Chapter 85: Rival
The mall was a cage, and they were the main attraction.
Sterling stood on the ground floor, his Vanguard squad forming a perfect, gleaming silver perimeter, their energy rifles a silent, deadly promise.
Above them, on the third-floor balcony, the Stalker Chimera was a glitching, shimmering nightmare, its featureless chrome face tilted down, its empty, soulless gaze fixed on Michael.
And all around them, chaos.
Screams echoed through the cavernous atrium.
Civilians scrambled for exits that were now blocked by impassive, silver-armored soldiers.
"Well," Jax’s voice crackled over the comms, his usual cheerfulness strained with a note of genuine, tactical appreciation. "I gotta hand it to Shiny Boy. This is a beautifully executed trap."
"We’re boxed in," Jinx’s voice was a low, dangerous growl from her hidden perch on the second floor. "I’ve got three Vanguards blocking the east exit and another four sealing the main entrance. No way out."
"The Stalker is the immediate threat," Chloe’s voice cut in, a cool line of logic in the hot chaos. "Its primary directive is the analyst. Its secondary directive is you, Michael. Sterling will not engage as long as a civilian population is at risk. He’s posturing. Use his arrogance against him."
She was right. Sterling was a showman. He wanted to win, but he wanted to win cleanly, on camera, without any messy civilian casualties that his corporate sponsors would have to explain.
This wasn’t a firefight. It was a hostage negotiation, and they were the hostages.
"So, what’s the plan, Spooky?" Jax asked. "We can’t shoot it. We can’t punch it. It’s a literal ghost in the machine."
Michael looked up at the Stalker.
He looked down at the massive, multi-tiered fountain that dominated the center of the atrium.
Water.
Lots and lots of water.
A terrible, beautiful, and utterly insane idea began to form in his mind.
"Jax," he said, his voice quiet, but intense. "That fountain. Is it on a closed-loop system?"
There was a pause, then Jax’s voice came back, a new, excited energy in his tone. "Yeah, standard commercial design. It’s got its own pump room in the sub-level. Why?"
"Can you get to it?"
"Pfft, can a monster poop in the woods?" Jax retorted. "I can be there in thirty seconds."
"Good," Michael said, a wild, dangerous grin spreading across his face. "I need you to do something for me."
"I need you to turn the whole thing into a giant, non-lethal taser."
The silence on the comms channel was absolute.
Then, Jax let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-gasp of pure, unadulterated joy.
"Spooky," he breathed, his voice full of a sudden, religious fervor. "That is the most beautiful, chaotic, and irresponsible idea I have ever heard in my entire life."
"I love it."
"On my way!"
"Jinx," Michael commanded, his voice gaining a new, sharp authority. "I need you to get Jax to that pump room. And I need you to find the main breaker for the atrium’s lighting system. On my mark, I want this whole place to go dark."
"Copy that," Jinx grunted, a note of grudging admiration in her voice. "Playing with the lights. I like it."
"What’s your part in this masterpiece of bad ideas, kid?"
"My part?" Michael said, his eyes locking with the Stalker’s empty, chrome face. "I’m the distraction."
He took a deep breath.
"Hey! Glitch-Face!" he yelled, his voice echoing through the cavernous, panic-filled space. "You want me? Come and get me!"
The Stalker didn’t hesitate.
It dissolved into that oily, black smoke and flowed over the third-floor railing, a river of pure, malevolent shadow that shot down towards him.
Sterling, seeing the situation escalate, barked orders into his comms. "Contain the anomaly! Do not let it reach the civilians!"
Michael ran, a desperate, frantic sprint through the screaming, stampeding crowd, the cloud of black smoke hot on his heels.
He vaulted over a kiosk selling overpriced cell phone cases.
He slid across a wet patch of floor where someone had dropped a smoothie.
He was a rat in a maze, and the cat was a teleporting smoke monster.
"Jinx, I could use that power outage any time now!" he panted into his comms.
"Working on it!" she snapped back. "These high-end breaker panels are a pain in the ass!"
The smoke coalesced behind him, reforming into the Stalker’s glitching, humanoid form. Its obsidian blade sliced through the air, inches from his back.
He used a micro-[Shadow Step], a tiny, panicked zip that put him five feet to the left, crashing into a display of designer handbags.
Okay, this is not my most heroic moment.
"Jax, status!"
"I’m in the pump room!" Jax’s voice was a frantic, excited yell. "And I’ve found the main power conduit! I’m attaching my custom-made, non-lethal, ’Party-Zapper 3000’ as we speak!"
The Stalker was on him again, its movements a fluid, boneless dance of death.
It was toying with him. Herding him. Pushing him out of the crowd, into the open space in the center of the atrium.
Right towards the fountain.
Perfect.
"Okay, team," Michael breathed, his lungs on fire. "On my mark."
He skidded to a stop in the center of the atrium, the massive, bubbling fountain directly behind him.
The Stalker solidified, its chrome face reflecting his own pale, terrified expression.
It raised both of its blades.
This was it.
"NOW!" Michael roared.
Three things happened at once.
One: The main lights in the atrium went out, plunging the world into a disorienting, near-total darkness, broken only by the faint, colored lights of the fountain.
Two: Jax, with a triumphant, joyful scream of "CLEAR!", slammed his hand down on a very large, very inviting red button.
Three: The fountain erupted.
It wasn’t a gentle, decorative spray.
It was a geyser. A massive, violent torrent of water that shot fifty feet into the air, super-charged with a few thousand volts of pure, non-lethal, Jax-certified justice.
The Stalker, caught completely by surprise, was engulfed in the electrified wave.
It let out a piercing, electronic shriek, a sound of a thousand systems failing at once.
Its glitching form convulsed violently, sparks showering from its joints.
Its phasing ability, its smoke form, its very connection to reality—it all short-circuited in a glorious, beautiful, and deeply satisfying cascade of system errors.
It crashed to the wet floor, a twitching, sparking heap of fried circuits and angry, corrupted data.
They had done it.
The lights flickered back on.
Sterling and his Vanguard squad stood frozen, their faces masks of pure, slack-jawed disbelief.
They had just witnessed a bunch of sewer rats take down a Chimera assassin with a fountain and a car battery.
Michael walked slowly towards the twitching, disabled Stalker, his Reaper’s Fang held ready.
He was going to end this. He was going to take its core. He was going to get the answers Gideon had buried inside this thing.
Just as he raised his blade for the final strike, a new figure dropped from the third-floor balcony, landing with a soft, utterly silent thud that cracked the marble floor.
It wasn’t a soldier. It wasn’t a monster.
It was a ghost in a graphite-gray suit of armor.
Commander Kael stood there, not a single hair out of place, his handsome face a mask of smug, condescending amusement.
He applauded slowly, the sound of his armored gloves clapping together a mocking, metallic echo in the stunned silence.
"Bravo," he purred, his voice smooth as polished steel. "A truly inspired performance. Such... creativity."
He looked from the fried, twitching Stalker to Michael, a cruel, beautiful smile on his face.
"A test run," he said, his voice a low, dismissive murmur. "My new pets are performing beautifully. This one was just a prototype."
He raised a hand, a small, remote-like device in his palm.
He pressed a button.
The Stalker let out one final, pained, electronic sigh, and went still, its systems completely deactivated.
Kael walked over to the inert Chimera, placing a proprietary hand on its chrome head as if it were a disobedient dog.
"Thank you for beta-testing him for me," he said, not even looking at Michael. "Your feedback has been invaluable."
He turned then, his eyes, which glowed with a faint, controlled energy, finally locking onto Michael’s.
It was a look of pure, clinical assessment. A scientist observing a lab rat that had just solved a particularly clever maze.
"You are... more interesting than your file suggests, anomaly," he said, a flicker of genuine curiosity in his voice.
He looked from Michael’s tattered hoodie to his own perfect, gleaming armor.
"But you are still just a relic," he sneered. "A broken echo of a failed experiment."
He gave Michael one last, dismissive look, a look that said, You are not even on my level.
Then he turned to the furious, humiliated Sterling.
"Clean up this mess," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument.
With that, he turned, and in a single, silent, and utterly infuriatingly graceful leap, he was gone, a phantom melting back into the shadows of the mall.
He had left them with a parting gift.
A dozen angry, heavily armed Vanguard soldiers, and their even angrier, deeply humiliated commander.
Sterling turned to Michael, his handsome face a tight, ugly knot of pure, personal fury.
"You," he snarled, his voice a venomous hiss. "Are going to pay for that."