Where the Pulse Ends

© 2026 Sai Marie Johnson

The humidity in the city didn’t just hang; it leaned. It was a thick, stagnant soup of diesel exhaust, ozone, and the metallic tang of blood that drifted from the "Compliance Zones." Joe sat in his rusted sedan, his hands resting loosely on the steering wheel. He wasn't gripping it. He wasn't angry. Anger was a chemical spike, a biological inefficiency. Joe was simply... focused.

He was trapped on the Verrazano-New Bridge. Three miles of suspended concrete that the New Regime had turned into a slaughterhouse funnel. Ahead, the red taillights of ten thousand cars bled into the rising smog like a sea of dying embers.

This was a "Compliance Cordon." The Department of Civil Stability—colloquially known as the Kilvils—had decided the evening commute was the perfect time to harvest dissidents.

In the lane to Joe’s left sat a silver hatchback. The driver was a boy, barely twenty, with a face full of soft features that hadn't yet been hardened by the state. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to a frantic, silent rhythm.

"Don't look at them," Joe whispered to his cracked windshield. "Just look straight ahead, kid."

But the boy looked.

A black armored transport, looking like an iron coffin on wheels, lurched through the emergency lane. It bore the sigil of the Aegis-Elite: a golden fist clutching a lightning bolt. It screeched to a halt diagonal to the hatchback, forcing the boy to slam on his brakes.

Three men jumped out. They weren't just soldiers; they were "High-Flyers"—low-level biological supers funded by Senator Silas Vane’s ‘Safe Streets’ initiative. The leader, a man named Miller, had skin that looked like burnished brass. He didn't knock on the window. He shattered it with a casual backhand.

"Compliance check!" Miller’s voice was amplified by a throat-mic that made him sound like a god speaking through a trash compactor. "Exit the vehicle! Hands on the roof!"

The boy scrambled. His movements were jagged, frantic. "I—I’m sorry, sir! The door is jammed—the lock is—"

"Resisting!" Miller barked.

Joe sat three cars back. He didn't reach for a gun. He didn't have one. He just let his vision go soft, focusing not on the armor or the brass skin, but on the rhythm beneath. To Joe, the world wasn't made of people; it was made of systems. Electrical impulses. Blood pressure. The hum of the Vagus nerve.

The boy finally kicked the door open, but as he stumbled out, his foot caught in the seatbelt. He lunged forward, his hand reflexively reaching out to catch himself on Miller’s pristine armored vest.

Miller didn't flinch. He smiled. It was the smile of a man who had been given a legal reason to satisfy a private urge.

The kinetic pistol at Miller’s hip cleared its holster in a blur. Crack.

The sound was wet and heavy. The kinetic round didn't just pierce; it dumped its entire energy into the boy's chest cavity. He folded in half, hitting the side of his car. His graduation tassel dangled from the rearview mirror just inches from his lifeless, staring eyes.

"Clear," Miller muttered into his comms, stepping over the body. He looked bored.

Joe felt the shift. It wasn't a "rage" in the traditional sense. It was the cold, hollow logic of a mathematician looking at an equation that refused to balance. The boy was a zero now. The balance had to be restored.

Joe reached out. Not with his hands, but with that silent, invisible tether. He didn't target Miller’s heart—High-Flyers often had redundant cardiac tissue. Instead, Joe went for the Vestibular System—the delicate machinery of the inner ear.

Negate.

In an instant, Miller’s world tilted ninety degrees. He didn't just fall; he collapsed in a violent, seizing heap. His brain, suddenly deprived of its sense of gravity, sent a panicked signal to his stomach. Miller began to vomit inside his sealed tactical helmet, a muffled sound of choking.

His partners scrambled, weapons raised, screaming for a sniper. They never looked at the man in the rusted sedan who was calmly shifting into ‘Drive.’

***

Part 2: The Sanctum of the Damned

Joe’s apartment was located in the "Sink," a district where the power grid flickered like a dying heart. The walls were covered not with photos, but with anatomical charts. Gray-scale maps of the nervous system, the circulatory paths, the delicate wiring of the brain.

He stripped off his shirt. His own body was a map of the cost. Every time he "negated" a function in someone else, a shadow grew in him. His left hand was permanently numb. His sense of taste had vanished months ago. He was trading his own humanity to act as the city’s circuit breaker.

He sat at a low table and opened a file. It wasn't about Miller. Miller was just a finger on the hand. Joe wanted the brain.

Senator Silas Vane.

Vane was the architect of the "Lethal Discretion" act. He was an Elite who believed the city was a biological organism that needed to be pruned. He lived in the Green Zone, a glass-and-steel utopia built on the bones of the Sink.

"Higher Law," Joe whispered, his voice rasping. "Symmetry. For every breath taken on the bridge, a lung must fail in the tower."

***

Part 3: The Infiltration

Joe entered the Green Zone through the service tunnels, wearing the gray coveralls of a "Ventilation Specialist." In this world, the Elites didn't look at the help.

He reached the primary checkpoint of Vane’s penthouse. Two Aegis guards stood there, their bodies humming with kinetic shields. They were literal human tanks.

"ID," the first one grunted.

Joe didn't reach for a badge. He targeted the man’s Broca’s Area—the part of the brain that turns thoughts into speech.

Negate.

The guard opened his mouth, but only a dry, clicking sound came out. He tried to signal his partner, but Joe was already moving on the second guard, targeting the Semicircular Canals. The second guard hit the marble floor, his world spinning at a thousand miles per hour.

Joe walked through the scanners. They remained silent. He carried no metal, no gunpowder. He was just a man. A man who knew exactly where the "off" switches were located.

***

Part 4: The Subtraction of Silas Vane

The Senator’s office was a sanctuary of filtered air and expensive lilies. Vane stood by a floor-to-ceiling window, watching the flicking lights of the raids below like they were a light show.

"You’re a long way from the slums, citizen," Vane said, not turning around. His skin had a faint gold glow—bio-polymer reinforcement. He was "Impervious."

"I'm not here to break your skin, Silas," Joe said, walking to the center of the room. "I'm here to stop the signals."

Vane turned, his face twisting into a sneer of augmented arrogance. He lunged with supernatural speed. Joe didn't dodge. He simply negated Vane's Proprioception.

Vane’s hand missed by a foot. He stumbled, his legs moving as if they belonged to a stranger. He hit his mahogany desk, spilling a glass of vintage wine that cost more than the boy’s silver hatchback.

"What... what is this?" Vane gasped.

"You think power is about being hard," Joe said. "But power is just electricity moving through meat. And I’m the one who handles the subtraction."

Joe focused on the Phrenic Nerve.

Negate.

Vane’s chest went still. He tried to gasp, but the muscle refused to move. His "Impervious" skin was a cage now.

"The boy on the bridge couldn't breathe because your pet soldier put a hole in him," Joe whispered, leaning over the dying Senator. "You won't breathe because I’ve deleted the command. You’re going to spend your last three minutes realizing that your 'Elite' status is just a chemical lie."

Vane’s eyes bulged, full of a primal, pathetic terror. He reached for Joe, but Joe negated the Synapses in the Senator’s hand one by one.

"I'm not a hero, Silas," Joe said as the Senator’s face turned a bruised, final purple. "Heroes want to change your mind. I just want to shut down your system."

***

Part 5: The Anatomy of the Fall

Joe walked out onto the balcony as the Senator’s heart gave its final, unheeded thump.

Below him, the city was still burning. One dead Senator wouldn't stop the machine, but it would make the machine shudder. Joe pulled a burner phone from his pocket. He sent an encrypted file to every pirate radio station in the Sink: the home addresses and biological signatures of every Aegis commander in the city.

He felt a new coldness in his chest. His own heart skipped a beat—the price of the night’s work.

He didn't care. He wasn't a hero. He was the ghost in the wiring, the shadow in the anatomy chart. He was the place where the pulse ended.

And he had a lot of names left on his list.