Dark Skies

THREE DAYS PRIOR

Blacklight was starting to get bored.

Jumping from shadow to shadow in his spectre form, ghosting back and forth through his personal, dark parallel dimension never got boring. No, that he could do for days on end.

Bearing no weight, no mass or sensations aside from peaceful lethargy was inexplicably bliss. Here, motion came solely from thought, as there was no body to move.

But even for him, stakeouts had a finite fun timer.

He'd spent days on the prowl. Blacklight turned New York inside out in his frenzied search, going long, exhaustive shifts without sleep. It didn't take long for the case to crack. Rifling through crime data along with select stalking led him to a nightclub run by the local crime family. Ten minutes of batting their security around and he had the location of a Rogue who'd booked an expensive hotel five days prior to Andre's assassination.

The hotel staff were far more accommodating, He didn't even have to threaten anyone to access their booking logs and the Rogue's likely fabricated credentials. While those were useless, the security camera footage of the Rogue's gray Pontiac rolling through the hotel's underground parking was not.

Two days later, he was helping himself to a plate of churros when his earpiece chimed. The Pommel had a hit. A match had just been found six minutes ago in downtown Philadelphia, rolling past a bus stop.

Though Blacklight wasn't happy to cut his well-deserved lunch short, he immediately spectred and rocketed across the state.

He moved quick and his eyes were sharp, but Blacklight had to admit he was lucky to spot the car parked on a curb, across the street from a middle school.

At the time, he thought it odd but inconsequential.

He manoeuvred to occupy the shadow of the vehicle's ceiling, revealing a fantastic mask—tight framing, adequate breathability and dense material.

He was a pro.

The Rogue completed the look with a long, hooded trenchcoat and sleek leather gloves, meaning he was not only terrifically outfitted but completely anonymous. Not just from a normal position, either; his look was too generic for Blacklight to actually identify.

In fact, as he pulled away from the vehicle and reformed on the ledge of a nearby gas station canopy, Blacklight realized how hasty he'd been. A Rogue with detective or precognitive abilities would've sniffed him out and spelled disaster.

Deciding to now operate on logic, he waited for the man to finish his stakeout. Attacking a Rogue in front of an occupied school was a terrific way to get his license permanently revoked.

His diligence, though, was rewarded with one of the most boring afternoons of his life. The school day ended, the children left, and the building was nearly empty when the man finally gunned his engine and rolled away.

Blacklight's day flipped from monotonous to fascinating as the Rogue led him down a few blocks, then southbound on the interstate.

Way south.

As in, out of Pennsylvania and halfway across New Jersey south. So south that by eleven PM, Blacklight was drifting through the ether, wondering how the hell they'd ended up in Atlantic City.

The Rogue ramped off the expressway and made for the eastern tip of the island. Blacklight followed him to a massive casino. They rode past security, down the tunnel and into the building's underground lot.

None challenged Blacklight's spectre form.

The Rogue rode an elevator seven levels. He walked down a hall, then pushed open massive doors, allowing music to pour out. Bodies tangled over a multicoloured dance floor. Lights and streamers hung from long rafters nailed to the ceiling. Even the DJ was losing himself, swaying back and forth over his console.

The Rogue ignored them and legged up the steps to an overhead balcony shuttered with dark blinds.

Blacklight curiously followed him past two armed guards. They entered a lounge populated by drinking men and women either gathered around a poker table or sprawled in plush white sofas.

"Nevill!" barked the Rogue. He had a deep voice. Blacklight tried matching it to a face in his mental catalogue but came up empty.

One of the fatter, more expensively dressed men snapped upright. "Oh, shit! You're here!"

"Really? I hadn't noticed," snarled the Rogue. "Where's my ride?"

Nevill tried to get up and stumbled. "Ooohhh. Give me a moment."

The Rogue rolled his eyes, and Blacklight decided to case the room. While most of the men and women were draped over one another, inebriated out of their minds, two stood out.

The first had short brown hair, a smaller frame, and sharp green eyes. She looked revolted. The other was a man of equally average features, though he looked indifferent. Them, Blacklight recognized. Sonnet and Gel, both Bishop-Class Rogues, were high profile. Seeing them both in the same place with another unknown Rogue was, to say the least, concerning.

Nevill found his feet and waddled to a marble counter against the floor-to-ceiling window. There, everyone watched him fumble through a duffle bag to produce a set of keys.

"We helped you, okay?" he stammered, tentatively handing them to the Rogue. "Our whole crew. The Family will remember, right? We'll be spared when–"

"Shut," the Rogue snarled, seizing Nevill's collar and hoisting him off his feet, "the fuck up. Shut up. Do you want me to liquify your brain?"

"N-n-no! I'm sorry, I didn't–"

"Think? No shit." The Rogue released Nevill, who crumpled to the carpet. "Give it a try next time."

Nevill nodded vigorously. "I will. I will, I promise."

"Where am I going?"

"State Marina," Nevill said. "Show one of the staff the tag, and they'll take you to the boat."

The Rogue's mask eyes narrowed. "You want me to talk to blanks dressed like this?"

"We own them!" Nevill assured hurriedly. "They won't squawk. We made sure of it."

"And if they do?"

"They won't," Nevill started. "I–"

"And if they do?" repeated the Rogue.

Nevill swallowed. "I'll take responsibility."

"Good boy." The Rogue paused, glanced at the scene around him, then sighed. "We'll remember this. The Family doesn't forget. Good or bad."

Nevill's whole body seemed to decompress. "Thank you."

"Indeed," said Blacklight, appearing at the back of the room. "Thank you. This has been most informative."

The Rogue's arrival had already dialled up tension, but Blacklight's appearance maxed it out. Everyone froze, including Gel and Sonnet, while the unknown Rogue spun to face him.

Blacklight waved them down. “Don’t stop on my account. You guys looked like you were having fun.”

"How the fuck?" the Rogue spat.

"Wrong," Blacklight corrected. "You're looking for 'why the fuck'. We can clear it all up in a moment. Let me just get a look at some of this nectar . Whoo! Nice!”

He strolled to the bar, turning his back on the Rogues and blanks to study a bottle. His real focus, though, was on observing everyone's reaction through shadows.

The blanks receded to the far corner of the room while the Rogues exchanged looks and slowly fanned out.

Figures , he sighed. None of them sound like idiots.

"This is the good shit," he chuckled, spinning the whisky bottle in his glove. "The Family must pay well."

The Rogue shot a menacing look over his shoulder at Nevill, who somehow paled further.

"Hey!" Blacklight chastised. "None of that. Nevill's been nothing but a sweetheart. I want everyone to be nice to him, okay?"

"Did you follow him here?" growled the Rogue.

Blacklight snorted. "Who, Nevill? Please. I've been on you since Philly. You have terrible awareness habits. Like, awful. Never caught your name, though."

The Rogue froze, then clenched his fists. "You're too late. You're all too late."

"For?" Blacklight asked.

"You don't even know."

"No, not really. Does it have something to do with that?" Blacklight said, pointing to the key in the Rogue's hand.

"Showing your face was a mistake, Blacklight. Even you can't take all of us at once."

Blacklight looked up from the bar, feigning concern. "I mean, Nevill is an absolute unit. You may be right."

Gel's skin shifted from caucasian cream to gelatinous green, while slits along the side of Sonnet's mouth divided to unhinge her jaw.

"Oh, you meant them. I’m good, then."

The Rogue pressed his hand against the carpet, and the room began to rumble.

A geo? thought Blacklight. Huh.

"Look, uh, guys, I don't want to fight. Really. I don't even want to arrest you right now."

Nevill's terrified scowl wavered. "Really?"

"Shut up, Nevill!" barked the Rogue.

"Really," Blacklight promised. "I just want," he pointed to the masked Rogue, "him."

Sonnet opened her mouth wider, and Gel completely lost all semblance of a human to shape his body into a glowing blob of radioactive pudding.

"Fine," Blacklight sighed, tossing the bottle over his shoulder. "But seriously, benching Nevill is the wrong move."

Sonnet's sonic scream doubled everyone but Gel and the other Rogue over, clutching their ears and screaming in agony. It trucked across the room and blew apart the door, tossing the posted guards spinning off their feet and crashing to the dance floor.

Blacklight was not among them, as he'd already spectred, then reemerged beneath the unknown Rogue, intent on unmasking him. His hand closed over empty air as the Alpha just managed to dodge back.

"Aw," Blacklight sighed, switching to drive his left hand into the man's solar plexus.

The Rogue disappeared through the window, while Gel tried to ensnare him in jellied constraints. Blacklight spectred and popped up behind Sonnet. She had no chance of evading his hand clamping over the back of her neck and driving her forehead through the ground.

Gel spun and was completely bisected by the shadow blade that cleaved his bulbous body in two. Blacklight didn't afford him the chance to recover as he discharged a shadow blast and sent the Rogue careening through the now open window.

He pointed a warning finger to the blanks huddled in the corner, causing them to jump.

"Stay," he warned, then skipped through the destroyed door.

Blacklight scanned the dance floor to find the speakers, then disabled them with shadow spikes. The crowd shouted angrily until Blacklight highlighted himself with a dark halo of energy.

"Party's over! Go home, now!"

He threw a few more shadow blasts at random objects on the roof and wall to get the message across. His supervision of their evacuation was interrupted, though, when a deafening wall of power yanked him off his feet and threw him across the room.

Reactive shadows flared over his back and weathered some of the force, but Sonnet's scream still seemed to drill holes through his eardrums. He let momentum push him into grounded shadows, then checked to see if civilians were in danger. Five had been knocked off their feet from the volume, two of which were in danger of being crushed by tumbling rafters.

He reformed and punched the first tangle of bars apart, then snagged the second with a roped shadow hook. Sonnet barely had time to catch her breath before it crashed into her chest. The force collapsed part of the balcony around her and sent them spilling onto the DJ's booth.

Three men on their way out froze as Blacklight obliterated a chunk of ceiling on its way to sandwich them to the floor, then jumped as he shouted, “Help them!”

Instead of moving toward the indicated incapacitated civilians, they gawked.

Blacklight didn't have time to care. He spectred, accelerated and reformed above Sonnet with the speed of a hovertrain. Her gasp for oxygen was explosively interrupted by his boots smashing into her stomach, caving the booth, stage, and floor beneath them.

Blacklight ignored the shrieks of terror and focused on swimming back into the ether, bulleting to the floor and reforming to tackle Sonnet before she hit the ground. His momentum took them forty feet, through a dozen tables and into an expensive fireplace.

He slipped into spectre a second before it exploded, spitting Sonnet back into the air before crashing into a piano. Blacklight rolled back to reality, snagged her shoulder with a shadow hook, and hurled her out the window.

The sixth-floor customers stared at him in varying states of astonishment.

"My bad!" Blacklight shouted. "SWORD will cover damages!"

He turned and dove out the window, debating whether to call the Pommel for cleanup before or after he'd handled the other two. Sonnet's crumpled body in a small crater of asphalt meant she was out for the count, though Command might–

BANG!

Getting blindsided by a flying SUV wasn't the worst thing that could happen to someone, but he'd never go so far as to call it 'pleasant'.

Snarling frustratedly, he shifted to pull himself from the frame and rip the whole thing in half. It didn't do much to curb his now wayward trajectory, but he felt a little better.

As overhead casino lights banished shadows from the parking lot pavement, Blacklight had to take the impact on a roll, then dig his fingers through asphalt to claw to a stop. Gel, now recovered, snaked nightmarishly across the parking lot before rearing up to swallow him.

Blacklight erected a ten-by-ten shadow wall and smacked Gel thirty yards into an illegally parked Maserati. The alarms shrieked for a second before the car realized it was totalled and died.

Blacklight pressed, loping across the parking lot to leap, coat his fist in pressurized energy and crash down on the Rogue.

Gel split to let the fist pass through, but the explosion still went off against the car and blew him apart. The Maserati’s shape went from a croissant to no longer existing.

Oops, muttered Blacklight.

Gel slowly reformed, his concentration beginning to wane from the demands of staying together. Blacklight let him progress, then blew him apart with another shadow bomb.

"Alright," he muttered, turning to study the northern chunk of Atlantic City's skyline. "State Marina, right?"

He arrived in two minutes. He found the Rogue even quicker, thanks to his loud and crass barking.

"Where's this fucking boat!" he roared. "Tell me!"

The teenage employee, who looked almost as pale as his white work polo, tried to stammer an answer before the Rogue went still.

The boy turned to see a figure manifest from the bowels of the night. The being stretched to its full height, cracked its neck, and offered them a dark smile.

"Oh sh–" began the Rogue before the illusion faded and the real Blacklight rammed into him from behind. Three boats tried and failed to catch the Rogue before he slid to a stop at the edge of the dock. Blacklight hooked himself in the pavement to kill his momentum, then reached over and caught the boy by the scruff of his shirt before the shockwave knocked him into the marina.

The boy’s big blue eyes got wider as his jaw hit his laces. "You're Blacklight!"

"What gave me away?"

The kid opened his mouth, looking up and down at Blacklight's inky black armour.

"Joking," Blacklight teased. "Hey, do me a favour and– oop!"

He scooped the kid into a fireman carry and skipped away from the mid-sized Powercat suddenly careening in their direction. He also had to twist to bat a dinghy away with a club of shadows.

Blacklight heard the subterranean rumble before he saw it. His tether hooked into a cross-street fence and pulled them clear seconds before an eruption of seawater swallowed the sky.

Oh , he realized. That's who he is.

Blacklight shut out the kid's screaming and slid them both to a comfortable stop. Checking over his shoulder, he spotted the Rogue back on his feet, holding his hands out by his sides.

The marina's water bubbled eagerly in response.

"Great," he sighed, setting the shaking boy down. "You good?"

"No!"

"Good. Can you run?"

The boy shook his head. "Absolutely not."

Blacklight pointed to a nearby clothing store. "Go hide there and wait for the police. I'll be done in a sec."

"I my l-l-legs won't move," the kid stuttered. "I can't m-mov–"

"Hey," said Blacklight. "Listen to me. I gotta take this asshole down, but I can't do that if I've gotta keep looking over my shoulder. Do me a solid, yeah?"

The boy pumped out a few deep breaths, then turned and bolted.

"Thank you, Mr. Blacklight," muttered Blacklight. "God, what would I have done without you? That boat would've turned me to whipped cream if you weren't here."

"You made a mistake coming after me!" screamed the Rogue. "I'm gonna bury you at the bottom of the fucking ocean!"

Blacklight walked over, ignoring the columns of water the Rogue was pulling from the marina.

"Floodgates, is it? Queen-Class. I've heard about you. On another day, I might say something funny or even have the energy to be impressed. Not today, though. Today, I'm fresh out of shits to give."

Floodgates' mask had been torn off when Blacklight hit him, allowing the Hero to see his brows crease in confusion.

Blacklight kept walking. "Generally, I'm detached. You know why? ‘Cause it's all a fucking cycle. You break the rules, we come after you. Either someone dies, you escape, or you get locked up. But we follow a code. Keep your heads down, and there's a good chance you'll never see the emblem. You know what that code is, Floodgates?"

Floodgates growled and used the marina to shape a twenty-foot javelin. It stabbed into the ground, as Blacklight was already gone. Floodgates turned and ate every knuckle of the Hero's right hand as it exited the dock's shadow and hammered into his cheek.

Floodgates was yanked off his feet and ploughed through nine separate boats before leaving the marina to surf another half mile of street. Blacklight followed the carnage to land in a baseball field, where Floodgates was sprawled near the dugout.

"You went after the kids," Blacklight intoned murderously, emerging from Floodgates' shadow like an angel of death. "You went after our kids."

This time, Floodgates couldn't dodge the hand that fell over his face, lifted him off his feet and slammed him back down on home base.

Floodgates needed several seconds to regain consciousness. He scrambled to try and roll to his feet, but the blow had knocked equilibrium right out of his body.

"Who killed Andre?" growled Blacklight.

"Fuck you."

"Wrong."

Blacklight dropkicked Floodgates into the backstop, crumpling it around his body. Floodgates sucked in a single breath before Blacklight was moving again, barrelling into him with sufficient force to take them flying onto the elevated freeway.

They bounced to a stop with Blacklight's hand clamped over Floodgates' throat.

"WHO ?!?" bellowed Blacklight, pounding blows into Floodgates' head. "I will break every bone in your body before anyone strong enough to stop me arrives. Give me a name, now ."

He let up long enough for Floodgates to drink in a lungful of air. The Rogue then tried to blindside him with a spiked ball of water.

"Another wrong answer," Blacklight mocked. "God, how did you even graduate?"

He rose to his feet, ignoring the indignant horns of swerving cars as he seized a handful of Floodgates' stringy hair and lifted him in the air.

"Who am I kidding?" he laughed, tossing the Rogue into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. "You probably think high school is just a taller nursery.”

The collision tossed Floodgates up into the night. The driver skidded to a panicked stop.

"What the–"

"Calm down. How bad's the damage?" Blacklight asked.

The driver glanced at his grill. "Glancing, but–"

"Bill SWORD. They'll cover it."

He leapt through the air to find his opponent, who'd been flung almost a hundred feet. Floodgates, now a bloody mess, was trying to crawl toward a small puddle of water. Blacklight drove a tendril into his shoulder and tossed him into it.

Floodgates' injuries slowly began to heal as he absorbed the water. Once he was recovered enough to talk, Blacklight walked over and teep kicked him in the ear, spinning him off his feet and dragging through grass.

"Who's The Family? What do they want?" Blacklight reached Floodgates and wedged his foot against his injured arm. "Think carefully before you reply, this time."

Black, serpentine tentacles rose from Floodgates' shadow and wrapped around his left wrist. They reached his hand and squeezed, breaking the pinky with a wet snap.

Floodgates snarled defiantly, though his face was starting to lose colour. Blacklight observed him neutrally as the cords moved to his ring finger and clenched.

"Fuck!" screamed Floodgates, trying to punch Blacklight off him. His body was bound, though, and it came to no use. "Godda– ARGH!"

His middle finger broke with a snap, then they continued to his index.

"Wait, wait! Just–"

"You know how old Andre was?" Blacklight asked. "Sixteen. Great kid. Amazing grades. When I checked up on his training every now and then, always smiling. Had... heh. He, uh, had this side gig with music. It was shit, but he loved it." Blacklight shook his head with nostalgic disbelief. "Sixteen years old. Damn."

SNAP .

"FUCK! Stop, stop, I'll tell you–"

"I mean, he hadn't even finished training . Still had apprenticeships, community hours and whatnot. Not a killer, not a threat. He'd never been in a real fight before."

The shadows sharpened, but this time they massed around Floodgates' entire arm, right up to the shoulder.

"Stop! Stop !" he begged.

"And now the kid is gone," sighed Blacklight. "Life really is a shitter, isn't it?"

"The Mother!" screamed Floodgates as Blacklight raised his hand to clench.

Blacklight frowned. "I... huh. That's your safeword?"

"She's in charge! She calls everything!" he rambled in panic. "She's hiring a shit ton of Rogues from everywhere and saying we'll dismantle the regime and make things the way they should be andshapetheworldintow–"

"Slow down," Blacklight chided, dissolving the wires. "The Mother says what will happen?"

"A new dawn is coming!" shouted Floodgates, now looking a tad maniacal. "SWORD will fall like a house of cards. The Heroes who resist will fall with it. The Messiah's Evolution is inevitable, and you will burn with the glory–"

Force rammed Blacklight from Floodgates and soaring off his feet. He'd been so focused on the Rogue's crazed ramblings that he'd failed to keep an eye on the perimeter.

Stupid, stupid.

He spectred and reappeared moments later, slipping out to see Black Ram in all his eight-foot glory, standing over Floodgates' body.

"You too?" grumbled Blacklight. "How big is this club?"

Black Ram pointed west. "There's a bomb on the highway, set to detonate in five seconds. You can fight me, or you can save them."

Blacklight narrowed his eyes. "Well played. Enjoy the respite. Next time, I snap you like a toothpick."

He spectred and shot across the interstate, locking in on the flashing red light half a mile away. There was no time to evacuate civilians, so he launched out of the ether at near supersonic speed, snatched the taped block of C4 from the asphalt and cleared a couple hundred yards of altitude before the bomb exploded in his hands.

The force sent him shooting through the night and crashing into one of Atlantic City's many aquatic bodies. With his own controlled shadow explosion, he threw himself from the water to dry land. Orienting himself through the fireball still dissolving in the sky, Blacklight spectred and blitzed across Atlantic City.

Upon arrival, though, he was both annoyed and unsurprised to see both Black Ram and Floodgates gone.