Thoughts and Prayers

  Maxwell's penthouse reeks of expensive whiskey and desperation. The glass wall facing Star City's skyline reflects our silhouettes—one immortal puppet master and his aging human confidant thumbing through files like office drones searching for missing decimal points. Except our spreadsheets show power signatures of individuals manifesting abilities across the globe. Our missing variables are the puppets I need to pull new strings.

  "This one," I say, sliding a file across Maxwell's glass table. The holographic display flickers, showing a woman who appears to be in her early thirties. Dark hair, hollow eyes that have seen too much. "Alexandra Clark. Called herself 'Starla' - semi-popular indie singer until her sonic manipulation abilities triggered during a concert in Detroit. Killed forty-three people when her voice shattered their eardrums and liquefied their brains."

  Maxwell adds her file to the growing pile, age lines deepening around his eyes. He doesn't know my past—doesn't need to. Just knows I pay well and ask interesting questions. "Twenty-two candidates so far. All with destructive potential. All broken enough to be... controllable."

  My strings dance in anticipation. The quantum device from Melek pulses in my pocket, its octahedral shape pressing against my thigh like a guilty conscience.

  "The woman—”Starla”—she's perfect," Maxwell says, swirling his fourth whiskey. His hands shake slightly, a reminder of his mortality. "Traumatized. Isolated. Power still growing. She's hiding in an abandoned recording studio in Chicago."

  "She'll make an excellent puppet," I mutter, watching my strings cut idle patterns in the air. "Starkid won't expect a counter-move like this. A team of powered individuals under my control."

  Maxwell nods, bringing up a holographic map. Red dots show our potential recruits across the globe. "If we move quickly, we can gather five, maybe six before Starkid realizes what we're doing. Though I still don't understand your obsession with this particular hero."

  "Just business," I reply, offering nothing more. Maxwell knows better than to ask questions about my motivations. He's paid to find, not to ask why.

  "The pyrokinetic in Buenos Aires looks promising," Maxwell says, tapping another file. "But time's running out. If Starkid continues gaining popularity at this rate, the government will officially sanction him. That'll make our job significantly harder."

  I stare at the image of Starkid hovering above the rescued train, reality warping around him like a cloak. Something in his quantum signature, in the way he bends physics to his will, stirs ancient memories. Wounds that never healed. A cathedral bathed in blood. A portal shimmering like mercury.

  My hand instinctively touches the octahedral device in my pocket. The quantum artifact Melek gave me all those years ago. The one that led me to the twins' sanctuary. To that day that changed everything.

  The memory floods back like acid eating through the walls of my mind...

  ***

  The quantum device pulses in my palm, its facets reflecting light that isn't there. Each beat grows stronger as I approach the abandoned cathedral. The twins always did have a flair for the dramatic. Gothic architecture rising like a middle finger to conventional religion, gargoyles leering down with smiles that seem too knowing. Stained glass depicting saints whose faces look just a little wrong.

  Perfect place to hide a dimensional fold. To birth a child meant to shatter reality itself.

  Melek's device throbs faster, confirming what my strings already taste—this place exists in multiple realities simultaneously. The twins have bent dimensional barriers, creating a sanctuary that's both here and elsewhere at the same time.

  My strings cut through the quantum lock on the cathedral doors. Black lightning dances along their length, the last remnants of Maelstrom's stolen power responding to my rage. The massive oak doors swing inward, revealing shadows deeper than physics should allow.

  Inside, the cathedral's been gutted. Pews ripped out and replaced with quantum computers that pulse with sickly light. The altar transformed into some kind of interdimensional gateway—a shimmering portal that hurts to look at directly. Reality bends around it like light through dirty glass.

  Two figures emerge from shadow-filled alcoves. Not the twins—their toadies. The bone witch steps into a shaft of colored light filtering through stained glass. Her ghost-white skin mapped with blue veins and ridges of protruding bone. Spurs of calcium jut from her joints, and her fingers end in talons of polished ossein.

  Beside her, a newcomer. Tall, impossibly thin, skin the color of tarnished silver. Every movement leaves metallic afterimages hanging in the air, like reality can't quite delete where he's been. His eyes swirl with liquid mercury, pupils vertical slits like a reptile's.

  The bone witch speaks first, her voice dry as desert sand. "The puppet master himself. Here to save his missing toys."

  Mercury Man's laugh sounds like steel being torn. "Too late, string-puller. Far too late."

  My strings explode outward, a web of hungry shadows. "Where are they?"

  The bone witch flexes, and the bones beneath her skin writhe like living things. "Somewhere you can't follow. The twins are... occupied with your woman. With what's growing inside her."

  "And the boy?" Mercury Man adds, skin rippling like liquid steel. "Well, let's just say he's learning some hard truths about family."

  No more words. No more threats. My strings move faster than thought, faster than light. The first cuts through the air where Mercury Man's throat should be. He flows around it like quicksilver, body temporarily losing solid form. My second and third strings anticipate this, slicing through the metallic mist of his partially liquefied body.

  Blood sprays, liquid silver mixed with crimson. He screams, the sound like crumpling aluminum foil. Part of his shoulder and chest solidify too slowly, catching the edge of my attack. Flesh peels back to reveal metal bones beneath—not grafted technology, but his actual skeleton.

  The bone witch retaliates. With a gesture, she pulls calcium from the cathedral floor. Bone spikes erupt from marble in a wave of ivory destruction. My strings slice through them, but each cut spawns more growth. A forest of sharp ossein spreading across the floor like deadly coral.

  I launch myself over the bone forest, strings arcing ahead of me wrapped in black lightning. The bone witch raises her arms, calcium plates sliding beneath her skin to form living armor. My strings cut through anyway, opening lines of red across ghost-white flesh. Blood flows, mingling with fragments of shattered bone.

  Mercury Man recovers, reforming into something less human, more weapon. His arms elongate into chrome scythes, edges molecularly sharp. He moves like liquid death, each swing designed to separate head from shoulders or limbs from torso.

  My strings catch the first blow, wraparound his extended arm like constrictors finding prey. Black lightning dances along the connection. Electricity and liquid metal mix badly. His arm bubbles and boils, droplets of mercury flesh sizzling where they hit the floor. His scream echoes through the cathedral, a sound like grinding gears.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The bone witch doesn't wait for her partner to recover. Her spine extends, splitting into a dozen whip-like appendages tipped with bladed vertebrae. They move independently, each one targeting a different vital area—throat, eyes, heart, groin. My strings form a defensive web, slicing through bone projections with surgical precision. Ossein fragments scatter across the marble floor, some still twitching with residual power.

  "You can't save them," she hisses, bone regrowth already replacing what my strings destroyed. "The birth has already begun. The catalyst enters our reality even as we speak."

  Mercury Man flows across the floor in liquid form, reforming behind me with scythe-arms raised. "And your precious boy? He's watching it all. Learning what true purpose looks like."

  I spin, strings cutting arcs of black destruction through the air. Mercury Man is fast, but rage makes me faster. Three strings catch him mid-reformation. The first severs his right arm at the shoulder, the wound immediately sealing with liquid metal. The second cuts through his torso, opening a line of silver-red from sternum to hip. The third—my primary string, the first I ever created—drives through his metallic eye and into whatever passes for his brain.

  His body convulses, mercury blood spraying in a fine mist that hangs in the air like metallic fog. He tries to speak, but only manages a gurgle of liquid steel. The string through his eye vibrates once, black lightning channeling directly into his neural structure. His head doesn't so much explode as disassemble, mercury flesh separating into component droplets that rain down on cathedral marble.

  The bone witch doesn't pause to mourn her fallen comrade. Her attack redoubles, bone constructs growing more complex, more deadly. Calcium spurs burst from the floor and walls, thousands of ivory needles filling the air like ossein hail. Each one sharp enough to punch through flesh, skull, organs.

  Pain becomes my universe as dozens find their mark. Sharp bone needles penetrate my shoulders, my back, my thighs. Blood flows freely, soaking my clothes, turning the marble floor slick and crimson. But pain? Pain's just weakness leaving the body.

  My strings cut through her attack, through the air, through dimensional barriers themselves. They reach her despite bone armor, despite defensive constructs, despite distance. The first string catches her throat, opening a red line across ghost-white skin. The second wraps around her extended spine, black lightning dancing along calcified vertebrae.

  She screams, the sound like breaking bones. The electricity travels through her ossein structures, turning bone to superheated calcium. Steam rises from her pores as marrow boils within her skeleton. Her eyes bulge, blood vessels bursting from internal pressure. Still, she fights, launching a final desperate attack.

  Her bone plate armor extends, covering every inch of exposed flesh. Spurs elongate, becoming a forest of spikes that transform her into a walking calcium weapon. She charges, no longer fighting at range, committing to close combat.

  A mistake.

  My strings weave a pattern I haven't used since Chronos. They cut through bone armor like it's tissue paper, through flesh like it's air, through reality itself. Where they touch, bone doesn't just break—it disintegrates. Calcium structures that took years to grow collapse into white powder. Her scream turns wetly organic as bone spurs designed to protect pierce her internal organs instead, driven inward by collapsing external structures.

  The bone witch falls to her knees, blood flowing from every orifice. Her once-proud ossein structures now broken stumps protruding from shredded flesh. Still, she manages to laugh, the sound bubbling through blood-filled lungs.

  "You... still don't... understand," she gasps, ghost-white skin turning gray as life drains away. "The twins... they're not the architects. They're just... the carpenters."

  My strings wrap around her throat, tightening slightly. "What the hell does that mean? Who's pulling their strings?"

  Her laugh becomes a wet cough, spraying blood across the marble floor. "No strings... no puppets... just... evolution."

  "Where are they keeping Scarlett and Dresden?" I demand, strings tightening further.

  "The Umbras..." she whispers, eyes going distant. "They've been watching... waiting... The child is their door... and Dresden..." She coughs again, harder this time, a chunk of lung tissue landing with a wet splat on the cathedral floor. "Dresden is the key that turns the lock."

  My patience evaporates like water on hot steel. My strings pull tight, ending her miserable existence. Her head separates from her body with surgical precision, bone structures making a last desperate attempt to seal the wound before cellular death renders them inert. Her head hits the marble with a wet thud, rolling a few feet before coming to rest against an overturned pew.

  In the sudden silence, I become aware of my own ragged breathing. Blood drips from dozens of bone spur wounds, creating a crimson trail as I move deeper into the cathedral. My strings cut idle patterns in the air, hungry for more violence, more answers.

  The quantum device in my pocket pulses faster, stronger, almost burning through fabric with its energy signature. I follow its guidance toward the transformed altar, toward the shimmering portal that makes reality itself uncomfortable.

  The dimensional gateway resembles a vertical pool of mercury, its surface rippling with images that appear and disappear too quickly to process. Through it, distantly, I hear a woman's scream. Not fear—pain. The kind that comes with bringing new life into the world. Scarlett.

  And beyond that, another sound. A boy's voice, raised in anger or desperation. Dresden.

  I approach the portal, strings extended, tasting the quantum signature of whatever lies beyond. The device vibrates violently now, almost jumping from my pocket. I remove it, studying its octahedral shape as it pulses in synchronization with the portal's fluctuations.

  Whatever dimensional fold the twins have created, Melek's device recognizes it. Responds to it. The question is no longer how to follow them—it's what I'll find on the other side.

  Movement behind me. A wet, dragging sound. I turn to see the bone witch, impossibly still alive. Her body a broken ruin of shattered calcium and torn flesh. She drags herself across the marble floor, leaving a trail of blood and bone fragments. One arm gone completely. Her legs useless tangles of splintered femurs and tibias. Still, she moves. Still, she fights.

  "You... can't..." she gasps, voice bubbling through a throat half-severed. "The Umbras... have been... waiting..."

  My strings hover in the air, poised to finish what they started. But curiosity stays my hand. "Waiting for what?"

  Her laugh is a wet gurgle, blood frothing at her lips. "For the child... to open... the door. And Dresden... Dresden is the key... that turns... the lock."

  "What the hell does that mean?" I demand, strings tensing with impatience.

  Her eyes—one intact, one hanging by nerve fibers from a shattered socket—fix on me with disturbing clarity. "Ask yourself... why the twins... need both of them... Your son... and his sibling..."

  My patience evaporates like water on hot steel. My strings snap forward, wrapping around her ruined throat. "Last chance. What are they planning?"

  "Evolution..." she whispers, blood bubbling between her teeth in a grotesque smile. "Beyond your... understanding... puppet master."

  "I understand enough."

  My primary string—the first I ever created, connected directly to my core—vibrates once. A clean, almost merciful end compared to what I could inflict. Her head separates from her body with surgical precision, bone structures making a last desperate attempt to seal the wound before cellular death renders them inert. Her head hits the marble with a wet thud, rolling a few feet before coming to rest against an overturned pew.

  In the sudden silence, I become aware of my own ragged breathing. Blood drips from dozens of bone spur wounds, creating a crimson trail as I move back toward the portal. My strings cut idle patterns in the air, hungry for more violence, more answers.

  Through the mercury surface, images flash too quickly to fully comprehend—fractured glimpses of ancient architecture, equations carved into stone that hurt to look at, reality itself bent and folded in ways that shouldn't be possible. The portal's surface ripples and distorts, refusing to stabilize enough to show what lies beyond.

  Another scream echoes through—Scarlett's voice, unmistakable even through dimensional barriers. And beneath it, sounds of struggle, of rage. Dresden fighting against whatever holds him.

  I can't see them, but I can feel them. Their presence pulses through the quantum field like heartbeats, like stars about to go supernova.

  The bone witch was right. I'm too late to prevent whatever's happening. But I'm not too late to deal with the consequences.

  My strings dance with violent anticipation as I pocket Melek's device and prepare to step through. To finally confront the twins. To save my family. To face whatever lies on the other side of reality's thin veil.

  After all, every puppet master knows the most dangerous performance...

  Is the one where he cuts his own strings.