Felix spent the next few minutes as a marble bouncing around in some kind of container. Whatever carried him— he was pretty sure it was the cyborg— was moving at a very high speed, considering the amount of G-forces he was feeling. He would’ve already thrown up if it wasn’t for the fact that he was an inanimate object.

Fortunately, the crazy rollercoaster ride stopped soon enough, and he found himself tossed into the air.

With a small puff of arcane smoke, the man regained his corporeal form as his feet touched the ground. Felix patted imaginary dust from his clothes while marvelling at his surroundings.

The darkness was a pleasant contrast to the shimmering city earlier. Felix was never a fan of underground caves, but this one offered a well-needed respite from the choking neon lights on the land above.

Specks of bluish-white crystals glittered on the rocky walls, casting a comfortable glow onto quaint, squarish houses lining up neatly on the naturally formed walkways. Even further down were small orange glows, which were presumably part of some bazaar.

Felix tried to walk towards it but knocked into something invisible instead. He put his hand forward testily, feeling the slightly rumbling force field push back against it.

“Well, well. Looks like we’ve caught the attention of the notorious Iron Angel.” Orpheus’ voice drifted to Felix’s ears. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Felix looked around. Orpheus and Marcia were both safe, thankfully, although they were also trapped in this invisible prison like him.

The cyborg turned slowly. Felix’s psychic senses sparked, but he ignored it. Something about this thing’s demeanour seemed familiar. Iron Angel lifted a metallic hand to the side of his head and pressed a button. His helmet retracted from his face.

Felix flinched visibly this time, taking a huge step backwards.

“Titus Angelo…” he breathed as the traumatic memories of his sister’s kidnapper surged through his mind like water from a broken dam. He stole a glance at Marcia, who was also looking positively mortified with recognition.

Titus Angelo looked like he was in his early forties, although his hair remained as green as ever. Half of his body was made of sleek metal, including his face, which featured a frankly cool-looking green glow in place of his right eye. The other half was hidden behind a thicker armour, but Felix could sense living flesh behind it.

“Not another word from you, Grand Necromancer.” Titus’ narrow left eye shifted to Orpheus. “I’m only here for these two.”

Orpheus stepped in front of Felix.

“Slow down there, Mister Vigilante.” The smile on his face faded. “The law may not be able to do anything to you, but it doesn’t mean I can’t. These two are out of our jurisdiction, but technically, you just kidnapped a government official as well. Don’t push your luck.”

Felix could sense the magic in the air beginning to swirl around Orpheus’ staff. Titus must have noticed it as well because the remaining armour on his left side also retracted away.

“I have already shown you respect by bringing you along with your quarry,” the cyborg replied coldly. “Worry not, I have no intention of slaughtering them, if they cooperate.”

“What do you want, Angelo?” Felix snapped before he could stop himself.

“No. What do you want with our world?” Titus shot back. “Why are you here? How are you here?”

“Why’re you so nervous?” Marcia stepped forward. “Did something wrong?”

Armour burst around Titus as he stepped forward threateningly. Felix stared at him, silently daring him to make the first move.

“I’ve done plenty, girl.” The cyborg’s voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “But him—”

He jabbed an aggressive finger at Felix without looking.

“—He’s done a hundred times more than I ever will.”

“You don’t know me.” Felix folded his arms. “So don’t judge me. You’re plenty bad yourself in my world. Kidnapping children, syphoning their Meta essence… You have no idea. Don’t act like you know what I’m going to do.”

“So tell me, then.” Titus swivelled to him. “We have suffered under the wrath of Felix fucking Pagonis for long enough. If there’s even a one per cent chance you’re going to threaten my people, I will take that as an absolute certainty.”

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“Your—” Felix scoffed. “—Your people? Wow, we have a model leader here. Don’t kid yourself, Angelo. If you had pants, you’d be shitting them senseless right now. We didn’t choose to be here; it was an accident. An accident that we were trying to clean up until you decided to barge in.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you believe,” Felix snarled as the ground began trembling. “As far as I’m concerned, you kidnapped us. Again.”

A faint pink flickered in his eyes as he projected his mind into Titus’ head. He hated going anywhere near that bastard’s mind, but if it meant shutting him down so they could leave this place, he’d have to tolerate it just for a few seconds—

Titus’ helmet reformed around his head instantly, and Felix almost recoiled from the sudden mental block out.

“Old trick, arsehole,” Titus hissed from behind the metal mask. “I know all your tricks by heart, including this one.”

The man plunged his hand into Felix’s chest without warning and ripped his heart out.

Orpheus’ eyes went wide with shock. Marcia screamed. Felix staggered back as pain shot through his entire body. He calmed his mind, allowing his psychic energy to flow into the hole in his chest.

And then the wound sealed itself up rapidly, leaving behind not even a single hint of the trauma wrought upon his flesh.

“You ruined a perfectly good shirt.” Felix took a deep breath as the pink faded from his eyes. The shock had silenced everyone by now, so Marcia broke it with a slight whimper.

“H— How?” Her mouth hung open, her eyes still fixated on Felix’s torso.

“Biokinetic regeneration,” Titus replied simply, dropping the now-decayed organ onto the floor. “Pagonis picked up that psychic ability when he was twenty-one, and he mastered it by twenty-two. Isn’t that right?”

Felix kept his silence defiantly.

“That was my first mistake,” the cyborg muttered to himself. “Thought I’d won when I finally managed to crush your head like a watermelon until you grew it right the fuck back. Barely had time to realise your power isn’t just vested in your brain before you proceeded on to disintegrate half my body with a single psionic blast.”

He motioned to the cybernetic part of his body. “I would’ve died, if it weren’t for my allies who sacrificed their lives to drag me out and patch me up with these.”

Felix kept his head low.

“Even your powers have developed in the same manner as that monster who terrorised our world,” Titus said darkly. “So tell me. How can I not be suspicious of you?”

“The… me in this universe,” Felix mumbled. “What did he do? How did he become like this?”

“Your sister died in a crossfire during a Meta riot. She was innocent. It was an accident. A tragedy, in every sense of the word,” Titus said. “You arrived too late to save her, and she died in your arms. I wouldn’t have blamed you for what you did next.”

The psychic closed his eyes grimly.

“But you didn’t stop, even after you flooded the streets with both Meta and Magi blood. You didn’t stop, even after you slaughtered every single government official in one night. You didn’t stop when you wiped out Surone’s entire military arsenal and crippled its defences permanently. You didn’t stop when you declared yourself the new dictator of the country and imposed your new rule.”

Felix glanced at Orpheus, who avoided his gaze immediately.

“You didn’t stop, because you thought only you could save everyone. By forcing your will on the world, you thought you could eradicate everything that was wrong with it. But you only made it worse,” Titus continued. “And the worst part? Nobody could stop you. The Tier Five Metas banded together and went up against you in a head-on fight, but you still destroyed them all. I was the only one with any sense not to join them, and so I survived.”

“If Dictator Me really was as powerful as you described, how did you beat him?” Felix folded his arms, adamant not to lump himself with that megalomaniac.

“I joined a small resistance. People who wanted to keep their freedom and managed to avoid being brainwashed using the same metal used to forge my helmet. Like hell we were going to let ourselves be turned into those smiling idiots you see on the streets. We escaped the clutches of those technomagick guards— which still retain their programming to carry out your executive orders, by the way. And we eventually found your weakness.”

“Felix has a weakness?” Marcia asked, wide-eyed. “The only thing I ever recalled you being afraid of are insects.”

Titus chuckled softly. “Yes, you’re right. He is afraid of insects, in a way. Bee poison, to be specific. Felix Pagonis was deathly allergic to them. And so we devised a poison that had the potency of a thousand bees. Took us more than fifty doses of that poison, but we finally managed to wear you down enough for me to finish you off. You took more than half of us with you, including my own sister.”

“If you truly claim to care about your allies, why don’t you bring them up to the surface?” Felix insisted, still refusing to believe that his sister’s kidnapper could be a hero in any universe.

“Like I just said, Pagonis’ technomagick robots are still programmed to hunt us down. We have experts who are re-programming them cluster by cluster, but that takes time. Not to mention, the people up there have been mentally re-programmed to forget anything that makes them unhappy, and that includes your existence. We’re still recruiting telepaths to break through Pagonis’ brainwashing and restore their memories without making them go mad. It’s not easy, so I have to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

Titus walked out of the prison cell as though the forcefield was made of mere water. “Even if you are different from the Pagonis I know, you’re still too huge a threat to leave you roaming about. I’ll have to keep you here until we solve our problems.”

“And how long will that take?” Marcia banged her fists on the forcefield. “We just want to get home! We want to get out of this universe too!”

Titus turned back as he stepped onto a floating platform. “Sorry, girl. I won’t take any risks. We have already lost much, and I have too much more to lose.”

A translucent, purple forcefield surrounded the man, and the platform whizzed into the distance.