Chapter 5: Heist Interrupted
Midnight painted the Garden District in silver and shadow.
The Boudreaux mansion crouched behind wrought iron gates like a sleeping beast, its antebellum columns and wraparound galleries speaking of old money and older secrets. Security floods carved perfect paths of light and darkness across manicured lawns, creating a maze that would challenge most intruders.
He wasn't most intruders.
Crouched on a neighboring rooftop, dressed in black leather that moved like second skin, he studied the target with eyes that saw patterns his original mind never could have processed. Guard rotations every twelve minutes. Motion sensors covering the obvious approach routes. Pressure plates hidden beneath decorative walkways.
Remy's knowledge, he realized. His body remembers how to read security like sheet music.
The deck of playing cards in his jacket felt warm against his ribs, charged with potential energy that made his fingertips tingle. Yesterday's practice had left his hands covered in small burns, but tonight those same hands felt steady. Sure.
Time to find out what I'm really capable of.
The mansion's south wall offered the best approach—aging brick with enough handholds for someone with enhanced agility. He dropped from the rooftop to an adjoining building, then made his way across connecting fire escapes with fluid grace that would have been impossible in his original body.
The actual climb felt like meditation.
His fingers found purchase in mortar gaps worn smooth by decades of Louisiana humidity. Each movement flowed into the next, muscle memory and conscious thought finally working in harmony instead of fighting each other. When he reached the third-story window that his research had identified as the security blind spot, he barely felt winded.
The lock picks materialized in his hands before he consciously decided to use them. Remy's fingers knew exactly how much pressure to apply, which direction to twist, how to feel for the telltale click of tumblers falling into place.
Five seconds. The window slid open silently, well-oiled hinges making no sound.
Inside, the mansion smelled of old wood and expensive perfume. Oil paintings lined the hallways—portraits of stern-faced ancestors watching him with disapproving eyes. His enhanced senses picked up the subtle electronic hum of the security system, the nearly imperceptible vibration of pressure sensors in the floorboards.
He moved like smoke through rooms filled with priceless antiques, following the mental map he'd memorized from architectural records. The vault was located in what had once been a wine cellar, hidden behind a false wall in the mansion's basement.
Getting there meant bypassing three separate alarm systems.
The first was simple—infrared beams at ankle height designed to catch crawling intruders. A series of careful steps and a single acrobatic leap carried him over them without triggering so much as a blinking light.
The second required more finesse. Motion detectors mounted in the corners tracked heat signatures. He solved that by charging a playing card to exactly the right temperature, then throwing it to the far end of the hallway while he slipped through in the opposite direction. The sensors dutifully followed the decoy while he passed beneath their range.
The third made his pulse spike with recognition.
A biometric scanner next to the hidden door, requiring both palm print and retinal scan. Technology that shouldn't have been available to private collectors in 2009, unless they had very special connections.
Military grade. Government issue. Someone wanted this vault protected from more than ordinary thieves.
But Remy's body knew the override codes. His fingers moved across the hidden panel beneath the scanner without conscious direction, entering a sequence that bypassed the biometric requirements entirely. Some previous job, some bit of intelligence gathering that had paid off years later.
The vault door swung open with a soft pneumatic hiss.
Inside, the Heart of New Orleans waited.
The crystal sat on a velvet pedestal at the center of the small chamber, about the size of a softball and deep red like arterial blood. But it wasn't the color that stopped him cold—it was the energy.
The artifact pulsed with the same pink-purple light as his powers, resonating with something deep in his chest. Void recognizing Void, like calling to like across dimensions. Standing near it felt like standing next to a tuning fork that vibrated at the exact frequency of his soul.
This is it. This is what brought me here.
He reached toward the crystal, then stopped. Every instinct Remy's body possessed screamed danger. Not from the artifact itself, but from—
"Step away from the Heart, Remy."
The voice came from behind him, low and musical with just a hint of threat. He turned slowly, hands raised in a gesture that was part surrender, part preparation for violence.
Five figures stood in the vault entrance, all dressed in dark clothing that emphasized their deadly competence. But his attention fixed immediately on their leader—a woman who made his breath catch in recognition.
Bella Donna Boudreaux was beautiful the way storms were beautiful—terrible and magnificent and utterly dangerous. Dark hair fell in waves around sharp cheekbones, framing eyes that burned with intelligence and barely contained fury. Her body moved with the coiled grace of someone trained to kill, but it was her face that hit him like a physical blow.
I know that face. Not from comics or movies—from Remy's memories.
"Bella," he said, her name falling from his lips like a prayer and a curse.
"Don't." Her voice carried enough pain to cut glass. "Don't you dare act like you're happy to see me."
The Assassins Guild members behind her held weapons with casual expertise—throwing knives, garrotes, a collapsible crossbow that looked like it could punch through kevlar. Professional killers all, but Bella Donna was clearly their leader.
"Did you really think we wouldn't know about your contract?" she continued, stepping into the vault with predatory grace. "Anonymous client, massive payment, artifact with our family name attached? We've been watching this place for days."
"Your family name?"
"Boudreaux collection, Remy. The man you're stealing from is my grand-uncle. The Heart of New Orleans was supposed to come to me when he died."
Understanding crashed over him like cold water. This wasn't just a theft—it was a betrayal. Remy had agreed to steal from Bella Donna's own family, breaking whatever fragile peace existed between the Guilds.
"I didn't know," he said honestly.
"Liar." But something flickered in her eyes—uncertainty, as if his tone didn't match what she'd expected.
The moment stretched taut as a wire, balanced on the edge of violence. Then one of the Assassins Guild members made his choice for him.
Steel flashed in the corner of his vision—a thrown knife aimed at his spine. In his original life, he would have died without ever seeing it coming.
Instead, time slowed to a crawl.
The knife's trajectory unfolded in his mind with crystal clarity, not as visual prediction but as absolute certainty. He would spin left, the blade would pass three inches from his ribs, and the thrower would be off-balance for exactly 1.2 seconds afterward.
How do I know that?
His body was already moving, spinning away from the knife while his hand dove into his jacket. A playing card materialized between his fingers, pink energy crackling around it as he charged it mid-motion.
The knife-thrower was exactly where precognition had told him he'd be—off-balance, weapon gone, vulnerable. The charged card struck him center mass and exploded, launching him backward into the hallway with a cry of pain and surprise.
"What the hell—" one of the other Assassins started to say.
Another blade, this one aimed at his throat. Again, impossible knowledge flooded his mind—duck right, grab the attacker's wrist, use his momentum against him. The movements felt choreographed, as if he'd rehearsed this exact fight a hundred times.
Chaos erupted in the confined space of the vault.
The Assassins Guild moved like a pack of wolves, coordinated and deadly. But his new precognitive sense made their attacks feel sluggish, telegraphed. He knew where each strike would land before they'd committed to throwing it.
A garrote snapped toward his neck—he was already rolling under it, coming up with a charged card that detonated against the wall where his attacker had been standing. Another knife flew through the space his head had occupied a heartbeat earlier while he vaulted over the artifact pedestal.
"Stop!" Bella Donna's voice cut through the violence. "All of you, stop!"
But the fighting had taken on its own momentum. Blood was in the water, and professional killers didn't pause for conversation once the dance began.
The largest of the Assassins came at him with a wicked curved blade, moving fast enough to blur. Precognition screamed warnings—feint left, real attack right, follow-up thrust to the ribs. He ducked under the first swing, blocked the second with his collapsible staff, then charged the man's own weapon and let the explosion do the work.
The assassin stumbled backward, singed and disoriented, directly into Bella Donna's path.
She moved like liquid lightning, flowing around her own team member to bring a pair of curved knives within inches of his throat. For a frozen moment they stood locked together, her blades against his neck, his hand on a charged card at her heart.
"Enough," she whispered, her breath warm against his ear. "We both know how this ends."
He should have been terrified. Instead, standing that close to her, he caught her scent—jasmine and steel and something uniquely her own. Memory fragments from Remy's mind surfaced unbidden: lazy Sunday mornings, heated arguments that ended in passionate reconciliation, the way she looked when she laughed at something only she found funny.
I loved her. Remy loved her. More than life itself.
"Why?" The word escaped before he could stop it. "Why did he leave you?"
Her eyes widened slightly, as if his question had caught her off guard. For a moment, the deadly assassin facade cracked, revealing the hurt woman underneath.
"You tell me, Remy. You're the one who disappeared three years ago without a word."
Behind them, the Heart of New Orleans pulsed with increasing intensity, responding to the emotional turmoil in the room. Void energy built like an approaching storm, pressing against the walls of reality.
He grabbed the artifact without thinking.
The moment his fingers made contact, the world exploded.
Void energy erupted from the crystal like a dam bursting, flooding the vault with pink-purple light that made everyone cry out in shock. The sensation was like touching a live wire connected to the space between dimensions—raw, chaotic, infinite.
Through the energy storm, he saw Bella Donna's face twisted in pain and confusion. Saw the Assassins Guild members stumbling blindly, overwhelmed by power they couldn't understand.
"What are you?" Bella Donna gasped, her voice barely audible over the energy discharge.
He didn't have an answer that wouldn't destroy everything.
Instead, he ran.
The mansion's third-story window beckoned like salvation. He crashed through it in an explosion of glass and Void energy, the Heart of New Orleans clutched against his chest like a burning coal. The three-story drop should have shattered every bone in his body, but enhanced physiology and desperation carried him through a roll that distributed the impact across his entire frame.
Behind him, Bella Donna's voice cut through the night air:
"Remy! What happened to you?"
Three blocks away, perched on a rooftop that offered a clear view of the mansion, he finally stopped running.
The Heart of New Orleans pulsed in his hands with the same rhythm as his heartbeat, warm with Void energy that felt like coming home. His precognitive sense hummed constantly now, a low-level awareness of potential threats that he suspected would never fully turn off again.
Another power. Another piece of who I'm becoming.
But the victory felt hollow. Bella Donna's hurt expression haunted him—the way she'd looked when he'd asked why Remy left her, as if his question had reopened an old wound.
"I'm not the man you loved," he whispered to the city lights below. "I don't even know if he's still in here somewhere, or if I killed him just by existing."
The artifact pulsed once more, then settled into dormancy. Whatever answers it held about his presence here would have to wait.
Right now, he had a Guild contract to fulfill and a war to prevent.
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