Veiled in darkness, Nick Morgan sat tied to a chair, his body a symphony of pain. He was certain at least three ribs were fractured, and the gash Wilton had inflicted the previous day throbbed with renewed intensity. The worst-case scenario he had desperately tried to avoid for two days had brutally materialized: The Legion gang was out for blood—his blood.

  Nick had been en route home from a successful meeting with Karen Wake. His old friend had enthusiastically agreed to help him escape the country and forge a new life after he presented compelling evidence of her mother’s survival. It had been Nick’s trump card, and it worked so well that Karen offered to personally escort him to his new beginning. They had concluded their meeting by agreeing to rendezvous at Factory Forty-Five the following afternoon. Unfortunately for Nick, that wasn’t soon enough; he already regretted not taking her initial offer of protection.

  Midway through his walk to the south side, a faint orange-red glow had caught his eye on the western horizon. Smoke billowed into the sky from several points across the city. A colossal black cloud was expanding, engulfing nearly a quarter of New Rome. He quickened his pace, turning his back on the glow.

  He reached Thirty-Third Street just as a solitary black limousine passed him, traveling in the opposite direction. Nick instinctively tried to melt into the shadows, avoiding the pools of light cast by the electric streetlamps, but his efforts were futile. He broke into a desperate run as he heard the sudden screech of tires against pavement. Nick never saw the person or object that struck him. He only registered the roar of an engine and a searing pain exploding at the back of his head before succumbing to darkness.

  The air in his current surroundings was frigid, and the hum of machinery filled the background. Beneath that mechanical drone, he thought he could discern muffled voices, but a constant vibration prevented him from catching their words.

  A sharp metallic click and the creak of a door sliced through the oppressive pain wracking Nick’s body. He attempted to focus on the approaching footsteps, trying to count the people entering the room, but failed. One man or ten—he had no way of knowing. Each passing minute made breathing more difficult; he found it hard to concentrate on anything but keeping air moving through his lungs.

  Suddenly, harsh fluorescent light flooded the room, though Nick’s hood still obscured his vision. Despite the fabric, he could tell he was covered in far more blood than he had realized. The black hood was saturated, dripping into his eyes and making it difficult to even blink. An unbidden whimper escaped his lips as he struggled for breath. Nick knew he couldn’t endure this for long.

  Through the haze of fear, he clearly heard two voices nearby. “It’s a goddamn circus out there, big guy,” a man with a thick New Roman accent stated.

  “Don’t you think I know that, you shithead? Take what men you have left and get your worthless asses back out there! We’ve lost too much to give up now,” a deep, gravelly voice roared—a voice Nick couldn’t immediately place but knew he had heard before.

  “With all due respect, I think you need to reconsider. The guns are blowing up in our faces, and The Elephants are all juiced up on the Monster. The streets and buildings are literally on fire. There will be nothing left of the west side if we keep pushing. It’s a suicide mission! You know Alexander would have called for a retreat by now,” the New Roman voice protested.

  After a moment of silence, Nick heard a loud crack, followed by a thud and panicked shuffling on the ground. “You listen to me!” the deep, familiar voice bellowed. “My brother is gone, you fucking understand that?! Thanks to this bastard tied to the chair and his sci-fi bullshit, we’ve lost Alexander and nearly all our gang. I didn’t want to bet everything on this fight and those boys' shitty guns, but he did. Now he’s fucking dead! I’m in charge now, and I say get the fuck back out there and finish the job!”

  Nick’s stomach twisted. He recognized the voice: it was Titus Legion, and the man was consumed by vengeful rage. In a fit of panic, Nick tried to wriggle in his chair to loosen his bonds. He failed, only exacerbating the pain.

  As hope abandoned him, Nick began to weep for his soon-to-be-dead self. He doubted they would ever find his body; if they did, there would be no one left to give him a proper burial. He found small comfort in the fact that his killers had left the hood on his face—as irritating as the blood-soaked rag was, no one would see his weakness. That thought vanished when he felt a hand touch his face.

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  The sudden removal of the hood plunged him into temporary blindness, and the frigid air caused the congealed blood on his skin to stiffen. Nick managed to wipe some debris from his right eye by dragging his face along the ropes. As his vision cleared, the gravelly voice spoke again. “Damn, and I told them not to beat you up too bad. Can’t blame them, I suppose. Everyone in the gang wants to cut off a little piece of you, and I might just let them. After I’m done, that is.”

  Nick squinted, seeing the hulking gangster in a blood-splattered blue suit. They were surrounded by large meat hooks suspending massive slabs of beef. Suddenly, the cold air made sense. The Legion Gang intended to kill him in a meat locker.

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Morgan; you’re going to die tonight. I’m going to cut you up and scatter your parts to the four corners of New Rome. Nothing you say or do will change that inescapable fact,” Titus stated, malice dripping from his voice.

  Terrified, Nick turned his face away. He fidgeted slightly, finding just enough slack to reach his pockets. “I want you to know, I am a criminal, and even though I live by fewer laws than most, I do have a code,” Titus said, stepping closer. “When I’m about to kill or torture somebody, I feel it’s necessary to let them know exactly why. No confusion. is what my grandma called it. A spirit that doesn’t know why it’s dead can’t fully comprehend an afterlife. I want you to know exactly why you’re going to be burning in hellfire.”

  Titus paced out of Nick’s limited field of vision. “Now, maybe you did or maybe you didn’t know those guns we bought from you were shit. I don’t really care. Alexander had you rush the order because tonight we made our final move on the west side. Everything was going good, until your guns blew up in my guys’ hands. Alexander and most of the Legion are dead now, thanks to you. We’re still fighting out there. Honestly, we probably won’t win, but I’m the boss now, and I say we spend every ounce of blood we have left fighting.”

  Nick ignored most of the speech. His focus was split between enduring the pain and searching his pockets, for something, anything to help him. His memory was hazy, but he was surprised to feel a forgotten square metal object: a Rift Field detonator.

  He had conceived the idea after watching a movie about a space alien hunting a man in the Amazon. Most of his inventions had inadvertently become bombs anyway; he had realized, It was a pocket-sized explosive designed to unleash a surge of Rift-field energy. Nick painstakingly maneuvered the button into his hand, oblivious to Titus’s gaze as the gangster wheeled a metal stand toward him.

  Titus began cutting him free from his bindings, one by one. Bewildered by the sudden movement of his arms, Nick instinctively thrust his hand into his left pocket, clutching the button just as a long knife pierced his right thigh.

  Nick's entire nervous system erupted. He was drenched in sweat, his eyes swollen shut with tears and blood. A second later, Titus plunged a second knife into his left thigh. Nick fainted, collapsing onto the floor, only to awaken moments later with Titus standing over him, a third knife in hand.

  “Looks like I nicked that big vein in your leg, Morgan,” the villain said with a chilling smile. “You’re going to bleed out in less than twenty minutes. I’m going to have to make this quicker than I wanted to. I’m going to take your balls, and then when you die, your whole fucking bloodline goes. All those years of injustice done to my family by yours will finally be righted.”

  Titus approached with a serrated, curved hook blade. Nick felt his lifeblood draining; he could barely maintain consciousness. He no longer cared about living; he just wanted the agony to cease. With his last vestige of strength, he gripped the square object.

  He couldn’t feel his legs anymore, his voice was reduced to a raspy whisper due to the meat locker’s chill, and he had no more tears to shed. He no longer cared about living; he just wanted the agonizing pain to cease. With his last vestige of strength, he felt the square object in his hand one final time. It was the last object he would ever hold, he decided.

  As Titus knelt, Nick Morgan pressed the suicide button.

  The frigid air of the meat locker fractured. The room exploded not with fire, but with light—a kaleidoscope of electric colors that tore at the fabric of space. The industrial freezers shrieked, warping into a high-pitched whine that threatened to shatter Nick's bones. The massive slabs of beef blurred, their molecular structures unraveling into shimmering threads of energy.

  Titus froze, his face twisted in a mask of bewildered terror. He didn't just disappear; he unraveled. His blue suit dissolved into shimmering motes, followed by his skin, which sloughed off in a cascade of vibrant hues. Muscle fibers elongated into snapping strands of pure energy. His bones, visible for a horrifying second as an ethereal skeleton, crumbled into glittering dust.

  The pain in Nick's own body was eclipsed by an infinite, ecstatic stretching. He felt his very atoms lengthening and dissolving. The locker, the beef, Titus, the smell of blood—everything became a torrent of chaotic energy. The metallic tang in the air was replaced by the sharp scent of ozone. The space wasn't merely destroyed; it became one with the Rift-field. And then, nothing.