arms crossed. She looked at Sarah the way a cat looks at a mouse that has just walked into its own trap.
"Chief," she said. "You've been on my man's tail all night. What's bugging you? You interested in my man or what?"
A ripple went through the taskforce—Zane's eyebrows lifted, Kira's jaw tightened, Santra actually smirked.
Sarah's voice did not change.
"Don't try any mind games here, missy. I'm on the clock to capture you both and put the cuffs on you."
The figure with the glasses tilted his head.
"Don't know if I should be touched by your focus on duty, or just disappointed."
He put on a worry-faced expression that was so theatrically overdone it made one of the officers snort out loud.
"You've all been feeling all over the place, haven't you?" he said. "Finding me here. Jumping so quickly without butting an eye. Forgetting the old line." He paused. "Hurry, hurry, has no blessings. Only loose ends."
Sarah's face didn't change, but something behind it shifted.
"What do you mean by that?"
The figure smiled.
"You'll find out."
---
The Command Center
The command center was quiet.
Two of the monitors were still dark—the feeds for Unit Seven and the tactical transport, which no longer existed. But the feeds for the station itself were live, and three people were at those desks now, keeping half an eye on the perimeter as the chief's standoff played out.
One of them was Selby—young, over-caffeinated, the sort of person who checked every camera twice. He had Lucian's feed up on his main screen.
On the feed, the taskforce officers who had stayed behind were coming into the room. Four of them—Pell among them—were stepping up to the chair where the figure that was supposedly Lucian had been sitting all this time, waiting to be tied.
On the feed, they reached him.
One of them bent down with a length of zip-tie.
On the feed, a hand closed around the back of his neck.
Whose hand, Selby couldn't tell. It had come from off-screen—fast, high, gripping the officer's neck in a way that looked casual and was not.
The officer jerked. His head turned at an angle that necks do not usually turn. He folded to the floor without a sound.
Two more officers—the ones just behind him—started to reach for their weapons.
The figure that had been sitting rose to his feet. His chair tipped back and clattered onto the floor. He looked at the officers. He looked past them. He looked at the camera.
He smiled.
And then it started.
The officers on the left and right of him came apart—not in an explosion, not with fire, but simply opened, as if something had reached into their chests and pulled the front of them away from the back. Red mist drifted up toward the ceiling. Their weapons clattered to the floor with the hands still attached.
Pell tried to run.
She made it two steps.
The figure caught her by the hair and drew her back without effort, the way a man draws back a curtain. The last thing Selby saw of her on that feed was her hands closing over his wrists, and then a flick, and then she was gone too.
The figure—still wearing the face of Lucian Freeman—stood alone in the room.
He reached up to his jaw.
He peeled the mask away.
Underneath it was a stranger's face—older, thinner, emptier. A man Selby had never seen and would never see again. The stranger looked at the camera. He looked into the camera. He tipped his head in a small, mocking bow.
The lights in the station went out.
Selby's voice cracked.
"What the—"
---
The perimeter camera caught them coming through the front doors.
Three figures, walking in without hurrying, in dark civilian clothes and no visible weaponry. The officers at the station entrance were already reaching for their sidearms when they saw them.
They didn't get the chance to raise them.
The three figures never broke stride. The first of them was the man who had peeled his face off at the chair—still wearing the stranger's features, still walking with the same unhurried certainty. The other two flanked him half a step behind. None of them spoke.
The desk sergeant opened his mouth to shout.
The man in front raised a hand and pressed it against his own chest.
Underneath the civilian shirt, something was strapped. Something Selby could not see clearly, not even with the camera at the entrance zoomed all the way in.
The desk sergeant's face went white.
He turned and ran.
He didn't get far.
---
From the street outside the central station, the first sign was the flash. It wasn't fire, exactly—it was white, a flat, soundless white that expanded outward from the front of the building and consumed it. Then the sound arrived. Then the windows came down in a long glittering curtain across the pavement. Then the front of the building came down after them.
The blast wave crossed the road. It knocked a patrol car onto its side. It flattened a hot dog cart three blocks away. It set off every car alarm between the station and the river.