“Whoa, so this is what possession feels like?”
“Jem” raised his hands, clenched his fists, and released them.
Indeed, Yuri, transformed into Ghostfreak, had possessed Jem’s body and seized control of it.
As for Jem’s consciousness, it fell into a deep sleep.
Once Yuri vacated his body, Jem would forget everything.
Yuri threw two punches using Jem’s body.
The feeling…
lacked any real power.
Possession felt bizarre.
After all, Jem’s body wasn’t his own, so controlling it felt slightly off, though basic movements weren’t hindered.
It just felt odd, though luckily, Yuri didn’t find it unbearable.
“Waaaaah!”
“BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!”
A piercing alarm suddenly echoed, followed closely by three loud explosions.
A cold gleam flashed in “Jem’s” eyes.
The second Trickster had triggered the alarm; it seemed he had found what the Network wanted.
Tangrui’s trio at the left gate had also started causing destruction to draw the guards’ attention.
Invisibly, an ethereal spirit floated out of Jem’s body.
Jem then collapsed limply to the ground like a soul-drained shell, passing out cold.
Yuri placed his hand on Jem’s forehead.
“When you wake up, you will forget everything that happened over the last two days…”
***
Seventh-floor evidence room.
After ransacking the room, Axel finally locked onto his target: a deeply hidden, inconspicuous safe.
Axel pulled out a stethoscope-like device and pressed it against the safe near the combination lock.
Just like in movie tropes, he listened intently while turning the dial.
However, the moment the device touched the safe, a gravity alarm system underneath was triggered.
The alarm instantly blared through the entire building.
Axel paid it no mind and kept turning the dial, devoting his full attention to cracking the lock.
“BANG! Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
BANG!
BANG!”
About a minute later, violent thuds echoed from the door.
When Axel had broken into the evidence room, he had locked the door behind him and sealed it tight with candy glue.
This glue was one of The Trickster’s classic gadgets, sticky enough to hold even a rookie Flash for a few seconds.
Its flaw was that it melted rapidly under extreme heat.
The first guards to reach the evidence room found that no matter how hard they rammed the door, it wouldn’t budge, and they caught a faint scent of candy in the air.
“It’s candy glue!
Does anyone have a flamethrower?”
The original Trickster was an FBI Supervisory Agent now; all his gear was common knowledge within the Bureau.
The guards knew exactly what to do.
Since the alarm had gone off suddenly, guards on the floor rushed over immediately carrying only their standard sidearms, with no time to retrieve heavy gear.
Fortunately, they carried another weapon capable of generating high heat.
“Incendiaries!
Use incendiary grenades!”
The guards backed away and hurled an incendiary grenade at the doorway.
Although it risked damaging evidence near the door, they couldn’t afford to care.
“BOOM!”
The incendiary burst open, setting off a roaring fire that wouldn’t extinguish for minutes.
Under the intense heat, the candy glue began to melt at a visible speed, filling the air with the smell of burnt sugar.
In just thirty seconds, the candy glue was largely melted.
The guards charged forward, extinguished the doorway flames with fire extinguishers, and rammed the door.
This time, a light push sent the door open.
From the moment the alarm sounded to the guards breaking in, barely three minutes had passed.
“Drop what’s in your hands!
You’re under arrest!”
In the corner of the room, Axel had just opened the safe and pulled out a dossier a dozen pages thick, with the word “Network” printed on the cover.
He looked at the guards charging in with mock shock.
“What?
I’m under arrest?
Are you guys joking?”
“You’ve gotta be joking.”
Axel grinned, shoved the dossier into his waist pouch, and suddenly threw a smoke bomb at the guards.
His objective was crystal clear: steal the dossier.
After tossing the smoke bomb, Axel dashed straight for the window, shattered the glass with a gunshot, and leaped out. This story is hosted at g.com.
Just then, an invisible spirit floated up through the seventh-floor floorboards.
It was Yuri as Ghostfreak.
After erasing Jem’s memory, he had flown straight here.
The moment he entered the evidence room, he saw Axel leaping out the window to escape.
Yuri quickly flew out after him.
Up in the sky, Axel ran wildly through thin air wearing his air-walking shoes.
He needed to hand the stolen dossier to Blacksmith immediately.
Yuri floated behind him, quickly catching up.
In his intangible state, Ghostfreak’s body possessed extreme malleability.
He could turn into a long, invisible thread or stretch his body like Elongated Man.
Yuri’s waist elongated in a mind-bending fashion (if Ghostfreak even had a waist), his upper body wrapping around in front of Axel.
Axel’s waist pouch came into Yuri’s view.
*Sorry, buddy, looks like you’re going home empty-handed today,* Yuri thought to himself.
He extended two thin tentacles, silently unzipped Axel’s pouch, extracted the “Network” dossier, and zipped it back up.
After all, Axel was still an inexperienced novice.
He didn’t notice at all that someone had invisibly stolen the stolen file right out of his pouch.
With the dossier in hand, Yuri stopped in midair, no longer pursuing him.
Axel, blissfully unaware, kept sprinting full speed ahead and soon vanished beyond the horizon.
With the file secured, Yuri rushed back without delay.
He found Tangrui, Patch, and Busk, and erased their memories of the past two days one by one.
As for why he didn’t erase Axel’s memory as well: first, it was unnecessary.
Axel didn’t know Yuri in the first place and probably wouldn’t even recognize him next time they met.
Nor would Axel run to the FBI and tell them there was a fifth accomplice they missed…
Second, erasing memories was no simple task.
The stronger a person’s willpower, the harder it was to tamper with their mind.
Axel was a supervillain—no matter how green he was, he was far beyond a regular civilian, creating a huge gap in willpower.
Yuri wasn’t sure he could manipulate Axel’s mind successfully.
In fact, there was a third reason: in the DC universe, memory was tied to the soul.
Unless a person’s soul was purified or cleansed, their memory couldn’t truly be erased, only buried deep with the constant possibility of resurfacing.
A prime example was *Identity Crisis*, where Zatanna—one of DC’s top magical talents—had to exert immense effort just to wipe the memory of Doctor Light, a B-tier villain, and he still ended up regaining his memories anyway.
Of course, Yuri hadn’t read DC comics, so he was unaware of this fact for now.