Chapter 240

Alexander stepped through the portal and onto the station.

The corridor stretched in both directions, lit by the dull red glow of emergency lighting. The only sound was the low hum of atmospheric processors working somewhere behind the walls. Inside the helmet, the HUD lit up, displaying atmospheric data. The oxygen was lower than it should be, but breathable. Pressure normal.

That meant the station’s systems were running on minimum, keeping conditions survivable but not comfortable.

He reached outward with his powers.

Metallokinesis traced the station’s structure. Technopathy probed the machines and devices that were still running. Electrokinesis swept outward, hunting for bioelectrical signatures.

The suit’s worship flooded in immediately.

The moment he split his focus, the OACS surged through the gap. Every processor, every sensor, every subsystem pressing its adoration into him now that his concentration was no longer holding it at bay. It crowded against the base of his skull, hot and relentless.

He gritted his teeth and ignored it.

The station was intact. No breaches. No structural damage. Most of the machinery was offline, running on emergency protocols to conserve power. Atmospheric processors. Gravity plating. Basic lighting. A few smaller devices still hummed, but everything else was dark.

Dozens of mundane signatures registered aboard the docked ship. Crew or workers. Nobody superhuman.

Then he located two signatures on the station, many levels below him, deep in the facility’s core. Their Wills rose the instant his probing sense touched them, shutting him out completely.

Alexander opened the comms channel. “The ship is clear of superhumans. Proceed once Talia confirms she has access to their systems. I’ve got two targets on the station. Moving out.”

“Copy,” Augustus said.

The portal snapped shut behind him.

Alexander reached into the ring.

Drones poured out, filling the surrounding hallway. Combat drones spread into formation. The two shield drones took flanking positions at his sides, joining Droney as personal security.

The surveillance drone emerged last. Angular, faceted, its pyramidal studs catching the red light.

He gave it the command.

It spun and fragmented. Fifty smaller units burst outward, scattering down the corridor and into every branch and vent they could find. Within seconds, feeds of the nearby spaces began streaming back through the command drone’s filters. Empty halls. Dark laboratories. Sealed storage bays. Workstations with screens still glowing on standby.

A station of this size would take anywhere between three and five hundred to operate. Instead, there was no movement anywhere.

Alexander pulsed Metallokinesis and lifted slowly off the floor. He leaned forward, and the power carried him down the corridor, accelerating into the red-lit darkness as the combat drones spread out ahead and behind him.

He turned down another hallway just as Droney fed him another stream of images from the surveillance network.

Bodies.

They lined the hallways. Slumped against walls. Collapsed in doorways. Sprawled across the deck in positions that said they’d dropped where they stood.

The injuries were consistent. Burn marks. Some were thin lines scored across the torso or neck. Others were single holes punched through the head or chest. Clean. Precise. Every one of them fatal.

Alexander slowed as more feeds arrived. Bodies in the crew quarters. In the corridors one level down. In what looked like a control room, two men slumped over their consoles.

Then the cafeteria.

The surveillance drone’s feed showed a wide, low-ceilinged room. Tables and chairs. Trays of food. Dozens of people had been eating when it happened. A single line of scorched destruction had swept across the room from left to right, cutting through everyone at chest height where they sat.

One of the smaller drones drifted close to the far wall where the line ended. The damage bit less than a finger’s width into the steel. Whether Radiant had held back or whether that was the limit of what that particular attack could do was a question he’d be answering shortly.

They suspected Radiant was responsible for killing the mercenaries at the base in Europe, back when they first crossed paths. But there was no proof the man was a monster.

Now he had it. And it didn’t change a thing. If anything, it simplified the conversation he was about to have.

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As he passed each room, he held back and let the drones sweep first. He’d fought enough people with unusual powers to no longer trust Electrokinesis completely. Invisibility. Signature masking. Biological manipulation. Being dead. There were too many ways to hide from a single sense.

The way ahead sloped downward. He followed it deeper until it ended at a sealed bulkhead.

Alexander reached into the station’s systems and commanded it open.

It slid aside.

The space beyond opened up before him. A wide atrium, circular, stretching upward through multiple levels of the station. Wrap-around balconies ringed each floor, connected by stairways that curved along the outer walls. The ceiling far above was a reinforced observation dome, Jupiter’s banded surface visible through the glass, casting pale light across the interior.

Plants grew everywhere. Climbing vines along the railings. Potted trees on the balconies. Garden beds built into the ground floor, filled with greenery that softened every hard edge. Benches and low seating areas were scattered between the planters. No consoles. No workstations. Just open space, designed to give people who lived permanently inside a metal shell something to look at that wasn’t metal.

Every station had one. A psychological human necessity for long-term habitation. Somewhere the crew could sit and remember what home felt like.

Standing at the other end of the atrium, arms crossed, was Radiant.

He wore flip-flops and a bright pink shirt, unbuttoned halfway. Sunglasses sat low on his nose. He looked like a man waiting for a drink at a resort bar, not someone standing in the middle of a facility he’d just depopulated.

Alexander descended into the atrium slowly, drones spreading out around him, some taking positions along the balconies above. Others remained in tight formation around him, along with Droney and the shields. Every drone in his arsenal had already been retrofitted with Flashpoint in mind. Heat-resistant alloys. Reflective coatings. Energy-dissipating plating. Fire and light weren’t the same thing, but the physics overlapped enough that the preparations should pay off.

Radiant watched him come down. His expression didn’t change. “Rooke. Was wondering who had the balls to show up here uninvited.”

Alexander cocked his head. The suit complied smoothly. “Saw your handiwork. Why’d you slaughter everyone?”

Radiant shrugged. “Orders.”

“I see.” Alexander commanded the door closed behind him. Then sealed all the other exits. “I’m guessing that door behind you leads to wherever Santiago is hiding? He send you up here to protect him?”

“Kid, Gabriel Santiago doesn’t need any protection from the likes of you. You’re a baby in the supe world. I came up because I was bored.”

Alexander grinned. Disappointing that Radiant couldn’t see it behind the opaque visor. He’d make do. “You have a really cool power. Light. Can’t get much better than laser beams, right?” He waved a hand at him. “Way more dangerous than my lightning, which I can’t even use properly in this thing.”

“Why not?”

“Ah. The military gifted it to me, and I rushed straight here. Didn’t have time to modify it.”

“Seems like a rookie mistake, Rooke. The kind that will get you killed.”

Alexander laughed. “That’s okay, because my powers are better than yours. They’re versatile. I’ve already sealed all the doors.”

Radiant raised an eyebrow. “Pointless. I can cut through them once I’m done with you.”

Alexander nodded. Then he pointed a finger up at the ceiling of thick reinforced glass and steel. “Right, so about that. If you try to flee, I’m going to rip the station open and kill you that way.”

Radiant glanced up. He frowned, eyes narrowing.

Alexander raised a second finger. “If the fight isn’t interesting, I’m going to rip the station open.” He raised a third finger. “If you start winning, I’m going to rip the station open.” He paused. “I’m a sore loser like that.”

Radiant’s face had gone pale.

“Basically, I’m going to use you to gain some experience, then I’m going to rip the station open. And kill you, in case that wasn’t clear. This situation is so unfair to you that it’s not even going to be an actual fight. You’re just going to try desperately to kill me. Then, after we’re done, I’m going to murder Santiago for being an absolute dick.”

Alexander waited. It was coming. Any moment now. The one thing he really, really needed, that only someone as dangerous as Radiant could give him.

Radiant’s Will exploded out of him.

It hit Alexander like a wall of pressure, crashing across the atrium with enough force to bend the trees. Branches snapped backward. Leaves tore free and scattered. The potted plants on the upper balconies shuddered as the displaced air rolled upward through the tiers, rustling foliage all the way to the observation dome.

Then came the Domain.

It was nothing like the Wills he’d clashed with before. Willpower was a wave. Fluid. It pushed and pulled, forming peaks and lows that could be contested. A Domain was something else entirely. It pressed against reality itself, an absolute boundary backed by both Will and superpower fused into a single, suffocating declaration of ownership.

It said the atrium belonged to Radiant. That the light itself was his. His Domain said so, and reality agreed.

Alexander’s Will burst outward in response, driven by Ambition and the cold certainty that no one owned the ground the Machine God stood upon.

Willpower collided with Willpower in the space between them.

The pressure was staggering. Nothing like what he’d experienced when he’d encountered Bardot and Kitty. That had been a gentle greeting in comparison.

Alexander felt it in his teeth, behind his eyes, pressing against his skull, even inside the suit. The OACS worship vanished beneath the weight of it, drowned out entirely. His drones shuddered in their formations, a few of the less repaired ones dropping as they died under the onslaught of the competing forces.

But he held. His Will was weaker than Radiant’s. He knew that. The gap between a real Tier 3 and a Tier 2 wasn’t something confidence alone could bridge. But it didn’t break him. It didn’t buckle his knees or force him backward.

Then something changed. Animachina already empowered the suit, Droney, the shield drones, and the others defending him. Technopathy reached into every system aboard the station. Metallokinesis held him aloft. Electrokinesis pumped throughout his body.

But now they also leaked outward, merging with his Willpower. Sparks of electricity danced in the air. The surrounding metal curved outward, bending away from him.

Radiant’s eyebrows rose above the rim of his sunglasses.

Alexander grinned inside the helmet. There it was.

The thing he needed. A Tier 3 Domain, pressing against him with everything it had, giving him something to push against, to study, to learn from.

This was going to be the most educational fight of his life.

Light burst from behind Radiant in a blinding flash.

The man launched forward.