In a wide room, with no windows.

The only light came from the monitors and the tall glass tubes lining the walls, each filled with a liquid that glowed a sickly green. They bubbled slowly, casting restless shadows across the ceiling and floor.

The man stood with his back to the door, hands clasped behind him, studying the nearest tube. Inside, something that had once been biological floated suspended in the fluid, unrecognizable now, reduced to data points on the monitor beside it.

The monitor beeped.

A blaring red message suddenly flooded the screen.

ERROR.

His hands tightened slowly into fists.

The door behind him opened with the careful sound of someone who had learned to enter this room cautiously.

"Hexi."

"Master." The voice that answered was uneven. Wrong in a way that was difficult to name precisely, like the cadence of speech had been learned rather than grown into.

"The operation failed." The man’s voice carried no particular anger, "We lost the specimens from the last lab. And the new location was compromised before we could extract anything useful."

Hexi’s head dropped lower. His fingers found a strand of hair and began curling it slowly. "I’m sorry, master."

"There’s a hero." The man’s gaze hadn’t moved from the monitor. "I’ve seen the headlines. The one they’re calling the Phantom Hero. He was involved in the operation."

Hexi’s fingers tightened around the strand of hair.

Tightened further.

Then pulled.

"The hero ruined Master’s plans." His voice carried something that wasn’t quite anger, more like the sound of a person trying to produce an emotion from memory. "I got information from my puppet before the connection was lost. He seems strong."

"Every hero seems strong until they aren’t." The man turned slightly. Not enough to be seen clearly. "They’re all the same. Climbing for attention. Farming popularity. Building themselves into symbols so the public forgets to ask what they’re actually doing." His voice carried a cold edge "Kill him."

Hexi’s face twisted into something that resembled a smile more than it actually was.

"Master." His voice dropped to something almost gentle. "Can I keep the brain?"

There was a brief pause, before the voice replied, "You always keep the brain, Hexi."

The smile deepened unevenly. Then his expression shifted as he quickly remembered why he was here in the first place.

"Master. Someone cancelled my abilities."

The shift in the room was immediate.

Nothing visible changed.

Yet somehow the silence felt heavier than before.

The man turned further. His face remained in shadow, but his posture sharpened considerably.

"Cancelled your abilities?"

"My connection to a puppet was severed. I placed enough hex to last a week, it should have been impossible to break without my interference." Hexi’s fingers moved to another strand of hair. "But it disappeared. I wanted to use her more. Her brain would’ve been nice" The voice croaked going dark.

"You’re certain?" The master asked, unperturbed by his statement.

"Yes master."

The man was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again his voice had shifted into something more deliberate the voice of a person rearranging their understanding of a situation.

"I want information on both. The cancelled connection and the Phantom Hero."

He turned back to the monitor. The green glow caught the edge of his jaw.

"Get me information. Everything. His abilities, his method, his connection to the association." A pause.

"If they have someone who can cancel abilities... the association may have found what we’ve been looking for without knowing it."

Hexi tilted his head. "And the kill order? I want to see his mind"

"It still stands." The man’s reflection flickered faintly in the glass tube. "Find out what he can do first. Then kill him."

****

Julie had been filming since they left the association building.

Not anything specific just footage. The street. The sky, The back of Nicholas’s coat as he walked slightly ahead of them. She’d already reviewed that clip twice and declared it had excellent cinematic potential, but her eyes didn’t hold the same excitement.

"We should’ve gone for a better mission," she said, for the third time in twenty minutes. Her camera swung slightly as she gestured. "The forum had at least six active ones. There was that thing in the east district with the—"

"Julie, if you’re not okay with the mission, you can leave." Selena said slipping her cigarette into her mouth.

"I’m just saying. The algorithm responds to action content. Nobody would want to watch us on a boring mission like this"

"People love it when heroes do good!."

"No! People love it when heroes kick the asses of high-level impures and those videos get millions of views—"

"Julie." Selena threw her a glance from the side of her eyes, Julie met her gaze with teary pleading eyes, Selena let out a sigh, "We have to do this mission"

She went quiet. For approximately four seconds.

Nicholas walked slightly ahead of them and said nothing. He’d already understood why Selena had picked this mission. She hadn’t said it directly she rarely did, but the reasoning was clear enough.

Julie had no combat ability.

The previous mission had nearly killed both of them.

Selena still remembered the grenade, the collapsing wall, and the blood running down Nicholas’ face afterward.

She hadn’t said it aloud, but this assignment was her way of slowing things down before someone ended up in a hospital bed.

’She’s tactical,’ he thought, he couldn’t help but admire that quality in her.

However, in his previous life, caution like that would’ve felt like weakness. He’d operated in environments where hesitation got people killed and the only safe assumption was that every situation was hostile until proven otherwise.

Here, it felt different. More considered.

She plans around the people she’s responsible for.

He filed that away without commenting on it.

It was beneficial for him as well.

A slower mission meant time to recover, time to learn more about the association, and most importantly, time to earn without getting blown up again.

"We’re here," Selena announced, they had reached the destination for their mission.