The Jeep lurched violently as Sam's body contorted in Sasha's grip, slamming them both against the rear window hard enough to make the safety glass groan.

  "Steady back there!" Warren shouted from the driver's seat, wrestling the wheel to keep them on the road.

  Sasha couldn't spare the breath to respond. Every ounce of her concentration was fixed on the writhing horror locked in her armored arms—a thing that had been Sam just the night before and was now something monstrous. His limbs bent at impossible angles, joints popping and reforming as he tried to slither free of her hold. His skin had taken on that rubbery, translucent quality, muscles and tendons visible beneath the surface like snakes under a sheet.

  The rear compartment of the Jeep was never designed to hold two adults in a death-grip wrestling match. Sasha's armor scraped against the wheel wells, her helmet crammed against the ceiling. Sam's body kept changing against her—elongating one moment, compacting the next, always seeking some gap in her hold, some angle of escape.

  "HUNGRY," Sam snarled, his voice wet and wrong. "Need to feed."

  "Sorry, bud," Sasha grunted. “Can’t exactly swing through the drive-thru without like this.”

  Bending and twisting to keep her hold on Sam, Sasha caught a good look of Zoe sitting in the front passenger seat, her entire body rigid with concentration. A shimmering barrier of compressed air separated the rear compartment from the rest of the Jeep—invisible except for the faint distortion it created, like heat shimmer off summer asphalt. She'd dismissed her armor to conserve its power, and her platinum hair was dark with sweat at the temples.

  Sam's head twisted—not turned, twisted, rotating nearly a hundred and eighty degrees on his neck—and those yellow goat-eyes fixed on the rear window. His jaw began to unhinge, mouth stretching impossibly wide.

  He's going for the glass.

  Sasha did the only thing she could think of. She shoved her armored forearm directly into that gaping maw. Sam's teeth reflexively clamped down with crushing force. Even through her armor’s protection—rated to shrug off bullets and resist superhuman impacts—she felt the tremendous crushing pressure. Warnings flickered at the edge of her vision: ARMOR INTEGRITY 94%... 91%... 87%...

  The pain was extraordinary. Not the sharp pain of a cut or the dull throb of a bruise, but a deep, grinding agony as Sam's jaws worked against her forearm, trying to chew through the aetheric alloy to get to the juicy treat inside. Sasha's world narrowed to that single point of contact—the relentless pressure, the scrape of teeth against metal, the wet slurping of Sam's throat working as some instinct drove him to swallow what he couldn't bite through.

  She didn't scream. Didn't cry out. Just locked her jaw and endured.

  I've been here before, she thought, the words rising unbidden from somewhere deep. Not this exactly, but this feeling. The weight of something trying to break me.

  The casual cruelties of middle school, the assumptions and microaggressions that piled up like stones on her chest. The pressure to be twice as good to be seen as half as capable. The way her parents' expectations and her own ambitions had felt like millstones grinding her between them.

  All of that before the Nexus. The powers. The responsibility of being one of only five people standing between Earth and threats that most humans couldn't even imagine. The weight of that had nearly broken her in those first weeks. The nightmares. The fear. The bone-deep certainty that she wasn't strong enough, wasn't enough, period.

  Still, she hadn't broken. She'd bent, sure. Cracked in places. But she was still here. Still fighting.

  I will not yield.

  The thought crystallized in her mind with sudden, absolute clarity.

  I will not break.

  Another violent lurch as Warren swerved around something—a slow driver, maybe, or a stop sign he'd decided was optional. Sam's body rippled against her, his form becoming almost liquid as he tried to ooze out of her grip. Sasha adjusted her hold, using the enhanced strength of her armor to compensate, but it wasn't enough. He was getting slipperier, harder to pin down.

  I'm the one who endures. Always.

  Power surged through her.

  It wasn't like anything she'd experienced before—not even like her agonizing integration after taking the Oath. This was something else entirely. Something that welled up from inside her, from the core of who she was, and answered.

  Her muscles sang with sudden strength. Her reflexes sharpened. Her body felt more present, more capable, more her. The grinding pressure of Sam's jaws became almost bearable—still agonizing, but no longer overwhelming.

  The shift in the struggle was immediate. Where before she'd been barely holding Sam in place, now she had the strength to actually control his movements. When he tried to twist free, she was fast enough to anticipate. When he thrashed, she had the stability to absorb the impact without losing her grip.

  Sam seemed to sense the change. His yellow eyes widened, and for a moment—just a moment—something almost like recognition flickered across his distorted features.

  "S-Sasha?" His voice was a ragged whisper, half-human and half-something else. "Can't... stop... hungry..."

  "I know," she said quietly. "Just hold on. We're almost there."

  The lucidity shattered as quickly as it had formed, replaced by that feral, ravenous snarl.

  “We’re here!” Warren declared a brief eternity later.

  “Pull around to the back of the hill,” Sasha said between deep breaths as she psyched herself up for what would come next. “You know the spot.”

  Warren pulled the Jeep off the main drive and onto a service path, grape vines barely visible to Sasha through the plume of dust they were kicking up. The crush pad was on the opposite side of the hill from them; the broad concrete platform where seasonal workers were processing the last of the harvest even on a Saturday morning. Through her affinity, Sasha could feel their exact location as Warren drove the Jeep toward a rocky outcropping at the base of the hill. With her powers and after all these months, she knew the Quester estate like the back of her hand.

  Not wanting Sam to overhear the game plan, Sasha sent a HUD message to the other two Paladins to share with them her gameplan.

  Warren backed the Jeep up until the rear bumper was nearly touching the hillside. Through the rearview mirror, his green eyes met Sasha's, and she saw the question there: Ready?

  She nodded.

  Warren and Zoe climbed out, circling around to the rear of the vehicle. They positioned themselves on either side of the rear hatch their aetheric weapons at the ready. Sam sensed that something was about to change and went entirely still for the first time since she’d gotten ahold of him. Sasha could feel the quivering tension singing through every inch of his malleable body. Sam was preparing himself to break free the instant things changed.

  Not if I have anything to say about it.

  "On three," Warren said. "One... two... three."

  Warren yanked the hatch open.

  Sasha came crashing out, Sam still locked in her arms. The moment she hit dirt, she felt the connection to her element surge through her—earth and stone and bedrock, the bones of the world pressing up against her awareness stronger than ever before.

  Sensing his opportunity, Sam twisted and writhed with explosive effort. Despite her best efforts, his body began to eel sideways, finding gaps in her grip that hadn't existed a moment before. His arm was stretching, elongating, reaching for the open air and freedom—

  Sasha didn't give him the chance. Responding to her mental command, the earth swallowed the both of them whole.

  The earth flowed around them like water around a fish. The hillside parted before her and sealed behind, leaving no trace of their passage. Panicking, Sam thrashed in her grip, but surrounded by her element, Sasha was unassailable. The stone pressed in on all sides, holding him immobile, leaving him nowhere to go.

  Fifteen feet of hillside passed in seconds. Then their journey through the earth spit them out into the familiar cramped space of Delta's hidden chamber—smooth stone walls, LED lantern light, and the massive crystalline bulk of Delta's probe resting on its shaped platform.

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  Sasha released Sam and rolled clear, coming up in a crouch. Sam scrambled to his feet, whipping around with a snarl—

  Slapping her gauntlet clad palm to the floor, Sasha flexed will. Stone walls erupted from the floor, encasing Sam before he could take a single step. Fingers digging into the gravel covered ground, her Earth Control power held the construct together as she fed more energy into it. Power pulsed through her, hardening the walls, reinforcing the structure until it was as dense and unyielding as she could make it.

  Inside, Sam threw himself against the walls of his new prison, howling as he searched for weakness. Sasha let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Licking her lips, Sasha stood from her crouch and tentatively released the flow of power she’d been feeding into the stone.

  She heard and felt the thuds of impact as Sam hurled himself against the walls, but she felt the obstinate stone holding strong.

  “Well done, Paladin Sasha,” Delta said, the lights of his probe’s exterior pulsing with the words. “And congratulations on attaining the rank of Knight.”

  ***

  The drive to the Quester estate took about twenty minutes, during which Eden filled him in on the details she'd glossed over earlier. The virus that had attacked Delta, what they'd learned about the FBI agent apparently tracking the Paladins, and Sam's horrific transformation from human to mimic creature. By the time Rowan pulled his aging Honda into the Questers' driveway, his head was spinning.

  "You're sure you're okay with this?" Eden asked as they climbed out of the car. "I know it's a lot to take in."

  "I spent several hours last night in an alien dungeon assaulted and held prisoner by hybrid beast-men," Rowan reminded her. "My threshold for 'a lot' has expanded considerably."

  In the morning light, Rowan noticed the way Eden's black hair caught the sun, the subtle freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks, and those deep blue eyes that held both warmth and tremendous calm. She was small—barely over five feet—but there was a quiet strength in how she carried herself. An athletic grace that suggested capability without aggression.

  She's beautiful, he thought, and then immediately: And she's a freaking superhero. And you're... complicated.

  He knew who he was, had known on some level as long as he could remember, had fought for the right to exist as himself for over a decade. He also knew that most people—even well-meaning allies—could find the reality of dating a trans person more complicated than the abstract concept. Eden worked at the same clinic he did, and before that they’d been friendly since high school. She'd always been friendly, warm, easy to talk to. That was all before he’d unlocked these new powers, and before he'd learned about hers. Before everything had gotten impossibly strange.

  "You're handling it better than I did when this all started," Eden said, pulling him from his thoughts.

  “Gotta fake till you make it,” Rowan replied with a rueful chuckle.

  If nothing else, you’ve got a gift for masking turmoil it seems, Rowan told himself.

  They filed through the main house in silence. Rowan heard music drifting down from upstairs, but Eden seemed unconcerned. Exiting the house Eden led him down a path toward the winery facilities. She gave a friendly smile of acknowledgement to the workers they passed, but no one seemed particularly surprised by their presence as she guided him toward the entrance of wine caves carved into the hillside.

  I always knew that Warren’s family had money, but damn, I hadn’t realized they had private wine caves type of money! Even growing up in Napa Valley, it was difficult not to be intimidated by the Quester’s estate. The caves were impressive to say the least: thousands of square feet of barrel storage, and deeper in, a "game room" that looked like a well-appointed teenage hangout space with comfortable chairs around a gaming table and a wall-mounted TV.

  "Warren's domain since high school," Eden said with a small smile.

  What the typical visitor didn't see was the hidden passage concealed along the back wall—a door carved through solid rock, leading to a cramped chamber maybe fifteen feet across and ten feet high. The walls were smooth stone, and a single LED lantern hung from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows across the uneven floor.

  In the center, resting on a platform of shaped stone, sat—what had to be from Eden’s description—Delta’s probe, the most advanced piece of technology on Earth. Although it hardly looked like an interstellar probe sent by an ancient race of space dragons. Rowan still wasn’t sure if he should think of the probe as Delta’s body or his ship. Regardless, the probe was a multifaceted crystalline egg roughly the size of a garden shed. Its surface caught the white LED lantern light, refracting it into shifting patterns of color that danced across the cave walls. Even standing several feet away, Rowan could feel the power thrumming from it—a deep, resonant hum that vibrated somewhere behind his sternum.

  Warren, Sasha, and Zoe stood nearby. Sasha was still armored—massive plates of matte, orange metal etched with angular patterns that made Rowan think of tectonic forces and indomitable cliff faces. Despite the imposing bulk of the armor, he could see her favoring one arm. Scratches and dents marred the surface of her bracers, evidence of the fight she'd just been through.

  Zoe leaned against the cave wall in street clothes, stylishly ripped jeans and a snug white tank-top under a leather jacket. A stylized Gemini symbol was tattooed on her upper chest, just visible above her neckline. Her striking green eyes held a brittle edge that Rowan recognized as razor edged tension masquerading as alertness.

  Also unarmored, Warren stood in jeans and a long-sleeved, red flannel over a gray tee that still managed to show off an athletic build. His blonde hair was slightly disheveled, and his green eyes—a shade lighter than his sister's—tracked Rowan's approach with open curiosity.

  "Rowan." Warren gave him a nod. "Thanks for coming."

  "Eden said you all needed help." Rowan approached the stone cell cautiously.

  As he drew nearer, Sasha went still for an instant, then her armor vanished in a flash of amber light. Without it, she was a Black woman of average height with her hair in a slightly compressed puff and warm brown eyes that held an expression of genuine concern as she intently watched Sam's cell. She rolled her injured arm experimentally, wincing at the movement, and Rowan noticed dark bruising just below the elbow.

  "You're hurt," Eden said, moving toward her.

  "It's fine. Sam used me like a chew toy during the extraction." Sasha waved off the concern, though she didn't resist when Eden's hands began to glow with soft white light. "Nothing that won't heal on its own in a few hours."

  "There’s no reason to suffer,” Eden said. “We all need to be in tip-top shape.”

  Sasha sighed but relented and held her arm out for Eden. “Alright.”

  While Eden worked, Rowan turned his attention to the cell. It was constructed from thick slabs of gray stone. There was a narrow window cut into one wall—maybe eight inches wide and two inches tall, just enough to see through. "Is he...?"

  He trailed off as he got his first look at Sam.

  The thing in the cell bore only a passing resemblance to the man Rowan had worked with for the last year at the clinic. Sam was humanoid, mostly, but his proportions were wrong—limbs too long, joints bending at odd angles. His skin had a rubbery, translucent quality, and his eyes...those yellow eyes with their horizontal pupils tracked Rowan's approach with an intensity that made his hindbrain scream predator.

  As Rowan watched, Sam's face contorted. For a moment, something almost human surfaced in those alien eyes—fear, confusion, a desperate plea—and then it was gone, replaced by a snarl that revealed rows of pointed teeth.

  "HUNGRY," Sam rasped. "So...hungry..."

  "He cycles like that," Zoe said quietly. "Sometimes he's almost lucid. Mostly he's... not."

  "Jesus." Rowan took an involuntary step back. "Are you sure he can’t get out?"

  "The stone is a foot thick, and I've reinforced it aetherically to be as hard as diamond," Sasha said. "The window's too narrow for him to squeeze through—at least, not yet, we think."

  "Not yet? Think?" Rowan couldn’t help but let his tone show just how uneasy we was at those conditionals.

  "His mutation is ongoing and his powers continue to evolve," Delta's voice echoed through the chamber, emanating from the crystalline egg. "I am monitoring his cellular structure in real-time, but I confess the progression is...unexpected."

  "Delta." Rowan wasn't sure how to address a disembodied alien AI. "Thanks for having me here."

  "On the contrary, I should thank you for coming." Delta's tone was warmer than Rowan expected—almost friendly. "Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated. And if I may say, it's a pleasure to finally meet you properly. Your performance in the dungeon was quite impressive for someone with no prior training."

  Warren's eyebrows shot up. Zoe made a noise that might have been a strangled laugh.

  "Did Delta just...compliment someone?" Warren asked. "Unprompted?"

  "I believe I did, yes." Delta's voice carried a hint of defensiveness. "Is that so unusual?"

  "Uh, yeah. Extremely." Warren exchanged a glance with his sister. "Usually you call us 'primitive' or 'hatchlings' or—what was it last week?—'cognitively limited bipeds.'"

  "I adapt my communication style to my audience," Delta said stiffly.

  "Right." Zoe crossed her arms. "And your audience right now is...what? Someone you're trying to butter up?"

  "I am merely being welcoming to a potential—" Delta caught himself. "To a guest."

  Eden, Rowan noticed, was watching this exchange with barely concealed amusement. When she caught his eye, she gave a small shrug.

  "Anyway," Delta continued, his tone returning to something closer to businesslike, "Rowan, you accumulated seven Nexus Power Points from your time in the dungeon. It would be prudent to allocate them before circumstances require capabilities you do not yet possess."

  "Allocate them how?"

  In answer, a pedestal rose from the floor nearby. Resting on top of it was a sphere about the size of a softball, its surface swirling with iridescent colors that seemed to shift and flow like oil on water.

  "This is an upgrade interface," Delta explained. “It provides…what you might consider a high-bandwidth connection to the Nexus.

  “Can I ask a question?” Even after everything that had already happened to him, Rowan couldn’t help but feel a little overwhelmed.

  “Of course,” Delta said.

  “Seriously?” Sasha murmured. “Did that virus fry his personality or something?”

  “Hey!” Delta snapped. “I heard that!”

  Sasha flipped off the massive crystalline egg.

  “The Nexus has cursed me,” Delta grumbled before shifting into a decidedly cheery tone to address Rowan. “What was your question, young man?”

  “Well, if I didn’t know these guys.” Rowan gestured to the Paladins. “How is a non-Paladin supposed to allocate their points, or whatever?”

  “Oh, well that is a very good question.”

  "On integrated worlds—planets that have been connected to the Nexus for some time—these are commonly found in settlements and adventurer guilds. Government entities and wealthy individuals often commission portable versions. Merchants sell upgrade guide AIs like the one I've prepared to assist newcomers through the process. Simply touch the sphere, and the interface will guide you through your selections."

  Rowan approached the pedestal cautiously. "And this is safe?"

  "The upgrade process is entirely benign, though integrating multiple points simultaneously can be...uncomfortable. I will provide guidance through my assistant subroutine—the same entity that aided the other Paladins during their initial allocations."

  "Uncomfortable how?"

  "The Nexus is rewriting portions of your neural architecture and physical structure in real-time. Some discomfort is unavoidable." Delta paused. "The Paladins have described it as 'being turned inside out and microwaved.' The sensation scales with the number of points integrated."

  "Great." Rowan reached for the sphere. "Looking forward to it."