The words hung in the air of the opulent hotel suite, heavier and more devastating than the forty-ton I-beam had ever been.
Seventeen fatalities.
The number wasn't a statistic. It was a physical blow, a concussive force that bypassed Leo's aching body and slammed directly into the fragile, terrified core of the man he used to be. Seventeen people. Seventeen families. Seventeen lives extinguished in a cascade of failing steel and concrete that he, and he alone, had foreseen with absolute certainty. The [Energy Debt] was a grinding, agonizing pain, a physical torment that made his teeth ache, but this was a different kind of agony. This was the sharp, clean, soul-crushing weight of guilt.
Detective Miller stood his ground, a pillar of weary cynicism in a world that had suddenly stopped making sense to him. His aim was steady, his gaze unwavering, locked on Julian's featureless face. He was a man running on stale coffee and thirty years of grim determination, and the impossible didn't scare him; it just made him profoundly, furiously angry.
"Threat assessment: a low-level, non-systemic entity," Julian's synthesized voice echoed in Leo's mind, a cold stream of data in a raging sea of emotion. "The entity displays high levels of aggression but possesses minimal capacity for genuine harm. Lethal force is not required but remains the most efficient solution to neutralize the immediate obstacle."
"No," Leo forced out, the word a raw croak from his throat. He pushed himself fully upright, a monumental effort of will over matter. The room spun violently, and the text on his System interface blurred into an unreadable mess as a migraine hammered behind his eyes. He gritted his teeth, planting his feet on the plush carpet and forcing the world to stabilize through sheer stubbornness. "No lethal force. No… escalation."
The thought process was agonizingly slow, like trying to run complex calculations on a dying computer. Police are a system, he thought, forcing the logic through the pain. A system with rules. Predictable. Killing them breaks the rules, makes us an enemy of the entire system. Bad business. Must reframe the engagement. Shift liability.
He couldn't afford a war with the Aethelburg PD. He was already at war with a shadowy board of reality-benders; he didn't need to add the local government to his list of powerful, well-funded enemies. This problem couldn't be solved with force. It required a different kind of weapon.
Leverage.
"Detective Miller," Leo said, his voice strained but surprisingly clear. He found a strange clarity in the pain, a focus born of desperation. "You are operating under a false premise."
"The only premise I'm operating under, son, is that seventeen people are dead, and you're the one who knew it was going to happen," Miller growled, taking a half-step to flank Julian, trying to keep both Leo and the strange entity in his sightline.
"I am not your suspect," Leo stated, taking a slow, deliberate step forward, ignoring the screaming protest of his muscles. He leaned heavily on the marble table for support, the cool stone a welcome anchor in the spinning room. "I am your primary witness. And I am the victim of a corporate sabotage plot that almost made me the eighteenth casualty."
Miller's eyes narrowed, a flicker of professional skepticism warring with the raw curiosity of a man who has just seen a gun disassembled without being touched. "That's a nice story. Talk."
"The report you found is real," Leo continued, his mind piecing together the narrative, framing the truth in a way that served his new reality. It wasn't a lie; it was a strategic presentation of facts. "I filed it. I sent it to my superior, Marcus Thorne, with an urgent flag. I have the email records to prove it. He personally assured me the issues had been addressed by a subcontracted engineering firm. He lied. He used substandard materials across the entire project to cut costs, pocketing the difference through a series of shell corporations. He is the one responsible for those deaths. Not me."
"And where is this Marcus Thorne? Took off on a private jet to a country with no extradition treaty, I suppose?" Miller asked, his voice thick with sarcasm.
This was the pivot. The moment of leverage. The presentation of an asset.
"Where do you think?" Leo said, a ghost of a wry smile touching his lips. "He's my primary evidence. He's sedated in the next room." He looked pointedly at Julian. "My… bodyguard… detained him after he tried to flee the scene during the collapse. He seemed quite panicked."
Miller's grizzled face registered a flicker of genuine shock, which he quickly suppressed. This changed the equation entirely. The person of interest was delivering a prime suspect—a major corporate figure—on a silver platter. It was too neat, too convenient. And yet, the alternative—a reality-bending monster and a man who could stop falling girders with his mind—was too insane to contemplate. A cop for thirty years, Miller chose the path that led to paperwork he could actually file, to a story he could tell a judge.
"You're telling me the man responsible for the worst structural failure in this city's history is sleeping next door?"
"I'm telling you that you have a choice, Detective," Leo said, pressing his advantage, feeling a surge of adrenaline momentarily clear his head. "You can try to arrest a man who is clearly the victim of an attempt on his life, defended by... forces you don't understand, and get tied up in a jurisdictional nightmare that will make headlines for all the wrong reasons. Or, you can walk into that room and arrest the man who is demonstrably, provably responsible for the deaths of seventeen people. You can close this case. You can get justice for those families. Today."
The standoff was absolute. A grizzled cop who ran on logic versus a situation that defied it.
Leo could feel his control slipping again. The room was starting to blur at the edges. The [Energy Debt] was a tide, and it was coming in fast. He had to end this.
"Julian," Leo commanded, his voice firm. "Stand down. You are an asset of a legally registered entity. Do not interfere with a lawful investigation. Allow the detective and his officers to secure Mr. Thorne."
Julian's golden eyes blinked once. Acknowledged. He flowed backwards, silent as a shadow, his posture shifting from 'imminent threat' to 'passive observer'.
Miller stared for a long moment, his mind grappling with the decision. Finally, with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of his entire career, he lowered his weapon. "Cuff him," he said to his two stunned officers, gesturing towards the adjoining room. "And somebody call for a bus. This scene just got complicated."
He turned back to Leo, his eyes still hard. "This isn't over, Mr. Vance. Not by a long shot. You're not a suspect anymore. You're a material witness. Which means you don't leave town. You don't leave your hotel. You don't do anything without clearing it with me first. Am I clear?"
"Crystal," Leo rasped, relief washing over him with such force it almost buckled his knees.
As the police moved to secure Marcus, creating a flurry of official activity, Leo stumbled back to the couch, his job done. He had converted a direct threat into a manageable, albeit temporary, truce. He had turned a liability into leverage. It was a good piece of business.
But as he collapsed onto the soft wool, the faces of seventeen people he had never met swam in his vision. The System had registered his move as a victory. His heart registered it as a profound failure.
The exhaustion was absolute. The world dissolved into a meaningless haze of color and sound. The last thing he registered before the [Emergency Hibernation] protocol finally took over was the cold, analytical thought: The human cost is a liability that can't be quantified on a balance sheet.
Three blocks away, in a darkened hotel suite that smelled of new carpet and ambition, Evelyn Reed ended a call.
"I don't care what your firm's standard retainer is," she had said to the senior partner at Aethelburg's most notoriously aggressive criminal defense firm, her voice a low and dangerous calm. "You work for me now."
A wire transfer for a sum with seven zeroes was already on its way to them. Their mandate was simple: create a legal blizzard so thick that the District Attorney's office wouldn't be able to find their own desks for a month. Her client, a client he didn't even know he had yet, was Leo Vance.
Evelyn stood before a triptych of glowing laptop screens, her reflection a pale, determined ghost in the blue light. The center screen displayed a live feed of every major news outlet and social media trend related to the Titan Tower collapse. A team of freelance PR specialists she had hired from a crisis management firm in London were already at work, seeding counter-narratives, emphasizing the building's history of cut corners under Marcus Thorne, and preparing a statement positioning Leo as a heroic whistleblower who had been silenced.
The screen to her left displayed a secure, encrypted connection to a private investigator she had on a permanent retainer. The file was labeled "THORNE, M. - EXPEDITED DUE DILIGENCE." It was already populated with offshore bank account numbers, shell corporation registries, and a list of subcontractors known for using substandard materials—all linked to Marcus. She was building the case the police were too slow to find. The third laptop was open to a series of architectural forums and engineering databases, as she began her own, independent analysis of the collapse, trusting no one else's data.
She allowed herself a single, deep breath, walking to the window and pressing her forehead against the cool glass. For a fraction of a second, the mask of unshakable competence fell. A tremor of fear ran through her. Not for herself, but for Leo. She had seen what happened on that rooftop. She had seen him stand before an impossible, reality-defying threat and not flinch. She had seen him do… something. Something that wasn't on any blueprint. He was in over his head, in a world he didn't understand, and her world of contracts, money, and influence felt like a pitifully small shield against whatever was coming for him. She felt a frustrating sense of powerlessness, a feeling she utterly despised.
She pushed the fear down, compartmentalizing it. It was an unproductive emotion. Fear didn't solve problems. Strategy did. Action did.
Her phone vibrated. A text from Leo's number. It was short, and the grammar was unnervingly precise, lacking any of Leo's usual human cadence.
Police confrontation contained. Primary asset is undergoing emergency recovery cycle. Awaiting your strategic counsel.
It wasn't from Leo. It was from the other thing. The bodyguard. Julian.
Evelyn stared at the message. The situation was contained, but Leo was out of commission. That meant she was now in command. The thought didn't scare her; it clarified her purpose, banishing the last vestiges of fear. Leo was the power. She was the structure that would direct it.
She turned back to her laptops, her expression hardening into one of cold resolve. "Alright," she whispered to the empty room. "Let's get to work."
The smell of his own precinct was something Detective Miles Miller would never get used to. It was a fifty-year-old cocktail of burnt coffee, stale cigarette smoke baked into the walls, cheap disinfectant, and the quiet desperation of bad life choices. He sat at his metal desk, the yellow fluorescent lights above humming a tune of bureaucratic indifference, a mountain of fresh paperwork already forming on his desk.
His captain had torn him a new one. For the battering ram. For the lack of body-cam footage that wasn't just static and corrupted data. For letting his two best officers get "assaulted" in a way they couldn't coherently describe ("He didn't… touch me, sir. He just… pointed? And my arm stopped working."). The department, for lack of a better explanation, was calling it a "gas leak hallucination" for the official report, a rug under which all things impossible were swept.
Miller knew better. He stared at the whiteboard in his office. In the center, he'd written "VANCE, LEO." Around it were questions. "Stops I-Beam?" "Controls 'Janitor'?" "Thermal Manipulation?" It looked like the ravings of a madman.
But on the other side of the board, he had written another number: 17.
He looked down at the file on his desk. Photos of the victims. A construction worker with three kids. A young intern on her first day. A project manager who was two weeks from retirement. They weren't abstract numbers to him. They were the reason he still did this godforsaken job.
He took a long, bitter sip of his coffee. The Vance kid was the key. But the story he'd spun about Marcus Thorne was tight. It was a lifeline of logic in a sea of insanity.
A young officer knocked on his doorframe. "Detective? We got the preliminary report back on Marcus Thorne. He's at Aethelburg General. Doctors say he's unconscious. No signs of physical trauma, but his brain activity is... weird, like he's been hit by a localized EMP. And we got his financials. The kid was right. Thorne's been funneling millions into a series of shell corporations registered in the Cayman Islands."
Miller felt a grim satisfaction. It was a lead. A real, solid, follow-the-money kind of lead. He looked back at the whiteboard and drew a thick, red line through "VANCE, LEO" as his primary suspect.
His phone rang. It was the DA's office.
"Miller," a sharp, irritated voice said. "What the hell is this I'm hearing about you trying to question Leo Vance? Don't you read your memos? The kid's a protected witness. Some high-priced law firm—Blackwood, Finch, & Associates, no less—just filed a massive injunction against any and all police contact. They're claiming harassment and citing corporate espionage. You are to stand down. Your only suspect is Thorne. Do you understand me?"
Miller felt a cold dread creep up his spine. It had been less than an hour. The speed, the efficiency, the sheer power of the legal wall that had just slammed down in front of him was more terrifying than any magic janitor.
He hung up the phone and stared at the whiteboard. He had thought he was the one in control, the one holding the leash.
He was wrong. He wasn't the one leading the investigation at all.
He was being led. And he didn't like it one bit.