074 Father & Son - Part 3 - Merrick’s POV

  “I’ve never been fond of theatrics,” I said, taking another slow step forward. “And I’ve never been fond of empty threats. You do realize a hostage only has value if I believe you’ll actually harm him, yes?”

  Ark tightened his grip around Mark’s throat. The boy was struggling, but he was losing air. I could see the tension in his limbs, the twitch of a muscle in his forearm, the way his eyes darted, calculating. But the simple fact was this: Mark couldn’t overpower Ark in his current state. Not without air. Not without leverage. Not without his ESP.

  “I said stop,” Ark warned, his voice flat. “Or he suffers.”

  “I know,” I replied. “And that’s why I’m not stopping.”

  I didn’t need to run. I didn’t need to charge like a hero from some pulp fantasy. I just needed to walk forward and keep my eyes open. Because Ark’s threat… while dramatic… was hollow. There was no need to make him panic, I could see it. Feel it. For all his cold brilliance and monstrous power, he didn’t want Mark dead. He wanted him changed. Corrupted. Broken. And there’s a difference between killing someone and trying to turn them into a reflection of yourself.

  Of course, that’s when she arrived.

  “Don’t move, or seaweed here gets it,” Selena called out, voice ringing through the trees like a blade drawn from a sheath.

  She emerged dragging Greg by the collar, unconscious and bleeding, a knife pressed right against the kid’s throat. Her boots kicked up dirt and dead leaves as she pulled him into view. The damned woman had somehow slipped past everything.

  She was wearing my suit.

  Well, my jacket and shirt, at least. I felt like a stiff breeze might knock the arrogance out of me. She smiled as if she wasn’t holding a knife to a kid or she wasn’t wearing my bloodstained clothes draped across her frame. Bold of her to appear before me after I clocked her good in the face.

  “I was surprised to find him in the transport vehicle,” she said casually, pressing the blade a little tighter. “But hey, at least we can get some use out of him.”

  “Charming,” I muttered.

  Ark clicked his tongue in thought, watching the scene unfold as if evaluating an investment. “He would’ve been useful,” he murmured. “Fits the Arcana profile rather nicely.”

  Selena scoffed. “No offense, boss, but a thank-you would be nice. I thought you wanted your son back?”

  “I misjudged,” Ark admitted. “I thought the Greg kid was stronger and would slow things down. But it turns out… the real threat’s been my boy all along.”

  Mark jerked in his hold again. “I’m not your son.”

  There was venom in his voice, and it wasn’t performative. It was raw, hard-earned, full of ash and resolve. Ark didn’t flinch, but I saw the twitch in his left brow.

  Selena turned her attention back to me, her smirk tight. “So, what’s it gonna be, Merrick the Magician? All you’ve got is a sword and maybe a rather annoying ESP. Is that really it?”

  I raised the blade just slightly. I didn’t have to look at it to know it was ready. It always was, when I needed it. “Annoying?” I echoed. “Well, that depends. Have you ever seen an illusion so convincing you forget what’s real?”

  Selena’s grip tightened.

  Yeah, I showed her how it was done. Let’s just say I returned the ourtesy of having to suffer her illusion… and with it, I made a run for it. That’s the thing about illusions… they don’t have to be massive or dramatic or colorful. They just have to make you doubt. Doubt what’s in your hand. Doubt what’s in your head. Doubt whether the blood you see is yours or someone else’s.

  However, while teasing Selena might have been amusing, it was fact I am quite in a pickle.

  “Boss,” Selena said, dragging Greg into better view as he groaned weakly at her feet, “you’re going to want to hear this.”

  She flashed me a glance, triumphant and smug, like a schoolyard bully who thought she’d finally caught the teacher with their guard down. Her blade still hovered near Greg’s neck, but I could see her angle now. This wasn’t about threats anymore. It was about bragging.

  “I got a peek inside his ESP,” she said, nodding toward me. “Only a taste, but it was enough. He’s not just telekinetic. It’s a variant—one that doesn’t just move things. He understands them. Dissects them. If he sees an ESP ability once, he can reverse engineer it. Not exactly copying—more like building his own version from the scraps.”

  Ark turned slightly, finally interested. He still had Mark in a chokehold, but his grip had loosened, if only by instinct. “Is that so?”

  Selena nodded, smirking. “Yep! He doesn’t even need to see how it works, just that it did. It's like his ESP breaks the phenomena into component laws and reconstructs it using kinetic logic. Give him long enough and a strong enough frame, and he could mimic anything.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Ark murmured. “If he can truly replicate a function through raw comprehension… then maybe he could shoulder my curse.”

  “What curse?”

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  It rang in my ears like a half-remembered hymn. I hadn’t heard it used in any serious context since my dungeon-stakeout years, back when cryptids wore the faces of the dead and ESPers whispered to things that shouldn't exist. Back then, "curse" meant something alien and unresolved. Not metaphor. Not superstition. A curse was a living contradiction. An ESP too incompatible with the body that hosted it. A terminal mismatch. A beautiful, spiraling defect.

  “I heard the entire thing… What is this curse you talk about?”

  If Ark thought Mark might be able to carry or inherit it, I have no idea, but it sounded dangerous? At least from the context, I understood that the curse was transferable.

  “Charming legacy you’re building,” I muttered.

  Ark didn’t respond. He just stared at Mark… no, through him. There was no glee in it. No love. Just… cold logic. Mark wasn’t his son.

  Selena turned back to me, smug again. “So, what’s it gonna be, Merrick? You’ve got your sword, your illusions, maybe a parlor trick or two. But we got your students! It definitely won’t be a fair trade, but I want your life in particular, Merrick.”

  I didn’t blink. I didn’t smirk. I just said, “You should know I used to be an assassin.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “And?”

  “And that means I’ve already made peace with what I think about human life. Including yours.”

  Before she could react, I shifted.

  Not in body… never in body. The motion was internal, a flick of a mental switch. My telekinesis twisted, adjusted, then folded into something sharper, more volatile. I channeled the frequency I'd memorized earlier from a captured relic, then modified it on instinct. Electrokinetic output, restructured through the lens of cognitive mimicry. A lance of blue-white light burst from my palm.

  It struck her shoulder in a direct, intentional blast.

  Selena howled, staggering back and dropping Greg. She hit the ground rolling, cursing like a sailor with a toothache. Steam curled from the edges of her jacket—my jacket, damn her—and the blade she was holding skidded across the dirt.

  But it wasn’t meant to hurt her.

  The lightning I conjured was precise. Compressed. Tuned to awaken, not destroy. It struck Greg as well—brushed him, really—and his body convulsed for half a second before settling.

  He groaned again. Louder this time. His eyes blinked open.

  Perfect.

  The real function of the blast was in its secondary structure. A tailored charge that sent Greg’s bioelectrical signals into overdrive—enough to jolt him awake and kick his ESP into high gear. I’d refined the current based on electro-stimulant protocols used in combat medics. It didn’t just wake a person. It evolved them. For about ten minutes, Greg’s synaptic lag would vanish. His ESP fatigue would bottom out. He’d run hot, fast, and clear. The body might rebel later, but the mind? It would be a weapon.

  Selena scrambled up, singed and furious. “You bastard—!”

  I cut her off with a cold smile. “Next time, look for the signs.”

  Greg coughed once, then twice, his eyes lighting up with sudden clarity. He saw Selena. He saw me. He saw Mark still dangling from Ark’s arm like a broken puppet.

  And then, he moved.

  I didn’t even have to give the order.

  Greg grinned like a kid who’d just found a cheat code. “Green Knight mode!”

  Childish. Utterly, shamelessly childish.

  And yet, the air changed the moment he said it.

  I watched as bark surged over his limbs, weaving together into armor that grew from his body like a second skin. Vines wrapped his shoulders, hardened leaves clamped over his forearms, and a crown of branches curled back over his head like a druidic helm. His feet tore into the ground, rooting and anchoring him for power, and then he launched.

  Selena barely had time to register the shout before his wooden gauntlet collided with her face. The impact echoed like a bat cracking against a wall. Her body flipped—three hundred sixty degrees, clean through the air—before Greg caught her by the ankle mid-spin and slammed her into the ground with enough force to crater the dirt.

  But she didn’t hit the dirt.

  She vanished in a puff of smoke.

  Shit—! I lunged forward just as the illusion peeled away, revealing that Greg had just smashed my coat, not her body. He blinked, confused, his eyes flicking to me, then to the rapidly dispersing mist.

  “Dammit. She’s fast,” he muttered.

  I didn’t stop. No time to explain. No time to analyze.

  Ark.

  He was still holding Mark. His grip had loosened, maybe thinking the danger had passed, or maybe because he was more interested in what I would do next.

  I would finish this.

  I launched forward, my eyes locked on him. I didn’t waste motion—I willed a telekinetic pulse to form inside his skull. A localized explosion, compact and cruel. I wasn’t aiming to kill him. Just rupture his equilibrium, force him to drop Mark, force him to…

  He moved first.

  With one effortless motion, Ark jabbed Mark at the base of the skull—just a single, precise strike, enough to knock him cold. Mark's body went limp, eyes rolling back as he slumped from Ark’s grip.

  Then… time stopped.

  The world shattered into stillness, sound turned to molasses, and motion ceased.

  Except me.

  I stood in the quiet, breath slow but ragged, watching as my blast finally landed… too late. Ark had already rolled to the side, dirt frozen mid-tumble, his body twisting in a pose that was somehow both lazy and deliberate.

  Only I could see him.

  Only I could detect him.

  That had always been the strangest part about Ark. Even in a time-frozen world—where photons halted and air didn’t move—I could still find him and interact with him in this time-frozen world. My ESP tuned to something beyond light and touch. It was a paradox I never bothered to resolve.

  He stood, brushing the dust off his coat as if we were sharing a smoke break, not a battlefield. Then he sighed.

  “I suppose this is the part where we part ways,” he said.

  I clenched my teeth. “Not yet.”

  My hand snapped to my side, drawing his saber… the same one he brought with him. The hilt hummed as if recognizing its previous owner, but I didn’t hesitate. I held it with the familiarity of someone who’d already wielded it in three dozen outcomes.

  I raised the blade. “Stay a little longer.”

  Ark offered a half-smile. Regret, maybe. Or mockery. With him, the line was thin. “You’re persistent. I’ll give you that.”

  Then… click.

  Time fractured again.

  He walked. Not ran. Walked.

  And I chased.

  Every step burned. Every second inside the frozen world drained my mind like a leaking battery, pulling energy from marrow, from muscle, from memory. My thoughts blurred, but I pushed forward. Even if it tore me apart, I had to reach him. Had to stop him before he vanished again into that damnable ripple between seconds.

  But he was faster.

  He moved like time didn’t touch him. Like the burden of this frozen realm bent to his will, not the other way around. Each step he took was a kilometer to my meter. Each breath I drew was a curse.

  “ARK!” I shouted into the stillness.

  He didn’t turn.

  I could only grit my teeth, lungs screaming, legs on fire. I reached for him with a twitch of telekinesis… but the flow was too sluggish, too heavy, and the air didn’t respond. Nothing responded. The world had become syrup and static.

  He vanished into the stillness.

  And I fell to my knees.

  I had no idea how long it took for time to resume. When it did, the sound hit all at once—wind, rustle, Greg shouting something behind me, Mark still unconscious at my feet.

  The moment had passed.

  Ark was gone.

  But he’d left something behind: a silence so sharp it could’ve been a blade. A question unanswered. A curse unclaimed.

  And a war that hadn’t even started yet.

  Or maybe it had long started already, and only now I was becoming aware of it.