(THO) CHAPTER TWELVE

The room was dark, cold, and quiet.

Just the way Thomas Calvert preferred it.

No windows. No clocks. Only the whirr of the ventilators recycling the air. 

One screen showed a high-angle view of an empty street near the Docks—colorless and grainy, bathed in the flicker of broken streetlights. Another monitor showed nothing at all.

Just static. Lines. Feedback.

That was the one he kept coming back to.

The one that never worked. The one that should have.

“Report,” Calvert said without turning.

The mercenary stood stiff in the corner of the room, silhouetted against a backlight. Dressed in black armor, balaclava pulled down, body language too disciplined to show nerves—but the tension was there. Subtle.

“We followed your instructions,” he said. “Maintained distance. No engagement. No overt movements. But as soon as we got within a certain range, our recording systems started experiencing glitches. Audio was cut, visuals too.”

Calvert remained silent. 

The mercenary hesitated, then added, “It’s not jamming. It’s not scrambling. It’s like... the world doesn’t allow us to perceive him unless we’re physically present.”

Calvert’s fingers drummed once against the console.

“Spatial exclusion,” he said under his breath. “Nothing can affect him unless he permits it. Not matter. Not energy. Not even information.”

“Sir?”

“You’re dismissed.”

The mercenary left without another word, the door hissing shut behind him.

Calvert sat still for several seconds longer, watching the static dance.

Then he tapped a key on his console.

“Call Tattletale.”

A few seconds later, her voice filtered through the speaker, thick with artificial boredom. Biting too, but only to an allowed extent. 

“Finally decided I’m useful again?”

“I have a project,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

“A cape,” Calvert said. “Name: Gojo Satoru. No records. No known affiliations. Invulnerability or some variant due to spatial manipulation. Complete disruption of all remote observation—whether passive or not remains unknown.”

“And let me guess. You want to know if he’s a problem, or an opportunity.”

“Precisely.”

Tattletale didn’t answer right away, but he could almost hear her smirk.

Then: “Send me the details. I’ll see what else I can dig up. But fair warning? If your mystery man breaks thinkers as well as he breaks sensors, I want hazard pay.”

“Done,” he said.

“And one more thing,” she added. “He met Skitter.”

Calvert froze for just a second. “How did it go?”

“Poor girl looked rattled, which means he got under her skin.”

“Has that effect on people from what I've heard,” he said. “Arrange another meeting. Controlled environment. Stress factors. See how he reacts to proximity and danger.”

“Subtle?”

“Preferably.”

“Mmhm,” she said. “Anything else, boss?”

“Yes. Don’t spook him. Let him think he’s walking his own path.”

Tattletale chuckled. “Isn’t that how all the best traps work?”

The line clicked off.

. . . . .

The night was thick with mist. 

Gojo walked down an alley hemmed in by shuttered buildings, hands in his pockets, steps unhurried. The only sound was the light tap of boots on wet concrete and the occasional sputter of a dying neon sign.

He wasn’t alone.

He didn’t need to turn around to know they were there, didn’t glance, but he heard them—two sets of footsteps at forty meters and closing, gentle pacing. One constantly spoke into his earpiece, walking on the balls of his feet. The other checked line of sight, fingers twitching toward his belt every other second. Trigger-happy, that one was. 

Gojo sighed through his nose.

Professionals, he thought. Or wannabes who’ve read too many spy novels.

Either way, he didn’t stop walking.

He didn’t need to.

He could end them in less than a breath. Reverse the space between them and the ground. Fold them into a box no wider than a shoelace, so violently and immediate neither of them would ever realize what had happened.

But he didn’t.

Not because they weren’t a threat. Not because he didn’t care.

Because they weren’t worth it.

At the corner of the block, Gojo stopped beneath a broken billboard. A faded Protectorate recruitment poster showed half a cape’s face beneath a cracked slogan, flakes of paint curling away from rusted edges. 

Someone had tagged it with spray paint, scrawled in oddly-elegant black:

NO HEROES HERE.

Gojo stared at it.

Then turned the corner and walked on.