Allies and Translucent

The taxi spent a full forty minutes stuck in traffic on the way back to Queens.

Puddles along the street reflected flickering neon signs. Lucian leaned against the back seat, his gaze passing through the window to lock onto Vought Tower as it pierced the night sky.

Bathed in lights, the tower looked like a sharp blade cutting open the heart of the city.

His phone vibrated twice in his pocket. The screen lit up with a message from Jordan: "Wild party in Building D tonight. Wanna come?"

Lucian immediately switched off the screen and tossed the phone back into his pocket.

He had more important things to do now. The groundwork was laid, and the time bomb inside Hughie's head could go off at any moment. Once that Brit came knocking as planned, the stagnant waters of Vought International would be thoroughly stirred up.

Meanwhile, in a cheap apartment in Queens.

The refrigerator compressor hummed dully. With the main light off, the living room was dim and oppressive. Hughie sat slumped on the floor, his back against a sofa leg, holding the business card he had brought back from the electronics store.

A photograph of Robin taken before her death sat on the coffee table.

His hands shook violently as the scene from that afternoon at the electronics store flashed through his mind over and over.

A few hours earlier.

The shop's doorbell rang. Hughie had his head down, organizing discounted cables on a shelf.

A burly man strode into the shop. He wore a flashy short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt beneath a long, dark trench coat, and his bulbous leather shoes struck the floor with heavy thuds.

"Looking for anything?" Hughie forced out his usual ingratiating smile.

The man said nothing. He walked straight to the glass counter, pulled a badge wallet from inside his coat, and slapped it down hard in front of Hughie.

"William Butcher. Joint insurance claims investigator for Vought International." The man spoke in an extremely rough British accent, his gaze pinning Hughie's face like nails. "Here to verify the claim details concerning your unfortunate girlfriend."

Hughie shrank back half a step uneasily, his fingers clutching the hem of his suit jacket.

"I've already read the agreement. Legal said... once I sign, the money will be compensation for her." Hughie's voice sounded helpless.

"Compensation?" Butcher scoffed, planting his rough hands on the glass counter as an oppressive presence bore down on Hughie. "Forty-five thousand dollars. They're using that pocket change to shut you up and send you home to lick your wounds. You really think they're sorry?"

Hughie lowered his head, afraid to meet his eyes.

Butcher snorted. With a turn of his wrist, he pulled a silver digital recorder from his coat pocket.

"Know what's easiest to get in the VIP rooms of fancy bars? The truth those cunts spill when they're drunk."

He pressed play and shoved the recorder right under Hughie's nose.

After a burst of static, the pounding bass of dance music in a noisy bar spilled out, mixed with the clear clink of ice against glass.

"Man, I swear, it felt fucking awful."

In the recording, A-Train's words were drawn out drunkenly, his voice carrying an utterly flippant laugh. "I was really getting into my run, going full speed. Suddenly I hit some chunk of woman who came out of nowhere. Bang! Like an overripe watermelon exploding!"

Several companions burst into unrestrained laughter around him.

"That woman's blood covered my whole fucking face!" A-Train laughed, slapping the table. "Bits of meat got stuck in the seams of my boots. Took me three hot towels to wipe it all clean. Fucking disgusting!"

The recording cut off abruptly.

Hughie stopped breathing entirely. In a single second, all the blood in his body rushed to his head, and waves of darkness clouded the edges of his vision. The sight of Robin being smashed apart tangled madly with A-Train's grating laughter in his mind.

"Legal's buying your girlfriend's life for forty-five grand, and that useless cunt in spandex is making her death into a drinking joke." Butcher slipped his business card beneath the recorder and turned toward the door. "Your choice. If you want to be a coward who takes the money and shuts up, pretend you never saw me."

Hughie jolted out of the memory, cold sweat soaking the back of his shirt.

He glanced at Robin's smiling face on the coffee table, grabbed his phone, opened his contacts, and found the number labeled "Queens ally."

Hughie pressed the voice-recording button, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

"I know you're fighting Vought too. That bastard... he actually had the nerve to joke about Robin's death." Hughie's voice started out trembling, then gradually became a teeth-gritted snarl. "I've decided. Tomorrow I'm going to Vought Tower to sign the settlement agreement, and I'll use the chance to plant the bug that so-called investigator gave me."

The voice message was sent.

The entire room was deathly silent. Hughie stared at the screen, his heart pounding as if it would shatter his breastbone.

Half a minute later, the screen lit up.

[I admire your courage, bro. I'll keep an eye on things from the shadows and help you when the time is right. Good luck.]

Hughie took a deep breath and slipped his phone into his pocket. The cowardice in his eyes was replaced by a layer of crazed resolve.

"I'll make them pay, Robin. I swear."

At eight the following evening, the night wind swept through the streets of Queens, carrying the raw scent of rain.

Lucian sat in a battered rental Honda, parked in a blind spot with no camera coverage diagonally across from the electronics store.

The window was lowered a palm's width. One hand rested on the steering wheel as he leisurely ate a hot dog bought on the corner, his gaze fixed on the glass door across the street.

Hughie pushed open the shop door and went inside.

His steps were unsteady, his face deathly pale. Just an hour earlier, he had accomplished the feat of planting a bug inside Vought Tower. Then that Brit had sent him back to the electronics store like throwing out trash, telling him to act as though nothing had happened.

Lucian swallowed the last bite of bread, grabbed a napkin to wipe his hands, and his gaze turned cold.

Translucent, whose entire body was wrapped in carbon skin, was extremely conceited and arrogant. Once he discovered the bug, he would never report it to Vought security. He would only follow the trail himself, personally dragging out this little rat to torture him to death.

Lucian opened the car door, pulled a short special-alloy baton from beneath the passenger seat, hefted it, and stepped into the night.

Bang!

A dull crash suddenly rang out from the electronics store.

It was immediately followed by the thunderous collapse of rows of metal shelves, mixed with Hughie's shrill, distorted screams.

Lucian strode across the road and stopped outside the electronics store.

"I'm asking you one last time."

No one was visible inside the shop, but Translucent's voice echoed through the air, thick with mockery and cruelty. "Who gave you the balls to bring that thing into Vought Tower? Did you really think I wouldn't spot a little bug like you?"

An invisible hand pinned Hughie's face hard against the floor. Broken glass cut his forehead, and blood ran down the bridge of his nose into his mouth.

"I don't know... what you're talking about..." Hughie moaned indistinctly, his hands clawing uselessly at the air.

"You don't know?"

Translucent roared with laughter. His invisible hand suddenly seized Hughie's hair and yanked his head off the floor.

"I'll give you a chance. A useless piece of shit like you wouldn't even dare kill a chicken. You couldn't pull this off if you had ten times the balls. Tell me who's behind you, and I'll make your death quick." Translucent spoke extremely slowly, savoring his prey's desperate trembling. "Otherwise, I'll crush your bones into powder inch by inch and let you watch your own guts spill all over the floor."

Ding-

The brass bell above the shop door rang crisply.

Translucent stopped. Hughie struggled to open his swollen right eye and looked toward the entrance.

Lucian pushed open the door and locked it behind him.

He stepped through the wreckage, his combat boot crushing a piece of LCD panel with a piercing crack. The alloy baton in his hand tapped lightly against his leg.

"Who are you?" Translucent released Hughie, letting him collapse on the floor. His invisible body made heavy footfalls across the floor. "This kid's boyfriend? Or another idiot in a hurry to line up for reincarnation?"

Lucian stopped three meters from the distortion in the air and raised his eyes toward that empty space.

"I'll give you a chance too."

Translucent froze for two seconds, then burst into wildly exaggerated laughter that made the fluorescent tubes overhead buzz.

"A chance? Is your brain broken? What are you going to do? Give me a pedicure with that shitty steel pipe?"

Lucian stared ahead expressionlessly, his super senses fully activating at that moment.

Airflow patterns, the faint temperature changes caused by breathing, the minute deformation of the floor under pressure—all that data flooded madly into Lucian's brain.

Carbon skin could indeed change its refractive index to become invisible, and could even withstand rifle bullets. But beneath that impenetrable hide, the organs and bones still had physical limits to the impacts they could endure.

"More or less." Lucian turned his wrist, spinning the alloy baton through the air. "I just want to see how many solid concussive blows that turtle shell you're so proud of can take."

"You've got balls." Translucent's laughter vanished instantly, his tone chilling to the bone. "The last bank robber who dared talk to me like that got thrown straight off the twentieth floor. When he hit the ground, his eyeballs bounced like Ping-Pong balls. Want to try it?"

Lucian wasted no words. He bent his knees slightly and lowered his center of gravity.

All sound suddenly vanished from the air. Translucent moved, deliberately suppressing even his breathing and footsteps to the utmost.

Lucian lowered his eyelids slightly.

The airflow beside the shelves on the left was abruptly interrupted. Dust by the counter on the right rose in the opposite direction.

Here!

Bang!

A powerful hook came without warning from his blind spot, smashing squarely into Lucian's temple.

The tremendous impact exploded. Lucian staggered two steps to the right, his shoulder slamming into a broken shelf and sending several unopened boxes of routers clattering to the floor.

His LV3 super physique took the blow head-on, leaving only a sharp sting in his temple.

Lucian steadied himself, tilted his head, and rolled his neck. His cervical joints gave a series of cracks like popping beans.

"Well, you're a tough one." Translucent's voice came from three meters to the left, carrying a trace of surprise he could not hide. "Let's see how many more punches those tough bones of yours can take."

Lucian turned and tightened his grip on the alloy baton.

"That punch just now-was that your full strength?"