Aw fuck.

  I looked all around, and everything felt like it was going in slow motion. Vicky was floating in the hallway next to Crystal, who had a ruby-red glow around her hands that were clenched into fists by her abdomen. Amy was flipped around on the couch, eyes wide, as was Lisa, who didn’t seem nearly as surprised as Amy. A blanket of insects was plastered to the outside of the nearest window so thick it blocked the light out entirely.

  Aisha had a knife in her hands and held up close to her chest. Leet was holding some kind of puzzle cube thing in one hand that was blinking lights on tiny square panels that covered the entire surface, and Chris was holding what looked like the world’s cheesiest sci-fi blaster, which emitted a whine while it was charging. Brian had stepped over and thrown an arm between Rachel and Taylor.

  This is about two seconds from blowing up and a bunch of people getting hurt.

  I saw the tip of Chris’ zapper wobbling around from where he was clenching it in his hands too tightly.

  I’ve got to do something.

  I sucked in a big lungful of air.

  When I let it blast, it wasn’t Morgan’s voice; it was my voice. “HEY!”

  Heads jerked at the unearthly chorus assaulting everyone’s eardrums.

  “How MANY TIMES do I have to say this!?” My lips were pulled back in a snarl. I imagined I looked like an unhinged lunatic right about now. And possessed by a demon, too.

  “SPARRING! GOES! IN! THE! GYM!!”

  I shot a clawed finger to my left at the heavy steel fire door a dozen feet away, clearly labeled “PT ROOM.” The tall and thin pane of reinforced glass next to the door showed a view of colorful floor mats, bright lighting, and exercise machines along a far wall.

  “IT’S RIGHT THERE!”

  “It’s not–” Rachel growled, and Brian immediately talked right over her, very loudly.

  “Sorry Apex! We got a little too excited to do some sparring! Everybody who’s sparring, pile in!” He grabbed Rachel by the shoulders, and I saw her shove and try and get out of it, but he had a head and shoulders on her, and an easy 50 pounds. He moved both of them to the gym and through the doors post haste.

  I stomped over to Taylor, who was pinching her nostrils closed with one hand. I bent over and got her glasses off the floor, and collected one of the arms that had been snapped off. Standing back up, I spoke to her, but loudly enough to be heard without making it totally obvious what I was doing.

  “Damn it, Taylor, you know better! You need to be setting an example for the others here who aren’t familiar with how we do things!” I didn’t hold back in verbally raking the coals over her. Her irate glare at me told me just how much she wasn’t appreciating being thrown under the bus.

  I’ll make it up to you later. I have to sell this, and for that, you have to take the fall. Sorry, Tee.

  “Amy!” I barked, and I heard her startle on the sofa. I looked over to her. “Will you please handle Taylor’s nosebleed before we have to call in a decontamination crew in here?”

  She jerked her head up and down rapidly.

  I looked over the rest, my upper lip still curled. The slew of weapons and… implements still in people’s hands. “Is someone raiding the station right now!? Do you hear the siren going off!?” I shouted at them.

  A couple of heads shook, and most just glanced around.

  “Then put that shit away or I’ll take it away!”

  Silence filled the air.

  “NOW!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” A plainclothes member of Chess team, Pawn, I think, stuffed a service pistol back into his belt and flipped his shirt over it.

  “You got it, boss,” Crystal said with a touch of sarcasm, dispersing her energy and dropping back to her feet.

  The rest of the weapons got returned to whatever hidden holsters, sheathes, or places-I-didn’t-want-to-think-about.

  I dropped down to a loud, but not window-rattling volume and looked over the crowd again. “Well, if you’re sparring, get in the gym! The rest of you, find something to entertain yourselves with, or I’ll find something productive for you to do!”

  Newter snickered, and I stuck an index-claw at him and squinted. He coughed. I drifted it to one side, until it was aimed at Chris. “You’d better beat his ass for trying to rile people up!”

  Chris picked up his controller and gave a half-assed “I’ll try.”

  I squinted.

  “Okay!” The second response was much perkier.

  I nodded.

  In the meantime, Amy had stepped over to Taylor and laid a hand on her temple. “This is pretty busted. It’s going to take a minute to get everything lined back up where it was.”

  “She just needs the bleeding stopped, pain handled, and to be able to breathe through it for the time being,” I told Amy.

  The look Taylor gave me was probably stripping the paint from the walls behind me. I gave her a level stare right back and kept talking to Amy. “She’s liable to wind up getting it busted again, she has a spar to attend, and it’s liable to get messy.”

  Taylor blinked at me twice.

  I dropped my voice low, for just the three of us. “You’re not going to let her get away with a suckerpunch like that, are you?”

  Taylor’s eyes lowered to the floor.

  Oh, Taylor. You stupid girl. You think you deserve it for betraying her. You truly are a glutton for punishment.

  I put an index finger under her sticky chin and lifted it until she was making eye contact again.

  “You’re number two here, Taylor. You can feel however you like inside, but don’t forget you’re a boss at Brockton Strong; there are eyes on you, and lips that will whisper behind your back, even here. This is as much of a test as the Chosen attacking.”

  She clenched her jaw, and her shoulders came up and back, ever-so-slightly.

  There she is. That’s the Taylor I know.

  Amy handed Taylor a damp paper towel, and she wiped her lower face until it was only streaked with pink, cleared her throat and spit into the bloody wad, then tossed it into a trash bin. She looked at Amy and asked, “Can I blow my nose without opening up a bleed?”

  “Yeah,” Amy said. “Just don’t blow too hard. I’ll get you straightened up after, good as new.” A little smile crossed her lips.

  Taylor went over to the kitchen, blew her nose a few times, then headed to the gym.

  “Anyone else sparring or need to blow off some steam?” I asked the room.

  Menja’s flip-flops flapped on the staircase, coming down from upstairs. She’d gotten changed and was wearing tight leggings and a compression shirt. She smirked at me and headed for the gym.

  I heard Lisa mutter something about ‘not killing each other,’ and she stood from the sofa and headed over as well. Leet took a spot on the sofa in front of the big display, and Alec found his way over and plopped down as well. They glanced at one another and picked up controllers.

  Amy looked over at me. “I’d probably keep an eye on things, in case anyone gets hurt.”

  I cracked a broad grin and told her: “Sure, if you’re feeling up to it. Don’t think you’re getting out of practice just because you’re on medic duty.”

  She just sighed and headed for the room she shared with Crystal and Vicky. I headed into the gym.

  We had a big open space with thicker floor mats in the gym, with the outside of the room ringed by cardio and strength machines. There were a couple of training weapon racks with the usual assortment of wooden and rubber training weapons and several types of dummy firearms in both long and short varieties. A couple of the weapons were coated in foam-rubber and intended for more full-contact training, but neither those nor the full rubber weapons were pleasant to be struck or stabbed by. The rubber knives could leave hellacious bruises.

  Brian was off to one side, quietly arguing with Bitch and trying to help her put on fingerless MMA gloves. She didn’t seem to be too happy about the arrangement, but those hard, beady eyes of hers kept looking around Brian at Taylor.

  There you go, Bitch. Eyes on the prize.

  Taylor had her shoes off, a pair of gloves on, and was doing a few stretches.

  Finally, Bitch kicked her boots off and spat on the floor. This woman, I swear. Brian shot me an apologetic look, and I flicked my hand in his direction.

  Don’t sweat it. These two are going to wind up beating the piss out of each other, and it’s going to get messier than that.

  Bitch stomped over to within a few feet of Taylor, and Taylor shook her arms out and squared up.

  “Alright, let’s get this disagreement worked out,” I called out to both of them. “I don’t want to see any eye-gouging, no windpipe chokes, and no powers. Otherwise, I don’t really care what you do, short of killing each other. We have a medic ready.”

  I looked between each of them. “Clear?”

  “Very,” Taylor said, her voice tight.

  “Whatever!” Rachel snapped.

  I motioned with one hand at Brian to take up a position on the other side of the mat so that the two girls were between us. He knew the deal. We’d be stepping in to intervene if things got too ugly. Lisa and Vanessa were watching from two different sides of the fight and occasionally giving one another stink-eye.

  “Works for me, go on then,” I called to the two fighters.

  Taylor took a deep breath, brought her hands together, and bowed.

  Rachel surged forward while Taylor had her head lowered and swung a low haymaker at the side of Taylor’s head. Taylor jerked and brought one hand up, but she wasn’t going to get an effective block up in time, or with the awkward position she was in. She rotated her head into the punch, just like I’d taught her.

  The blow clipped Taylor’s glove and got knocked slightly off-track, and wound up hitting her on the upper slope of her forehead. It was very lucky for Rachel that she was wearing gloves; punching someone’s head like that was a great way to shatter your hand.

  Rachel sucked a breath in through her teeth and jerked her hand back like she’d just stuck it in a fire.

  Yeah, I bet that didn’t feel good.

  Taylor staggered back and to the side, nearly slipping on the mat before she straightened up. Rachel had less reach than Taylor did, but a significant mass advantage. Rachel didn’t have a lick of training and was just street brawling from what I could tell. Taylor did have training, but she was still very much an amateur despite the constant drilling. Sometimes it can be harder for someone with her level of experience to fight against someone who’s just throwing punches and kicks at random. There’s a structure and form to more formalized hand-to-hand combat. You can still read positioning and footing.

  But Taylor wasn’t doing that. Her eyes were on Rachel’s face at the moment. Rachel pressed her advance, walking in punches and kicks. Taylor at least had her hands up and was maintaining good footing. She was ducking, weaving, and darting around to evade hits, but Rachel still managed to hand a few hits to Taylor’s gloves, and the impact wasn’t gentle.

  If Taylor’s strategy here was to let Rachel gas herself out and then try and take her when she was breathless, she was going to have to really be careful. Rachel was, to put it bluntly, built like a brick house. I never saw any exercise equipment at the Undersider’s old lair, and Rachel didn’t seem the type to go to a gym. She was still solid as hell.

  Rachel stepped in to swing another punch, and Taylor took a half-step back, then snapped her back foot forward to kick Rachel’s thigh. She landed a damn good hit, too. A real meaty whack followed by a pained grunt from Rachel. Rachel just took it and snatched Taylor’s shin in both hands.

  Remember what I told you, Taylor. Sometimes you just need muscle mass. It has a lot of benefits beyond picking bigger things up, like being able to tank shots like that.

  Rachel yanked Taylor’s leg towards her, then hauled up. Taylor was thrown off balance and toppled backwards. She at least kicked her leg out of Rachel’s grip.

  “Take it to the mat!” Brian yelled at Rachel.

  Rachel lurched forward to pin Taylor.

  If Rachel gets on top of Taylor, it’s over for her.

  “Interrupt!” I shouted.

  Training Taylor to avoid grapple situations had been a high priority. Ground fights heavily favored mass and strength. Two things she didn’t have. So we’d gone through drills over and over again on ways to avoid a pin. Ideally, she would have gotten herself up off the mat after being tossed, using the energy to assist her in getting back up. The positioning wasn’t right for that. Rolling to evade was a good option for her, but I wanted her to do more than that. A preemptive counterattack.

  I hoped she remembered.

  She’d remembered, or heard me, because her knee came up, and then she shot her foot out and up and kicked Rachel square in the gut. Not the target I would have picked. I would have expected my opponent to know how to resist the effects of gut shots like that. But Rachel wasn’t trained, her eyes bugged, and she let out a loud dry-heave retch.

  Dropping to her knees and clutching her abdomen gave Taylor time to roll and hop back up. She had ample time to set up and go for a submission hold, or to put her on the mat in a sprawl. She didn’t do either.

  “What’s the matter, Bitch? Things not working out for you when you aren’t landing cheap shots?” Taylor taunted her.

  Rachel stood back up, wiped her mouth with the back of one arm, and glared at Taylor, who was carefully shuffling around her, just outside of lunge range.

  “You’re a fucking cain!” Rachel shouted at her.

  Taylor’s eyes narrowed. “No, I’m not. I could have fucked you, but I didn’t. I just left!”

  “Lisa told us all about what you did!”

  My eyes left the two momentarily to look at Lisa. Her own darted over to mine briefly, but didn’t linger, looking back to the two fighters.

  What had she told them after Taylor left? And had there been bad blood between Taylor and Lisa? It didn’t seem like it. If anything, they were still rather friendly with one another. Especially at the park.

  “From the start!” Rachel screwed her face up. “A snake! A liar!”

  Ah. Answers that question.

  “What of it?” Taylor stepped forward and threw a jab at Rachel. Rachel jerked her head aside, and Taylor’s fist met air. Rachel followed it up with an ugly kick aimed at Taylor’s crotch. Taylor twisted to the side and sent her own kick out, hitting Rachel in the back of the thigh. This time she snapped it back quickly, as she should have done the first time. “Doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t change what we all did together. Doesn’t change the fights, the good times, the bad times, any of it!”

  Rachel looked over at Taylor, standing to her side, and tensed.

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  Uhoh.

  She twisted and swung a backfist, and Taylor’s attempt to block it with her forearm was insufficient. It smashed into Taylor’s upper arm, just under the shoulder. Taylor gasped and staggered to the side, backing away from Rachel. She shook her left arm, opening and closing her fist. I could see her fingers trembling and shaking each time she opened her fist.

  Oof. That’s real bad for Taylor. Hit straight to the radial nerve, her whole hand might be numb, and if not numb, then likely weakened.

  Sure enough, Taylor brought her hands back up, and her left fist was slower to bring up into position.

  I wasn’t the only person who’d spotted it. “Go for her left side, Bitch!” Brian called out.

  “Keep up the pressure with what you’ve been doing, Taylor!” I did my own sidelines coaching.

  I had a pretty good guess as to what tactic Taylor was taking. She was targeting Rachel’s thighs. Rachel’s footwork was god-awful, she just clomped around wherever, whenever. Taylor couldn’t risk a straight boxing match with someone who outweighed her to the degree Rachel did. She’d get turned into hamburger. So she had identified the weakest area she could and was using longer-range kicks to deal damage while trying to avoid getting caught.

  I had to credit Rachel and recognize her ‘fighting style’ if one could call it that. Rachel had clearly been in a lot of scraps, and even though she was clumsy, she had a good sense of timing.

  Rachel growled at Taylor and went straight in, and they danced back and forth. Taylor stayed on the defensive and managed to get a few hits in, Rachel landed even fewer, but they certainly mattered more. Brian and I called out tips to our respective fighters.

  Taylor lashed out with another solid kick to Rachel’s thighs, but Rachel was prepared for it this time around. She took the opportunity to step in close and threw a one-two straight punch at Taylor. The first hit her in the upper chest and sent Taylor back, and the second hit Taylor square in the mouth. The fact that Taylor was already in the process of reeling back probably helped soften the blow, but I still winced.

  Taylor fell back on her ass with a thud, and Rachel all but tackled her, knocking her back to the mat and straddling Taylor’s hips.

  Oh man. Not good.

  I stepped forward, along with Brian, to be ready to tear them apart from one another.

  Taylor brought her arms up to protect her face and head just like I’d taught her. Bitch was wildly throwing punches down at Taylor, and the skinny girl was doing a half-decent job of blocking the shots and weathering the storm, but it wouldn’t last.

  “Come on, Taylor! Good dee, but you need to reverse!”

  “Get her Rachel! She’s right where you want her!”

  I heard something, and I darted my eyes away from the fighters for a split second. Vanessa looked slightly amused. Lisa looked distinctly unhappy. Amy and Crystal had just walked in, and Amy was visibly cringing at the scene. I returned my attention to where it belonged.

  Rachel wasn’t wearing down nearly fast enough for Taylor to outlast her here. I saw Taylor bring her knee up several times, but she couldn’t dislodge Rachel.

  I knew what I’d do in her place right now, against this berserker, were she on top of me. I’d bait her into over-extending with a heavy hit, and then do my damndest to dodge and either let them punch the mat, or miss me and capitalize on the momentary imbalance.

  Rachel hit Taylor’s right forearm with a punch and knocked her defense aside, leaving her guard open. Taylor’s eyes were wide as she stared up at Rachel.

  Rachel screamed and pulled her left arm back for a wicked blow.

  Taylor’s either about to be given a mandated nap, or she’s going to flip this around!

  Both of them were wide open.

  There it is.

  Rachel’s shoulder rotated, and her hand accelerated towards Taylor’s face. Taylor dropped her eyes low, jerked her hips, and threw an awkward, sloppy shovel hook right into the space immediately under Rachel’s ribs and straight into her liver.

  Rachel jerked to a halt mid-swing, her jaw dropped, her eyes bugged out, and a strangled-sounding wheeze came out of her throat. Her upper body went slack, and she toppled forward and to the side like a puppet with its strings cut.

  She was still on the mat, twitching and trying to get her body to respond while Taylor rolled over, got to her hands and knees, and mounted Rachel. She wrapped her legs around Rachel’s abdomen and right arm, hooking one ankle behind her other knee. Then she slid an arm under Rachel’s extended left arm, around her neck, and locked her fingers.

  The positioning is mwuah! Damn, Taylor, that’s about as close to textbook as it gets! Right arm’s pinned, legs can control breathing, and upper body you have her shoulder rotated out of position so she can’t get any leverage, and you can either compress the legs for a choke, or pull the arms for quick nap time.

  Brian sighed, his shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. He knew this fight was over as well as I did.

  Rachel finally sucked in a lungful of air and hacked, then tried her best to twist and struggle.

  “I’ve got you, tap out,” Taylor said, and she sounded tired more than anything.

  “Fuck you!” Rachel spat out, her saliva splattering from her lips onto the mat. It mixed with the blood that was dripping out of Taylor’s mouth and splattering.

  Taylor brought her head down lower to Rachel’s ear, and Rachel tried to headbutt her unsuccessfully.

  Taylor’s voice was a murmur mostly lost in the white noise of the fans blowing in the room. I could make out some of what she was saying.

  “It was all fake,” Rachel growled, her teeth exposed while she tried to wiggle.

  “None of it was fake. I’m the same person you got to know.”

  “Fucking… traitor!” Rachel wheezed as Taylor applied a light amount of force to get the other girl to stop struggling so much.

  “Call me whatever you want if it makes you feel better. I’m your friend, you pig-headed, stubborn, raging bitch! And I always will be, even if we’re on other teams, even if we fight each other.” Her breath hissed in Rachel’s ear.

  I wandered over to Brian while keeping an ear tuned for the whispered war.

  “You’re the only pig here! Joining the heroes!”

  “When are you going to stop lying to yourself and making excuses?”

  “You’re the only liar here.”

  Taylor snorted through her busted nose, whispering: “We both know that’s bullshit! Face the fucking truth for once, Rachel.”

  “What truth? The one you make up?”

  “The truth. The real reason you’re so mad isn’t because I joined the Wards, it’s because I left you alone on the team where I was the only person who really gave a shit about you, Rach. To everyone else, you’re just Bitch, the villain, the Undersider.”

  Rachel jerked twice, hard, but made zero progress in dislodging Taylor. The girl really was as stubborn as a mule.

  “You don’t get to tell me how I feel,” Rachel shot back at Taylor.

  “Okay, but that doesn’t change the facts. I refuse to stop being your friend. Now tap out so I don’t have to sit here and choke you until you black out.”

  Rachel, who up until now had been trying to turn her head to the side to face Taylor, instead looked away from her. She let out a hoarse scream into the mat, the feral cry of a wounded animal. For several long moments, her chest heaved, the rest of her still, then she all but punched the mat with her hand up over her head.

  Taylor let go of her hold around Rachel’s neck and armpit and wobbled up to her feet. Rachel wiped at her face, then rolled over and went to get up. Taylor held a gloved hand out to help her up, but Rachel steadfastly refused to even look at it and hauled herself to her feet. Amy, now wearing her own gymwear, hurried over and held her hand out, pausing before touching Rachel. She asked for permission to treat her wounds, and Rachel growled and tried to swat Amy’s hand away, instead resuming her task of getting her gloves off.

  Taylor accepted, and Amy guided her over to a bench. Taylor grabbed a water bottle on the way, cracked it open, and swished her mouth before spitting it into a trash can. She took a seat on the bench and rested her back against the wall, letting Amy go to work.

  I looked around the room and clapped my hands together loudly. “Alright? Who’s next? That was just the first match!”

  Crystal cracked her knuckles and stepped forward. She had on a BS sleeveless shirt with the armpits cut low, down to the bottom of the ribs. Under that, she was wearing a pair of biking shorts, or similar stretch-fit shorts in bright red with white stripes. I smiled at her, and she returned it.

  “Who are you challenging, Crystal?” I asked her.

  She pointed squarely at Brian, who cocked an eyebrow. Bitch dropped her gloves on the floor, pulled on her jacket, and tossed something over her neck, then made for the door. I was honestly curious if she was going to leave the station entirely or not.

  I looked between Crystal and Brian. “Alright, you two know your ways around a mat and a ring. You agree on your terms and keep it above board, you hear me?” The door slammed shut. Brian nodded, and Crystal kept her grin up.

  I addressed him. “Now, Brian, I expect you not to tolerate any cheating.”

  Crystal gasped and cried out: “Morgan! You know it’s an accident!”

  Brian fished his own MMA gloves out of a back pocket, along with a pair of hand wraps, and got started setting himself up for a spar. I was glad to see he’d come prepared. I idly wondered just how badly he’d wanted to be able to cut loose in our gym. We all had our own methods of dealing with… things. “Oh?” he asked.

  “Crystal and Victoria each sometimes have problems remembering that gravity is a law most of us have to obey.” I snickered, then stuck the tip of my tongue out at her for a moment. “She can get a bit floaty when distracted, or really in the swing of things.”

  An honest smile broke Brian’s face, and I was reminded of how handsome he was when he wasn’t locked into some kind of forever-taciturn leader role. “That’s okay, I won’t hold it against her. Might have to dock some points off the scorecards for it, though.” He glanced over at Lisa, who still had the lingering remains of her earlier scowl on her face. “Bookie, will you be keeping scoring honest for the two of us this round?”

  Lisa straightened up, and her usual look snapped into position on her face. Always snickering at some joke the rest of us mere mortals weren’t privy to. I knew it for what it was, though. “Yeah,” she replied to Brian. “Nothing is going to escape my notice, and I’ll be keeping track of every slip-up!”

  “Boo, biased! We demand an independent scorekeeper!” Amy called out.

  They were getting set up for the next spar, and I made my way to the door. Vanessa was loitering near it, leaning her tall frame against the door. When I opened it, she looked over at me with half-lidded eyes. “Leaving so soon? I didn’t get my match.”

  Is this bitch for real right now?

  I looked over and up at her. She had a coy little grin on her face. “Were you really wanting to spar with me?” I asked her. “Or just playing a game?”

  Vanessa put a good amount of time in at the gym. One might go so far as to call her a gym bunny. But she only ever showed up to sparring to fiddle around on equipment, doing low-intensity stuff and providing a background track of bored-sounding sighs and huffs while the rest of us trained.

  She pursed her lips. “Uh-huh. Figured it could be fun, if you were willing to do some full-contact sparring. My former…team didn’t do the tap-tap stuff that seems so popular around these parts.”

  I frowned at her, and she stared at me, her arctic blue eyes studying my face. I didn’t know what she was capable of. She normally fought with a shield and sword, and since her sister died, she’d been fighting with her sister’s spear one-handed, and using her shield in the other. I tried to think back. I hadn’t seen her fight a ton, and the times I had, there was usually a bunch of other crazy shit going on that was at the forefront of my attention. My overall impression had been… that she knew what she was doing with martial weapons.

  “Hand to hand, or with training weapons?” I asked her after thinking about it for a moment.

  “What are you better with?” She asked, her voice a purr.

  For the love of…

  “Hand to hand. I’m decent with batons, tonfa, and escrima sticks, but not nearly to the extent that I am with my hands,” I replied flatly.

  “That’s what I thought. After all, that’s what Phoenix Strike always used. Fists and feet.”

  Trying to get a rise out of me, like always.

  “Fine, I’ll spar you, full contact, if that’s what you want. But I don’t want to hear any whining or complaining if you lose,” I told her.

  She turned and glanced around the room. “We might need a bigger space to really cut loose than this. It’s awfully cramped.”

  “Vanessa, I am not sparring you while you’re twelve feet tall, unless I’m a heck of a lot bluer than I am currently.”

  She looked back over to me, her smirk back on her lips once again. “I didn’t say anything about using powers. I thought you were one of those high-mobility fighters? There’s hardly enough room in here to do larger moves.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, that’s true. We can discuss location after, but I need to handle something at the moment.”

  “Mmhmm,” came her response, and she turned back to watch Crystal and Brian.

  I pulled the door open and walked out. There was a low-grade cacophony coming from multiple entertainment systems blasting quite loud game soundtracks, and people seemed to be having a good time playing Vee two across several matches simultaneously.

  I saw Pawn sitting inconspicuously in the kitchen, intermittently snacking on something. He was also positioned in a way to keep an eye on every one of our guests. I walked over and asked him softly: “Where did Rachel go?”

  He didn’t glance up, but asked: “Who?”

  “Bitch. The dog girl, fur around the collar of her jacket.”

  He dipped his head a fraction of an inch. “Fire escape to the roof of the apparatus bay.”

  “Thanks,” I said and headed towards it.

  Apparatus bay. I know it’s technically the right term, but why not just call it a garage? And what is Rachel doing on the roof?

  I pushed open the door, leaving the echoes of racket behind, and stepped out to the clear skies, warm breeze, and the sky full of orange hues. Rachel was sitting on the far side of the roof, up on the low wall around the edges, with her feet dangling off the other side. I made my way over to her.

  I wasn’t trying to be especially stealthy, but I’d left my shoes on the mats back in the gym and was walking barefoot across the hard surface of the roof. I got within several feet of her, and she grunted. “Go away.”

  “Nah,” I said, and I hopped up, landing on the ledge next to her lightly. Then I squatted and took a seat next to her uncomfortably close, our thighs nearly touching.

  Rachel jerked her head to the side, looking down to where we were nearly touching, then up at my face. I smiled at her while keeping my lips closed. She looked like she didn’t want me next to her, or at least, that close to her, but she also looked conflicted, too. Like she didn’t want to cede to the invasion of her space.

  “You’re weird,” she said at last, then went back to staring out at the city.

  “And you’re rude. But I don’t think either of us cares about either of those things right at the moment.”

  She grunted again. “Manners are stupid. Just more lies between people.”

  I rocked my head from side to side, thinking that over. I didn’t know much about Bitch. I’d read her file. Or at least, the file for Hellhound. She had murder charges. A dead foster parent, ripped to pieces. I’d heard that the foster system was a real crapshoot. Most foster parents were strictly acceptable. Some were terrible. A few were good, or so I’d been told. It might explain a few things.

  But not everything. Rachel was a bit of an enigma to me. There were times when she seemed uncharacteristically mad about something or another, and then other times you’d expect her to be mad about something, and she didn’t seemingly give a shit. When she made eye contact with me, and usually tended to hold it longer than it would be considered polite, I saw a mind behind those eyes. I wasn’t sure if I would call the impression she left me with intelligent, but she certainly wasn’t stupid, either.

  She didn’t always seem rational, but she wasn’t random or gave me that slightly off feeling.

  “Can I touch you?” I asked her.

  She looked back over at me like I was stupid. “Why?” She demanded.

  I shrugged. “Because I want to touch you? It would be rude and a bit improper for me to just do it without asking. It’s not like I know you particularly well.”

  “No,” she said without much of a delay.

  “Hmm. Please? What if I offered you something in return?”

  She squinted at me, her dark brown eyes staring daggers at me, and her upper lip curled slightly, not enough to show her teeth.

  “Fine,” she snapped, then turned away. I put my arm around her back and held her other shoulder. It was hard to tell with the baggy and poor-fitting clothing she always wore, but she was, as I’d expected, solid.

  “What am I getting out of this?” She asked, voice gruff but not quite as outright hostile.

  “What do you want?”

  “Dog food.”

  I blinked my eyes and looked over at her, but she didn’t turn her head. “You… eat dog food?” I asked her slowly.

  “No, stupid! It’s for dogs!”

  “How much do you need? Let’s say, per week?”

  She thought for a moment. “Six bags a week right now.”

  Six bags? That’s not super useful for me.

  “Can you be a bit more specific? What size bags, do you know how many pounds?”

  “I don’t know, big ones!” The irritation was grinding in her voice again.

  “Okay, uh… how about you like, hold your hands out and show me about what size? You know, wide, deep, and tall?”

  She sighed loudly, but did what I asked.

  Oh.

  “And that thick, you’re sure?” She held her hands out again and nodded.

  “Hmm, let me think.” I did some mental math.

  Usually two to two and a half thousand pounds per pallet, fifty pounds per bag, that’s uh… 40 or 50 bags. At six bags a week, that’s… two months of food. I can get the straps rigged so they’re double-stacked without putting the weight on the bottom pallet, so that’s four months…

  “Well? Not hard to say yes or no,” she demanded.

  “No, I don’t have dog food. And there isn’t any that FEMA sent in. Pets, sadly, aren’t really considered essential in disaster relief, so they’d have to be fed people's food from relief supplies.”

  She growled again. “That shit either gives them the shits or rots their teeth! I ain’t feeding them that!”

  “Rachel, I didn’t tell you to feed them that. I said we don’t have any, and why. I was thinking how I would get you some here in a good quantity. I can order some pallets. Each pallet should feed your dogs at that rate for two months. I can probably get you two pallets pretty easily. How urgent is it?”

  She finally turned her head to look at me. “I got enough for about a month.”

  I nodded, not breaking eye contact with her. “I’ll get you four months within the next week, then. We go for supply runs at least once a week. Will that be fine?”

  “What’s the trick!?” Her teeth came out.

  “No trick, but I do want payment for it,” I told her, keeping my voice smooth and level.

  “Psh. I got money. We robbed a bank. Boss pays too.” I shook my head in response to her. She frowned.

  “I don’t want money. I want a favor. A very small one.”

  Her eyelids narrowed further. “I’m no fucking rat,” she said between clenched teeth.

  I laughed, loudly and freely. That was genuinely funny to me, that she thought I was trying to plant a narc in the Undersiders. And if I were, that it’d be her, of all people.

  The only person on the team who actually gave a shit about Rachel. Hmm. Interesting take, Taylor. I think I could see it, though. She’s about as pleasant as curdled milk and as volatile as a wet cat.

  “I won’t!” She said, and I pulled her shoulder in, shoving her into a side-hug that she was very much not participating in.

  “That’s not it at all, Rachel. What I want you to do is easy. Just forgive Taylor.”

  Rachel drew her head back. “What’s she got to do with paying for dog food?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Rachel, I don’t care about a few thousand bucks if it’s going to a good cause. I think feeding your dogs is a good cause. Just because the government isn’t willing to pay for their food, doesn’t mean I want to see them starving or suffering. Not to mention, having starving animals is dangerous for people.”

  She was studying my face again intently and not saying anything. “It’s very simple. I consider Taylor a friend. You being upset with her hurt her feelings more than I think you punching her in the face several times did. I don’t want to see her suffer, either. Or you, for that matter. So, just find it in yourself to forgive her for leaving the Undersiders. She cares about you, Rachel. You and the others, too. Leaving wasn’t easy for her.”

  “Then why’d she do it?” Rachel snarled at me, spit flying from her lips. “If she cared so much, she would have made right with us, not joined… you!” She jerked her shoulder and shrugged, popping my hand off her back.

  I folded my hands in my lap and looked up at the sky. Thought about what my motivations would be if I were in Taylor’s shoes. Taylor was scary smart. She must have known that long-term, the kind of villainy she and the other Undersiders had been doing the past couple of months wouldn’t be viable. She’d be forced to relocate out of the Bay, or get caught and arrested, or worse. I thought about our shared desire to distance ourselves from our families to protect them. That felt like a stronger element.

  I cleared my throat, still looking up at the multi-colored hues of the sunset over the city. “Her dad means the world to her. He’s the only close family she has. I think… and this is a bit of a guess, but I think that she figured she was going to get caught eventually and probably arrested. She probably didn’t want to think about the way her father would see her, in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.”

  I dropped my head back down and turned to look at Rachel, but she had her head turned away from me.

  “Can you do that for me, Rachel?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I thought about the last time I’d seen the two together, not fighting. It wasn’t hard to recall. It was a memory that was etched straight into my memory, clear as can be. Rachel holding Taylor by the scruff of her neck, and Taylor being as limp as a ragdoll or corpse. And it would have been right before Rachel found out that Taylor had been trying to be a double-agent in the Undersiders all along.

  Yeah. I’d be fucked up about that too. She would have drowned in the water, being paralyzed. Rachel is the only reason she’s probably even alive right now. And then finding out she was a traitor right after you’d saved her.

  I lowered my voice. “Listen, I know–I have a very good idea just how pissed you are at her. How things went, with Leviathan and everything. How you saved her.”

  Rachel grunted.

  “And I know finding out about her from Armsmaster, who was trying to find anything to use to hurt other people at the time. Feeling like you’d just been stabbed square in the back.”

  Another grunt.

  I paused.

  “But I also know you care about her, too.”

  “You don’t know shit about anything.” There was malice in her voice, but it was a faint echo from before.

  “Maybe not. Maybe you’re right. But I’m pretty sure that you dragging her around so she didn’t drown until you could find help for her means that you did care for her.”

  “Just a teammate,” Rachel said, her voice thick and phlegmy.

  “You can tell yourself that, that you’d do the same for any of your other teammates, but Rachel, I don’t think that’s true. And I don’t think Taylor thinks that’s true, either.”

  Rachel whipped around, her eyes and cheeks wet, and headbutted me in the forehead. Not super hard, but fairly solidly. I took it. She pushed against me. I held my ground. She was just lashing out instead of doing the actually hard part of connecting the dots inside.

  Through clenched teeth, she hissed: “Why do I have to be the one to apologize to her, if she’s the one who fucked me?”

  Yikes, that phrasing. Let’s… put that aside. Focus, Morgan!

  I pushed back against her, not budging an inch, and told her in that same low, steady tone, “ Because she already forgave you, Rachel. Right to your face.”

  “She didn’t say shit to me!”

  I reached up and took Rachel’s head in my hands. She didn’t try and stop me. I pushed her back, just slightly, so she wasn’t trying to drill a hole in my forehead anymore, then I pulled her back in so we were touching instead of grinding, and dropped my hands.

  “You silly, stupid girl. She didn’t tell you with words. She told you with her actions when she let you walk in and punch her square in the face.”

  A low growl emanated from Rachel, and she clenched her fists at her sides. I’d let her hit me if that’s what she really wanted. “She didn’t let me do shit, I jumped her.”

  I stared Rachel dead in the eyes. “The bug girl, who knows where every single person around her is, thousands and thousands of people, all at the same time, didn’t immediately recognize her friend walking up in the middle of her base and home, and then stood there and let you punch her.”

  Rachel blinked a number of tears from her eyes.

  “Think, Rachel. I know you’re smarter than you like to let on. Does that sound like something Skitter would do?”

  Rachel broke eye contact first, pulled her head back, and wiped her face on her jacket sleeves. Snorting and snuffling, she spat over the side of the building.

  I really hope nobody is down there…

  “You’re stupid. She’s stupid. You’re all stupid,” Rachel said after several minutes of silence.

  “Maybe. I’m sure we’re all dumb about some things, some times.”

  “...No.”

  “Hm?” I asked. “No, what?”

  Rachel sighed loudly and looked at me like I was dumb once again. “No, that ain’t something Skitter would let someone do on accident.”

  I did my damn best not to smile. No need to rub salt in the wound. So I nodded instead.

  Stubborn as fuck is an understatement. Greedy. Rude. Questionable hygiene. But not stupid. And not evil or deranged.

  “So you’ll do it?” I asked gently, like I was trying to herd a water buffalo.

  She grunted. “Whatever. Get me my dog food.”

  I’d call that a victory in my book.

  Rachel rolled her shoulders and rubbed the heel of her palm into her thigh. I imagined it probably ached like hell right about now.

  “Why?” She asked after a beat. She waved a hand in the direction of my torso and face. “Why do you look like that?”

  Not often I hear her asking questions unprompted.

  “Like a person! With… your tits sticking out and always wearing hardly any clothing!”

  I put my hands on my bare thighs and pressed the sides of my boobs together with my arms. I looked down at the jut of my chest, then over at Rachel with a sly grin. “I mean, they are pretty great tits, if I don’t say so myself.” Rachel squinted at me, and I laughed loudly. That only made her squint harder.

  Chuckling, I did my best to tamp down my mirth. Taking a deep breath, I exhaled a silent sigh and brought one hand up to rub at the back of my neck.

  “This is… how I used to be. How I looked before I changed. Mostly.”

  “I know that isn’t what you really look like,” Rachel cut in.

  I quirked a brow at her. “Lisa told you that?”

  Rachel drew her head back. “What? No. I can just tell. That the other you is the real you.”

  I tongued my cheek and thought about that for a moment. While I did that, I reached up and picked a piece of plastic from Rachel’s hair, having caught a reflection of it when it flapped in the light breeze. A piece of cigarette plastic wrap, one of the tear-off strips. Probably stuck to her hair with static. I played with the thin strips in my fingers while I thought.

  “...As I was saying, this is what I used to look like. From before. I was very vain. I worked hard, trained hard to build up my strength and shape my body how I liked. I used to wear very sporty clothing like this, because I spent a lot of time in the gym, and because I just… Liked looking at myself in reflections, and seeing the way other people looked at me.”

  Rachel went to speak, and I glanced up at her and held up an index finger. She closed her mouth.

  “One at a time. You asked why I look like this, and why I stick my tits out and wear small clothing. That’s the answer about the clothing. I was prideful of the way I looked. I wanted to be seen as hot as I thought I was at the time, and show off my figure and muscles. Now I’ll answer the other thing.”

  Rachel nodded slowly.

  “When I first changed, I hated how I looked, how I felt. The proportions were all wrong, I didn’t fit in normal spaces, I have tentacles, for fuck’s sake. A lot of them.” I glanced back at Rachel. Pinching the strip of cellophane between my thumbs and forefingers, I pulled it taut, brought it to my lips, and blew on it like a crude, squeaky wind instrument. Rachel made a face, and I grinned at her.

  “Things changed over time. Reversed. Now, it’s like you say. This isn’t me anymore. I’m something else. Now I’m uncomfortable like this. I can’t hardly hear, I can’t hardly see. I’m weak; suddenly everything is too big, and people can hurt me very easily. When I am Apex, I am simply more in virtually every way.”

  “So why, then? If you’re strong and you like it more, why this?”

  I sighed. “Because people ask me to be. Some things I just can’t do as me-me. I can’t get in a car or a small room. Lots of little things like that add up. But the biggest reason?”

  I glanced around to check if anyone was watching, then curled my index finger at Rachel to beckon her closer. She leaned in with her head turned so I could whisper to her. I tucked her shaggy hair up and over her ear, exposing it.

  I whispered to her: “So I can do stuff like this.”

  Then I darted just a few inches to the side and smooched her on the cheek.

  She jerked upright and went stiff. I dropped my hands down to the wall and pushed up and off it, hopping back onto the roof and stepping back as she swung an arm at me like an oaf. I don’t think she was seriously trying to hit me.

  I cackled at her and flashed my teeth. Her ugly Bitch scowl was back, and she wiped at her cheek with the cuff of her jacket.

  “You–! Stupid bitch!” Rachel cursed at me, and I couldn’t help myself, still laughing. The look on her face was too good. And she’d walked straight into that one.

  “I’m not bitch, you’re bitch!” I teased her with a shimmy, shake, and a pointing fingertip.

  She just growled in response.

  “Now, don’t be a sore loser because I baited you into a smooch! Heh heh! It could have been much worse; I could have gotten you with the tongue in the ear!”

  I stepped closer and held my hand out her her. “Come on, they’re waiting for us inside. I need to kick someone’s ass, too. You’ll enjoy it, and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about fighting if you pay attention.”

  She grumbled and grouched, ignored my hand, and turned herself around, hopping off the wall with a loud clomp of her workboots.

  As we walked back towards the entrance to the second floor, Rachel said, “I don’t need to learn how to fight better. I got powers and dogs for that.”

  I hummed a note. “Mm. Not sure about that. What happens if you get into a fight when you don’t have your dogs, and your brawling isn’t going to cut it?”

  I pulled the door open and held it for her. “Besides, are you telling me that Bitch wouldn’t take what amounts to a free power-up to make her more dangerous to her enemies? All for the cost of some sweat, some blood, and some time?”

  Her head and eyes tracked me as she walked past me, but she didn’t say anything one way or another.

  Tally that as another win for the evening.