She wasn’t a front-line fighter. She didn’t have powers that granted her speed, agility, strength, durability, or the ability to predict opponents or control a battlefield. Her ability was granting other people abilities. She had to touch them to do it, and the abilities she granted would last up to a few minutes after she broke contact.

  Speed, strength, durability, regeneration, flight, and her trump card, outright invincibility. Only one at a time on a single person, but she had options. She was a force multiplier.

  The only thing was… she couldn’t give them to herself. When it came right down to it, she was as super-powered as the average person off the street.

  She placed one hand against the brick building on one side of the dingy alleyway she was in. Her chest was heaving, and she was gasping for air. Her throat and chest felt tight.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It was supposed to be a shakedown for supplies and a reassertion of the former dominance of the Empire. They were Fenrir’s Chosen now, but they carried on the legacy of the Empire despite the loss of some of their members. Sure, New Wave was operating out of here, but New Wave wasn’t shit compared to them. And they’d lost people in the Leviathan battle, too. The combination of a surprise attack and their numbers should have caught them off-guard and made this a smackdown–in their favor.

  Their front line had fallen or been tied up almost immediately, and the Brockton Strong idiots had crashed straight into their back line support. Like her.

  She felt a centipede or something on her neck and suppressed the urge to scream, barely managing to clam up and get out a panicked “Mmf!” as she slapped it away.

  “Fucking… bugs! Fucking bug girl! Disgusting!”

  She heard splashing down the street and peeked her single eye around the corner. A trio of cherry-red laser beams swept down the connecting street, blasting and boiling street water into clouds of fog and steam. There was the crash of something, or someone big, hitting a building hard. It came from the direction the lasers originated from. She held out hope that Hookwolf was kicking their asses and slamming Manpower through a concrete wall right now.

  Gulping, she ducked back around the corner and tried to make her way away from the action, as quietly and stealthily as possible. The water in the alleyway made that difficult, but she tried to keep the sound down by keeping her feet in the water and speed-shuffling along. Twice, she tripped over things under the surface of the water she couldn’t see. She’d nearly face-planted the second time and had to catch herself on the side of a dumpster.

  The smell was ungodly, and she dry-heaved. Trash, like most city services, had been out since the Endbringer attack. And these dumpsters were probably pretty full before more than a week of cooking in the humid heat of the last week.

  Swallowing down the bile in her throat, she pushed off the dumpster and continued making her way down the alley. Coming to the other end, she looked out into the dark streets. The glow of floodlights from the station a few blocks away barely made their presence known here.

  Othala hesitated.

  She was being a fucking coward, and she knew it. But she also knew that getting slammed into a building would kill her as opposed to being an irritant.

  Where was her husband, Victor? Where was anyone?

  She heard a splash in the alleyway she’d just walked through, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned around slowly, dread gripping her chest tightly.

  She didn’t see anything in the alley other than some ripples in the water.

  There was another splash, and she saw the cause. Gigantic, fat rats jumping out of the dumpster and swimming through the water to wherever home was.

  Her lip curled, her face filled with revulsion. It would be so much easier to just get the hell out of Brockton Bay. She knew why they hadn’t. They weren’t going to let this place beat them. This was their home, and they had gotten a taste for being the king of the hill.

  More like king of the trash hill, she thought to herself.

  Rapid splashing to her right, down the street a quarter of a block. A dog running across the street in almost chest-high water. Now was her chance to cross.

  She decided that speed was more important than stealth at the moment. She ran across the two-lane street, being careful about the drop and rise of the curbs. The water was maybe a foot or so deep here, making traveling around quickly on foot extremely tiring. Sweat was pouring down Othala’s face as she ran across the street to duck back into the shelter of another narrow alleyway. She looked down the alley quickly, not seeing anyone other than some ruined building debris piled up against the wall down most of the length of the alley.

  She turned back around to look from where she’d come for any signs of a tail, sticking to the heavy shadows of the alleyway wall.

  A large gloved hand clapped over her mouth, and another slithered over her shoulder and across her chest, and she was snatched backwards into the pitch black.

  She screamed into the glove, but the only sound she wound up making was a heavily muffled “mmf!”

  A man’s voice whispered harshly into her ear from behind. “Quiet, quit struggling!”

  Victor!

  She went limp for a moment with sheer relief. Then the surge of adrenaline hit her, and her temper flared. She made a fist and brought her hand down, hitting him with the heel of one hand in the thigh. She had been aiming for his balls for pulling a stunt like that on her, in circumstances like these.

  She tried to call him a fucking asswipe for grabbing her like that without saying anything, but again, she got a “mmimm mmhm!” out.

  He pulled her tighter and whispered again, voice just as harsh: “Stop fucking around! Sorry for scaring you, but I think we’re being followed.”

  She went still upon hearing that.

  “Going to be quiet?”

  She nodded, and he took his hand off her mouth and helped her stand upright from where she’d been pinned at an awkward angle against his chest. She couldn’t help herself when she took note of how well-defined his forearms were in the dim light.

  “Where is everyone?” She whispered. Victor usually was involved in the strategy and planning much more actively than she was. Her thoughts were scattered, half from the panic–now fading–and stress. At the moment, she barely remembered where they were supposed to go in case things went bad.

  He craned his neck back and forth, looking up and down the street they were up against. “Falling back, where and when able. Some of the others stayed behind to cover the retreat. New Wave has partially split up to chase.”

  “What was that? I thought the plan was we were hitting a shelter with some defenses put up, not some kind of… army base!”

  “Keep it down!” He hissed back to her, then motioned for her to stick close, heading towards the opposite end of the alley. “Bad intel happens, you know that. We expected a couple of people from New Wave, not the entire team, and whatever help they have.”

  She snarled–quietly–back. “New Wave doesn’t have or use rocket launchers, Victor!”

  He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. His face was harsh at first, then softened after looking her over. He always knew how to read how she was feeling. “Let’s get back to the meetup point and we can talk more, okay?”

  She nodded quickly and adjusted her eyepatch, then brushed her bangs back over it to obscure it.

  Victor looked up and down the alley, and at the rooftops on either side, frowning. He leaned in close to Othala to whisper directly into her ear. “If we get into another fight, hit me with invincibility, and let me fight them. You get away and run to the rendezvous, okay? Don’t stick around. Nobody will be able to hurt me. I’ll be a few minutes behind you.”

  Othala straightened up some, then nodded.

  The two continued down the alleyway. They were about ten, maybe fifteen feet from the other side when a burned-out car wreck dropped from above and slammed nose-first into the water and pavement, completely blocking the exit of the alleyway. The water didn’t do anything to deaden the crash of the metal hulk into the pavement, and the echoing crash was near-deafening for Othala.

  No longer whispering, Victor yelled out: “Shit! It’s a trap! Run!

  A woman’s voice, clear and bright, laughed loudly from the other side of the wreck. “Run, run away! Quickly!” she taunted them while cackling maniacally.

  Othala was in the lead, their positions having reversed as they retread their steps. She tripped over something in the water and went flying face-first, her hands splayed out and heart racing a mile a minute in her chest. Victor grabbed her arm and kept her from totally landing in the water, but she was soaked from her abdomen down, and her foot was throbbing where she’d kicked a paint can or something of the sort.

  They made it back to the mouth of the alley they were in, and Victor pressed Othala back, looking around the corner and scoping out the rooftops.

  He was always so protective of her, and not just in situations like these. Cape battles. Even on the street, especially in dodgy neighborhoods.

  “Stay behind me. Enough space to move, but not far.” Victor was back to a hushed near-whisper. He stepped out of the alley.

  One. Two. Three steps. She stepped out. Both were looking around everywhere for whoever was after them.

  Was it a Stranger? She clenched her fists at her sides. She hoped not. Strangers were the absolute worst kind of cape to deal with, in her mind.

  They made it to the middle of the street without any interference of any sort.

  “The water. Watch the water,” Victor hissed back to her. “The water and the rooftops.”

  She didn’t understand what it was he meant by watching the water, and the confusion must have been evident on her face, because he pointed down at one leg and took a step forward. The water stirred and sent out ripples in all directions.

  She nodded quickly. “What way are we going?” She whispered back, looking at the tops of the townhouse-style buildings on each side of the street. It was cloudy out, and visibility from moonlight was poor, but the sky was different enough between the edges of the buildings to make them fairly visible.

  “East for now.”

  She blinked.

  “Towards the bay,” Victor said, and pointed to the right.

  Othala looked around. In the dark, one street looked more or less like another, and there weren’t any visible landmarks at street level in this part of town. There was a nebulous glow of all the high-output lighting that had been put up around the dockyards, lighting the sky with a bright white glow. That would be her lighthouse.

  Before she had a chance to even figure out what was happening, a lamp post or something similar crashed down into the water between herself and Victor. The impact was tremendous, a thudding boom! She had enough time to squeeze her eyes and mouth closed as a near-vertical wave of displaced water crashed into her, knocking her off her feet and towards the side of the street, away from Victor.

  She came to a stop, her back hitting a mailbox with a dull thump.

  She clambered to her feet and wiped her face with the back of her hand, spitting out the small amount of spray that had gotten in her mouth. The taste was salty and rancid, and she wanted to gag. She had to get to Victor!

  He was getting up himself, and they nearly fell into one another. She made contact with her bare hand on his left forearm, squeezing him tightly as she infused him with her invincibility. Of all the effects she could grant, it persisted the shortest amount of time after she broke contact. Having her hand on him for longer would help extend the duration, but even at her maximum strength, it only ever lasted a bit under a minute.

  Powerful, but not the most useful if she couldn’t maintain contact while remaining some level of safety herself. Best for people with ranged abilities, like Purity.

  Why did she have to leave us? We’d be so much better off with her, Night and Fog right now.

  “Oh, lovers embracing in the dark of night. Husband and wife wrapped in one another’s arms.” A reedy, nasally man’s voice sounded from a rooftop above and to their left… west?

  Victor whirled around, keeping himself between the person and Othala.

  “Psh. Romance is overrated. It’s damn near the end of the world here, baby. Who isn’t up for a little Dee Tee Eff action?” A brash, mezzo voice, from street level, and behind.

  Othala clutched onto Victor’s arm, expecting an attack at any moment. She was so juiced up with adrenaline right now that she was practically vibrating. They whirled around to the source of the woman’s voice. The steps of a brownstone-style home, ten feet away.

  But there was nothing there. No disturbance in the water. No motion on the rooftops that Othala could see.

  “They invited themselves to what they thought was a party to fuck without an invite. But they didn’t get the memo. It’s the uninvited guests who get fucked.” A salacious and smoky older woman’s voice echoed in the street from the alley they’d just come from.

  Victor’s arm was a blur, pulling a throwing knife from a sheath on his thigh and flinging it straight down the alley in a perfect underhanded throw. There was a single splash of water down the dark alley. And nothing else.

  “Victor, we’re being played with by some Stranger! Let’s just get out of here. They’re probably buying time for backup!”

  “Wowwie!” A young child’s voice rang out in a sing-song cadence. “Isn’t that a b-b-bold ass-ump-shun!”

  The kid’s voice had come from right next to them!

  Maintaining contact with Othala by also holding her forearm with his left hand, Victor lashed out with a vicious-looking fighting knife in a blistering thrust, followed by a sweeping slash, both low and high. His blade found nothing but the air. He grit his teeth in a low-boiling rage.

  “Show yourself, fucking coward!”

  “Aww, gee mister Vic-tor, I thought we were ha-ving fun play-ing!” It was that annoying brat voice again, and again, Victor lashed out with his knife, finding nothing.

  Victor growled and, keeping firm hold of Othala, started to head down the street to the east.

  “Hehe! Woof! Woof! But you’re not the doggy!” The voice circled around them, taunting them. Victor made a few swipes with his blade in the direction of the voice, but still didn’t manage to hit anyone. They continued their way down the middle of the flooded street. Picking up their pace, splashing loudly.

  Victor thought about his next steps. If the Stranger wanted to follow them back to their fallback position, then they’d have numbers on their side to deal with his or her annoying ass. Hard to shake what you can’t see, so better to regroup where they have more abilities to fight with.

  “Hookwolf would gut you like a fish!” Othala called out, trying to steel her resolve.

  “Buhh, Hoo-kie Woo-kie had to lie down for naaap time. He was-nt very fun at all!” The voice was following them, a dozen or so feet back.

  “Bullshit!” Victor spat into the night air.

  A gruff man’s voice sounded from just to the left of them, some sort of voice modulator distorting his voice. “Cursing is beneath you, young man. You’re better than that. Use your vocabulary to get your point across.”

  Was that… Armsmaster!? Othala stumbled and caught herself, pushing on Victor’s wrist some to urge him to speed up.

  “Eat my entire ass, fucko!” Victor snapped back, not bothering to swing his knife.

  The voice that sounded very much like Armsmaster responded back: “Better, but you need to broaden your horizons if you’re going to spar wits with a tink– Oof!”

  With a crunchy crackle and what sounded like snapping wires, a huge, six-foot chunk of the brick wall on a house in front and to the right of Victor and Othala sheared off the second story and came crashing down into the street water. Several other somethings crashed into the water in the middle of the street, leaving a few rippling waves in their wake.

  The water moved some, and for a moment, Othala thought she saw a blur, but then it was gone.

  “Aw, shucks!” The little kid was back, front and center of them, ten to fifteen feet out. “They do-ont make them liiike they used-to!”

  What Othala thought of as a geezer responded to the kid, this time much closer, and slightly to the right. “Back in my day, we built ‘em homes outta brick! Brick, stone, and wood! From American dirt!”

  Victor pulled Othala forward and struck out with his knife.

  A woman cleared her throat. Disdain oozed from her voice. “Brick facade lowers sticker prices, speeds up construction, and maintains the same curb appeal.”

  “Stand and fight, you, you…” Victor started with a shout, but trailed off. “...you ventriloquist!”

  A single person slow-clapped from right in front of Victor. “Well done, son. Proud of you. Getting your grades up this semester.” Armsmaster again. “Since you tried real hard, you get the grand prize. Take your best shot.”

  Victor flipped the knife in his hand into an ice-pick grip and extended his arm out like a striking viper. The tip of the blade clanged against something invisible, and with a ping, the tip and front third of the blade snapped off. He didn’t hesitate for more than a fraction of a second before drawing the blade across his target in a gutting maneuver.

  A horrific, screeching squeal sounded from the blade attempting to cut across whatever the Stranger was wearing, far worse than nails on a chalkboard. Othala clapped her free hand over one ear and squeezed her eye closed as the sound rang out.

  Victor dropped the now-ruined knife and pulled another, but the Stranger caught his hand and whacked it a few times until he dropped it.

  “Urgh! Do you know who you’re fucking with!? We’re Empire! We’ve killed people for less than thi-”

  Victor was cut off by the child’s voice.

  “The Empire’s dead, mister!”

  “Fenrir’s Chosen will crush you!” Othala shouted at the ghost.

  “You think you’ll break us with your mind games? I’ll never surrender to you!” Victor seethed and hurled vitriol at their tormentor.

  “Hmmm…” A voice, different from all the rest. Much different. Loud and bassy, Othala could feel it in her chest. “I believe you.”

  Victor wrenched and tugged at his arm where it was being held above his head, seemingly without success.

  “Tell me, Victor…” The voice dragged out the tail end of his name. “...Can you swim?”

  “What kind of stupid question is that!?” Victor snapped.

  “Your very life depends upon it…” The voice trailed off, and Victor’s arm raised higher, until he was half-dangling from it, one foot off the ground and flailing for purchase.

  “Yes! We both can! Please don’t hurt him!” Othala didn’t know who they were up against, but any Stranger that could hoist Victor off the ground like a ragdoll… She didn’t like their chances. She was still holding on to his left arm, but she was getting dragged forwards and upwards herself.

  “Good enough for me.” Victor was hoisted up further, clearing both feet. Othala tried to keep a hold on him, but he let her forearm go so she wouldn’t be pulled up as well, and she wasn’t strong enough to hold her body weight one-handed.

  She fell back into the water onto her ass as the shoulder and waist straps of Victor’s black breastplate were cut loose, the front and back halves splashing down in front of Othala.

  “Victor!” She screamed.

  The blood-red T-shirt he wore under his black breastplate was wet and clung to his chiseled physique, but as Othala watched him float around in the air, the shirt and his torso blurred and distorted. It made her eye want to water looking at him as her eye kept trying to focus on her husband.

  Victor kicked the air and beat his fists against the blur around his chest. The voice sounded mildly bored as it read out his sentence. “You’re banished to the time-out box for… fifteen minutes. Think about your actions tonight while you’re there.”

  Victor jerked to the side, over Othala’s head. He reached one hand out to her and gasped out, his voice quiet and strained from where he was being constricted. “Othala- run!”

  It was the last thing she saw of him before his head snapped to the side and he was launched down the street and into the air, clearing the height of the buildings and disappearing into the darkness. There was a distant scream in the direction of the dockyards, and then, nothing.

  Othala sobbed and collapsed forward onto her palms.

  “That was a good one. I bet he skips at least five times. Maybe six.” The rumbly voice was contemplative. The water stirred in front of her, eddies and waves slowly circling around her. “Aren’t you going to do as Hubby says and run?”

  “N-no,” Othala choked out, taking a gulp of air and continuing, “I don’t want to play your s-stupid game.” Her voice was shaking, and her vision was blurry from crying. Even if she wanted to, she didn’t think she could get away.

  “Mm? Why not? I thought we were having a party tonight? Good parties usually have games.” The splashing and churning of water continued to circle around Othala.

  “Because you-you can fly! There’s no point!” Othala tried to track where her opponent was with her head.

  “Golly miss! Dontcha know what they say about assumptions?” The child was back yet again.

  Something cool and hard tapped her on the tip of the nose, and she jerked her head back.

  “What makes you think I’m flying around?” The sultry smoker asked.

  “If you had been chasing us on the street, the water would have given you away! And we were watching the rooftops.”

  “Look at you,” the rumbling voice responded, “using your head. Maybe not as dim as some of the others. Let’s take a little walk…”

  Othala wasn’t given the chance to respond before something grabbed her around the chest and under her armpits and abruptly tossed her into the air. She let out a shriek as something else wrapped around her ankles, and she was suddenly inverted, hanging from her legs upside-down.

  “I thought we were walking!?” She yelled as she was hoisted up, the groundwater falling away below her at a rapid pace until she was up above the level of the two-story buildings flanking the street she’d just been sitting on.

  “We are walking. Well. Some of us are, so it still counts. You should try to relax and hang out.” The rumble was coming from her side this time, on top of the buildings, while she was dangling over the streets below.

  Othala really didn’t like heights. And she especially didn’t like heights while hanging upside down from God-knows-what. She let out another choking sob. She tried to crane her neck to look at her lower legs, and she saw her bodysuit, but around her shins and ankles, it was blurry and wavering. Like a heat shimmer.

  Once again, it was an unpleasant effect to look at, as it was continually tricking her brain into thinking her eye was out of focus. She couldn’t make out what had grabbed her. It felt hard and cool to the touch, and not like she expected skin would feel through her suit.

  “What do you want from me!?” She shouted at her captor, a moment before she felt a jerk and went sailing over an intersection. She squeezed her eye shut.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Entertainment?” The low voice seemed to be staying around now, but the answer was inflected with uncertainty. “Hmm. I’m having fun, are you telling me you’re not having fun right now?”

  “No! I hate this!” She screamed back.

  “Oh…” The voice sounded momentarily forlorn. “I guess I’ll try to be more entertaining for your sake? I do want to be a gracious host, after all.”

  Othala heard rustling and felt a gentle breeze wash over her face. It was easy to pick out with how heavily she was sweating.

  “W-wait, what are you doing?” She stammered, fearing the worst.

  “Oops. Too late. Time for fun!”

  Rather than getting hurled to the pavement or dashed to meat chunks against the side of a building, or pulped under a car, and the other things that were racing through Othala’s mind, instead there was a thudding boom and she, or they, shot up into the darkness. It felt like the world above her head had suddenly fallen away. Her single eye closed, and she didn’t reopen it.

  She screamed her lungs out and clutched at her chest. It was getting hard to breathe, and her heart was thumping in her ears so loudly she could barely hear over it. Othala was certain that she was having a heart attack and that this was the end of her. She’d never see Victor again.

  “H-h-help. My heart.” She wheezed between intermittent lungfuls of air. The pain in her chest was so bad that she was holding her breath to avoid inflaming it. “M’having a heart-attack!”

  “No, you aren’t, you absolute baby. Don’t you want to take a look at the view, Othala? It’s so nice from up here!”

  “N-no!”

  “Aw, come on, it’s great! Besides, don’t you want to see where we’re going? How will you know where we are, for when you escape and run to your friends? Isn’t it better to have some landmarks to orient yourself with?”

  Othala felt like she was prying her eye open through sheer force of will. She looked up- no, down. The lights of the Dockyard stood out clear as day, a thousand miles below her! She squeezed her hands together over her chest and snapped her eye shut once again.

  “Oh, boo. Well, let’s go visit Hubby, and you two can say hi! Feel free to throw up if you have to, but I’m told that throwing up upside-down is really not fun, so I wouldn’t recommend it! Oh, wait, I know how to fix that! Puke away, Oathy!”

  All the sensations went away for a single blissful moment of peace and quiet. No more whipping wind, or booms, or cold night air. She was tempted to open her eye to see what was going on, when she was abruptly and quite forcefully yanked downwards. In her panicked confusion, she opened her eye. She was hurdling straight down, directly at the reflective surface of the Bay.

  This is it, Othala thought. Victor, I lov-

  Any thought in her head was thrown out as she whipped back around to an inverted position so hard she thought her head was going to snap clean off her neck. She felt her spine in her lower back rattle with a burst of pops.

  “Whoo! Now that’s FUN!” That voice, that horrible voice, once again. “Sing, Othala, sing for hubby! Maybe he can hear you!”

  She screamed bloody murder, so loud and hard her voice cracked. The sounds of their flight were different this time around, far quieter, such that only her voice carried. Othala had gone totally limp, her arms hanging above her head, like there wasn’t an intact bone left in her body. Damp, wet, salty air assaulted her nose and taste buds. Something slapped her hands, rather hard, then again, and again.

  She knew she shouldn’t open her eye, but the stinging slaps hurt. She did despite knowing better. Her head was inches from the ocean. Well, maybe not inches, but close enough that her hands were clipping the occasional swell on an otherwise very calm sea. She resumed screaming.

  Her tormenter chuckled amusedly.

  Othala thought she heard something between blasting her lungs and tonsils out. She stopped long enough to listen. There was again, but it was echoey.

  The third time was the charm. “Othala!” rang out from the distance, much clearer now.

  It was Victor! She tried to call out to him, but her voice wasn’t cooperating at the moment; she couldn’t get any volume or projection, just raspy wheezes not much louder than speaking volume. She heard splashing and his voice calling out to her, and then they zoomed past where he was in the bay. He wasn’t far from the docks now, maybe less than a hundred yards. The waters were fairly well lit, and there was a decent-sized crowd of dockyard laborers gathering. A few had ropes and nets ready to assist.

  Othala tried to scream for help as the booms and wind resumed, and they shifted to traveling upwards, over the docks.

  “Help! Help! Victor!” She cried out as loudly as she could as they slowed, stopped, then reversed course in some kind of maneuver that had her getting thrown from side to side and flailing around.

  “Othala!” Victor cried out and up to her as she was dangled over the water, circling around Victor, but well out of reach.

  “Better doggy paddle faster, Victor! I might get bored and give wife juggling a try!”

  Victor stopped to tread water and shout up at the assailant of his wife: “Fuck you! You piece of shit!” He spluttered a little as a slow swell washed over his head. “You hurt a hair on her head and I’ll fucking kill you!”

  Othala continued to dangle and circle Victor, but her height above the water started rising and falling enough that she was getting immersed from her fingertips up to her elbows.

  “Whoah now, Othala, easy, easy! Quit struggling so much! I don’t want to drop you!” Othala started hoarsely screeching while the voice above her laughed loudly. “Well, better go, I don’t want her to catch a chill! I’ll have to give nazi dunking another try when it’s nicer weather out! Toodles, loverboy! Better swim faster if you want to rescue her!”

  A series of booms and thumps sounded, and Othala was whisked off at speed, gaining altitude as they pathed back over the city.

  Othala closed her eye and whispered a prayer to the Allfather. She was exhausted from multiple rounds of adrenaline comedowns, and all of her muscles were either sore, burning, or both. She could barely speak at a normal volume without her throat feeling like it was full of broken glass. Her hindbrain was still insisting she was liable to die at any given point.

  But there was something else teasing her mind. As she was being dragged along through the air, there was a distinctive sound. Like a helicopter, but not quite. Thumps and booms, but with odd, uneven, and often-changing tempos and cadences. She knew that sound. She’d heard it several times before. There was a new cape, a disgusting monster one. She hadn’t been involved in any fights with it, but she’d heard from others. Kaiser, Hookwolf, Stormtiger.

  What was its name? It was on the tip of her tongue as they slowed, dropped then came to a stop somewhere. There was some wind moving and distant sounds. She didn’t need to open her eye at this point to know it was someplace equally terrible as the last few places. She wanted to go home. Or die. Anything other than this torment.

  “A…” she croaked.

  “Hmm?” The voice blurred the line between a purr and a growl as it rolled over the query.

  Othala coughed several times and swallowed. “I-I know who you are.”

  “Ohh?” The sound of interest rattled her chest as she was held, still hanging upside-down by her lower legs.

  “You’re Apex, and you’re a hero now.” Othala was proud of the fact that she was able to imbue a little venom to throw at the title. Her mind raced with the implications. “You can’t kill me! I have rights!”

  Something wrapped around her hands and wrists, and she was flipped right-side up to hang from her hands, now with her feet dangling instead of her hands. Her toes could touch pavement, or maybe concrete.

  “Open your eye, Othala. I suppose you cracked the case, so you deserve some reward.”

  She peeled her eye open. They were on top of a building roof, not near an edge for once, and the building actually had power. A floodlight poised over a door buzzed overhead nearby, lighting the area she was in. At least it was behind her, so it wasn’t burning her eye.

  Where are we, she thought. Hospital, maybe? We’re fairly high up and near downtown, though.

  Her attention was drawn to a shape materializing in front of her. Nothing at all transitioned into a blur in front of her. A big blur. Then that rapidly transitioned into something huge and blue and right in front of her!

  Othala sucked in a breath and tried to jerk back. She was told it looked like a mutated dog… thing! Not this abomination!

  It was the size of a big moving truck, or maybe a bus, bulging with muscle where it wasn’t covered in armor plates and freakish! Some kind of wide and very long wedge-shaped head, with fifty big black bug eyes, and hundreds of snakes for hair, like a… Lobster Medusa! It was sitting down half-upright like a dog, and its head was so far above her that she had to crane her neck up to look at its freak face. It was more than twice her height. Sitting!

  Her jaw worked, opening and closing as her eye darted around. Claws the size of her leg on its paws, and it was holding her… by a tail!? Like a crocodile tail, or something, with a hand… thing at the end, but as long as a telephone pole and wider than she was where it met its body!

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” The thing taunted her. “Doesn’t have mine…” She heard a click or a snap, and the thing’s mouth opened. She didn’t even think it had one; it was basically flush and nearly seamless to its head when it was closed. A slimy anaconda of a tongue stretched out and swiped her cheek under her eye.

  “Mm. Salty. A little umami. Hints of desperation. If it wasn’t for the lingering taste of deep-seated insecurity and ignorance in the aftertaste, it’d be better. I’d give nazi tears… a seven out of ten. Not bad, room for improvement.”

  “F-fuck you!” Othala drew in a breath and barked out the insult the best she was able. It sounded a bit weak, even to her ears.

  “Not in your wildest and kinkiest fantasies, Othala.”

  She curled her upper lip in disgust.

  “Oh, me too, me too!” The thing teased her, and it slurped its tongue back in and its mouth yawned open.

  Othala jerked back as she was drawn closer to a mouth that could swallow her whole. Hundreds, thousands of teeth. Rows, zig-zag patterns, teeth upon teeth, upon teeth. Sharp blade teeth, stabbing knife teeth, angular chopping teeth. Death in every form imaginable.

  A hot, wet breath washed over her as her upper arms and lower shins hit the top and bottom of the thing’s mouth. It didn’t smell too bad, like brine and a little bit of fish, but that didn’t make up for the fact that she was about to be stuffed in and turned into mincemeat with a single bite.

  “W-wait wait! You can’t eat me!”

  She was pulled back, and the mouth closed with a snap and clack! The beast tilted its head some, then asked her: “Oh? Why not?”

  “You’ll go to the birdcage! Murdering a captive! They’ll rip you apart in there as a hero!”

  “Hmm… that’s a good point, I don’t want to lose my new job. The pay’s pretty sweet, and the dental? Wow. Well, how about this, then? What about just… a single arm or leg? Maybe two?”

  The maw from hell opened again, and she was hoisted up and lowered down until her legs from the knee down were in its mouth. “This counts as a single leg, right?”

  Othala sucked in a good lungful and shrieked, actually managing to get some volume behind it. “You can’t maim someone you’ve got captive either!”

  Despite its mouth being open and its jaw not moving, it seemed to be able to speak just fine, without any distortion. “Oh, Othala. But that would require proof I did it, wouldn’t it?”

  “W-w-what do you mean?” She squirmed and tried to pull herself up and out of the mouth, not daring to try and kick at the array of wicked razor-sharp looking teeth.

  “Don’t know know? I’m best buddies with Panacea. She lives with me, even. You know, at the place you decided to attack? I bet she’s real pissed. You know how much she hates nazis? You have no idea how much. I’d just ask her to grow you some new legs before I took you in for arrest, and enjoy my little evening snack. Who’s going to believe your story? I’m a hero, and you’re a criminal hanging out with serial killers and murderers.”

  She’d gotten her legs hiked up, with her knees nearly to her chest, despite the screaming protest her muscles were sending to her brain. The beast just lowered her down more into its mouth.

  They’ll never believe me. Even if my suit’s ripped. It could eat all my arms and legs off and make me just keep growing them back to eat more. No, no no no!

  “Mm. I can smell the fear oozing out of your pores, you know. The stress hormones flooding your body? Improves the taste of the meaty bits.”

  “P-p-please,” she stammered out in a raspy croak. “Please, no, not this, I’ll do-I’ll do anything!”

  She halted in place. “Oh? What do you mean by anything?”

  It’s going to bite my leg off and then chew on it, crunch it up. My leg just… digesting in acid and melting away!

  She couldn’t shake the visions from her head, flashbacks of the worst, grisly death scenes she’d seen from countless horror movies.

  “Anything! Please, no!”

  “Well, if you’ll do anything… then I have two things I want. Otherwise…” Its tongue wrapped around her ankle and tugged her right leg down, until it was mostly straightened out. It was freakishly strong, like a vice grip and a truck winch pulling on her.

  “Tell me!”

  “A proper apology, first.”

  “I’m sorry! Please! I’m sorry for attacking your friends! I’ll never bother them again, ever! I swear it!”

  “Mm. That’s fairly convincing. Fine. Next…” It let go of her ankle and pulled her up and out of its mouth, lowering her back down to where she’d been before, with her feet barely touching the rooftop, front and center, a few feet from the beast.

  It closed its mouth and brought its face so close it was nearly touching her own with the narrow tip of its snout…nose…beak. Four of its horrible, beady black eyes were staring into her, like it could see clean through her. It could turn invisible; it probably could see right through her, too.

  Othala was crying again, and it felt miserable. She’d cried so much in the past two or three hours of this torture that her tear ducts felt dry, scorching, and depleted. Her whole eye burned.

  “Tell me, please…” she begged.

  “I want you to sit and think. Not now, later. Tomorrow, wherever you are, in jail, maybe.”

  Othala let out a quiet sob. The thought of being in jail terrified her, but right now it was better than what she’d been dealing with.

  “I want you to think about the kinds of people you’re hanging out with, who are dragging you into situations like these. Are those good friends? Do good friends abandon one another to save themselves and leave their friends behind? Or did you come up with the idea that attacking my people was a good idea to get some easy loot?”

  “N-no! It was Hookwolf! I don’t- I don’t do planning stuff!”

  “Oh, I know you don’t. You know how I know you don’t, Othala?”

  She shook her head back and forth. The creature bobbed her up and down, left and right, like it was making her dance like a puppet. “Because they’re using you, foolish Othala. Making you dance around on a board like a piece while they play the real game.”

  “They’re my family! And we don’t abandon each other! Doesn’t matter who dies!”

  It spun and swayed her back and forth, drawing her closer and closer to her face like a clockwork music-box ballerina.

  As quietly as she’d heard it speak the entire evening, it almost-whispered to her when they were inches apart. “Oh, but that’s not true either, is it? Tell me, Othala. Where’s Purity, Night and Fog? Aren’t they your family too? Seems like they ditched you. Again. Off to do their own thing, and you weren’t invited along. And why exactly was it that your husband, who loves you, was… far ahead of you, already hiding in place in an alley blocks away, and you only caught up to him afterwards, when you literally ran into him ?”

  Othala squeezed her eye shut and shook her head. “No, shut up!”

  “Could it have been because he’d cut and run before you did? No, he wouldn’t do that, would he? But if he was just in front of you, wouldn’t you have heard splashing in front of you, and gone another way on the chance it was some of us intercepting you?”

  Hot breath washed over her face yet again. Something hard and smooth lightly bopped her on the tip of the nose. “Tomorrow, the next day, a week after, you sit. You sit and think about the group you run with, and how your family may not be worth the cover and company they give you. Where’s Othala going to be in five or ten years? Happy and raising a family with hubby? How’s that working out for Purity? Or might you get caught up and dragged to the Birdcage with the rest of them when Hookwolf and Stormtiger get sent there, not if they get sent there.”

  “Just, just let me go, or arrest me. I want to go home, or go to jail. Please.”

  The monster shook her, and she opened her eye to look at it. “You said you’d do anything , Othala. You can’t even lie and tell me you’ll think about things that maybe aren’t fun to think about for a couple of hours?”

  “Fine, fine! I’ll do it!” Her voice rose, shrill in the now-crisp night air. She shivered some, thankful that some of the water from the streets and ocean had dried off her suit. It was still wet in the less exposed areas.

  “Shake on it. Your word is your bond, right? Oaths and all that?” A third arm slithered out from under its armpit and extended to Othala. It looked thin, human, almost graceful, if not for the fact that it was the same shades of blue and similarly patterned as the rest of it. And that it had black claws the size of boot knives growing out of the fingertips. She thought they looked like curved razor blades, like an eagle.

  She lifted her hand and carefully shook it.

  “Great!” The thing, Apex, cheered up immediately. “Now, Othala, do you want to go downstairs, or go somewhere else?”

  “What’s um… downstairs?”

  “Oh, you don’t recognize this building? You must not have been looking as we landed. Let me help you out real quick with that.” She was pulled back and away from the thing's face, over towards the door with the floodlamp some dozen feet away, then circled to the side of the doorway.

  She felt her stomach drop from her chest straight into the pit of her belly.

  This is… PRT HQ!

  Parahuman Response Team, East Northeast, in big block letters painted directly onto the concrete. She was pulled back in front of the monster.

  She stared at it. Was it playing another game with her? Getting her hopes up, just to smash them into the pavement yet again? Did she have anything to lose at this point for playing along with whatever new, sick game this was?

  “Um… no?” She asked tentatively.

  “No, you do not want to go directly to jail, have a trial scheduled for you, and then go to prison in the next two to three months when your trial comes up?”

  She shook her head slowly. The weird human-not-human hand came back out from wherever it hid and ruffled her hair like she was a little kid. “See, I knew you had a head on your shoulders, even if it is clogged up with a bunch of bullshit! Well, let’s go someplace else, then, if that’s what you want?”

  She nodded rapidly, but didn’t want to get her hopes up. It hoisted her up by her arms, up and over itself, and she expected to be flipped back around and dragged by her legs off to the next destination. But instead, it lowered her over its lower back, just over its hips. Tentacles, which made her skin crawl, seemed to crawl out of nowhere at all to grab her legs, spread them, and then squeezed around her legs securely, like bands of iron. It made her gorge rise. More tentacles took her hands and stretched them forward into a stance like one of those crotch rocket bikes.

  This thing wrapping around her like that made her want to throw up. Frightening images filled her mind of those things slithering all over her body. Touching her bare skin, like squirming snakes.

  Then Apex took off at a dead run and leapt off the building into the air like a dog running off a pier to splash into a lake. She realized she had a tentacle in each of her palms to grab onto, and that rather than dangling, she was nearly bolted into place on the thing’s broad back. Enormous bug wings snap-cracked outwards, tripling in size instantly, and that whump-whump-whump filled the air again. It sounded very different from above, compared to behind and below, where the wind had been hitting her like a near-solid object a few times a second, buffeting and battering her.

  It was a small miracle that she hadn’t lost her eyepatch in the process. The thing flew from the brightly lit roof of the PRT HQ building in downtown over a mostly dark inner city. A few places here and there had generators running and lighting rigged up, but they were by far the exceptions to the rule. Othala knew very well how bad it was out there. She and the rest of Fenrir’s Chosen had been struggling to find anything to eat that wasn’t out of a can or junk food from a gas station. She liked spaghetti rings, ever since she was young. Eating them for three meals a day for half a week straight made her struggle to choke them down.

  They started gliding after a couple of minutes, dropping lower in near silence, over the rush of air and the occasional creak of the bug wings flexing. They were approaching one of the more brightly lit areas in the city- wait. A roll to the side and a tight, looping bank pressed her firmly against its back, which felt like sitting on a boulder or statue. Literally, the thing felt as solid as a rock under her. It was no wonder Victor’s knife had snapped off like it had.

  They went back fully upright, and there was a flurry of wing flapping for several seconds. Then they dropped to the street precisely where all of this had started. There was no sign of any of her teammates. There was barely any sign they’d ever been there in the first place, if not for some laser scoring on some of the nearby building walls, and a few holes in first-story walls in adjacent buildings. Her captor strolled up to the wide, solid metal gate.

  Ample lighting in the area highlighted the guard posts on each side of the gate, perched on top of the wall. Emblazoned across the entire gate was a black skyline of the city with BROCKTON STRONG blazing over top. Several swirling zig-zags underlined the words, and a rainbow of assorted color laser beams angled over the sky of the city and words.

  As much as Othala hated to admit it, she kind of liked it. It was bright and colorful in ways that her people’s stuff wasn’t. Everything they had, from the Empire to now, the Chosen, was always black, red, white, and metallic.

  A crisp male voice came from the right guard post. A man there in jeans and a flannel shirt with a scarf over his face and a rifle across his chest spoke. “Ma’am. Good evening of hunting the enemy?”

  “Oh, a couple of decent catches. One was scraggly and stubborn; I had to throw him back in the water.”

  Wait- Othala’s head was a mess, but that man… wasn’t talking to her? This thing was a girl!?

  “Is your plus one a POW, ma’am?”

  “Mmm…” The rumble under her stretched out, and she could feel it transmitting directly into her thighs underneath her. “No, they are a supervised temporary guest, for the time being.”

  “Full copy. Gate’s opening, make sure you’re back three feet!” He called into the complex, then punched a button or something on the inside of the guard station. A loud buzz sounded twice, then the gate whirred open, retracting behind the thick concrete walls it was anchored into.

  Othala had her head down as they’d gotten close, and hadn’t gotten a good look from above. When the gates opened, she was surprised to see a heck of a lot of people milling around an expansive courtyard, most of which had wide, framed platforms raised above the very shallow water. Nearly everyone was dry, clothed, and clean, the latter of which was the most surprising of all. People had been chattering, only quieting down when the gate had buzzed. Looking back as they stepped inside, she saw the gate closing behind them. Big roller wheels and electric motors that powered the gate were taped off with neon-colored plastic ribbon tape to keep people away from the mechanisms.

  And she saw why. There were entire families here, sitting in the courtyard at folding tables and chairs on the platforms, eating their dinners. A good number of old people, quite a few young people. Very young. Younger than Theo, and even he was too young to start teaching and introducing to the lifestyle she and her clan shared.

  “Isn’t it… kind of late to be eating dinner?” she asked quietly as they approached the middle of the courtyard. Apex was taking care to play keep-away from the wood and metal platforms, stepping only into the water-filled gaps between walkways and larger panels. Othala wanted to say it was pushing midnight, maybe. They’d planned on attacking an hour after sunset, around nine, and that had been hours ago.

  “Yeah, a bit,” Apex responded. “Unfortunately, some incredibly rude people decided to interrupt when we’d normally be cooking and serving meals, so all these people had to take shelter and wait while they were cold and hungry.” They came to a stop in front of a medium-sized platform that connected in the middle to most of the other platforms and to the firehouse itself.

  Othala was picked up under her armpits and around her waist by the tail-claw, released from its back, and set on her feet in the middle of the platform. People from all around the courtyard were rubber-necking while eating their food, looking up from their board games and other activities to see what was going on.

  “What… am I doing here?” Othala was confused and uneasy as to what was going on. Were they going to beat her, or stone her, or something?

  “You made me an agreement not that long ago, did you forget already?” Apex asked her.

  “What agreement?” She cleared her throat.

  An arm poked out of Apex’s side where it was sitting on all fours again and waved at someone near a stack of shipping containers, then pointed at something. A lady waved back, and Apex pointed at a fire barrel, then at Othala. It seemed to do all of this without looking away from her, which was weird. Everything about this thing was weird. And creepy. She saw lobsters, bugs, snakes, and spiders when she looked at it. It made her skin crawl.

  “To apologize, remember?”

  Othala blinked slowly. “I did!”

  The creature chuckled at her. “Oh, Othala, you thought you had to apologize to me? Whatever for?”

  “For… attacking here?”

  She swore she could feel the thing rolling its eyes at her, even if they didn’t move at all. “Silly, silly Othala. You haven’t ruffled a feather on my head at any point tonight. Not you, not your husband, not even the baddest fighter you have, Hookwolf, would be more than a quick and rather boring fight. But I live to fight. All day, every day, all day and all night. It’s all I do. Look at me, do I look like I have a day job at the copy shack?”

  Othala raised her chin. She might be a coward, but people like Hookwolf weren’t. If what Apex said was true, then she was like a kindred spirit to Hookwolf. And he’d destroy it–her. So she said that.

  Someone snorted loudly from her blind spot, which was quite large, and she whirled to face them.

  It was a tall and skinny girl wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt with an unzipped hoodie over it, and…Skitter’s mask.

  “She already fought Hookwolf a couple of weeks back. She fried him like bacon, half-incinerated him, and then literally ripped him in half. He looked like he barely survived. Cricket and Stormtiger had to carry him home unconscious. Apex was fully recovered the next morning and brushed it off like it was nothing.” Several rows of crickets were on each of Skitter’s sleeves, and they chirped and screeched as she spoke, sounding out the words as she did.

  So not someone wearing a look-alike mask. “He only lost because the entire Undersiders group, plus their mutant dogs, attacked when they tried to have a duel!”

  Another snort. “That is almost the exact opposite of what happened. But don’t listen to me, one of the Undersiders who was standing there watching, who isn’t in your ‘friend group.’ Believe whatever story you were told second-hand.”

  “Everything good, Skitter?” Apex asked her.

  The other girl nodded. Othala hadn’t realized that Skitter was a girl before. She’d heard, and assumed from their brief former contact, that she had been a weedy teen boy.

  “Yeah. Quiet night after the thing earlier.”

  Apex nodded, and Othala caught sight of a blonde coming from what was apparently the kitchen, but didn’t get a good look at her through the crowd that was around that area.

  “As I was saying, no, Othala. You’re going to apologize to the people you actually harmed when you and your friends decided to drop in uninvited.” Apex pointed at the people milling around the kitchen.

  Othala went to protest, but her eye locked on someone approaching, and her jaw didn’t want to work all of a sudden.

  Menja!? What is she doing here? Is she a hostage? A traitor?

  She strolled up with two steaming lidded cups in her hand, handing one to Skitter first, and then the other she extended to Othala.

  “Thanks, Vanessa,” Skitter said before taking a sip from the cup.

  Othala looked at the cup in Menja’s hand, then up at her. She looked… good? Clean civilian clothing, well put-together, hair shining, looking freshly combed and washed. Why did she have an apron on? Why was Skitter referring to her by her real name? Was she mastered, or brainwashed?

  “You going to take the tea, or just stand there looking like that?” Menja’s tone wasn’t harsh as much as it was annoyed or chiding.

  Othala took it and greedily gulped it down. Warm black tea, and sweetened with honey. She was parched, and the warm beverage was soothing on her throat. Menja held her hand out for the cup, and she handed it back over. She kept staring at Vanessa. Nothing was making sense.

  Am I being mastered?

  “What the fu-udge are you staring at?” Menja testily demanded, correcting herself partway through.

  Othala just blurted it out. “Are you mastered?”

  “Psh. That would make things easy for you, wouldn’t it? Do you really think that?” Vanessa flipped her hair over her shoulder and scoffed, looking down her nose at Othala. She’d always been taller, prettier, and way more condescending, but what was all of this?

  “Why else are you here?!” Othala demanded right back, her own annoyance with Menja’s attitude growing.

  “Look, kiddo. Stuff changed. People died. My-” The blonde looked up and away, blinking her eyes. She took several breaths, then said, “Fenja… died. Things changed. I saw the writing on the wall, so I left. It’s to my advantage to be here, so I’m here.” Vanessa looked back down at her, her eyes watery, but she’d kept her composure.

  “Cricket said you left town to meet up with some uh…” Othala glanced around. “...other people until things cleared up here.”

  “Lying, manipulative bit– whatever. You can see that ain’t true. And I’m not mastered. Do whatever it is you’re here to do, then flip off, unless you figure some crud out for yourself.” Vanessa turned to walk back to the kitchen, then stopped herself and half-turned back. “And he isn’t like you think he is. You only see the parts he wants to show you and not the rest.” With that, she left without looking back.

  “Who!?” She called out. Hookwolf? Stormtiger? Victor?

  “Figure it out for yourself, but honestly? All of them.”

  Apex let out what sounded like a loud trio of bird chirps, and even the people who hadn’t been paying attention to the scene up until this point perked up and paid attention to it.

  Apex spoke up loudly enough for the entire courtyard to hear clearly, which wasn’t much louder than it… her normal speaking voice was. “Othala is here to apologize for the attack earlier. I encourage you all to form a line and get your apology from her, but I understand it’s late, and it’s been a long, busy day. Come if you want, you don’t have to. Thank you all.”

  Then Apex also wandered off the same as Vanessa had, off to do her own things, without bothering to watch over or even pay attention to Othala. Skitter had taken a few steps away and was leaning against the fire station wall between two of the big bay doors, but was watching something else in a different direction. After taking a few more sips of her tea, she pulled the mask back down over her lower face and walked off.

  People of all shapes, sizes, and colors formed a line on the platform Othala was standing on, and it swiftly started to grow, extending off the platform and back towards the kitchen. She felt her stomach fall again at the prospect of apologizing to each of these people individually.

  They just… left me here. I’m a supervillain! I could… take someone hostage, maybe a kid? Bargain my way out of here to freedom? Othala looked at one of the kids who was third in line. It was a little boy, maybe five or six years old, with paint stains all over his hands.

  …But she’ll just catch me again, and actually put me in prison this time around…

  Othala sighed as the first person stepped up. It was a struggle to make eye contact and apologize, and even to her ear it sounded weak. The man seemed content enough, even though he was clearly still judging her when he left. Then the next came and went, a hard-nosed woman with a RBF.

  The paint kid was next. He looked up at her. “Did you take any green paint from us? Can I have it back? I really want to paint Miss Militia for the monster fight!”

  Wha-

  “I um. No, I’m sorry. I didn’t take any paint. Sorry for… dinner being late.” Othala’s stomach twisted yet again.

  When I was running, I tripped over some booby traps… or what I thought were booby traps. Was it just a gallon paint can that this kid left sitting and forgot in the water?

  The kid beamed a big grin up at her, all excited now. “It’s okay! We got double chocolate brownies!!” He did a fist-pump and took off.

  The line moved on. Othala stole looks around the place between people. Some, maybe most, were rude, but nobody hit her or spit on her. She hated the look of pity some of them gave her. As the line started to grow sparse and she got another cup of tea, she was able to take a few furtive peeks around.

  There were defenses everywhere, but the vast majority of the people here were just homeless people and what appeared to be day laborers. She saw a few members of New Wave come and go, and another cape or two she recognized but couldn’t name, including a disgustingly obese man-creature with see-through skin that made her squeamish to look at.

  Nobody she expected to pay attention to her paid her any mind at all. She knew she wasn’t strong on her own, but that was more deeply humiliating than having to apologize to random people for things she didn’t do herself. She saw Apex off to one side of the courtyard, near some area lighting, resting on its elbows next to a platform and playing… checkers or something with different color rocks on a grid with three other people, a mix of kids and teens. The bunch was laughing despite the horrible beast inches away from them. Where were their parents, leaving them alone with it like that?!

  Then there was Menja. She kept seeing Menja going in and out of the kitchen container. In an apron. Cooking and serving food.

  Menja. Serving food. Seemingly willingly.

  The most spoiled rotten, stuck-up mega-bitch of their… former group.

  It was as perplexing as it was just plain strange.

  Finally, after her humiliation tour was nearly at its end, an elderly, gray-haired negro woman was wheeled up in front of her in a wheelchair by a musclebound man nearly as wide as he was tall. A no-neck type.

  She looked down at the black woman with a cardboard box on her lap and a blanket over her legs. The way the woman looked back up at her, she felt like the positions were entirely reversed.

  She stammered, thrown off by the look she was given. Like it came from Kaiser, rest his soul. “S-sorry for attacking–”

  For the lines in her face, her voice didn’t sound her age in the slightest. Like steel, instead. “Save your half-ass apology. I don’t want to hear it.” She had a pronounced southern accent, Othala couldn’t quite place it, but it was deep south, that much she knew from some of the others who had been through the Empire in the past few years.

  “I lived my entire life putting up with people like you. You think you’re special? That you’re better than others? I’ve heard that for fifty years. My mother heard it before me. My grandmother, when she was kidnapped hauled across the ocean as chattel. You’re just like the rest that came before you. Birds of an ugly feather.”

  “Actually, most slaves were sold by their ow–” Othala started to say.

  The wall of muscle behind the old woman spoke, his voice harsh. “You shut your mouth and listen when Miss Landry is talking to you. You’ll know when it’s your turn to speak.”

  Miss Landry waved her hand back at her assistant. “I only want to know a few things from you, girl.”

  Othala closed her mouth and nodded. The man looked like he could take her apart like a potato head toy.

  “Did you mess up tonight?”

  Othala nodded quickly.

  “You know you did wrong to these people?”

  Othala clenched her jaw and looked away.

  “Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you, girl.”

  She dragged her eye back to meet Miss Landry’s scornful gaze. It felt like it might have been beams from Lady Photon sweeping over her. At last, she nodded again.

  “Say it, I wanna hear you,” Miss Landry commanded her.

  “Yes, I wronged the people here tonight.”

  Why does that hurt to admit? We need food and supplies too! Othala thought to herself.

  Miss Landry stared at her for what felt like fifteen minutes in silence, then said: “Good. You can turn around and walk out those gates. You know what you did, and you know it was wrong. You think about that, girl. Now you take this and see yourself out.”

  Muscles leaned over and picked up the cardboard box, about the size of a shoe box, and handed it over to Othala. It was heavier than she expected. She went to open it and look inside, but muscles just shook his head and wheeled Miss Landry off.

  She hurried over to the gate after looking around to see if anyone was escorting her out. The gate buzzed, and one of the armed guards let her out. It whirred and clanked securely closed behind her. Shoulders slumped–only from exhaustion, of course, never her pride–she trudged off in the direction of their temporary home base.

  Curiosity tugged at her as to what was in the box, but when she rounded the corner of the wall the gate was on, she nearly jumped and dropped it when she came face-to-face with Panacea, who was scowling at her like she was about to try and drown her in the street water.

  So this is the real trap. Beat their ass when they’re out of sight.

  Amy was near-growling as she spoke, freckles dancing around on her face like the spots on a prowling cheetah. “Next time you and your shitty, racist, bigot friends decide to come over and help yourselves to what isn’t yours, maybe stuff your stupid-fuck pride up your ass sideways and ask instead of trying to rob.”

  Othala blinked rapidly.

  “We work too hard here to let dipshits like you and the Merchants, or whoever else, just come in here and run over the place and trash it. You’re lucky the boss said to let you all off with a light spanking. If it were me?” Amy jutted a finger out and poked Othala in the chest with it, over the namesake rune on her costume. “I would have zip-tied and locked all your asses up to rot with the PRT. But we don’t do that here, because I don’t run the place. I don’t think you deserve to be let off.” Her eyes dropped down to the box in her hands. “And you sure as hell don’t deserve that. Now get out of here, or I’ll give you the worst kind of acne you’ve ever seen ruin someone’s face.”

  A blonde girl’s head popped over the side of the guardpost on the wall, looking over and down at them.

  Glory Girl…

  “Everything good, Sis?”

  “Yeah,” Amy replied, looking up at Glory Girl. “Just heading back in for the night.”

  Glory Girl’s head disappeared back over the wall, and Amy looked back at Othala. “You want stuff, you come, ask nicely, and follow the rules. The gates open for anyone willing to work for it, even nazis, as you can see. Now get lost.”

  Amy drew her hand back and splash-stomped off towards the gate.

  “Wait!” Othala called out, now more deeply confused than ever. “Who runs this place? Who’s the boss?”

  Amy looked back at her. “Are you stupid? You attacked a place like this, and you don’t even know that?”

  Othala’s cheeks burned. She didn’t do strategy and planning; that was for the others.

  “It’s Apex, obviously, but we all decide on matters of community. God, get your head out of your ass, for real. Don’t just blindly follow people into attacking the most secure place in the entire city without even knowing what the hell goes on there or who runs it.” Amy turned the corner, and Othala hurried to make her leave as well, cheeks still hot in the cool air.

  She thought she heard a muttered “...fucking idiots…” between splashes, but she wasn’t sure. She stopped about a block away, curiosity getting the better of her finally.

  Using the remaining light from the giant flood lights that faced out into the city from the walls and surrounding buildings of the Fire Station, she unfolded the lid of the box, and steam wafted up to hit her in the face.

  It was full of food. A two-quart insulated sealed container of what looked like thick beef stew, a small oblong loaf of crusty fresh bread topped with seeds, and butter in a plastic tub. A plastic flexible bladder bag of brown liquid, probably tea, lay along one side, along with packs of lemonade and instant coffee, plastic cutlery, alcohol wipes, napkins, and paper towels. A vacuum-sealed plastic bag of bandages, pills in tubes, a plastic tube contraption called a Water Straw, what looked like a pool testing kit with a tube of big pills shrink-wrapped to it, a little battery bank, and more, was roughly cordoned off with a scrap of cardboard as a divider.

  Some kind of cloth was peeking up from the bottom, maybe a tablecloth, flag, or possibly a t-shirt? It was brightly colored, whatever it was.

  Sitting on top of all of it was a big, cling-wrapped, square brick of double-chocolate brownie with a folded piece of bright yellow paper taped to it.

  She choked back a half-sob. She was so hungry, and this didn’t just look like food, it looked divine. She pulled the piece of paper out and unfolded it.

  The Station Community Rules:

  A bulleted list followed, in two columns, one titled “Everyone” and the other “Parahumans.”

  At the bottom was that logo again. BROCKTON STRONG.

  Someone had written cursive old-timey handwriting on the back of the paper. She couldn’t hardly make it out with the light, but it started with: “It’s not easy admitting when you’ve been wrong…”

  Othala carefully re-folded the paper and put it back in the box away from the liquids, folded it closed, and resumed walking back home. She couldn’t stop sniffing. It was probably just the cold making her nose run and eye water.