"What are you?" Tyler asked, his voice steady as he watched the shadow in front of him.
He didn't move, didn't react beyond that. After months in the same room, with the same chains and the same lights, something like this didn't feel as impossible as it should have. He'd had too much time alone, too much silence pressing in, too many thoughts circling back on themselves.
Maybe this was how it started. Maybe the isolation finally broke something, and now he was seeing things that weren't there.
He didn't rule that out.
The shadow didn't answer.
"Ethan," it said again, quieter this time, the name settling in his mind rather than reaching his ears.
Tyler's grip tightened against the chains, the metal scraping faintly under the pressure.
"What does that name have to do with me?" he said, his tone sharpening slightly. "If this is something my brain came up with to mess with me, then it's doing a great job."
He exhaled slowly, his eyes still fixed on it.
"That's the last name I want to hear."
"I know," the shadow said. "That's why I came. I'm offering you an opportunity. To take what you're owed -- revenge."
Tyler looked at it for a long moment.
"You're offering me an opportunity." He let the chain go slack. "Something I don't even know is real. Standing in my cell. Offering me revenge." A short sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Right."
He leaned back against the wall.
"Get out of my head."
The shadow didn't move.
"I'm not in your head," the shadow said. "You know that already." It extended a hand, dark and shapeless at the edges. "So. Do you want to rot behind these four walls — or take my hand and get what you're owed?"
Tyler looked at the hand.
"What's in it for you?"
The shadow didn't answer immediately.
"I learned something in this cell," Tyler continued, his voice even. "Nothing is free. So before I do anything — tell me exactly what you get out of helping me. And why you came to me specifically."
The shadow regarded him for a moment.
Good. It liked that answer. Broken people who grasped at anything were useful in the short term and unreliable afterward. This one still had his edges. That made him considerably more valuable.
"I need someone with a specific kind of hatred," the shadow said. "Focused. Personal. The kind that doesn't burn out." The hand stayed extended. "And our enemies are the same."
Tyler looked at it for a moment.
"Heh." Something shifted in his expression — not quite a smile. "He beat you too, didn't he."
The shadow said nothing.
Which was answer enough.
"So that's what this is." Tyler let the chain hang loose from his fist. "You got embarrassed and now you need someone else to do something about it." He looked at the extended hand. "And you picked me."
"Then I have to revise my answer," Tyler said. "I don't work with someone who already got beaten." He paused. "Although — and I hate saying this — that guy isn't something I can just take on either."
That much was true. He'd learned it the hard way. Ethan in a fight didn't give you room to think. Didn't give you a chance to find your footing.
Even at full Hyde — full power, nothing held back — it hadn't been enough. Ethan had dismantled it like it was barely an inconvenience.
"Who says the winner stays the same?" the shadow said. "Things change. Even something that seems untouchable can be brought down — if you help me with one thing first." The hand stayed extended. "Do that, and I promise you his head."
Tyler looked at it.
"One thing," he said.
"One thing."
He looked at the chains. At the four walls. At the hand.
"What's the one thing," he said.
"Open a door."
Tyler stared at it.
"That's it?" A short laugh, genuine this time. "Open a door. You're standing in my cell, offering me revenge on the most dangerous thing I've ever fought, and the price is opening a door." He looked at the shadow. "You don't have hands for that?"
"Not the kind this door requires," the shadow said.
The humor left Tyler's face.
"What kind of door?" he said.
"You don't need to know what's behind it," the shadow said. "Just open it. That's all. Do that and I'll give you what you want." A pause. "Or don't. I can always find someone else."
Tyler looked at the hand. Chains around his wrists, his neck, his ankles — he couldn't take it even if he wanted to. He nodded instead.
The room shook.
Not gradually — all at once, like something underneath the floor had shifted.
The chains rattled hard against the wall, the overhead light swung on its fixture, and the cracks that had always been in the concrete split wider, dust dropping from the ceiling in thin streams.
Down the hall the alarm went off.
Two security personnel hit the corridor at a run, radios crackling, one already calling it in as they reached the containment wing. The lead guard punched the code into the cell door panel —
The wall came down.
The entire left wall, folding inward in one collapsed section, concrete and rebar dropping across the floor. Both guards stumbled back, choking on the dust cloud that rolled out into the corridor.
When it cleared, the chains were on the floor.
Still locked. Still intact.
The cell was empty.
The alarm kept ringing through the building and nobody in Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital had an answer for what had just walked out of a maximum security containment room through a solid concrete wall.
***
A/N: And on Patreon, The Boys arc started.
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