That awful sinking feeling burrowed in Toric’s chest. It was a new certainty that this moment wasn’t going to belong to him. Even though he’d bled for it.

He wasn’t the kind of man that believed in ghosts or saviors. And yet, there in the sky hovered a man dressed in holy white, floating down from the heavens to look on them like a divine judgment waiting to be executed.

The man hung in the air as if on string from beyond the atmosphere. He remained suspended above the pavement at the far end of the plaza, lingering just beyond the edge of the barricade. His long, pale cloak moved through the air like smoke in the rising wind, his body caught in a slow, weightless motion.

Streaks of white-blue lightning crawled in threads across his arms, as if drawn to him. A magnetizing force that even the air itself couldn’t escape. 

Everyone below him in the plaza had fallen still, even the Unified soldiers. The armor clad men stood frozen, their shields falling slack in their arms with a creeping kind of dread. Even the drones seem to have faltered, their usual jittering corrections gone, leaving behind an unnatural calmness.

It was as if the city had been built around the man in white, and no one had noticed until now. As if he’d always been part of the glass and heat, and just been waiting to be perceived. 

His eyes were like pale glowing rings of a white hot plasma, searing through the haze of the boulevard. His head moved microscopically, and for one unbearable moment, he looked directly at Toric.

The plaza, the frantic shouting, the entire rebellion itself all blurred into the heat of that single, momentary gaze.

Vox’s stare was level and unreadable, like that of a creature only wearing human skin. The heat of it was impossible to hold yet somehow, even harder to break away from. The weight of it defied logic, and in it was a sense of recognition so sharp it felt like a biological intrusion. It was as if Vox already knew him. Like he’d been standing in the center of this chaos simply waiting for Toric to arrive. 

For the first time in a long, long time, Toric’s tactical mind went dead silent. He’d forgotten his next move. He didn't even seem to remember what game he’d been playing. His stomach turned cold, an unsettled knot tightening deep in the pit of his core. 

A rifle hitting the ground across the plaza sent out a loud crack of metal against concrete, and yellow-white sparks bloomed out of the connection like tiny flowers.

The officer who dropped it had frozen solid and gone as pale as a sheet; it was as if a specter had passed through him. Another wave of recognition setting in. The others held their positions, but their lines had loosened in a subtle panic. Shaking fingers hovered just shy of triggers.

Vox hovered with effortless stillness, his cape twisting lazily in the heat-thick wind, the ripples of lightning crawling slowly along the length of his arms. The most unnerving part wasn't the display of power, it was that the bristling line of riot rifles didn't seem to faze him in the slightest. 

He kept his eyes locked onto Toric, as if the only point of interest in the entire square was the single rebel commander. Heads in the crowd followed the metahuman’s gaze to fall upon him, and soon the weight of hundreds of eyes were pinning Toric to the pavement.

What was special about him? He wasn’t the only rebel bleeding through the crowd. From above, dozens of red speckles threaded the mass of bodies. There was nothing particularly interesting about Toric. And yet, he could feel the desperate thrum of his own pulse slamming against his eardrums like a rhythmic hammer. The hard-wired instincts of his military background found themselves reeling back from the unnerving, crushing pressure of that mist-green gaze.

Then someone’s desperate command, boomed through the silence.

“Light him up!”

A line of muzzles rose in perfect sync, the sound of repositioning like a fine clatter of falling stones. The sound of gunfire cracked and split open the air. The sharp flashes of muzzle light dancing like their own kind of lightning.

Vox didn’t blink, but his eyes finally moved away from Toric in that moment, flicking over to the line of raised firearms with a kind of bemused boredom. He slowly lifted his right hand and without warning, the bullets stopped midair. The sound that followed the inversion of motion was a wind hissing screech. The pellets held aloft, suspended like buzzing flies caught in sap. Then, one by one, they dropped from the air to the earth with a soft, metallic patter against the stone.

Gasps rippled through the crowd like a wave. Vox flexed his fingers into a loose grasp before his wrist gave a soft tug and the guns jerked themselves free.

In Vox’s grasp, the instruments of oppression became nothing more than useless hunks of scrap. Rifles, pistols, stun batons, grenades; anything still clipped to a belt all tugged themselves free with the small effort of a palm. Straps tore open, and screws popped loose from the force as chest plates, helmets, and shields pulled into the air subsequently. The display was surgical, leaving the once-menacing line of soldiers standing bare and defenseless. Vox blinked finally, a predatory glint flashing behind pale, silvered eyes.

The debris spun in midair, a clattering cyclone of broken authority that seemed to mock the regime’s power. Some soldiers collapsed where they stood, while others staggered back in horrified awe. Their bodies had now become vulnerable beneath the weightless ruin of the gear that had once made them dangerous. Toric held his breath, his heart hammering against his ribs with a dull, frantic throb.

Vox held the arsenal aloft for one short moment, before he let the weapons rain down behind the front lines of the crowd in fair reach of the desperate sea of hands that immediately scrambled for the fallen shields and rifles. 

Then, the crowd surged forward with a renewed, primal vigor. They poured through the opening in the line like floodwater, and the roar of the uprising finally snapped Toric back into his own skin. His voice cracked like a whip as he began yelling orders into his comm.

“Go!” His voice boomed. “Move now! Now!” He charged forward with the surge. 

Rebel squads peeled off from the surrounding flanks, full of adrenaline. They wouldn’t get another window like this. Kael was ahead, already pushing toward the central stairwell with a team of five soldiers in tow. 

Above, the rebellion’s snipers came alive. Muzzle flashes flickered from the surrounding rooftops like strobe lights, clearing the balconies where the stripped guards were scrambling for cover. Without their armor, the soldiers looked weak. The men ducking behind pillars and clawing at locked doors that refused to open.

Mist-fine sprays of crimson painted the polished glass panels as the guards were systematically cut down.

The remaining Unified troops were poorly placed, and even son, had been scattered by the crowd and the speed of the breached entry. Those who Vox had overlooked, had managed to retain their pistols, but in the midst of the chaos, their aim was poor. A few got lucky and clipped passing bodies, but the flood ever slowed. Another reached for comm to alert for backup, and Toric shot him in the throat before he even managed to raise it to his frantic lips.

There wasn’t time to think. Just move. Move. Sweep that corridor. Get that room cleared. Toric’s voice was a blade, barking commands that sliced through the mass hysteria of the plaza outside. 

He moved with a fluid, lethal grace, his rifle tucked tight to his shoulder as he led his squad through the Spire’s sprawling arteries. They marched and conquered floor by floor, ensuring no witness was left behind to raise an alarm. Every hallway that had once hummed with the the Unified elite now echoed with the harsh thud of rebel boots and the wet, gurgling gasps of the dying. By the time they reached the upper tiers, the expensive, filtered air of the Spire had been choked out by the heavy, metallic stench of blood and gunsmoke. 

By the time they reached the executive floor, what was left of Sector Nine’s inner circle had begun to scatter. Cabinet members and corporate lobbyists scrambled, clawing at the security doors, or hiding behind columns, trying desperately to get away as if shoving each other into closets would save them.

Toric didn’t slow for even for a second. With the lower floors now secured, his men broke off in a staggered formation, to snipe the remaining trembling bodies with surgical precision. 

The Castellan’s office sat at the end of a long, cold corridor on the uppermost floor, all echo and shine, with ceilings that stretched too high for comfort and lights too bright. The pristine hallway was lined with painted portraits of the dead and the powerful, now darkened by smoke curling in from the floors, and raving plaza below.

Two guards stood flanking the large, heavy office doors that shielded the Castellan’s final hiding place. They were the kind of men who had clearly bought their way into power rather than bled for it. Their fear was evident t in the tremor of their hands and the shallow set of their boots on the floor. They were dressed for intimidation, they were not prepared for the reality of an incoming bullet.

It was so painfully clear that they had been relying on the riot line to keep the protest at bay, but that line was gone now. The armored wall they’d trusted was nothing but a heap of unshielded bodies now, a wet pile of flesh piling up like cordwood at the foot of the Spire’s entrance.

The guards panicked at the sight of Toric’s rugged, military hardened stance. They didn't even raise their weapons in time, before Toric’s cleaning placed shot hit the first one in the neck. The impact ripped a sound out of the man’s throat that wasn’t more of a wet, broken gargle than a scream. Blood sprayed in a sudden, violent arc against the pristine white wall, before the body slid down, twitching in the red smear it left behind.

The second guard didn’t even try to fight, he tried to run; his clean boots squeaking on the expensive flooring. The terrified man didn’t even make it more than two steps before Toric dropped him cold with a clean bullet just above the brow. His head snapped back with that of a sickening crack, and a must of blood singed the air copper for a fraction of a second before his body hit the floor with a flat, heavy sound. 

Toric didn't even pause to look at them; he simply stepped over their cooling remains, his boots tracking fresh prints down polished stone.

The ornately decorated, trimmed and paneled office doors loomed over him for only a heartbeat before he drove his boot into them, blowing them wide open, the smoke curdling in behind him in heavy waves of heat and soot. 

He looked like a specter of the very war the elite had tried to ignore. A spray of blood had dried tackily along his cheek, a map of the floors he’d just conquered. The suffocating scent of smoke and iron clung to him, tainting the climate-controlled air of the Castellan’s inner sanctuary. Despite the red on his skin and the grit under his nails, every inch of Toric remained composed and resolute. 

Inside, the office looked too clean. It was nothing like the starved, rust streaked industrial decay below. As the families struggled for bread in the dirt, the elite flaunted their opulence and greed like dragons hoarding treasure. A fortune to be seen, but not shared. Toric’s mouth twisted into disgust at the sight of it.

The Castellan was exactly where Toric expected. Curling under his own desk like a child, whispering frantically into a wrist comm that his team had jammed with their signal disruptors before his boots had ever reached the top floor.

“… I repeat, we’re breached… I need extraction—!”

Toric kicked the desk hard enough to crack the wood, the sound a violent punctuation that echoed off the clean white walls like a funeral bell. As the desk lurched away, papers scattered. and a metal pen holder clattered to the floor. It revealed a sweaty, panicked, pathetic man who was coiled into the fetal position as if that would save him.   

The Castellan flinched at the sound like he’d been struck, the heavyset man rolling onto his side with a wheezing grunt. His pristine white collar was soaked straight through with sweat running down his neck in fat, ugly lines. He hadn’t even shed one drop of blood, and he looked like he was already dying.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” he choked out in a desperate high voice filled with panic. “Killing me won’t fix this. You can’t win. You people won’t win.”

Toric let out a low breath, something that wasn’t quite a sigh. Something like a  laugh. He tilted his head slightly and smirked, but there was no warmth in it. The curl didn’t reach his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “But it might make me feel better.”

Then Toric stepped forward, bending at the knees to grab the front of the man’s suit jacket. He  hauled him upright in one violent jerk. The Castellan’s head lolled forward, his face dangling inches from Toric’s and their breaths mixed together. One was calm, and one was sour with panic. The stink of fear rolling  off the man in waves made Toric’s nose scrunch and his stomach lurch. 

“Wait—” the Castelan gasped. “Just—just tell me what you want! I can get it for you.”

Toric said nothing. The resolution materialized in a sharp upward twitch of his upper lip.

“Money?” the Castellan stammered, his breath hitching violently as he fought to stable his grasp on Toric’s fist, which had curled into claws in his lapel. “Power? I can g-get you listed, give you a title, I c-can put you in uniform—you want my seat? You want this fucking office? It’s yours. Just say the word. We can deal!”

When Toric spoke, it came out as a flat rasp. “No more rationing.”

It wasn’t really a request at all, it was a sentence. Though, the sweating man in his clutches didn't seem to realize that. He started nodding as if Toric was haggling with him and he was taking the deal with an awaiting handshake..

“There will be no more standing in the cold for a fucking bar of soap while you bastards eat off silver platters and pretend you fucking earned it.”

He shoved the Castellan back with a righteous rage that was as calm as it was final. The man crumpled away with a gasp, catching himself awkwardly with one hand. His breath was still hitching in shallow gasps as he tried to right himself up again. The air sung with the stink of him, sour and bitter. His expensive cologne turning into a foul acid reek in the man’s panic.