Later that same day — September 29th, 2015 — Tuesday — Chicago — 9:47 PM
The roof of the old Teen Team base smelled like rust and old rain.
Eve came in through the skylight, floating silently toward the corner where the team's old things had been left behind.
She stopped in front of the memory board. Her eyes settled on the group photo; her and Rex, smiling, before everything had fallen apart.
She picked up the photos and stared at them for a few seconds.
Her chest tightened. She closed her eyes, fingers tightening around the edge of the paper.
Until...
BOOOM!
The muffled sound of an explosion made her spin around.
She shot outside, leaving a streak of pink light across the dark sky.
When she emerged, fireworks were blooming overhead.
She watched them for a second.
It was almost beautiful...
But the faint smile faded when she noticed the one responsible, sitting on the outer ledge with one leg dangling over the drop.
Rex.
He wasn't wearing his mask. One hand was braced behind him, the other gathering energy for another explosion in the sky. A few light bruises remained from the Guardians tryout, or maybe from some recent training. Hard to tell.
He looked up with that typical grin when he heard her land.
"Surprise!" he said, forcing enthusiasm, like the fireworks were for her.
Eve stayed still a few meters away, but the silence didn't last. Rex stood up quickly and took a few steps toward her.
"I know there's no fixing this," he began, his voice stripped of its usual arrogance. "I acted like an idiot. I don't know what I was thinking." He ran a hand over his face. "I don't know why I can't stop... you know I love you, right?"
"I know," Eve replied. Her voice was flat now, no anger left in it. "But that wasn't an apology, Rex."
Rex looked away, then forced himself to meet her eyes.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
He took another step forward, almost hesitant. "Look, Eve, give me one more chance. Just this once. I'll do better. I promise. I already got what I deserved... Monster Girl beat the hell out of me, and your friend Infinity nearly ripped my jaw off."
Eve looked at him for a long time, but she didn't see the boyfriend she had loved.
She only saw a cycle that needed to end.
She turned toward the horizon.
"Good luck with the new team, Rex."
"I'm sorry," he said, and it sounded real in that desperate way real things do when it's already too late.
She rose into the air without looking back and vanished into the sky.
A few minutes later, somewhere else.
Eve stopped in midair, pink energy flickering around her feet.
The twins' bedroom window was lit. A golden rectangle cutting through the darkness of the night.
She drifted closer.
She hadn't planned on coming here. She had just... flown toward somewhere that wasn't the base, wasn't her parents' house, wasn't anywhere that required her to be okay.
And somehow, she had ended up here.
Through the lit window, Mark's silhouette was unmistakable.
And there was someone else with him.
Amber.
Amber's arms were around his neck, and they kissed.
Eve looked away. Her chest tightened in a way she knew well enough to hate. Rex's voice came back without warning—"you were getting too close to Invincible"— she closed her eyes for two seconds.
"No," she whispered to the wind. "That's not it."
She was exhausted. She had just ended things with someone she loved. Of course seeing anything like romance right now was going to hurt.
That was all.
It had to be all.
Her train of thought was cut short by a voice coming from behind her.
"Looks like if I go in there right now, I'll ruin somebody's fun."
Eve jolted in the air and turned.
Kai was floating three meters away, arms crossed over his chest. He wasn't wearing the suit, just jeans and a dark T-shirt. His white hair was disheveled from the wind, and his eyes...
His eyes were icy.
"How long have you been there?" she asked, trying to put the mask of indifference back together.
Kai didn't answer right away. He tilted his head, brown eyes fixed on Mark's room before returning to her.
"Long enough to feel sorry for you."
She frowned, but before she could snap back, he turned in the air, still holding her gaze.
"Come on. The air here is too heavy."
Eve stared at him for a second as he drifted away. His expression carried nothing obvious.
It never did.
Then she followed him...
That was still better than her other options.
They landed on top of a skyscraper in the Loop. The wind up there was sharp, howling between radio antennas and carrying the city's scent of ozone. Chicago stretched below like a sea of orange lights and veins of pulsing traffic.
Eve walked to the edge, arms crossed against the cold. Kai stayed a few steps behind, hands in his pockets. His posture carried that same detached calm she had seen before, but there was something new now—a static charge in the air around him that made him feel different from the Kai she knew.
The silence lasted long enough for the weight of the altitude to settle in.
Kai's voice cut through the wind. "So, what happened?"
"I went to see Rex," Eve kept her eyes on the dark horizon, her fingers digging into her arms. "He apologized."
"And what changed?" Kai's question was direct, so direct it almost wasn't a question.
"Nothing. It just... closed. You know? It's over." She exhaled, her breath vanishing instantly into the wind.
Kai crossed his arms and leaned against one of the metal supports near the lightning rod.
"So everything's resolved," he said, irony dripping from his voice.
Eve stayed quiet. The wind whipped her red hair across her face.
"Earlier... Rex said I was getting too close to Mark." The words came slowly, carrying the weight of something she had been dragging around all day. "That was how he justified what he did."
Kai took a step forward, into the weak light cast by the tower. "And now you feel guilty because part of you thinks he might've been right."
"I don't know." The honesty slipped out before she could choose a safer answer. "I know he wasn't right. But there's still this second where I wonder if I really gave Rex a reason. It's just... I finally found him. The boy I met years ago, the one who first told me I didn't have to hide what I could do. That I could actually be a hero."
She stopped, then began again. "But the truth is, even if he wasn't that boy... Mark is just good. In a way most people aren't. So I became his friend."
Maybe she was just telling herself what she needed to hear.
The unspoken thought floated between them.
Kai let out a short laugh, dry and joyless.
"People only doubt when they're afraid to admit the answer they already know."
She didn't answer. Just breathed in deeply, feeling the freezing air burn her lungs. The silence stretched until she turned fully toward him for the first time.
"Thanks for standing up for me. I heard you were the one who punched Rex."
"I didn't stand up for you," Kai replied, his tone shifting subtly. "Mark had finally started cleaning the room, and your drama interrupted everything, which forced me to answer Robot's call. It was purely a matter of convenience."
Eve gave him a faintly ironic smile.
"I never know when you're being serious, when you just want to watch the world burn, or..." She raised an eyebrow, pausing dramatically. "...when you want to blow up a teacher, kill a gorilla, or throw a villain into a pool of lava."
Kai was silent for the space of a heartbeat. His eyes seemed to be fixed on something beyond the Chicago skyline, taking inventory of his own instability.
"Some days, I don't know who's answering," he said, his voice flat and empty. "Me... or someone I used to know."
He didn't explain.
Saying it out loud would've meant admitting the ghost had a name—and that the name belonged in a cemetery.
Confusion passed across Eve's face. She tried to find some logic inside that confession.
"Those powers you used before... you haven't used them again because of that day?"
Kai turned just enough to look at her from the corner of his eye.
"By 'that day,' I assume you mean when you helped me with Cosmic. When I lost control."
Eve nodded lightly.
"Yeah. As you probably noticed, there are... side effects." Kai let his gaze drift back to the horizon.
Eve nodded slowly, like someone filing away an incomplete answer because she knew it was all she was going to get.
"And Mark... you still plan on not telling him?" she asked, shifting the subject.
Almost involuntarily, Kai let out a breath and rolled his eyes.
She caught the reaction and frowned.
"You were mad at Mark earlier. Did you fight because of that crap villain?"
"Not exactly," he said, glancing back at her.
Eve held his gaze, waiting for him to finish.
"My ex. She sent a message after months. According to Mark, it was a link to some post where she's with someone else."
Eve took two steps toward him.
"I..." She stopped a meter away, empathy softening her voice as she imagined him going through something too similar to her own situation. "When did that happen?"
"I don't know. I'll never know." Kai let out a sarcastic laugh. "Mark deleted it before I could see the message."
She closed her eyes for a second, feeling the ache for him. "And then you fought?"
Kai walked past her toward the edge, wearing that same half-smile, the same cynical expression as if none of it mattered.
"Actually, no... more or less. Maybe."
She watched him for a second, then walked until she was standing beside him, looking at him in confusion.
"Not that you're easy to follow on other days, but today you're especially impossible."
"Mark wanted to help. But he didn't need to. It pissed me off." Kai glanced at her from the corner of his eye, a flicker of disdain passing over his features. "I'm the older brother. I help him, not the other way around. And imagine that... your ex sends you a social media link with another guy in it. Pathetic. Like she needs to prove something. She wasn't like that. Hard to believe."
Eve raised an eyebrow, an ironic smile pulling at her lips. "Funny. I thought you two were twins. That 'older brother' authority is a bit of a stretch, Kai."
Kai's gaze remaining fixed on the distance, but the corner of his eye twitched—the closest thing to a reaction she was going to get. For him, the difference wasn't in the minutes of their birth, but in the decades of another life, a gap she couldn't see.
"Details," he muttered.
Eve studied his profile for a long beat. The cynical mask was still there, but the tone was different—heavier. The irony slowly faded from her face.
"I'm sorry she did that," Eve said softly.
Kai turned fully toward her. The closeness and the yellow warning lights at the top of the building cast deep shadows across his face.
"You don't need to be sorry. You got dumped too," he replied, the mockery snapping in the air.
Eve rolled her eyes.
"I honestly can't tell if your personality is bad, good, or if you're just insane."
Kai laughed. "Neither can I."
Eve looked back out over the skyline.
"Just for the record, you're the only one who got dumped. In Rex's case, I'm the one who ended it."
"Sure, sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night."
"Asshole." Eve smiled, looking down at the city below. "We're on top of a building, dealing with ex drama. How pathetic is this?"
The tone was joking, but discomfort still thrummed beneath it. She looked away, fixing her hair.
Kai watched her for a moment, at first only from the corner of his eye, as if he didn't want to make a thing of it. Long enough to notice the obvious: Eve was still tense, red hair getting blown across her face by the wind, her gaze lost in the city below, making a quiet effort not to come apart.
The cold had pulled her uniform tight enough to outline what it shouldn't have, and his eyes caught on it with an attention that felt immediate and wrong — her waist, the sharp line of her chest, the simple fact that she was right there.
His gaze climbed higher—to her mouth, the color in her cheeks, and the green of her eyes.
Eve had always been beautiful.It just normally didn't matter.
But right now, his body was reacting before his mind could form a single decent thought.
He took two steps forward—sudden, sharp, immediate—invading her space with an attitude that didn't match his usual self. It was like gravity—as if the air around him had grown denser, and Eve was too close not to feel it.
She looked up, wary, meeting his gaze. The weak light softened Kai's features—perfect, almost artificial.
But it wasn't just that.
There was something beneath the skin, a silence that pulled.
"Speak for yourself. I'm not dealing with any drama," he said, his voice dropping, unhurried. "I only came here because I thought you needed to talk."
Eve took a step back on instinct. Her senses did what they always did when something felt wrong: read the world. Pink energy flickered around her ankles, and for an instant, the molecules in the air seemed sharper...
Except near him.
Near him there was absence—a subtle void in the composition of the world, a paradox without an explanation.
Her eyes dropped to his shirt, to the lean muscle underneath it that matched the lines of his face. By the time she noticed, he was closer. Not touching—not yet—but it felt like he was.
"If we're not talking about that," Kai whispered, inches from her face, "got any better suggestions?"
Eve's throat went dry.
His eyes held no judgment, no guilt—only an indifference that was strangely inviting.
It felt like standing on the edge of a very tall building—which, in this case, wasn't just a metaphor. You know it's wrong, but the body understands the impulse before the mind does.
"No," she whispered in answer.
But she didn't step back this time.
On the contrary, Eve held his gaze and gave the intensity back, without pretending she didn't understand where this was going.
That was enough.
Kai pulled her in and pinned her against the concrete ledge, his hands firm, with no theatrical gentleness—just impulse. Eve answered with the same thing, the same stripped-down urgency, using it like an off switch for everything else.
The kiss hit like an impact—teeth brushing, breath stolen, sudden heat against the cutting wind. There was no romance in it; it was an escape valve, pure and simple.
They rolled across the rooftop, Eve's pink energy flickering wildly as they hit the opposite wall. Kai's weight over her was solid, an anchor in the middle of the chaos. For her, it was a way to forget betrayal. For him, it was the only way to silence Viktor's voice in his head and the chill that Kiana's name still brought with it.
Some time later, the wind seemed even colder.
Eve was sitting on the edge, hugging her knees, her breathing still uneven. The pink glow around her ankles flickered on and off—not like power in battle, but like nerves trying to remember how to be still.
Kai stood a few meters away, his back turned for a second, as if trying to erase part of the night. His eyes no longer held that strange gravity. The magnetism had receded like the tide.
Damn.
The thought came dry, without drama. It wasn't regret.It was the cold clarity of having let the wrong part of himself get too close.
He tugged his shirt back down and straightened the hem with a quick motion, as if adjusting the fabric were the easiest way to pretend none of it had happened.
Eve looked up by instinct—and hated the instinct.
Because for a fraction of a second, she saw he was ridiculously handsome.
The infuriating kind.
Damn it, Eve. What was I thinking?
She looked away toward the city below, as if Chicago might save her from her own mind. She wasn't supposed to be here—and even less supposed to have done that.
But she had.
Because she wanted to.
And that made everything more uncomfortable.
Kai glanced at her from the side. Only for an instant. That quick calculation of someone already thinking about the damage before it existed. Hope this doesn't turn into an unnecessary complication.
"So," Eve said, cutting through the silence, searching for a word that wouldn't make this worse, her voice rough, "that was..."
"A distraction," Kai finished for her, sweeping away any trace that might make things uncomfortable between them. His usual tone was back. He sounded like the real Kai again.
She let out a breath, exhausted relief slipping through her. Then she stood up, legs weakening for an instant, but she kept her composure, pink light glowing under her feet and re-forming the hero uniform.
"We got carried away. Tomorrow, everything's the same as always," she said, relieved by the shape of the words.
"Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, it never happened," Kai sealed the pact with his usual blend of irony and cynicism.
He stayed there on the rooftop, watching her magenta trail disappear between the buildings.
In the silence that followed, a laugh echoed through his mind.
"She's using you to fill the hole Rex left, and you're using her to forget that Kiana moved on," Viktor's voice mocked. "It's been a while. Shame there's no way to record all the times her eyes flashed from green to pink while she was—"
"Alright, Viktor. I get it." Kai cut him off quickly, irritation in his tone.
Viktor laughed, then continued. "You're welcome. And by the way, your head's less of a mess now... I might end up disappearing eventually."
Kai didn't answer.
For a brief moment, feeling the blue glow pulse in his pupils—as if it were asking to be used— he only looked up and shot into the sky in the direction of home.
The misunderstanding stayed where it was.
In the end, it didn't matter enough to either of them to go back and untangle it.
At least, Kai was back—and Eve made it home without feeling like she might fall apart on the way there.
The next day — Reginald Vel Johnson High School — September 30th, 2015 — Wednesday — Morning
Kai and Mark were in class together, as always.
But together was a generous word.
Mark and Kai had crossed the main hallway with a meter of silence between them—not the comfortable silence of brothers who didn't need to talk, but the other kind.
The kind that lingers after an argument neither of them has decided to close.
The morning classes passed in that same tone.
The lunch bell rang like conditional freedom.
The classroom emptied in waves. Mark was gathering his things when his phone vibrated.
Blocked number.
He answered.
"Kid." Cecil's voice came through without preamble, as always. "Where are your communicator and your brother's?"
Mark opened his mouth. "I forgot to—"
A hand appeared in front of him.
Kai, still seated in the chair beside him, had already taken both communicators out of his backpack. He held one out to Mark with the same indifference someone might use when lending a pencil in class.
Mark took it.
"—I've got them," he finished. "Right here."
Cecil didn't comment on the sudden course correction.
"Put them on. I need to talk to both of you."
Mark slipped his phone into his pocket and placed the communicator in his ear. Kai did the same, finally lifting his eyes with an expression that clearly said what now.
Cecil's voice came through both devices in perfect sync.
"NASA has a manned mission heading to Mars. They need an escort. Departure is this afternoon, estimated duration two weeks." A pause. "You two are perfect for it."
Mark glanced at Kai for half a second.
"Two weeks? What about my dad?" he asked. "Why not call him?"
"The new Guardians still aren't operational," Cecil replied, dry as ever. "Nolan agreed that someone needs to remain on Earth for security."
"Okay..." Mark muttered, his voice trailing off.
"Good. Be ready at sixteen." Cecil hung up.
Kai let out a breath. "I'm expecting some kind of payment this time."
They stepped out of the classroom into the loud hallways as if the world hadn't just changed plans for the next two weeks.
After they came back from the cafeteria, they found Eve near the lockers at the turn in Hall B.
She had her back to them, switching books. She heard their footsteps and turned.
The look that crossed with Kai's lasted less than two seconds.
No visible discomfort. No obvious tension. Just two pairs of eyes that recognized, processed, and moved on with the clinical efficiency of people who had closed a file and archived it under not relevant.
Kai looked away first—or maybe Eve did.
Hard to tell.
Eve looked away too fast.
"Eve." Mark nodded at her as he stopped. He noticed something strange in the dynamic between the two of them. "What are you—"
"As we were saying, you've got an immediate problem to deal with. What are you going to do?" Kai cut in, looking at Mark with one eyebrow raised.
Mark frowned.
Then he got it.
He stared at the ceiling for two seconds, lips moving faintly like he was rehearsing something and discarding it in the same breath.
"Right." He looked at Kai. "How exactly am I supposed to explain to Amber that I'm going to be gone for two weeks because I'm going to Mars?"
Kai considered that with the seriousness of a lawyer evaluating a terrible case.
"You're gonna need a very good excuse this time."
Eve leaned against the locker, books pressed to her chest.
"Yeah." The words came out heavier than she meant them to. "Being a super and dating normal people is a headache."
Mark looked at her.
Kai spoke right after, his tone openly mocking.
"But don't worry. Dating super people is too."
Mark turned toward Kai. There was definitely something strange going on. It wasn't what they said—it was the way they said it.
But maybe it was because of Rex and Kiana, respectively.
He opened his mouth to ask.
Didn't.
Because Amber appeared around the corner.
She saw Mark first, and the smile reached her before her steps did. She crossed the hallway, curled her fingers into the collar of his shirt, and pulled him into a quick kiss that wasn't quite as quick as it should've been in the middle of school.
"Hey." She pulled back a few inches, looking at him. Then she turned. "Eve."
"Amber." Eve gave her half a smile that actually reached her eyes in a way Eve's half smiles usually didn't.
Amber hesitated for a fraction of a second before turning to the other side.
"Kai."
The tone carried a question she wasn't asking out loud. A temperature check. Still mad?
Kai looked at her with the same neutral expression he always wore.
"Amber."
She relaxed almost imperceptibly.
What followed was ten minutes of Mark in Amber mode—that specific state where the world around him went slightly out of focus and any nearby conversation stopped being processed in real time.
The end-of-lunch bell was getting close when Amber checked her phone with a no way expression and looked back up at Mark.
"I need to grab my stuff from Ms. Bryce's room before class." She rose onto her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. "I'll talk to you later."
Then she left.
Mark looked at the three people left in the hallway.
Eve.
Kai.
And the problem he had been putting off.
"Look." He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think I can keep lying to her anymore." He paused. "I want to tell her who I am."
Kai slowly turned his head toward Mark with the expression of someone who had just heard something predictable.
"Yeah." He picked up his backpack from the floor. "'I need to clean my room' isn't gonna cut it." A beat of perfect timing. "Even if I wish you'd do that more often."
Eve rolled her eyes at Kai with the speed of a conditioned reflex.
"Don't listen to him."
She turned to Mark, and her tone changed—the lightness drained out, the weight came in, slow as the tide.
"Mark." Eve chose her words like someone choosing where to step on unstable ground. "You don't take that back after you tell her. This isn't just a secret you share—it changes her life. The way she sleeps. The way she looks at the street. The way she thinks before going anywhere with you." She paused. "You only do that if you're absolutely sure this is serious. Absolutely."
Mark fell silent, processing it.
"Mark."
It was Kai.
His tone carried no advice. No emotional weight.
Just that straight-line objectivity of his that sometimes cut deeper than anything emotional ever could.
"I can handle things on my own. I'll take care of Mars. Decide whatever you think is best and enjoy it."
Mark looked at him.
And for some reason—maybe because of the dry tone, maybe because of the lack of drama, maybe because it was exactly the Kai he knew, the opposite of everything that had been jammed between them since yesterday—that was enough to completely loosen something inside him.
Kai grabbed his backpack with both hands and turned on his heel.
"I'm going to class."
And he left.
Eve looked down the hallway where he had disappeared. Then she looked at the floor for a second.
Mark didn't notice.
Or maybe he did and just didn't know what he was seeing.
The hallway kept emptying while the two of them remained there.
"And you?" Mark turned to Eve. "What do you think I should do?"
Eve stayed silent for a moment.
Not the silence of someone thinking about an answer—the silence of someone thinking about something else entirely and having to come back.
"I don't know." She leaned against the locker, hugging the books closer to her chest. "Lately I don't even know if I want to keep being a hero."
Mark frowned slightly.
"What else would you be?"
She gave a small shrug—not defensive, just honest.
"I've been thinking about college. Other things. Normal things." The smile that came with it was small and tired. "Feels weird even saying it out loud."
Mark looked at her.
Not with the eyes of a hero assessing an ally.
Not with the eyes of a classmate.
Just Mark, looking at someone who was clearly carrying more than she was showing, not knowing exactly what had happened but knowing something had.
"Eve." He waited until she looked at him. "If you need anything. Or if you just want to talk. You can talk to me, okay?"
She looked at him for a second, her expression softening.
Mark gave her a crooked smile.
"I mean—after I get back from Mars."
The laugh escaped her before she could stop it. Genuine, brief, the kind that shows up when you aren't trying to smile.
"Thanks, Mark."
The hallway was empty now. Somewhere behind them, a classroom door shut with the final sound of lunch being over.
They went to class.
Later that day — Low Earth Orbit — 4:02 PM
Earth became small very quickly.
Kai was trailing the ship from three hundred meters away, the Infinity suit adapted with an oxygen tank strapped to his back and the helmet sealed shut. Below them, the planet's blue curve stretched out in absurd silence—no wind, no drag, nothing except the low hum of his own breathing system.
Mark appeared at his side in two seconds, matching the ship's speed.
They exchanged a quick look through their visors.
"So you came..." Kai's voice came through clearly over the helmet comm channel. "Did you decide to tell her?"
Mark shook his head inside the helmet.
"No. I just told her I was going to volunteer to help some people and that I'd be gone for two weeks."
Kai frowned. Even through the helmet and mask, the expression came through.
"And she believed that?"
Mark shrugged—the motion looked slightly exaggerated in the suit.
"Seems like it." A pause. "Helped that I gave her a present before I left. That old chest that was sitting in the closet."
There was one second of silence over the channel.
Then Kai laughed—short and dry.
"You gave her that old thing as a present?"
"It was a vintage chest—"
"It was an old thing."
The channel crackled.
"Boys." Cecil's voice came in with the particular irony of a man interrupting conversations more important than this one. "Good to know you're enjoying yourselves."
Both of them straightened slightly in the vacuum.
"Your mission is to escort this expedition safely to its destination." His tone shifted back into direct operational mode. "Stay out of the crew's field of vision. Invisible. Unless intervention becomes necessary—and when I say necessary, I mean literal, not open to interpretation."
"Understood," both of them answered together.
Kai glanced at Mark, "Are we actually getting paid this time, or am I working for free again?"
A pause that lasted exactly long enough to be intentional.
"You will be paid for the work."
Both of them gave small, victorious smiles.
"Moving on." Cecil didn't leave room for celebration. "The main reason you two are on this specific mission is not the ship. It's what's waiting at the destination."
"What's on Mars?" Mark asked.
"Martians," Cecil answered plainly.
Mark went quiet for a second.
"There are Martians?!"
"And where did you think the Guardians' Martian Man came from? Jupiter?" Cecil didn't wait for an answer. "We don't know much about them. We know they live beneath the surface. They're reserved—we never had direct contact, only inferences based on what Martian Man himself revealed during his time with the Guardians. You shouldn't have any trouble, but keep your eyes open. Humanity is counting on you."
Mark processed that in silence for a few seconds while the ship ahead of them slowed slightly for its docking maneuver.
Far ahead, emerging from the darkness like a structure that had no business existing so quietly, was the larger vessel—a long cylinder of connected modules, position lights blinking at slow intervals. The smaller ship they were escorting approached with perfect precision, locking into the docking sleeve with a dull shudder that they felt more through the vibration in the air system than through sound.
After that—silence.
Space.
Earth was already just another bright object behind them.
The two of them looked ahead, where Mars waited sixty million kilometers away.
"Martians," Kai murmured.
It didn't sound like surprise.
It sounded like someone updating a mental list that had already gotten far too long.
The two of them adjusted position beside the ship and kept going.
GDA — Operations Room — 4:03 PM
The monitoring screens were still displaying the ship's telemetry when Donald approached the central station, arms crossed, his gaze moving between the data and Cecil's profile standing in front of the main panel.
"You know," Donald said, his tone carrying that specific brand of irony only available to someone who had worked with an impossible man for long enough to stop pretending otherwise, "it looks like payment is the key to getting the twins to work with us."
Cecil didn't turn.
"Yeah." His eyes stayed on the screens. "It'd be even better if I could pay to find out what powers Infinity is hiding."
Donald was quiet for a moment.
"That why you sent him into space? To see if he uses something out there?"
Cecil turned his head just enough to look at Donald out of the corner of his eye.
"Maybe."
He said it with the same tone he would have used to comment on the weather. Then he went back to the screens.
Donald knew Cecil well enough to understand that maybe meant yes, and I'm already three steps ahead of that.
"The pyro kid, Scott—he's still holding out. Still refuses to cooperate with the debrief."
"He's been in custody for months, he's back to his usual defiant self now, but was out cold for a full day, and spent the next two jumping at shadows, paranoid as hell. His head was a mess back then," Cecil said, his attention returning to the screens.
Donald leaned against the console. "The only thing on the record is what he told the transport team. That he looked into Gray's eyes and saw it."
"An infinite, empty abyss," Cecil finished adjusting his tie, the blue light of the monitors reflecting in his cold gaze.
"Sir."
Both of them turned.
The analyst stood two meters away, tablet in hand, carrying that exact posture of someone who had interrupted a conversation she definitely should not have interrupted but had no choice.
"Sorry to interrupt." She didn't sound especially sorry—too professional for that. "But the field reports just came in." She lifted the tablet slightly. "Erickson made it out alive."
Cecil and Donald looked at each other.
"Erickson attacked Brit," Cecil said. Not as an explanation—as a correction to an incorrect premise the universe had just presented.
"Yes, sir. And based on what the analysis showed..." She scrolled through a few sets of data on the tablet and lifted it for them to see. "...he was using superior technology. Not just superior to conventional equipment." She paused. "Superior to the GDA's own advanced tech."
Cecil frowned. His eyes fixed on the report.
"Where did it come from?"
The analyst switched to the next screen.
"The technological signature is consistent with the androids that appeared some time ago. The construction patterns are identical. Same origin."
The silence that settled over the room had weight.
Donald searched Cecil's face. Cecil remained fixed on the screen. The gears behind his eyes turned in silence, cataloging, connecting, filing things away somewhere Donald would probably never get access to.
The analyst looked between them, read the room, and then—because she was an analyst and curiosity was part of the job—asked carefully,
"I know he's a soldier, but what's so special about Brit?"
Donald uncrossed his arms.
"Brit's an old man." He said it without irony—it was a functional description. "White hair, military, looks like he walked straight off a 1950s recruitment poster and never really aged properly." He paused, choosing the wording. "Invulnerable. Completely. He can use one hundred percent of his musculature with no limitation because his body never pays the price for it. Reflexes above human standard, endurance way outside the norm, and decades of real training underneath all of that." Donald looked at the screen for a second. "He's not the kind of person you attack and walk away from."
Cecil finished the thought without taking his eyes off the panel.
"Brit is the product of the American super-soldier program." His tone was that of a technical assessment, stripped clean of emotion. "Efficient. Durable... and a considerably inferior version of what Russia produced with Atlas."
He didn't elaborate on Atlas.
He didn't need to.
The analyst processed that with the expression of someone updating several internal files at once.
Cecil finally turned fully toward the central panel.
"So someone with access to the android technology equipped Erickson well enough to go up against Brit and walk away alive." He spoke slowly, not to them—to himself, organizing the thought out loud. "And so far, we still don't know where the androids came from."
He fell silent for a moment.
"Keep analyzing. I want origin, acquisition route, and every point of contact Erickson has had in the last six weeks." He looked at the analyst. "Everything. And I want Robot involved too—send the full file to him. Let's see how long it takes him to get the new Guardians ready to handle this."
She nodded and left.
Donald stayed where he was, watching Cecil from the side.
Cecil turned his attention back to the telemetry screens, where the ship's data kept updating in real time—coordinates, speed, growing distance from Earth's orbit.
"Lately, the schedule's been full," Cecil said.
And that was all.
Interlude — Part 1: Survivor
Somewhere else — underground base — 4:35 PM
The base smelled like burnt metal and ozone.
Erickson stood in the center of the room while two assistants worked the side latches on the suit, removing entire sections of twisted robotic armor—some melted along the edges, others simply broken in half like eggshells. What remained of the protection system was no longer recognizable as technology.
It looked like scrap.
"Damn it!" He tore the right forearm piece off the armor before the assistants could reach it, throwing it to the floor with a metallic crash that echoed through the room. "This was supposed to be simple!"
More plates fell away.
"Old bastard!"
The chest piece came off last—a whole block of composite alloy that had taken the main impact, crushed inward in a way that documented exactly how much force Brit had used. One of the assistants needed a pry bar to get it loose.
Erickson stepped out of the suit.
For a second, he just stood there breathing, the muscles of his torso marked with bruises already developing—purple and yellow, the color palette of someone who survived by technical margin, not by merit. He ran a hand over his face and crossed the open floor of the base toward the workbench in the back.
The boy was there.
He looked about eighteen, glasses slightly crooked on his face, hair going in directions that clearly hadn't received any instruction that morning. He sat between piles of components, circuit boards, exposed wiring, and metallic structures in different stages of assembly—all arranged according to a logic that probably only made sense to him.
Erickson stopped on the other side of the bench, his eyes moving over the inventory of destruction he had brought back with him.
"How long until a new unit is ready?" Erickson pressed his teeth together for a second. "An old tailor managed to make high-tech armor." He tossed a broken armor fragment onto the bench. "How come yours breaks so easily?"
The boy didn't look up right away. He just reached out and placed his hand flat against the workbench.
The components began to move.
They weren't thrown. They weren't pushed.
They rearranged themselves.
Circuits slid on their own. Metal pieces rotated and clicked into others with the soft sound of something obeying. The boy's hand remained perfectly still while the material around it responded as though it were being reminded where it belonged.
Only then did he look up at Erickson.
"I already have another one almost ready." His voice had that particular calm of someone who rarely thought raising it was worth the effort. "Just a few more adjustments for the next batch of androids." He looked back down at the components. "And they'll be better than Black Samson's suit."
Erickson stared at him for a moment. Then he turned and walked toward the opposite wall, arms crossed over his bruised chest.
"Good." He didn't look back. "Until the new units are ready, you can forget about going to the arcade."
The boy lifted his chin slightly.
"From now on," Erickson continued, eyes sweeping over the wall of monitors, "I'm probably going to be hunted."
Interlude — Part 2: Perfect Soldier
Two months earlier — Ukok Plateau, Altai Republic — Russia — 10:35 PM (UTC+7)
The wind sliced sideways down from the mountains, carrying ice and the smell of diesel from the base generators. Andrey stood at the entrance to the checkpoint, hands in his coat pockets, the steam of his breath vanishing quickly in the dry air.
The soldier in the guard post looked down at him, one hand resting on the metal railing.
Atlas, or rather, Andrey pulled a photograph from his pocket and held it out.
"I'm looking for this woman."
The soldier looked at the photo. Then he looked back at Andrey with the expression of someone dealing with the worst possible kind of problem at the worst possible hour.
"You need to leave." The Russian came out flat, with no room for negotiation. "This is not a place for you."
Andrey didn't lower the hand holding the photo.
Behind the first soldier, a second one stepped closer through the guard post's glass corridor, glancing sideways. The man's eyes dropped to the photo for a second.
Something crossed his face.
Contempt, quick and involuntary.
"What does this boy want with Colonel Kasatkina?"
Andrey's eyes widened.
The name landed on him like a stone dropped into still water.
He leaned forward slightly, fingers tightening carefully around the photo.
"Kasatkina." The word came out slowly, like he was testing the weight of something he had carried his whole life without knowing its name. His eyes lifted to the second soldier. "That's her name?" He took a step forward. "Where is she?"
The first soldier, already impatient, drew his rifle and shoved it against Andrey's chest.
"That's enough questions. Turn around, now, or I'll put a hole in you."
Andrey looked down at the weapon with a dangerous kind of boredom.
Then he looked at the man.
The grinding of his teeth was audible.
In a blur too fast for the human eye to follow, he grabbed the rifle. Instead of pulling it away, he forced it upward, under the soldier's chin.
CRACK.
The sound of the skull splitting was followed by the thunder of automatic fire—the dying soldier spasmed on the trigger, sending a burst of bullets into the ceiling of the guard post. Blood and brain matter splattered across the glass, painting the map of Russia in viscous red.
The second soldier went for his weapon.
His hand made it to the holster.
Andrey was already in front of him, fingers closing around the man's throat, lifting him off the ground with the mechanical ease of someone picking up a sheet of paper.
The base alarm began to scream, a shrill siren competing with the howl of the wind.
Andrey didn't turn.
His eyes stayed on the suspended soldier, the man's legs kicking helplessly in the air.
"Kasatkina what?"
The soldier tried to speak. The pressure on his throat left little room.
"Natasha—" he choked, "—Kasatkina Sokolova."
Andrey let go.
The man hit the floor coughing, and Andrey started walking down the corridor toward the sound of the alarm.
The base became a slaughterhouse within minutes.
The first soldiers who came running across the main yard with assault rifles didn't immediately understand what they were seeing—a young man walking toward them through the snow without gear, without armor, with nothing but a coat.
They opened fire.
The bullets ricocheted.
Andrey kept walking.
The first soldier who got close enough to use his rifle like a club had it folded in half by Andrey's hand, then got hurled sideways with enough force to rip the iron gate off its hinges when he hit it. The second came from behind—Andrey turned, grabbed him by the vest, and slammed him into the concrete bunker wall over and over until the concrete gave way.
Then his eyes lit.
Red at first, faint as embers.
Then bright as welding flame.
The beam cut horizontally through a row of parked military vehicles. The metal screamed before it split—two jeeps, a transport truck, the side of an APC—all in two seconds, the edges of the cuts glowing and melting with that specific smell of burned iron.
The soldiers coming out of the east bunker saw the wreckage of the vehicles and fell back. The ones leaving the north bunker tried to flank him and found Andrey already there, his fists moving in trajectories that had no interest in hurting.
Only in ending.
It wasn't combat.
It was meteorology.
Something that happened to people.
Andrey crossed the main yard with half the base burning around him, every step leaving another streak of irreversible destruction. The central bunker had a reinforced steel door with three locks and a wall of reinforced concrete outside it.
He picked up the tank.
It was a T-72 parked forty meters behind him, and he lifted it by the barrel with both hands, the metal groaning under the absurd distribution of weight, then hurled it into the bunker wall.
The wall came down.
Andrey walked through the rubble, the twisted tank still smoking behind him, distant gunfire falling around him like hail that had arrived too late. He held the bent chassis of the tank in front of his body like an improvised shield, bullets hammering against the metal without going anywhere.
Inside the central bunker, twelve soldiers waited behind a steel wall.
Andrey stopped.
His eyes burned deep red, the heat of the beam already warming the air around his face. He tilted his head slightly, aiming for the joint where the wall met the floor, where the steel had been welded into the concrete.
The gunfire stopped.
Footsteps.
A woman stepped into the gap beside the steel wall, walking slowly with her hands raised, carrying herself like someone unafraid of what she was seeing. She couldn't have been much older than forty, dark-blonde hair, light eyes, a uniform with colonel's insignia fixed to the shoulders.
She looked at him without stepping back.
"Easy." Her voice was low, controlled—not the kind of control that comes from fear, the kind that comes from choosing every word before letting it out. "What do you want from me?"
The red glow in Andrey's eyes didn't fade.
His jaw worked for a second.
"Hi, Mom."
A few minutes later...
They were inside one of the military tents set up there.
The air smelled like kerosene and wet cardboard. The chaos suited the conversation that had already been going on for several minutes.
Andrey stood near the center, arms crossed, his eyes still carrying the residue of red that took time to fade after he pushed them that far. Natasha stood on the other side of the folding table, both hands resting lightly on its surface—not defensive, not submissive.
Calculated.
"You have no idea what hell I had to go through." The words came first, with no warning. Andrey uncrossed one arm and dragged a hand harshly through his hair. "Day after day trying to pierce my skin. Tests. I still remember the smell of antiseptic every morning. I remember diamond drills snapping against my skin because normal needles didn't even tickle. They beat me until I blacked out just to measure my recovery time and how much I could take. Why didn't you ever come for me?"
Natasha lowered her eyes for a second.
Only one second.
Measured.
"I didn't know you were alive." The voice came with the exact right crack in it. "They told me you had died. That you hadn't survived the day you were born."
Andrey opened his mouth, x-ray vision active, super-hearing searching for any sign of a lie.
Any heartbeat out of place in that woman.
She continued without flinching.
"When I finally got some indication that you might still be alive..." Her eyes lifted to him. "...I went to the lab. You weren't there anymore."
Andrey stared at her.
"Do you know how they kept me under control?" His tone changed—not louder, but turning inward. "They kept saying you would come for me. If I behaved. If I cooperated." His teeth clenched. "Until the day I walked out of that hellhole by myself."
Natasha's eyes became wet by exactly the right amount.
"I'm sorry." She still didn't move closer. She let the words settle first. "If I had known..." Her voice broke by a millimeter. "It's all that bastard's fault. He's the one who hid you from me. He's the one who lied."
Andrey straightened.
The question came out before he had fully decided to ask it.
"Who is he?"
"Anton Stanislavovich Volkov." Natasha spoke the name with the precision of someone who had rehearsed saying it in anger. "The man currently in command of the main Russian base."
Andrey looked at her for a second that needed no elaboration.
"Then he's going to pay."
Natasha moved—quick, fluid, wrapping her arms around his torso before he could pull away. The embrace came with exact precision—arms in the right place, pressure in the right place, the kind that felt practiced by how real it seemed. Andrey went rigid for one second inside it.
"No." Her voice came muffled against his shoulder. "We just found each other." She pulled back enough to look up at him, one hand on his face. "He has technology you haven't seen yet. We can't risk your life now."
Andrey stepped back.
Gently, but he stepped back.
"I'll handle it." His eyes held no doubt—only that specific kind of certainty that grows in laboratories, years of pain distilled into conviction. "You haven't even seen half of what I can do."
Natasha looked at him.
And smiled.
Present day — September 30th, 2015 — Novosibirsk, Siberia — Russia — 4:35 AM (UTC+7)
The steel door was fifteen centimeters thick and sealed by three electromagnetic locking systems.
Andrey stopped in front of it, tilted his head slightly, and his eyes lit up.
The beam entered through the upper seam and ran down both sides in one continuous motion, the metal melting at the cut with the orange glow of something that had no business being that hot. The door fell inward in two pieces.
He stepped inside.
The thirteen soldiers in the room responded exactly as trained—positions, cover, coordinated fire.
The bullets arrived first.
Then Andrey did.
Five men went down through brute force—two into the wall, one through the ceiling, two with enough impact to end any argument about staying on their feet. The other eight understood what the red in his eyes meant a fraction of a second before the beams came out.
The silence that followed smelled like metal and burnt flesh.
Andrey stood in the center of the room, breathing steady, looking at the only man still standing.
Anton Volkov.
Sixty years old, immaculate uniform even at four in the morning, the kind of discipline that came from decades of accumulated power. He looked at Andrey with the face of someone calculating every possible exit and finding none.
The scene was grotesque. The soldiers looked like puzzle pieces, divided into parts inside a room painted red.
Footsteps behind him.
Natasha walked in with her hands lowered, her voice completely flat.
"It's been a long time, Anton."
Volkov's composure lasted exactly three seconds.
"Natasha! You treacherous bitch!" Volkov shouted, rage sharpening his voice into a shrill bark. "You're behind this! You'll pay! You'll—"
He pointed a finger at her, a gesture of authority he no longer possessed.
The red beam came without hesitation.
"AHHHHHHH!"
Volkov's scream filled the room, and to Andrey it sounded like music.
Volkov's hand dropped to the floor.
Natasha didn't look at the hand.
She looked at Andrey, tilted her head slightly toward the door, and walked back into the corridor.
Andrey grabbed Volkov by the collar with one hand and dragged him out while the man writhed, clutching what remained of his arm.
Outside, the soldiers who were left were already in position. Dozens of men stared at Andrey holding their commander by the collar like a document waiting to be signed.
Natasha stepped forward.
The speech was short. Direct. Delivered with the authority of someone not making a request, but announcing a fact. Every word in its place. Every pause filled by the silence of people who had seen what had happened to the steel door and done the math on their own.
When she finished, no one moved in the wrong direction.
Natasha stepped away slightly, one hand rising to her ear.
"Natasha." The communicator voice came through low, with the cadence of someone used to being obeyed. "Good work." One second. "Now that we have the base—your next target is a man named Gero Mikhail. He's in the United States, in some laboratory that used to belong to Russell Baskin Borisov. We need him."
The communicator clicked off.
Natasha stood still for a moment, eyes on the dark Novosibirsk horizon.
"Damn Russell." Her voice came out low, carrying the weight of something personal that had never been fully processed. "That disgusting worm keeps causing trouble even after he's dead."
"You knew Russell?" Andrey asked, frowning.
She turned.
Andrey was standing two meters away, the red residue still fading slowly from his eyes, his expression set in that usual way—watching, filing things away.
Natasha held his gaze for a second before answering.
"I had the misfortune of knowing him years ago." She turned more fully toward him, and the smile that followed was genuine in the rare way her smiles actually were—or at least seemed to be. "Our next mission is in the U.S."
Andrey didn't blink.
"I know. I heard."
Natasha let out a laugh—short, real, the kind that slips out when something truly catches you off guard.
"You're incredible, boy."
Andrey looked at her, proud of himself.
His expression was that of someone already longing for the next mission.