Under Grey Skies - Chapter 1

Posted on Wed Sep 23rd, 2026 @ 9:16am by Blake Hayes

3,587 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Fallout
Location: Le Cafe Coffee - Manhattan - New York
Timeline: 18th July 2026

The coffee shop was busier than it had any right to be for a Tuesday morning. Blake stood near the counter in full uniform, one hand resting against the edge while he watched the barista work through a line of orders that seemed determined to grow rather than shrink. His radio crackled softly at his shoulder, blending with the hiss of the espresso machine and the constant murmur of downtown Manhattan. Outside, traffic crawled between the buildings, horns occasionally cutting through the glass. He glanced at the clock on the wall. They had ten minutes before they were due back on patrol. Ten minutes for coffee, if the universe was feeling charitable.

His partner stood beside him, scrolling through her phone while the television mounted above the counter played the morning news which was again recounting the attack in California a few days prior. She had been born and raised in New York, and she carried that fact like another item of her police equipment. She knew every neighbourhood, every shortcut and, apparently, every reason the city was going to hell. A familiar image appeared on the television—another police cordon, another crowd of reporters, another grainy photograph of a mutant incident somewhere outside the city. ’Further mutant-related disturbances reported across several states’, the news anchor was saying. His partner gave a quiet scoff.

“Every damn week,” she muttered. “You'd think they'd have figured out by now that these people aren't going to stop until someone makes them.”

Blake kept his eyes on the television. “Not exactly a fair assessment.”

She looked at him over the top of her phone. “Come on, Blake. You know what I mean. First it's some kid throwing a car across a street, then somebody burns down half a building because they lose their temper. And we're supposed to believe they're all harmless?” She shook her head. “Maybe the government should have done something years ago. Registration. Monitoring. Something.”

Blake finally looked at her. “We're cops. Our job is to deal with what people actually do, not what they might do because of what they are.”

She gave him a faint smile that suggested she wasn't convinced. “That's a very British answer.”

’He is British you moron,’ she corrected herself with a grin.

Before Blake could answer, the bell above the shop's door chimed. He glanced toward it without thinking—and stopped breathing for half a second. His ex-wife had just walked through the door, his daughter beside her, bundled against the morning chill. He hadn't expected to see either of them, certainly not here, and the sudden sight of his little girl made something inside his chest tighten. She spotted him almost immediately. Her face brightened, and she tugged at her mother's hand before pointing directly across the coffee shop. “Daddy!”

Blake felt his partner turn toward him. “Daddy?” she repeated quietly, amusement creeping into her voice. He barely heard her. His daughter was already making her way toward him, her mother following a few steps behind. He smiled despite himself, crouching as she reached him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He held her tightly, breathing in the familiar scent of her hair, and for those few seconds the noise of the coffee shop disappeared. Then he glanced over his daughter's shoulder at his ex-wife. Their eyes met. There was the familiar mixture of awkwardness and affection between them, years of history compressed into a single look.

“Morning,” she said softly. “Didn't expect to find you here.”

Blake straightened, keeping one hand on his daughter's shoulder. “Neither did I.” Behind him, the television continued talking about mutants. His partner had gone strangely quiet. He could feel her watching him, and suddenly he became acutely aware of the uniform he was wearing, the secret he had carried for twelve years, and the fact that the woman standing in front of him was one of the very few people in the world who knew exactly what he was hiding.

His ex-wife offered him a small, polite smile, though neither of them seemed entirely sure what to do with the unexpected encounter. Their relationship had settled into something functional over the years, built around their daughter and little else, but moments like this still carried an awkwardness neither had quite managed to eliminate. “We were just grabbing some breakfast before school,” she explained, glancing down at their daughter. “She wanted pancakes.”

Their daughter immediately nodded in agreement, apparently pleased that this important piece of information had been confirmed. Blake smiled. “Pancakes are a reasonable demand.”

“See?” his daughter said brightly. “Daddy agrees.”

Blake glanced toward his partner, who was standing a few feet away with an expression of barely concealed curiosity. He cleared his throat. “This is my partner, Officer…” He made the introduction, and his ex-wife returned the greeting with the polite warmth of someone who had met enough police officers to know better than to ask too many questions. His partner smiled and introduced herself in return, her eyes briefly moving between Blake and his former wife. There was no accusation in the look, but Blake knew that look. She was putting pieces together. “We work together,” Blake added unnecessarily. His ex-wife gave him a fleeting glance that seemed to say she had noticed exactly how unnecessarily he had said it.

“So,” his ex-wife said, turning her attention back to him, “are you working all day?” Blake nodded.

“Until late afternoon, assuming nothing decides to explode.”

“That sounds optimistic.” He smiled faintly.

“It's New York.” She laughed softly, and for a moment the awkwardness eased. Their daughter, apparently having lost interest in the adults' conversation, had begun examining the display of pastries near the counter. Blake watched her with a fondness he couldn't quite hide.

“You still coming on Saturday?” his ex-wife asked.

“Wouldn't miss it.” He replied as she nodded.

“Good. She keeps asking whether you're going to be there.”

The mention of Saturday made Blake smile. “I'll be there.”

His ex-wife looked at him for a moment before nodding. “Good. She'll be happy.”

There was something almost comfortable in the exchange, a reminder of what their relationship had once been before everything had become complicated. Blake was about to say something else when his eyes flicked briefly toward his partner. She was waiting for her coffee, apparently absorbed in her phone, but he knew better than to assume she wasn't listening. His attention returned to his ex-wife, and an old unease settled quietly in his stomach.

He trusted her not to say anything. At least, he wanted to. They had been through enough that she understood what the secret meant to him, even if she had once been hurt by the fact he'd kept it from her. But standing there in his uniform, with his partner only a few feet away, Blake suddenly became painfully conscious of every word his ex-wife might choose. He found himself wondering whether she might mention something about the past, something innocent that could sound anything but innocent to somebody who didn't know the full story. His eyes briefly met hers. For the smallest fraction of a second, he thought he saw the same concern reflected there.

“Well,” she said eventually, breaking the silence, “we should probably let you get back to work.” Blake nodded. “Yeah. Probably.” Their daughter returned carrying a pastry almost as large as her hand, and Blake crouched down to straighten her coat before giving her a quick hug. “I'll see you Saturday, sweetheart.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.” As he stood again, his ex-wife gave him another small smile.

“See you then.” Blake watched them head toward the counter, collect their waiting order and exit the coffee shop, he then turned back toward his partner. His coffee had finally arrived, but somehow the ten minutes he'd thought he had left suddenly didn't feel nearly long enough.

Blake took his coffee from the counter and turned back towards his partner, finding her watching him with an expression that was far too amused for his liking. “What?” he asked.

She lifted one eyebrow. “Nothing.”

“That's never a good answer.”

She took a sip from her own cup. “You seem different around her.”

Blake frowned. “Around who?”

“Your ex-wife.”

He gave her a sideways look. “She's my ex-wife. I'm allowed to be different around her.”

His partner smirked. “Touchy.”

Blake shook his head, taking a drink of his coffee. “You're imagining things.”

“Maybe,” she replied, clearly unconvinced.

Blake was about to say something else when a tremendous explosion erupted somewhere down the street. The sound hit the coffee shop like a physical force, rattling the windows and sending a shockwave through the room. Cups jumped from tables. Someone screamed. Blake's coffee slipped from his hand and shattered across the floor as his instincts took over. He was already moving before he'd consciously registered what had happened.

“Police!” he shouted, pushing through the startled customers toward the entrance. His partner was immediately beside him, one hand reaching for her radio as they burst through the door. Smoke was beginning to rise between the buildings ahead, accompanied by a distant chorus of screams and car alarms. Blake's stomach dropped.

That was the direction his ex-wife and daughter had gone.

“Come on!” he shouted, breaking into a run.

His partner followed, calling for emergency services over her radio, but Blake barely heard her. Every thought had narrowed to one thing. His daughter. His ex-wife. The distance between them and the explosion.

And for the first time in twelve years, Blake felt something deep inside him stir.

Blake rounded the corner and stopped dead. The grey sky hung low between the buildings, the morning light muted beneath a blanket of heavy cloud, while a light drizzle fell steadily across the street. Within seconds, the rain was mixing with the dust and smoke rising from the wreckage, turning the pavement into a slick, filthy mess. The street had become a scene of chaos. Alarms screamed from damaged cars, people stumbled through the debris in a haze of confusion, and the front of the building had been torn open, windows blown out across several floors. Fragments of masonry and twisted metal littered the pavement. Somewhere ahead, someone was screaming for help. Another voice shouted for a medic. Blake barely registered any of it.

His eyes searched frantically through the rubble.

“Connie!” he shouted, his voice cracking. “Connie!”

Nothing.

Then he saw her.

His ex-wife was on the ground beside what remained of a low concrete wall, one arm shielding her head. Blood ran from a cut along her forehead, the rain already beginning to wash it across her temple. Blake's heart lurched, but she was moving. She was alive.

“Where's Lily?” he demanded, dropping beside her.

Connie looked up at him, dazed and terrified. “Blake…” Her eyes darted around the wreckage. “I—I don't know. She was with me. She was right beside me.” She pushed herself upright, panic overtaking the confusion in her expression. “She was holding my hand.”

Blake turned toward the rubble.

“Daddy!”

The tiny voice came from somewhere beneath the debris.

Everything inside him stopped.

“I'm here!” Blake shouted. He scrambled toward the sound, dropping to his knees beside a collapsed section of masonry. “I'm here, sweetheart. Daddy's here.” He began pulling pieces of broken concrete aside with his bare hands, ignoring the sharp edges cutting into his palms. “Keep talking to me. I need you to keep talking.”

“Daddy, I'm scared.”

“I know.” His voice shook despite every effort to steady it. “I know, sweetheart. I'm going to get you out.”

He could hear Connie behind him, calling their daughter's name, but Blake barely registered her words. His entire world had narrowed to the small space beneath the rubble. His daughter was trapped somewhere beneath it, and every second that passed felt like an eternity.

Then the pressure began.

It started behind his eyes.

A familiar prickling spread across his fingertips, followed by a warmth that travelled slowly up his arms. Blake froze. He knew this feeling. He had spent twelve years learning how to bury it, suppress it, force it somewhere deep inside himself.

’Not now. Please, not now.’

A sudden gust swept through the street, carrying the drizzle sideways and lifting dust and scraps of paper into the air around him. Blake looked up sharply. The wind shouldn't have been moving like that.

His breathing quickened.

He could feel the atmosphere.

The pressure.

The moisture.

The unstable air rolling in from somewhere beyond the city.

It was all suddenly there in his mind, as though his senses had expanded beyond his own body. He could feel the storm front approaching in the distance, could almost sense the electrical charge building within it.

And he was losing his grip.

“Blake?” Connie called.

He clenched his fists.

The wind strengthened.

Loose debris began skittering across the pavement.

“No,” he whispered, staring at his trembling hands. “Not here.”

A faint spark jumped between his fingers.

His daughter's frightened voice came from beneath the rubble.

“Daddy?”

Blake closed his eyes.

For twelve years, he had been afraid of what would happen if he ever stopped holding back.

Now his daughter was trapped beneath several tonnes of concrete.

And for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure he could hold it back anymore.

The sound of boots scraping across broken pavement made Blake turn. Four men appeared around the corner through the drifting smoke, weapons already in their hands. The black-and-white Purifier insignia was visible on their jackets, stark against the rain. For one terrible second, Blake simply stared at them. Then one of them raised his weapon.

“Mutants!” the man shouted.

Blake's attention snapped back toward the rubble. Lily was still trapped beneath it, her frightened face barely visible through the narrow gap. “Stay down!” he shouted, throwing himself over the opening instinctively. But before he could reach her, the air around the rubble seemed to shimmer. A brilliant flash of white-blue light erupted from beneath the concrete, forcing Blake to throw an arm across his face.

There was a sound unlike anything he had ever heard—a sharp crack followed by a rushing sensation—and then the weight disappeared. The slabs of concrete that had been crushing down around Lily were simply gone. Not broken. Not moved aside. Gone. They had been displaced several feet away, scattered across the street as though someone had picked them up and thrown them. Lily lay exposed in the space where the rubble had been, staring at her own hand in utter confusion. A faint glow still surrounded her fingers.

Blake scrambled backwards, staring at his daughter. His heart was hammering, but the panic that had consumed him moments earlier was suddenly replaced by something else entirely. Confusion. Shock. He looked from Lily's glowing hand to the debris lying several yards away, then back again. “Lily?” he whispered. “What...?” He couldn't finish the question. His mind raced through every explanation, every possibility, but none of them made sense. He had spent twelve years terrified that he might reveal what he was. It had never occurred to him that his daughter might have something of her own.

The Purifiers didn't hesitate.

“There!” one of them shouted.

Blake turned just as the weapon came up.

“NO!”

The gunshot cracked through the street.

Lily's small body jerked as the round struck her, and she collapsed back onto the wet pavement.

For a heartbeat, Blake couldn't move.

He simply stared at her.

Then something inside him broke.

The world seemed to stop.

For one terrible second, Blake could do nothing but stare at Lily's small body lying on the wet pavement. Then Connie screamed her daughter's name, and something inside him finally broke.

Blake's head lifted.

The rain continued to fall, cold against his face, but he no longer felt it. His breathing came in ragged, uneven gasps. His hands trembled at his sides as he stared at the Purifiers through the curtain of smoke and rain.

Twelve years.

Twelve years of fear.

Twelve years of hiding.

Twelve years of telling himself that if he stayed calm, if he stayed quiet, if he never used what was inside him, nobody would ever have to know.

The Purifiers had just shot his daughter.

Something deep within Blake finally gave way.

He screamed.

The sound tore from his throat with such raw fury that Connie instinctively covered her ears. The air around him seemed to shudder in response.

Above Manhattan, the clouds moved.

Not naturally.

They turned.

The existing storm front rolling toward the city accelerated as Blake reached into it with his mind. Vast banks of dark cloud twisted together above the buildings, spiralling around one another as though an invisible hand had seized the atmosphere itself. The grey morning disappeared beneath a rapidly rotating canopy of black cloud.

His eyes burned blue-white.

The wind exploded outward.

A storm force gale tore down the street, ripping loose signs from buildings, overturning abandoned vehicles and hurling debris away from Lily. The falling rain suddenly changed direction, driven almost horizontally by a wall of wind.

Then the temperature dropped.

Dramatically.

Rain froze in mid-air.

What had moments earlier been a light drizzle became a violent torrent of ice.

Hailstones hammered down from the sky, bouncing from rooftops and pavement with deafening force. Some were no larger than marbles. Others grew to the size of golf balls as Blake unconsciously drew more moisture and energy from the storm system.

The Purifiers tried to run.

They didn't get far.

A bolt of lightning slammed into the pavement directly in front of them.

The street erupted.

Another struck behind them.

Then another.

Blake raised one trembling hand.

The entire sky flashed.

Lightning ripped through the clouds in branching veins, illuminating the buildings for blocks in every direction. One enormous bolt descended from the storm and struck a metal street fixture, exploding it into a shower of sparks.

His partner stood frozen.

She had seen mutants before.

She had seen footage of the X-Men.

She had seen the news.

But she'd never seen anything like this.

Blake wasn't producing lightning but instead he was controlling the storm itself.

Every gust of wind, change in pressure, every drop of rain and ice, every electrical charge building inside the clouds.

The atmosphere had become an extension of him.

The Purifiers raised their weapons again.

Blake saw them.

The wind changed.

A concentrated blast tore across the street, lifting one of the men from his feet and throwing him through the remains of a storefront.

Another was struck by a sheet of ice and collapsed.

The remaining two turned and ran.

Blake's scream followed them.

Lightning came down.

One.

Two.

Three bolts.

The pavement exploded around them.

The Purifiers disappeared beneath the blinding flashes.

Then silence.

Not complete silence.

Thunder continued rolling between the buildings, deep and endless, but the gunfire had stopped.

The hail began to weaken.

The wind slowly fell.

The clouds remained above Blake, churning ominously as though reluctant to release him.

Blake stood motionless.

Then his eyes dropped back to Lily.

Everything changed.

The anger vanished.

His knees buckled.

“No…”

He stumbled forward and dropped beside her. “Lily?”

There was no answer. His hands hovered over her, trembling violently, terrified to touch her and terrified not to. “Lily, sweetheart…”

His voice cracked as he gently lifted her into his arms, she felt impossibly small.

Blake pulled her against his chest, cradling her carefully as though she were still the little girl who had wrapped her arms around his waist in the coffee shop only minutes earlier.

“No, no, no…”

His composure finally collapsed, bowing his head over her and began to sob.

Not quietly, not with the restrained grief of a police officer trying to maintain control.

He broke.

A broken, desperate sound escaped him as he clutched his daughter against his chest.

“I've got you,” he whispered through his tears. “Daddy's got you.”

Connie reached him moments later.

She dropped to her knees beside him, tears mixing with rain as she placed one trembling hand against Lily's back.

“Blake…”

He looked at her, terror in his eyes now, the fear of the Purifiers gone, no fear of the storm he had pulled from off shore. It was fear of what he had become.

His partner finally moved.

She pulled her radio from her shoulder with shaking hands.

“Dispatch, this is Officer—” Her voice faltered as she looked at Blake, the man kneeling in the centre of the destroyed street and at the Purifiers lying scattered around him. At the storm still circling above the buildings as it moved back onto its original course.

She swallowed.

“Officer down. Multiple civilians injured. We have a confirmed terrorist attack involving the Purifiers.”

She glanced at Blake again.

He was still holding Lily.

Still crying.

Still surrounded by faint arcs of electricity.

Her expression hardened.

“And we have a mutant.”

She pressed the transmit button.

“Repeat, we have a confirmed mutant at the scene.”

Blake heard her.

His eyes closed.

For twelve years, he'd imagined the moment someone finally discovered what he was.

He had imagined fear.

Anger.

Hatred.

He had imagined losing his career.

His home.

His family.

He had never imagined that the first person to report him would be his own partner.

And as thunder rolled once more across Manhattan, Blake held his daughter tighter and wept.

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

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