Chapter 281: Round 2

The screech of warping air reached him less than a second before he appeared.

A sharp rip opened fifty feet above the rusted rail yard. Darkness twisted around it, bending the light before a figure dropped through like a falling meteor.

BOOM!

The impact cracked the reinforced concrete where the four rail tracks converged. Shockwaves spread outward, kicking up gravel, rust-eaten rail spikes, and clouds of gray dust.

Standing in the center of the shattered concrete was the clone.

His dark hair whipped in the cold wind, his identical features sharp and pale beneath the heavy clouds. His combat jacket was covered in soot and dried blood from Chicago, but he was filled with wild, restless energy. Deep violet light flickered in his eyes. Unlike Nicholas’s steady, controlled power, the energy inside B was wild, pouring through his body without restraint.

The clone’s gaze locked onto Nicholas, who stood twenty paces away.

A broad, mocking grin spread across his face.

"Look at you," B said, his voice an eerie, perfect copy of Nicholas’s own, filled with contempt. "The great original. The hero of Grayland. Crawling out into an abandoned yard to die in the dirt."

Nicholas didn’t move. His hands hung loosely at his sides, and his breathing remained slow and even.

"You talk too much for a laboratory mistake."

The clone’s grin widened. He tapped his chest with a gloved thumb.

"Mistake? I am what you were supposed to be before you let weak, sniveling parasites chain you down," B laughed, taking a slow step forward. "I saw your memories in the vats. The girl in the apartment. The little sister. The supervisor holding your leash. You hold back your power to play house! You limit yourself because you’re terrified of breaking the little glass world around you!"

A blinding light suddenly flared beneath B’s ribs.

Nicholas immediately felt the strange frequency coming from it. Unlike Nicholas, who controlled his abilities through the system’s precise levels and refined Qi pathways, the clone had no such system. Instead, B drew from an overwhelming, seemingly endless supply of energy implanted directly into his core. The strange extraterrestrial power filled his body, pushing his physical abilities to terrifying and unstable levels.

"I don’t have limits," B snarled, his eyes glowing bright purple. "I have infinite fuel. Let me show you what true power looks like when it isn’t chained by a conscience!"

The clone blurred forward.

Spatial Fold.

B vanished from the crater and appeared inches from Nicholas’s face, his right arm already pulled back and covered in a swirling crescent of black energy.

Void Slash.

The dark arc came down with enough force to split a locomotive in two.

Nicholas didn’t blink. He didn’t try to overpower the attack. He simply stepped back half a shoe’s length and turned his shoulder slightly.

Spatial Fold.

Nicholas shifted three feet to the left.

The clone’s Void Slash passed through empty air and struck the cracked concrete below. The ground split open into a twenty-foot trench, the broken stone disintegrating into black dust.

Nicholas immediately countered.

Plague Touch.

Dark, condensed energy covered his right hand, forming a razor-sharp, obsidian-black short blade. He thrust it toward the clone’s exposed throat.

B reacted on instinct. He threw up his left arm and released a powerful burst of gravitational force.

BANG!

The gravity shockwave exploded between them. Nicholas absorbed the impact through his heels, sliding backward across the tracks as his blade dissolved into mist.

B didn’t stop. He rushed forward again without bothering to defend himself. Three massive Void crescents followed, his arms swinging wildly as the black energy tore across the yard. Abandoned railcars were sliced in half, their smoking remains crashing onto the gravel.

"Die! Die! Die!" B roared, his aura growing brighter with every reckless swing.

"Vixen! Angle three!" Nicholas called calmly.

From her hidden position between the rusted freight containers, Vixen moved. She snapped her fingers, opening two vertical spatial rifts directly in the path of the flying Void slashes.

The first two energy waves disappeared into the rifts.

A split second later, a third portal opened thirty feet above B and released the redirected Void energy straight down onto his flank.

BOOM!

The reflected blast struck B’s shoulder, tearing away part of his coat and scorching the skin underneath.

The clone stumbled, his face twisting in disbelief.

"Interference?!"

B turned toward the shipping containers, gathering a huge sphere of concentrated gravity in his hand. He was about to destroy Vixen’s position.

He had overextended himself.

All his weight shifted onto his front leg, leaving his core exposed.

"Nectron! Ground him!" Nicholas commanded.

From the shadow of the collapsed blast furnace, Nectron drove both fists into the ground.

The air around the entire area suddenly dropped in temperature as a powerful gravitational force slammed down on B.

CRACK-CRUNCH!

The ground beneath B sank six inches. The pressure locked his legs in place, and his knees buckled beneath the sudden weight.

For one critical moment, the clone couldn’t move.

"Get off me!" B screamed, pouring the strange energy in his chest into the gravity field.

The burst of power tore Nectron’s hold apart, but the half-second Nicholas needed had already passed.

Nicholas was already there.

He closed the distance before B could regain his footing. There were no wide or flashy movements. Just the martial discipline Nicholas had developed through hundreds of life-or-death contracts.

Nicholas ducked beneath B’s frantic backhand and stepped inside his guard.

His left hand shot forward, fingers locked together as he drove his palm into B’s right shoulder.

POP.

The shoulder came out of its socket, cutting off the clone’s ability to channel Qi through that arm.

B coughed up a spatter of dark blood, but his feral eyes widened. He gathered the remaining energy in his body into his left fist, preparing to unleash a point-blank explosion.

"I’ll take the whole sector down with us!" B shrieked.

"You won’t," Nicholas said quietly.

Plague Touch.

Nicholas gathered the purest, densest black plague energy he had ever formed around his right knuckles, condensing it into a hard, needle-thin point.

With terrifying speed, he drove his fist into the center of B’s sternum, directly into the point where the strange, volcanic energy was pouring outward.

CRACK.

The concentrated strike pierced through the clone’s aura and reached the center of his energy source.

The impact wasn’t an explosion.

It was a complete disruption.

Nicholas’s refined plague energy tore through B’s internal pathways, cutting the connection between his mind and the chaotic power inside him.

The violet light in B’s chest flickered violently, sputtered, and died.

The clone’s eyes rolled back. The rage vanished from his face, replaced by blank shock. His legs gave out, and his body slumped forward like a puppet with its strings cut, collapsing face-first into the cold, oil-stained gravel.

The rail yard fell silent.

Nectron slowly stepped out from the ruined furnace, breathing heavily as he wiped sweat from his eyes. Vixen shimmered back into view from behind the freight containers and lowered her arms with a long breath. From the crane tower, Zero dropped smoothly to the ground, landing without a sound.

Nicholas stood over the unconscious clone, his breathing steady and his hands resting at his sides.

He looked down at B’s torn combat shirt.

Beneath the shredded fabric, right where Nicholas had landed the final blow, the skin was split open. But there were no broken ribs or torn flesh.

Embedded directly in the bone of the clone’s sternum was a jagged, glowing green crystal. It pulsed with the same ancient, seismic energy signature as the master power stones described on the Sahara parchment.

Before Nicholas could reach down to examine it, a low mechanical click came from the shadows of the rusted grain silo across the yard.

High above the tracks, on the silo’s dark metal catwalk, a single red laser dot moved across the back of Nicholas’s neck.