Powerhouse: Legend of the Archwave

Epilogue: My Wayward Daughter

-The Same Evening-

-Celestial Compound, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic-

By now, it had been over two weeks since Isabela Acosta—one-time superhero who went by the callsign Archwave and the runaway heiress to the Celestial Syndicate—had fled her home country of the Dominican Republic to try and make a name for herself and carve out her own future.

When Isabela first left, her father Angelo Acosta's outlook for her wasn't good. He assumed that since the higher-ups, especially in America, didn't take too kindly to migrants—especially illegal ones, no matter the reason—that his daughter wouldn't last long no matter where she went.

And, tragically enough.....he was right.

His daughter, Isabela—after initially having a good start in America, saving people and defeating bad guys while remaining under the radar—eventually met her end when she was fatally shot by Special Agent Warren Schaefer of the FBI during a rescue mission at the King Street Station, with a pained James Markovsky a.k.a. Powerhouse—who had even served as her mentor for some time—being forced to witness the entire thing. Since then, Angelo's cartel, the Celestial Syndicate, had already received word of her passing, and—under the guise of an affectionate and loving father, which Angelo clearly was not—he requested for Isabela's body to be brought back to the Celestial Compound using a midway liaison as a representative, so the deliverers would not learn the exact location of the base.

He had promised the deliverers that he would give his daughter a proper burial.....but in truth, the heartless and callous father had other plans.

In a wide empty space within the Celestial Compound's campus, Isabela's lifeless body—with her still wearing her archer suit costume—was brutally strung up using multiple wires and stakes over a raging campfire, with her bow and arrows, which had been her prized gear, having been ruthlessly burned and irreparably destroyed in order to keep the flames going, licking the fires alongside the regular logs that had been placed alongside them. The hole in her body where Schaefer's bullet had pierced her was still present, though the blood had long since dried by now.

Standing around the fire were numerous rambunctious grunts affiliated with the Celestial Syndicate, and some were bashing her body with blunt instruments as though it were a piñata. Others spit directly up at her body, others hurled insults at her—even though she couldn't respond due to already being dead—and even others were frantically trying to search around for more things to burn in order to make the fire rise higher; they wanted Isabela to burn for her perceived "betrayal" and "abandonment" of the Syndicate.

"Double-crosser! Useless!" one admonished before whacking the back of Isabela's body with a baseball bat. "Traitor!"

"Let's see you 'abandon' this, pendejo (stupid)!" another one shouted. "You deserved to die for leaving us behind!"

The insults and verbal barbs kept coming, and eventually, Isabela's body was assaulted so much that it flew off the wires and racks it was affixed to, landing in the midst of the rambunctious and heartless grunts. Utterly incensed with rage at how Isabela had turned against her father—and the Syndicate as a whole—to pursue her own interests, the goons all dogpiled on top of Isabela's body and ruthlessly tore her apart limb from limb until her remains were nigh-unrecognizable.

Now, with her gear burned and her body destroyed, absolutely nothing remained of Isabela.

But she was both a traitor and an illegal alien, so it wasn't like a lot of people were going to miss her, anyway.

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The leader of the Celestial Syndicate, Angelo Acosta—who was also Isabela's father—sat in a black cushioned chair in his office and looked outside of his back window; he had lifted up the blinds in order to get a better view at the "funeral" he had organized personally for his daughter. With his white suit—enhanced with golden lining—and his gelled over black hair, he looked on through said window as his henchmen heckled and ruthlessly mauled his own daughter's body beyond recovery.....and he didn't even care.

Instead, his lips actually curled up into a small smile before he casually took a sip of a glass of coco loco, a typical Dominican Republic cocktail.

One of Angelo's advisors walked through the doorway into his office, and somehow, Angelo knew that he had entered without even turning around.

"Would you mind bringing me the letter from before?" Angelo requested his advisor. "The official report of my daughter's untimely death? I would like to confirm it one more time, to make sure that this isn't just some kind of fantastical dream I'm having."

Dream. Not nightmare.

No, this was no nightmare. For Angelo.....the removal of anyone unfaithful to the Celestial Syndicate—even his own child—was a dream come true.

The advisor bowed respectfully. "Yes, sir."

Then, he briefly ducked out of the office for a few minutes before returning with the envelope in question. He approached the left side of Angelo's black cushioned office chair and handed the parcel to the Celestial Syndicate's head, who switched his grip on his cocktail from his left hand to his right. Now with a free left hand, he received the letter from the advisor and opened it, looking once again at the letter that officially declared Isabela dead.

"So.....I'm really not dreaming," Angelo mused with sick satisfaction. "My wayward daughter truly has paid the ultimate price for her brash abandonment of the Celestial Syndicate."

He lifted his eyes up from the letter to the window in front of him, gazing out again at how brutally his henchmen treated Isabela's body. "It's a shame they had to rip her apart like that. Her uncle, Xavier, would've loved to have his way with her body. But.....I suppose it cannot be helped now."

Another set of footsteps began sounding in the outer hallway. Angelo's advisor turned around and saw that Daniela Acosta, Isabela's mother, was now standing in the office's doorway.

"Sir," the advisor told Angelo. "Your wife has arrived. I'll take my leave now and leave you two to talk things out."

Then, the advisor left without another word.

"Ah, mi amor (my love), how it pains me for us to have lost our dear daughter to the migrant-hating Americans," Daniela lamented in an obviously fake tone as she approached her husband's office desk. ".....I'm kidding, of course. She was a rebel beyond redemption. Completamente una idiota (Completely an idiot)."

Angelo chuckled darkly. "Of course she was, querida esposa (dear wife). But at last.....we no longer need to worry about her. With her out of the picture, we can focus on what truly matters to us; the Celestial Syndicate!"

"Indeed! None can stand in our way!"

Both of them indulged in a heartless laugh, with the horrific sight of Isabela's body—already broken and maimed and continuing to be mauled and abused—serving as their sinister and unnerving backdrop.

"Who can stop us now?" Angelo exclaimed hysterically, having completely gone off the deep end by this point. "WHO? Hahahahaha!"

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LIGHTSPEED will return in LIGHTSPEED: DRUG DETECTIVES (Phase 4, Book #2)