Chapter 171: What the Water Hides

Chapter 171: Chapter 171: What the Water Hides

The four men had spent over a week trying to learn something useful about the group on the twenty-first floor, and had come away with almost nothing.

The gate gave them nothing to observe — no windows, no predictable rhythm, nothing but a locked door that stayed locked no matter how long they waited in the stairwell below it. What they’d learned instead had come from watching the group move through the open water, out on supply runs, where the sealed floor’s careful secrecy didn’t apply.

"They go out every three days, give or take," Marcus said, crouched beside the tall man near a collapsed overpass overlooking the flooded intersection below. "Same five people, usually. Sometimes four. Boat, or the small speed craft the redhead pilots. They hit stores nobody else has picked clean yet, and they’re good — fast, coordinated, barely stop moving the whole time they’re out."

"That’s the problem," the tall man said, flexing one hand idly, watching the rainwater pooled near his boots respond with a faint, obedient ripple. "We can’t touch them on their own ground. That floor’s sealed tighter than anything left in this city. We hit them out here instead. Somewhere narrow. Somewhere they can’t spread out and use whatever they’ve got."

"They’ve got plenty," the third man — the one whose shadow manipulation had grown considerably more controlled over the past several weeks — said, quiet and uncertain. "We’ve all seen what they can do. The lightning. The fire. Whatever that dark-haired one does to metal."

"We’ve got something too," the tall man said, sharp. "We’ve been sitting on our hands for weeks while they get stronger and we stay exactly where we started. That ends today."

Marcus glanced between them, something restless and hungry sitting behind his eyes that had little to do with the plan itself. He’d been thinking about her for days now — the redhead, the way she moved, the easy authority she carried even surrounded by men twice her size. He’d decided weeks ago, somewhere in the long, empty hours of watching from a distance, that she was going to be his. Whatever else happened today, that part wasn’t negotiable.

"They’re heading toward the old shopping district," Marcus said. "Narrow streets down there, lots of collapsed buildings. If we’re going to hit them somewhere tight, that’s the place."

The tall man nodded once, decision made. "Then we move now, while we still know where they’re headed."

They gathered their gear quickly — makeshift weapons, the small stores of confidence that came from weeks of careful watching finally translating into action — and made their way through the flooded streets toward the shopping district, moving with the particular purposeful quiet of men who’d rehearsed this moment enough times in their heads that the actual execution felt almost familiar.

They found the group forty minutes later, boat anchored near a partially submerged storefront, all five of them inside clearing shelves with the same brisk efficiency Marcus had watched from a distance a dozen times now.

"Positions," the tall man murmured, already directing his men toward the narrow alley mouths flanking the store’s entrance. "We wait until they’re loaded down. Harder to fight back with your arms full."

They didn’t have to wait long. Erik emerged first, carrying the last of a stack of supplies toward the boat, Kai a step behind him, both clearly winding down from what had been an efficient, uneventful run.

The tall man raised one hand, water surging up from the flooded street in a sudden, violent wave, crashing directly into Erik’s chest and driving him backward off his feet.

"Ambush!" Kai shouted, already dropping his own load and reaching for his axe.

Killian was through the doorway a heartbeat later, Penelope and Ben close behind, all three immediately reading the shape of the attack — four figures, positioned at angles, clearly not infected, clearly organized.

"Four of them," Killian said, already scanning for the most immediate threat. "Water user’s the one who hit Erik."

Erik surged back upright, drenched but unhurt, ice already crackling along his knuckles. "I noticed."

The shadow-manipulator struck next, darkness pooling and stretching from the alley’s shadowed corners toward Ben, coiling around his ankle and yanking hard enough to drop him into the flooded street.

"Ben!" Penelope was already moving, katana clearing its sheath, cutting through the shadow-tendril with one clean stroke before it could tighten further.

Ben scrambled upright, coughing floodwater, earth spikes tearing up from the submerged street beneath his attacker’s feet a heartbeat later, forcing the man to leap backward or be impaled.

Killian met the tall man’s second wave head-on, raising one hand as the water surged toward him — and it simply stopped mattering, splitting apart around an invisible, atom-thin barrier he’d learned to project weeks ago, the surge parting harmlessly on either side of him.

"That’s new," the tall man breathed, momentarily thrown.

"Not really," Killian said, already closing the distance. "You just hadn’t seen it yet."

The fight tightened fast after that, the ambush’s carefully rehearsed structure collapsing under the sheer, practiced coordination the group had built over weeks of facing threats considerably worse than four untrained men with recently awakened abilities. Kai’s flames caught the shadow-manipulator’s sleeve, forcing him to abandon his attack entirely to smother it. Erik’s lightning arced across the flooded street, catching the fourth man mid-strike and sending him convulsing into the water.

Marcus broke from his position near the alley mouth and lunged directly for Penelope, water gathering around both hands into a crude, grasping shape rather than a weapon — not trying to kill her, Penelope registered with a cold, sudden clarity, but trying to take her, hands already reaching for her arm the way a man reaches for something he’s already decided belongs to him.

"You," he said, breathless, something possessive and unhinged in his voice. "I told them — I told all of them, you’re the one I wanted, you’re coming with—"

Penelope’s blade opened his forearm before he finished the sentence, and he screamed, staggering back, the water around his hands collapsing uselessly into the flooded street.

Erik didn’t hesitate. Didn’t shout a warning, didn’t give the man a second chance to explain himself. He crossed the distance in three strides, and the lightning that followed wasn’t a warning strike or a disabling jolt — it was final, sustained, driven through Marcus’s chest until his body went rigid and then simply stopped, collapsing face-down into the shallow water with a splash that barely registered over the sound of the storm.

Silence fell over the street.

"Erik," Kai said quietly, though there was no real objection in it.

"He said he wanted her," Erik said, voice flat, still staring down at the body. "He said it like it was already decided."

Killian had already moved to Penelope’s side, scanning her for injury with quick, efficient focus before his attention shifted to the two remaining attackers — the tall man and the shadow-manipulator, both frozen, weapons lowered, watching what had just happened to their friend with open horror.

"You have exactly one chance," Killian said, voice cold, "to explain why we shouldn’t finish this the same way."

The tall man’s hands rose slowly, water dispersing from around them entirely. "We didn’t know he was going to say that. I swear, we didn’t—"

"You planned an ambush," Erik cut in, turning toward him now, lightning still crackling faintly along his knuckles. "You knew exactly what you were doing when you positioned four men to strike people who’ve never once threatened you. Don’t stand there and tell me you didn’t know what kind of men you brought with you."

The shadow-manipulator, still unconscious from Kai’s earlier flames, lay motionless a few feet away. Nobody moved to check on him.

Penelope stepped forward, katana still in hand, something hard and unshaking settling into her voice. "He wasn’t going to stop. You heard him. That wasn’t a threat that was going to grow out of itself."

"Please," the tall man said, voice breaking now. "We’ll leave. We’ll never come near your building again, I swear it—"

Erik studied him for a long, silent moment, the decision visibly weighing on him in a way killing Marcus hadn’t. This man hadn’t reached for Penelope. Hadn’t spoken her name like a claim already settled.

"Take him," Erik said finally, nodding toward the unconscious shadow-manipulator, "and go. If I see either of your faces again, anywhere near this building, near any of us, I won’t ask a single question before I end it."

The tall man didn’t waste time arguing. He hauled his unconscious companion up and half-dragged him through the flooded street, disappearing around the nearest corner without a backward glance.

The group stood in tense silence for a long moment afterward, adrenaline slowly draining out of all of them, Marcus’s body still face-down in the shallow water where he’d fallen.

"That’s new," Kai finally said, breathing hard. "People specifically targeting us instead of just resenting us from a distance."

"It was going to happen eventually," Erik said grimly, already scanning the surrounding rooftops for any sign of further threat. "Word’s spread too far about what we’ve got, what we can do." His eyes flicked briefly to Penelope, something raw and unguarded passing behind them before he looked away again. "About who we protect." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Penelope caught the look, understanding exactly what sat underneath it — not regret, not hesitation, just the bare, unspoken fact that Erik had killed a man in less time than it took to think about it, the moment that man had said her name like an intention.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Don’t thank me," Erik said, voice still rough. "I didn’t do it for gratitude. I did it because I’m not losing you. Not to this, not to anything."

Ben, still catching his breath nearby, glanced between them before speaking up. "We should tell the others. Aunt Mary, Aunt Lucy. If people are organizing against us now, everyone needs to be more careful, and they need to know it’s not just resentment out there anymore."

"We should," Erik agreed, already turning the problem over with the same methodical focus he brought to everything. "And we need to accept that this won’t be the last attempt. Whoever’s left out there watching us, they’ll have heard about this by tonight."

Killian remained close to Penelope’s side, quiet, watchful, something unreadable behind his composed expression as he studied her — not checking for injury anymore, simply looking, the way he did more often lately without either of them naming it.

"Load the boat," Erik said finally. "We finish this run, and then we go home."

Nobody argued. They gathered the remaining supplies in watchful, exhausted silence, Marcus’s body left behind in the flooded street, and by the time they pushed back out into open water, all five of them carried the same grim, shared understanding — the resentment simmering beneath the building’s surface had finally found teeth, and one man hadn’t survived reaching for what he’d already decided belonged to him.