Deep within the crumbling labyrinth of the abandoned factory, Kevin Levin paced silently through the dust-choked corridors.
He was following the same elusive trail that had snared Gwen—a fleeting glimpse of a green jacket darting past a doorway.
“Ben?
Hey, Tennyson!
Where the hell are you?” Kevin called out, his voice echoing off the exposed steel girders above.
No response came.
Only the hollow whistle of the wind blowing through the shattered windowframes.
Suddenly, a loud clatter echoed down the hall.
Kevin snapped his head toward the noise, catching a faint, pale silhouette flashing past an intersection.
Frowning, he slowed his pace, his instincts on high alert.
A sudden, unnatural chill swept through the corridor, dropping the temperature by several degrees in a fraction of a second.
Frost began to bloom across the rusted pipes lining the walls.
Kevin kept his composure, but his mutant physiology reacted instantly: the heavy metallic masses on his forearms shifted and expanded, reshaping into two dense, stone-and-steel sledgehammers.
He rounded the corner, but the corridor was completely empty.
Yet, the prickle of invisible eyes pressed hard against the back of his neck.
The air felt heavy, stagnant, and cold.
He felt a faint draft brush past his shoulder and spun around instantly, bringing one of his massive stone hammers swinging through the air with enough force to shatter concrete.
It struck nothing but empty air.
Kevin exhaled a heavy breath, wiping a smudge of dirt from his forehead as he noticed a row of broken glass windows nearby, where cold night air was drafting into the building.
“Phew…
man, I’m jumpy tonight,” he muttered to himself, lowering his heavy arms.
He turned back toward the hallway—and froze.
Floating less than two feet from his face was a terrifying, skeletal apparition.
It possessed a sickly white, shroud-like skin laced with dark, jagged tracks, and a single purple eye sliding unnaturally along a crease in its chest.
“Woah—!” Kevin recoiled with a startled yell, instinctively swinging his stone hammer straight at the creature’s head.
The heavy blow never connected.
The spectral figure drifted forward, becoming completely intangible as the stone hammer passed uselessly through its torso as if it were made of smoke.
Before Kevin could pull his arm back, the ghost reached forward, plunging its phantom hands directly into Kevin’s chest.
An agonizing, bone-chilling cold invaded Kevin’s nervous system.
“Ugh—ahhh!” Kevin gasped, his eyes rolling back as his knees buckled.
The ghostly figure floated above him, drifting in two quiet circles as it looked down at the sprawling mutant.
It raised an intangible hand, tapping its chin thoughtfully.
Well…
youth really is grand, Albedo thought in his Ectonurite form, feeling a slight sting of awkwardness.
They fall asleep so easily.
To be fair to his tactical planning, this had been an accident of distribution.
Before launching the trap, Albedo had used his Ultimatrix to shift into an Echo Echo form to split himself into two distinct, fully functional bodies, then reverted to human appearances to set the lure.
While both copies retained his full intellect and tactical awareness, his customized Ultimatrix core had automatically partitioned his active DNA playlist between the two units to prevent signal interference.
The copy assigned to hunt Kevin simply hadn’t received soft-containment options like Pesky Dust.
Left with high-tier combat forms, he had settled on Ghostfreak for a quick, non-lethal neural shock.
“At least the target is secured,” the specter muttered.
Hoisting Kevin’s heavy, multi-material body effortlessly over one intangible shoulder, Ghostfreak drifted off into the shadows to rendezvous with his other half.
Gwen felt as though she were clawing her way up from the bottom of a deep, dark ocean.
When her eyes finally fluttered open, her head was throbbing with a dull, lingering ache.
She immediately tried to move her hands, only to feel tight, industrial-grade steel cabling binding her arms firmly behind her back.
Worse, a pair of heavy, glowing dampener cuffs were locked around her wrists, constantly emitting a low-frequency field that disrupted her internal mana pathways, making it impossible to tap into her Anodite powers.
She looked around the dimly lit, cavernous room.
Lying right beside her on the cold concrete was Kevin, still completely out cold and bound in matching heavy-duty cables.
Gwen shuffled closer, nudging his stony shoulder with hers.
“Kevin!
Hey, Kevin, wake up!”
He didn’t budge.
She nudged him harder, but he only let out a low, snoring grunt.
Gwen gritted her teeth, leaning right up against his ear.
“Kevin!
Ben just took your sports car for a joyride and crushed the transmission!”
The effect was instantaneous.
Kevin’s eyes snapped wide open as he jolted upward, roaring at the top of his lungs, “No!
Tennyson, if you touch a single bolt on my car, I will personally tear you apart!” Get faster updates on g.com.
He scrambled to his feet, wildly looking around for his beloved vehicle or its potential destroyer.
Finding neither in the dusty room, he let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
Then, the reality of his current situation crashed down on him.
He was bound tightly in thick steel cables, his stone-and-metal arms pinned to his sides.
“What the…?” Kevin growled, flexing his massive shoulders to snap the restraints.
He strained against the cables, his metallic muscles grinding together under the effort, but the alloy refused to yield even a fraction of an inch.
After a minute of fruitless struggle, he slumped back against the wall, breathing heavily.
“Save your energy, Kevin,” a relaxed, familiar voice echoed from the shadows across the room.
“You won’t break those.
I engineered those specific alloy cables to withstand structural tension up to forty tons.
You’re just going to tire yourself out.”
Gwen and Kevin both snapped their heads toward the source of the voice.
Sitting casually on a dusty, beat-up sofa in the center of the room was a young man.
He was wearing a green jacket over a dark shirt, blue jeans, and had messy brown hair.
In his right hand, he held an extra-large slushie cup, lazily sipping from the straw.
Gwen’s pupils constricted.
“Ben?!
What is going on here?
Why are you doing this?!”
Kevin glared, his temper flaring red-hot.
“Hey!
What kind of sick joke is this, Tennyson?!
Unbind us right now before I lose my temper and flatten you!”
The teenager on the sofa let out a quiet, amused laugh, lowering his drink.
“Hahaha…
oh, Kevin,” he said, his crimson-tinted eyes flashing sharply in the dim light as a cold, mocking smirk spread across his face.
“You really are remarkably slow on the uptake, aren’t you?
Have you honestly not realized who you’re talking to yet?”