Trace saw Stalker get up off the ground calmly. And then promptly lost sight of him because the mutant-battery started struggling. A bit of a tighter squeeze and a harder press from the handgun stopped the struggling entirely. By the time Trace looked back up, Stalker was gone. That was decidedly not good. He noticed remnants of a smoky haze in front of him and the hairs on the back of his neck jumped straight up.

OF COURSE the Stalker would have some form of creepy smoke teleportation. Or maybe it was invisibility? Or had he-

Trace’s thoughts cut off abruptly as he heard a bellow behind himself. He barely had time to bodily shove the captive agent and twist before a knife bit into the back of his shoulder. He felt the blade scrape against his scapula and let out a cry of pain. Instinctively, Trace reached out with his power.

Again, Trace experienced something he’d never experienced before.

Time stopped entirely. It could have been a fraction of a second, but it could have been a year. Trace had no idea. He had no frame of reference. Some combination of the adrenaline of taking a knife wound and the third mutant’s ability to enhance powers had caused a massive surge in his powers. Time had stopped for everyone. Trace couldn’t tell if it was localized to the area or if he had somehow managed to affect time as a whole. All he knew was that he couldn’t really move and that he was still aware.

And then the first ripple came. It was small, at first. A sensation in his head that things were not right. Frantic, Trace reached out and tried to extinguish his power, but something much larger had him in its grasp and it was not done with Trace Tanner yet. Additionally, he had another sensation, some sort of link that had been forged between him, the Energizer Mutant and Stalker. There was a tangible connection and he could feel it between them, thrumming with some indescribable power.

Then came the second, larger and more volatile. Panicked, Trace rolled his eyes around. The eclipse had started sometime during the fighting. He’d lost track of time. It was dark around them. He felt as though that might have been something he should have seen.

The third ripple thrummed through the link between the three mutants caught in their epic melee of death. He felt the ripple effect Stalker. He felt it pass through the other agent. He felt it run though him.
The ripples began coming faster and with them, pain and sensation flared through Trace’s body. Locked in a timeless scene, he couldn’t react, couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t scream. He felt the ripples pulse, gaining momentum and resonating through every fiber of his being, the shear amount of information pushing itself into his brain, causing and overload from which Trace was sure that he would never recover. The pain, the light, the heat the-

Silence. Trace opened his eyes. In the blitz of everything that had happened, he hadn’t realized that he’d even closed them. The place to which his eyes opened was not the park that he’d been in originally. Describing what he saw to the best of his ability, it was as if he was seeing multiple film strips running all at the same time. Inspecting them closely, Trace began to make out shapes and scenes. Some from his own life, some, he gathered, from people that had been around him recently. In those moments, Trace was himself and he was everyone that he could see.

He saw a displaced psychic, afraid of the world and scared of an all too familiar future, dark and persecuted. The dead were his only company, the living were far too dangerous. Apprehension, near terror, yet a strong resolve and a decision to act and a strong hesitance to return home after a time away. But again, there was another version, similar but different. A child. A wife. Just as much hardship. Just as much pain.

A young officer, joining an organization she didn’t understand for reasons she knew were good and right, sure that she could make a difference in the world. Confident that there was no weight she could not bear, no challenge she couldn’t overcome. A fond relation with an agent who suddenly went rogue, a friend in a position that was precarious. A split. Another person, different but familiar. Male. Proud. A ridiculous monster truck.

A young college girl, trying to do good in her life. Working with a clandestine team that seeks to put right the wrongs in the world. Terror at a recent encounter with a demonic entity that had shattered a seemingly normal portion of her life, the part where she didn’t have to run, fight and hide. Confusion and terror, fleeing from the scene.

A young boy screaming into the night, mourning the loss of his parents in an alley. A group of mutants absconding into the night having killed them. They left the boy. He was special. He wasn’t one of them, he was one of us. Unknowable pain, the emotional kind, although somewhere, Trace felt a strong physical pain and a cold sensation. His side was wet. That was strange. A million more images and stories flashed through Trace’s head. He could control plants, no, he could control animals. He could start fires, then he could reconfigure his body. He was an empath, he had math vision, he had bone spikes, he had wombat hands. Wind, memories, mind reading, lie detector. Some familiar, many not. But his mind kept coming back to one. A single experience, etched into the fabric of his being. So engrained that he saw it over and over and over.

A young man, questioning his own motives. Feeling as though he’d been betrayed. Scared, alone, pursued. But resilient. Fighting despite the odds. Standing defiant against all the things that had gone wrong. Afraid for those around him and trying to protect everyone he could, even his enemies. It was familiar. It was right. Trace latched onto that feeling, let the emotions and the feelings flood back into him. He felt himself becoming whole again, some displaced part of him returning to reality. Which brought him back to the pulsing.

Trace was suddenly rocked by a massive pulse. He was physically thrown backwards through the air, the force of the blast akin to videos he’d seen of an atomic bomb. Trace felt himself hurtling through the air before the pressure and force was enough that he blacked out.

Things were off. Akshay could feel it. He felt it when he appeared from the mist, he smelled it in the super charged air, he could even taste it, the bitter, coppery taste like when there is blood in your mouth. Akshay knew that something was off but the man simply didn’t care anymore. This hunt was taking far longer than he wanted it to and Trace had pushed his last nerve. He had full faith in S.U.P.E.R. to cover up any of the fumbles and mishaps that happened today. He would bring in Trace by any means necessary, even if that meant run-through on the pointed end of a knife.

However, it seemed that Akshay had stumbled into something that he hadn’t all-together expected. Just as he appeared through the mist, he noted instantly that his body wasn’t fully solidifying. He still held the knife in his hand, still was flying towards his target, but still something was off. Thankfully it wasn’t enough of a distraction to keep him from landing a blow.

The knife dug deep, piercing the man’s clothing and driven straight through, cutting into bone. It was a satisfying feeling, to be sure, but just as the man made contact, he heard the scream that Trace bellowed, followed by a sudden burst of a sensation that he couldn’t quite identify. It rolled throughout his body like a shockwave, tearing into him down into his marrow. But just as soon as it came, it stopped; but it wasn’t only the feeling that stopped…everything stopped.

He was both conscious and unconscious of what was going on. He could scarcely wrap his mind around what was happening, the only thing that he knew was that he was in his body, but it couldn’t be moved. It wasn’t just him…somehow….all-around…he could sense in the space surrounding them that it had all stopped. Every man, woman, child, animal, they had all become trapped within a cage made of their own flesh and blood. And not only that, but the grass stopped waving, the trees stopped rustling, there were even birds that looked to be paused in mid-flight. It was as if someone had hit the pause button and the world responded.

It was terrifying, to say the least. Akshay could feel his heart racing in his chest, his blood pounding in his ears…or at least he it should have been. His fear only increased when he steadily realized that he couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat in this pure vacuum of stillness and silence. He needed to get out, he needed to get out now!!

He willed himself to move. He willed himself to teleport out of this insanity! He could feel the pulse of adrenaline ([unknowingly aided by the third agent whose mere presence was sending his powers into overdrive) and as it grew stronger, Akshay tried. He felt a pulse expand from his body as he tried to teleport out to a nearby mutant, any mutant who could get him away from the epicenter, but it no avail. He tried again, another powerful pulse and he thought he felt something different, the most minor change in the air pressure, but no real change.

A third pulse, this one originated from a place that was no him. As it coursed throughout his body, he felt his mind go in a whirl. In that instant, space meant nothing. He knew the limits of his powers, he knew he would only see mutant signatures for so far but in that moment, Akshay’s field of vision expanded. It moved, outward, extending further and further away and as it did so, the world lit up. He saw them. He saw all of them, all around, their bodies glowing like thousands upon thousands of roman candles, all alit at the same time and sending off pillars of orange, blindly light, like fire into the sky.

It hurt. He wanted to scream. Frozen in place, his body unresponsive but his mind conscious, he felt it stretching further and further like a thin shred of butter being spread over a piece of toast the size of a football field. Thinner and thinner it went but Akshay could still see them as clear as day. Not just the mutants in the park, not just those in the surrounding buildings, but in the city, in the state, in the country, it felt like the goddamn world. Each one illuminated into flares that burned images into his corneas – images that made no sense.

He saw them., laid on top of one another like two negatives that were slightly altered. He saw those people who dwelled in a sunken city, risen above the waves. He saw a nightclub run by the same mythic name run by a true lord of the oceans. He saw a mansion filled with hope for the future, and in its places, a burned out husk where tragedy and death hung heavy in the air. He saw golden doors, opened for mutantkind and shunning all others, then one with doors open to any and all that came forward in need of assistance. Akshay saw all of it, everywhere, as clear as day, and it couldn’t have scared him more. He had to get out. He needed to get out.

Once more…with feeling. He struggled, he tapped deeper into that inner core of rage and terror and desperation. He locked off of Trace and onto someone, anyone else that was as far away as he could get. He wasn’t sure whom he had latched onto, or where they were, but they were far. They were so, so far. Their signature flickered, on and off, almost as if it existed on the other side of a thin sheet of cellophane. He had to get there, he was a mouse on a sinking ship and he could feel his lungs about to fill with water.

He pushed, he groaned, and with a final internal and agonizing cry for salvation, Akshay teleported…

The thunder followed the force. The pressure of a shockwave strong enough to shatter physics exploded outside, expanding further and farther than the human eye could ever track. People were thrown about, sent careening in all directions, thrown haphazardly like boxes filled with ragdolls. As a collective scream filled the air, the cacophony of thunder and followed the forceful explosion, the vibrations shaking people down to their cores, shattering cheap jewelry, car windows, and what looked like the very air itself.

There, in ground zero, it was seen as clear as day. It the air shift strangely. It was as if someone had hung up a sheet of transparent silk; silk that was now tattered and shredded, frayed and burned around the edges. Around the splintered hems of time and space, there was only the smallest furling and unfurling of smoke, mist where one Akshay Malik and Trace Tanner had once stood. Now, all that remained was empty space – empty space with a fairly massive tear.

Amid the screaming and the crying for help. Among the shaky limbs of people trying to stand. Throughout the whirl of sirens in the distance and of the clicking of cellphones that tried to maintain recording, there was no clue as to what had actually happened. But they would know, they would all eventually know that the impossible had been achieved...

...spacetime was broken.