Mateo's body crumpled as it hit the building wall, the concrete spiderwebbing on impact. The world spun around him in slow, broken frames. Dust filled his lungs. Light flickered at the edge of his vision.
Get up. Get up, you bastard. They need you.
It felt like his chest had caved in—in fact, he suspected that was the case. In addition to his shattered arm, every breath he took felt like his chest was getting stabbed by a thousand needles. He felt like his lungs were being crushed, like he was wearing a corset lined with razor blades.
He coughed, and it felt like a grenade was going off in his torso. He could feel the bitter, coppery taste of blood on his tongue, and then it started pouring out of his mouth, leaking from his respirator.
Blood. Broken ribs. Did I puncture my lungs? Am I... dying?
The thought should have terrified him, but all he felt was rage. Rage at his useless body, rage at his failure, rage at the fact that Alex and Akira were still fighting Man 1 without him—and they were losing. Badly.
No. Not like this. Not when they need me.
"Mateo!" Alex's voice cut through the haze of pain.
She dashed toward him, but skidded to a halt when Man 1—still bleeding from every visible orifice, still barely holding himself upright—snapped his head in her direction. There was no way he should still be moving. Not with Dong's venom boiling through his veins. Not with a cratered skull and organs liquefying from the inside.
And yet... he was.
The man stumbled forward, almost robotic in motion. A dying marionette pulled by invisible strings.
Alex, shaking the fatigue from her bones, barked out a curse. "He's not done. Back! Back!"
The blood leaking from the man's eyes had become a steady stream now. He wiped at it absentmindedly, like it was sweat. And he kept moving, one dragging step at a time, toward Akira.
Move. MOVE. They're going to die because you're too weak to stand up.
Mateo tried, so desperately to get up, but not only was the pain from his broken arm and fractured ribs unbearable, his body completely refused to respond to the commands from his brain. It was like his nervous system was staging a rebellion, telling him to rest, that even if he got up, he wouldn't be able to do anything to help them win.
Is this how it ends? All that planning, all that effort, and I can't even finish what I started?
His breath was becoming shallower, and somehow, the pain was becoming fainter. But Mateo knew that wasn't a good thing. In fact, it most likely meant his life was seeping out of him with every labored heartbeat.
No. Not yet. I won't die here. I won't let them die because I'm too weak.
Even after all his planning and the vigorous energy he'd put into his goal, would he die on the battlefield, bleeding and unable to move? The thought made him want to scream, but he didn't have the strength.
As his vision tunneled, his hearing gradually came back, the incessant ringing seized. He could hear the crashes as Man 1 hurled an abandoned car like it was a backpack at Alex. She could barely push it back before he rushed in for a direct hit.
Alex. Hold on. Please, just hold on.
In the background, he could feel tremors rising in the distance, booms as buildings came crashing down. What the hell was happening?
In the coming seconds, the B-1 team broke through the buildings like cardboard, joining the battleground, with the identical Man 2 still running rounds around them, though they seemed to have better luck thanks to their raw destructive power.
He saw Inferno fly in with fireballs at his feet acting as rocket boosters. He held out his arm, a massive fireball that was deep yellow at the edges and red hot at its core flaring in his grip, like a compressed star. The air pressure drastically changed as the blood in Mateo's mask started evaporating from the heat.
Man 2 was still in the same checkered suit, but it looked almost completely burnt off, revealing layers of toned, perfectly coiled muscles. He was still uninjured, but not for long.
As Inferno prepared to launch the attack, Mateo half expected the son of the top-third hero to say something heroic or archaic like, "Begone, vile villain!" or "This is the end of the line for you!"
Instead, with his eyes burning with fiery passion, Inferno uttered three simple words that seemed too cold for the scalding attack.
"Burn, you bastard."
The fiery orb launched straight at Man 2. With the ball being so large and almost nowhere to escape, he barely managed to dodge—he tanked the attack right to his skull. The fireball passed through it, and Mateo could see the grotesque burning mass of flesh underneath. He could even smell the charred meat through his broken respirator.
But the man's right eye was already regenerating, and so was the flesh under the skin. There was no point to fighting if he regenerated from all their attacks—they had to double down and attack simultaneously.
"Marina!" Switch yelled painfully, wiping blood from his nose as Man 2 struck forward.
"ON IT!" She practically screamed. Her hands clapped in a horizontal prayer position, and a powerful jet of water—thinner than a mechanical pencil, sharp and powerful enough to cut through steel like butter—erupted from her palms.
Switch barely dodged quick enough before the deadly water beam cut through a lock of his golden hair. Soon, the jet stream contacted the spot where Inferno's fireball hit, but instead of cutting through with ease like it had done to the surrounding concrete buildings, the beam faced intense resistance from the already damaged tissue—like cutting through steak with a butter knife.
Marina noticed this and increased the pressure, shrinking the beam to the diameter of a pinhead as it pierced and cut through Man 2, even as he attempted to move forward. Soon, the jet had sent an almost clean slash through the fourth quadrant of his head, cleaving off his right eye and sending gray brain matter and red blood splattering everywhere.
Even with the severity of the maiming, the man never showed any sign of being in pain. But for Man 2, the absence of a significant portion of his brain seemed to affect his capabilities. He was brought to a jerky stop, and even from his distance, Mateo could see the brain reforming—almost like without it, they couldn't send signals to the body telling them what to do.
That's it. The brain. That's their weakness. But they heal too fast.
That was more than enough time for the B-1 team. With his long combat knife, Switch ran forward as Maya telepathically hurled SOG butterfly knives to deal damage. Switch's dagger embedded itself in the space devoid of brain. Using every bit of energy in his body, Switch twisted the blade and drove it down further through flesh and bone until it cut through the side of the neck in an arc.
As Man 1 continued his frenzy with Alex and Akira, Switch ran from Man 2, who he had just beheaded.
The 'corpse' was still standing, even though it was missing a head, blood pulsing through the neck stump.
Switch panted heavily next to Maya, his cotton shirt drenched in blood and sweat as they stared at the body in apprehension.
"Is it dead?" Maya asked timidly.
Please. Please let it be dead.
Obviously, life was not favorable to them.
Helplessly, they watched as the thick neck muscles regrew, as flesh and bone bound and meshed until a solid neck had reformed. And in a few seconds, the head was next.
No. NO. How are we supposed to fight something that won't stay dead?
The B-1 team looked utterly disheveled. Inferno's suit and cape were torn and burnt in multiple places. Switch's usually impeccable hair was dirty, and his shirt was drenched in blood and sweat. Maya looked like she was in agony, a deep gash on the side of her temple. Marina sported several purple and red bruises over her skin beneath her ravaged blue costume.
They also looked utterly drained, like all the fighting spirit had been sucked out of them, like they wouldn't survive the next wave of attacks.
Man 1 was still bleeding profusely from his orifices, but he didn't show any substantial signs of slowing down. Mateo had assumed Dong's poison would shut down the biological healing factor, but maybe their regeneration couldn't be stopped with venom. Either they could hope and pray that the venom would finally take effect and shut his body down, or the healing would eventually purge all the compromised blood and return him to peak condition.
Neither situation was looking good for them.
We're going to die. All of us. And there's nothing I can do about it.
The remaining members of the B-2 team, Alex and Akira, joined with the B-1 team, both looking equally battered.
Man 1 had paused in his murderous frenzy, as if weighing whether fighting was still worthwhile. But once Man 2 had fully regenerated, they got back into fighting position, ready to attack.
It was now a 6v2 fight. Alex, Akira, Inferno, Marina, Switch, and Maya. Mateo was still incapacitated, and Henrik was nowhere to be found.
Where is he? Is he dead too?
Either way, now they were fighting against two virtually immortal opponents. When it was 4v1, they had barely been able to win. How were they supposed to achieve victory with worse odds? Were they already as good as dead?
The whole team adjusted their stances accordingly. They looked on the brink of collapse, but now it was no longer a fight for victory—it was a fight for survival. For their very lives.
Reeves warned us. She gave us a chance to turn back, to live normal lives before the end came. And now here we are, moments away from death.
As Mateo considered their limited possibilities, a chill ran down his spine. Then he realized—it was a literal chill. The air, which had been warmed by Inferno's flames, suddenly dropped dramatically in temperature, making Mateo's breathing even harder than it already was, like his lungs were drowning in his own blood.
At first, Mateo thought the cold was death's icy fingers clawing at his soul, but he soon realized the source was more physical. More human.
The blue and purple parka, the brown boots, the pale silver eyes—these all pointed to one person.
Seraphine.
Sera? What is she doing here?
The girl had stayed back at the city hall base when she learned about Amaya's kidnapping. Mateo and everyone else had assumed it was because she was traumatized from losing two team members in less than two days.
So what was she doing here?
The others noticed the change immediately. Swiveling back, they saw the lithe girl who brought frost to the air wherever she walked.
The two men noticed something was happening, and they charged forward. Seraphine held up her hand to stop her battered teammates from fighting any longer. As the air grew even colder—so much so that the evaporating blood in Mateo's mask began to cool into frozen droplets—Seraphine continued to stride forward, as if she was in no rush.
She's different. Something's changed in her.
As the men charged forward, Mateo began to notice a circle forming around the three figures—Seraphine, Man 1, and Man 2. Soon, their movements began to slow, like the air had turned to honey, impeding their progress. Then, the sounds of terrifying cracks began to fill the air as the men walked even slower, even though Seraphine hadn't even come close enough to touch them yet.
At first, Mateo thought their bones were breaking somehow, but the horrifying answer crept into his mind.
The air is so cold that every drop of moisture in their blood, muscle, and tissue is turning to ice.
With every movement they made, they were breaking apart those frozen bonds—and their bodies themselves. Even though Mateo couldn't see any pain in those empty, mechanical eyes, he winced with every step they took. Surely that had to be excruciatingly painful, even more than his broken arms and ribs.
Eventually, they slowed to a stop. Having their blood, bones, and internal organs frozen and shattered, they had no other option but to drop to the floor, trembling with cold and trauma. Seraphine loomed over them like a frost goddess.
Mateo had never known her well, but even from their limited interactions, he knew she wasn't a chatterbox—though she was still friendly when she wanted to be. Now, she stood over the two villains without an ounce of emotion on her face. Back at the base, she had looked afraid, lonely. Now, none of that remained. Her face was painted with a mask of indifference, as if she had made some iron resolution none of them had witnessed.
What happened to you, Sera? What changed?
Finally, she walked toward the freezing men, their regeneration unable to counter her freezing power since she wasn't destroying any part of their bodies. Mateo himself couldn't have asked for a better counter.
She approached Man 1 first, who was still struggling against his frozen body. Seraphine's slender, pale fingers grasped the man's thick throat, and white speckles of frost began to climb through his skin, all over his body, bathing him in hypothermia and permafrost.
The dim light went out of the man's eyes as they froze solid. The air stilled, frozen. And even though it was a whisper, Mateo and everyone else heard it clear as day.
"No one will ever take anything from me, ever again."
With that, she applied gentle pressure to the frozen man's neck, and he shattered.
It was like watching a glass sculpture crash to the ground, except infinitely more horrifying and grotesque. The body crumbled without resistance, brittle as a sheet of ice, cracks spiraling throughout as his neck broke, revealing frozen jagged shards of what used to be neck muscles, veins and arteries, windpipe and throat.
Soon, the rest of his body fell apart into pieces the size of pebbles, leaving him truly dead.
Dead. Actually dead. She did it.
Next to him, Man 2 was shaking—not just from the extreme cold, but from the fear that Seraphine inflicted. Even though throughout the fights Mateo hadn't seen an ounce of emotion in their empty eyes (except for the melancholy and acceptance when he was about to hit Man 1), Man 2's eyes now showed pure terror. Tears that froze the moment they left his tear ducts streamed down his cheek.
As Sera's chilling blue eyes pierced his, his body went rigid. Then Seraphine walked to him, touched his hand, and he shattered too—into even finer pieces than Man 1, his internal features completely unrecognizable.
Mateo's breath froze in his throat. He had known that Seraphine was strong—she wouldn't be here otherwise. He had seen her display her power in training and duels, freezing surroundings. But he had never seen it so extreme before. Even though she was his teammate, he couldn't help but feel awed by how ruthlessly she had dismantled the same villains they had spent what felt like an eternity fighting—in less than a minute.
Soon, the fear of death left the other team members as some let out sighs of relief.
"Sera, y-y-you came back!" Marina said, stammering half from the cold and half from worry about her friend's mental state.
Seraphine nodded emotionlessly without answering verbally, then turned as if to go back to the base after the exhausting fight.
Akira and Alex looked at each other, and Akira ran ahead, most likely to look for Henrik, who had been thrown back by Man 1 and hadn't made an appearance since. Mateo hoped he was okay.
Alex, on the other hand, ran toward Mateo, and for the first time, she looked genuinely scared. Her usual bold and vibrant green irises were trembling with fear as she reached his broken body.
"Are you okay?" she asked, running her hands over him carefully. He winced, wanting to say something along the lines of, "No, I am not fucking okay, I have like twenty broken bones," but he couldn't even force coherent thoughts out of his mouth, his entire being dulled with pain.
She's scared. Alex is actually scared. When was the last time I saw her like this? That's right, never.
"Broken... ribs," was all he managed to answer as he continued to lie limp in her arms. He thought he imagined it, but there actually appeared to be tears forming in her eyes.
Don't cry, Alex. Please don't cry. I'm not worth crying over.
"Zeke!" she yelled at Inferno as he turned to her quickly. "He's hurt! We need to get him back to base and tell Reeves about this now!"
Inferno nodded and walked forward, touching his ear comm to contact Reeves. Mateo wondered where the hell Reeves was—didn't she hear the crashes and fighting from wherever she was positioned?
As Inferno approached to lift him up and carry him (most likely with his rocket propulsion), Mateo felt tremors in the earth. Then there was a distant boom. He had felt them previously but assumed they were from other heroes fighting in the corona of this massive, destroyed wasteland. But the boom felt closer—closer than it had ever been in Ashdrift during the single day they had spent here.
No. Not now. We just won. We just survived.
The others felt it too. Inferno swiveled his head toward the source of the sound. "What the hell was that?"
Another boom, definitely closer, shook the ground and almost threatened to throw them off their feet. Switch held up his blade uselessly. "Oh fuck, don't tell me—"
Before he could finish his sentence, the building a couple hundred feet ahead of them exploded and began to collapse like a house of cards, threatening to bury them in the incoming plume of dust and debris.