Chapter 261: An Undying Grudge [Edited]

The industrial outer sector of Grayland was a graveyard of rusted iron, cracked asphalt, and stagnant rainwater.

Decades ago, the sprawling area had been filled with assembly plants and shipping warehouses, but years of neglect had slowly emptied it. Now, under the gray evening sky, it was little more than a stretch of rotting buildings and overgrown train tracks. The city barely bothered to maintain the area, and heroes rarely came here unless something caught fire.

Inside a broken-down auto repair shop hidden behind a mountain of crushed cars, a small fire flickered inside a dented steel oil drum. The air smelled of old motor oil, damp mold, and cheap fuel. Rain dripped through holes in the rusted roof, tapping steadily against empty plastic buckets scattered across the dirty concrete floor.

Hexi sat on an overturned milk crate near the fire, a grimy wool blanket hanging from his shoulders. He looked terrible. His dark hair was greasy and tangled, hanging over bloodshot, sunken eyes that stared into the flames with a restless anger. A faded purple bruise still marked his left jaw where Phantom had struck him weeks ago. Thanks to his impure biology, the injury had healed faster than it would have for a normal human, but his ribs still ached whenever he took a deep breath. The humiliation, however, hurt far more than any of his injuries.

In his hands, Hexi held a bent metal spoon, scraping the cold, greasy bottom of a dented tin can of processed meat.

"Is this it?" Hexi growled, his voice rough and hoarse. The spoon scraped against the tin with an irritating squeak. "Canned pork and soggy crackers? That’s what we’re eating tonight?"

Across the oil drum, Sniper sat on the edge of a ripped leather car seat without looking up. He wore a stained gray hoodie and calmly wiped the scope of his long rifle with a dry rag. His fingers were stiff from the cold air coming through the broken doors, but he continued cleaning the weapon without saying a word. He wasn’t an impure like Hexi and Shadow. He was simply a man who was very good at shooting from a distance, and never missed a shot, thanks to his ability but right now, all three of them were living the same miserable life.

"That pork came from a delivery van parked behind a supermarket on the lower west side," Sniper said flatly. "I had to wait forty minutes in an alley behind a dumpster until the driver went inside for a coffee break. If you don’t want it, Hexi, leave the can on the bench. I’ll eat it."

"We were subjects of Dr. Malik Vance!" Hexi barked, slamming the tin can onto the rusty workbench. "We had clean laboratories! We had comfortable places to stay! We had more supplies and equipment than we could ever use because of the doctor’s connections! Now Malik is gone, and we’re squatting in a pile of rusted mufflers, stealing fuel from delivery trucks just to keep a little generator running!"

"Those places belonged to a dead man’s network, and that network is gone," a quiet voice came from the shadows near the garage rafters.

Shadow stepped out from behind an old car lift, her dark coat almost disappearing against the dirty concrete walls. Her ability to move through darkness made her nearly silent as she walked. She pulled back her hood, shook the cold rain from her hair, and set a plastic two-gallon jug of fuel beside the small generator in the corner.

She poured the fuel into the generator before looking at Hexi with tired eyes.

"The underground brokers in Grayland won’t deal with us," Shadow said, wiping her hands with a dry rag. "Everyone knows we crossed an elite hero and barely survived. Nobody wants the Association coming after them because of us. The fact that we even have this garage and a working generator means we’re lucky enough to be out here instead of sitting in prison."

"I don’t care about the brokers!" Hexi snarled, jumping to his feet and kicking the milk crate backward. It scraped loudly across the concrete. "I care about Phantom!"

The name hung in the damp air of the garage.

Hexi paced across the dirty floor, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white. His breathing became faster as the memory returned.

"He ruined everything," Hexi spat, his eyes burning with anger. "He made fools of us at the docks. And now? I saw the digital billboards downtown yesterday while we were following that delivery truck. Phantom’s face is on the hero registry! He’s an official high-rank hero now! The whole city of Grayland is cheering for him! He’s probably sitting in a warm luxury apartment eating fresh steak while we starve in a garbage dump!"

Sniper finished cleaning his rifle and looked up at Hexi with a completely flat expression.

"Hexi," he said calmly. "Shut up."

Hexi froze and glared at him. "What did you say to me?"

"I said shut up," Sniper repeated, setting the rifle across his knees. "You’ve been complaining about Phantom every night for three weeks. Every time the generator sputters, every time the food is cold, every time it rains—it’s always Phantom this, Phantom that. It’s getting pathetic."

"He humiliated us!" Hexi roared, taking a step toward him. "He broke my jaw! He treated us like insects at the docks!"

"Because compared to him, we are insects," Shadow said bluntly.

She walked over to the fire and held her cold hands above the flames.

"Face reality, Hexi. We’re low-level impures. Phantom isn’t some rookie who got lucky. He’s a monster."

Hexi gritted his teeth. "I was off balance at the docks! The ground was bad! We underestimated his speed. If we just—"

"Stop lying to yourself," Shadow interrupted, her voice suddenly harder. "You know what he’s capable of. We all saw it."

The garage fell quiet for a moment, with only the sound of rain filling the room.

None of them had talked about that night since it happened.

After their defeat at the docks, Hexi had refused to give up. He had forced Sniper and Shadow to help him find Phantom, hoping to catch the hero by surprise and get his revenge. They had followed him to the abandoned warehouse district, but by the time they arrived, the fight had already begun. Instead of attacking, they hid behind a row of rusted shipping crates and watched through the shattered windows.

They had watched Phantom fight his own clone.

"We sat in the dirt and watched him fight a copy of himself," Shadow said quietly, her eyes reflecting the orange flames. "We watched the two of them tear a concrete building apart with their bare hands. The speed, the force, everything about it... it wasn’t a normal fight. It was like watching a natural disaster."

She turned toward Hexi.

"If we had gone into that warehouse, we wouldn’t have lasted five seconds. He would have destroyed us before we even had a chance. He didn’t just beat us at the docks, Hexi. He spared us because we weren’t important enough to kill."

"We can get better weapons!" Hexi insisted, his voice desperate. He couldn’t accept that he had become nothing more than a minor problem to the man who had ruined his life. "There are black-market dealers operating outside the city! We can steal a shipment of powerful weapons! We can hire stronger impures! We can find out where his family lives and—"

CLACK.

The sharp sound of a round being loaded into Sniper’s rifle silenced the garage.

Sniper raised the weapon, pointing it directly at Hexi from a few steps away.

Hexi froze, his jaw tightening. "Sniper... what are you doing?"

"I am saving our lives," Sniper said quietly. "You mention touching an elite hero’s family one more time, and I put a hole in your chest right now."

Shadow didn’t move to stop him. She remained beside the fire, watching Hexi without expression.

"Do you know what happens to people who target the families of high-rank heroes, Hexi?" Sniper asked, his voice low and emotionless. "The Association doesn’t simply send the local police. They send people who deal with serious threats. They can shut down an entire area and make sure everyone involved is found. If Phantom finds out we even went near his family, he won’t call the police. He’ll come after us himself."

Hexi stared at the rifle. His hatred fought against the cold truth in Sniper’s words. His chest rose and fell heavily, and his bruised jaw began to ache again from how tightly he was clenching his teeth.

He knew Sniper wasn’t bluffing. Sniper had survived this long by knowing when to walk away. If Hexi became a danger to the three of them, Sniper would not hesitate to put him down.

"So what’s your plan?" Hexi hissed, slowly raising his hands. "We just live like rats forever? Stealing cans of beans until winter freezes us to death?"

"We lay low," Shadow answered. She stepped between them and gently pushed Sniper’s rifle toward the floor. "We keep stealing fuel and take small jobs far from the city center. When we have enough money, we buy fake travel documents and get on a freight train heading south. We leave Grayland. We leave the Association’s territory entirely."

Sniper lowered the weapon and switched the safety back on.

"That is the only way we survive this, Hexi. You give up this revenge fantasy, or you walk out of that garage alone tonight."

Hexi stood in the middle of the dark auto shop, surrounded by rusted scrap, cold drafts, and the smell of cheap fuel. He looked at Shadow’s cold expression, then at Sniper’s rifle, before slowly turning away and returning to his overturned milk crate. He sank onto the hard plastic seat, pulled the grimy blanket back over his shoulders, and stared into the flickering flames.

"Fine," Hexi muttered, his voice barely audible beneath the sound of rain against the roof. "We gather cash. We wait."

Shadow nodded and returned to the generator, while Sniper went back to cleaning his rifle.

But beneath the blanket, Hexi’s hands curled into trembling fists.

He stared into the fire, his hatred burning hotter than ever. He wasn’t going to let it go. He wasn’t going to leave the city with his tail between his legs like a beaten dog. He didn’t care what Sniper and Shadow said. They were cowards. They had seen real power in that warehouse and allowed it to break their spirit.

But Hexi hadn’t broken.

He was just angry.

’If standard weapons aren’t enough, Hexi thought, then I’ll find something worse. I can’t beat him in a straight fight. But I can find someone who can.’

He just needed to find a monster of his own. Someone who hated heroes just as much as he did.

Outside, the cold rain continued to fall over the empty ruins, washing rust into the dark storm drains beneath the forgotten streets of Grayland.