Chapter 5: In lieu of spiteful adoration the city never sleeps - Part 3

Michael drew a single breath, cold and metallic, and let the alarms fade into the background hiss of his own bloodstream. He closed his eyes, extending his hand toward Olivia until his fingertips brushed the slope of her shoulder. The contact was soft—almost polite—yet it carried the electrified promise of detonation.

With the slightest pressure he anchored himself and opened the floodgate.

Mana surged, molten and impatient, racing from the wellspring in his chest down the branching rivers of his veins. It burned, a slow, deliberate acid that dissolved the narrow borders between blood and spirit, cell and idea. By the time it reached his wrist the current felt alive, snarling to escape. He funneled it into his palm—then let it pour into Olivia.

She inhaled sharply, eyes widening though she never flinched. Inside her rib cage, the foreign energy spiraled like a galaxy forming in fast forward. Michael could feel it: the swirl, the sudden gravitational pull as his power colonized her circuits. Mana flooded her heart, whirled once, then pulsed outward, tracing her capillaries until every inch of flesh answered to his will.

For an instant their nervous systems overlapped—two radios accidentally tuned to the same frequency. Michael sensed her heartbeat stutter, then re sync with his own. Olivia, for her part, felt the subtler terror: her native mana—cool, quicksilver, playful—was seized, repurposed, marched into formation like soldiers pressed into foreign service. It should have hurt more; instead, the sensation was eerie, like finding someone else’s bones beneath her skin.

“Curse of sight,” Michael whispered.

The words were soft, yet the spell detonated inwardly. Unlike his familiar Curse of Blindness, which gnawed at optic nerves until the world went dim, this incantation did the opposite: it built an aperture, a bridge—no, a parasite—between their visual cortices. His mana scoured Olivia’s nerves for a target, found only her own racing thoughts, then settled inside like a lens snapping into place.

The effect arrived first as pressure at the back of his skull—then as sudden vision. Not his.

He saw the Chill Room again, but from a skewed height, Olivia’s height: the chalk stained boards, the toppled desk, the red lit dust swirling where Orland had leapt through the window. He saw his own body—a marionette convulsed by stolen power—hand still resting on Olivia’s shoulder, veins around the wrist raised like molten wire. Two perspectives flickered back and forth, barely meshing, as if reality were shuffling frames of mismatched film.

Heat bloomed at the points of contact. Michael’s fingers radiated smoldering pain where they kissed Olivia’s skin, the nerves there beginning to scream. He could feel each capillary combust as runaway mana traced glowing fissures beneath his flesh. Thin blue tributaries snaked under his skin toward the elbow, burning bright as phosphor before disappearing into sleeves damp with sweat.

Suddenly, the mana swirled back inside Olivia, returning into Michael’s body, casting the curse on him as if it was her own magic. Michael’s vision faded out and then, momentarily he could feel it, the pressure of multiple perspectives colliding all at once, all at the same time.

“So that’s how you see things,” Micheal murmured as he focused on Olivia’s vision.

He forced himself to focus. Through Olivia’s vantage he aimed west, letting her luminous motes guide his borrowed sight. Corridors streaked by—a surreal glide through walls, past panicked students and overturned benches. Now the west wing staircase: flicker of gun barrels, the sharp glint off suppressors, the tense coil of contractors who believed they were unseen.

Michael watched as if playing a furtive videogame inside her skull. A count formed on his tongue: one, two, three… six contractors, just as Olivia had said. Their auras—a rotten aftertaste of greed and borrowed courage—shivered at the edges of perceivable color. Riflemen hunched behind improvised sandbags, boots crunching on fallen plaster. Above, on the second floor landing, the tall outline of Hex paced like a wolf leashed to a tiny radius. In Olivia’s senses he radiated saturation: colors grew sickly where he stood, as though the air itself had spoiled.

The dual vision threatened to split Michael’s sanity down the seam. His own eyes, behind sealed lids, saw nothing but swirling darkness; Olivia’s eyes delivered hyper vivid panoramas, too wide, too bright, each detail soaked in nightmare contrast. Meaning threatened to drown in the flood. He clenched Jacques knife point focus, repeating silent metrics: entry distance, shield radius, kill zone.

Heat gathered at Michael’s fingertips where they pressed Olivia’s shirt. Each pulse made small sparks crawl across his thumbnail. Blood vessels in the back of his hand flared, threatening to rupture. Somewhere far away—or was it in this very room?—a fresh klaxon wailed: perimeter breach. Time was becoming a stack of misfired film frames, and he needed to stitch it into a single reel.

Olivia’s lips parted. She mouthed, “You good?” He felt it through their overlap like pressure against an eardrum. He answered by squeezing her shoulder—a “yes” that trembled with suppressed agony.

Mana drained faster now, turning his limbs to sandbags. He risked a glance—his own eyelids fluttered open involuntarily—and saw the world overlay: Chill Room and west wing merging like two radio stations bleeding together. Desks floated through barricades; Kane’s silhouette overlapped his own reflection in a cracked pane. It was beautiful in the way hospital fluorescents glint off surgical steel—cold, certain, violently clean.

“Let’s go see the courtyard,” Michael groaned, trying to focus.

He lurched out of the Chill Room like a punch drunk fighter leaving the ring—vision ghosting between his own and the phantom feed still tethered to Olivia’s magic. Corridors flashed by in ragged jump cuts: graffiti scarred walls, students pressed flat to lockers, mouths moving in silent panic as red strobes painted their faces the shade of coagulating blood. Every third heartbeat the world hiccupped—Michael’s sight sputtering between first person and Olivia’s remote eyes—but he kept stumbling forward, one hand grazing stone to stay upright.

Down the final stairwell a rush of winter air met him: metallic, sharp, threaded with exhaust and fear sweat. The courtyard yawned wide, its paving stones drowned in alarm light. There—just beyond the fountain’s frozen spray—hundreds of onlookers had formed a ragged half moon, each drawn by spectacle yet held back by a whisper of dread. Voices overlapped in a low, devotional murmur: what happened? who’s fighting? Michael’s stomach twisted—crowds always felt like open graves waiting to be filled.

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Among them he spotted Alex—jaw set, note clutched in a white knuckled fist—Jonathan at his flank, and Hubert Heck in shorts and flip flops, incongruously calm beneath swirling snow. The three stood half a pace ahead of the throng, as though the boundary between witness and participant meant nothing to Mercers or the odd contractor they’d conscripted.

Far across the quadrangle, Orland emerged from shadow, boots hammering frozen turf. He didn’t slow as he reached Alex; just thrust the folded scrap into his hand, whispered something into his ear and veered sideways, sprinting toward the west wing gates with the single minded grace of a barreling locomotive. Frost cracked under each footfall; the air around him shimmered faintly, hinting at the nascent shield spell gathering along his skin.

Michael felt Olivia’s borrowed sight jerk upward—motes clustering near the chapel roofline to spy the same scene from above. Two angles now: one from his own sweat blurred eyes, one from the lofty vantage of invisible fireflies. The dual feed ignited his pulse, frantic, exhilarated.

Orland hit the wrought iron gates and simply kept going, kinetic shield blooming into a pale dome that boiled frost into steam. Metal hinges shrieked; the bars gave way with a clang that rang off every stone wall like a cathedral bell. Inside, the west wing foyer stretched dim and hostile—makeshift barricades, overturned benches, sandbags bleeding filler onto marble. Rifles snapped up in unison.

The armed men opened fire. Gunfire flew forth, sparks jackknifing from the kinetic barrier as rounds ricocheted into columns. In Michael’s left hand vision—Olivia’s angle—the muzzle flashes stitched bright flowers across the gloom. In his right eye, Orland weaved through tracer streaks, shield rippling like oil on water.

In the back line a figure raised a staff, rune marks flaring molten orange. A fireball coalesced—roiling, hungry—and shrieked across the foyer.

In a rush Orland used his magic, activating a shield that blocked the oncoming attack. Flames burst against the dome, scattering ember sparks across shattered tile. Heat washed outward, driving dust in a rolling wave; Michael felt its echo in his chest, a sympathetic burn.

Immediately, Michael’s phone rang. He blindly picked it out of his pocket and answered.

“I’m here,” Orland said, voice thinned by distance and the percussion of bullets raining overhead.

Through Olivia’s motes Michael saw contractors reposition—three peeling off to flank the entrance, two hauling crates toward an interior stairwell. One rifleman slapped a fresh magazine, jaw set in professional rhythm. On a higher landing stood Hex, more statue than man, gaze fixed on Orland with the languid cruelty of a predator confident the kill is inevitable.

Orland ducked behind a stone baluster, thumb flicking speaker off. “Hold position,” he hissed into the phone. “Force them to burn ammo. When you see lights cut—push left column, draw them deeper.”

“Copy,” Orland grunted, another concussive boom rattling the mic. Sparks danced through the audio, half static, half ricochet.

Michael lowered the phone; sweat cooled to ice across his nape. Nearby, the crowd had begun to realize they were only spectators until stray rounds found a ricochet path. Alex barked orders, corralling students back; Hubert’s arm shot high, a lazy gesture that nevertheless sent two gawkers stumbling out of harm’s radius, mesmerized by his contractor aura. Jonathan scanned windows, sword half drawn, tension vibrating along the blade.

Snow kept falling—tiny grains blinking crimson in alarm light—quietly mocking the chaos. Michael inhaled the metallic chill, felt his chest hitch. He lifted his free hand; a red gem emerged in his palm and thrummed, a crimson pulse answering the courtyard beacons. Somewhere deep inside, curse threads strained, hungry to twist the battlefield to his design. Not yet, he told them. Wait for the board to settle.

An alien shimmer rippled across Michael’s borrowed vision—an after image that didn’t belong to either set of eyes. At first it was only static: flecks of color blooming at the edges of Olivia’s sight like heat spots on over exposed film. Then the static pulled itself into shape, resolving into a lone figure trudging up the main hallway that fed the Chill Room.

No footfalls. No panting breath. Just a steady, deliberate glide, as if gravity itself parted to let him pass.

A long black coat—dull as charcoal at the hem, polished to a midnight glaze across the shoulders—billowed around him in slow motion, its fabric too heavy for normal cloth. Underneath, interlocking plates of pale gunmetal wrapped his torso and collarbones, catching the strobing red alarm light in thin, lethal lines. White hair, wild and matted, spilled over his brow like a storm front, obscuring every feature above the nose. Below it, a coarse, salt and pepper beard sprouted along a square jaw.

He had only one arm. The opposite sleeve hung empty, flapping limp against the coat’s flank with each step, the cuff jangling with what looked like shattered shackles. Between each pulse of emergency light, the dangling sleeve seemed to writhe of its own accord, as though some phantom limb still tried to answer old commands.

Michael’s own throat tightened. Even through Olivia’s augmented gaze, the newcomer radiated a hush that eclipsed the sirens. Lamps flickered out as he passed them; the marble tiles underfoot dulled, leeching color. It felt like watching a black hole stroll through a cathedral, bending sound and sense toward its core.

He reached the threshold of the Chill Room. Hinges sighed; the battered door wheezed open. Michael’s own body—still crouched by a courtyard baluster—stiffened as he felt the psychic aftershock of that simple entrance. The room he’d just abandoned was suddenly a mausoleum, cradling a presence that didn’t quite belong to life or to death.

Through Olivia’s motes he watched the scene unfold. The stranger stepped inside, boots crunching on discarded chalk, head turning slightly, as if tracing the perimeter for lingering ghosts of conversation. His single hand flexed, gauntlet plates glinting. Then—finally—he spoke, voice a low baritone ground in gravel:

“Who are you?” he asked.

The words weren’t shouted. They were offered like an epitaph, requiring no echo. Yet Michael felt them rattle the marrow of both sets of bones—his, and the echoing phantom of Olivia’s borrowed body.

A lighter voice answered—Professor Staton’s—hurrying in behind the metal clad figure, phone now forgotten, breath puffing in the cold draft.

“Don’t worry about him,” Professor Staton said. “This is the queen I told you about.”

Queen. The chessboard image flared again in Michael’s mind, but the piece before him felt less like a queen and more like the blade that decapitates the opposing king the instant he overreaches. A predator disguised in rank.

“So, what do we call him?” Michael wondered aloud, whispering half to himself, half to the phantom tether. The question trickled through the curse conduit, echoing softly into the room where the armored man stood.

“He doesn’t have a name,” the professor stated. “We usually call him our executioner.”

Executioner. That single label slid under Michael’s skin like ice water. He looked at his face, one of his eyes was missing, gauged out, leaving a disgusting scar that scattered in all directions of his face.

“Then how about I call him X,” Michael replied.