Saturday night. Seventeen days since the Omnitrix. 10:45 PM. Costume on, notebook open to the route he'd planned. Three hours on the route, methodically. Cerebro had given him a framework for thinking about the Intergang problem and he'd been building on it every night since. Devon's information about the routes, the timing patterns from his Southside walks, the MCPD incident report locations. He had a map. Not complete but enough.
One rule tonight: if he found something manageable he'd engage. If he found something that wasn't manageable he'd leave.
'You know the rules. You wrote the rules. Follow them.'
He switched the Omnitrix to active mode, pulled the hood over the mask, and went out the window.
....
He found the first situation forty minutes in. Garrick Street. A man walking alone, pace quick, shoulders up. Two figures twenty metres behind him keeping pace, not subtle about it. The left one had his right hand in his jacket pocket with the stiffness of someone holding something.
'Two on one. One probable weapon. Single civilian. Manageable. Do it.'
He came down from the fire escape and hit the pavement moving. Six meters out, reaching for the dial, when the left figure turned and swung.
No warning. A wide haymaker aimed at his head. Silas got his right arm up but the angle was wrong and the fist caught his left forearm hard. the impact shooting straight up to the elbow.
Pain. Sharp and immediate.
'Hit the dial.'
The dial went down.
Prism stood on Garrick Street.
The two figures froze. Not for long. The one with his hand in his pocket pulled it out empty, both hands up, backing away with the expression of someone whose situation had just changed completely.
"Whoa — whoa—" the left figure said.
Prism didn't move. The crystal form stood in the streetlight, light fracturing across its faceted surface in shifting patterns, and said nothing. The two figures looked at each other and made the only sensible decision available.
They ran.
The victim walked away fast without looking back. Manageable. Nobody hurt except Silas's arm and that had happened before the dial went down. The form itself hadn't taken any damage that would carry back. the Omnitrix handled that. Whatever happened to the alien body stayed with the alien body.
'The costume does not protect the human. The watch doesn't activate until I activate it. That gap is always open.'
The Omnitrix pulsed its steady rhythm against Prism's chest. No display, no countdown he could read, just the watch's own sense of time communicating through pattern. The pulse rate hadn't shifted to the rapid warning yet. Still good. He moved north along Garrick, keeping to the building edges.
....
He heard the vehicles before he saw them. Three. two vans and an SUV. rolling down Byrne Street, lights low, the specific quiet of people moving with intent.
Prism went still at the corner and watched.
The vans pulled into the loading bay of a warehouse mid-block. Doors opened. Six people out. Then two more from the second van. Two from the SUV. one on his phone, the other scanning the street. Eleven total. Long low crates being handled with care, transit padding, the kind used for equipment that couldn't take a bump.
'Intergang. Weapons handoff. Eleven people, three vehicles.'
He counted them twice. Eleven.
He checked the timer. Nine minutes.
'Nine minutes is more than enough. The vans are the objective, not the people. Immobilize both engines and the hardware stays here regardless of how many of them there are. Nine minutes to wreck two engine blocks. That's nothing.'
He had, he would later acknowledge, significantly underestimated eleven people with Apokolips-grade hardware.
He moved along the wall toward the loading bay, staying low, committed.
'Fast. In, both vans, out. Nine minutes is a lifetime.'
He moved.
Fast and low, the crystal form covering the distance in four strides, coming around the back of the nearest van before the street watchers had finished turning. Prism drove one forearm through the van's rear panel. The metal folded. The impact was punishingly loud in the quiet loading bay. He reached through into the engine cavity.
Everything went loud at once.
"Contact south—" a street watcher shouted.
Prism pulled back from the van. Engine block compromised. That one wasn't going anywhere. He turned. Three operatives moving toward him, fast, one of them holding something that was not a standard firearm.
'Apokolips hardware. Of course.'
The weapon discharged. The blast hit Prism in the left shoulder and the impact was enormous. like being hit by a car, the crystal body taking the force and not breaking but staggering back two full steps, the warehouse wall stopping him.
'That hurt. Actually hurt. Not broken but. that hurt.'
Prism pushed off the wall and went straight at the shooter. The weapon came up again. Prism got one crystal hand on it first, squeezed, and the Apokolips weapon crumpled like tin foil.
The shooter let go and ran. Good decision.
But the other two were already on him. One came from the left with a baton. it connected with Prism's forearm and shattered. The man stared at what was left of it. The other drove a shoulder into Prism's midsection with genuine force. Prism caught him by the jacket collar with one hand and set him down on the concrete firmly enough to take the fight out of him.
Four seconds of silence.
The remaining eight operatives were reassessing. Two by the second van reaching for their jackets. Three by the SUV. The dropped crate had opened when it hit the ground and something inside was catching the loading bay light in a way that made Prism not want to find out what it was.
'Second van. Get the second van and get out.'
Prism moved for it. Got three steps.
Two short tones. A flash of red.
....
Silas stood in the middle of the Intergang loading bay in a black suit and a full mask and he was entirely human.
Red hourglass. Dark faceplate. The watch locked on his wrist, cold and silent.
Eight operatives standing. Two of them with their hands in their jackets. All of them looking at the space where the crystal figure had been and then looking at him.
'Nine minutes is more than enough, you said. Nine minutes is a lifetime, you said.'
'Run.'
He ran.
Out of the loading bay, left, south on Byrne. Behind him shouting. Boots on concrete. He took the first corner without slowing, the second without looking back, ducked into an alley between two restaurants and went flat against the wall and held still.
Footsteps. Two sets. Passing the alley entrance. They kept going.
He didn't move.
Thirty seconds. A minute. The footsteps faded. He found the fire escape at the back of the alley and climbed. Four flights. Rooftop. Flat against the parapet.
His left arm was a constellation of pain. the punch from the mugging, now the blast impact from the Apokolips weapon, both on the same arm. He pressed his back against the parapet and looked at the red hourglass and breathed.
'You just stood in an Intergang loading bay as a human. Eight of them were standing. Two had weapons drawn. The only reason you're on this rooftop is that they hesitated because they were confused. They will not be confused next time.'
Below, voices. Then engines. one of the vans starting. The SUV. He heard them leave. He didn't look over the parapet to watch.
He looked at the Omnitrix. Still red.
His shoulder felt fine. The reversion had brought him back clean. no damage carried over from Prism, no residual heat, nothing. The crystal form had taken the blast. Silas hadn't. He sat on the roof and breathed and felt nothing except the cold air.
Fourteen minutes. That was how long the recharge took. He sat on the roof and counted every one of them.
The Omnitrix pulsed once. Hard and clean. Green.
He looked at it for a moment. Then he climbed down the far side and walked home.
....
12:18 AM. Window. Mask off. Suit off.
He stood in the bathroom in the dark and pulled up his left sleeve. The forearm was bruised from the punch. The shoulder was worse. angry red that was going to be purple by morning, heat not fully gone. He pressed it carefully. Flinched.
'Apokolips hardware hits differently. Write that down. Write that down clearly.'
He went to his room. Sat at his desk. Opened the notebook.
He wrote the mugging first. The punch, the transformation, the resolution. Then the loading bay. The eleven operatives, the decision to engage, the van he'd immobilised, the weapon, the blast, the three he'd put down. The second van he hadn't reached. The timer hitting zero with eight people still standing.
Then the dead zone. The red hourglass in the loading bay. Running in a suit. The alley. The rooftop. Fourteen minutes.
He sat back and looked at everything he'd written.
He'd immobilized one of two vans. The hardware had still moved. He'd put three operatives down without serious injury. He'd taken a blast from an Apokolips weapon and survived it. He'd gotten out of a dead zone in a room with eight armed people and made it home.
'You were overconfident. The plan was reasonable and you were overconfident about what nine minutes meant. That's the actual thing to fix.'
He wrote at the bottom of the page in the small letters:
'The costume does not protect the human. The dead zone is the most dangerous moment in any operation. Engaging with nine minutes against eleven people was wrong. Know that number before the dial goes down. Every time.'
He closed the notebook. His shoulder was going to be a problem to explain in the morning.
'Get better. Faster than they adapt.'