Page 189 of Villainous Intent

His red eyes glowed brighter as he laughed, the sound cold and hollow. “Poor choice of words, Warden.”

I looked down at the dizzying drop below. The streets of Chroma Bay looked impossibly far away.

“I know your secret,” Dread crooned. “You’re a little broken, aren’t you? Not a full Warden. Enough power to be hunted, but not enough to save yourself. Not enough to stop me from using my powers around you.” He tightened his grip, keeping my arms locked firmly at my sides. “As long as you don’t touch my skin, you can’t do anything to me.”

I noticed then what I’d missed before. He wore thin, tight-fitting gloves. His face was the only exposed skin.

He’d come prepared. He knew exactly what I was and how I was broken.

If I could just touch his skin. Just once. But my arms were pinned.

I’d never been more bitter about being broken.

“It would be so easy,” he mused, loosening his grip enough to make me scream. “Just open my hands and let gravity do the rest.”

I forced myself to breathe, to think past the terror clouding my mind. Screaming wouldn’t help. Panicking wouldn’t help. I needed to keep him talking, buy time for someone, anyone, to notice I was gone. But other than Havoc, I couldn’t think of anyone who would even note my absence.

“Why?” I managed to ask. “Why kill us? What threat could we possibly be to you?”

“It’s the fact that you could out me,” he hissed, bringing his face closer to mine. “The fact that you can resist my power. Right now your mind should be fucking fractured with fear, but there’s only this paltry amount.”

I felt it then, a strange pressure against my consciousness. He was attempting to feed on my fear, to amplify it and twist it until my mind shattered. I’d seen what Dread could do to people, how he could reduce even the strongest heroes to whimpering, broken shells with just his presence.

But nothing happened to me. The pressure remained external, unable to penetrate whatever barrier my broken ability had created.

“You can’t have it,” I whispered. “My fear isn’t yours to take.”

Rage flashed across his face, his red eyes flaring brighter. “That’s exactly the problem with Wardens. You deny us what is rightfully ours.”

He tried again, harder this time, a psychic battering ram against my mental walls. But they held firm. I couldn’t stop him from using his powers entirely, not without direct skin contact, but at least he couldn’t use them against me.

“Where are you taking me?” I gasped, struggling to speak against the rushing air as he moved faster.

Dread didn’t answer, his attention focused on navigating through the city at terrifying speed. We were heading away from downtown, across the bay, toward⁠—

My stomach dropped as I recognized our trajectory. The complex looming ahead was unmistakable even in darkness: the Crucible. A sprawling mock city built on an artificial island in the bay, designed to simulate urban combat conditions for training Supers.

Dread’s grip tightened painfully as we descended. Without warning, he released me about six feet from the ground. I crashed onto the grassy area that surrounded the facility, pain shooting through my shoulder and hip as I rolled to a stop.

Dread landed beside me and pulled something from his pocket. He tapped it several times, his red eyes reflecting the blue light.

The Hammer. I’d only seen the picture once, but I knew the device.

A low hum that I hadn’t even noticed suddenly ceased. The barely visible shimmer of the protective barrier surrounding the facility flickered and disappeared.

I scrambled backward, ignoring the pain shooting through my shoulder. My fingers scraped against the dirt as I tried to put distance between us. It was futile, I knew that, but instinct drove me to try, anyway.

Dread watched my pathetic attempt at escape with something like amusement before casually stepping forward and grabbing my arm. He lifted me off the ground and launched us both into the air again.

We soared over the perimeter wall and into the mock city itself, a perfect miniature replica of downtown Chroma Bay, complete with scaled-down skyscrapers, alleyways, and town squares. All designed for combat training.

Dread flew to what would be the central plaza in the real Chroma Bay and dropped me unceremoniously. I hit the ground, rolling several times before coming to a stop against a decorative planter. Pain lanced through my ankle and ribs, and I tasted blood where I’d bitten my cheek.

He landed a few yards away, his red eyes glowing in the darkness as he stalked toward me.

I struggled to my feet, every muscle screaming in protest. How had he found me? How long had he known? We’d been hidden for twenty years, our identities protected by layers of secrecy and misdirection.

“How?” I managed, spitting blood onto the concrete. “How did you find out what I was? That information isn’t exactly in the public domain.”