CHAPTER 3: WELCOME TO HELL (PART 2)
Morning light filters through stained curtains that look like they haven't been washed since the Clinton administration. Rayen sits cross-legged on the motel bed, a stolen laptop balanced on his knees—apparently, this new body came with surprisingly decent pickpocketing skills he doesn't remember learning.
The screen glows with tabs of research: Vought International's public financials, Seven roster updates, news articles about Supe incidents. He's been at this for hours, compiling everything publicly available about this world's version of corporate-sponsored godhood. Knowing the future doesn't help if he doesn't understand the present landscape.
His coffee has gone cold. The cup—stolen from the bodega down the street—bears the cheerful logo of a local donut shop, its optimism jarring against the reality he's researching. Headlines scroll past: "A-Train Saves School Bus," "Queen Maeve Opens New Hospital Wing," "Homelander's Charity Gala Raises Millions." All lies. All perfectly crafted PR.
Today's goal: figure out what the hell his powers actually do before he accidentally kills someone.
On the laptop screen, a live news broadcast shows a C-list Supe called Surge demonstrating his electrical manipulation for a crowd in Times Square. Children cheer as he creates light shows with his fingertips, parents recording everything on phones they'll post to social media within minutes.
Rayen focuses on the screen, eyes locked on Surge's flickering performance. He wills something to activate, imagining his power reaching through the digital display to nullify the man's abilities. His eyes water from staring, but nothing happens.
Line of sight means real line of sight. No screens.
The limitation makes sense, but it's frustrating. He can't train his abilities on television—he needs actual Supes, in person. Which means leaving the relative safety of this grimy motel room and hunting powered individuals in a city full of them.
He shuts the laptop and checks out, the desk clerk barely glancing up from his newspaper as Rayen slides the key through the bulletproof glass slot. The man looks like he's seen every variety of human misery and stopped caring around 1987.
The city swallows him immediately—the familiar chaos of New York morning rush hour amplified by the casual presence of flying figures overhead. A speedster delivers packages between buildings in blurs of motion. A woman with plant-based powers tends to rooftop gardens visible from the street. The world has normalized miracles and monetized them.
Rayen spots his test subject three blocks from the motel: a young man, maybe early twenties, using enhanced agility to perform parkour demonstrations for a gathering crowd. Tips fall into an open guitar case as he bounds between walls and fire escapes with fluid grace that defies normal human limitations.
Perfect.
Rayen positions himself across the street, leaning against a storefront window to appear casual. The agility Supe launches himself between two buildings, a twenty-foot gap that should be impossible without wings or web-shooters.
Rayen focuses. His eyes lock onto the airborne figure and something shifts behind his pupils—a sensation like electricity channeling through his optic nerves. The familiar burning begins, tears welling up as his vision sharpens to predatory clarity.
The Supe, mid-leap, suddenly loses coordination. His enhanced reflexes abandon him completely and he plummets toward the alley below, arms windmilling in panic.
"No!" Rayen screams, breaking his concentration.
The Supe catches a fire escape at the last second, dangling by fingertips before hauling himself onto the metal platform. The crowd gasps, then applauds, thinking it was part of the show. The performer looks genuinely shaken, staring at his hands like they've betrayed him.
Rayen's eyes feel like sandpaper. He stumbles into the nearest alley, blinking tears and trying to process what just happened. The power surge had lasted maybe three seconds, but the effect was absolute—the Supe's enhanced agility had simply... vanished.
So that's Erasure. I take away powers. Cool. Horrifying. Got it.
The alley smells like garbage and broken dreams, exactly the kind of place where bad decisions get made. Rayen slumps against a brick wall, wiping his streaming eyes, when footsteps echo behind him.
"Hey, you."
He turns to find a man approaching with the careful gait of someone trying to appear calm while holding a weapon. Mid-thirties, hollow cheeks that speak of missed meals and poor choices, wearing a jacket that's seen better decades. The knife in his right hand gleams with the kind of edge that suggests frequent sharpening.
"Wallet. Phone. Now." The words carry the resignation of someone who's done this before but doesn't enjoy it.
Rayen raises his hands slowly. "Look, man, I don't want any trouble—"
"Neither do I, kid. Just need some cash. Make this easy for both of us."
There's something in the thug's eyes—desperation, sure, but also shame. This isn't a career criminal; this is someone backed into a corner by circumstances beyond his control. Rayen feels a different sensation crawling up his arm, like static electricity building to discharge.
On instinct, he reaches out and touches the man's shoulder.
"Heaven's Door."
The world shifts.
The thug's body unfolds like origami crafted from light and memory, becoming translucent pages filled with handwriting that flows like living text. Rayen sees everything—childhood beatings from an alcoholic stepfather, the needle tracks hidden under long sleeves, a six-year-old daughter named Amy who doesn't know Daddy steals to buy the medicine that keeps her asthma attacks from killing her.
The man's deepest shame: he's not even addicted anymore, hasn't been for months. But he tells people he is because it's easier than admitting he's stealing to pay for a little girl's inhaler while her mother works three jobs and still can't afford healthcare.
The pages flutter in a wind that doesn't exist, revealing layer after layer of accumulated pain and desperate love. Rayen sees the man's real name—Marcus Webb—and the address where Amy waits for Daddy to come home with her medicine.
It lasts three seconds before Rayen yanks his hand back, gasping. Marcus collapses unconscious, the knife clattering to the alley floor. Rayen staggers to a dumpster and vomits, his breakfast splattering against rusted metal.
I looked inside his soul. Oh god.
The violation is immediate and total. He'd read Marcus Webb like a book—literally—seen every private moment, every buried shame, every secret the man would die before revealing. The power doesn't just show information; it strips away the fundamental human right to privacy, to inner sanctuary.
As Rayen recovers, wiping bile from his mouth, another set of footsteps echoes into the alley. Heavier. Unsteady.
"Hey! What'd you do to Marcus?"
The voice belongs to a junkie whose enhanced musculature bulges beneath a stained tank top. His eyes are bloodshot and wild, darting between Rayen and the unconscious form of Marcus Webb. Super-strength, from the look of him—probably lifting cars when sober, throwing them when high.
"I didn't—he's just unconscious, he'll be fine—"
The Supe charges. No warning, no negotiation, just drug-fueled rage and enhanced power directed at whatever target seems responsible for his friend's condition.
Rayen panics. No time to focus for Erasure, can't outrun super-strength, nowhere to hide in the narrow alley. The junkie's fist approaches his face with hydraulic force.
Something activates.
The punch stops an inch from Rayen's nose, the Supe's knuckles pressing against an invisible barrier that refuses to yield. The man pushes harder, veins bulging in his neck, but his fist cannot advance. It's like trying to punch through the space between spaces, an infinite division that makes contact impossible.
The Supe screams in confusion, throwing his full weight behind each blow, but the barrier holds. Rayen hyperventilates behind his protection, untouchable and terrified in equal measure.
Then the barrier flickers.
Like a television with bad reception, the invisible shield wavers for half a second. The junkie's fist connects solidly with Rayen's face, sending him sprawling across the alley floor. Blood streams from his nose as the Supe stares at his own hand in bewilderment.
"What the hell—"
The man doesn't finish the sentence. He turns and runs, spooked by whatever impossibility he just witnessed. His footsteps fade quickly, leaving Rayen alone with his bleeding nose and unconscious victim.
Rayen lies on the grimy asphalt, staring at the narrow strip of sky visible between buildings, and starts laughing. It's a hysterical sound that echoes off brick walls and broken windows.
Infinity. It worked. Then it didn't. Perfect.
Three powers, three activations, three different flavors of malfunction. Erasure causes physical agony and removes abilities he might need to preserve. Heaven's Door violates everything he believes about human dignity. Infinity only works under extreme stress and fails when he needs it most.
He's not a god. He's a broken weapon with a manual written in a language he doesn't speak.
Marcus Webb stirs as Rayen sits up, touching his swollen nose gingerly. The man's eyes flutter open, confusion replacing the desperate determination from before.
"What... what happened?"
"You tripped," Rayen lies, helping him to his feet. "Hit your head on the dumpster. You okay?"
Marcus feels the back of his skull, wincing. "Yeah, I... think so. Where'd you...?"
But Rayen is already walking away, leaving the confused thief to wonder why his intended victim helped him up instead of calling the police. Some stories don't need explanations. Some kindnesses don't require understanding.
The city swallows Rayen as he limps through streets that feel less familiar now that he's bled on them. His reflection in storefront windows shows a man with a crooked nose and hollow eyes—someone who's learned the weight of power and found it heavier than expected.
The Entity's message echoes in his memory: "You will find your other half deep in the CEO of Vought, Edgar Banker."
Stan Edgar. Vought's CEO, the man who treats Supes like livestock and corporations like kingdoms. But "deep in" suggests something hidden beneath the corporate facade. A person imprisoned? A secret buried?
Vought Tower looms ahead, its glass surface reflecting the city's lights like a monument to controlled power. Something in Rayen's gut tells him the answer waits there, buried in the building's foundations or hidden in its executive suites.
Time to break into the most dangerous building in the world.
No big deal.
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