Page 116 of Villains Series

FOUR WEEKS AGO

SOUTHERN MERIT

NICK Folsetti sank onto the bench beside the block of lockers and began unwinding the tape from his hands. He ran his tongue along his inside cheek—he could still taste the tang of blood where his opponent had landed a punch.

The last of the tape came free, and Nick flexed, watching the skin on his knuckles tighten, harden to something like stone. It wasn’t stone, of course, or anything else. It was more like all the softness went out of him. All the weakness erased. He flexed again, his fingers gaining a sudden flush of color as they softened back into flesh and bone.

Nick could only harden himself in pieces—hands, ribs, shins, jaw—and even then, it was a conscious thing.

But it was a hell of a thing.

He’d heard the whispers, of the soldiers who came looking for people like him. Had gone down the online rabbit hole, dug up everything he could on ExtraOrdinaries in those first few days before he realized that was probably a giant red flag and switched to incognito searches on public computers.

EON—that’s what they were called. He kept picturing them like the people on TV shows, the ones who believed in ghosts or monsters or aliens. Nick had never been gullible, he didn’t really think they existed, these hunters.

But then again, up until six months ago, when Nick, fresh out of the hospital, put his hand through a wall, and the wall was the only thing that broke, he hadn’t believed in people like him either.

The bookie, Tavish, whistled from the doorway, a fresh toothpick between his teeth.

“For a guy your size, you sure can throw a punch.”

His chin bobbed toward the hall, the room, the ring.

“Bigger stages than this, you know.”

“You want me gone?”

asked Nick.

“I didn’t say that,”

said Tavish, shifting the toothpick in his mouth.

“Just saying, you ever looking to go big, I could help you … for a cut.”

“I’m not looking for more attention,”

said Nick.

“Just cash.”

“Suit yourself.”

The envelope arced through the air, landing on the bench beside him. It wasn’t all that thick, but it was untraceable, and more than enough to get by until the next fight. Which was all Nick needed.

“See you in three nights,”

said Tavish, disappearing down the hall.

Nick thumbed through the cash, then tucked it in his coat and headed out.

The alley light above the door was on the fritz again, the alley a tangle of shadows, the kind that played tricks on your eyes this late at night.

Nick lit a cigarette, the red tip dancing before him in the dark.

There was a rager going on in one of the nearby warehouses, the heavy pulse of the club’s bass blanketing the streets. Nick couldn’t hear his own heart over the beat, let alone the footsteps coming up behind him.

Didn’t know someone was there until the sudden flash of pain pierced his side. It caught him off guard, and for a second Nick thought he’d been shot, but when he looked down he saw, jutting between his ribs, a short metal dart. An empty vial.

He rounded, dizzy, expecting to see a cop, or a thug, or even an EON soldier, but there was only a single man, short and balding, wearing round glasses and a white lab coat.

That was the last thing Nick saw before his vision blurred, and his legs buckled, and everything went dark.

* * *

NICK came to in a steel room—a shipping crate, or maybe a storage locker, he couldn’t tell. His vision slid in and out of focus, his head pounding. Memory flickered back. The dart. The vial.

He tried to move, and felt the pull of restraints around his wrists and ankles, the rustle of plastic sheeting beneath his head.

Nick flexed, hardening his wrists, but it was no use. Solidity wasn’t the same as strength. The bonds had just enough give. They didn’t snap. He fought, then, thrashing against the table, until someone clicked their tongue.

“How quickly we devolve,”

said a voice behind his head.

“People become animals the moment they are caged.”

Nick twisted, craning until he caught the edge of a white coat.

“I apologize for the state of my lab,”

said the voice.

“It’s not ideal, I know, but science doesn’t bow to aesthetics.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

demanded Nick, twisting desperately against the restraints.

The white coat approached the table, and became a man. Thin. Balding. With round glasses and deep-set eyes the color of slate.

“My name,”

said the man, adjusting latex gloves.

“is Dr. Haverty.”

Something glinted in his hand, thin and silver and sharp. A scalpel.

“I promise, what’s about to happen is in the interest of progress.”

The man leaned in, bringing his blade to rest above Nick’s left eye. The point came into perfect focus, close enough to brush his lashes, while the doctor slid into a blur of white beyond.

Nick gritted his teeth, and tried to retreat, out of the scalpel’s path, but there was nowhere to go, so instead he forced all his focus into hardening his left eye. The scalpel came to rest against it with the plink of metal on ice.

The blur of the doctor’s face parted into a smile.

“Fascinating.”

The scalpel vanished, and the doctor retreated from view. Nick heard the scrape and shuffle of tools, and then Haverty reappeared, holding a syringe, its contents a vivid, viscous blue.

“What do you want?”

pleaded Nick as the needle disappeared from sight.

Seconds later, a pain pierced the base of his skull. Cold began to flood his limbs.

“What do I want?”

echoed Haverty, as Nick shivered, shuddered, spasmed.

“What all men of science want. To learn.”

3

ASCENSION