The four-ton SUV spun like a frictionless centrifuge, a wall of blackened steel hurtling directly toward the paralyzed civilian.
Inside the vehicle, the air suddenly grew blindingly bright.
Golden light erupted from the backseat, burning away the shadows. Before the spinning chassis could crush the man, the reinforced side window exploded outward. Sol didn't just climb out; he blasted through the frame like a missile. His body was wreathed in a corona of heavy, brilliant solar energy.
He hit the asphalt and drove his boots into the pavement, anchoring his hyper-dense mass. Sol caught the spinning rear quarter-panel of the SUV with his bare hands. The impact echoed like a bomb going off. The metal crumpled inward under his grip, groaning in protest, but the kinetic force died instantly. Sol shoved the massive vehicle sideways, pinning it flush against the concrete wall of a nearby building so it couldn't slide any further.
The civilian collapsed to his knees, gasping for air.
The back doors of the SUV kicked open. Toby stumbled out, immediately reaching into the emergency storage compartment. Kit followed, stepping out of the vehicle with calm, unassuming precision. He didn't yell. He simply walked over to the glowing hero, his voice quiet and clinical.
"Sol, your payload is unstable," Kit stated softly. "You have not fully recovered. You shouldn't be exerting yourself like this."
Sol didn't look at him. He looked down the chaotic, war-torn avenue. Cars were smashed. The street was on fire. People were bleeding. The golden light around his fists burned even brighter, pushing back the dark.
"Look at them," Sol said, his voice resonating with a heavy, unshakeable conviction. "They're terrified. As long as I have breath, I won't let them suffer. Someone has to protect them."
With a single, explosive burst of golden energy, Sol launched himself into the night sky, flying down the avenue to pull trapped civilians out of the wreckage.
Toby didn't watch him go. He ripped a heavy-duty CO2 fire extinguisher from the trunk. "Kit! Get the trauma kit ready!" Toby barked. "Liam is badly hit!"
Down the street, Miguel was struggling. Liam was on his knees, grunting in agony as the swarm of mutated hornets tore into his wounded leg and thick arms. Miguel had the giant's heavy arm thrown over his shoulder, throwing tiny, localized thermal punches to pop the hornets off Liam's skin as he desperately hauled the bleeding man back toward Kit's position.
"Hold him steady!" Toby roared, sprinting up and sweeping the extinguisher nozzle over Liam. A massive cloud of freezing white carbon dioxide smothered the area. Deprived of oxygen and flash-frozen, the hornets curled up and dropped to the pavement like hail.
Miguel grunted, taking Liam's full weight. "Come on, big guy. Let's get you patched up."
Fifty yards away, the main swarm was still assaulting Kira.
Hive stood in the open, pouring thousands of the black insects against Kira's violet carbide shield. He didn't hear the footsteps behind him.
Vapor walked up to Hive with a cold, terrifying calmness. The man wore a bulky, specialized suit fitted with thick, transparent side-canisters filled with crystalline granules. The suit captured his sweat and instantly converted it into highly pressurized, super-heated vapor.
Vapor raised his heavy steel gauntlets, stepped directly behind Hive, and clamped both hands violently over his face.
A deafening hiss of pressurized steam shrieked from the gauntlets. Immense, super-heated vapor blasted directly into Hive's orifices. Hive's eyes went wide with sheer terror. His hollowed-out torso violently expanded, the skin stretching taut and turning a sickening, boiled red.
For two seconds, Hive ballooned. Then, with a wet, grotesque explosion, his upper half ruptured. Viscera and boiling blood sprayed across the asphalt. Vapor dropped the headless corpse. Without their host, the massive cloud of hornets outside Kira's shield instantly dropped dead.
"We got a bigger problem!" Miguel shouted from the rear.
Skid had returned. The speedster came tearing out of a side alley, gliding effortlessly. He was holding a massive red propane gas canister he'd stolen from a nearby fuel station.
He was thirty feet from Hannah. Twenty feet.
He never made it to ten.
Something dropped out of the sky with the weight of a falling safe. A massive, bladed shadow whipped through the air. A sickening *SCHLICK* echoed over the avenue.
The swipe caught Skid across the left side of his body. The sheer kinetic force of the blow sheared through his arm and torso, flinging him through the air. Skid slammed into the brick wall of a nearby storefront. He didn't drop the canister. He was flattened flat against the concrete, his hands still desperately clutching the red tank. The canister was crushed between his broken body and the wall.
It ruptured instantly. The spark from the impact ignited the pressurized gas, detonating in a massive, fiery explosion that swallowed Skid completely.
As the flames settled, the team finally saw what had killed him.
The figure standing in the wreckage was massive. He was terrifyingly tall, his muscles corded and thick. But it was his back that made the air feel cold. Protruding from his spine were four massive, biological spider legs—thick, dark chitin, muscle, and bone, currently dripping with Skid's blood.
Kane slowly turned his head.
Before anyone could react, the heavy *thwip-thwip-thwip* of rotor blades filled the air. An NKPD police helicopter and a local news chopper swept low over the avenue. The NKPD chopper immediately locked its high-intensity searchlight directly onto Kane.
Kane hissed, his eyes narrowing at the blinding light.
The massive spider-man didn't run. His chitinous legs dug into the concrete, and with terrifying, explosive power, he lunged straight up into the sky.
He cleared sixty feet in a single bound, slamming directly into the side of the NKPD helicopter. The metal shrieked. Kane's legs drove deep into the chassis, and with a brutal twist of his body, he literally snapped the tail in two.
Alarms blared as the crippled police chopper immediately began to plummet. Kane didn't care. He kicked off the falling wreckage, launching himself through the air toward the hovering news helicopter.
He never reached it.
A streak of golden light slammed into Kane mid-air. Sol hit the spider-villain with the force of a freight train, punching him completely out of the sky. Kane was sent hurtling away, crashing violently through the roof of a nearby commercial building in a cloud of dust and debris.
Sol didn't pursue him. The hero immediately dove toward the street, catching the falling NKPD helicopter just before it crushed a row of parked cars, carefully lowering the terrified officers to the ground. Above, the news helicopter quickly banked away, its cameras panning down to broadcast Sol's heroic rescue live to the entire city.
Back on the ground, the chaos hadn't stopped.
Vapor stepped over Hive's corpse, his gauntlets hissing, and began moving slowly toward the team. He wasn't running. He was just advancing, steady and inevitable.
"We have to move," Kira commanded, his eyes tracking Vapor.
Around them, the perimeter was breaking down. Despite the explosions and the carnage, a handful of idiotic civilians hadn't fled. They were hiding behind pillars and wrecked cars, their phones held up, recording the heroes for social media.
"The speedster is dead," Charlotte realized, testing her footing. The asphalt was normal again. The zero-friction payload was gone. "The SUV is viable. Let's get Hannah out of here before the whole city swarms us."
Toby and Kit were already pulling the heavily bleeding Liam toward the pinned vehicle. Hannah, Charlotte, and Kira moved quickly to join them, covering the rear. They were ten feet away from the SUV. It was battered, but it would run.
Then the ground heaved.
A massive, concussive *BOOM* echoed from the Diamond North station entrance. It wasn't a fiery explosion—it was a devastating outward push of sheer pressure. The concrete stairwell and about a whole block worth of the station completely crumbled, violently ejecting debris into the sky.
A massive chunk of underground rock and reinforced rebar arced through the air like a meteor.
It plummeted toward the street and slammed directly onto the roof of the SUV. The heavy vehicle collapsed like an empty soda can, the chassis snapping under the immense weight, completely totaling their only ride out of the warzone.
Toby stared at the crushed metal, his fire extinguisher lowering slowly.
"Fuck," Toby breathed.
---
To Be Continued