Epilogue
ANNIE
The hospital window framed a perfect rectangle of sky, a single cloud drifting lazily across my field of vision.
I watched it change shape, stretching and thinning as the wind carried it along.
Something about its slow transformation felt important, meaningful somehow, though I couldn’t articulate why.
My shoulder throbbed beneath the bandages, a dull ache that the painkillers couldn’t quite erase.
The doctors had removed Dread’s knife, repaired the tissue damage, and assured me there would be no permanent physical impairment.
Just another scar to add to my collection.
The bruises around my throat had faded from angry purple to a sickly yellow-green and my broken arm was now in a cast.
Time seemed to move strangely in this sterile room.
Minutes stretched into hours as I stared at the sky, then suddenly whole chunks of the day would vanish, leaving me disoriented and confused.
The doctors said it was normal after what I’d been through.
Dread’s attack had affected my mind as much as my body.
Some kind of psychic residue from his powers that even my broken abilities couldn’t stop.
I didn’t tell them that it felt more like my brain was trying to protect itself, shutting down rather than processing everything that had happened on that rooftop. Everything Cipher had said. Everything he’d done.
The cloud outside shifted again, stretching thin until it disappeared completely. I found myself wondering where it had gone, oddly concerned about its fate.
“Annie?”
Havoc’s voice pulled me back to the room. I blinked, turning away from the window to find him standing beside my bed. How long had he been there? I hadn’t heard him come in.
“Sorry,” I murmured, my voice still raspy from the damage to my throat. “I was somewhere else.”
Havoc sat in the chair beside my bed. “The doctors said the episodes will pass soon.”
I nodded, trying to focus on his face, but my thoughts kept drifting away like that cloud. There one moment, gone the next.
“Annie,” Havoc said, leaning forward slightly, “I need to leave for a little while, but I’ll be back soon.”
I blinked at him, a strange fog settling over my thoughts. Had he been speaking this whole time? I couldn’t remember what he’d said before this moment, though there was an empty coffee cup on the side table that hadn’t been there when I first woke up. How long had he been sitting there?
“You’ve been here...” I struggled to form the question.
“About two hours,” Havoc supplied, his expression softening. “We talked about the doctors’ reports and the security for your room.”
None of that sounded familiar. I nodded anyway, not wanting him to worry more than he already was. My gaze drifted back to the window, where a new cloud had appeared, this one darker and more substantial than the wispy one I’d been tracking before. It looked heavy with rain.
“You should go,” I said, still watching the cloud. “I’ll be fine.”
When he spoke again, his voice carried an undercurrent of something…
Anger? Fear? But I could only hear the cadence of the words, not the contents.
I should have been concerned about where he was going, should have asked questions, but focusing on anything for more than a few seconds felt impossible.
“Annie?”
“I’m here.” Was that what he wanted to hear? Was that what he’d been asking?
“The nurses have my direct line,” he said, standing. His hand rested briefly on mine, warm and solid. “Dawn will be here soon to sit with you.”
I nodded again, my attention already slipping away. The cloud outside was changing shape, stretching and darkening as it approached. Something about its movement seemed purposeful, almost predatory.
Havoc said something else but his voice sounded distant.
“Hmm? Yes. I’ll be fine. Go.” The words came automatically.
I heard him sigh, followed by his footsteps moving toward the door. The cloud outside had swallowed the twilight sky now, casting the room in shadow as the door clicked shut behind Havoc.
Then, like a lightning strike in my foggy mind, I remembered.
Cipher’s suit. When he appeared on that rooftop, when he had killed Dread, his suit had been different. The glowing lines that usually traced his body were dark. Dead.
Powerless.
The memory was so sharp it made me gasp, cutting through the haze that had enveloped my thoughts since I’d woken up in the hospital. I could see it perfectly. Cipher’s silhouette against the night sky, his suit dormant. No power signature. No technological advantage.
He’d come for me without his armor’s protection.
My fingers clutched at the thin hospital blanket as I tried to hold on to this realization before it could slip away like everything else. What did it mean?
The cloud outside darkened further, its edges turning almost black. I tracked its movement, using it to stay present while I picked at this thread of clarity.
Cipher relied on his technology. It was his identity, his brand, the thing that made him special among Villains. For him to shut it down when facing Dread meant what?
I blinked rapidly, trying to stay present with this thought. This one detail refused to dissolve like the rest of my memories.
Cipher had come for me without his powers. Without his protection. Another part of the memory hit me. Dread with the Hammer. The way Cipher’s suit had flickered and died, the glowing lines extinguishing, leaving him helpless.
But Cipher hadn’t been helpless. He had killed Dread.
I pushed myself up straighter in the hospital bed, ignoring the ache in my shoulder.
Dread had disabled Cipher’s suit. By all accounts, Cipher should have been defenseless. He was just a serum enhanced Super facing one of the most dangerous Villains in the city. He should have died. We both should have died.
But he hadn’t.
And something else, something I hadn’t processed until this moment: the feeling of power that had come from him. Not serum based power, but something organic, something alive.
I’d felt it brushing against my senses like static electricity. Raw power that had nothing to do with his suit or serum and everything to do with what was underneath. What he was.
My breathing quickened as the realization crystallized in my mind, sudden and absolute.
Cipher was Trueborn. Not a serum-enhanced Villain with fancy technology. A Trueborn, like Havoc.
The dark clouds outside my window thickened and swirled, pulling my attention away from the revelation that had momentarily cleared my mind. I tried to latch on to the thought, Cipher, a Trueborn, but it began slipping away as my mind tugged me back toward that hazy, disconnected state.
No. I needed to hold on to this. This was important.
I forced myself to look away from the hypnotic dance of the clouds, focusing instead on the institutional beige wall opposite my bed. A Trueborn Super. Hiding in plain sight. Pretending to be something else.
I can’t be here. I can’t explain to them—
Cipher hadn’t finished the thought, but now, the words made more sense.
He was alive when he clearly shouldn’t have been.
He had killed a Trueborn Super when his suit wasn’t functioning, when it couldn’t possibly have “enhanced” his manufactured abilities.
Then he had flown. Flight wasn’t in his registered power set, he needed his suit.
I had a duty to report him immediately. Trueborn Supers were strictly regulated for a reason. They were required to register, to take the dampening serum, to submit to monitoring. Cipher had deliberately circumvented all of that, breaking one of the most fundamental laws.
I should call Havoc back. I should contact the Council. I should—
I didn’t reach for the call button.
Instead, I watched the storm clouds gather, feeling an odd kinship with their gathering darkness. The knowledge I now possessed was power—power I wasn’t ready to relinquish just yet.
Was I protecting him? The thought made me laugh, though it came out as more of a strained wheeze.
After everything, was I actually considering shielding Cipher from the consequences of his deception?
Or was I simply waiting for the perfect moment, when revealing his secret would cause the most damage?
I honestly couldn’t tell which motivation was driving me. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
For now, I would wait. Let this knowledge settle within me. Let the fog clear from my mind.
As the storm approached, another realization emerged from the fog, slower this time, but no less powerful.
Cipher had come for me.
Not for Dread. Not for the Hammer. For me.
I closed my eyes, trying to hold on to this thought as my consciousness began to drift again. I was being pulled back under, but I fought against it, clinging to this new understanding that felt so significant.
He could have let Dread kill me. It would have been simpler that way. One less complication for him.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, he’d come to that rooftop without his technological shield. He’d placed himself between me and Dread. He’d fought, not as Cipher the tech Villain, but as whatever, whoever, he truly was underneath.
He’d risked everything to save me.
Why? Why would he risk exposing himself? Why would he care whether I lived or died?
But he had come for me.
As the fog finally pulled me under, I surrendered to sleep with that single certainty anchored in my mind.
CIPHER
The city lights were beginning to blink on across the bay as dusk settled. Chroma Bay looked deceptively peaceful from this distance, all glittering promise and no hint of the chaos churning beneath its surface.
I’d dressed carefully in civilian clothes, dark jeans, a t-shirt, and leather jacket, nothing that would mark me as anything but an ordinary man enjoying the view offered by the cliff-side trail. Thomas Smith, not Cipher. The thought alone made my shoulders tense.
My fingers brushed against the small object in my pocket for perhaps the twentieth time in the last hour. Such a small thing to carry such weight.