The camera shook so violently that for three seconds the live feed showed only the churning grey pavement of the plaza and the panicked boots of fleeing civilians.
"—hold it steady! Keep it on the shoreline!" Raya screamed over the deafening roar of grinding stone. She hunkered down behind a concrete planter on the plaza, her windbreaker whipped by a sudden, unnatural gust of hot wind coming off the collapsing structure. "Is the satellite uplink holding?"
"We're live! We're live!" the cameraman yelled back, crouching beside her and wiping thick concrete dust from the lens. "Raya, look at the main structure!"
Where the twenty-eight-story facility had stood moments ago, there was only a mountain of shattered concrete, twisted rebar, and a plume of grey dust rising hundreds of feet into the afternoon sky.
"The tower has collapsed," Raya said into her microphone, her professional composure cracking as she stared at the rising cloud. "Rescue crews had barely established a perimeter before the lower levels gave way. We have no word on survivors, no word on—wait."
The mountain of rubble didn't settle. It groaned.
Deep within the core of the ruin, a dull red light flared beneath three feet of solid foundation. Then, with the screech of tearing steel, the peak exploded outward.
Slabs of reinforced concrete weighing dozens of tons were thrown into the air like gravel. Out of the dust erupted massive, wet, glistening red tendrils—thick as ancient oak trunks—spreading across the wreckage and pinning the loose debris in place.
"Get the zoom! Get the zoom right now!" Raya yelled.
The camera focused on the highest point of the ruin. Lifted high above the dust by the writhing tendrils were figures—emaciated, hollow-eyed, clad in the shredded remnants of white research smocks. Brands were scorched into their pale shoulders; rusted iron collars hung loosely around their withered necks. Surrounding them were armed men—members of the Vanguard of Vain who had survived the collapse.
"Merciful heavens..." Raya whispered, her voice carrying live across millions of television screens. "Those... those are prisoners. Look at their hands—look at the serial numbers!"
At the base of the rubble, dozens of armored NCC and NKPD vehicles skidded to a halt, their tires screeching against the grit. Officers burst from the doors, raising assault rifles and heavy sidearms, training a wall of red laser sights on the peak.
An NCC officer grabbed a vehicle megaphone, his voice booming over the sirens. "Attention suspects on the pile! You are surrounded! Step away from the ledge and put your hands in the air immediately!"
A tall, painfully thin man rose from the center of the tendrils. His skin was translucent, so pale that blue veins showed like a map beneath his flesh. Raw, bleeding holes marked his throat and collarbones where feeding tubes and IV lines had been violently ripped out. He blinked against the sunlight, his dark red eyes watering, his body shivering in the open air as if the wind itself burned him.
Then he threw his head back and laughed—a jagged, wheezing sound that turned into a raw howl of pure, unadulterated madness.
"Hands in the air?" he rasped, his voice amplified by the sheer density of the air pressure around him, crackling through every microphone on the plaza. "Look at me, you powerless worms! Look at what your precious handlers buried under their boots! Look at what they fed on while you slept in your clean little houses!"
He took a breathless, ragged step forward, his pale skin already beginning to blister under the direct sun.
"They told you we were monsters!" Berry shrieked, his voice cracking with a terrifying mix of deep trauma and unhinged fury. "They told you they put us in cages to protect you! Look at these marks! Look at these tubes! They didn't lock us away to save you—they locked us away to milk us! To cut us open and see how much power a NovaBreed can bleed before he dies! Every wall in that basement was painted with our blood, and every suit in your government signed off on the paint!"
Beside him, Spiteful Orange stepped onto the ledge, her bare forearms shimmering before melting into heavy, liquid-silver gauntlets. On his left, Lovely Lemon dropped to his knees, pressing both palms flat against the stone, his eyes closed in deep concentration.
His dark red eyes burning with wild, apocalyptic hatred as he stared down the megaphones. "You built your entire empire on our bones, and now you stand there with your little guns asking for order? I am leaving a statement at the NovaBreed Containment Facility down this coast, and every single one of you will watch it burn!"
---
Down near the harbor evacuation post, the small wall-mounted television screen inside the medical tent flickered with static, but Berry's face remained terrifyingly clear.
Hannah stood frozen in front of the monitor, her shoulder tightly bound in medical gauze where the bullet had torn through. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the live footage of the collapsed tower.
"No..." Hannah whispered. "No, no, no..."
"Hannah, please," Charlotte said gently, keeping a supportive hand near her good arm. "The medics said you shouldn't be standing—"
"Sol said King went back inside!" Hannah said, her voice shaking violently as she pointed at the TV screen. "He went back in to get someone before the whole building came down! Look at that pile, Charlotte! How is anyone supposed to get out of that?"
"He's King," Charlotte said softly, though her eyes were glued to the screen. "He always finds a way."
A short distance away, inside the main NCC command tent on the perimeter, Toby stood quietly near the rear support beam, his coat pulled tight, watching the live news feed on the primary monitor.
The atmosphere inside the tent was sheer panic.
"Cut that feed! Kill that satellite transmission right now!" the NCC Commander screamed, slamming his fist onto the console.
"Sir, it's an independent news array on the plaza!" a technician shouted back over the blaring red alarm lights. "If we jam that signal, we blind our own tactical units!"
"Do it!" the Commander bellowed. "If anyone upstairs sees this broadcast, every head in this tent rolls!"
Detective Leah didn't look up from her tablet screen in the corner. "It's a bit late for a cover-up, Commander. Half the city just saw three dozen illegal test subjects lifted out of a basement that isn't on any city blueprint."
The Commander rounded on her, his face dark with fury. "The NKPD's authority on this site was revoked twenty minutes ago, Detective." He turned to his chief officer. "Deploy the Beast Machine! Flatten that pile and clear the area!"
---
Far beneath the mountain of broken concrete, in the pitch-black silence under twenty feet of collapsed foundation, Lucius lay very still.
He was pinned in a tight, triangular lean-to formed by two massive floor slabs jammed together during the collapse. Dust filled his nose and throat, tasting of lime and old iron. He didn't move. Against his chest, held securely under his arm, The Lord remained wrapped and untouched.
Through the wet concrete beneath his back, Lucius felt the bedrock forty feet below begin to liquefy.
Lovely Lemon's power was active, melting the stone into a smooth, fluid slurry as he pushed his limestone manipulation straight down toward the deep basement vaults. Lucius tracked the vibration as Lemon carved a vertical path directly toward the calcified bone cocoon where Handsome Jack lay dormant.
Lucius held his breath, pulling his pulse down to a whisper, waiting quietly in the dark under the stone.
---
Above the plaza, Sol pushed himself up into the air, brushing concrete dust off his shoulders as his golden aura flickered back to life. The shockwave from the initial collapse had thrown him across the paving, but he was back on his feet, hovering fifty feet above the ruin.
He stared at the peak, his eyes locking onto Bloody Berry. He knew the man was an unhinged terrorist—a catastrophic threat that needed to be put down immediately.
Then Sol's gaze drifted to the people standing beside Berry.
They weren't soldiers. They were broken, hollowed-out husks, their pale skin branded, rusted iron collars chafing their raw necks as they blinked in terror at the sunlight. Sol's aura dimmed.
'What were they doing under that building?' Sol thought, a cold knot tightening in his stomach as he looked at the branded numbers on their arms. 'What really is this facility?'
Beside Berry, Lemon grunted, his face pale and dripping with sweat as he made a sweeping upward gesture with both palms.
The central slab of the ruins cracked open with a heavy groan. Guided by Lemon's power, the twelve-foot-long bone cocoon containing Handsome Jack rose out of the liquefying stone, dripping with grey slurry.
At the same time, Berry extended his red tentacles, wrapping them tightly around the heavy, ribbed cylinder casing, hauling it out of the wreckage and clutching it against his side.
"Boss!" Spiteful Orange urged, her voice pitched low with urgent concern as she kept her silver-armored arms ready. "We have Jack and the casing, but you're nowhere near full power yet! Your body can't take an extended fight. We need to fall back now while we have the chance!"
"Years in the dark, and the sky just... opens up for me?" Berry's voice cracked into a wild, breathless laugh, his dark red eyes widening as his tentacles flared aggressively around the casing. "Fate didn't just smile on me—it tore the roof off my cage! I am taking every second I want, and I will not be rushed by cattle!"
Berry turned to his armed Vanguard soldiers and the freed NovaBreeds, his voice cutting through the wind. "Anyone who tries to stop us—tear them apart!"
Inside the command tent, the headset crackled. "Association confirms! All responding heroes cleared to engage with total force!"
The heroes on the perimeter surged forward, weapons and powers flaring as they moved to intercept the group. Berry raised his tentacles, holding the casing tight, preparing to make his move.
---
TO BE CONTINUED