Chapter 13: The Next Attack
The jungle base wasn’t a city, but it burned the same.
Marcus, clad once more in the red and black skin of Titan, had expanded to five hundred feet. He stood amid the steaming canopy, the ancient trees brushing against his thighs like ferns, the air thick with the smell of crushed vegetation, fuel, and fear. The compound was spread out below him like a tactical model; bunkers, communication arrays, machine gun nests.
He felt it then. That deep, tectonic click in his soul. The looseness in his joints, the god-like power flooding his veins. It wasn’t just invulnerability. It was dominion.
A swarm of armored vehicles spilled from a hangar, miniaturized tanks and jeeps with mounted guns, spitting tracer fire that sparked harmlessly off his shins. He watched them scurry, these little metal ants who had dared threaten what was his.
A smile split Titan’s face, wide and terrible. He lifted his foot.
The stomp was a cataclysm. It wasn’t aimed; it was a statement. The ground ruptured. A gun nest and two armored cars vanished into a new crater of pulverized earth and twisted metal. Screams, tinny and brief, were swallowed by the wet thud of impact. He dragged his foot sideways, plowing a trench through a barracks building, turning it into kindling and red paste.
This was the feeling. The memory of Metropolis, of Tokyo, of a dozen other skylines crumbling under his fists. The sheer, unadulterated joy of unfettered destruction. But the memory was stale now, a ghost of a dead self. This was different.
This was for Danny.
He bent, his shadow plunging the central command block into twilight. His fingers, each as thick as a utility pole, hooked under the corrugated steel roof. With a roar that shook clouds loose from the sky, he tore it free. The shriek of rending metal was a symphony. He tossed the roof-section aside like a discarded beer cap, watching it flatten a swath of jungle.
Inside, soldiers scrambled. They were revealed, exposed, like beetles under a lifted rock. Some fired at him.Others ran.
He chose the runners. One massive fist, knuckles the size of compact cars, slammed down into the open heart of the building. The concrete floor didn’t crack; it liquefied, erupting in a geyser of dust and debris and human fragments. The fist came up, dripping. He pounded again. And again. Each impact was a punctuation mark. An exclamation point of revenge. He was erasing them from the earth. Grinding them back into the dirt.
From below, he heard the crackle of disciplined fire. Elias’s telepathic commands, Vince’s fireballs as bright as welding torches, Malik’s sniper rounds finding perfect, invisible kills. They were clearing the edges, surgical, efficient. But the core was his.
A group of soldiers, brave or stupid, poured from a side door, launching anti-tank rockets. The missiles struck his ankle and calf, blossoming into tiny flowers of heat that didn’t even warm his skin. He looked down at them, a giant considering termites.
He lowered his hand, palm open, and swept it across the clearing. He gathered them up—dozens of them—their tiny bodies kicking and writhing against his invulnerable skin. He felt their pathetic weight. He raised his hand, bringing the squirming mass level with his face.
He remembered popcorn at a drive-in with Garrett’s identity firmly in place, a simpler happiness. A twisted parody of that memory surfaced. He tipped his hand.
They fell, tumbling, screaming. His mouth opened. He caught them. Their tiny impacts against his tongue, the brief, salty bursts, the final, muffled crunches as his jaws closed.He swallowed. It was effortless. It was nothing. A snack to fuel his fury.
He straightened, scanning the ruin. Fire bloomed where Vince worked. Ice encased entire structures from Aurora. Siren’s voice lured a squad into Malik’s crosshairs. But the body count, blinking on some unseen tactical display he knew Charlotte was monitoring, was overwhelmingly his. He’d reduced the heart of the base to a smoldering, gory crater.
“Targets neutralized,” Elias’s voice crackled in his ear, calm as a surgeon. “All remaining hostiles are fleeing perimeter. Containment is optional. Your call, Titan.”
Marcus looked at the fleeing dots in the jungle.Small. Insignificant. Fleeing from him. He let them run. Let them tell the story. Let them describe the god that had risen from the earth to wipe their brothers away.
“Mission complete,” he rumbled into his comm, his voice like stone grinding on stone.
---
In the observation center, the bank of monitors showed a dozen angles of the carnage. Thermal, satellite, drone-cam. The main screen was a shaking, low-angle shot from a drone, showing Titan’s monolithic form blotting out the sun.
Charlotte Zimmerman sat perfectly still in her chair, her fingers steepled under her chin. Her eyes were sharp, analytical. “Look at that,” she murmured, not to Daniel beside her, but to the air. “Efficiency. Minimal strategic thought, maximal destructive output. The casualty-to-effort ratio is off the charts. He’s not fighting a war. He’s performing an extermination.”
Daniel was not still. He was leaning forward, elbows on the console, his breath shallow. He watched the giant in red and black. He saw the casual, world-altering power, the absolute brutality. He saw the stomp that erased lives, the fist that hammered men into paste. He saw the soldiers disappear into that cavernous mouth.
And he felt a heat coiling low in his gut.
This wasn’t Garrett. Garrett was gentle hands and whispered promises. This was the reality beneath. This was Titan. The monster. The destroyer. And this monster was his. This force of nature, who could shatter mountains, had chosen him. Had whispered filthy love into his ear, had opened him up and made him scream with pleasure. The duality was dizzying. The same hands that could crush a tank had cupped his face with devastating tenderness. The same being who swallowed men whole had begged, raw-voiced, for permission to come inside him.
Arousal, dark and unexpected, slithered through him.It was wrong. It was obscene.It was primal. He was hard, the pressure against his zipper a guilty, thrilling secret. He watched Titan plant a foot on the remains of the command block, a conqueror surveying his domain, and Daniel’s mouth went dry. My man, he thought, the word ridiculous and perfect. My Daddy.
Charlotte’s head turned slowly. Her gaze sliced from the monitor to Daniel’s profile—his flushed cheeks, his parted lips, the intense, glazed focus in his eyes. Her glance flickered down, noting the tension in his posture, the way his hands were clenched on the console edge.
A slow, silent understanding dawned in her cold eyes. She didn’t smile. She didn’t react. She simply turned back to her screen, and with a few deft keystrokes, opened a private log. She typed a single, cryptic line: Subject M: Observed positive reinforcement linkage between extreme violence and Mate D’s psychological/physiological state. Potential for conditioning is high. Exploitation vector confirmed.
---
The flight deck of the VTOL transport was a cacophony of scent: ozone from expended powers, sweat, cordite, and blood. The team filed in, shedding gear. Vince was grinning, shaking out a hand that still smoldered. Malik cleaned a rifle with monastic calm. Nadia hummed a haunting tune. Elias looked thoughtful, already running calculations in his head.
Cole “Velocity” slammed a locker shut, his face a mask of petulance. “A fucking one-man show,” he snapped, glaring at the hatch as Marcus, back to his normal, though still massive, human size, ducked through it. The red and black costume was streaked with dirt and darker, wetter stains. “Could’ve just dropped you in a crate and saved the fuel. Rest of us might as well have been spectators.”
Marcus unbuckled a gauntlet, letting it clatter to the deck. He met Cole’s gaze, his own eyes still holding the distant, satisfied chill of a battlefield. “Couldn’t help it,” he said, his voice still a little gravelly from the roar. “They gave me a target. A hundred of them or one of them, it’s the same. You clean the edges, Speedster. I level the fucking foundation.”
He began stripping off the top of his costume, the heavy material peeling away to reveal the sweat-sheened map of scars and muscle beneath. The crew fell quiet, watching.
Vince tossed Marcus a towel. “So?” he asked, his voice casual but his eyes knowing. “Enjoy yourself out there?”
Marcus caught the towel. He ran it over his face, down his neck. He paused, the fabric held against his chest. He looked around the bay, at his team, his friends. His gaze was unguarded for a moment, stripped of the villain and the lover, showing something raw and true.
“Yeah,” he admitted, the word a deep exhale. “I did. Felt… virile. Powerful. Like I was meant for that.” He threw the towel aside. “But not like before. It wasn’t empty.” He leaned back against the bulkhead, crossing his arms, a faint, possessive smile touching his lips. “I hope Danny was watching. I hope he saw it. I want him to know. To see what I can do. How I can protect him. How I fight for him.”
The cabin was silent save for the thrum of the engines. Nadia’s smile was soft. Malik gave a nod of final approval. Even Elena’s stern expression softened a fraction.
Cole just shook his head in disgust and stalked away.
Vince chuckled, popping open a water bottle. “Oh, he saw it, brother. Bet he loved every fucking second of it.”
Marcus closed his eyes, the image of Daniel’s fascinated, heated gaze waiting for him in his mind. A low hum of pure, possessive contentment vibrated through him. The storm had been unleashed, and it had pleased his mate. The circle was complete. The beast was fed, and the keeper was happy.
The ship hummed towards home.