Super Hero Rhapsody: 1975

The corridor buckles around Mrs. Vale like soft metal in a furnace. The exit behind Sally is gone, folded into a warped seam of steel and plaster.

She lifts one hand, and the wall beside Sally ripples inward. The Department seal stamped on a nearby panel twists, then snaps back into place like a lock being forced shut.

Mark V plants himself between Sally and the bent corridor, optics flaring. The Rose steps up beside Sally, thorns gathering at her gloves like warning sparks.

Mrs. Vale smiles without warmth, and the hallway tightens again, the warped walls inching closer as if the building itself is bracing to crush them.

Sally slips sideways and phases clean through the buckling wall, the pressure vanishing around her like a held breath. She reappears at Vale’s flank in the adjoining stretch of corridor, close enough to strike or run.

The Rose drives both hands forward. Thorns surge up from the floor and along the walls, swelling into a jagged barrier that crashes between Vale and the center lane.

Vale twists toward the new angle, her control stuttering as the thorn wall forces her to split attention. The corridor groans, but the crush slackens for a beat.

Ahead of Sally, the warped route opens into a narrow side passage, lit by a blinking red indicator over a half-caved Department door. Behind her, thorns rasp against bent metal as Vale tries to reclaim the space.

The wall is thinner here.

Sally slides into the narrow lane, shoulders squared and feet set where the floor still holds. The opening is hers now, and the corridor around her narrows into a firing line.

Mark V snaps one arm up beside the side passage, palm sparking as he tracks Vale through the gap in the thorn wall.

Blue-white lightning tears out from Mark V and slams into Mrs. Vale. Her warped metal shudders, and the nearest panels burst with a sharp metallic crack.

The blast throws Vale sideways into the bent frame, interrupting her grip on the corridor just long enough for Sally to have the lane. A spray of hot sparks licks across Sally’s forearm, leaving it numb and stinging.

Ahead, the red indicator above the caved side door blinks faster, and the seam in the thorn wall starts to groan under pressure again.

Sally explodes out of the side passage and drives straight into Vale’s reach, her fist a blur as she closes the last step.

Her punch lands on Vale’s arm with a crack that cuts through the corridor noise, buckling the limb sideways and forcing her grip on the warped metal to fail.

Vale’s forearm twists hard against the impact, and the warped wall she was holding jerks loose, leaving a jagged gap in the distortion line.

The red indicator above the caved side door flickers, then steadies on the narrow opening Sally has made by force.

Sally’s strike also snaps a metal conduit free from the wall, spilling a shower of sparks and exposing a service crawlspace behind Vale’s seal.

Sally lifts her hand, and a tight blue-white blast snaps from her palm into Vale’s chest. The impact throws her backward into the warped steel with a dull, final thud.

Vale’s metal control collapses at once. The buckled wall straightens in a shudder, then goes dead, leaving the corridor suddenly open and silent except for the hiss of the torn conduit.

The red indicator by the side door steadies, and the exposed crawlspace yawns wider as the building stops fighting them. Far off, alarms falter into a thin, dying whine.

The path is open. The pressure in the walls is gone.

Mark V pivots toward the opening, one hand already reaching for the crawlspace, while The Rose holds the corridor behind them. The team has a way through, but the next decision is whether to crawl out now or check whether Vale is really finished.