Bang!
Bang!
Bang bang!
Luke Cage blinked at the incoming fire.
Didn’t flinch, didn’t move an inch — just stood there and let it hit him square on.
A few seconds later, flattened slugs clattered to the concrete one after another, dull and useless.
Bullet holes riddled his shirt.
Gunpowder hung thick in the air around him.
Otherwise, nothing.
Not a mark on him.
“How is it every single one of you idiots knows exactly what I can do, and you still try this?”
He glanced down at his ruined clothes, more exasperated than angry, then stepped forward into the two robbers’ space.
Under their wide, terrified stares, his hand closed around one of the guns and crushed it flat — metal folding like it was nothing more than clay in his fist.
Clang!
The mangled gun hit the ground, and something in the two men finally broke through the shock.
They turned and bolted.
“You really think you’re walking out of this alley?”
Luke Cage reached out, almost lazy about it, and slammed the two of them together mid-stride.
Problem solved.
He clapped the dust off his hands and turned back toward Colin, easy as anything.
Two street muggers against a man with skin like armor plating and strength to match — barely worth calling a warmup.
He crossed back to Colin, reached out, clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Alright, pal, I already—”
His voice kept going, low and steady close to Colin’s ear.
But the words blurred out around the edges as Luke Cage’s hand made contact.
Green light bled into Colin’s vision, flooding it, swallowing the alley whole.
Inside that light: Luke Cage, over and over, fracturing into a hundred versions of himself — fighting, falling, climbing back up every time.
Other shapes moved around those flickering figures, too indistinct to name, too fast to hold onto.
A roar cut through the vision, Luke Cage’s voice this time, deep and absolute.
“I am a Defender!”
[Contacted Twisted Time Node, collected a small amount of time fragment × 1] [black iron mark (1/10)] [faith (32/1000)]
“Twisted Time Node?”
“…Time fragment!”
“Black iron mark.
And — faith?”
He stared at the words, surprise breaking clean across his face.
Then, without meaning to, the word slipped out of his mouth — the last thing Luke Cage had roared before the vision cut out.
“Defenders?”
Luke Cage’s eyebrow shot up.
“You’ve got me confused with someone else, pal.
I run with the Thunderbolts.
No idea what Defenders you’re talking about.”
He paused a second, turned the word over in his own head.
“…Though I’ll admit, ‘Defenders’ has a ring to it.
Sounds like something I’d actually want to be.”
“Thunderbolts.”
Colin looked up at him, the word landing somewhere between confirmation and disbelief, his mind already racing back through what he’d just seen.
So that’s what a Twisted Time Node means.
Luke Cage.
Should be running with a street-level outfit called the Defenders.
Not here.
Here, he’s a Thunderbolt.
A dozen half-formed thoughts crowded in at once, but the throbbing wound in his chest didn’t leave room to chase any of them down.
“Could you — could you maybe get me an ambulance?
I don’t think I’ve got much time left here.”
Colin pressed harder against the wound, voice tight with pain, eyes fixed on Luke Cage.
“Wait — you’re hurt?!”
Only then did it register.
Luke Cage’s gaze dropped, finally catching sight of the damage.
Not really his fault.
The alley barely had any light to speak of, and Colin had been leaned up against that wall the whole time, the wound tucked out of sight.
A momentary blind spot, nothing more — and it had cost him.
…..
Metropolis General Hospital.
A Thunderbolt didn’t get to linger — his schedule ran tighter than most people’s entire careers.
He’d only wound up in that alley because gunfire had carried far enough for him to hear it.
“Mr.
Luper, I know this might sound strange coming from a doctor, but you’re a lucky man…”
The Doctor finished dressing the wound, let out a breath, shook his head.
“An inch or two lower, and you wouldn’t be resting in a bed right now.”
He didn’t finish the thought.
Didn’t need to.
Only one other place in a hospital had room for a body to lie flat, and it wasn’t upstairs.
“Lucky.”
Colin didn’t argue the point out loud.
Inside, though, he knew better.
Luck had nothing to do with it.
That bullet hadn’t gone wide.
It had landed exactly where it was aimed — dead center, perfect placement, a shot that should’ve ended things clean.
Should have.
Before the transmigration changed the rules on him.
…
He lay still in the hospital bed, fingers finding the bandage through his shirt, tracing the shape of the wound underneath.
Then his eyes drifted back to the line of text still hanging in his vision.
[time fragment (Luke Cage)]
The fragment looked like a shard of broken glass, and inside it, Luke Cage’s shape flickered, faint and half-formed.
Colin turned the piece over in his mind, running through what little he understood of it.
Nearly a week now, bouncing between the two Worlds.
A whole week working the crime beat as a reporter here, running into dozens of people along the way — and not one of them had ever produced anything like this.
If Luke Cage hadn’t crossed his path tonight, Colin might never have learned this thing even existed.
Might never have known to look for it.
The thought settled somewhere uncomfortable in his chest — grateful, in a twisted sort of way, for a stroke of luck that had cost him a bullet to the chest to earn.
If contact with Luke Cage triggered a fragment, did that mean anyone like him could do the same?
Or was this strictly a Twisted Time Node thing — some rarer trigger, not just any encounter with power?
📚 Want to read the next 30+ chapters RIGHT NOW?