Chaos had a new soundtrack. The roar of the explosion had been replaced by an uneven chorus of screams, the distant wail of ambulance and fire truck sirens, and an unnatural silence emanating from the center of the street.
There, standing on the cracked asphalt, was Cain. The lights of the police cars flickered erratically.
"What the hell is wrong with the lights?" an officer shouted from behind his patrol car door.
"It's not just that! The radio is dead!" his partner replied, uselessly slapping the dashboard.
Their red and blue colors faded before dying completely. The officers, weapons drawn, stopped at an uncertain distance, their faces a mixture of confusion and fear. They did not understand what they were seeing, only that the laws of physics seemed to be crumbling around the figure.
"Dispatch, I repeat, we have a subject of unknown origin in the square! He seems to be interfering with all electrical systems!" one officer yelled into his shoulder radio, which only answered with static.
The television cameras, running on batteries from a safe distance, were broadcasting live. Their lenses ignored the helpless police and the panicking civilians as they fled. They were fixed on the figure standing between the monster and the world.
Gamma Jack stood about twenty yards from Cain, the dust from the collapsed courthouse still covering his prison jumpsuit. He remained impassive to the terror his antagonist generated. For a moment, he ignored Cain completely, as if he were a minor annoyance. He turned slightly, a calculated move so the dozens of cameras would capture the profile of his jaw and the determination in his gaze.
When he spoke, his voice echoed above the chaos, with a calm and authority that reached every microphone and every viewer watching from home.
"Citizens! Do not be afraid!" his tone was a proclamation. "Help has arrived!"
A murmur of relief spread through the crowd watching from a distance. The flashes from the cameras multiplied.
Just then, a hum cut through the air and a figure descended from the sky, landing with an agility that barely stirred the dust. It was Yuls, now clad in Apogee's dark, functional suit. She had arrived as soon as she finished dressing. Her face, framed by the mask, was pale and her eyes were wide as she surveyed the scene.
Jack's gaze shifted to her for a split second.
"Apogee, secure the perimeter! Do not let a single civilian get a scratch!"
"Understood," she replied, her voice firm despite the tremor she felt. "What is that thing, Jack?"
"Nothing important, my dear Yuls," he said, not taking his eyes off Cain. "Just a little parasite."
Yuls swallowed. Jack's words snapped her out of her stupor.
'God. It's real. It's not a nightmare. He's just standing there. Don't look at him. Don't look in his eyes. Orders. Jack gave orders. Focus on the orders.'
She nodded once, a sharp movement, and got to work.
Jack turned his attention back to the abomination before him. Cain simply watched him, his head tilted slightly, like a curious animal studying strange prey. It was time for the first test.
Jack raised a hand, palm open. An almost invisible, hair thin beam of gamma radiation shot out and hit Cain directly in the chest. There was no impact. The beam simply vanished into him.
Cain did not flinch. In fact, for an instant, he seemed to swell slightly, his chest expanding as if he had just taken a deep breath. A look of vague pleasure crossed his expressionless face.
Jack lowered his hand, an almost imperceptible smile curving his lips.
'Bingo. An energy parasite. It feeds on direct energy. Such an unimaginative design. A glorified parasite. Pathetic.'
While Jack made his diagnosis, Yuls sprang into action. She held out her hands, fingers spread, and concentrated. She felt an invisible resistance that yielded to her will. The chassis of an abandoned patrol car groaned with twisting metal before rising into the air, spinning slowly. With a fluid movement, she set it down on the street, creating the beginning of a barricade.
The stranded police officers stared at her in awe.
"Get back!" she yelled, her voice higher than she intended. "Everyone out of the perimeter! Now!"
A man sized piece of the cornice broke off the courthouse facade. Yuls gasped, spinning around. The concrete block plummeted toward a group of reporters huddled behind a vehicle. Without thinking, she projected a gravitational wave. The block stopped dead in the air, barely ten feet from the ground. With another gesture, she diverted it to the side, where it crashed in a cloud of dust.
"I told you to move!" she snapped at the reporters, who were gaping at her.
Her face was drenched in sweat, a mask of terrified concentration. Her movements were not elegant; they were rough, desperate. She was clearly a novice, but she was effective. She was following the order. She was keeping the civilians safe.
And that was all that mattered to Jack.
Cain had tasted the appetizer. Jack's small energy beam awakened a voracious hunger in him: a promise of a much larger feast. He felt the power radiating from the man before him, an almost limitless source, a personal sun. And he decided he wanted the main course.
With a low, guttural snarl, he lunged forward. His movements were clumsy but relentless; each stride struck the ground with devastating force. In his wake, the world died. The asphalt beneath his feet lost its deep black color, turning a pale, brittle gray. The streetlights that had survived his initial arrival sputtered out with a pitiful hum. A puddle of street water evaporated in a cloud of heatless steam. His goal was simple: get to Jack, put his hands on him, and absorb every last drop of his power.
Jack did not retreat a single inch. Instead, he smiled.
When Cain was less than thirty feet away, Jack moved with unnatural grace. He leaned his body back slightly and a small, controlled detonation of radiation, silent and invisible, erupted from the sole of his right boot. The force propelled him backward, letting him slide across the pavement.
Cain, seeing the distance increase, stopped abruptly. With a roar, he slammed his fist on the ground. The asphalt cracked and a car sized slab shot toward Jack. It was not a simple rock; it was wrapped in an aura of drained energy, moving faster than its weight suggested.
Jack did not even flinch. As he slid back, he raised one hand and fired an incredibly precise gamma beam that struck the center of the slab. It disintegrated into a shower of gray sand that fell harmlessly around him.
'Strong, but predictable. He thinks this is a fight. It's not. This is just my show.'
Cain roared in frustration and increased his speed, this time running in an arc, trying to flank him. Jack continued his dance, using small bursts of energy under his feet to propel himself sideways and backward, always maintaining a precise distance. His agility came not from his muscles, but from the absolute control he had over the energy he generated. It was a game of precision against brute force, and Jack was the master of the board.
The chase led them to the center of the square in front of the courthouse. Cain, frustrated by Jack's evasive dance, was about to reach him, extending hands that looked like claws.
"Apogee, now!" Jack yelled, not taking his eyes off his opponent. "Pin him to the ground!"
From the edge of the combat zone, Yuls, who had been watching with her heart in her throat while moving the last civilian vehicle to safety, reacted instantly.
'I can do this. Just push. Push down. With everything.'
She extended both hands toward Cain and pushed with her mind.
An invisible, crushing force slammed down on Cain. A massive and sudden increase in local gravity focused entirely on him. His knees buckled with an audible crack and he fell, first to one knee, then to both. The concrete beneath him spiderwebbed, forming a small crater. He tried to stand, struggling against the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. He growled in confusion, slamming a fist on the ground.
'What… is this? I… can't… absorb it. What trick is this?'
Jack did not waste the opening. He did not even look at Cain, who fought against a force he could not comprehend. His attention was focused on a new target: a cast iron fire hydrant on the edge of the sidewalk, a few yards from where Cain knelt.
Jack raised his hand and aimed. A torrent of pure gamma radiation enveloped the fire hydrant. The red metal began to glow, first with an orange radiance, then turning white hot. Finally, it took on a greenish halo that crackled and distorted the air around it. The asphalt at its base began to bubble. The process took barely three seconds.
"Apogee, pop it!" Jack commanded.
Yuls shifted her focus. She released Cain from the gravitational pressure and directed a sharp, concentrated pulse straight at the superheated casing of the fire hydrant.
The irradiated metal, weakened by the heat and energy, burst with the force of a grenade.
The water that shot out was not clear and clean. It was a murky, glowing geyser that emitted its own ghostly green light. A torrent of radioactive poison drenched Cain at point blank range.
For the first time, Cain screamed. A high pitched, soul tearing shriek of pure pain. The contaminated water sizzled on contact with his skin. He could not absorb the radiation that was bonded to the water molecules. He was being poisoned from the outside in. His body, designed to feed on energy, had no defense against such a physical and elemental poison.
The pain maddened the beast. Cain leaped to his feet, ignoring the force that had held him prisoner. The radioactive water evaporated off his skin in clouds of greenish steam, but the damage was done. His body convulsed, and dark patches, like necrotic burns, began to appear on his pale skin.
He understood he could not win this fight directly. The man in the prison jumpsuit was too smart, too evasive. And the invisible woman was a trick he could not counter. So, in his agony and fury, he unleashed his true ability. He stopped trying to absorb Jack's energy. Instead, he chose to absorb the energy from everything.
He opened his mouth in a silent scream and expanded his absorption field in a massive, growing dome.
A sphere of visible distortion expanded from his body, draining the life and energy from everything in a fifty yard radius. The sound vanished completely. The grass on the courthouse's manicured lawns turned gray and disintegrated into dust. The leaves on the trees withered and fell, turning to dried husks before they hit the ground. Color bled from the world inside the dome, leaving everything in shades of gray and death.
Jack, who had been savoring his masterstroke, realized the danger too late. The dome of emptiness expanded with terrifying speed. He propelled himself backward with a full power detonation, but it was not enough to escape the radius completely.
The pulse hit his left arm.
The fabric of his prison suit disintegrated into a handful of gray fibers. The skin on his forearm, from wrist to elbow, suffered the same fate as the grass. It instantly lost its color and vitality, turning gray, dry, and parchment like, stretched taut over the bone.
For a split second, Jack's mask of control cracked. His face contorted in a grimace of genuine pain and shock. A grunt escaped through his clenched teeth. The arm fell limply to his side, useless.
The crowd and reporters watching from behind Apogee's barricades gasped as one. The cameras zoomed in frantically.
"My God, he's hit him!" a reporter exclaimed on his live broadcast. "Gamma Jack is injured!"
"Jack!" Apogee cried, her voice filled with panic. She took a step toward him, ready to create a gravitational shield. "Your arm! We have to get out of here!"
He ignored her completely. His gaze was fixed on Cain, who was panting in the center of his circle of death, the vacuum pulse waning as he recovered.
'Damn it. That… actually hurt. No matter. The arm is useless, but I only need one to finish the show.'
Then, Jack did something no one expected. He laughed.
It was a loud, defiant, almost manic sound that echoed across the silent square.
"Get out of here?" he repeated, not looking at Yuls, his voice dripping with disdain. "Darling, the show is just getting started."
He grabbed his dead arm with his good hand and looked at Cain. But he made sure his voice carried, crisp and clear, to every microphone.
"Nice trick, monster!" he shouted, his voice vibrating with adrenaline and a cold fury. "You should be proud. You managed to touch me. You managed to leave your filthy mark on me." He held up the inert arm for all to see, the gray skin hanging off it. "You took my arm!"
He let the useless limb drop to his side.
"Now I'm going to take your life!"
He raised his right arm to the sky.
"You've spent your miserable existence taking! Absorbing! Eating!" he proclaimed, each word a verdict. "A parasite does nothing but consume until there's nothing left! But let me show you what happens when you try to swallow the sun!"
And in the palm of his hand, energy began to gather.
At first it was just a point of light, but it quickly grew into a sphere of pure radiation. It was a terrible sight, so bright the television cameras could not focus on it, overloading their sensors and turning the image to a white screen. A miniature sun that crackled with insane power, warping the air around it with visible heat waves. The high pitched hum it emitted rose in tone until it became an unbearable shriek. The ground beneath Jack's feet began to melt, forming a puddle of dark glass.
Apogee had to raise an arm to shield her eyes, feeling the searing heat even from her position. The power radiating from him was suffocating, a physical pressure in the air that made it hard to breathe.
Jack looked down, his face lit from below by his own terrible creation, with an expression of final judgment. He looked at Cain, who watched the sphere of energy with a mixture of hunger and, for the first time, fear. The beast instinctively knew that it was too much. Too much energy, too concentrated. Trying to absorb it would destroy him.
"Tell me, parasite," Jack said, his voice now a deadly whisper that somehow reached every corner of the square. "Are you still hungry?"