Tuesday. Twenty-five days since the Omnitrix.
He'd been watching the Southside routes for four days since the Perry Street operation and the pattern had changed. More vehicles per run, tighter schedules, and handoffs moved from fixed locations to rolling transfers between vehicles. Intergang had adapted. He'd hit them twice, they'd noticed, and they were thinking about it.
'You disrupted their supply chain twice. They know something is hitting the routes. What does an organisation like Intergang do when something persistent disrupts their operation?'
He'd been turning that question over all day. The answer was straightforward: they escalated more vehicles, better-armed crews, heavier Apokolips hardware on the handoffs. If the disruptions kept coming they'd eventually reroute entirely or add enough firepower to make interference not worth attempting.
'More Apokolips hardware on the next run, most likely. Or they move the routes. Either way it's a hardware problem. It's always been a hardware problem with Intergang.'
He went out at 10:30. Reconnaissance only. He needed to understand the new routing pattern.
He set the dial to Jetray and went out the window.
....
He was banking west over Perry Street, high and quiet, mapping the new timing pattern, when the lightning hit him.
Not weather. Not a power line. A bolt of electric blue-white from a rooftop to his left connected with Jetray's right wing with a crack loud enough to shake windows on the street below. The electricity moved through the form with a violence that had no comparison in anything Silas had felt. Every nerve firing simultaneously. The wing convulsing. The whole right side of the body seizing.
Jetray dropped thirty feet before the left wing caught and pulled.
'That was aimed. Someone aimed that at me.'
He banked hard left and climbed. Looked back.
She was on the rooftop edge, arms spread, white electricity crackling through her hair and between her fingers like it was breathing. Tall, pale, grinning with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting for this.
'Livewire. Intergang brought in Livewire. Not more hardware. A meta. I was completely wrong about what escalation looked like.'
Another bolt came. Clipped the tail, discharge snapping through the trailing edge and sending a sharp shock up the spine. Not enough to bring him down. Enough to hurt.
"Nice wings," Livewire called, her voice carrying across the rooftop gap.
"Let's find out what else you've got."
'She wants a fight. This form has range. Use it.'
Jetray's eyes locked onto her and fired.
Two streaks of green-white neuroshock energy crossed the rooftop gap in under a second. Direct hits, both, center mass.
Livewire absorbed them.
Not blocked. Not dodged. Absorbed. the energy spreading across her skin in arcing patterns, her hair surging brighter, her grin getting wider. She looked down at her hands where the energy was already cycling into new charge and looked back up at Jetray like this was exactly what she'd hoped for.
"Energy attacks," Livewire said.
"That's adorable."
'She feeds on it. The neuroshock blasts gave her more to work with. This form's primary attack just made her stronger. That's the worst possible outcome.'
The next bolt came with everything Silas had just handed her. It hit Jetray's left wing and the world went white.
....
Falling before he processed he was falling. The left wing had stopped responding, the electricity having overloaded the muscle pathways that controlled it, and with one wing functional and one hanging Jetray was descending in a controlled spiral.
He dived for the alley. Chose it deliberately, using what he had of the form's aerial instincts to angle the descent into the narrow gap between buildings.
The landing was bad. The right wing clipped the wall, spinning the body, and Jetray hit the alley floor on his side and cracked the concrete. He was up immediately, one wing dragging.
Livewire landed behind him on a bolt she'd ridden down.
"Tight quarters," she said, shaking the landing out of her hands.
"I work fine in tight quarters."
She fired before the sentence finished.
Jetray got the functional wing up and the bolt hit it and the wing convulsed and went dead. Both wings now. The form was on its feet but grounded, and Livewire was between him and the alley entrance, and the standing water from last night's rain was spreading across the alley floor between them, and she was looking at the water with the expression of someone who had just been handed a gift.
'Both wings gone. Grounded. No effective ranged attack. Water between us. This form is done in this fight.'
She fired along the floor. The electricity hit the standing water and spread outward in every direction at once, covering the full width of the alley, crawling up the walls, finding the drainage pipes and using all of it at once.
Jetray took it standing up. Full body. Every pathway lit simultaneously, the form seizing for two full seconds before the current finished moving through. When it cleared Silas was still upright, barely, one hand on the alley wall.
'Three hits. Wings gone. If she charges again this form goes down and I'll be timing out with no control over when or where.'
'Revert. Now. Choose the moment. Own it.'
He pressed the Omnitrix on his chest. in Jetray form the device sat near where the wings connected to the body. and pressed the release.
The green flash. The reversion. Silas in his costume in the alley, and his left hand went immediately to his wrist.
The faceplate was raised. The hourglass was green.
Not red. Green. No recharge lock. Active mode, dial available, ready.
'Early reversion. No timeout. No recharge. File that immediately. File that right now. That's important.'
Livewire had stopped moving. Looking at the space where Jetray had been. Then at Silas.
"Huh," Livewire said.
"There's a person in there."
....
Silas did not transform.
He had a full dial available. Could have gone to Brawler right now. But Livewire had just seen the reversion and transforming in front of her told her more about the Omnitrix than standing still did. He needed to know what she was going to do first.
'She absorbed the neuroshock blasts. She rode electricity down from the rooftop. She's a meta with full electrical control and she's between you and the exit. Find out if she's here to finish this or here to make a point.'
Livewire took a step toward him. Then stopped.
"Intergang said stop the alien disrupting their Southside routes," Livewire said, more to herself than to him.
"Contract was for an alien entity. Nothing in there about a person."
She looked at him. The electricity between her fingers had died to a faint crackle.
"How old are you?" Livewire asked.
Silas said nothing.
"Right," Livewire said. She glanced at the Omnitrix on his wrist. The green hourglass.
"So that watch does it."
Still nothing.
"Look. Free advice. Stop hitting their routes. They're gonna keep sending people and the next one's not gonna care about the fine print the way I do," Livewire said. She stepped back, giving him room.
She looked at him for one more second.
"Not bad, for whatever you are," Livewire said.
"Get better."
She went straight up on a bolt of her own making, through the open top of the alley and into the night sky, and was gone.
Silas stood in the alley with a full active Omnitrix on his wrist and the silence of midnight Metropolis around him.
'She said get better. She let you go and she said get better. Believe both of those things.'
He walked home.
....
12:38 AM. Window. Suit off. He sat at his desk and wrote everything before anything faded.
He wrote: LIVEWIRE. Then the full account. Rooftop bolt, wing damage, neuroshock blasts absorbed and used against him, alley, wing failure, floor current, reversion decision, the eight seconds between reversion and Livewire deciding to leave.
Then the two things he'd learned.
He underlined the first one twice.
*EARLY REVERSION: no recharge lock. Reverting deliberately before timeout leaves the dial active and ready immediately. The lock only triggers on timeout. This changes everything about how I manage the dead zone.*
He sat with that for a moment. The dead zone had been the thing he feared most in every operation. But the dead zone was a timeout consequence, not a reversion consequence. If he managed his timer and chose to revert before it ran out he could go straight from one form to another with only the transformation flash as transition.
'You didn't know this because you always waited for the timeout. You never tried reverting early because there was never a good reason to. Tonight was the first time it was the better option.'
He wrote the second discovery underneath.
*LIVEWIRE: energy attacks feed her. Neuroshock blasts from Jetray were absorbed and converted into larger charge. Any form with an energy-based ranged attack is tactically reversed against her. Physical-only forms are the correct approach.*
*Also: I was completely wrong about what escalation looked like. I assumed Intergang would go to heavier hardware. They went to a meta instead. That is a different category of problem and I didn't account for it. Next time I think I know what an organisation will do, leave room for what I haven't considered.*
'She said the next one won't care about the fine print. Believe that.'
'Twenty-five days. Three untested forms. One major mechanic I only just found. Start on all of it.'