Foster stirred, consciousness clawing through a fog of static.

  Late, late, overslept? Gotta get to work… wait, no… I was at work… something’s wrong… everythings wrong! Why am I still thinking about work…

  His eyes cracked open to a sterile glare—white walls, too bright, humming with a faint electric pulse. He shifted, and metal bit his wrist—handcuffs chaining him to a medical bed frame that gleamed like polished chrome. Not your standard hospital cot. This one was reinforced - built to hold something more than human. His clothes were gone, replaced by a thin silvery hospital gown. It was surprisingly warm for something that looked like it was made out of gossamer.

  He recognized the style of the room, it was in the Super Ward - a fortified wing for the triggered and the volatile - a fortress of a hospital buried inside the Inner City where the wealthy and the powerful resided.

  He’d been here before, dim memories from this new life which he’d suppressed rustled at the edges of recollection but he pushed them back down, focusing harder on the now.

  He scanned the room with his eyes, it thrummed with the kind of tech that didn’t work where he’d been living out in zone E: a holo-monitor flickered above his head, cycling vitals in neon green—pulse steady, brain waves jagged, something labeled “S-Aura-meter” spiking off the chart. Tubes snaked from his arm, pumping a fluid that tingled as it hit—not saline, something sharper, engineered. He could feel it burning in his veins like liquid razor wire. The air smelled of ozone and antiseptic, a tang that clung to the back of his throat.

  Beyond the bed, the walls weren’t just walls. The glimmer of a containment field hummed at the edges of the room, almost invisible but still barely perceivable, ready to snap shut if he so much as sneezed wrong. Across the room, a viewscreen masqueraded as a window—projecting a fake cityscape, all twinkling lights and calm skies, a lie to mask the solid reinforced alloy underneath.

  Fragments of recollection started coming back to him. His head throbbed, a dull ache laced with echoes of the night—grease sizzling, Wolfen’s snarl, Sofia’s wide fearful eyes. His own terror that he couldn’t do anything and then the voice offering a choice.

  Wait… that was Hedy… I know her… she’s so fucking dramatic.

  He flexed his free hand, half-expecting it to spark or glitch. Nothing. Just meat, bruised and bandaged.

  “Hedy?” His voice rasped, barely a whisper.

  Nothing, just silence.

  “Fine, sulk then.” Foster shut his eyes, dredging up what he could…

  Foremost were the memories of this new life, they still came easily. Losing his girlfriend, flunking out of school, scraping by slinging tacos for chump change in a city that didn’t care about anyone that wasn’t inner-city born and bred… he had not been doing great.

  Only he wasn’t Alex Foster… he hadn’t been for some time. He was a Nether-Shard Incarnation and this was a stolen life. He wasn’t from this world… he wasn’t even from this universe. He tried harder to remember but a void yawned wide — memories missing like someone had taken a plasma torch to the reels.

  “Damn it… Hedy?”

  [Extra-dimensional Invader - Greetings.] A shimmer caught his eye. A screen materialized—golden, translucent, hovering in midair. Silver characters traced words in sharp, elegant strokes: [Adjudication Begins.]

  “That’s new.” He squinted at it, then sighed, sinking back into the bed. Even with his eyes closed, the damned thing was still there. That was annoying and worrisome.

  He remembered what he did to Wolfen, even if it didn’t make perfect sense looking back. Apparently dumping extra-dimensional energies to kill a raging super had caught him some negative attention from this realities higher ups. He cracked his eyes open again, exasperated. “Look, I’ve had a rotten couple of years and a truly terrible night. Whatever this is, I’m tapped out. Please come back tomorrow.” He waved his free hand at it, a half-hearted shooing motion.

  The words spilling from his mouth tasted different—edged with years of life spent amidst grit and grease struggling. How much had this meat-life reshaped his mentality, how deeply rooted was it into the marrow of his new self?

  “Hedy, seriously, what’s going on?” His core-bound AI should’ve been chattering in his head, feeding him intel and offering suggestions. Instead—nothing. A bad sign.

  The silver characters danced, reforming on the golden screen: [Extra-dimensional energies frozen, pending examination.]

  “Ah. That might explain the quiet.” Hopefully it also explained the missing memories. His Nether-Shard was locked down, somehow, leaving him running wholly on just squishy human wet-ware. “Didn’t think anything could do that.”

  The screen flickered: [Consent required for examination - be advised - if the threat level cannot be determined termination of the biological interface to this plane is classified as an acceptable but non-preferred remedy.]

  Foster blew out a frustrated breath, “Mr. Floating text box. Do you really want to fuck around and find out?”

  The screen glitched — characters scrambled and then slowly reformed.

  [Humorous extra-planar demi-deity. Conflict is non-ideal. Alternative proffered - Incentive - Equivalent Exchange - Reward. Do You Consent?]

  Then it began to count down from a hundred.

  He chewed it over. Would this thing—whatever it was—peg him as a threat to this reality? Was he? He didn’t plan on burning down the world, but with his memory swiss-cheesed, who knew? Maybe it’d dig up something useful, something he’d lost. Maybe it would just go away and he could close his eyes and get more sleep. Much as he didn’t like being strong armed he really didn’t think it would be a good idea to let it count all the way down to zero. “Sure, fine. Go ahead—but I want to know what you see.”

  [Consent obtained. Reward chosen. Observing extra-dimensional entity and occupied biological substrate for origin and malicious intent… Accessing adjacent realities - scanning akashic records… updating probability engines… ]

  The room dissolved, melting into black. Then chaos exploded around him.

  ***

  Inside the deeper levels of StarLiner Jubilee there was screaming, crying, and praying.

  Screams ricocheted off bulkheads as passengers clawed toward the outer hull scrambled up towards where the life-pods were.

  The crying was mostly from the remaining human engineers who were still trying to make their way down to the reactor. They weren't making it, they were melting, starting with their boots - followed by the rest of them.

  The ship's desperate AI kept trying to tele-presence its own probes into the breach but the radiation leaking out from sub-space was too much for them and they kept bursting open into showers of flaming sparks as their insides were cremated by subspace radiation.

  One figure dressed in a fine gray suit continued to make their way further down, occasionally patting down the parts of their clothes that had started to smolder. “Hedy, I don’t think this outfit is going to make it.”

  This is an ill advised action. Hedy’s voice was low and velvety, yet threaded with a crystalline clarity. Each word she spoke was deliberate, a rich timbre that settled warmly in the ears.

  “Counterpoint Hedy - I'm immortal and I’m bored and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one on this ship that can make it down to the drive core. The needs of the many Hedy! The needs of the many.” He hopped over a slowly melting pile of… someone… and continued on his way.

  If they can afford interstellar cruises they can afford backups. Just take one of the first class escape pods. Hibernate and wait for recovery or continue on to Trappist yourself, you’ve flown to the moon before, this will just take … longer. The closer you get to the core the more damage you will take when the curve collapses and hyperspace fractures.

  “Eh, when this bargain bin Alcubierre drive blows it will tangle local space up into knots that will take years to clear. That and we aren’t even halfway there yet. Besides, I think I can fix it!”

  You mean you think I can fix it! Hedy was, in as much as a higher level constructed intelligence could be, exasperated. Being the core-bound AI to a partially ascended lifeform was exhausting. She knew she shouldn’t hold it against him, since he was effectively just working with an over-clocked copy of his miniscule starting consciousness. First generation ascended were just so frustrating. If they chained you to a little monkey and said, “Keep this monkey happy and safe,” that would already be hard, but this breed of monkeys were self destructive!

  While your personal flight speed is limited to sublight - with relativistic effect it wouldn’t take that long from our perspective.

  “Please Hedy, the ship isn’t even glowing yet. I'm just going to need you to talk me through getting those negative energy rods back in proper alignment and we’ll be back on our way in no time.”

  Finally she felt she had no choice but to use an ultimate technique, technically it wasn’t even a lie. “I have estimated a non-zero chance that with the space-time distortion the nether-cast will not reach our backups. That means we may both permanently terminate…” Hedy projected just the right amount of fearful emotion into her voice. “Please ... I don’t want to die.”

  “Tsk.” He turned around and started making his way back up towards the escape pods. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing!”

  He didn’t get far. The air shimmered—red, orange, yellow, cycling fast, then blue suffusing everything. “Oh shi—”

  Violet light blazed … space collapsed in on itself and then there was darkness again.

  ***

  The world snapped back into focus and Foster jolted. It was like he’d just lived it again, experiencing it from multiple perspectives at once.

  “A little monkey? Really Hedy is so insulting. I wrote half her core code myself… I think? Or did I contract that out? It’s actually kind of hard to remember right now… is my meat brain filling in the missing gaps with bullshit? That’s not good…”

  Alternate Reality - Post-Singularity Fragmented Intelligence Shard / Hybridized with Native Sapient Nexus Being - Reclassified from Extra-dimensional Invader to Extra-dimensional Homeless / Exile / Survivor. Rules 12, 31, and 9654 apply.

  “You could just send me back?”

  Repatriation to Origin is standard protocol. Inapplicable circumstance. Universe of Origin is shielded against extra-dimensional incursion. Survival probability - inversed astronomical.

  Foster sighed. Bits of broken memories came together … his home had locked the doors tight after some uglies had trashed the place—billions of pure organics dead, dozens of worlds lost to a strange necrotic blight and a ban on any more extra-dimensional portal hopping for the immortal and bored. Now those field generators he’d helped finance were keeping him out! Maybe he could work something out, if he could just remember how they were even set up in the first place, but he was missing all the details. “Damn it.”

  [Assigning Sub-Process 987 to monitoring. Examination complete. Level D danger - Threat mitigated by Low Intelligence. Within acceptable tolerances. Reward appended to biological ascension protocol. Releasing Dimensional Lock.]

  “Low Intelligence…” Foster snorted, “Yeah o.k. I know I’m not that smart, that’s why I have Hedy!”

  The screen collapsed in on itself and disappeared. His vision flickered. A tiny blue NetherShard? logo spun in the corner of his eye, and Hedy’s silky voice slid back into his head. There’s a chronometric mismatch?! What happened!”

  “Hey Hedy, finally!” Foster muttered, “looks like we got noticed—”

  Not out loud! You’re probably being monitored.

  He flicked his eyes to the room’s corners, it was - prudent to be prudent he supposed. ‘Fine - testing, testing, are you fully back up from your nap?’

  Just tell me what happened. He could sense both mild amusement and frustration in the tone of her response, more frustration than amusement though. He spent the next few minutes sharing what had transpired, and going over his memories of the catastrophe he’d witnessed.

  That … was … an accurate reconstruction of the event. I did not expect this reality to have hidden higher-level intelligences … Frustrating - they are ignoring all of my attempts to communicate!

  ‘Seems like they just wanted to make sure we won’t wreck the place. Maybe they have a prime-directive against interacting with lower life forms, or lower level AIs?’ He could almost feel Hedy smoldering at him. ‘I was hoping my memory lapse was a result of whatever that just was… but you’re back and I’m still drawing blanks. That’s really not good.’

  ***

  Citadel - Seventh Spire - Foresters Union

  In a dimly lit control booth two grunts that barely qualified as Supers slouched in front of a bank of flickering holo-screens, their eyes glazed from hours of nothing. The air hung heavy with stale coffee and the faint whiff of yesterday’s takeout, a grease-stained carton shoved under a console. On screen - Foster twitched on his reinforced bedframe staring off into space occasionally mumbling to himself.

  Milo Tanner sprawled in his chair, boots propped on the desk, scuffing the edge of a control pad that’d stopped caring years ago. His uniform—charcoal gray with sharp crimson piping—fit like it’d been pressed that morning, the Inner City Security Force insignia glinting on his chest, a stark contrast to the man wearing it. A gut strained against the tactical vest, hinting at too many late-night burger runs, and his stubble was a patchy rebellion against the razor, creeping up a jawline gone soft. Dark hair peeked from under a skewed cap, greasy strands curling at the nape like he’d slept on it funny. He flicked a half-chewed stylus between his fingers, twirling it like a bored gumshoe with a cigarette, his hazel eyes drifting over the feed. “Guy’s just layin’ there talkin’ gibberish to himself,” he muttered, voice gravelly from disuse. “What do you figure? Triggered or just crazy?”

  Vince “Rusty” Russo leaned back beside him, chair creaking under his wiry frame, one hand scratching at a patchy beard that looked like it’d lost a fight with a weed trimmer. His uniform matched Milo’s—crisp, professional, all straight lines and polished buttons—but the sleeves were rolled up haphazardly, exposing forearms crisscrossed with faded tattoos: a coiled serpent, a busted skull, relics of a rowdier youth. His badge hung slightly askew, pinned like an afterthought. Leaner than Milo, Rusty still carried the slump of a man who’d given up caring—shoulders hunched, elbows planted on the desk, a cold energy drink sweating in his grip. His eyes, a washed-out blue, flicked between screens, but the spark was long gone. A mop of chestnut hair spilled over his forehead, untamed and oily, catching the blue glow of the holo-feed. “Triggered, probably,” he grunted, popping the tab with a hiss. “Saura-meter’s screamin - and I’m sure you heard about Wolfen.’

  “So this guy really killed him?” Milo rubbed at his weak chin.

  “Allegedly.” Vince shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time a super faked their own death though, shit, one did it just to get out of alimony, but I saw the body being carted down to the labs, or what was left of it. If it was a fake it was damn good. It had the bio-supers totally freaked out.”

  “Well he’s got somebody up in a twist. He was flagged the moment he made it into the hospital, get this - these priority notification flags are over two years old.” Milo pointed at a flashing icon on the screen marked, IMMEDIATE ESCALATION - contact case worker 6754. The problem was case worker 6754 was MIA, and their files were nothing but black bars when they tried to pull them up. Higher Authorization Required blinked mockingly on the screen.

  “So who finally got that notification?”

  “Fuck’n Dark Spire.”

  “Oh, oh… shit. Guess we better archive these feeds before-” The holo-screen cut to black. He sighed. “Before they redact the shit out of it, like they always do. Dark Spire and their damn secrets. I’ll call the Boss and let her know.”

  ***

  ‘All right Hedy I remember - some fragments of my first life, and alot of this one, most everything for the last couple of years - but most of what was in between is just pulling a 404, what the hell went wrong!’

  You did.

  Foster frowned. He had a feeling he was about to hear something he would rather not.

  We were operating under infiltration protocols - minimal nether-shard use - pure organic operation - to give time for memory traces to be written to your new… well …lightly used cortex. The alternative to doing it slow and safe was a high probability of Mnemosyne’s Affliction - an unenhanced human mind simply isn’t meant to absorb a lifetime of memories in any span of time less than a lifetime - and you had many lifetimes of memories.

  Foster grunted, He dimly remembered trying to emulate a movie he saw and downloading one too many martial arts upgrades in a prior incarnation, he’s spent the rest of that life with a burned out primary motor cortex, it wasn’t fun. The nether-shard was meant to archive memories from the host - if he ended up with the memory of a gold-fish that would be… not ideal.

  If we had some Nether-Shard resonators or cyber-memory augmentations it wouldn’t have been a problem - but we were working with what we had, so six years was the absolute minimum needed.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  ‘So you’re saying I won’t remember the rest of my existence for what… another three years?’

  There was a worrying pause.

  You dumped all the energy that was locked up and revolving around the core into your death ray stunt, not considering that there was already a reason I hadn’t vented those dangerous levels of chaotic energy. Nether-Shard host memories are encoded into the various spin states of the subspace energy field surrounding the shard so when you-

  Don’t! Don’t say it.’

  Hedy was silent.

  ‘Damn it. Damn it! I get it. I reformatted my own memory archives. That’s why I still feel like I’m a taco stuffing loser rather than a badass immortal. Fine. How much did I lose?’

  Before she could answer the door to Foster’s sterile room hissed open, a pneumatic sigh cutting through the background hum of the containment field. In strode a figure clad in gleaming silver armor—less a knight, more a walking arsenal of precision engineering. He recognized her instantly.

  The Platinum Paladin - the woman that had warned him away from his ex - in this life. He felt a bolt of anger thrum through his consciousness.

  This cold blooded bitch is back to screw with my life again!

  He struggled with the feelings - this was rage bubbling up from his incarnation’s memories… his host wasn’t completely gone as the memories had been integrated into his own neural architecture - while his Alex Foster persona was somewhat buried for the moment under the weight of his newly remembered past lives - fragmented though they were - it was still poised to explode like a volcano if conditions were just wrong enough, and they were getting there.

  The Paladin didn’t saunter; she advanced, each step a deliberate clank of metal on tile, echoing like a gavel in the tight space. The room’s lights danced off her suit, scattering light in jagged shards. She was like a mirror made into a weapon, a silhouette of cold authority, and Foster—strapped to his chrome covered bed—felt the weight of her gaze even through the faceless helm.

  Her armor was a marvel, a second skin of liquid-metal sheen that hugged her frame like it’d been poured on. Plates of shining articulated alloy flexed seamlessly at the joints—shoulders, elbows, knees—each segment etched with faint, glowing circuitry that pulsed faintly.

  ‘Hedy, how advanced would you say that armor is?’

  Very.

  ‘Could you hack it?’

  Hack it how? My field of influence extends to your brain and our combined knowledge of the technology and capabilities of Super-Humanity is… limited.

  ‘Yeah - Taco-Slinging min-wage workers aren’t exactly piped in to those kinds of details. I know we were in infiltration mode but damn!’ Foster sighed and focused on the Paladin, soaking in the details.

  The suit’s surface bore scars—hairline scratches and faint burns, badges of battles fought and won—but it gleamed, polished to a mirror finish that reflected the med-monitor’s neon flicker and Foster’s bruised, bandaged form in distorted miniature.

  The helmet was the crown jewel of the suit —smooth, featureless, a perfect oval of mirrored silver that gave nothing away. No eyes, no mouth, just a blank expanse that threw back the room’s stark light and Foster’s own haggard face, warped and accusing.

  Long black hair spilled from beneath it, cascading down her back in a thick, glossy wave—untamed, stark against the armor’s sterile shine, the one human touch in a shell of machine perfection. He wondered how that even worked… a force field? Maybe it was fake? He noticed as her hair swayed slightly as she halted, planting her feet wide, hands resting on her hips. The stance screamed judgment—shoulders squared, head tilted just so.

  The Platinum Paladin’s silence broke like a crack in a glacier—sudden, sharp, and chilling. When she spoke, her voice echoed from the mirrored helm, low and resonant, threaded with a metallic edge that wasn’t quite human.

  “It looks like you’ve gotten into some trouble.” There was no warmth, no softness; it was a voice that could’ve been forged in the same lab as her armor—cold, precise, with a faint distortion that made you question if it was flesh or machine talking.

  ‘Hedy… I’m not exactly operating on all cylinders at the moment - if we can’t hack it - what can we do? Freeze time, shoot death rays, exactly what have I got on tap to deal with her if things go south?’

  Overclock is on Cooldown so unless you want a melted shard that’s off the table - there will be no subjective time tricks for a long while, and that ‘death ray’ was the accumulated chaos energy built up from a trans-dimensional jump. Don’t do that again - ever - unless you want to lose what little is left of your mind. So… try rolling for Charisma? Maybe you can rizz her out of the armor. Maybe she has a fetish for handcuffed helpless men.

  ‘Gross. As if I would want to. Probably just a bunch of dust up under all that shine.’ Foster scowled up at the Paladin - it seemed he’d have to handle this the old fashioned way - by sucking it up and smiling, it didn’t feel good. He plastered a twisted smile on his face and struggled to keep his voice level. “Trouble? Seems more like you Supers came in and screwed everything up again.”

  “Is that why you murdered Wolfen?”

  “I’m pretty sure self defense isn’t murder.” He snapped.

  “Excessive self defense is. Store surveillance records show he was already beaten.”

  “Really! Like the Turbo twins beat him? Like Mech-Knight, or Princess Power?” Foster listed off the names of Supers that had historically bested Wolfen in one of his drunken brawls, glad for his meat-life fixation on all things Super. They were all now listed as - missing. “You all knew the truth, and there’s no way in hell he could have taken Mech-Knight, not unless he tracked him back to his home and caught him out of his armor, but none of you ever did anything about it.”

  “Because there has never been any proof of those allegations.”

  Foster realized he was breathing too heavily as some of the machines around his bed started to make squawking alerts, with an act of will he tried to calm down. A sudden impulse - a need to know - shook him from his rage. “Just tell me - are Pete and Sofia O.k.?”

  He could sense tension settle in - radiating even past the armor as the Paladin carefully searched for her words. “Your co-worker Peter suffered occipital head trauma and a subdural hematoma and unfortunately… they did not survive.”

  He was surprised by the fury he felt. Like magma burning in his veins. From one perspective the last years of his life were like a dream - but he'd been living that dream every damn miserable day, and his coworkers were almost friends. Pete would never get another number from a drunk girl in the drive through window… he felt his fists clenching… and realized amidst the rage… with most of his memories gone - and the bulk of his clear recollections from just the last couple of years that - at least for now - he truly was still Alex Foster.

  “Sofia-” He forced out the words, “-is she-”

  “Everyone else survived and is recovering, but I’m not here to talk to you about your various co-workers. We need to discuss how you killed Wolfen, be it a mystic artifact, spell, or hidden trigger event, and how we will be handling this incident.”

  Foster laughed but rage was still dripping into his voice, “You’ll do what you always do when a super kills some poor unfortunate bastard, cover - it - up. I bet the local PRU didn’t even interview anyone, because then they would have to document what one of your own supers did, and I’m certain those recordings you mentioned have been locked up tight and thrown in a vault marked - never release.”

  “If you’re willing to co-operate with us, we can work with you to-”

  The suppressed rage finally broke free, and he found himself almost screaming. “You already broke your word to me, you’re a fucking liar! I don’t intend to make any more deals with a promise breaking monster like you!” Foster grabbed his forehead with his free hand. ‘Hedy… what the hell is this. I sound like a damned child!’

  ***

  The Paladin

  Promise breaker?

  Lira Kael never wanted the spotlight—she barely wanted the room. Born to Eryn Kael, the original Platinum Paladin - she grew up in the shadow of a legend: a mother who was half a myth, a beacon of order in the City’s chaos. Eryn was a force—unyielding, fearless, her silver armor a symbol that criminals learned to dread.

  Lira, though? She was the quiet kid in the back, more comfortable with a holo-tablet and a locked door than a crowd. Antisocial by nature, she stammered through conversations, her dark eyes darting away from anyone who lingered too long. Her black hair—long, thick, a mirror of her mother’s—was her shield, a curtain to hide behind when the world got too loud.

  Eryn didn’t push her into the Super life, not directly. But when Lira was seventeen a raid went wrong—Eryn pushed herself too far in a fight against a rogue super. She survived, she even won, but her nerves were damaged beyond even the PRU’s capacity to heal. Damage that would progress if she kept wearing the armor she’d worn for two decades. Bedridden, her mother trained Lira in secret—not out of choice, but necessity. The Inner City couldn’t know the Platinum Paladin was down; the myth had to live. Someone had to keep the criminals in fear and the other Supers accountable. If they thought the PRU didn’t have someone powerful enough to bring them to justice… she didn’t want to imagine what might happen.

  Lira, at nineteen now, was the only one with the gene-key to sync the suit, its nano-circuits tuned to Kael blood. She hated it—the weight, the expectation, the lie. But she loved her mother, so she donned the armor every day, kept her head down, and let the world assume the Paladin still walked among them.

  Lira stood rigid in the Super Ward room, the Platinum Paladin’s mirrored helm reflecting Foster’s bruised, muttering form. Her hands stayed on her hips—her mother’s stance, drilled into her—but inside, her mind was a tangle of panic.

  He knows me? How does he know me? I was called out here because he’s flagged for immediate debrief for any incidents and HQ called me up and asked me to take point on this…but that look—those eyes, they’re burning. But I’ve never met him. I’d remember a face like that, all that anger, cuffed down like some beast gone feral. What’s he seeing when he glares at me? No, not me. Mom. Oh, damn it, he thinks I’m her. What did she do this time! Of course she’d be at that off-grid medical retreat now- crap.

  Her gloved fingers twitched, the servo-tips clicking faintly. She forced them still, swallowing the lump in her throat. He can’t know I’m not her. Nobody can. If he figures it out—if he even guesses—

  She tilted her helm slightly, mirroring her mother’s cold appraisal, but inside, her heart hammered against the chestplate. Say something, Lira. Sound like her. Don’t let him see the cracks. When she finally spoke it was one of her mother platitudes —“We are Heroes, we have to make hard choices.”—her voice came out low, metallic, intimidating by design. But in her head, she was screaming.

  “Oh, illuminate me then Ms. Platinum. What do you intend to do with me, you can’t exile me further out from the inner city, I already live at the edge.”

  Before she could answer the door to Foster’s room slid open again, and in limped Detective Ray "Bulldog" Callahan. The biometrics in her suit ID’d him for her, he was flagged a PRU operative - a level 3 clearance. Impressive for a non-powered.

  She paused, should she think of normal people that way? Technically she didn’t have powers - she had hand me down powered-armor. It wasn’t quite the same. Then again - she could punch through a person while armored up. So it was sort of… close enough.

  Ray Callahan was a storm cloud in a cheap suit. His trench coat—grayish and wrinkled, stained with yesterday’s coffee—flapped around him like a tattered flag, the hem brushing scuffed boots that looked like they’d seen too many alleys. He moved with a hitch, favoring his left leg. A cigarette dangled from his lips, unlit—ward rules—but the stink of old tobacco clung to him anyway, so Lira upped the filtration level of her helmet.

  His face was a roadmap of hard years: lantern jaw clenched tight, gray stubble creeping up pockmarked cheeks, eyes like chipped flint sunk deep under a furrowed brow. A fedora sat crooked on his head, gray hair peeking out, thinning but stubborn, like the man himself.

  She was relieved, someone else could take point on this debrief, Foster’s unwarranted anger was stressing her out.

  Ray carried a battered holo-pad in one meaty hand, knuckles scarred from nights he didn’t talk about, and a styrofoam cup in the other, black sludge sloshing over the rim as he stalked in. The PRU badge clipped to his belt glinted dully—brass over steel, scratched but proud. His tie hung loose, a faded red strip against a shirt that’d given up on white, sleeves rolled to the elbows exposing forearms thick with muscle gone soft. He didn’t glance at the Platinum Paladin—didn’t need to. To him she was muscle, a walking shield; he was the brain, or so he told himself. His gaze locked on Foster, sizing him up like a dog sniffing meat gone bad. He knew how these things went… the kid had killed a Super - he was screwed.

  “Alright, sunshine,” Ray growled, voice a gravel pit roughed up by whiskey and shouting matches. He planted himself at the foot of the bed, sloshing coffee as he tapped the holo-pad awake with his thumb, neon case files flickering to life. “You’re my headache now. Start talkin’ or I can make this real ugly for you and you’re gonna wish you had.” He shot a sidelong look at Lira’s gleaming armor, muttering under his breath.

  ***

  Foster closed his eyes and leaned back into the bed.

  “Come on Foster, let’s cut the crap. You’re strapped to a slab in the freak wing, The scanner’s screamin’ like a banshee, and I’ve got a report says we have a dead Super, so … it doesn’t take a genius to know you got yourself some black-market artifact and tried to force a trigger. Did it even work?”

  ‘Force a trigger? Was that something that can even be done? If so they are doing a damn good job of keeping it a secret.’

  Foster’s eyes opened narrowly and flicked up meeting Ray’s flinty stare. His voice rasped out, flat and final. “Lawyer.”

  Ray’s jaw tightened, the cigarette in his mouth twitching like it wanted to light itself. He leaned in, close enough for Foster to smell the stale tobacco and bitterness rolling off him. “Cute. Real cute. You think stonewallin’ me’s gonna make this go away? We’ve got witnesses—” He did not in fact have witnesses - E zone wall-rats didn’t stick around to talk with the PRU and the employee’s all said they only saw a raging Super kill a store employee - writing that into a report was a quick way to get posted beyond the wall. Annoying wall-rats, if it was up to him they’d all be -

  “Lawyer,” Foster repeated, his free hand flexing, gaze drifting to the containment field’s shimmer like Ray wasn’t even there.

  Ray straightened, tossing the holo-pad onto the foot of the bed. Coffee sloshed over his fingers—he didn’t flinch, just wiped it on his trench coat, leaving a fresh stain. “You’re a real piece’a work, huh? I’ve seen your type—think you’re slick Newsflash, kid, the PRU don’t play soft with super-killers. Tell me what went down—

  “Lawyer.” Foster’s tone didn’t waver, a brick wall in two syllables. He shut his eyes, like he could will Ray out of existence.

  Ray snorted, a harsh sound that bounced off the chrome walls. He paced a tight circle, boots scuffing the tile, then wheeled back, slamming a palm on the bed frame. “Listen up, wiseass—

  “Enough.” The Platinum Paladin’s voice sliced through Ray’s growl like a blade through smoke—low, resonant, edged with that metallic hum that made the air feel tight. She stepped forward, armor clanking softly, her mirrored helm tilting toward Ray. The word dropped heavy, a quiet menace vibrating through the suit’s vocalizers, not loud but inescapable, like a warning shot fired too close. Her stance shifted—shoulders squared, one gauntlet flexing with a faint servo-whir—silencing Ray mid-rant.

  Ray froze, his hand still on the bed frame, eyes narrowing as he shot her a sidelong glare. “Stay in your lane, tin can. I’m workin’ here.” But the edge in his voice dulled, blunted by her presence. He straightened, snatching his holo-pad to his chest, and muttering under his breath, “Muscle don’t call shots.” Yet he backed off. “Fine, we can pick this up at the station as soon as you get cleared for release.”

  The door hissed open again, and a compact woman, five-foot-five but built like she could wrestle a containment field and win walked in —broad shoulders, wiry arms. Her face was sharp—high cheekbones, a tight jaw, with eyes like polished obsidian that cut through the room’s sterile glare. Dark brown hair, streaked with premature gray, was yanked back into a severe bun, not a strand daring to slip free. Her white coat was pristine, embroidered with M. Vex, MD

  “My patient hasn’t been cleared for a visitor, much less an interrogation. What the hell is this?” Her voice snapped out, crisp and commanding, edged with fury that didn’t need volume to express itself. She stormed to the bed, planting herself between Ray and Foster, her glare raking over the detective like he was a stain on her floor. “Callahan, you’re interrogating my patient before I’ve cleared him? And you—” she wheeled on the Platinum Paladin, eyes narrowing at the mirrored helm, “—you’re letting him? I don’t care if he’s a suspect or a super—he’s mine until I say otherwise.”

  Ray bristled, coffee sloshing as he turned. “Doc, we’ve got a case—”

  “I’ve got a patient who came in reading half-brain-dead and is now showing stress signs spiking off my charts!” Mara cut him off, pointing at the holo-screen on the bed’s edge, its screen flashing red. “The Aura readings are a mess, his brain waves look like a war zone, and you’re in here playing bad cop? Back off—both of you—or I’ll have hospital security drag you out. I think you both know what happens if you make an enemy of this hospital.”

  Her gaze flicked to Foster, assessing—clinical, cold, but not unkind. “You. Stop stressing out and rest. I’ll deal with these two.” She straightened, crossing her arms, a wall of white-coated fury.

  Foster pointed to his cuffed wrist tapping the cuffs, “I haven’t yet been charged with a crime, and yet-”

  Mara’s eyes narrowed, “Uncuff him Callahan.”

  Ray snorted, “Sorry. It looks like the officers that secured him lost the key… I’m sure it’ll turn up… eventually.”

  Mara pointed at the door, “Both of you get out of here - now.”

  The Platinum Paladin’s armored boots clanked once more as she turned, her mirrored helm reflecting the room’s sterile glare in a final, silent judgment. She didn’t glance back. Ray Callahan followed, his trench coat flapping like a wounded bird, muttering curses under his breath. “Damn doctors,” he growled, sloshing more coffee as he limped out, the door hissing shut behind them with a pneumatic thud. The containment field’s hum settled back into the air with a low drone.

  He lay there, handcuffed wrist chafing, the holo-monitor above flickering his jagged vitals in neon green. The room felt colder without the others—emptier, the white walls too bright, too clean, a lie of safety. His free hand twitched. ‘Hedy, can you guess the Doc’s angle? Bad cop good doc? That’s a new one.’

  I suspect we’re about to find out.

  Dr. Mara Vex stood at the bed’s edge, arms crossed, clipboard now tucked under one elbow. Her sharp eyes locked on him, dissecting. The faint whiff of ion sanitizer clung to her coat, mixing with the ozone tang that coated the room. She tapped a boot once, impatient, then spoke, voice crisp but quieter now, edged with something like reluctant candor. “I can tell you don’t trust me— and that’s fine. I don’t trust anyone either.” She smiled.

  ‘Super? Empath maybe? That would be a shit power for a Doctor. Maybe she’s just perceptive though.’

  Foster snorted, a dry rasp that scraped his throat. “I don’t believe in favors without strings.”

  Mara’s lips tightened, a flicker of irritation crossing her face before she smoothed it away. She stepped closer, “Just a mess we’re cleaning up. When you were here last after that terrible beast tide incident—two years back or so - there was a mistake. I won’t bother bullshitting you. Your blood tests have come back positive for a serum that wasn’t ever cleared for use on civilians.”

  Foster’s eyes narrowed, a dull ache pulsing behind them. “Serum?” Two years ago—dim flashes, restraints, needles. His voice hardened. “If it was cleared out of my system, you wouldn’t care.”

  Mara nodded, unfazed by his anger. “Exactly. It’s dormant—mostly. But it’s soaking up energy like a sponge. That’s probably why you haven’t triggered yet, even with your readings. The military was trying to replicate the serum that gave the Primarion his powers - only - they tried to do it cheaper, obviously.”

  The Primarion - Foster remembered reading about him - he was a Golden age hero - the Thousand fold man… said to be one thousand times stronger and a thousand times faster than any mortal man and while some hyperbole was in play the man had been recorded tossing cars and leaping over buildings.

  “What they ended up with didn’t augment anyone, all it did was accelerate healing until the energy imbued in it ran out. The serum may be trying to activate itself, but it’s too broken to finish the job.” She shifted, “We don't know how he got it but the Doctor mis-logged it in the system as regeneron-X which is an extremely expensive regenerative therapy drug and… we suspect he pocketed the difference.”

  I remember that Doctor … Chimmigran?… So he screwed me over. Foster’s free hand clenched, knuckles whitening. “So I was someone’s lab rat. And you’re worried I might sue.”

  Mara’s gaze didn’t waver, but her jaw tightened, a flicker of steel beneath the calm. “I’m pissed we missed it. I don’t like screw-ups—not mine, not anyone’s. But yes, upstairs are mildly concerned about potential liability. With the right lawyer you could even play this off as a long term psychosis induced by an experimental military drug. It would be bullshit but it might work. If you’re called into a trial it’s likely they’ll get the records of what happened here… the PRU’s circling because somehow you managed to kill the unkillable Wolfen. Congratulations by the way, he was responsible for far too many of the patients sent here, and not all of them survived, but since they were all technically criminals…” She shook her head disgustedly, “No one really cared. But you’re a legal nightmare waiting to happen and I’m going to try and resolve the matter now.”

  The containment field shimmered faintly at the room’s edges, a reminder of the cage they were both in—him literal, her bureaucratic. Foster tilted his head, studying her. “What’s the deal, then? You’re not confessing this out of guilt.”

  “No,” Mara said flatly, stepping back to lean against the wall, coat brushing the alloy. “I’m merely expressing possibilities - because we can help each other. Hospital lawyers will represent you—handle this incident and the PRU. They’re sharks; they’ll bury it. Whatever secret trick you used will stay your secret trick for a bit longer, they’ll make a case that it’s a violation of the Superhuman Privacy Act to ask how you defended yourself from an unprovoked Super attack - but in exchange, you waive future prosecution against the institution for past incidents. No lawsuits and no headlines.”

  Lawyers. Foster’s mind churned, signing off on their mistake? Feels like swallowing glass. He stared at the ceiling, the holo-monitor’s hum a dull pulse in his ears. “You’re asking a lot.”

  “We’re offering a lot. PRU prisons aren’t fun places, we keep our reputation and you keep your freedom, our interests are aligned.”

  “There is the small matter that you billed me for that illegal treatment, and impounded the death allowance disbursed by the City to cover it.” He left his demand unspoken. She should be able to figure it out.

  Mara looked vaguely surprised. “That will be… addressed.”

  “Then when it is, we have a deal.”

  Mara nodded once, crisp and final, pulling the holo-clipboard free to tap a message to someone upstairs. “Smart. Lawyers’ll be here by morning. Rest now—I’m not clearing you till I’m sure you won’t die. Also, while I don’t care how you managed to pull off the impossible, other parties will. The spires certainly won’t stop investigating you till they’re satisfied. We can stop the PRU but not the supers that hopscotch from hero to vigilante and back again - you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.” She turned, her shoes clicking toward the door, but paused, glancing back. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you uncuffed.”

  “You have the keys for these?” Foster glanced at the cuff, it gleamed silver and was etched with thousands of almost invisible tiny glowing traces. “Isn’t it supposed to be a unique magnetic lock for every pair?”

  She almost laughed. “We don’t need keys, Supers get into situations with those power-dampening cuffs all the time. I’m going to say we had to change your bed and then we had it cut off - and then I’ll bill the PRU for it so that Callahan gets a ear full of it from his bosses for not uncuffing you when I asked. Just don’t make me regret it.”

  The door hissed shut behind her, leaving Foster alone with the hum, the cuffs, and a deal that tasted like ash. ‘Lawyers, Serum, Wolfen. Hedy, what the hell? Did we end up in the unluckiest person on this whole damn world.’

  Considering he was mostly brain dead when we found him? It’s safe to say he wasn’t terribly lucky in life.

  ‘Hmm… true.’