The list was endless. Every powerful, influential person in this world would do anything to get their hands on him if they knew of his peculiarity. He was a ticking time bomb, a secret waiting to be unearthed. It was taking every ounce of his willpower to act normal, to not let the fear consume him.
His mind was a prison, each thought was a new layer of dread. What about the blood he'd left behind in the factory? The hair follicles on his bed, the dead skin cells he shed every day? What would happen if a single strand of his DNA fell into the wrong hands?
John felt a surge of rage, a cold, blinding fury directed at the Viper Gang leader. This man, with his petty ambitions and his stupid games, had triggered an irreversible change in his life. If not for him, John believed, his life would have remained stable, his secret safe. He was a now drowning in a sea of fear, and the gang leader was the storm that had pulled him under.
John knew how irrational his thoughts were. This wasn't something the gang leader had done to him, this was something he had always been. The man had simply been the catalyst for its discovery. Yet, his mind, desperate for a target for his mounting fear and rage, latched onto the gang leader. He was the perfect, tangible enemy, a stand-in for the terrifying and uncontrollable reality he now faced.
He didn't even entertain the thought of calling forth his IBM, his Invisible Black Matter. He knew they were mostly invisible to normal human eyes, but this was the DC Universe. The humans here were by no means normal, and the technology was beyond anything he had ever imagined. Some scientist, some ambitious villain, could find a way to see them, to trap them, to control them.
John felt himself teetering on the brink of madness. He was a control freak, a man who lived and breathed discipline, but now he was a complete mess. He needed to find balance, a pattern, something to anchor his thoughts and tether himself to reality.
John didn't sleep. The night was a blur of frantic meditation, a desperate attempt to anchor his mind. He sat cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the subtle creak of the door as the service staff came and went.
Outside, the city was a symphony of chaos. The wail of sirens, both police and ambulance, pierced the morning air. He turned on the TV, and the harbor district filled the screen. The news anchors spoke in hushed, somber tones about the massacre he had carried out.
He watched with cold, detached eyes. The bullet wounds on his body, a phantom pain, briefly seeped through his clothes, the bloodstains a stark reminder of his new, terrifying reality. He did nothing to stop the bleeding, the seeping wounds a deliberate act. He needed the physical evidence of his pain, the justification, he needed it for an audience he knew was watching him.
And he was right. From their hidden outposts, the higher-ups of the League, including Sensei, were watching. They had seen the footage, had witnessed the impossible the moment a sniper's bullet should have found its mark, and the moment their prized trainee should have died.
They had no confirmation. The feed had been too grainy, too chaotic. Did the bullet hit, or did it miss? If it missed, it was simply a testament to the boy's reflexes, a sign of his exceptional training. But what if it didn't? What secret did the boy hold? The blood seeping through his clothes on the news feed was a stark and immediate answer, forcing them to abandon their theories.
Sensei however believed he had an idea of what took place. "I believe the boy may have reached the grandmaster stage," he said, his voice a calculated calm. The idea was outlandish, but it made sense once they took in the factor of the power metahuman power. Also once a grandmaster, dodging bullets was not an impossible feat. The only problem was the boy's age. A 17-year-old grandmaster was unheard of, a legend in the making.
Their minds, however, couldn't help but conjure up another figure with similar talent, a woman who started a bit later than John, but who possessed the same impossible gifts. A woman whose name was whispered in the highest echelons of the League.
Lady Shiva.
Meanwhile, at the port where the massacre had taken place, Captain Thorne stood rooted in disbelief as reports filtered in. The acrid scent of smoke still lingered in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of blood that the sea breeze could not quite sweep away. Officers moved about in hushed tones, hauling black body bags one after another, while forensics marked splatters of carnage across the dockyard.
There were cameras, dozens of them. This was supposed to be an abandoned port, one of the city's most closely monitored hubs as a trap for gangs who thinks of making use of it. And yet, every feed had been tampered with, corrupted, or wiped clean as if the massacre had never happened. Thorne clenched his jaw as he flipped through the empty files. Someone had scrubbed the evidence with precision, leaving not even a trace for the technicians to recover.
An unnerving thought gnawed at the back of his mind. He knew who was capable of something like this "Ghost". The killings, the efficiency, every detail screamed his name. Thorne didn't want to believe it, but the pieces clicked too well to ignore.
And then there was Elara. Her sudden disappearance, coinciding so neatly with this bloodbath, sealed the suspicion like a nail in a coffin. Standing before the rows of corpses, Thorne could not shake the possibility that these men, whoever they had been, were connected to her vanishing. Perhaps they had taken her. Perhaps she had been caught in the middle. Or perhaps… she had left with Ghost willingly.
The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.
But certainty brought no satisfaction. If anything, dread settled heavier on his shoulders. Ghost's actions last night had shattered whatever fragile line he'd walked before. Up until now, Thorne could argue the man's past deeds away, justify them as the gray work of someone who skirted the edge of legality, perhaps even someone useful when the system fell short. But this, this slaughter was different. A massacre could not be overlooked, nor spun into necessity. It branded Ghost not as a shadowy ally or reluctant outlaw, but as a criminal to be hunted.
And worse, it made Captain Thorne's own position precarious. He had been the one to vouch, silently if not openly, for Ghost's methods. He had let his greed override procedure more than once. Now, with the city staring at the aftermath of carnage, those decisions threatened to come back and destroy him.
As the wind carried the flap of canvas from another sealed body bag, Thorne tightened his fists. The city would demand answers. His superiors would demand blood. And Ghost, whether guilty or not, had just become the perfect target.
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