Vanessa stared at the detonator in her hand until her fingers ached.
It was smaller than she expected. Heavy enough to feel real. Red LED. A row of tiny, malicious lights like a heartbeat.
She felt the room shift. The lights were gone. Ergency glow painted everything green and grainy. The vault looked like a scene in infrared. Shapes and shadows.
Then the speaker clicked back on, voice calm and clinical.
"Walk."
Vanessa did not hesitate. You didn’t argue with a voice like that. Not with a bank rigged for a show.
She moved slowly. Her palm tightened around the plasti.
Half a breath into her first step, the voice cut in again — sharper this ti.
"No—no. Look behind you."
She did.
At first she thought it was a mannequin. The place was dark. Her eyes hunted for the impossible. Then a red dot—low, precise—painted the air. A glint of tal. A muzzle. The man holding the gun stood farther back in the zzanine gloom. He looked like a silhouette painted with spite.
Vanessa let out a small, dry sound that was almost a laugh.
"What now?" she asked.
The speaker went dead.
The man stepped forward until his voice replaced the speaker’s: flat, controlled, the kind of voice that had rehearsed cruelty.
"I will be commanding you now."
There it was: the ownership. The posture of a man who believed a remote could beco god.
A different kind of irritation flared in Vanessa — sharp and hot. She hated being told what to do. But this wasn’t the ti for theatrics.
"What do you want to do?" she said instead. Neutral. Even.
He didn’t answer with a plan. He answered with an order.
"Walk before . I’ll tell you when we get there."
She sighed. A little sound. Private, annoyed. Then she started walking again.
He stepped aside to make a corridor of shadow for her. Close enough that the barrel of his gun kissed the air beside her shoulder. Close enough to remind her that the detonator could end everything in one heartbeat.
"If you try anything funny, this whole place goes boom," he said.
Boom. The word hung like a promise.
Vanessa kept walking. Her hands stayed where they could be seen. Her shoulders were steady. Her face practiced calm. Inside her head, she catalogued exits, cara blind spots, likely locations for planted devices. She counted steps. She rehearsed a dozen possible moves. None of them had ti. Not yet.
On the next floor up, the scene was its own brand of absurd.
Dickson had three n in his personal space. Guns ward leather near his temple. The trio slled like old cigarettes and poorer life choices. The man closest to him rested the weapon against the back of Dickson’s head like a bored, dangerous finger.
"We don’t have much use for you," one of them said, voice flat, businesslike. "So if you do anything stupid we’ll blow your brains off."
Dickson blinked. Then his mouth started doing the thing his brain always sent it to do: fill silence with sothing stupid.
"Yo, chill the fuck out," he said. He tried for nonchalance. He failed. The words flopped into the room like a wet towel. "I’m not going anywhere."
The truth in his voice was a thin animal. He sounded small. He sounded like soone who’d been pulled from a warm bed and shoved into the wrong movie.
"I don’t even wanna be here," he added. "I should be eating my beef."
There it was. The confession. The ridiculousness. He tried to laugh it off. The n didn’t.
One of them tightened his grip. The barrel pressed a constellation of pressure into the soft part of Dickson’s skull.
"Shut the fuck up," the gunman said, and the sound was final.
Dickson’s breath hitched. The stupid grin died. Fear edged the corners of his voice — but underneath that fear, sothing fiercer flickered. He had just discovered powers like the rest of them. It made him feel ridiculous and electrical. There was a tiny current of excitent underneath the terror. It made his hands shake in a new way.
He tried another tactic. Begging, but casual: "Co on. You gotta feel for at least. Just let go, man. You won’t ever see here again."
The n’s patience was a narrow thing. It snapped and re-set itself like a loaded trap.
"One more sound from you," the man said, the words slow and precise, "and I will put a bullet down your head."
The sentence landed like a hamr.
It wasn’t theatrical. Not a threat floated to intimidate. It was the chanical finality of a man who’d done this kind of math before — the math where soone else’s noise costs you your life.
"Fine, fine, fine! I’ll shut my ass up!" Dickson raised his hands quickly, his tone sharp with fear and frustration.
The man pressing the gun to the back of his skull loosened slightly, smirking as if he’d just won. He relaxed, thinking the idiot in front of him had finally learned his place.
But the instant he relaxed—Dickson moved.
He spun, grabbing the muzzle of the gun with both hands. Sparks crackled around his fingers, electricity flashing out like snapping whips.
"Ughhhhhh!" the man scread as his entire body lit up. The lightning surged straight through him, muscles locking, eyes rolling back as his fra convulsed violently. His scream was cut short when Dickson pushed everything he had into the attack, pouring raw power out of him like water from a broken dam.
The stench of burning clothes filled the air. The robber’s grip faltered, the weapon slipping out of his hand as his body stiffened, then jerked backward.
He hit the ground with a heavy thud. His chest didn’t rise. His arms twitched once and then went limp.
Instant kill.
"You fucker!" the second robber roared, his fury echoing through the floor. Without wasting ti, he aid and pulled the trigger.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
The shots were deafening at this range. Dickson’s eyes went wide—he was too close. There was no way to dodge. His body moved on panic alone, arms shooting up to cover his head. He crouched down, bracing for the bullets to rip into him, eyes squeezed shut.
This is it. I’m dead.
But the pain never ca.
Instead, a deep, bone-chilling cold wrapped around him. It wasn’t death. It was sothing else.
Dickson slowly cracked one eye open. In front of him, a thick, gleaming wall of ice stood firm, bullets lodged deep inside its surface. Not one had broken through.
His jaw dropped. "No way..."
Heart pounding, he spun his head around—and saw her.
His cousin.
"You beautiful bastard!" Dickson shouted without thinking, pure relief bursting out of him. He sprinted to her side imdiately, ducking behind her body like a shaless child hiding behind a parent.
Lilith turned her head slightly, one eyebrow raised in irritation, her sharp eyes glinting. "Hiding behind a woman? What happened to your pride as a man?"
Dickson poked his head out from over her shoulder, eyes still wide, adrenaline making him twitchy. "Pride later. Survival first," he shot back, ducking even lower when the second robber adjusted his aim.
The two n left standing didn’t fire. They exchanged uneasy glances, eyes flicking from the ice wall back to the woman who had made it appear in seconds. They weren’t stupid—this wasn’t sothing they could just ignore.
"Who the fuck are you?" one of them asked, voice tight with tension. He held his gun steady, but his hands weren’t as firm as before.
Lilith didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
While the man spoke, his partner shifted carefully, lowering his hand toward the walkie-talkie clipped to his vest. He thought the darkness gave him cover, thought she was too busy glaring down his friend to notice.
He was wrong.
Lilith chuckled softly, a cold sound that made Dickson shiver even though he was behind her. She lifted her finger, barely moving it.
In an instant, an ice blade appeared out of nowhere. Long, sharp, glistening, it flew across the room faster than the eye could track.
Shhhk!
The sword cut clean. His head separated from his shoulders before he even understood what had happened. His eyes widened, mouth opening as if to scream—but the sound never ca.
Thud.
His head hit the floor first, bouncing once before rolling lazily across the ground.
Roll.
It turned over and over, streaking a thin line of red as it went.
Thud.
Finally, his body dropped, collapsing like a sack of at, blood gushing from the severed stump.
The room went still.
The last man swallowed hard, his weapon trembling in his hands as his gaze flicked between the rolling head, the pooling blood, and the cold woman who had killed his partner with nothing more than a flick of her finger.
Dickson peeked again from behind her shoulder, his face pale but his mouth moving faster than his brain. "Holy shit... remind never to piss you off."
Lilith didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. The ice wall glistened under the dim light, the severed head resting at her feet like a warning.
User Comments
0 comments from readers