Chapter 21: Rebel Plans
The safehouse's main room had been transformed into a command center, maps and documents spread across salvaged tables like the entrails of Vought's empire laid bare for examination. Landon stood at the center of it all, his enhanced fire control casting dancing shadows across walls that had witnessed too many desperate conversations. The weight of leadership pressed against his shoulders—unwanted, unearned, but undeniably his.
Luke paced the perimeter like a caged predator, his own fire powers responding to the emotional currents in the room. Since the riots, Golden Boy had shed his carefully constructed public persona like a snake shedding skin, revealing something harder and more dangerous underneath. The change should have been reassuring—they needed fighters, not diplomats—but it felt like watching accelerated evolution in real time.
"Vought's moving faster than we anticipated," Luke said, stopping beside a schematic of the campus security grid. "Shetty's implementing new protocols, tightening control. If we don't act soon, we'll lose our window."
Marie looked up from the intelligence reports she'd been studying, blood clinging to her fingertips like liquid jewelry. Her powers had been restless lately, responding to stress in ways that left crimson traces on everything she touched. "What kind of protocols?"
"Mandatory power testing. Enhanced surveillance. Random dormitory searches." Luke's jaw tightened, flame flickering briefly across his knuckles. "They're building a prison and calling it education."
Andre leaned back in his chair, magnetism making the metal frame creak ominously. "So we burn it down. Literally, if necessary. Between your fire and Landon's... whatever the hell he's got cooking, we could level the place."
"And accomplish what?" Emma's voice carried the quiet authority she'd been developing since choosing sides. "Destroy the campus, scatter the students, give Vought exactly the excuse they need to crack down harder?"
The question hung in the air like smoke, acrid with the truth none of them wanted to acknowledge. Destruction was easy—Landon's growing arsenal of stolen abilities made violence feel like the simplest solution to complex problems. But revolution required something more sophisticated than firepower.
It required sacrifice that went beyond dying and coming back.
"We expose them," Landon said, the words emerging from some part of him that still believed in justice despite everything he'd done to compromise it. "The Woods, the experiments, the virus—all of it. Make it impossible for them to hide behind corporate doublespeak."
Luke's smile carried the sharp edges of suppressed fury. "And how exactly do we do that? Waltz into Shetty's office and demand a confession?"
"Something like that." Landon moved to the window, moonlight painting his face in shades of silver and shadow. The campus spread before them—beautiful, deadly, full of children being molded into weapons. "But first, we need allies. Real ones, not just the kids angry enough to throw rocks."
Marie joined him at the window, her presence warm and solid beside him. The blood scent that followed her everywhere had become as familiar as his own heartbeat, a reminder that they were all marked by violence in their own ways.
"The faculty won't help," she said quietly. "Too much to lose, too much invested in the system. And most of the students..." She shrugged, the gesture carrying years of disappointment. "They still believe the fairy tale."
"Then we make new believers." Landon turned from the window, meeting each of their gazes in turn. "We show them what's really happening here. Force them to choose between comfortable lies and uncomfortable truths."
Andre's laugh held no humor. "Brother, you're talking about starting a war."
"We're already at war." The words came out sharper than intended, edged with frustration that had been building for weeks. "The only question is whether we fight back or let them win by default."
Emma moved closer, her size-shifting powers allowing her to compress slightly, making herself smaller and more vulnerable in the way that always made Landon's chest tighten with protective instincts. "What if we get people hurt? What if we make things worse?"
The question struck at the heart of his growing crisis of conscience. Every power he'd stolen, every death he'd orchestrated, every line he'd crossed had been justified by the greater good—by the need to survive, to protect, to change a future that felt increasingly inevitable. But what if his intervention was just another form of violence? What if his rebellion caused more suffering than the system he was fighting against?
[SYSTEM: Plan set. Rebels rising. Don't screw it up.]
The system's commentary cut through his philosophical spiral like a blade, reminding him that hesitation was luxury they couldn't afford. Whatever doubts plagued him, whatever guilt accumulated with each passing day, the facts remained unchanged: Vought was a cancer, Godolkin was its symptom, and someone had to be willing to cut deep enough to excise both.
Even if the surgery killed the patient.
"We'll be careful," Landon said, the promise feeling hollow even as he made it. "But we can't let fear of consequences paralyze us. They're counting on our hesitation."
Marie stepped closer, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin, see the flecks of amber in her dark eyes. "I'm with you," she said, voice fierce with conviction. "Whatever it takes, however far we have to go. They turned us into weapons—time to see how sharp we really are."
[SYSTEM: Marie's your partner. Rebel duo locked.]
The system's approval felt like benediction and damnation rolled into one. Marie's loyalty was a gift he didn't deserve, trust he'd earned through deception and manipulation. But it was also strength he desperately needed, an anchor point in a world where his own moral compass spun wildly between magnetic poles of necessity and humanity.
"Bloody rebels," he murmured, letting affection leak through the words. "Has a nice ring to it."
Marie's smile could have melted steel. "I was thinking more along the lines of 'righteous fury,' but I'll take 'bloody' if that's what you're offering."
Andre stood, metal objects throughout the room humming in sympathy with his emotional state. "Count me in. My father spent his whole career playing by their rules, and look where it got him. Maybe it's time the Anderson family legacy included some actual justice."
Luke nodded once, the gesture carrying the weight of hard-won wisdom. "The Woods broke something in me," he said quietly. "But maybe that's what we need—people broken enough to see the cracks in their perfect system."
Emma was the last to speak, her voice soft but steady. "I used to think the worst thing about my powers was how they made me feel small. But maybe feeling small is what lets you see the spaces between the lies."
[SYSTEM: Romance soaring. Emma's yours.]
The system's observation felt both accurate and insufficient. Emma was his—or he was hers, the distinction increasingly irrelevant—but their connection transcended strategy or convenience. She saw him clearly, saw through the layers of manipulation and calculated vulnerability to something worth saving. The knowledge should have been terrifying.
Instead, it felt like hope.
"Then it's settled." Landon moved back to the center of the room, firelight dancing across his features. "We expose Vought's operations, rally the students, and force them to choose sides. It won't be clean, it won't be safe, and some of us might not survive it."
He paused, letting the weight of that truth settle over them like snow.
"But if we do nothing, we're all dead anyway. At least this way, we die fighting for something that matters."
The silence that followed felt pregnant with possibility and disaster in equal measure. They were children planning to topple giants, armed with stolen powers and desperate courage. The smart money said they'd be crushed before they could strike a meaningful blow.
But as Landon looked around at their faces—Marie's fierce determination, Andre's reluctant heroism, Luke's hard-won purpose, Emma's quiet courage—he realized that maybe being smart was overrated.
Sometimes, the only sane response to an insane world was a little strategic madness.
And if anyone understood madness as strategy, it was a kid who'd died his way to power one calculated murder at a time.
The rebellion was about to begin in earnest.
And for the first time since arriving at Godolkin, Landon felt like he might actually know what he was fighting for.
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
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