**Chapter 86: "Blank Spaces and Black Riders"(86)**
**Volume 5 – Exodus**
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The interrogation room in Willowbrook's central precinct smelled of burnt coffee and old metal. Detective Ava Reyes sat across from **Jordan Pitas**, a thick file open between them. The fluorescent lights hummed. Jordan's cybernetic jaw caught the light every time he shifted—polished alloy plates and faint blue seams running from cheekbone to throat.
Ava tapped her pen once. "Start from the beginning. How does a 30-year-old end up half-machine?"
Jordan's voice was rough, filtered through the subtle mechanical click of his rebuilt throat. "I was in a car crash when I was 12. My mother decided to put these good ol' jawns on me. Said the hospital could only save half my face and most of my spine. She signed the papers. Paid the black-market clinic. Woke up with this." He tapped the metal along his jaw. "Been living with it ever since. Don't sleep much. Don't dream right. But I walk. I talk. I still bleed red where the flesh is left."
Ava studied him. "And the upgrades since then? The ones that let you punch through concrete?"
Jordan's remaining human eye narrowed. "Survival. Willowbrook doesn't exactly roll out the welcome mat for cyborg men."
The door slammed open. A uniformed officer, breathing hard, leaned in. "Detective the—Los Jinetes Negros. The Mexican mafia crew. They're moving product right now. Big convoy. Boss Diego Ramirez is personally overseeing the run. Trucks left the east warehouse ten minutes ago, heading for the industrial bridge."
Ava stood in one smooth motion. "Jordan, we're not done. Stay put."
She was already moving. The officer followed. Within ninety seconds the precinct emptied of every available unit. Sirens lit the rain-slick streets. Unmarked cars and black-and-whites poured out after the convoy of dark trucks flying no plates, only the faint painted silhouette of a black horseman on the rear doors.
Ava rode in the lead car, radio crackling. "Stay on them. No lights until the bridge. I want Ramirez in cuffs before midnight."
The trucks rolled heavy through the industrial district, tires hissing on wet asphalt. The police shadowed them like wolves.
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Elsewhere, sleep had become an enemy.
Kevin Leister lay on a cot in the damaged Guardians Headquarters, eyes closed, Mythical Matrix dim. The moment consciousness slipped, there was nothing. No dreams. No memories. No nightmares. Just an endless, featureless blank space—white and silent and absolute. He floated in it with no body, no thoughts, only the knowledge that something had stolen every dream he was supposed to have.
He jolted awake gasping. Across the room Wyatt sat up at the same instant, face pale.
"Blank again," Wyatt whispered. "Every time. Just… nothing."
In a side room Bandile Hardere held Serenity against his chest. Her cool zombie skin was damp with residual rain. They had tried to sleep after the earlier chaos. Both had fallen into the same empty white void. No memories of each other. No shared dreams. Only the same terrible blankness. Serenity's undead heart gave a single hard thud of unease. Bandile's telekinesis stirred restlessly around them like nervous static.
"It's spreading," Bandile muttered. "Whatever's taking the dreams is hitting all of us."
Kevin met Wyatt's eyes across the dim hall. The Child of Humanity and the Supernatural Rampager had the same hollow look. Something was erasing the one place left that still felt private.
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The main hall of Headquarters was a war zone.
Hades moved like entropy given form. Every step aged the floor into dust. Every gesture unmade the air. Nathan Moya's illusions had already been shredded; the illusionist was on one knee, blood running freely from both nostrils, still trying to weave new false corridors that Hades simply walked through.
Peter Shotstock fired the End Blade in controlled arcs. Sasha coordinated from the console, Ofentse translating threat vectors in three languages at once. Rona's incubus glamour tried to slow Hades's perception and failed. Cain's silent strikes glanced off ash-coloured skin. Nanuq the polar bear charged and was thrown aside like a toy. Brakash and Jayse the Caveman hit Hades together from opposite flanks and were driven back in a single shockwave.
Kevin and Wyatt rejoined the fight the moment they woke. The Matrix flared. Wyatt's ordinary blood—still the most dangerous thing in the room according to Hemostro—sang under his skin. Hikoru Jinshi's kitsune tails blazed gold and crimson. Kenshi Yung's blades carved silver lines through the air. Ignis dropped solar lances from the upper railing. Lancelot's silver spears pinned Hades's shadow to the floor for half a second before the ancient power simply stepped out of it.
Bella and Bangu fought as a unit. Jackson's mist tried to choke Hades's senses. Sally's power layered over it. Koa's beast spirits lunged and were unmade. Almost every teenager still able to stand was in the hall, throwing everything they had.
Hades barely seemed to notice.
Then **Arthur "Blinkstrike" Muller** teleported.
One moment the Teleporting Viking was on the far side of the hall. The next he was inside Hades's guard, violet light trailing from his braid, axe already mid-swing. The blade—old, rune-etched, hungry—carved a deep diagonal line across Hades's chest.
Ash-coloured flesh split. Something that was not quite blood, black and smoking, welled up from the wound. Hades looked down at it as if mildly surprised.
Blinkstrike reappeared ten metres away, chest heaving, axe dripping that same dark fluid.
"First blood," the Viking said, almost smiling. "Even gods can bleed if you cut them right."
Hades touched the wound with two fingers. The smoking liquid clung to his skin. His grave-pit eyes lifted and found Blinkstrike, then Kevin, then Wyatt.
"Interesting," he said, voice still the sound of earth falling on a coffin. "You are learning."
The temperature in the hall dropped another ten degrees. Outside, sirens howled in the distance as Ava's convoy closed on the black trucks of Los Jinetes Negros. In the blank white spaces that waited behind every closed eyelid, the dreams of Kevin, Wyatt, Bandile and Serenity remained stolen.
And Hades, chest freshly opened, took one slow step forward as if the cut had only woken him up.
**End of Chapter 86**