Something inside me changed.

All unnecessary distractions were washed away by a surge of anger. This wasn't a white hot rage like when Mirage duped me for the umpteenth time. No, this was a new kind of anger.

It was cold and silent.

For the first time in weeks, my mind felt like it had been rinsed clean. The lingering stress that was weighing me down disappeared, and nothing else in the world felt like it mattered. I knew with absolute certainty what my next step was.

No hesitation.

No brainstorming.

No second-guessing.

There was only one acceptable outcome, no matter the cost.

Richard was going to pay.

Unintentionally crippling our operation was one thing, but hurting Sam was personal. Watching her unravel and sob in my arms ignited something primal within me. I desired one thing and one thing only. It burned like fire beneath my skin, and there was only one way I was going to quell it.

No more sitting around.

No more waiting.

Splicer's equipment could wait.

My cybernetic projects were making good progress.

My automation could be put on the back burner.

My firepower was lacking in comparison to Ajax, but it would be satisfactory for the job that needed to be done.

I was tired of other people having power over us. Mirage was a rat who knew more than I was comfortable with. Cyberspace had a leash on every single one of us, and there was nothing we could do. Now, Alice was compromised by someone we had chosen to overlook in favor of focusing on Grim and the Cains.

That decision cost us.

No more. I'm not going to give an inch more.

I was done playing nice, and I was sick of keeping my head low. I just needed a couple of hours.

Finding Richard's home had been easy enough.

Breaking in was even simpler.

Inside, we found a dusty old house that had been abandoned for weeks. No photos on the wall and no decor. All the flowers were wilted, and every room looked drab.

"Hard to believe someone so fucked up grew up in a place like this," Anomaly inspected the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards. He found nothing but moldy bread and tinned fruit. Then he opened the fridge. "Power is still on, so someone is paying the bills at least."

I had already prepared for this eventually. I brute forced my way into Bayside's CCTV and was sifting through recordings of the area around Eastworth Girls. I saw the form of Seraphim flying in with the bastard, and I snagged his face from there.

I fed it through every public and private identification database in the city, uncaring of who knew what I was doing. The ECU, probably, but it wasn't like it would matter. He would be dead and buried long before they could find him.

It took some time, but I finally found where Seraphim had taken him after their confrontation with Alice. It was a small townhouse a few blocks away. Maybe Richard thought it wouldn't be safe to go back home. It seems he wasn't a complete moron.

"I've got him," I stalked out of the house. "Follow me closely. There are Walkers nearby."

Four of my drones were tracking the nearest ones, while the other four followed me.

Anomaly and Vigil followed my instructions without complaint. When they had heard what had happened to Alice, they were more than willing to help. Vigil's statues maintained a perimeter around us while Anomaly provided support.

Alice didn't join us. She couldn't, nor did she want to. After her collapse, she locked herself in her room and refused to come out. I couldn't blame her. She felt powerless and had just lost a huge part of herself.

We moved as a unit, with me acting as a guide. The seismic sensors I'd placed fed me information directly to my suit, so we were able to avoid the Walkers with only a bit of difficulty.

When we arrived at the house, I moved up to the front door and scanned the building. There were three heat signatures inside: one upstairs and two in the living room.

"Get the door open," I said.

Anomaly stalked forward and melted through the cracks. There was a bit of shuffling on the other side, and a few seconds later, the door was open.

I strode through and down the hallway, turning through the first opening on the right. I wanted to identify who the occupants were in the lounge before we went any further.

As it turned out, the two heat signatures I picked up were an elderly couple. They hadn't turned to see who had opened the door or even reacted to our presence at all. They simply stared at the TV, doing their best impression of one of Vigil's statues.

A TV that wasn't switched on.

Anomaly gagged the moment he returned to his human form.

"Ugh! It fuckin' stinks in here!"

I walked around in front of them, blocking their view. They didn't acknowledge me, they stared right through me like I wasn't even there. They were alive at the very least, but aside from that, they might as well have been zombies.

Unresponsive. Locked in place. Seems like they would sit here and stare until they died. Given that they were still alive, this had to have been a recent development. Dehydration would only take a few days to claim them after all, unless Richard's power somehow managed to keep them alive for prolonged suffering.

"More of his handiwork," I said, scanning the couple. They had elevated heart rates, and judging from their brain activity, they were registering our presence. They just couldn't act. "Seems like they know we're here, they just can't speak or move."

Anomaly managed to push through the foul aroma and shuffle around next to me. His fists clenched when he looked at their faces. Bloodshot eyes and sunken faces with skin that clung desperately to bones. I could only imagine the quiet agony they were enduring. I wanted to help, but what could I do?

I could extract the sedation fluid from my tranquilizers in my sniper and put them to sleep, but that wouldn't solve the problem. They would still be trapped, and Richard didn't care if these two lived or died.

Sick fuck.

"Let's fuck this guy up." Anomaly hissed in a barely suppressed rage. "Who the hell actually does shit like this? What did they do? Literally nothing. They just—" he cut himself off and transformed.

His entire body shuddered, and what sounded like the distant screams of the damned emerged from him.

"He's upstairs," I said coldly. "Bring him down here, just like we talked about."

Anomaly surged forward like a black tide, sliding through the room and rushing through the entrance. He disappeared around the corner, and I heard his oversized form smash the door to Richard's room. The yelp that came from upstairs was cut very short, and it wasn't long before I saw Anomaly return with the vermin in hand.

Richard looked just how I remembered him.

He was flailing around, trying to rip the appendage that covered his mouth. I heard his labored breathing through his nose as he clawed at Anomaly, but he made no headway. The only way he'd escape was if Anomaly let him.

Conveniently, there were a couple of chairs in the room. I fetched them both and placed them in front of the elderly couple. I sat down in one and gestured for Anomaly to force Richard down into the other. He obliged, more tendrils emerging from his gelatinous body and wrapping around Richard's limbs, pinning him to the chair. Not once did the one around his mouth loosen.

All it would take is one slip, and he could compromise us all.

I wasn't going to give him the opportunity.

"I expected to find Seraphim here," I started, knowing this wasn't going to be much of a conversation. "How unfortunate for you that she isn't here. I suppose I shouldn't complain, it makes life much easier for us."

Richard's eyes madly darted around the room as it started to dawn on him, just how screwed he was. His eyes briefly scanned the elderly couple he had condemned to a fate worse than death, and his eyes narrowed in concentration. I allowed him a few seconds to see what else his powers were capable of, but nothing came of his attempt. The couple did not move, and Richard only grew more desperate.

"I've seen some horrible shit since I got dragged into this lifestyle," I continued. "This easily makes my top three. I don't know why you've done what you've done, but it stops here. You've crossed a line, and I'm not going to put up with people like you lurking in the shadows when there are already enough problems to deal with."

Richard tried to hurl every insult he could at me, or perhaps he was trying to control me. Regardless, the noise was devoured by the gag in his mouth.

"You hurt someone I care about – a girl called Sam. I don't know how much you know about us, and frankly, I don't give a shit, but you've done something that can't be undone, at least from where I'm sitting. So, here's what's going to happen," I leaned forward and clasped my hands together. "We're going to have a brief chat. I'm going to ask some questions, and you're going to answer them honestly. You'll answer by blinking. Once for no, twice for yes. If you don't, I'm going to kill you."

Richard's breathing quickened.

"First question, and this is a big one so don't lie to me. Are you able to reverse the effect your powers have on people?"

Richard stared at me in defiance. I saw his expression shift behind Anomaly's appendage, his cheeks raising as if he were smiling. I kept my cool.

"I'm not going to ask a second time."

Richard blinked twice.

He could have been lying to save his own skin, feeding me the answers I wanted to hear. Thankfully, I'd come prepared. Since Gold was no longer an option, I was forced to find another way to detect lies. I couldn't rely on my own intuition to make that decision because even people trained to spot lies got it wrong too often. I'd considered bringing Francis along since there was more than one way to ensure the truth, but he wasn't going to put himself anywhere near this guy.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

That was fine, I didn't need him here anyway. There were simpler methods.

I'd acquired an old-fashioned lie detector and upgraded it before integrating it into my suit. I tuned it to cooperate with the other sensors that were built into my suit. Heart rate monitor, blood pressure, brain activity. It utilized the data from the other components to make a judgment on whether the subject was lying. Before leaving to execute this operation, I ran a few tests with Anomaly, Vigil, and Francis to make sure it worked properly.

It had a hundred percent success rate with Anomaly and Vigil, mostly because they weren't very skilled liars. Francis, on the other hand, was a much tougher nut to crack. Regardless, I was still satisfied with a sixty-eight percent accuracy rating. He had experience fooling enemy mentalists. If he couldn't beat an advanced lie detector more than one time out of three, then that really said something about the quality of mentalists nowadays.

Richard wasn't trained. He was a moron playing at a game much bigger than he realized. I had every confidence the lie detector would work.

Lo and behold, he was telling the truth. His power was reversible. However, I already suspected why he was so calm about sharing that information. He thought it would protect him – buy him some time to think of an escape route.

"Do you need your ability to speak to reverse any damage you've caused?"

Richard shrugged and blinked twice again.

I didn't bother asking if he was willing to cooperate. Someone who tortured the elderly like this didn't deserve the opportunity. Even if he was willing, I couldn't trust him to keep his word, and I wasn't willing to risk him getting out a command that had us all dancing to his tune.

"It's clear you've had control of Seraphim for a while. A month or two, I imagine?"

Two blinks.

"That's more than enough to cause some serious damage. I suspect you've had plenty of time to play around. Would I be right to assume you're somewhat new?"

Again, two blinks.

"How long? Two months?"

One blink.

"Three?"

One blink.

"Well, isn't that interesting. You've been a super longer than me," I scoffed, scowling at him from behind my visor. All this time, someone like him had been sleuthing around in the background, slowly rotting Seraphim's brain while no one took notice. "With a power like yours, you could've stopped the Cains and Pandora easily, but who am I to judge? I fucked around too, and didn't really know what to do in the beginning. I imagine you were the same," even drawing the comparison made me feel sick. "But you chose to find a toy to play with. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?"

Richard didn't blink.

He just glared at me.

That hateful stare returned as if he were trying to scream at me. I could almost hear him screaming, 'Who are you to judge me?' He probably thought he was better than me. The Mechakinetic of Madhouse, the one who led Grim into a trap that put him down for good.

"Aside from Seraphim and the old couple here, Is Seraphim the only one you have under your control?"

Two blinks – a lie.

"You're lying."

My shoulder-mounted grenade launcher unfolded from my shoulder compartment, and I saw panic flash in Richard's eyes. The barrel of the weapon rotated as I reconfigured its firing mechanism through the interface on my visor. With Ajax's curfew and the need to be discreet with our actions, I hadn't had the chance to test the laser function I integrated into it.

I lowered the intensity, and a brief flash seared a line across his throat.

He wailed in agony. No matter how much he moved, he made no progress and wasn't able to free his mouth. Anomaly held firm, and I could see that he was just itching to tighten his grip further to squeeze the life out of this rat.

"That's strike one. Two more and you're out," I warned. "I'll ask again. Is Seraphim the only one you have under your control?"

Richard's chest heaved as he began sweating. He blinked, well, winked I suppose, once, and repeated it in evenly spaced intervals. He was desperate. Angry and afraid. He thought that his ability to reverse the damage he caused would probably keep us from harming him.

I let him have that little bit of hope.

"How many more? Do you have anyone else in the ECU under your control?"

One blink.

Good, he hadn't done anything to Abby.

"How about friends? Any you have that you've twisted?"

One blink.

"Family?"

Two blinks.

"Siblings?"

One blink.

"Parents?"

Two blinks.

"Both of them?"

Two blinks.

Interesting.

They weren't home when we broke into his house. Without Alice's help, I had no clue what they were doing. I didn't even know what they looked like since there were no family photos in the house. The house had been barren.

That meant he sent his parents somewhere, but where?

I looked at the elderly couple. They… couldn't be, right? They were too old. Grandparents maybe?

"These two here," I gestured to the elderly couple. "Are they your grandparents?"

One blink.

"Do you know them somehow?"

Two blinks.

He was familiar with them. They weren't his grandparents, but they could be extended family. Something didn't feel right about that. I checked the room again and looked for photos, any sign of who these people were. I picked out a few portraits of the couple in their youth, and they looked happy, but that didn't answer any questions. I continued to search the room and found an album. I brought it back to my chair and began flipping through the pages.

I found my answer quickly.

"These aren't your grandparents. They're Seraphim's."

Anomaly's body shuddered, and his appendages tightened around Richard. I saw him squeezing as his massive head curled around like a snake to face the weasel being crushed in his grip. His body shuddered again, and a roaring, nightmarish chime shook the room. Richard was paralyzed as he stared into the ancient dying stars that were Anomaly's eyes.

"Stop," I said. Anomaly's head slowly turned, and I was met with the same piercing gaze. I didn't falter. I didn't even flinch. "I'm not done with him."

Anomaly made another hellish sound before loosening his grip. Richard gained some slack, and I could hear the bastard groaning. I wouldn't be surprised if Anomaly's little outburst had broken some of the bones Red had cracked.

"Do you have anyone I haven't guessed under your control?" I asked.

It took Richard a moment to even register the question. I decided to hurry things up by giving him some motivation.

I focused my laser to a pin point and activated it once more. The light entered his right pupil and scorched away his sight with surgical precision. He kicked and thrashed as Anomaly kept him still.

"Strike two. You've only got one good eye left, if I were you, I would pick my next answers very carefully. Do you have anyone else under your control?"

One blink.

"Your parents weren't home when we went to visit. You've sent them somewhere," I paused to think of how to phrase the question. It had to be a yes or no question for him to even be able to answer. "The ECU?"

One blink.

Fair enough. What would he need them for? His power let him control anyone he spoke to. If he was trying to remain incognito, then he still needed some way to survive without tipping off people who would catch on. He needed food, money, and resources.

"You sent them to work?"

Richard looked confused for a moment before blinking twice.

They were working somewhere, for someone. My lips thinned as I tried to think.

"Their day jobs?"

One blink.

"Something new then. You sent them to work for someone?"

Two blinks.

What would a moron like him try to get them to do? Earn money quickly and easily. It made my skin crawl to realise we'd both had the same motivation when we started out. At least I learned my lesson quickly. Perhaps it was a good thing he never did. The damage someone like Mirage could cause with a power like Richard's was almost unthinkable.

"A gang?"

Two blinks.

It was easy enough to narrow it down from here.

"The Cains?"

One blink.

I hadn't expected a yes from that, but I figured I would ask anyway. They were defunct now, but he could have put them to work months ago.

"Pandora?"

Two blinks.

I growled.

"You sent them to work for Pandora?"

Two blinks.

What kind of fool would do that?

Two mind-controlled zombies strolling into Pandora territory would draw attention sooner or later. Chances were they'd already been captured and squeezed for whatever information they had. Though depending on Richard's conditioning, Pandora would only get so much.

That's probably why he wasn't living at his house anymore. He was afraid Pandora would find him. Anomaly and I hadn't seen any signs of forced entry, but that didn't mean no one had gone snooping. Then there was the incident today at Eastworth Girls, where Seraphim was seen publicly fleeing the premises.

It was why Abby was called away after her therapy session. The emergency meeting was about Seraphim.

What did Pandora know? The ECU?

This place belonged to her grandparents. It was a location of interest, and we were just sitting there. Pandora or the ECU could arrive at a moment's notice. The fact that they hadn't didn't exactly surprise me, but it did put me on edge.

"Keep him here," I said, getting up from my chair. "I'll be back in a moment."

I moved out of the lounge and into the kitchen. One of Vigil's statues was keeping itself obscured next to the window. I approached it as the solid material began peeling off and flaking away, only for Vigil to emerge and stumble slightly. Switching with her statues was still somewhat disorientating, but she had gotten much better at it.

"I take it you heard?" I asked. Vigil nodded quickly. "How are we looking? Is everything still quiet?"

"The Sweepers keep finding my statues. I have to keep them spread out so they can't narrow down where we are," Vigil explained. "There's some Pandora members around as well. They're slowly making their way here, but I'm doing my best to scare them off. They're looking for something – this house I imagine. Everything is quiet on the ECU's front."

The four closest Walkers still hadn't changed their patrol patterns.

"Pandora Mentalists likely clued them in while The ECU are probably out chasing Seraphim. My guess is they've spotted her somewhere. If Alice's info is accurate, Richard's conditioned Seraphim to protect him at all costs. She's not going to come back here if she's being followed."

"Which just leaves Pandora," Vigil confirmed. "What's the plan?"

"Keep trying to scare them off. How many are there?"

"Six. Two fliers and four other supers on foot. One of them is big, but it isn't Liberation," Vigil frowned. "Sorry, I don't know any of their names. That's Alice's thing and… and I haven't really done much research on them."

"Switch back and stay safe. I'll send a few of my drones to help you harass them. Anomaly and I will wrap things up here."

"Are you…" Vigil peered through the kitchen door back into the hallway. She couldn't see into the living room, but I could tell what she was going to ask. "Are you going to kill him?"

I looked over my shoulder.

"I want to."

"You should," Vigil said, her fists clenching. "Alice has been… It's unnerving. I've never seen her like this before. I don't want him walking the streets, I won't let him."

"Don't worry. I don't intend to set him free."

"Are you going to hand him over to The ECU?" Vigil frowned. "Would they even be able to hold him?"

"I'm not handing him over either," I said, turning around. "He's got redundancies, so killing him will just cause too much damage."

I felt Vigil's gaze harden as she stared into my back.

"Upgrade…"

I raised a hand to cut her off.

"Don't worry. I've thought of a much better way to deal with him."

Richard wasn't going to cooperate. Never.

So I would make him.

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