THE THRONE OF THE NINE HEAVENS

CHAPTER 7: THE VIPER SECOND SKIN

I didn't drive to the safe house; I hunted. The steering wheel groaned under my grip as the realization clawed at my brain. Five years. Five years of waking up next to her, sharing meals, sharing a bed, and it was all a calculated lie. Sarah wasn't a cheating wife. She was a weapon planted in my life.

I kicked the door of the suburban bungalow off its hinges. The wood splintered like matchsticks.

"Sarah! Get out here!" I roared.

The living room was dark, but I felt the shift in the air. A shadow moved near the kitchen island.

"You were always so loud, Elias," a voice whispered. It was Sarah’s voice, but the warmth was gone. It was replaced by a cold, surgical precision. "You were supposed to be the quiet observer. What changed?"

"The 'quiet observer' watched his friends die today," I spat, stepping into the dim light. "I saw the mark on the assassins at Thorne HQ. The same one on your hip. You’re Void Eye."

She stepped out, spinning a pair of jagged daggers. The blades glowed with a sickly, rhythmic purple hue. Qi-poison. One scratch and my nervous system would melt.

"Void Eye? Please," she mocked, her eyes tracking my every movement. "I’m the one who kept you alive for five years. Do you have any idea how boring it was playing the doting wife to a man who didn't even know what he was?"

"So the affair? The lies? All part of the mission?"

"It made you a better subject," she said, lunging forward.

She moved faster than a human should. I threw up a gravity barrier, but she twisted in mid-air, slicing through the edge of the field. The daggers hissed as they bypassed my defense.

"You’re fast," I grunted, pivoting to avoid a strike at my jugular. "But I'm stronger."

"Stronger? You’re a toddler with a loaded gun!" She landed a kick on my chest that sent me skidding across the hardwood. "You think these powers make you a hero? You're just a vessel, Elias. A container."

I stood up, the floorboards cracking under my feet as I increased the local density. "Tell me the truth. Was any of it real?"

"The truth?" She laughed, a sharp, jagged sound. She swung the daggers in a blur of poison and steel. "The truth is I hated every second of it. The dinners, the movies, the 'I love yous'. I was a sleeper agent assigned to a battery. And now, the battery is finally charged."

I caught her wrist mid-swing, the gravity well pinning her arm in place. I looked her dead in the eye, inches from her face. "You’re going to pay for every lie."

SLAP.

I didn't use a fist. I backhanded her with enough force to send her spinning into the drywall. It was a face-slapping reality check. She hit the ground, her lip bleeding, but she was smiling.

"That's more like it," she hissed.

She threw a flashbang from her belt. The room turned white. By the time my vision cleared, she was already through the back sliding doors. I surged after her, the ground shaking with every step.

Out in the backyard, a blacked-out transport helicopter was already hovering, its rotors whipping the trees into a frenzy. A rope ladder dangled just feet from her.

"Stay here, Sarah!" I screamed, reaching out to crush the helicopter's engine with a gravity surge.

She grabbed the ladder and looked back at me, her face contorted in a mask of triumph and pity.

"You still don't get it, do you?" she yelled over the roar of the engines.

"I’m coming for you!" I yelled back, the air around me distorting with raw power.

As the helicopter began to lift, she climbed higher, safe from my reach. She leaned out, her voice cutting through the wind like a serrated blade.

"You think you’re a man seeking justice, Elias? Look at yourself!" she screamed. "You’re not a man! You’re just a battery for the world’s end!"

The helicopter banked hard, disappearing into the midnight clouds, leaving me alone in the dirt with the Echo of her words screaming in my head.