Chapter 187: Hitman Returns
"There. Done." Doctor Cho straightened up, pushing his oversized glasses up the bridge of his nose, and the last of the warm tide finished knitting Nicholas back together.
It was, as always, a miracle. The swollen eye opened clean. The broken ribs sat whole and quiet in his chest. The dozens of cuts and bruises and the deep grinding ache of a day spent fighting gods simply ceased to exist, as though the entire tournament had happened to someone else’s body. Nicholas rolled his shoulder and felt nothing but smooth, easy motion where an hour ago there had been a fracture.
"I’ll be expecting my payment," Cho added, already turning to leave, snapping his bag shut. "The usual rate, plus the emergency call-out fee, plus the surcharge for dragging me across a continent on tournament night. It won’t be cheap."
Nicholas stared at him.
He stared at the lanky man in the lab coat with a very particular expression, a fine blend of jealousy and quiet, simmering annoyance.
Because in all their encounters, across every injury Cho had ever mended, the man had never once looked at Nicholas with even the faintest flicker of admiration. Not when Nicholas beat a B-rank on his first day. Not after the dragon. Not after he clawed a draw out of a literal god a few hours ago, a feat two billion people had just watched slack-jawed. Cho had healed him through all of it with the same bored, cold efficiency of a man fixing a leaky pipe.
And that was the problem.
If Cho had ever, even once, felt so much as a spark of genuine awe, the Charm system would have handed Nicholas the healing ability long ago, and he’d never have paid another medical bill in his life. He could feel it, sitting just out of reach, the single most useful ability he’d ever encountered, locked behind one man’s complete and total indifference to him.
Instead he got the bills. Stupendous, itemized, surcharge-laden bills.
’You could at least pretend to be impressed,’ Nicholas thought sourly. ’Just once. For my wallet.’
Cho met his stare, entirely unmoved, and pushed his glasses up again.
"Whatever it is you’re thinking," the doctor said flatly, "it isn’t going to lower the invoice." He gave a small, uninterested wave over his shoulder as he walked out. "Try to go one week without being hospitalized. I have other patients."
The door shut behind him.
Nicholas let out a long, defeated sigh, and gave up.
Which left the three of them.
Selena. Nicholas. And Julie, who was, of course, still filming.
"...Julie."
"Mm?" Julie didn’t look up from her phone, angling it to catch the newly-healed Phantom in a better light. "Hold that pose, actually, the healing glow really pops on camera, the viewers are going to lose their minds when they..."
"Turn. It. Off."
Selena’s voice had gone very low and very quiet, and she was looking at Julie with an expression that promised a slow and creative death.
On the little screen, the chat had exploded the instant the words left Selena’s mouth, and it was still exploding as Julie’s thumb hovered, frozen, over the end-stream button.
[Nyr01: NO don’t turn it off we’re at 6 million]
[Tyler_Man: JULIE RUN. that woman’s eyes said homicide]
[Wrathsflame: supervisor-san about to become a villain herself 💀]
[AuraNova: not selena’s death glare coming through the SCREEN. I felt that]
[Harry_Hart_3085: peach fairy it was an honor. tell the light we love it]
[Thegreatestscape67: turn it off turn it off she’s going to snap the phone AND the streamer]
[Zerox4575: 6 million people watching this woman get threatened into silence, cinema]
"...Okay bye everyone love you don’t forget to like and subscribe," Julie squeaked, and killed the stream in one panicked motion, hugging the phone protectively to her chest. "There! Off! It’s off! Please stop looking at me like that."
Selena exhaled through her nose, dragged a hand down her face, and turned to Nicholas.
"Alright. Now that we’re not broadcasting our every move to the entire planet." Her voice hardened into something focused. "How exactly is this supposed to work? You want to help them, fine. But what’s the plan? Are you seriously just going to waltz up to that dome and stroll in to pull everyone out? Because that’s what it sounded like."
"No." Nicholas’s expression had shifted, the laziness gone out of it. "Because that wouldn’t work, and I think you already know it wouldn’t."
"Explain."
"Something isn’t right about that broadcast." He leaned back against the wall, arms folded, his one good eye distant with calculation. "Think about it. The strongest heroes on the planet are down there. Dana, Nectron, Vixen, Eric, Mercury, all of them. And they’re just... kneeling. Waiting. Letting a handful of people line them up and threaten to execute them one by one." He shook his head. "Heroes don’t do that. Not those heroes. If they had any way to fight back, any way at all, they’d have already torn that street apart. They wouldn’t be sitting there like sheep waiting for us to come save them."
Selena’s brow furrowed. "So what are you saying?"
"I’m saying the Master did something to hold them in place. And given who he used to do it..." Nicholas’s gaze flicked toward the dark screen, toward the memory of a small girl with a book. "That impure. The one from Denvi. Her power turns whatever she reads into reality. If he put a story into her hands that said the heroes lost their abilities..." He let the sentence finish itself.
Selena’s eyes widened. "He stripped them. All of them. That’s why Vixen hasn’t just folded everyone out of there. She can’t."
"She can’t," Nicholas confirmed. "None of them can. The moment that dome went up, they stopped being heroes and started being ordinary people, and ordinary people don’t win against Hexi and Shadow and the rest."
"And it fits," Selena said slowly, the pieces clicking into place, dread rising in her voice. "It fits with everything. Months ago, when Hexi and Shadow slipped away from you, they let something slip. They said their master had been looking for you. Specifically for you." She stared at him. "We never understood why. But if he’s building a world without abilities, and you’re the man who can cancel abilities..."
"Then I was always on his list," Nicholas finished. "One way or another."
For a moment, none of them spoke.
Then Julie’s voice, small and horrified, broke the silence. "So it’s a trap. The whole thing. The broadcast, the invitation, all of it, it’s a trap to get everyone to come running so the dome takes their powers too." Her hands tightened on her phone. "But then, how are we supposed to help the others?! We can’t just stand here and let him kill them! We have to do something!"
Selena turned to Nicholas.
She looked at him for a long moment, at the calculation still running behind his eye, at the way he’d gone quiet and still and dangerous, and she already knew the answer before she asked.
"What do you want to do," she said. "You’ve got that look. You have a plan."
Nicholas let out a slow, tired sigh.
’I really do need that money for next month,’ he told himself, one last time, the way a man straightens his tie before walking into a room he’d rather avoid. ’Marina’s already booked the trip. Katie’s counting down the days. I am not letting a doomsday cult ruin my family’s vacation.’
"I have a plan," he said.
A small grin began to cut its way across his face, sharp and cold and entirely unlike the man who’d been haggling over a beach a minute ago.
"And my plan is to walk right into their trap." He pushed off the wall. "But we’re not walking in as heroes."
The grin widened.
"We’re walking in as hitmen."