Collapse

The air trembled.

Steam hissed from ruptured pipes. Water flooded deeper into the corridors, rushing up to Maxwell's shins. Sparks rained down from a shredded breaker box behind him, casting strobe flashes across the carnage. The room—the whole vault—was falling apart.

Elijah pushed up from the rubble, coughing violently, one arm limp at his side. "You… you think this changes anything?" he spat, swaying.

Maxwell was breathing hard, but steady. Bruised. Exhausted. But still on his feet.

"I don't care what it changes," he said. "You were never meant to be the one holding the leash."

Elijah charged.

Not with grace—just fury. Blind rage.

Maxwell sidestepped. Grabbed his wrist. Twisted. Drove a boot into his knee.

CRACK.

Elijah howled, collapsing to one knee.

Max hesitated. Just for a second.

He still remembered the boy Elijah used to be. The lonely look in his eyes in the facility. The confusion. The pain.

But this wasn't that boy anymore.

This was a monster forged by pain—and made cruel by choice.

"I gave you a chance," Maxwell said.

Elijah looked up, his mouth twisted into a bloodied smile. "You didn't give me anything. They broke me long before you ever existed."

A tremor rippled beneath them. The ceiling groaned.

Chunks of steel and concrete began to fall.

Maxwell stepped back just as the support above Elijah gave way.

The ceiling crashed down, burying Elijah under twisted beams and debris.

Max didn't cheer. He didn't smile. He stood there in silence, surrounded by darkness and water and smoke, staring at the place where his greatest failure now lay.

Sirens wailed somewhere above. Firetrucks. Police. Maybe the Army. He didn't know.

He only knew he couldn't stay.

Not yet.

Maxwell turned and limped out of the vault, into the sewer tunnels, his cape dragging behind him—torn, soaked in soot and blood. The sounds of the city were distant now.

He didn't know if Elijah was dead.

And part of him didn't want to know.

The damage was already done.