Chapter 5

A block of ice the size of a muscle car smashed into the asphalt, spraying frozen shrapnel across the harbor. Jake hopped over a jagged chunk, his red boots skidding on the slick surface as he pivoted. "Missed me! You really should have gone to Specsavers, Specter. Or maybe just an optometrist who specializes in 'walking corpse' syndromes." Specter let out a rattling, dry roar. He was a horrific sight—a skinless, muscular skeleton with one eye socket empty and the other glowing with a murderous frost. He swung an arm, and the moisture in the air coalesced into another massive projectile. Vapor stood on the rusted corrugated roof of a nearby warehouse, her black hazmat suit stark against the gray sky. She didn't move, her gas mask tilted down toward the chaos. "Your aim is pathetic," Vapor’s voice came through her respirator, muffled and dripping with annoyance. "You’re throwing mountains when you only need a needle. Freeze him already so we can get this over with." "I'd listen to the lady in the rubber suit, Bone-head," Jake shouted, checking his watch. "Though, honestly, freezing me is a bit of a cliché. Can’t you do something original? Like an ice sculpture of a middle finger? I’d respect the craft." He felt the familiar tug in his gut and snapped his fingers. The world turned a dull, monochromatic gray. The falling sleet hung like diamonds in the air. Jake walked three paces to the left, plucked a discarded cigarette butt from the air, and placed it on the edge of a frozen crater. Time resumed with a violent lurch. "See? I'm fast. I'm also—and this is the important bit—immortal," Jake announced, puffing out his chest. "So this whole 'trying to kill me' thing is really just a very loud, very cold waste of your Tuesday." Vapor’s head tilted. "Immortal? Everyone thinks they're special until I melt the lungs out of their chest. You’re just a loudmouth in a costume that’s three decades out of style." "Ouch. My fashion sense is timeless," Jake countered, tapping the side of his mask. "And your power? It’s basically just being a very angry humidifier. What’s next? Are you going to give me a slight cough? Maybe some mild rust on my zipper?" Specter didn't wait for a punchline. He slammed his skeletal hands together, and a dense, blinding mist erupted from his palms. It wasn't just fog; it was a flash-freeze, a wall of absolute zero rushing forward to claim everything in its path. Jake dove. He didn't just move; he slipped through the gaps in the air as the mist crystallized the ground where he’d stood a millisecond prior. Mid-roll, he felt the cooldown on his ability click over. *Ten seconds of stillness, ten seconds of waiting. Math is a cruel mistress.* He sprang up, pulling two tactical knives from his belt. "Going once, going twice!" The world froze again. Jake didn't waste a second. He blurred across the parking lot. He reached Specter first, leaping onto a crate to get the height he needed. He drove the first knife straight into the skeleton’s remaining eye, twisting the blade for good measure. Without stopping, he pivoted and launched the second knife toward the roof. It spun through the frozen air, aimed directly at the center of Vapor’s chest. He landed back in his starting position just as the gray veil lifted. Specter’s scream was a high-pitched, grinding sound of bone on bone. He clutched at his face, the knife buried deep in his last eye. Red-black ichor leaked over his frozen fingers. On the roof, Vapor gasped—a sharp, metallic sound—as the knife pierced the front of her hazmat suit. A hiss followed immediately, but it wasn't the sound of air. A thick, sickly green gas began to plume from the puncture, swirling around her. "My eye! You miserable, flesh-clad maggot!" Specter wailed, stumbling blindly toward the sound of Jake’s breathing. "I will find you! I will freeze your soul and shatter it into a thousand pieces!" "Hard to find me when you’re looking with your ears, buddy," Jake taunted. "And honestly, the whole 'skinless skeleton' look was okay for a bit, but now you’re just a very tall, very angry pile of calcium. Drink some milk and lie down." Specter’s form began to ripple. "One more joke. Make one more joke, and I will show you what a god of the north looks like." Jake leaned forward, hands on his knees. "What do you call a cold dog? A chili dog. What do you call a snowman with a six-pack? An abdominal snowman." The ground groaned. Specter didn't just grow; he absorbed the environment. The ice blocks he’d thrown, the frost on the crates, the moisture in the harbor air—it all rushed toward him. Within seconds, a four-meter-tall titan of jagged ice and packed snow loomed over the parking lot. It had the rough shape of a man, but with arms like tree trunks and a head that was nothing more than a jagged peak of permafrost. "Oh," Jake muttered, stepping back as a massive ice fist smashed the ground where he’d been standing. "A literal snowman. You went for the literal snowman. I’m actually disappointed." Vapor was busy on the roof, her gloved hands frantically trying to patch the hole in her suit. The green gas continued to leak, causing the metal shingles beneath her feet to turn a brittle, flaking orange in seconds. The heavy rumble of a high-performance engine cut through the sound of Specter’s roaring. A black sedan drifted into the parking lot, tires screaming. Julian Blade stepped out before the car had even fully stopped. He looked at the four-meter ice monster, then at Jake. "Services are ten minutes out, Jake," Julian shouted, his voice calm despite the carnage. "We don't have time for a winter wonderland." He raised his hands, and a shimmering blade of crimson light manifested between his palms. It hummed with a frequency that made the nearby puddles ripple. "Services?" Jake asked, glancing at the sky. "Did someone call the cops, or is this just a standard response to giant snowmen?" Vapor didn't answer. She was already gliding toward the far end of the parking lot, her boots barely touching the ground as she tried to distance herself from the leaking gas. The thump-thump-thump of rotors drowned out any further conversation. A Falcon A129 attack helicopter crested the warehouse roof, its searchlight cutting through the gloom. Two security guards were visible through the cockpit glass, their faces grim. "Hey! Over here!" Jake waved a wad of euros in the air, grinning up at the pilots. "I’ll pay for the fuel if you just take the skeleton out! He’s the one without the skin!" The helicopter’s response was a hiss of ignition. A missile streaked from its pylon. "Rude!" Jake snapped into the time-stop. The missile slowed to a crawl, a trail of fire frozen behind it. He walked calmly to the side, checking his watch. Three seconds left. He looked at the battlefield. Julian had his arms up, bracing for an impact he couldn't see coming. Specter was a massive, unmoving target. Vapor was still nursing her leaking suit. Jake reached out and grabbed Vapor’s arm—the one with the pisto-gauntlet. He wrenched it around, aiming the palm directly at the frozen Specter. Time resumed. The missile impacted the center of the lot. The blast wave tore through the air, a sphere of orange flame and shrapnel. Julian Blade vanished behind a veil of crimson light as he shielded his face. Specter, in his titan form, simply took the hit, the ice on his chest cracking but holding. Vapor was thrown backward by the pressure, her gauntlets sparking. High above, Vapor recovered first. She snarled, pointing her other hand at the helicopter. A concentrated blast of compressed air shot out like a cannonball. It caught the Falcon’s tail rotor, shearing the metal clean off. The helicopter spun wildly, its engine screaming as it plummeted into the dark waters of the harbor with a massive splash. "My turn," Jake whispered. He stopped time again. He ran to Vapor, who was still reeling. He grabbed her hand, pointing it toward the base of the ice titan’s neck. *Five, four, three...* The world snapped back. Vapor’s gauntlet discharged. A massive, high-pressure stream of air hit Specter’s ice form at point-blank range. The frozen structure couldn't handle the internal pressure; it shattered. The titan exploded into a million shards of ice and slush. Through the white-out of falling snow, Julian Blade moved like a streak of red lightning. He leapt through the air, his crimson blade singing as it carved a perfect arc. Specter’s skeletal body, now exposed as the ice fell away, was sliced clean in half at the waist. Jake didn't let up. He charged Vapor, his Ironclad Gauntlets whining as the hydraulic pistons primed. "Delivery for the lady in black!" He buried his fist in her gas mask. The electrical shock surged through the suit, and the piston fired with a mechanical *clank*. Vapor was launched off the roof, soaring through the air like a discarded doll before smashing into the rusted hull of a supertanker wreck. Jake stood in the settling dust, panting. He looked down at his right gauntlet. The green gas from Vapor’s suit had already begun to eat into the metal; the once-shiny surface was now a mottled, rusted brown. It groaned as he flexed his fingers, the mechanism jamming. "Well," Jake muttered, "that’s a hundred thousand euros down the drain. But hey, it was fun. If you aren't having fun, what's the point of being a vigilante?" Julian Blade approached, deactivating his energy sword. He looked at the pile of bones that was Specter and the distant wreck where Vapor had landed. "Is she dead?" Julian asked. "Probably not," Jake said, kicking a piece of ice. "People in this city have a habit of being annoyingly durable. What about Boney over there? He looks a bit... divided." "Specter is immortal," Julian said flatly. "He’ll grow the rest of himself back eventually. It’s a slow process, but you can’t kill him with conventional means." Jake stopped. "Wait, immortal? As in, he's going to come back and try to freeze my balls off again?" "He has a secondary power," Julian explained, already walking toward the sedan. "The more you break him, the more he adapts. We need to leave. Sentinel Services will have reinforcements here in minutes, and they don't distinguish between 'deranged couriers' and the people they're fighting." Jake scrambled into the passenger seat of the Road Runner as Julian climbed into his own car. They tore out of the harbor, the red and black cars weaving through the labyrinth of shipping containers. As they neared the main road, a fleet of black Sentinel Services minivans screamed past them in the opposite direction, sirens wailing. "That was close," Jake said, pulling up alongside Julian at a red light a few miles away. "Too close. I almost had to do paperwork." "Drop me at the railroad station," Julian said, checking his rearview mirror. "I need to go to ground for a few hours." "Sure thing, Jules. Hey, you got a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? I feel like we’ve bonded. I should meet the family." Julian gave him a rare, tired smile. "I have a girlfriend. And no, you shouldn't meet her. You’d probably try to sell her a thermonuclear bomb." "I would never! I’d give her a discount," Jake joked. "Can I call you Zanny? Or maybe J-Blade?" "My name is Julian Blade," the man said firmly. "Just Julian." "Right. Julian. It's May 8th, 2020, for the fifth time today, and I think I finally made a friend. This is a big day for me." Julian nodded as they reached the station. "I’ll reach out to Urban Outlaw. I’ll see what he knows about Chloe Vance and the tech you're looking for. You did well today, Jake. For a lunatic." "I prefer 'unorthodox professional'," Jake said, watching Julian disappear into the station crowd. Jake felt a rare sense of accomplishment. He had a lead on Chloe, a new ally who didn't immediately try to stab him, and his car was still mostly in one piece. He hummed a tune as he drove back toward the city center, the neon lights of Olympus City reflecting off the hood of the Road Runner. An hour later, he pulled into the hotel parking lot. His legs felt like lead, and his brain was buzzing from the repeated time-loops. All he wanted was a shower and a bed that didn't smell like sea salt and ozone. He reached the tenth floor, whistling as he walked down the carpeted hallway. He reached his door, his fingers brushing the cool metal of the doorknob. *Click.* The world didn't just end; it erupted. The entire floor vanished in a roar of expanding green gas and orange flame. The pressure wave slammed Jake into the opposite wall as the interior of his room turned into a localized sun. The heat stripped the skin from his bones before his nerves could even register the pain. *** Jake sat upright in the driver's seat of the Road Runner. The 'Welcome to Olympus City' sign loomed ahead, its neon flickering in the twilight. The clock on the dashboard read the same time it had four times before. "May 8th, 2020. Fifth time. Or is it the sixth? I’m losing track." He slammed on the brakes, the car skidding to a halt in the middle of the empty highway. He stared at the city skyline, his hands trembling slightly on the steering wheel. "Someone just firebombed my hotel room," he whispered to the empty car. "That’s... that’s rude. That’s very rude." He shifted the car into reverse, tires smoking as he spun a U-turn. "New plan. New hotel. And maybe a very large shotgun." ════════════════════════════════════════