Chapter 5: In lieu of spiteful adoration the city never sleeps - Part 4

“X, huh?” the professor touched his chin, consumed in thought. “What do you think?” He turned toward the figure.

X did not answer. He simply watched the snowstorm of motes swirling beyond the broken window, the pale cascade reflecting in his half hidden eyes. In that single armed silhouette Michael sensed a pressure—ancient, tidal, coiled under armor plates that clung to his chest and shoulders like wrought iron epaulettes.

“Is that why I’m here?” he pointed forward with his index finger.

The motion was small, yet it made his coat hem ripple, like a black wave brushing the floorboards. Michael’s pulse beat an arrhythmic code against his ribs; Olivia’s distant vision flickered at the edge of his consciousness, but even that phantom feed could not eclipse the dread pooling in the room.

“Yes, how fast can you get there?” Michael wondered.

His own voice sounded foreign—thin, as though spoken through radio static. Somewhere beneath the tactician’s veneer lay an animal awareness: the sense that introducing this entity onto the board might shift every calculation sideways.

“I can’t,” X replied in monotone.

The statement hung there, stark as a tombstone inscription. Michael felt an ice trickle along his spine, an existential vertigo. He had expected indifference, not impossibility.

“Why not!?” Michael exclaimed.

He took half a step forward, frustration slicing through fear. A delicate crack, like splintering porcelain, spider webbed across the curse link inside his skull; his composure threatened to fracture.

“Don’t worry,” the professor stated. “You see, our friend here is sealed and if he were to enter combat in this state he would surely die.”

Staton’s calmness felt obscene—like someone describing rainfall over a mass grave. Yet there was genuine concern in the older man’s eyes, a scientist unwilling to squander his prize subject.

“I’ll reduce your limiters by 3 levels. This should be enough.” He explained further, bringing his handheld detector to life. Its glass readout scrolled incomprehensible sigils while a faint buzz thrummed through the professor’s fingers. He moved with practiced efficiency, as though following a ritual etched into muscle memory across countless mid night experiments.

Staton produced a device from a hidden holster: a metallic hilt circled by a guard shaped like a broken halo. It shimmered with dormant promise—something trapped, waiting to be named. He placed it in X’s remaining hand.

X pressed one of the buttons located on the handle. Immediately, a cerulean blade erupted, humming into existence—a broadsword wrought from slow lightning. Energy crackled along the edges, bending light, warping dust motes into spirals of sapphire spark.

“What is that?” Michael wondered.

The glow painted his face in pale aquatic tones, as if he peered from the bottom of a sunlit trench. The blade’s resonance vibrated in his teeth.

“That’s my newest invention, the energy blade!” the professor enthusiastically stated. “It can change shape, lengthen, shorten, and reform once broken.”

Each boast rose on a breathless cadence, but the words seemed to leak out, half eclipsed by the blade’s keening hum.

“I see,” Michael murmured. “I’ve never seen such a weapon before.”

He tried to picture the sword cutting through gunfire, carving air into ribbons. Another branch in the decision tree: weaponized light in the hands of a man sealed from his own potential.

The professor placed his detector flush against X’s breastplate. Tiny pneumatic clamps snapped shut, locking into conduits that pulsed beneath the armor.

“Lower limiter by 3 levels,” he said.

A tremor rolled outward. Invisible yet irresistible, it pressed against eardrums and squeezed lungs. Dust on the window ledge leapt upward only to settle again in uncanny stillness. The air itself tasted heavier—iodine on the tongue.

Immediately a powerful pressure erupted from X, covering the entire room in its dreadful invisible aura. It was different from Michael’s earlier flare of rage: this weight felt ancient, geological, like standing at the lip of a volcano whose heart had just stirred after centuries of sleep.

Michael paused as fear rose, contaminating his subconscious. A voice surfaced in the hush, the same dry timbre that haunted his dreams of the golden casino.

“Contractor,” a voice within his mind spoke out. “Be careful—there’s something unsettling about that man.”

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Even the demon’s warning quivered, as though it sensed a rival predator.

“So, how long till you reach the west wing?” Michael repeated his question.

“5 seconds,” X replied.

Five. In that sliver of time, a heart could beat once, maybe twice. Michael pictured corridors warping around the armored figure, walls melting into streaks of color as velocity bent the academy’s geometry.

“Then go, protect Orland, the one using the shields. Your job is to break through the enemy line and protect any hostages still inside. Avoid the second floor, no matter what, until I give you an order to otherwise.”

X nodded—a single hinge motion, devoid of hesitation. A wind like collapsing vacuum burst from his form, snuffing the hanging light bulbs; glass quivered but did not shatter. Coats and torn curtains snapped toward him. Then, with a crack of displaced air, he blurred—a smear of black and blue light—through the nearest window. The glass flexed around his absence, then exploded outward in glittering shards.

Snowflakes spiraled into the breach, swirling through the Chill Room like pale ash. Michael watched them tumble onto the floorboards, tiny white absolutions settling upon a chessboard now irrevocably changed. Somewhere to the west, five seconds would soon collide with gunfire. And beneath the alarms, Michael could almost hear it already: the steady, inevitable footfalls of an executioner unleashed.

X flashed forward, a black blur against the white curtain of slow falling snow—like a monster wearing human skin, dragging a streak of winter lightning in his wake. One instant the courtyard was a churn of panicked students and rifle flashes; the next, X materialized beside Orland at the base of the west wing facade, between the stone steps and the bullet storm.

Bullets hissed through the snowfall. Every round that crossed X’s path met the icy blue edge of his shifting blade, each impact scattering sparks that died before they touched the slush slick ground. Orland’s first reflex—to throw up a kinetic barrier—died half formed; X’s swordplay was swallowing the threat faster than shielding could. Stunned, Orland glanced sideways and nearly missed Michael’s voice crackling in his earbud:

“Stay on his seven o’clock. When he lunges, you close the gap. I’ll guide.”

With a single flicker of his finger, the blade changed shape, its length stretching to a spear that skewered two incoming rounds mid air. The instant X snapped it short again—a machete now—Michael hissed: “Flank left—three shooters behind the barricade.”

Orland obeyed. He dashed, skidding over icy flagstones, timing his rush to X’s footwork. The armored executioner shifted right, drawing suppressive fire; at that same moment Orland slid left, snatching up a dropped riot shield from the snow. The makeshift guard shuddered as slugs hammered it, but the angle was perfect—bullets deflected into an empty patch of courtyard.

Another rifle team to the northeast loosed a burst. X pivoted, blade contracting into a fist long stiletto, and in a single pirouette he batted the stream of rounds skyward; brass casings tinked onto frosted pavement like sleet.

From deeper in the defensive line, a contractor barked a spell. A twisting bolt of green flame tore across the courtyard. Before Orland could raise the shield, X’s weapon elongated into a curved khopesh; a fluid sweep redirected the spell sideways into a stone planter that erupted in steam and sparks.

“Is this…” Orland paused, voice raw as he regrouped behind the larger man, “…the queen the professor mentioned.”

“It is,” Michael replied over the phone. “Now go, help him get inside.”

The command sharpened Orland’s focus. He clung to Michael’s whispered directives—micro adjustments of position and timing that let him echo X’s rhythm rather than drown beneath it. If X darted forward, Orland swept in after the wake, shield braced to intercept ricochets. When X vaulted up the wide staircase, blade now a spear that punched through a metal shutter, Orland followed close enough to keep stray rounds from blind siding him, but never so close he’d hinder the living storm ahead.

Outside, snowflakes kept drifting—slow, silent witnesses to the violence below. Each flake caught the pulse of emergency beacons, flaring red then fading as it settled on fractured concrete. The defenders—Mercy guild gunmen in makeshift winter rigs—barked orders, trying to herd the intruders sideways. Yet Michael’s voice flowed through Orland’s earbud like a second heartbeat: “Contractor on the balcony—prepare for incendiary. When I say ‘down,’ you dive.”

X’s blade stretched again, luminous and breath stealing, lopping the balcony’s support column before any pyro glyph could fully ignite. The spell sputtered harmlessly into the snow. Orland dove when told, rolling behind a stone balustrade as fragments of railing clattered around him. Arcs of blue white light from X’s sword whistled overhead, carving a corridor through staggered riflemen toward the west wing entry.

Working in tandem, they became a metronome of destruction: X striking at impossible angles, Orland plugging gaps on Michael’s cue—shield up, draw fire, vault low when X’s blade scythed high. Without Michael’s remote choreography Orland would have lagged, but each whispered turn left, surge right, rise now kept him humming in formation, a satellite moon locked to X’s gravitational chaos.

A fresh squad tried to bottleneck the stair landing. Michael breathed one word—“Breach.” Orland exploded up the steps, shield first, smashing two riflemen aside. At the peak of the arc X streaked past his shoulder, blade condensed into a quarter meter spike that pierced a grenade mid air; the explosive blossomed harmlessly into sparks above their heads. By the time shrapnel pattered in the snow, Orland was already sweeping stragglers downhill with a shield bash while X carved open the heavy double doors in a single, silent swipe.

The defenders’ line buckled. Gunfire thinned; cries for a fallback rippled through the ranks. Snow hissed where spent cartridges sizzled. Past the shattered entry, warm light poured from the corridor—an artery leading toward Nia’s prison and Hex’s waiting shadow.

“Remain on standby, should the convoy arrive– have X destroy it, I’m getting over there.” Michael sighed as he turned off his phone.

He released Olivia’s shoulder. Instantly the current snapped, leaving a feedback sting that raced back up his nerves. Veins dimmed, vision separated—his own dark field, Olivia’s perspective shrinking to a pinhole, then gone.

Michael staggered a step, fought for breath. Sweat dripped from his temple, trailing salty rivulets across the bruise on his cheek. Excitement gnawed the edges of terror—an animal chewing its own tail. He managed a cracked laugh.

He brushed back his hair as he looked toward the professor with a slight grin.

“Tell me–just who the hell is that guy?” he asked. “He’s fucking amazing!” he laughed, dreaming about having such a powerful piece at his disposal.