London was already burning when I arrived.
I tore through the clouds at full speed, violet energy screaming around me, and the first thing I saw was the sky ripped open. A black-gold rift hung over the city like a wound that refused to close. Buildings along the Thames were cracked open. Glass rained down in glittering sheets. Sirens howled from every direction.
Then I saw the bodies.
Not dozens. Not a rumour. People. Real people. A bus on Westminster Bridge had been split in half. Civilians lay in the street where the shockwave had hit. Some were still moving. Some were not.
The comms exploded.
"Loverman, this is Command. Multiple confirmed fatalities. Estimated thirty-plus dead in the first strike. More incoming. We need you on the ground now."
I dropped onto the shattered pavement hard enough to crater it.
That was when they stepped through the rift.
Five figures. Tall. Still. Dressed in dark ceremonial armour that looked older than any nation on Earth. Their skin had a faint metallic sheen. Their eyes burned the same gold-black colour as the rift.
One of them spoke, voice echoing across the ruined square like it came from inside my skull.
"The Super Couple hid a child from the old blood. We are the Immortal Clan. We do not allow new gods to be born unclaimed."
I did not wait for a second sentence.
Violet energy detonated from my fists as I slammed into the nearest one. The impact should have folded him in half. Instead he slid back three metres, boots carving trenches in the asphalt, and smiled.
"Young," he said. "Strong. Alone."
The other four moved.
They were fast. Faster than most things I had fought. One caught my punch and redirected it into a parked taxi, sending the wreck spinning. Another opened a smaller rift under my feet. I blasted upward just in time, but the delay cost me. A spear of black-gold energy punched through my left shoulder and pinned me to a collapsed wall.
Pain white-hot. I ripped free, blood already steaming off the wound as it started to close.
"Elena," I gasped into the comm. "Talk to me."
Static. Then her voice, tight, breathless.
"Alex… it's happening. Contractions. Strong. Dr Voss is on the way but—"
A cry cut her off. Not fear. Pain.
My heart stopped.
"I'm coming—"
"No." Her voice sharpened even through the strain. "You stay there. People are dying. I can do this. Voss is coming. You finish it."
Another contraction hit. I heard her breathe through it the way she used to breathe through battle.
Then the line went quiet except for her breathing.
The Clan leader tilted his head.
"She labours while you play hero. How human."
I hit him with everything I had.
The square vanished in violet light. I drove him through two buildings, through a park, into the river. Water exploded upward. He came out of it laughing, armour barely scratched.
"We do not die," he said. "That is the point."
The others joined him. Five against one. They fought like a single organism — rifts opening and closing, spears and blades of old energy, hands that could crush steel. I broke one of their arms. It reset in seconds. I put a nova blast through another's chest. The hole closed while he was still falling.
Civilians were still dying in the crossfire. A second shockwave flattened a row of shops. I threw myself in front of a family running for cover and took the blast across my back. The suit tore. Skin tore. I stayed standing.
"Command, get people out of the radius. Now."
"Evacuation in progress. Loverman, we cannot get more powered support to you in time. Thick Chick is—"
"I know."
I knew.
Elena's next transmission came through gritted teeth.
"Alex… they're close. Seven minutes apart now. I can feel it. The baby's coming."
I wanted to drop everything. I wanted to be in that room with my hand in hers.
Instead I flew back into the five of them.
The fight became ugly. No elegance. Just survival. I used the city itself — ripped a section of bridge and hurled it, collapsed a parking structure onto two of them, used super speed to stay one half-second ahead of their rifts. Every time I landed a real hit, they regenerated. Every time they landed one, I felt it in my bones.
One of them got behind me and drove a blade through my side. I screamed. Violet aura flared so bright the streetlights blew out.
"You are not enough," the leader said. "She should have come. The child should have been ours to judge."
"You don't touch my wife," I snarled. "You don't touch my child."
I grabbed him by the throat and poured everything I had left into a point-blank blast. The explosion flattened the square. Two of the Clan were thrown through the rift. It flickered, unstable.
The leader hit the ground hard, armour cracked for the first time.
He looked almost pleased.
"Good," he said. "Now you understand the cost."
Elena's voice again, raw.
"Alex… I need you to hear me. I'm okay. I'm doing this. But I need you to come home alive. Do you understand me?"
"I understand."
I didn't.
I understood that people were dead because I had been too slow. I understood that my wife was giving birth without me. I understood that these things would not stay down.
The remaining three Clan members circled. The rift above London pulsed, growing.
Command cut in, panic in the operator's voice.
"Loverman, secondary signatures appearing over Paris and New York. Same energy. This is not contained."
The leader smiled with blood on his teeth.
"We are many. You are one tired father."
I looked at the bodies in the street. I thought of Elena's hand on her belly that morning. I thought of the kick against my palm.
Then I stood up.
The wound in my side was still open. My shoulder was still knitting. My aura was flickering like a dying star.
I raised both hands anyway.
"Then I fight until I can't."
The Clan came at me together.
The last thing I heard before the world turned into light and pain was Elena's voice, breaking into a scream that was not fear.
It was labour.
It was life starting while the city died around me.
I flew straight into them.