Chapter 1.1.50 — Third Party

The double doors burst off their hinges. The force sent the doors cartwheeling across the warehouse’s giant room. They slammed into the opposite wall, half-embedded and sticking out.

Fast-Response Drones shone spotlights through the upper windows, highlighting the lone super. They stood in the entrance, clad only in black. It was an outfit much like Emmett wore—black mask, hoodie, and pants. Though the hoodie was torn, revealing rippling muscle beneath, the man wasn’t bleeding from the injury. Normal enough, except that even from across the room, Emmett could feel that there was nothing normal about him.

Emmett hadn’t felt a sense of overwhelming power and dread like this since seeing Paragon hanging ominously in the sky.

“Clara?” Emmett whispered.

“You have one chance to leave,” Clara said, floating higher in the air. Her suit hummed with power, the air around her warped and flickered.

Despite Clara’s show of force, it didn’t make him feel the slightest bit better.

“I’m sorry—”

Emmett didn’t see the new super move. One second he was standing in the searchlights. The next second, he was gone. The upper windows of the warehouse shattered as drones fired kinetic blasts at where the super had been.

To Emmett’s right, the duplicate of Porcelain exploded as it spoke. Shards tumbled across the room. The super stood in her place.

He disappeared again, reappearing at another duplicate and simultaneously destroying her. This time, the fallen shelving screeched from where the super had stepped on top of it, and Emmett saw the super retracting a punch—

He wasn’t teleporting or using psychic power. This guy was just that strong and that fast. Which meant Mutagen-X wasn’t so different from Mutagen-A… That fact didn’t make Emmett feel any better either, but he filed the mental note away for later.

Even the drones outside took a moment to register the target’s movement—the thunks of impact from their kinetic blasts tracing across the room after him.

TINA’s voice on the intercom brought Emmett back to the moment. “Upgrading countermeasures.”

Suddenly, the thunks from the drone blasts converged on the new super. Emmett crouched low as the searchlights swept across him, but the drones’ shots missed him completely. Even when the super ran across the room, taking out another duplicate of Porcelain, the drones’ shots were right on top of him.

Whatever TINA had done to the drones had tuned up their shots so that each impact made the room shudder and missed shots tore chunks out of the concrete floor. But the super shrugged off everything.

Things had quickly gone from bad to worse: Not only did the drones’ weapons not appear to be affecting their enemy at all, even Clara seemed caught off guard by his speed.

The super could’ve struck Clara or Emmett as he went past them. He wasn’t going after them at all…

Clara screamed at Emmett, “Get Porcelain!”

Emmett turned to the nearest duplicate and sprinted for her. Since the new super had arrived, Porcelain hadn’t moved at all. Every copy of her was frozen mid-pose.

Emmett reached her, grabbed Porcelain by the shoulders, and shook her. “We need to get out of here!”

Her skin was hard and cold as stone, and at first she didn’t react, but then Porcelain looked Emmett in the eyes. “He’s going to kill me.”

Emmett had never seen Porcelain so clearly than he did in that moment. She didn’t wear a mask—she didn’t even appear to wear a bodysuit. Her skin was the texture of smooth ceramic, hairless and seamless. She had eyes that were unblinking and sterile white. Her powers had transformed her inside and out. But for a moment, Porcelain’s dangerous, inhuman exterior fell away. She wasn’t a super—she was scared.

His brother, Antony, had looked up at him like that when they were scared kids.

Behind them, dull impacts of metal on flesh echoed as quick as machine gun fire. Emmett glanced back just in time to see twin blurs as Clara fought the new super hand-to-hand. The broken shelves around them crackled with blue electricity like she’d deployed another countermeasure.

“Clara, disengage!”

“We need to run,” Emmett said, grabbing Porcelain by the arm and sprinting for the closest door. She didn’t resist, and if she replied, Emmett couldn’t hear it over the maelstrom of battle.

By the time they made it to the door, Emmett heard something that sounded like the thunk of a heavy gear turning, but he didn’t stop running. Clara had told him about her trump card—she’d overloaded her exosuit and was already using it.

She was already using her final attack.

Emmett and Porcelain had just managed to make it outside by the time the second explosion went off. All the matter around Clara’s suit was condensing and solidifying.

Supposedly, Clara’s attack would be confined within the building, but she’d explained the destructive potential it contained. Emmett wasn’t chancing it. They didn’t stop running.

A second later, an explosion tore through the warehouse. Steel screeched and the glass that was left was thrown across the streets. Emmett and Porcelain stumbled as a blastwave blew through the doors directly behind them.

Above them, the Fast-Response Drones dove into the warehouse to clean up.

Emmett and Porcelain hadn’t even made it to the next warehouse when more explosions sounded from behind them. The wall of the warehouse crumpled as several things came flying out into the street—wrecked drones bounced across the pavement. A second later, Clara followed them. Her exosuit skidded down the street.

Emmett’s heart dropped and he whispered through gritted teeth. “Clara…”

“My suit’s down, but I’ll make it,” she replied through the intercom. Her voice was laced with pain.

Venture came through a moment later. “Emmett, run. Porcelain isn’t worth it.”

Emmett turned and ran through the warehouse, dragging Porcelain with him. After all this, Emmett couldn’t just leave her to die.

They sprinted across another large open room of the second warehouse. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the floor and long plastic sheets draped down from the ceiling.

Something burst through the wall behind them, and Emmett didn’t need to turn around to picture the super’s ominous silhouette.

“Stop.”

Emmett ignored the voice, tossing smoke pellets and noise makers behind them. Pops and shrill wails echoed through the building.  Emmett and Porcelain sprinted down the hallway—

And made it precisely two more steps.

Porcelain turned around and grabbed him, quickly putting Emmett in a chokehold. Even with his training, he hadn’t a chance of resisting Porcelain’s strength when she was condensed. Emmett grabbed Porcelain’s arms, as feeble as it felt.

Across the room, the unknown super strode out of the smoke. The noise makers were already done, presumably smashed.

Emmett struggled. “We’re trying to help—”

“You were there the night I was poisoned,” Porcelain said.

At first Emmett thought she was talking about him, but Porcelain didn’t whisper. She was talking to the other super…

Even more startling was that the enemy super flinched in surprise. The expression was so quick that if Emmett blinked, he would’ve missed it.

Emmett moved to reach for a smoke grenade—

He barely registered the sound of rapid footsteps as the super crossed the room. Emmett was thrown sideways, slammed into the wall, and pinned there. The super had one hand on Emmett’s chest, pressing so hard that he struggled to breathe.

Emmett pawed helplessly at his enemy’s forearm, but it wouldn’t move. Emmett squeezed the man’s wrist with his metal arm and not even its inhuman strength phased him.

The super held Porcelain by the throat with his other hand. Despite both Emmett and Porcelain struggling, the super didn’t even move.

He stood there, completely unphased. His mask was still in one piece, but his hoodie was in tatters. Beneath it, his muscles rippled like they were alive, and his skin was completely unharmed.

The super glanced from Porcelain to Emmett, his white eyes the only part that peeked through the mask. “You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to,” he said in a low growl, like he was hiding his voice.

Emmett struggled to speak. “Please. She has answers I need.”

“I’m sorry—”

Porcelain’s voice was cut off as the super squeezed and her neck shattered. Her head and body fell to the floor, breaking and scattering shards across the warehouse.

Emmett’s head hung, defeated, as he stared at the shattered remains of Porcelain. At his chance for answers.

Then he glared at the super that still held him by the chest. Emmett squeezed the man’s wrist as hard as he could. The actuators in his arm whirred with effort, but the man didn’t even flinch.

“I’m not your enemy.”

Emmett looked up in disbelief. He didn’t even scoff. “It doesn’t feel that way.”

The super shook his head. “It doesn’t matter—I’m not your enemy... But don’t cross Gnosis.”

The next second, Emmett coughed at the sudden release of pressure around his chest. Emmett glanced around, but the man was already gone. As relieved as he was to be able to breathe normally, Emmett turned, ready to run and look for Clara.

But she was standing across the warehouse. She flew across the room and set down beside him. Her suit was mangled; plating was crumpled, or completely torn and missing, showing fibers and mesh beneath.

“Are you alright?” Emmett asked.

“My pride hurts worse than I do. What about you?” she asked.

Emmett nodded, then stared down at the broken shards littering the floor and winced. Pieces of Porcelain crunched beneath Clara’s exosuit.

“I couldn’t do anything,” Emmett said. “I couldn’t help her.”

Clara put a metal hand on his shoulder. “He’s gone, but we’ll find him. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“You too,” Emmett said, nodding again. Even though he felt defeated, he breathed easier.

It was over… for now.

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