May 23rd - 11 h 11 PM

As the screams of agony ends in the alleyway, the neighborhood filled with cops remains agitated by the commotion.

People inside the buildings are hiding from the chaos, while those unfortunate enough to watch the scene from outside, too close to the action, flee with fear for their lives. When the city you know and love is subjugated to trauma like this, it already starts to feel less like home and more like hell. Bars and restaurants are either flooded or depleted of civilians running around. The officers with bits of their sanity intact work on helping people evacuate the terrible lieu de crime, but securing the perimeter in this madness is unfeasible.

Richard is shellshocked. He’s fixing his hands, replaying in his mind the naked woman he saw in his vision for a split second. He can’t quite make details of the face just yet. He believes to know exactly who it is, but he’s unconsciously complexifying the understanding process, immersed in the delusions of grandeur. He lost two of his proteges, one by physical death, the other by reputational death. Richard can barely recognize himself, shaking like a ghoul at the cusp of his career dying a dramatic death. 

Tayla McKenzie, a director who by all accounts shouldn’t be here, stares back at the distraught officer with an iota of pride on her face, leaning on a wall, legs crossed. She picks up an ear-piece-like device and arranges it on her left ear. She presses the arm touching the ear-piece on her other arm, with a suggestive look in her eyes.

Richard has a feral look in his eyes. His mind is about to go blank. Is Tayla a mutant? Is this how she was able to flash what is clearly her body in his own consciousness? That image seems real enough to have actually happened, so why can’t he remember when it occured? It is all jumbled up in his mind. He’s slowly losing it.

Tayla seems satisfied.

Richard temporarily snaps back to reality as other cops look terrorizd at what’s coming out the alleyway.

The giant, over seven feet tall monster of a machine, Toska.

“Tayla, we are ready to proceed with Delta-32. Tonight’s target was neutralized”, it speaks dreadfully to the director.

“Right… Thank you for taking care of my mess. It’s much appreciated. Also, we’ll have to bring the full arsenal. Too many civilians have left the zone”, responds Tayla. 

She presses on the small blue chip on her ear-piece.

“Code Delta-42! I repeat, code Delta-42!”

It takes ten seconds. Hundreds of portals appear out of nowhere all around the district. Civilians and police officers are left stunned. Between two and three hundred soldiers, wearing what seems to be armor from centuries in the future, appear out of those portals. Superior weapons, superior technology and superior sense of control over the situation. The dynamic is flipped on it's head by their sheer presence alone. 

What felt like Tayla being an intruder in this whole situation now feels like a clown revealing everyone else is the joke. Toska looks like an antique prototype compared to those shining soldiers wearing these white cream colored bodysuits.

There is no other command, no other directive. The soldiers proceeds without warning to shoot everybody that is near the vicinity. Every laser that touches a human body stops it from moving, freezing them in place like a statue.

“Alright, bring the arsenal here please!”, yells Tayla to a dozen super soldiers.

Richards stands up, ready to confront the woman that got him in those muddy waters.

“Tayla, you bastard! I swear you won’t get away with this!”

Before Richard can do anything, one of the soldiers shoots at him, freezing him in time.

“Well, that takes care of that”, speaks the director while moving on as if that just didn’t happen.

“Madame Tayla!”, yells a soldier while detaining York, defenseless and scared shitless. “This gentleman wanted to have a word with you.”

More then just scared, the young man is terribly ill, confused and tormented by the last 24 hours. Tayla approaches the young man and gives him the same motherly eyes he gives Clark. She recognizes him from this morning, when him and his two partners were securing the perimeter around Vil de Ville. Despite the actions she just commited, Tayla looks far more empathetic.

“I assume no amount of apologies will fix all this for you?”, begins the woman. York seemingly in tears, can’t fight back for the life of him.

“Why…What’s going on?? Who are these people?? A-Are we being invaded?? Is this… Is that what you are!?”

To Tayla, this counts as a foolish question. Though she understands the broken mind where the question comes from, she doesn’t get why York hasn’t tried fleeing like the rest of people.

“All I can say is that, even if I explained to you what’s going on, you would only misinterpret what I’m saying. Besides, you’ll have the unfortunate opportunity to see what’s about to happen for yourself”. She then gives the overwhelmed young man a kiss on the forehead.

[ Dream Devourer - Mind Snatcher: Enabled ]

Immediately, the young man falls unconscious, slowly closing his eyes like an angel falling in deep slumber.

At the same time York lands on the ground softly, A giant portal opens up on the ground. letting a gigantic tower the size of an apartment complex. The tower is mystique, a dark gray that mystifies it’s unorthodox silhouettes sculpted from what seems to be centuries ago. At the center of the tower resides a cube floating, invading the space as it cracks open just a little bit, leaving a bit of light peaking from the cube’s shell.

The ominous subsystem of Tayla reappears, emanating that same gruesome light from the cube, this time, without a name, a state or an ability to enable, but a poem:

[ I am the secret you want to keep 

I am the tears you can’t stop chocking 

My branches higher then clouds of dark smoke 

You’d have to climb the mountain

To find peak of misery

Who am I ? ]

Tayla looks at the screen. She looks sad. She closes her eyes. Faint echoes of a previous life yelps in the distance. She pretends to not hear them.

“...I refuse to answer your questions”.

As if an act of childish tantrum, the system disappears. Tayla sighs. Enforcers of the law captured. Law-abiding citizens detained against their will, people frozen in time. Tayla looks around, unable to hide her expression of disappointment and doubt. She breathes in and out, as if to finally let the accumulated hurt go. She already knows by now that it never helps.

“... These forsaken demons are everywhere… Even in my head.”

“Madame Tayla! We are ready for Delta-42!”, screams an officer, getting her out of her headspace.

She can’t help but fake a smirk filled with arrogance.

“Alright then, get ready boys and girls! We’re gonna be popping some fireworks!”, shouts Tayla McKenzie.

Toska has been observing the director quietly this whole time.