Two days later.

Seventy-two hours had passed since the brutal confrontation between Jayden and Frost in Carmine City.

Heeding Fred’s stern advice, Jayden had completely halted his crusade against the Black Cobra syndicate. He needed to lay low, let the EVA chase ghosts, and divert their attention away from the masked vigilante’s true motives. So, he pivoted his focus entirely to the local criminal underworld.

To prevent the EVA from pinpointing Emerald City as his base of operations, Jayden expanded his hunting grounds. Every night, he rotated between Emerald, Ruby, and Jade City, systematically dismantling local street gangs, illegal weapon rings, and smuggling operations. The results were staggering. In just forty-eight hours, the crime rate across the tri-city area plummeted by a massive sixty percent.

The underworld was terrified. They had originally assumed the vigilante was an elite corporate assassin solely targeting black cobra, leaving the street-level gangs to operate in peace. But that illusion had been violently shattered. Now, whispers echoed through the slums and black markets of an unkillable ghost. They called him "The Phantom"—a terrifying apparition that could strike while completely invisible and walk harmlessly through a hail of laser fire.

Currently, the Phantom was perched on the rusted fire escape of a brick building in Ruby City’s industrial district, his golden eyes locked onto a sprawling warehouse across the street.

According to an encrypted chatter he had intercepted earlier, a massive shipment of high-grade, black-market tech was resting inside the warehouse, and a gang was planning to "liberate" it tonight. Four armed guards were stationed at the warehouse perimeter, smoking cheap cigarettes and leaning against the chain-link fence, completely unaware of the impending heist.

Jayden waited in the shadows, perfectly still, a predator watching the trap slowly spring shut.

Ten minutes later, the low hum of a heavy engine echoed down the empty street. A matte-black transport truck suddenly peeled around the corner, its headlights killed, and screeched to a halt directly in front of the warehouse gates.

The four guards instantly dropped their cigarettes, raising their plasma rifles and shouting warnings.

The back doors of the truck kicked open, and six heavily armed men wearing ballistic vests poured out, moving with practiced, militaristic precision, followed quickly by the driver. Seven in total. They didn’t bother issuing demands. A barrage of stun-grenades and concussive plasma fire instantly overwhelmed the guards. Within seconds, the four watchmen were unconscious on the pavement.

The robbers slapped a thermal breaching charge onto the warehouse’s heavy steel doors. With a muffled thump, the locking mechanisms melted, and the crew flooded inside.

Jayden watched through his thermal vision. The massive interior of the warehouse was lined with dozens of heavy metallic crates. The thieves immediately went to work, hooking up anti-gravity dollies to the crates and hauling them rapidly toward the waiting truck.

Jayden waited patiently until every single man was entirely preoccupied with the heavy lifting. Then, he became invisible and silently dropped from the fire escape.

Inside the warehouse, one of the thieves was struggling to strap a large crate to a dolly near the back of the room. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, muttering a curse. Suddenly, an invisible, Vice-like grip clamped around his ankle.

"Huh?!" His eyes widened in horror and confusion. "What the—?!"

Before he could complete the sentence, he was violently yanked into the pitch-black shadows between two shipping containers.

There was a dull thud, and then absolute silence.

The man working nearest to him paused, looking up. "Hey, Derek, give me a hand with this—"

He stopped. Derek was gone. The heavy crate sat abandoned.

Before the man could call out, an unseen force struck him squarely in the chest. He was launched fifteen feet through the air, crashing into a stack of wooden pallets and instantly losing consciousness.

The echoing crash of their crewmate being launched through the air alerted the rest of the crew. The remaining five men dropped their cargo, instantly raising their high-powered assault rifles, their mounted flashlights cutting frantically through the dim warehouse.

"What the hell was that?!" one of them yelled, his hands shaking.

Another thief stared at the shattered pallets, his face draining of color. "Shit. It’s him. It’s the Phantom!"

Absolute panic set in. The thieves began firing wildly into the shadows, the red and blue plasma beams scorching the concrete walls, melting steel support beams, and vaporizing the wooden crates.

Jayden moved through the chaotic crossfire like a ghost. He didn’t just walk; he glided seamlessly between the lethal beams of superheated plasma.

He targeted the closest man first—a heavy-set thug screaming as he sprayed plasma fire in a wide, blind arc. Jayden dropped low, sliding effortlessly beneath the lethal beams. While entirely invisible, he swept his leg out in a brutal arc, shattering the man’s knee joint. As the thug let out a shriek and began to fall, Jayden grabbed him by the tactical vest, hauled him forward, and delivered a devastating, invisible uppercut to his jaw. The man’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he hit the concrete completely unconscious.

The second man heard the sickening crunch of the jaw and whipped around, firing blindly at the empty space. Jayden blurred to the side. Then he reached out and grabbed the barrel of the man’s plasma rifle. With a sharp squeeze of his fist, he crushed the reinforced metal into a useless lump of sparking slag.

Before the terrified thief could even drop the ruined weapon, Jayden drove a perfectly executed, concussive palm strike directly into the center of the man’s chest. The sheer kinetic impact stopped his heart for a fraction of a second, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing into a stack of tires, out cold.

Two down.

The third man was frantically backpedaling toward the exit, trying to reload a fresh plasma cartridge. Jayden vaulted silently off the top of a shipping container, flipping through the air, and landed soundlessly directly behind the retreating man.

Without breaking his stealth, Jayden delivered a surgical, lightning-fast chop to the vagus nerve at the base of the man’s neck. The thief’s nervous system short-circuited instantly; his eyes rolled back, and he dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been violently cut.

Three down.

The fourth man spun around, realizing he was suddenly standing in a graveyard of his own crew. Driven by pure terror, he let out a guttural scream and held the trigger down, sweeping a continuous beam of lethal energy across the warehouse floor. Jayden didn’t dodge. He activated his Intangibility, striding straight through the red-hot plasma beam as if it were a warm breeze. He closed the gap in a microsecond, materialized his hands, and seized the man by the lapels of his vest. With a violent heave, Jayden lifted the fully grown man off his feet and hurled him through the air. The thief crashed head-first into the solid steel side of a shipping crate with a deafening CLANG, sliding to the floor in a heap of broken bones and bruised pride.

Four down.

The deafening roar of gunfire ceased abruptly, leaving only the sound of sizzling concrete and groaning men.

The fifth and final robber backed away slowly, his chest heaving with sheer terror. He was completely alone in the massive warehouse, surrounded by the broken, unconscious bodies of his crew.

Ten feet in front of him, the air suddenly shimmered and warped. Jayden materialized from thin air. He stood perfectly still, his dark tactical suit absorbing the dim light, the white, glowing eyes of his mask fixed dead on the terrified man.

The thief flinched violently, his heart hammering against his ribs. He fumbled with his plasma rifle, his hands shaking so violently he could barely disengage the safety.

Jayden didn’t move a single muscle. He simply waited.

With a desperate, terrified scream, the man finally pulled the trigger. A concentrated, searing beam of red plasma erupted from the barrel, aimed squarely at Jayden’s chest. But the lethal beam passed seamlessly through his body as if he were entirely made of mist, scorching a blackened hole into the concrete wall behind him.

The man gasped, stumbling backward in absolute shock. He pulled the trigger again, sweeping the beam across Jayden’s torso and head. Nothing happened. The energy simply washed through the phantom vigilante without leaving a scratch.

Realizing his weapons were completely useless against a ghost, the man screamed, dropped his rifle, and bolted frantically toward the open warehouse doors.

Jayden didn’t chase him. He simply raised his hand. Using his Telekinesis, he ripped the heavy, solid-steel lid off one of the nearby crates. With a sharp flick of his wrist, he sent the fifty-pound slab of metal flying through the air like a deadly frisbee.

The metal lid struck the fleeing man squarely in the back of the head. He crumpled instantly to the concrete, out cold before he even hit the ground.

Jayden slowly lowered his hand, surveying the unconscious crew scattered across the warehouse floor.

As he turned to leave, a groan echoed from the entrance. One of the original guards, nursing a bleeding forehead, had managed to stir awake. Blinking through the haze, the guard saw the terrifying, masked figure standing amidst the carnage. Driven by pure adrenaline, the guard scrambled to his knees, pulling his sidearm and aiming it directly at Jayden’s back.

"D-Don’t move!" the guard stammered, his arms shaking wildly.

Jayden didn’t even turn his head. He simply tilted his chin slightly to the side.

An invisible pulse of kinetic force struck the guard’s wrist and the heavy pistol was violently wrenched from his grip, flying twenty feet across the warehouse and clattering harmlessly into a dark corner.

The guard gasped, staring at his empty hands in utter dismay, completely defenseless. He scrambled backward, trying to flee.

"I’m not going to hurt you," Jayden’s voice echoed through the massive room, distorted and unnervingly calm.

The guard froze, terrified.

"Call the military police," Jayden instructed coldly. "Have these men arrested. The cargo is secure."

Before the guard could even blink, the air warped, and the Phantom vanished entirely, speeding off into the cool Ruby City night.

........