The fourth attacker screeched when he hit the pavement.
Not in pain, at least, not purely in pain, but mostly a screech of anger, frustration and the raw overload of a body that had been pushed far past what it was ever meant to endure.
~THUD!~
The man skidded violently across the rain-slick asphalt, tearing a sunken line through the street before finally coming to rest against the twisted remains of a bus stop.
Tandy landed lightly a moment later, boots barely making a sound as she straightened, Light still glowing faintly along her arms as she looked down towards the man.
"Stay down," she said firmly, breath steady despite the fight, "Final warning!"
The man tried to rise, but before he could unleash an another attack.
"AHHHHHHH!" An immense scream of pain ripped from his lungs. The man's muscles spasmed and blue veins ran across his skin.
Whatever enhancement the man had been given began to rapidly eat him alive from the inside out, his eyes rolling back until finally...
~BOOM!~
The man's body exploded, a gush of blood, organs and guts splattering all across the various walls and other structures in the immediate environment.
"Jesus, just like the last 3 today," Tyrone said as he stepped out of the shadow behind the now blood soaked bus stop.
Sirens were already approaching their location, so Tyrone glanced at Tandy and said, "We're done here."
She nodded and didn't argue. They vanished a second later, Light and Dark folding in on themselves as the city was left to deal with the aftermath.
They reappeared on a rooftop several blocks away, rain tapping softly against concrete and steel.
Tandy stood there, hands braced on her knees as she stared at the police vehicles that arrived at the scene they had just left, analyzing yet another exploded body.
"This is the fourth one today alone," she said finally.
Tyrone leaned against the low wall at the edge of the building, shadows stretching lazily around his feet, "I know."
"Four nights in a row," she continued, lifting her head. Her eyes were sharp now, "People with different powers appearing and wrecking havoc, all of them ending up dying with their body exploding,"
She turned to him, "That's not coincidence."
"No," Tyrone said quietly. "It isn't."
Tandy crossed her arms, glow dimming as her thoughts raced, "At first I thought it was just some kind of failed MetaHuman Drug that flushed the market. But all our research points to something other than that, and that explanation doesn't explain why they've only appeared in National City,"
She shook her head as she continued, "Feels like they're being thrown specifically at us,"
"Maybe it is, either way we need to figure out the source of all of this before it's too late," Tyrone said, watching the rain wash away a-lot of the blood.
However, internally, Tyrone definitely knew the answer. This was certainly Taylor and Roxxon, testing him and Tandy's powers to figure out a plan to take them down, and they were using people as live simulations in these tests.
"Yeah, we need to go after the source," she said, clenching her fists as Tyrone unravelled his Cloak and teleported both of them back to the mansion.
Once entering the house, they changed their clothes while Artio greeted them enthusiastically, tail thumping hard enough to echo through the corridor. Tandy laughed softly, kneeling to bury her hands in the dog's thick fur, letting the warmth ground her.
Tyrone watched for a moment, then heading downstairs toward the operations center. The wall of monitors flickered to life at his approach.
All of it displayed various data streams and surveillance feeds. Roxxon subsidiaries layered over city infrastructure like a parasitic nervous system.
All of it had Tyrone with one decision to make.
How would he take them down!
He already had half the plan completed, taking down all their dark operations centers, like research institutes and more. Off the books places that they used for their less than savory business.
However, he also needed a second way to take them down, in the public eye. This method needed to be perfect, as if he just wildly dropped public accusations, with their influence, they'd easily reframe it and it wouldn't affect Roxxon in the slightest.
So, he needed someway, or someone, willing to publicly expose them, and he had some ideas, but he'd need to garner more proof to do so.
Thankfully, he already had a lead.
Various kinds of data began appearing on the monitors, transparent maps over live feeds and infrastructure schematics ghosted over city grids.
Then one panel pulsed multiple times and Tyrone expanded it.
Immediately, the room filled with graphs and waveform readouts. Energy curves spiked sharply upward and jagged, then vanished as if someone had sliced them clean out of the timeline.
Tyrone's eyes narrowed.
"Show me again," he murmured.
The system replayed the data from earlier that night. Three minutes before the fourth attacker lost control.
A surge of energy that was violent before being abruptly cut off.
"Overlay biometric telemetry," he ordered.
Another screen shifted, pulling up combat recordings, police drones, traffic cameras. The enhanced man's body glowed faintly in false color, heat and internal energy bleeding through skin moments before the spike in energy and the man's scream.
Tyrone exhaled slowly through his nose.
"So that's what you're doing," he muttered, "You're not just enhancing them. You're powering them."
Behind him, soft footsteps padded down the stairs.
Tandy appeared at the edge of the operations floor, hair still damp from the rain, an oversized hoodie pulled over her shoulders. She paused when she saw the screens, her expression sharpening instantly.
"You found something," she said.
"How'd you even tell?" Tyrone asked.
"From our link, I can sense you were pretty antsy, so I came down," Tandy said.
Tyrone thought for a moment about hiding the Roxxon stuff from here, but eventually just nodded and gestured for her to come over, "Come look what I found,"
She moved to his side, eyes tracking the data as he walked her through it, energy signatures, timestamps, overlays between the attacks and the spikes.
"These surges," he said, highlighting one in red, "they happen minutes before every incident. Same energy profile, every time."
Tandy frowned. "It's not either of us."
"No," Tyrone agreed. "And it's not natural."
She watched the replay of the man's body tearing itself apart, jaw tightening. "It's like… whatever they're pumping into them keeps feeding until the body can't contain it anymore."
"Exactly." Tyrone's fingers curled unconsciously, "They're batteries, very unstable ones."
He brought up the next layer. Utility grid anomalies. At first glance, it looked like noise, minor fluctuations, momentary drops, nothing that would trigger oversight alarms.
But Tyrone began linking them together, drawing thin lines across the map.
Each spike lined up with a reported "maintenance downtime."
Different facilities and very different companies, sometimes in different sectors.
Tandy blinked as she saw this, "What are you showing me here. None of these sites are even related."
"They shouldn't be," Tyrone said, "That's the problem."
He pulled up corporate registries, ownership trees branching outward like infected veins. Some companies were obvious Roxxon shells, subsidiaries of subsidiaries, buried under layers of legal insulation.
Others…
Tyrone's jaw tightened as he spoke, "Some of these companies aren't connected in any way,"
Tandy leaned closer. "But you think they are."
"I know they are," he corrected. "I just can't prove it yet."
He zoomed out. Nationwide.
Six points glowed on the map now, pulsing faintly in sequence.
Two underground, deep inland, far from any population centers.
Two coastal, close enough to shipping lanes to disappear anything inconvenient.
One Arctic, marked in faded gray, labeled DECOMMISSIONED.
Her gaze slid to the final marker. One in the outskirts of National City. A rusted, forgotten dot at the edge of the urban sprawl.
"Jaded Energy," she read aloud. "Defunct power plant."
"Supposedly," Tyrone said.
He pulled up everything he had on it.
Jaded Energy had gone bankrupt eight years ago. Acquired, sold off, dismantled. Its assets were scattered, its leadership vanished into obscurity. No public connection to Roxxon. No shared board members. No obvious shell-company trail.
But the energy routing told a different story. Power was still flowing there. Not enough to light a city, but it was definitely still routing there nevertheless.
Tandy's voice was quiet. "So this is the source."
"One of them," Tyrone said. "And it's the closest."
She looked at him, eyes bright with resolve. "Then we go."
"Tonight," Tyrone agreed without hesitation.