The stream of furious shouting that had been flooding Wilson's headset cut off without warning. Through his binoculars, he watched in horror as his men were carved apart mid-stride, some falling in short halves, others dropping in long, twisted segments that thudded wetly onto the asphalt. The red beams swept with mechanical precision, and wherever they passed, bodies separated cleanly.
Wilson's eyes went bloodshot.
Those weren't just subordinates. Many of them had followed him for years. Some had trained under him. Some had trusted him enough to stake their lives on his calls.
Rage flooded his chest.
He dropped from the roof of the SUV, boots hitting the pavement hard. For a second, instinct screamed at him to charge forward and empty his rifle into that glowing-eyed monster. He grabbed the weapon anyway, slid into the driver's seat, and started the engine.
His knuckles went white on the steering wheel as he stared at the young man walking calmly through the carnage.
Turn the wheel.
Drive straight at him.
Run him down.
The thought flickered through his mind, reckless and desperate. But it wasn't courage—it was suicide. Trying to ram that thing with a vehicle would require madness or total loss of reason.
Wilson slammed the car into gear and drove away instead.
As he put distance between himself and the battlefield, the gunfire in his earpiece stopped entirely. The silence that followed was worse than the screams. It felt thick, like water filling his lungs. He could barely breathe.
The only sound left was the echo of his own heartbeat and, faintly, the memory of boots crunching over broken glass.
He ripped the earpiece off and threw it onto the passenger seat. Then he gasped, dragging in air like a drowning man finally breaking the surface.
Back on the street, the outcome was no longer in doubt.
After upgrading his Destruction Ray, Ethan's beams had grown hotter and carried a violent shockwave behind them. The reinforced alloy shields that once gave Wilson confidence had become meaningless scrap. The squads had been erased with the same casual efficiency as slicing through fruit.
Bodies and severed limbs littered the road. Rifles lay beside hands that no longer had owners. Smoke drifted upward in thin columns, mixing with the metallic scent of blood and the acrid sting of burnt flesh.
In their final moments, many of the guards had been wide-eyed with terror. Some had tried to crawl. Some had dropped their weapons entirely. Ethan had watched them without hesitation and ended it quickly. Fear and despair were exhausting things. He spared them the rest.
Within minutes, the once chaotic battlefield turned eerily quiet.
It looked like an abandoned plaza at midnight, empty and hollow, the smell of char and iron hanging heavy in the air.
When Harris drove back into the neighborhood, he slowed instinctively. His pickup rolled to a near stop as he took in the scene.
Corpses were scattered across the asphalt like broken mannequins. Weapons lay everywhere. Blood pooled in dark patches that reflected the fading light.
His pupils contracted sharply. A chill crawled up his spine.
He had seen violence before. He had dealt with bodies. But this scale was different. His brain struggled to process what his eyes were feeding it. Every instinct told him that the people who had sent this force would not stop easily.
For the first time, he wondered whether reaching out to Ethan had truly been the smart move.
After all, anyone capable of deploying that kind of organized force wasn't small-time. And anyone capable of wiping it out alone was even more dangerous.
"If there's nothing else we need here, we should go," Harris said after forcing himself to step out of the truck. He kept his voice steady. "We don't know if they'll send backup."
Ethan looked mildly surprised to see him. Harris had more than enough time to disappear. Instead, he had come back.
Ethan gave a small nod. He stripped off the shredded bulletproof vest he had borrowed from Harris's stash, tossing the ruined fabric aside. Then he climbed into the passenger seat without another word.
The pickup roared to life. A plume of exhaust trailed behind as they drove off and vanished down the street.
The quiet did not last long.
Doors creaked open along both sides of the road. Curtains shifted. Windows slid up just enough for curious eyes to peek through.
Men stepped out holding coffee mugs, taking casual sips as if observing roadwork rather than a massacre. A few smirked and shook their heads before heading back inside to start dinner.
Others were less restrained.
Some wandered directly into the street, stepping over bodies to search pockets and collect weapons that hadn't been destroyed. A man with a large dog even led his animal across the asphalt, allowing it to sniff at the remains as if selecting scraps.
As for who had died and why—
No one asked.
Gunfire happened every day. People died every day. Life moved on.
For Wilson, however, it did not.
He drove south without stopping until he reached a Vought security branch facility. Only once he was inside thick concrete walls did the delayed fear finally hit him fully.
If he hadn't fled when he did, he would have been another charred corpse cooling on the street.
"I want to see Ms. Madeline," he demanded later at the Vought office tower, voice hoarse but insistent. "I want to see the CEO."
Ashley, Madeline's assistant, regarded him coolly from behind her desk. "Ms. Madeline will not be meeting with you. You understand how much this failure has cost the company."
"I can explain it to her face," Wilson pressed.
He already knew the decision. Madeline had informed him he would be reassigned to a remote city as a cleaner. A demotion so severe it might as well have been exile.
Given how much he knew about Vought's operations, he suspected that simple dismissal was off the table. Too risky. So they would bury him somewhere quiet instead.
"What exactly are you going to explain?" Madeline's voice cut in as she stepped out from her office.
Wilson straightened immediately. "It was a sudden escalation. Give me one more team. Just one. I'll bring him in."
Madeline's expression remained cold. "And risk another total wipeout? The fact remains—you mismanaged the situation."
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Do you know how many calls I've had from Pennsylvania law enforcement because of your mess? If you continue this, security will escort you out."
She turned and walked away without waiting for his response. Ashley gave him a small, almost sympathetic shrug before following.
Wilson stood there, hollowed out.
He didn't remember how he got home.
He drank until the room blurred. A full case of beer disappeared one bottle at a time. The thought of spending the rest of his career as a cleaner in some forgotten town made his stomach twist.
This had started with one escaped lab subject.
One.
"Why did you have to run?" he muttered bitterly. "You could've stayed in that cage."
He hurled a bottle at the wall. It shattered, foam spraying across the plaster. The crash didn't quiet the rage inside him.
He grabbed another bottle, but paused when he noticed the advertisement printed on the label—A-Train's smiling face staring back at him.
Wilson went still.
After a long silence, he reached for his phone.
"Dr. Carlton?" he said when the call connected. "I think you might need a stronger test subject."
There was a brief pause on the other end.
"…That would be an honor."
Meanwhile, Harris relocated Ethan to another safe house.
Harris had always kept multiple identities and backup properties. The new place was an aging apartment on a quiet street, one bedroom and a cramped living area, but far more secluded than the last.
"They won't find this one," Harris said confidently as he unlocked the door.
Ethan didn't argue. The previous location had been compromised because of Nelson's tracker. This one felt safer.
"Why did you come back?" Ethan asked after stepping inside.
Harris shrugged lightly. "Still don't know. Maybe instinct. Maybe my brother. Hard to say."
He gave a faint smile. "Guess you didn't need the help."
Ethan returned the smile. "The place works. Otherwise, it would've taken me some time."
For the next few days, Ethan kept a low profile. Harris brought food and occasional information, careful not to ask questions he didn't want answers to.
Whenever sunlight filtered through the window, Ethan stood in it, letting the warmth wash over him as his role-playing value ticked upward. After spending a thousand points upgrading Destruction Ray, he still had more than five hundred left.
It made him think of the Invisible Man.
A walking battery of potential points.
After a long session in the sun, Ethan stepped back inside and turned on the television. Vought News filled the screen again, polished and controlled as always.
Since the story about A-Train running down a pedestrian days ago, there had been no real follow-up.