Chapter Six
Gray
The riot stretched before Gray like the aftermath of a broken dam, crashing through New Athens’s neat streets, tearing apart anything in its path.
Gray had been preparing for a moment like this his entire life, though he’d never let himself imagine what it might truly look like.
He’d always believed that if he ever reached the point of unleashing, of dropping the control he’d clung to for ten relentless years, it would be in a battlefield or a lab, somewhere clinical or unseen—somewhere where the consequences fell only on him.
But instead it happened here, in the center of New Athens City, on a night full of smoke and fear, with the streets he’d sworn to protect crumbling under the weight of what Helena Pierce had orchestrated.
Fires climbed the edges of buildings like desperate hands reaching for escape. Glass glittered across the pavement as though the city had shattered its own reflection. The crowds’ movements were frantic and confused, forming and breaking patterns of aggression the way storms churned thunderheads.
Hannah remained just behind him, close enough for him to feel her presence brushing against the edges of his awareness.
It was a living, breathing counterpoint to the chaos.
The incomplete bond between them tugged and steadied him even before she touched him.
Knowing she was there made it possible to move forward.
So he did.
He stepped calmly into the center of the riot, not rushing, not bracing, but walking with a deliberate steadiness that cut through the discord around him.
People didn’t notice at first. They were too caught in their own spirals of panic and righteous fury, striking out at shadows because they needed an enemy, and Protogenus had handed them one.
A rock hit his shoulder and bounced off without so much as a sting.
Another grazed his jaw. He didn’t break stride.
The first gunshot was sharper than the others sounds, slicing through the air like a needle.
The bullet never reached him. The electrical field rising around his body liquefied the metal before it touched him, dropping molten residue to the ground with a soft hiss.
More shots followed, all dissolving in the same effortless way, until the crowd realized something was wrong.
Eyes snapped toward him, expressions shifting from anger to uncertainty to fear faster than they could process any of it.
By the time he reached the heart of the square, absolute silence stretched across the nearest onlookers, a silence that rippled outward in uneven waves.
He felt their fear as tangibly as he felt the heat from the fires.
A familiar, heavy pressure wrapped around his ribs and squeezed.
It was nothing new. People had always feared Pollux variants.
He’d spent a decade molding himself into the kind of man who wouldn’t feed that fear, who wouldn’t give them a reason to look at him the way they looked at the others.
But that version of Gray couldn’t save them now.
He drew in a slow breath, let it expand his lungs until his chest felt tight, and released the word he’d been holding back.
“Stop.”
The sound amplified through the charged air, deepening and resonating until it filled the entire boulevard with a force that made windows shiver in their frames. Those closest to him flinched. Others simply stared, frozen.
It wasn’t enough.
They needed to see what he truly was, and what he chose not to be.
So he let the power rise.
Lightning burst from his body in a vertical column that shot into the sky, so bright that several people shielded their eyes.
The clouds responded instantly, gathering and swirling as though they recognized him, as though the storm remembered its favored son.
Blue-white electricity arced across the heavens in long, branching streaks, turning the air sharp and luminous.
Thunder rolled through the city with enough force to rattle the bones of the closest buildings.
And for the first time in years, Gray didn’t hold the storm back.
The fear in the crowd deepened. Some backed away. Others collapsed to their knees. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that he controlled every volt. He directed it upward, not outward, refusing to let a single spark land where it could harm someone.
Then the lightning bent to his will.
He pushed the storm higher, shaping the arcs into enormous letters across the sky. It required, the kind of control only a Pollux variant with years of suppression could have developed. Sweat beaded at his temples, but he didn’t waver.
Above them, carved in crackling arcs of electric blue, the words formed:
We protect you.
The crowd gasped, a ripple of stunned energy moving through their ranks.
He forced the storm to continue its display, even as the strain began to tighten at the base of his skull.
He felt the edge of danger inside himself.
There was a vast reservoir of power that he kept sealed away.
It fed from the aggression bred into his genetics and the hunger for dominance that had always lurked beneath the surface.
He’d never let it loose, not fully, because he feared what would spill out along with it.
Tonight, he was closer to that edge than he’d ever been.
And that was when he nearly lost his grip.
His vision flickered. A spike of power stuttered outward, uncontrolled for half a heartbeat, cracking a nearby lamppost.
He stiffened, breath catching as panic flooded through him.
Then Hannah touched him.
Her hand slid into his with a sure, warm confidence, and the bond between them lit up in a way that stole his breath. Her presence rushed into him. Her focus met his fury with a balance so perfect it felt like exhaling after years of holding his lungs tight.
Lightning wrapped around both of them, merging, their energies intertwining with a fluidity that stunned him. He felt her heartbeat syncing with his. Felt her anger at the injustice around them. Felt her determination to stand with him even in the heart of the storm.
More intimately, he felt her trust.
Her belief in him.
Her love emerged through the bond with a clarity that loosened the tightness in his chest.
Together, they steadied the storm.
The words continued forming across the sky, more precise now, shaped by her strategic mind and his power working in tandem:
We are not your enemies
Protogenus is lying to you.
We want to work with humanity not against it.
Hannah stepped forward with him, her voice joining his as they projected their message across the city, across every screen, into every home.
As if summoned by the truth itself, Dr. Helena Pierce stepped into view on a rooftop overlooking the square. Her silhouette was backlit by a monstrous machine. It was huge, glowing green, and humming with lethal intent. It was their power-stripping weapon. Ten Dioscuri variants flanked her.
Her arrival changed the atmosphere instantly. Gray felt Hannah’s fury spike beside him when the older woman raised the weapon, its core pulsing with sickly green energy. Pierce’s taunts rolled over the square, but Gray barely heard them. His focus centered on the weapon.
“Beautiful performance,” Pierce called, her voice magnified. “But the world doesn’t need your speeches. It needs protection from you.”
“You’re the only one attacking civilians,” Gray said. “Supes didn’t start this riot. You did.”
Pierce ignored him.
“Surrender, Gray Spark, and I’ll deactivate the weapon. You’ll undergo power removal peacefully. And no one else gets hurt.”
“No. I won’t do that.”
When Pierce fired, Hannah didn’t hesitate.
She pulled him against her, and together they flooded the weapon with a rush of power that had no right to exist.
Hannah’s energy channeled his, amplifying it, shaping it into a lethal strike against the attack. Pierce’s weapon overloaded instantly. Her scream was swallowed by the explosion that followed, a blast of blinding light that lifted chunks of rooftop debris into the air and sent Dioscuri flying.
When the smoke cleared, Gray and Hannah were still standing in the center of the square, their fingers still interlaced, their bond felt like the beginning of something he’d been denying too long.
The crowd looked at him differently now. Some still feared him. Some didn’t know what to think. But many watched with dawning comprehension, shame softening their features.
Gray lowered his voice, letting it carry without force, because he knew that raw honesty now would strike harder than power.
“I could have hurt you,” he said. “Every last one of you. I didn’t. Because having the ability to destroy doesn’t obligate anyone to use it. And I’ve spent my entire life choosing not to.”
A woman stepped forward. “Were you really protecting us?”
Hannah answered for both of them. “Even when it destroyed our lives.”
When the first hesitant applause broke, Gray didn’t allow himself to hope for acceptance—not fully—but possibility.
And that was enough.
When the crowds dispersed and the fires died, exhaustion swept through him so abruptly his knees buckled. Hannah caught him before he hit the pavement, her arms strong around him, her scent warm and electric.
Her touch centered him in ways he’d never experienced.
He leaned into her, letting the bond between them hum softly.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
Gray inhaled deeply. “I feel like I don’t have to fight alone anymore.”
An intimate moment passed between them. It had the potential to develop into something more, but then Rick appeared with a squad behind him.
“That,” Rick said, hands on hips, “was the best damn PR event I’ve ever seen.”
Gray groaned. “Rick, please.”
“Nope,” Rick said cheerfully. “The whole country watched you display god-tier power without killing a single person. The senate vote on us in the morning. I bet their phones are blowing up with constituents calling in about us.”
Vera approached, eyes shadowed.
“Tomorrow is the real confrontation,” she said. “If the vote passes, Pierce gets legal authority to remove powers from every supe they can catch.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Gray said. “Get some rest, all of you. Send that out to everyone. We all did good work today, but we’ll need everyone at their best tomorrow.”
Rick and Vera left them.
“Gray, I’ve been thinking,” Hannah said.
Hope flared in his chest.
“I don’t want Aethor or Protogenus to win, but I can’t fight what I feel for you anymore. I saw what we could do together and I want more. I want you.”
It was all he could do to keep his cool while they were in public. “I want you too,” he said. “Let’s go home.”