The rain had a way of getting into everything.
It soaked the broken pavement, wormed through the seams of Cal's coat, and hissed quietly as it hit the rusted fencing that surrounded the old Eastline substation. The place had been condemned after a structural collapse twelve years ago. Power rerouted. Files sealed. Even SCYTHE's internal archive marked it as scrubbed.
Which made it a strange place for a distress signal.
Cal crouched by the fence gate, flashlight off, one hand on the lock. A new padlock. Not rusted like the chain-link or the bolt mount. Polished, commercial, high-security — maybe a week old. Whoever installed it hadn't bothered hiding the job. They weren't expecting visitors.
He slipped a tool from his inside coat pocket. A tension wrench, narrow and carbon steel. The lock clicked in under thirty seconds. He slid through the gate and closed it behind him without a sound.
Beyond the fence, the station rose like a scar. A low, brutal block of concrete and iron half-swallowed by vines and shadow. The windows were boarded, but badly. One near the north stairwell had the panel kicked out from the inside. That's where he headed.
His boots crunched on broken glass and wet stone, slow and measured. Inside, the air shifted — dry, stale, sour like old wires and mold. Somewhere, water dripped in a slow, uneven rhythm.
He didn't turn on the light yet. Instead, he paused at the threshold, ears straining.
Silence.
The wrong kind.
Not the kind you get in abandoned places — with rats scratching in walls and wind cutting through broken vents. This was heavy. Weighted. Like the whole building was holding its breath.
Cal unzipped his coat halfway and drew the compact pistol from his belt holster. No power-mods, no charge cores. Just a cold, reliable piece of steel.
He moved inside.
The corridor beyond the stairwell was narrow, lit only by the faint green flicker of emergency lights that hadn't fully died. Wires spilled like vines from the ceiling. Burnt notices and electrical diagrams clung to the walls, warped with moisture.
He followed the trail. Drag marks. Two sets of boots, light. One heavier. And blood. Not enough for a kill — more like a cut. A fight? Or bait?
The corridor opened into the main floor — a massive chamber where the core transformers had once lived. The heart of the substation. Half the floor had caved in, but makeshift scaffolding ran across it now — metal boards, fresh welds. Someone had been maintaining access.
He stepped carefully, scanning corners, behind ducts. Nothing. No sound. Just the soft tap of rain against the broken skylight above and the slow, steady hum of something unnatural in the air.
Then he saw them.
Five bodies.
Laid in a circle on the concrete around an old breaker unit. Arms out. Palms up. Eyes wide open, all of them.
He froze, then moved forward, slow.
No visible wounds. No signs of decay. They hadn't been dead long. Clothes still clean, though soaked now in the gathering rain that bled down from above. No burns, no tears, no breakage. Just… stillness.
Cal crouched beside one — a young woman, early twenties, hair matted but face untouched. Her mouth was open like she'd been trying to scream, but couldn't quite get it out.
He pulled a nitrile glove from his coat pocket, slipped it on, and gently touched her wrist.
Cold.
"Eyes scorched. Mouth locked in place. No external trauma," he muttered aloud, recording into a small comm-recorder clipped to his collar. "Five bodies. Circle formation. Ritualized? Possibly staged. Zero residual power burn. No standard attack markers."
He stood again, circled slowly. Looked for patterns — spacing, symmetry, points of orientation.
"They died fast," he said. "Too fast to react. No defensive wounds. No damage to the room. Like something stopped them mid-step."
His breath fogged in the air. It was colder now.
He looked up toward the cracked skylight.
Rain came down in silver lines, soft and endless.
"You ever wonder what your last breath is gonna be like?" he asked no one in particular, voice low. "Thought it'd come with warning. A sound. A shadow. These people? Didn't get either."
He holstered the pistol.
Then reached for his flashlight, clicked it on.
The beam passed across the wall—
And caught something.
A smear of wet footprints — small, fast. Recent.
And one more thing.
A sixth outline on the floor. The dust and grime around it disturbed, like something had lain there — then gotten up and walked away.
Cal's hand dropped back toward his sidearm.
Something shifted behind him.
But he didn't turn. Not yet. Just listened.
Waiting for the silence to break.
Cal didn't react—not immediately. His body tensed, muscles coiled just under the skin, but his eyes stayed fixed on the sixth outline in the dust. Movement behind him, but no sound. Not a scuff. Not a breath.
Too smooth.
His hand inched down until his fingers brushed the pistol's grip. He exhaled once through his nose, slow and quiet, and let his voice cut through the tension like a wire.
"You're either here to clean up," he said calmly, "or you're the one who made the mess."
No answer.
The air behind him changed—like something warm exhaling into a cold room.
He turned.
No footsteps, no blur, no flicker. Just a figure standing ten feet away. Lean, still, dressed in dark combat weave. No SCYTHE insignia. No face—just a smooth black mask, featureless but for a faint vertical seam across the front.
Cal didn't flinch. "That's not standard ops gear. Not ours, anyway."
Still no response.
He raised the flashlight slightly, illuminating the intruder's torso.
No blood. No visible weapon. But they hadn't come in through the entrance; he would've heard. Which meant they were already inside. Waiting.
Cal's eyes dropped for a second—one second—to the figure's boots. Dry. Clean.
They didn't come in through the rain.
He moved first.
A snap of muscle, a practiced draw. Gun in hand, leveled. "Last chance—state your unit, or I shoot."
The masked figure tilted its head slightly, like it was curious rather than threatened.
Then it moved.
Not fast in the way most powered individuals did—no blur, no lightning arc, no sound barrier crack. Just gone, like space itself pulled a trick. Cal's eyes tracked instinctively, rotating his body with the pistol drawn in an arc—
Too late.
A sharp impact struck his left shoulder—a baton, metal or ceramic, no charge. He stumbled back, rolled, came up behind a control pillar, shoulder burning but still working. Not a disabling hit. Just a warning.
He steadied his breath.
"Alright," he muttered. "You're quiet. Not invincible."
He kicked a loose pipe with his boot—sent it clanging across the floor to the left. As expected, the figure lunged toward the sound.
Cal flanked the other side, moving low. Up close now. Within five feet.
He rose from cover like a spring, slammed the butt of his pistol into the side of the figure's neck—disrupting balance—then drove his elbow into the gut and fired a shot down toward the thigh.
CRACK. A clean hit. The figure staggered—no cry, but a hiss escaped the mask's seam.
They weren't untouchable.
He pressed the advantage. Shoulder-checked them back, pistol high, about to strike again—
The figure reached for something at its hip.
Cal saw it. A small hexagonal sigil etched into blackened steel. Not a weapon. Not familiar.
The masked figure whispered a single word—something not in English. Not even a dialect Cal recognized.
And the floor beneath them... shifted.
There was no tremor, no rumble. Just pressure. A sudden, gut-punch weight that dropped out of nowhere. Cal's body froze mid-movement, nerves misfiring. A pulse of energy—not heat, not cold—something wrong passed through his core.
And then it hit.
A force he couldn't see but could feel, like gravity reversed and folded in the wrong direction, slammed into his chest.
He flew backward.
The world spun in flashes of concrete and rust. Air ripped past him as his spine collided with the wall. Metal screamed. Something sharp tore through his coat, his ribs, his body.
The breath left him in one savage exhale, and the green-tinged world tilted sideways.
Pain bloomed, raw and liquid, bright at first—then distant.
He was pinned.
A jagged steel bar, once part of the scaffolding, now protruded through his abdomen—just under the ribs, straight through the back. His legs hung half a foot off the ground. One boot twitched, then went still.
Blood poured in heavy taps onto the concrete below. Rain slipped down through the broken skylight, washing over his face, cold and uncaring.
He gasped, but the air didn't come. His lungs spasmed once, twice. Failed.
His fingers opened. The pistol dropped from his hand and clattered uselessly to the floor.
The masked figure stood across the room, unmoving.
Watching.
The pain wasn't fading. It was spreading—a black rot in his chest, reaching for the edges of his sight. He tried to speak. Nothing. Just blood in his throat, choking back any final words.
He looked up again, eyes glassy, and saw the green flicker of emergency lights above him.
So that's it.
Death didn't come with a scream.
It came like this.
Silent.
Sudden.
Uninvited.
Then the green light flickered.
Just once.
And Cal's heart... stopped.