Chapter 82: The Hunt Begins
The meatpacking district was a maze of brick and steel, slick with a fine, misty rain that made the world smell of wet cobblestones and old blood.
The plumber’s van cut through the deserted streets like a gray, angry shark, its engine a low, guttural growl in the pre-dawn quiet.
Jax drove with a focused, manic intensity, his bad leg propped up at an awkward angle, his hands light on the wheel.
"Okay, Boss Lady," he chirped into his headset, his voice a little too loud. "We are approaching the designated ’spooky murder alley’."
"ETA to target intersection, sixty seconds."
"Copy that, Jax," Chloe’s voice was a calm, disembodied presence in their ears, a cool line of logic in the building tension. "Jinx, you’re on the roof of the adjacent warehouse. What do you see?"
"I see a lot of brick and a distinct lack of convenient sniper perches," Jinx’s voice growled back, a cynical rasp over the comms. "But I have eyes on the target."
"He’s early."
"He looks nervous."
In the back of the van, Michael was a coiled spring of pure, focused energy.
His [Void Sense] was a high-pitched, insistent whine in the back of his skull.
The Stalker was close.
He could feel its cold, empty presence, a patch of absolute zero on his internal radar.
Luna sat beside him, her face pale, her eyes squeezed shut. She wasn’t a field operative. She was their canary in the coal mine, and the mine was full of gas.
"It’s here," she whispered, her voice trembling. "It’s in the shadows. Across the street."
"It’s... watching him."
Michael focused, pushing his sense out, trying to get a lock.
He saw it. Not with his eyes, but with his soul.
A flicker of movement in a dark, recessed doorway. A ripple in the fabric of the shadows.
It was playing with them.
It knew they were here.
"Okay, team," Michael said, his own voice sounding distant to his ears. "New plan. This isn’t a protection mission anymore. It’s an ambush."
"And we’re the bait."
"I don’t like it," Jinx’s voice cut in, sharp and final. "It’s too risky. We don’t know what this thing can do."
"It’s the only way," Michael countered. "It’s not going to show itself as long as we’re all sitting here. I need to draw it out."
"Negative," Chloe’s voice was a block of solid ice. "The primary asset will not be used as bait. That is an unacceptable risk."
"She’s right, Spooky," Jax added, his usual cheerfulness gone, replaced by a rare, serious concern. "This thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. And I’m a guy who willingly puts his hands in things that are designed to explode."
They were trying to protect him.
His broken, dysfunctional, pizza-loving family was trying to wrap him in tactical cotton wool.
It was infuriating.
It was also, in a strange, unfamiliar way, deeply touching.
"I’m not asking for permission," Michael said, his voice quiet, but firm.
He looked at Chloe’s icon on his HUD, a silent, direct challenge.
"I’m the only one who can track it. I’m the only one it’s interested in."
"It’s my play, Chloe."
The silence on the comms channel stretched for a long, tense, and deeply insubordinate second.
Finally, Chloe’s voice came back, stiff with a reluctant, professional fury.
"Fine."
The word was a surrender.
"You have a sixty-second window, Michael," she stated, her voice all business once more. "Draw it out. Jinx will provide cover fire. Jax will block its escape route with the van. But if you are not clear in sixty seconds, I am scrubbing this mission and pulling you out."
"Understood?"
"Loud and clear, Captain," Michael said, a faint, grim smile on his face.
He opened the side door of the van and slipped out into the rain-slicked alley.
The air was cold, but he felt a familiar, hot hum beneath his skin.
The battle was about to begin.
He took a deep breath and walked out onto the main street, his hands in his pockets, trying to look like just another lost soul wandering the city at a terrible hour.
The DGC analyst, Daniel Sterling, was pacing nervously at the far end of the street, checking his watch every few seconds.
Michael didn’t look at him.
He looked at the shadows.
"Come on, you glitchy son of a b*tch," he muttered under his breath. "Come out and play."
He felt it before he saw it.
A sudden, sharp drop in temperature.
A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision.
He spun, his Reaper’s Fang already in his hand.
The Stalker stood in the middle of the street, twenty feet away.
Its form was unstable, a shimmering, glitching silhouette of a tall, thin man in a long coat.
Its face was a smooth, featureless plate of chrome that reflected the dim, wet glow of the streetlights.
It didn’t speak. It didn’t make a sound.
It just tilted its head, a silent, curious gesture.
Then it moved.
It didn’t run. It didn’t phase.
It flowed.
It dissolved into a cloud of oily, black smoke and shot across the asphalt, reforming directly in front of him.
A long, wicked blade, like a shard of obsidian, extended from its wrist.
SLASH!
Michael used [Shadow Step], a desperate, reactive teleport that put him ten feet to the left.
The blade sliced through the air where he had been, leaving a faint, shimmering trail of distorted reality in its wake.
This thing was fast.
"Jinx!" he yelled into his comms. "Light it up!"
The crack of her rifle was deafening in the narrow street.
BANG!
The high-caliber round slammed into the Stalker’s chest.
It didn’t leave a hole.
The creature’s form just... absorbed the impact, its glitching form wavering for a second before stabilizing.
It turned its featureless face towards the rooftop where Jinx was perched.
It knew where she was.
Okay, so it’s bulletproof, his inner monologue noted with a rising sense of panic. That’s a fun new feature.
The Stalker raised its other hand, and a second blade extended from its wrist.
It was going to come at him again.
He was out of time. He needed to end this.
"Jax!" he roared. "Now!"
The roar of the plumber’s van was a beautiful, glorious sound.
Jax slammed the van into gear, the tires screaming on the wet asphalt, and shot out of the alley, aiming directly for the Stalker.
The Chimera didn’t even flinch.
It just turned, its body dissolving into smoke again, preparing to flow out of the van’s path.
But Michael was ready for it.
He threw the one thing Jax had given him.
The Glitch Grenade.
It arced through the air, a small, silver sphere, and detonated directly in the path of the smoke-form.
It didn’t explode.
It let out a high-pitched, electronic screech.
The Stalker’s smoke form convulsed, its cohesion shattered by the grenade’s disruptive frequency.
It was forced back into its solid, glitching form for a single, critical second.
Right in front of the speeding, two-ton plumber’s van.
The impact was a sickening, wet crunch of metal on something that was not quite metal and not quite flesh.
The Stalker was thrown through the air like a broken doll, its limbs flailing at unnatural angles.
It slammed into the brick wall of a warehouse and collapsed into a twitching, sparking heap.
Jax skidded the van to a halt, a wild, triumphant grin on his face.
"Touchdown!" he yelled.
Michael sprinted towards the fallen Chimera, his dagger held ready.
He had to finish it.
He had to get its core.
He was ten feet away when he heard it.
A new sound.
The high-pitched, electronic whine of a DGC scanner.
He looked up.
At the far end of the street, a sleek, silver, and deeply familiar set of armor shimmered into view as its cloaking field disengaged.
It was Sterling.
And the entire Vanguard A-team was with him.
They had their energy weapons raised, their targeting lasers all painting a single, bright red dot on his chest.
"Well, well, well," Sterling purred, a cruel, triumphant smirk on his handsome face. "Look what we have here."
"A monster-on-monster crime."
He gestured with his own energy blade towards the twitching, disabled Stalker.
"I’ll be taking that," he said. "As evidence."
He then looked at Michael, his eyes shining with a cold, predatory light.
"And you," he finished, his voice a low, final, and utterly victorious promise.
"You’re coming with us."