Chapter 5 #2
Specter kept circling slowly, always positioning his body between me and the newcomer, but the man’s eyes tracked me like a targeting system, cold and unblinking.
The man just stood there, unsmiling. Unhurried. His eyes found mine first, not Specter’s. Cold. Empty. Like looking into a void where a person should be.
“Blackout,” Specter said, the name barely audible.
I went cold at the confirmation. Oblivion’s elite operative. Specter’s equal or better, if the intelligence was correct.
Stillness settled over the three of us. Specter kept circling to position his body between us, but Blackout’s eyes tracked me like he was marking a target. Clinical. Detached. Assessing.
“You think this is a hero?” Blackout’s voice cut in, motioning once toward Specter without looking away from me. “You trust him? You’re wrong. He’s just a monster, like me.” His voice was flat, mechanical. “Just ask him about Prague.”
Specter drew a short breath. I filed it away automatically, professional reflex kicking in despite the danger.
“Don’t listen to him,” Specter said, voice tight. “He’s Oblivion, and I suspect his name is Blackout. There’s nothing left of whoever he was. Isn’t that right, Xavier Hale? Look at you. What would your sister say about what you’ve become?”
The man tilted his head a fraction, as if listening to something. “Xavier Hale is gone,” he confirmed. “Only Blackout remains.”
No warning. Blackout stepped in fast and low, driving Specter into the wall before I could blink. The concrete shuddered with the impact. No wasted motion. Elbows, knees, weight shifting like liquid violence. Specter caught the first strike but missed the second—a hammer blow to his sternum.
The force of their collision sent me reeling backward. My spine hit the opposite wall as I scrambled out of the immediate danger zone, breath tight.
They moved too fast to track. Blackout didn’t draw a weapon, didn’t need to. His attacks were measured hits, each one designed to punish rather than kill outright. Clinical. Efficient. Where Specter fought with raw drive, Blackout moved with cold calculation.
Specter drove forward, using his slightly larger frame to push Blackout back two steps. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d gained advantage, then Blackout twisted, redirecting momentum into a counterattack that slammed Specter’s head against the corner of a half-collapsed door frame.
I should have run. Should have used their fight as cover to escape. My training screamed at me to find safety, alert security, follow protocol. Instead, I stayed put, glued to the wall, watching the brutal dance unfold.
Something shifted in Specter’s face, the carefully controlled patient vanished, replaced by something feral.
Wild. He stopped trying to match Blackout’s method and started fighting dirty.
He grabbed a handful of loose wiring from the exposed wall, swinging it like a flail.
When Blackout dodged, Specter used the distraction to drive him sideways, smashing his head toward the steel frame of a door.
Blackout absorbed the blow with barely a blink. His response was immediate, a short, vicious strike to Specter’s midsection that doubled him over for half a beat. Blood marked the wall. Neither slowed.
Fear thinned, replaced by a cold, awful focus. Specter spun low, sweeping Blackout’s legs. For a fraction of a second, Blackout was airborne, then he twisted midfall, landing in a crouch that flowed immediately into a rising strike toward Specter’s throat.
Specter barely deflected it, his forearm taking damage meant for his windpipe. Blood welled from fresh cuts on both men as they separated for a half-second, circling.
“Oblivion’s waiting for you,” Blackout said, voice unchanged despite the exertion. “You were never meant to have choices.”
Specter’s mouth curled. “And yet here I am, making them.”
They crashed together again, a blur of limbs and lethal intent. Specter drove his elbow toward Blackout’s temple—a killing blow if it connected. Blackout caught it, turned the force aside, but Specter used the momentum to hook his opponent’s ankle, nearly toppling him.
Concern for Specter shoved everything else aside, even the fact that as a psychiatrist, I was mesmerized by how their minds controlled their bodies.
Specter was fighting brilliantly, but every time he moved to protect me, it cost him critical advantage.
The realization twisted hard. I was the liability here.
A deep, bone-shaking concussion slammed through the corridor, not close enough to kill, but violent enough to spiderweb the overhead piping. Some sort of gas roared down, blinding us in a choking white curtain. The smell was horrid, making my eyes water and breathing hitch.
Somewhere in the haze, multiple sets of boots flooded into earshot. Through streaming eyes, I saw Blackout freeze, head tilting as if listening to orders only he could hear.
Specter seized the opening, hooking my wrist and hauling me into the blind zone of the gas. The roar drowned my questions as we retreated along the wall, using the hiss and whiteness as cover.
Behind us, I caught one last glimpse: Blackout standing absolutely still in the mist, a weapon in his hand, but not firing. Without knowing what gas filled the room, it would have been suicide to shoot. His voice cut through once, low and certain, aimed at me through the cloud:
“We’ll finish this.”
Specter pulled me through a maintenance door that had been blown partially off its hinges. We stumbled into a service corridor lit only by emergency strips along the floor.
“Keep moving,” he said, his breathing ragged. Blood trickled from a cut above his eye, and he held his left arm stiffly against his side.
“You’re hurt.”
“Irrelevant.” He pushed forward, scanning the corridor ahead. “That gas was CS mixed with something else. Won’t kill us, but we need to get clear before it affects our breathing.”
We pressed on through the labyrinth of service corridors. Each step took us deeper into the belly of the facility, away from the surface and any hope of conventional escape. The sounds of conflict grew more distant, replaced by the mechanical groans of damaged infrastructure.
I couldn’t shake the image of Blackout’s hollow eyes, or the way they’d tracked me through the smoke. Not angry, not determined—something far worse. Absolute certainty.
“He’ll keep coming, won’t he?” I said, already knowing the answer.
Specter didn’t look back. “Yes. Until he completes his mission or dies trying. That’s what Quinta-generation means. No hesitation. No doubt.”
“And no hope of breaking the conditioning?”
This time he did turn, his expression unreadable in the emergency lighting. “I don’t know. But right now, that’s not our biggest problem.”
“What is?”
“Staying alive long enough to find out.” He gestured toward a heavy maintenance hatch set into the floor. “And that starts with getting underground before this whole place comes down around us.