Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"Stay down, you piece of trash, or I'll paint this alley with your brains," the man spat.
A heavy, armored boot slammed into my ribs, pinning me against the wet concrete. I didn't scream. I didn't even blink. I just stared up at the rain-slicked neon signs of Ironport, feeling the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. My chest felt like it had been crushed by a mountain, but that was probably because this body was a joke. A frail, shaking, street-brawler's shell that didn't belong to me.
"Where is the girl?" the squad leader barked. He was wearing a Vanguard Corporate helmet—sleek, white, and arrogant. He leaned in, his voice distorted by the comms system. "We know the brat is here. Give her up, and maybe we'll let you bleed out slowly."
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a wet cough. *Slowly?* I had watched stars collapse. I had rewritten the laws of physics to suit my whims. Now, I was being stepped on by a corporate lapdog in a suit of plastic.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I rasped. My voice sounded wrong. Too high. Too desperate.
"Liar." The leader shifted his weight, pressing the boot harder into my sternum. I heard a rib crack. "You're a low-life scavenger. You'd sell your own mother for a credit chip. Where. Is. Mina?"
I didn't answer. Instead, I focused. Deep inside the wreck of this chest, there was a spark. A tiny, flickering ember of what used to be my gravity core. It was shattered, barely a fraction of its former glory, but it was still there. It felt like a needle of white-hot ice piercing through my veins.
"Still playing mute?" The leader stepped back, raising a high-frequency blade that hummed with a lethal, blue light. "Fine. I'll just take your fingers one by one until you find your tongue."
"You talk too much," I whispered.
"What?"
I didn't give him a second chance to ask. I reached out, my fingers twitching, and gripped the edge of his armored boot. I didn't pull. I didn't push. I just *compressed*.
*Crunch.*
The sound of reinforced carbon-fiber snapping echoed through the alley. The leader let out a strangled yelp as his foot was suddenly crushed into the pavement, the gravity in a three-inch radius spiking to ten thousand times the norm. He wasn't just pinned; he was being fused into the concrete.
"What the hell!" one of the other soldiers shouted, leveling a rifle at my head. "Get off him! Now!"
I ignored him. I felt the rush—the familiar, intoxicating pull of the void. I shifted my gaze to the soldier with the gun. He was shaking. He could feel it too. The rain around us stopped falling. It didn't just stop; it hovered. Thousands of tiny droplets froze in mid-air, suspended in a shimmering, static veil.
"Is this what you call a superpower?" I asked, my voice growing steadier, colder. I began to rise, not by pushing off the ground, but by simply deciding that 'down' was no longer where I belonged. I floated an inch off the grime, the air humming with a low, guttural vibration.
"Shoot him! Shoot him now!" the leader screamed, his voice cracking as he struggled to pull his leg from the crater I'd made.
*Bang.*
The bullet ripped through the air, but it never reached me. Three inches from my face, it slowed. Then it stopped. It just sat there, spinning uselessly in the air, trapped in a localized gravity well.
I looked at the bullet, then at the soldier. "My turn."
I snapped my fingers.
The bullet didn't just fly back; it accelerated. The kinetic energy doubled, then tripled. It tore through the soldier's shoulder, throwing him backward into a stack of rusted crates with a sickening thud.
"You... you're a rogue!" the leader gasped, his helmet cracked, revealing a face twisted in pure terror. "Who are you? What unit are you from?"
I drifted closer, my shadow stretching long and jagged across the alley. I reached out and grabbed the front of his helmet. My hand didn't just hold the metal; it started to warp it. The white plating groaned, bending inward like wet paper.
"I'm the man who's going to make you wish you'd stayed in bed," I told him. I tightened my grip. The helmet collapsed, crushing the man's screams into a muffled, metallic wheeze. I didn't kill him—not yet. I just wanted him to feel the weight of a world that hated him.
I tossed him aside like a piece of garbage.
"Kaelen..."
The voice was small. Broken. I turned around.
At the end of the alley, huddled behind a dumpster, was a girl. She couldn't have been more than ten. Her clothes were oversized and filthy, soaked through with rain and grime. But it was her eyes that stopped me—wide, iridescent, and shimmering with a terrifying clarity. She was bleeding from a jagged cut on her forehead, the crimson staining her pale skin.
She didn't look at me with fear. She looked at me like she already knew how I was going to die.
I walked toward her, my boots clicking on the pavement. The gravity around me settled, the rain suddenly slamming back down in a torrential burst.
"Are you the one?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
"The one what?" I asked, reaching down.
As my hand touched her shoulder, a jolt of electricity shot through me. Not a power, but a vision. A flash of a white laboratory, a screaming man in a suit, and a giant orbital lens focusing a beam of pure light onto this exact coordinate.
I pulled back, frowning. "What was that?"
Mina—the girl—didn't answer. She leaned forward, her small body collapsing against my coat. She gripped the fabric with trembling fingers, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. She looked up at me, her eyes glazing over, a sudden, violent seizure racking her frame.
"Ten minutes," she choked out, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. "Ten minutes... then the orbital guns erase this block."
I froze. Orbital guns? In a slum like this?
"Who's firing?" I demanded, shaking her slightly. "Mina, look at me. Who is coming?"
She didn't answer. Her head slumped against my chest, unconscious.
Just as I shifted to pick her up, a sharp, metallic *click* sounded behind my ear. The cold muzzle of a handgun pressed firmly into the base of my skull.
"Don't move a muscle, Gravity Boy," a woman's voice purred. It was smoky, dangerous, and entirely too confident. "Drop the kid, put your hands on your head, and maybe I won't blow a hole through your medulla oblongata."
I didn't even have to turn around to know she was fast. I could feel the displaced air, the scent of ozone and expensive leather.
"I'm having a very bad day," I said softly. "Do you really want to be part of it?"
"I'm a professional," she replied, the hammer of the gun clicking back. "And right now, your head has a very high price tag on it. So, here's the deal: you give me the girl, and I might let you live long enough to see the fireworks."
I felt the gravity core in my chest flare. I didn't know this woman, but I knew the type. A fixer. A mercenary. A predator.
I started to turn my head, just a fraction.
"I said *don't move*," she hissed, pressing the gun harder into my skin. "One more inch and I pull this trigger."