It was a perfect night for a murder.
The full moon was at its peak above the hills of Bel Air, casting brilliant rays of light that vanished into the midnight mist. Four shadows cut swiftly through the blanket of fog on Mulholland Drive. The only sound was the light tapping of their shoes against the pavement.
Getting past the guards and into the most prominent neighborhood in Beverly Hills was an impossible feat for anyone who wasn’t invited, but these shadows didn’t belong to just anyone.
They were Talents — outcasts with incredible abilities that struck fear into the hearts of the public. Every Talent was categorized by their power, and these four Talents, not by chance, were one of each type.
The Shaper found himself in the lead. Though he was only the second youngest, the others looked to him for guidance. It was his idea, afterall, to kill Jeff Maxwell.
He motioned the others forward and they slipped unnoticed down the road, passing by the grand entrance and accompanying guard station.
They knew well that the punishment for killing a rich man was greater than that for killing a hundred of their own. A hundred thousand, if you were a billionaire — and Jeff Maxwell was no longer a billionaire. He had skipped merrily past the line of thirteen digits not once, but twice, cementing his name forever as the world’s first multi trillionaire, and the richest man in history.
But the group had already accepted their fate.
Maxwell had long been a formidable enemy in the war against the Talents, sparked eleven years past after the cold blooded murder of his wife.
An internationally beloved sweetheart, Lynette Maxwell’s death had shattered the world and turned all eyes against the Talents. The well known Elemental responsible for her fate had once been heralded as a hero, but if even the best of the Talents was a murderer, what did it say about the rest of them?
It was this question, posed by Jeff himself, that breathed life into the flames of the war.
Poetic, in a way, that it should end with his death.
The Shaper stopped beside the tall steel fence and took the bars in his hands. With little effort, he pulled them apart enough to fit through. Many thought that Shapers were capable of inhuman strength, but it wasn’t strength they possessed. It was the power to bend the shape of anything they touched to their will.
He looked at the Thinker and raised a question in his mind: Are the guards near?
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and then her voice filled his thoughts in response: “One at the gate watching cat videos. Two patrolling the street, but they passed by a minute ago. We’re clear until they circle back around.”
He nodded, then squeezed through the fence. As he pulled his leg through, he considered closing the gap behind him and sealing the others off. This was his plan. It was a suicide mission. Did the others really need to die with him?
“Don’t be an idiot,” the Thinker’s voice echoed in his mind. “You’ll never get close enough without us.”
He knew she was right, but the weight of their lives felt heavy on his shoulders as he watched them climb through the fence.
“This isn’t just your revenge. It’s all of ours. We made our choice.”
She was right. They had all suffered just as much as him, if not more.
With a fortune built on the backs of a dozen countries and millions of employees, Maxwell funded the Talent Knowledge and Regulation Service — an organization of skilled operatives and top scientists with the purpose of understanding the Talents and apprehending those guilty of criminal activity. The Service, as it was known, had soon developed technology capable of countering and suppressing the Talents’ powers, and it was rumored that they were close to completing a Cure.
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Once it was replicable, the Cure would put an end to the Talents’ powers for good.
“Ready for this, Taylor?” the Clocker asked him.
The Shaper nodded, then turned to the others, who nodded in turn.
The Clocker grabbed the Shaper’s wrist in one hand and the Thinker’s hand in the other, while the Elemental took the Thinker’s free hand, and all together they proceeded forward.
They walked for several minutes to reach the gate of the Maxwell Mansion, but with the Clocker’s power over time, less than a second had passed when they arrived.
Maxwell’s security detail was made up of elite members of the Service, which made the Talents’ mission all the more dangerous.
The Shaper crept to the gate and silently opened the locks. Then he backed into the shadows and gave the others a nod.
The Elemental summoned a strong gust of wind, striking the gates open with a bang and knocking the two guards on the other side to the ground. The Thinker and Clocker were close behind her as she advanced into the courtyard.
“Maxwell!” she yelled. “Come and face me, you coward!”
The Shaper waited for his opening and then ran for the main house, keeping to the shadows as the others distracted the guards.
This would be their only chance. No doubt Maxwell would triple or even quadruple his security if they failed.
It was all riding on the Shaper.
Everything that Maxwell had taken from him flashed through his mind. Hatred burned in his chest, spurring him up the stairs and across the long, lavish courtyard toward the door. He had brought no weapons, only his hands, ensuring that the man’s death would be far from painless.
A single guard raised his gun from his post at the door, but a second too late. The Shaper reached him and bent the gun in half with a touch before it could fire. The guard reached for his taser and the Shaper grabbed his arm, severing it from the man’s shoulder in one quick motion and tossing it aside.
The guard collapsed without so much as a scream, rendered unconscious from the pain.
It occurred to him as he opened the door that he hadn’t stopped to ask the Thinker which room Maxwell was in. The two-story mansion was an extravagant maze of columns and arches and hallways, and he was only two feet inside the front door.
“Upstairs. Third bedroom on the right.” Her voice spoke directly into his mind, saving him the trouble.
Through the door was a grand entryway that led straight through a large arch to the back foyer. On either side of the rear door was a set of stairs.
He took the stairway on the right and paused at the landing. It doubled back, and the second floor made a circle around an open overlook of the foyer. From his position, every doorway was on his left.
But surely the Thinker had meant the right side according to her position, facing the building. He hurried through the first doorway into a long hall, keeping light on his feet. The third room was further than it needed to be.
He found the door at the hallway’s corner and quietly approached it, hoping the commotion outside hadn’t woken the bastard. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he had the stomach to finish the job — but the others were counting on him. If one of them had to live the rest of their days with murder on their conscience, better that it be him than the others.
The door was locked, but that was hardly an issue for him. He slowly turned the handle and pushed it open as his heart pounded in his ears.
This was it.
This was the moment that would change everything.
After eleven years of suffering, the Talents would finally have their vengeance.
A queen sized bed sat against the wall on the right, but it wasn’t Jeff Maxwell tucked beneath the sheets.
Long red hair lay delicately across the white silk pillowcase, and the Shaper faltered. It was Maxwell’s daughter, barely sixteen — and he was about to make her an orphan.
It wasn’t as though she would suffer the same way anyone else would — the way he had. The daughter of the richest man alive would be well taken care of. She would live the rest of her days without a moment of strife, never wondering if she would be homeless or without food.
But that familiar pain of losing one’s parents had never really left him, always burning at the bottom of his chest even after so many years. It was part of why he had come up with this plan in the first place.
And now it was why he wasn’t sure he could go through with it.
“Freeze!”
He spun away from the doorway and raised his hands in surrender.
The guard fired the gun anyway.
He grunted in pain and clutched his left side as the bullet pierced his ribs. His legs were already moving, scrambling around the corner toward the stairs. Blood seeped through his fingers and a numbness swept over him. The bullet had pierced his liver.
He had failed.
And now he was going to die.
