After Asher stepped into the corridor, he adopted a casual, unhurried pace. His body language suggested complete obliviousness, just another hotel guest wandering to the vending machines or perhaps looking for the ice room. But his awareness was razor-sharp, tracking his pursuer through every reflective surface he passed: polished elevator doors, framed artwork under glass, even the glossy finish of a decorative vase.
The thug was following him. The amateur kept ducking behind corners and furniture, clearly terrified of being spotted. But to someone with Asher's training and enhanced situational awareness, the man might as well have been waving a bright neon sign.
'This guy is absolutely terrible at surveillance,' Asher thought, suppressing a sneer. 'Just find anyone off the street and put them on a tail job? Kevin's really scraping the bottom of the barrel if this is the best he could hire.'
The hotel's main lobby was too crowded, too many witnesses, too many civilians who could get caught in the crossfire. He needed to draw this tail somewhere isolated, somewhere he could flip the script and start asking his own questions.
The back exit would be perfect.
Asher adjusted his trajectory, moving with deliberate casualness toward the rear of the building. A few minutes of strategic navigation through increasingly empty corridors brought him to the service area. The back door loomed ahead, grimy industrial light filtering through its small window.
He pushed through into the night air.
The open space behind the hotel was exactly what Asher needed, dim lighting from a single flickering bulb, the ambient noise of distant traffic, and most importantly, no witnesses. Trash bins lined one wall, and the smell of restaurant waste hung heavy in the humid air.
The door clicked open behind him.
The thug stumbled through, eyes scanning the area frantically. His expression shifted from focused to confused in an instant. The target who'd been right there just seconds ago had vanished like smoke.
"Where'd he go?" the man muttered, turning in a slow circle. His voice carried an edge of panic. "He was right in front of me... I couldn't have lost him that fast..."
"Looking for someone?"
The thug nearly jumped out of his skin as Asher emerged from behind the dumpster, where he'd simply crouched low and let the shadows do the rest. Sometimes the simplest tactics were the most effective.
The man's face cycled through several emotions, surprise, fear, then a desperate attempt at composure. He straightened his shoulders and tried to paste on a friendly expression.
"Oh! Hey there, kid. You, uh... you lost? It's pretty late for someone your age to be out here alone." He spread his hands in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring gesture. "Why don't you tell me your room number? I can walk you back to your parents, "
"Drop the act," Asher said coldly, his voice cutting through the man's rambling like a blade. "Tell me who sent you and what you're really after."
"Who sent me? What are you..." The thug's fake confusion turned to aggressive bluster in an instant. He straightened to his full height, trying to use his size to intimidate. "Listen here, you little punk! I'm just trying to help, and you're getting all mouthy with me? You better watch your..."
Click.
The sound of the air gun's safety releasing was almost musical in its finality. Asher drew the weapon from his jacket pocket with practiced ease, leveling it at center mass with rock-steady hands.
The transformation in the thug was instantaneous and almost comical. His knees buckled, dropping him to the concrete like someone had cut his strings. Both hands shot up in the universal gesture of surrender, his face draining of color.
"Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Easy! Easy with that thing, kid!"
"First of all," Asher said calmly, "don't bother questioning whether this is real. My hand might slip, and then we'll both find out together." He tilted his head slightly, the gun never wavering. "So let's try this again. Who? Sent...You?"
The thug's hands trembled in the air. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool night air. "Okay! Okay, I'll talk! Just... just don't point that thing at me!"
"Then start talking."
"It was, it wasn't a person! I swear!" The words tumbled out in a rush. "It was this robot, man. This little flying robot just appeared in front of me out of nowhere, hovering right at eye level. And then there was this voice coming from it, giving me orders. Told me exactly where to find you, told me to follow you and keep track of where you went. The robot even gave me cash up front!"
He fumbled with his jacket pocket, pulling out several crumpled hundred-dollar bills. The money fluttered in his shaking grip. "See? This is what they paid me! I'm telling you the truth, it was a robot that hired me! Some kind of remote communication device with a voice on the other end!"
Asher's expression didn't change, but his mind was racing. 'A robot. Of course it was a robot. Vilgax and Kevin.'
But something didn't add up. Why send such an obviously incompetent tail? Why make the surveillance so easy to spot? Unless...
Unless being spotted was the entire point.
The realization hit him like ice water. 'A distraction. They wanted me to notice this idiot, wanted me to waste time and attention on an amateur hour surveillance job. They wanted me to focus on the wrong threat.'
A distant sound reached his ears, not quite an explosion, but the sharp electrical crack of a building's power grid being overwhelmed all at once. The lights of the hotel behind him flickered and died, plunging the entire structure into darkness.
Then came the screaming.
BOOM.
The emergency exit doors crashed open as panicked guests flooded into the night, their voices rising in chorus:
"There's a bomb! Someone found a bomb on the top floor!"
"The elevators are stuck!"
"We can't get through the main doors, they're sealed shut!"
"Oh my God, we're trapped!"
Asher's jaw tightened. He looked at the thug still kneeling on the ground, hands raised, face pale with terror. The man clearly had no idea what was actually happening, he'd just been a disposable pawn in a much larger game.
"Get out of here," Asher said flatly. "Run. Now."
He didn't need to say it twice. The thug scrambled to his feet and took off at a dead sprint, not even bothering to collect the money that scattered from his hands.
Alone now, Asher turned his full attention to the hotel. The building loomed like a dark monolith against the night sky, its windows blank and lifeless without power. Somewhere up there, a bomb was counting down.
And somewhere in that chaos, Ben, Gwen, and Max were still inside.
'Clever bastard,' Asher thought grimly, his hand moving to the Omnitrix. 'Draw the tiger away from the mountain, then strike at what he left undefended. Classic misdirection.'
He slammed his palm down on the Omnitrix's activation dial.
WHOOSH.
The familiar surge of transformation energy exploded outward in a cascade of green light. Asher's body dissolved and reconstituted in microseconds, human flesh replaced by sleek blue-and-black armor plating. His legs merged with organic wheel structures, his helmet snapped into place with its signature visor, and in the space of a single heartbeat, the velociraptor-like speedster stood where the human boy had been.
XLR8 crouched low, his body coiled like a spring. The world around him had already begun to slow, his perception operating at speeds that made normal time feel sluggish and heavy.
"No wonder he sent that useless tail," XLR8 said, his voice carrying that characteristic electronic undertone. "Vilgax wanted my attention on the wrong threat entirely. Draw me out, keep me occupied, then move on to the hotel while I'm distracted."
The strategy was brutally effective. By the time Asher had realized the tail was a decoy and dealt with it, the real attack was already underway.
'But he miscalculated one thing,' XLR8 thought, a fierce grin splitting his alien features. 'He forgot who he's dealing with.'
CRACK.
The speedster exploded into motion, a blue blur that left nothing but displaced air and a fading afterimage. The emergency stairwell door was just ahead,
BOOM.
He kicked it open without breaking stride, the reinforced door flying off its hinges like it weighed nothing. XLR8 hit the stairs at full velocity, his perception ramping up even further as his body moved faster and faster.
One floor per second. The numbers flew past in a dizzying rush, first floor, second, third, fourth,
Twelve seconds. That's all it took to reach the rooftop level, moving so fast that the air itself became a physical obstacle he had to push through.
The rooftop restaurant was pandemonium.
Guests were screaming, crying, desperately trying to call for help on phones with dead batteries. Some had grabbed tablecloths to fashion makeshift parachutes, a plan that would only result in broken bones at best, death at worst. Others huddled together in terrified groups, as if proximity to other humans could somehow protect them from what was coming.
And in the corner, embedded deep into the building's structural support, was the bomb.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The device was crude but effective, military-grade explosives wired to a countdown timer, the whole assembly bolted and cemented into place. The timer display glowed an ominous red in the darkness, numbers counting down with merciless precision.
2:47... 2:46... 2:45...
"Everyone MOVE!" XLR8's voice cut through the chaos like a whip crack. He didn't wait for compliance, his tone carried the absolute authority of someone who would not be questioned. "Clear the area around that device! NOW!"
The presence of an alien speedster had an immediate effect. Some guests recoiled in fear, but most had the sense to recognize help when they saw it. They scrambled backward, creating a wide perimeter around the bomb.
"What... what is that thing?" one woman whispered.
"I don't know, but it's trying to help!"
"Is that a superhero?"
Only one person didn't move. A small child, maybe five or six years old, stood clutching a stuffed animal and staring at XLR8 with wide, wonder-filled eyes. No fear. No hesitation. Just pure fascination.
"Wow," the kid breathed. "Just like on TV. Aliens are real..."
XLR8 didn't have time to appreciate the moment. He dropped into a three-point stance in front of the bomb, his claws extending to their full razor-sharp length.
The device was sophisticated enough to be dangerous, tamper detection, redundant triggers, probably a dozen ways it could go wrong if he just tried to pull it out or cut the wrong wire. But Vilgax had made one critical miscalculation:
He'd built the bomb to withstand human EOD specialists.
XLR8 wasn't human.
"Let's see how well your explosives handle a Kineceleran at full speed," XLR8 muttered.
His perception shifted into overdrive. The world around him slowed to a crawl, the flickering of panicked eyes became long, drawn-out blinks. The sound of breathing stretched into deep, resonant rumbles. Even the countdown timer seemed to pause between numbers.
2:31... 2:30... 2:29...
SLASH.
His right claw came down in a precision strike, shearing through the outer casing like it was tissue paper. Metal components scattered in slow motion, their trajectories perfectly mapped in XLR8's enhanced perception.
SLASH.
Left claw. The secondary housing fell away, exposing the maze of wires and circuit boards beneath.
Red wire. Blue wire. Yellow wire. Green wire.
In the fraction of a second it took for the next number to tick down, XLR8 analyzed the entire circuit diagram. Pattern recognition at superhuman speed, he could see the logic, the redundancy, the fail-safes. He could see which wire was the real trigger and which were decoys.
SNIP.
Right claw, surgical precision. The yellow wire parted cleanly.
SNIP.
Left claw. Green wire severed.
The timer continued counting down, but its connection to the detonator was gone. The two were now independent systems, the timer counting down to nothing, the explosives rendered inert without their electronic ignition system.
2:17... 2:16... 2:15...
XLR8 drove his claws deeper, shredding circuit boards and crushing microprocessors. In his accelerated perception, he had all the time in the world to dismantle every component with extreme prejudice.
The main charge. The backup detonators. The trembler switches. The tilt sensors.
All of it reduced to scrap in the space of three seconds of real time.
When XLR8 finally straightened and stepped back, the "bomb" was little more than scattered components and severed wiring. The timer still counted down faithfully, but it was now connected to nothing.
1:58... 1:57... 1:56...
The rooftop erupted in cheers. Relief washed over the trapped guests like a physical wave, people laughing, crying, embracing strangers in sheer joy at being alive.
"He did it!"
"We're saved!"
"Thank you! Oh my God, thank you!"
XLR8 straightened, rolling his shoulders and retracting his claws. The adrenaline rush of the defusal was already fading, replaced by cold calculation.
Vilgax's strategy was clear now: Create chaos. Trap the civilians. Force Asher to choose between pursuing his enemies or saving innocent lives.
It was a strategy designed to exploit heroism as a weakness.
'You wanted to draw me away from the hotel,' XLR8 thought, his eyes narrowing behind his visor. 'You wanted me chasing shadows while you set your trap. But you forgot something important, Vilgax.'
The speedster moved to the rooftop edge, looking out over the city lights below.
'I'm fast enough to do both.'
The small child who'd been watching the whole time tugged on XLR8's leg. The speedster looked down to meet those wide, innocent eyes.
"That was so cool," the kid whispered. "Are you a real superhero?"
XLR8 crouched down to the child's level, his visor reflecting the kid's awestruck expression.
"Not quite," he said gently. "But I'm working on it."
The Omnitrix symbol on his chest began to pulse yellow, time running low on the transformation. XLR8 nodded once to the assembled guests, then blurred toward the stairwell in a streak of blue light.
He had a warlord to hunt.
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