The Black Spire had that calculated kind of exclusivity. The kind of place that didn't need neon signs screaming for attention, didn't need flashing holos or tacky, over-designed logos. Just a sleek, black-glass entrance, floor-to-ceiling windows that made the skyline part of the decor, and waitstaff so polished they barely seemed real.

  No advertising. No menu boards. No goddamn music blasting from cheap speakers. The kind of place that let people assume they weren't invited. It was old money, or at least as old as money got in a colony this young.

  And all it had taken for them to get a table was his name.

  That was the part he still wasn't used to. He hadn't even made a reservation or even asked—just walked up, said Victors like David told him to, and the hostess had straightened, smiled too bright, and practically tripped over herself to assure him that, of course, sir, they had an immediate opening. Right this way.

  Zedd wasn't sure how he felt about that yet.

  Now, out on the terrace, the city stretching beneath them in long streaks of neon, warm halogen glow diffusing into the night, with the air feeling just engineered enough to be pleasant, no matter the season, with Nina sitting across from him, her legs tucked neatly under the table, wine glass in hand, hair catching in the low ambient lighting.

  He had to admit. It was a good choice.

  Didn't mean he was comfortable, though.

  The Black Spire wasn't loud—not in the way the market was, not like the streets—but it was full. A low, controlled murmur of voices, laughter tucked neatly behind polite restraint, the quiet clink of glassware, the distant hum of a live band playing smooth, unintrusive jazz.

  Zedd sat with his back to the wall, muscle memory. He wasn't thinking about it, but his body was still running calculations—exits, movement, distance between tables, posture, which conversations carried just a little too much weight.

  His mind was running too hot, which for someone that wasn't him, would probably mean seizure territory. If not immediately, then imminently.

  Too much input. Too much from the last few days, from the fucking propaganda machine warping his image into something he didn't recognize, from the six-year-old who thought he was a goddamn superhero, from the corporate vultures looking to carve him up, from the Alliance suit who had known just a little too much about things he didn't talk about.

  His fingers twitched. Ignore it.

  And then there was the other shit.

  Thirty-eight breach attempts.

  The ones ADAM had already flagged. The ones that the VI had considered a risk. And the thousands more that were still pinging off his security like gnats, testing, crawling, looking for a crack. Maybe they'd find one. Maybe they already had.

  Zedd forced his fingers away from his omni-tool. Not tonight.

  It wasn't easy.

  Because the itch was still there, deep in his skull, the need to fix, build, solve—to dig into code, to work through the problem, to do something.

  But Nina was talking. And for her, he could try.

  "…I think this is the longest you've gone without touching your omni-tool all week. I'm impressed."

  Zedd blinked, refocusing. Nina was watching him over the rim of her glass, one eyebrow arched, lips quirking.

  He stabbed at something green on his plate, pushed it to the side. "Got threatened by two different assholes yesterday. Thought we should celebrate."

  Nina hummed, swirling her wine. "Romantic."

  "I know, right?" He deadpanned. "Gonna start a trend."

  She huffed a laugh, leaning in, chin resting on her palm, nails tapping against her glass. "Mmm. What girl wouldn't want to be wined and dined in the aftermath of attempted murder?"

  Zedd smirked. "I don't know, babe. Maybe the kind who gets off on hero shit?"

  She groaned, flopping back against her chair. "Oh, fuck off."

  "You started it."

  She pointed at him, nails catching the light, dark polish gleaming under the soft amber glow of the terrace. "You're lucky you're cute."

  Zedd snorted, shaking his head. "But I have been thinking, though."

  "Hell of a transition," Nina muttered, tipping her wine glass slightly, hazel eyes watching him over the rim. "About what?"

  Zedd leaned forward, tapping his fork against his plate, a half-smile creeping onto his face. "What do you know about superheroes?"

  Nina's brows drew together, a slow blink as she tried to figure out where the hell that came from. "...Superheroes?" She tilted her head, expression caught between amusement and suspicion. "You mean, like for kids, right?"

  The way she said it—so casual, so obvious—made something click in his head that he recalled from his own half-life and research. Superheroes were for kids.

  That was just a fact here.

  No billion-dollar franchises, no generations raised on capes and masks, no grown-ass adults still debating whether Batman could take Superman in a fight. No "great power means great responsibility" and definitely no superpowers outside of biotics.

  Costumed heroes just never caught on. The closest thing they had were over-glorified action stars, science heroes, secret agents, and fictional super soldiers. Most of the latter happened to be biotics, because playing with genetics to make anything close to a real-life Captain America was a big no-no.

  Zedd dragged his fork through the sauce on his plate, watching the slow swirl of color. "Yeah. Superheroes." His grin widened slightly. "That kid today gave me an idea."

  Nina arched an eyebrow, but didn't interrupt.

  "Y'know, why not lean into it?" He set his fork down, gesturing vaguely. "Do something for the kids. Build better suits. Make a whole Power Rangers team—"

  "The fuck is a Power Ranger?"

  "Don't worry about it," he muttered, waving a hand. The future sucks. "Point is, you keep telling me I need to do more PR shit. Get in front of the camera, be a face, stop making people think I'm some crazy hermit guy." He shrugged, reaching for his drink. "Why not do something that puts eyes on the company without it just being another corpo trying to sink their teeth into my shit or some weird spy trying to join my 'R&D Department'? Something that actually means something?"

  Nina propped her elbow on the table, resting her chin in her palm, eyes narrowed in the way that meant she was actually considering it. "So lemme get this straight," she said slowly. "You—Zedd Victors, Mr. Serious Sarcasm Man, wanna make colorful children's heroes?"

  He smirked. "What, I can't have an inner child?"

  She rolled her eyes but didn't disagree.

  Across the terrace, a waiter drifted between tables, biotic fields shimmering faintly around him as he balanced a tray of drinks. Outside the transparent shielding, the city pulsed—soft neon bleeding into the sky, traffic weaving in fluid arcs along the skyline. It was easy to get lost in the movement, the rhythm of it, to let his brain slip into the static of numbers and breach attempts, of security threats and shifting variables.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Zedd forced his fingers away from his omni-tool.

  Not tonight.

  Nina was watching him again, and not in the way she usually did. She wasn't teasing, wasn't poking. Just looking. Reading something he wasn't saying.

  "...You wore the dress," he said after a beat, changing the subject.

  Nina blinked. Then scoffed, shaking her head. "You like this dress."

  "Damn right I do."

  She muttered something under her breath in Spanish, too fast for him to catch, but he could tell from the smirk that it wasn't exactly polite.

  Zedd just grinned wider, settling back into his seat. The idea sat in the back of his head, coiled and waiting—right next to the tripwire that was ADAM's earlier report, the breach attempt that hadn't felt like the usual corpo bullshit. He wasn't worried.

  Not yet.

  The food was good. The company was better.

  Nina exhaled through her nose, shaking her head, a slow smirk tugging at her lips. "No, but seriously—what the fuck is a Power Ranger?"

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  The air outside was thick, the scent of rain that hadn't fallen yet pressing heavy against the pavement. Heat radiated off the streets, turning the neon glow of New Abraham's skyline into a hazy blur, casting elongated shadows that stretched too far, too thin. The noise had changed—thinned out as they walked, the restaurant district bleeding into quieter streets, the dense chatter fading into the low murmur of scattered pedestrians, distant traffic humming in the background.

  Their shuttle was parked half a block down, the sleek white hull standing out against the darker vehicles lining the curb. The electric blue VI logo glowed faintly on the side—subtle, but recognizable. Not flashy, not a status symbol, just efficient. Faster, quieter, better tech than ninety percent of the shit on the market. He'd picked it for function, but he had to admit, it had a certain presence.

  They were maybe a hundred feet away when Nina bumped his shoulder, easy, casual. "You ever gonna buy a personal one?" Her voice was light, teasing, heels clicking against the pavement as she kept pace beside him.

  Zedd exhaled a short laugh. "I could make a better one."

  "So why don't you?"

  He smirked, glancing at her sideways. "...Is that a challenge, midget?"

  Her scowl was immediate, a sharp elbow jabbing into his ribs. "Fuck off. I'm average height."

  Sure you are. He snorted, mouth already opening to fire back—

  Then he felt it.

  Not saw it. Felt it.

  The shift in the city's rhythm.

  A break in the pattern, the kind you didn't notice unless you knew what to listen for. The steady, natural flow of the street had a cadence, a pulse, and something had just thrown it off. Too still in the wrong places. Too much intent where there shouldn't be. His muscles stayed loose, but his focus sharpened. Peripheral scan—

  Three figures.

  Not together. Not obvious. But placed.

  One leaned against a storefront, head tilted down like he was checking his omni-tool. Another lingered by the alley, just inside the glow of a holo-ad, half-lit by shifting colors. The last was ahead of them, not too close, not too far. Casual. Normal.

  Except, not.

  Zedd kept his pace steady. Didn't slow. Didn't react. Just noticed. Let the distance close naturally.

  Another step.

  Another.

  The first guy moved. Quick. Precise.

  Zedd barely caught the motion in his periphery—an arm shifting too purposefully, a step closing in too smoothly. Civilian clothes, but the stance was tactical. Trained. The kind of training that didn't belong on a random street corner.

  A stun gun strike, angled low, aimed at his ribs—close-range, efficient. Not messy. Not lethal.

  Meant to take him alive.

  Meant to drop him.

  The shock hit hard, electricity knifing through his system, locking his muscles for half a second.

  Half a second.

  Pain surged through his ribs, bright and sharp, nerves lighting up like a fuse sparking toward detonation—then dulling. Too fast. Too easy. His breath hitched for half a second, the sensation rolling through him like a wave that never fully crashed. The problem wasn't the pain. It was the fact that it stopped too soon.

  They didn't know.

  Didn't know that overdosing on all three stims he'd cooked up last year had burnt out some of the built-in safeties in his nervous system. That his brain rewired itself to adapt too quickly, processing damage like it was just another set of numbers to run. That, for some reason, pain like this just didn't last.

  Kira had clocked it first—the way he didn't really need stimulants to keep going like the rest of them, the way his energy never lagged the way it should. Dev had noticed next, watching the way Zedd never really crashed, how he could keep going long after exhaustion should've hit, until he decided to let go.

  Zedd had joked about it at first, but ADAM had been the one to confirm it. Enhanced neurotransmitter activity, accelerated nervous system recovery, an increased neural threshold—his normal was already two steps ahead of everyone else's high.

  It had taken a month just to stop rambling every time his heart rate picked up, twice that to figure out how to keep his fingers from twitching whenever the same happened.

  So yeah. The stun gun should've dropped him.

  It didn't.

  The guy holding it hesitated. That hadn't been part of the plan.

  Zedd's head snapped up, teeth grit, body already in motion before his mind caught up.

  The second attacker lunged.

  Another stun gun. Raised. Ready. Fast.

  Zedd twisted—not away, toward.

  Momentum carried him into the guy's space too quickly, too sharply, his left hand snapping up to grab the attacker's wrist before the weapon could connect. He twisted. Hard. A sharp pop of tendons, a strangled noise half-swallowed by shock—cut off completely when Zedd's right elbow cracked into his jaw.

  Too hard.

  Too fast.

  Not clean enough to knock him out, but enough to make him feel it.

  The first guy was already recovering, recalibrating.

  Zedd spun, ignoring the lingering burn in his ribs, planted his weight, and kicked the guy's knee out—not hard enough to break, but enough to drop him.

  It should've ended there.

  But the third man was moving.

  And he wasn't holding a stun gun.

  Gunmetal gleamed in the dim light, a sleek, compact sidearm raised just enough to catch Zedd's eye.

  His pulse didn't spike. His breathing didn't change. No panic. No hesitation. Just a shift. The kind that happened beneath the surface, where everything that made him human got drowned out by something colder, something sharper.

  Zedd's gaze locked onto the gun. His fingers curled. His mind emptied.

  And then he moved.