Director Piggot, her retinue of assistants and lawyers, Weld, Skitter, and I all made our way down the steps of the Capitol Building. The riotous strobing of camera flashes, combined with the high-intensity directed lights of television cameras, felt like a dozen different icepick lobotomies being performed on my brain simultaneously. It was really quite painful for me.

  But I wasn’t going to show weakness on stage before the entire world. I was reduced to navigating using only one of the eyes on the underside of my head, one that was mostly shadowed from the sensory overload. One Apex eye was all I needed.

  Behind barricades set up by the DC Metro police, and manned by both the DCMPD and the local PRT forces, was a deep layer of press personalities from various outlets. Local news, national news, and plenty of international journalists alike, reporting on the events of the day as our group made our way to the waiting motorcade.

  Piggot and her group were wearing fancier versions of the stuff that they typically wore, which was more formal officewear. Taylor was in her new suit, and damn, if it didn’t look good. The iridescence of the hard armor was spectacular in broad daylight. Weld was wearing a suit, which he filled out exceedingly well. Meanwhile, I was strutting my stuff in my typical bare-assed manner. I’d debated putting a BS hat on or another accessory, but I’m pretty sure the Director would have ordered me drawn and quartered by tanks if I had.

  Now that we were officially done with what was an insanely long and grueling day, I could cut loose just a little. So I unfolded my wings. Normally, when they were tucked along my back, they were folded up; otherwise, they were just too big to maneuver around with. I broke out the technique I’d spent entirely too much time practicing once we’d set a date for this thing. I rotated my wings so they were mostly vertically aligned from the leading edge to the trailing edge, and angled them up like the folded wings of a jet on an aircraft carrier. Then I started color-shifting the membranes until they were slowly and constantly shifting with a full rainbow spectrum. Changing the colors wasn’t hard at all for me. Getting the colors to follow the rainbow spectrum so I looked like a big pride flag was the tricky part.

  Behind the press, there was a second cordon line, with civilians behind it. They appreciated my ever-so-subtle display, screaming and cheering like it was some concert venue instead of a stuffy old building in a city of stuffy old people.

  “Having fun?” Taylor asked me from just ahead of me and to the side, without turning to face me. Instead, she was doing the same thing Weld was, which was the smile and wave for the crowd maneuver, except only waving in her instance.

  “Need to have a little fun after today. How about you? Are you ready?” I asked her.

  “Affirmative. Assets are in place,” she replied cryptically.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Weld asked around his toothy, metal smile.

  “Never had a bad one, Weld. Just you wait,” I boasted.

  Despite it being nearly midnight, the city was pretty bright, between the light pollution from the metropolitan area itself and the near-radioactive glow of all the press. Still, nobody was the wiser to what we were scheming.

  Police and PRT officers parted from in front of our motorcade, and the doors were opened to admit Piggot and her people.

  “Send it,” I stage-whispered to Skitter.

  Even with my vision still being almost entirely blitzed, I couldn’t miss the display. I was sure that nobody missed it. Starting a dozen feet above the motorcade, and extending up fifty or more feet, tens of thousands of fireflies lit up to display messages, like a giant, invisible billboard. The same image that could be seen all over the place now. The outline of Brockton Bay’s skyline, as seen from the water, a dead Leviathan, and two words: BROCKTON STRONG.

  If the crowd was cheering before, they went berserk upon seeing the display , bouncing, screaming, and holding their smartphones up. While Skitter and Weld did one last round of waves and climbed in, I turned around, stood up, and threw five victory V’s. Nobody was going to have a hard time seeing me fully upright. When the motorcade started to move, I dropped back down and fell in behind the big armored SUV once they got underway, and there were police and PRT cruisers behind me.

  Originally, they’d gotten a semi flatbed for me to ride in style on, but the trip from the hearings today to the hotel was only a little over four miles, so I told them I’d just prefer to avoid the logistics and I’d just walk it. Walking at a moderate clip, I was able to keep up with the motorcade perfectly fine and wasn’t going to risk damaging infrastructure.

  Today had been a whole ordeal. We’d left Brockton Bay via helicopter at 3 AM, flown to Boston, then took a PRT jet from Boston to DC, and another helicopter ride from the airport to our hotel. Arrival at the Congress Building at eight, where we had to get in and get all mic'd up. I got my own XL lectern set in front of me, where I was lying on the floor, because I’m just fancy like that.

  From there, it had been eight hours of public hearings and testimony, with a brief break for lunch. We were addressing a special joint session of Congress to answer questions and deliver statements to the government, the people of the U.S., and all the watchers from around the world. The primary discussion was on the events of the Endbringer attack and the slaying of Leviathan, the state of the city, and ongoing relief and restoration efforts. Additionally, we talked about our proposal for reviving the MIRIS initiative, with both Chief Director Costa-Brown, Director Piggot, and me making the case.

  That was the first session. We had a second brief meal break, and then we moved into the second session, which was a closed-door joint session with both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee members in full attendance. Press and guests were not allowed there, due to a number of sensitive matters, most of which I only vaguely understood. In the first session, the Chief Director and Director Piggot did most of the speaking, and questions were directed at us capes, also. In the second session, it was largely just the directors and their legal teams talking.

  There had been some bandstanding and some borderline hostile questioning in both sessions, but for the most part, the different parties behaved themselves. The nature of this matter, being largely grounded in the wake of an Endbringer disaster, kept things mostly civil. It was political suicide to badmouth victims of Endbringer attacks, much less the people responding and providing relief efforts to those attacks.

  That was our political capital, our giant lever we had to jostle and corral such a diverse group of people, all with their own very personal, and often selfish reasons for sticking their hands in the taxpayer’s cookie jar. Reviving MIRIS was not a small ask. The PRT was already one of the most-funded parts of the Federal Government, and that was with MIRIS being two dudes in a closet somewhere.

  We were asking for billions of dollars per year to be spent on supporting parahumans that might not directly have any easily quantifiable return on that investment. The feeling up until very recently was that the PRT got a lot of money, and they did an acceptable to good job handling parahumans and parahuman affairs. But the solution, as it was until now, was entirely hammers and nails. The PRT was a hammer and the villains were nails. Nails popped up naturally, all the time, at random, and at an increasing rate over time. When they did, you nailed them back into place. Maybe you used a smaller hammer, but it was a hammer, nonetheless.

  The entire point of the MIRIS initiative was that it was supposed to be an additional leg on the table to balance things out. The PRT was designed around that leg being there, but penny-pinching, pork spending, greed, corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse had happened. It withered on the vine, while the rest of the organization bloomed. There was supposed to be a third way.

  So we made our case. There were many parahumans out there, entirely too many, who were railroaded into one of two paths, and both of them had a whole lot of expectations and strings attached. White hat or black hat. Rogues, or parahumans who didn’t participate in traditional ‘parahuman affairs’ and instead only operated commercially, weren’t well supported, and hadn’t been for twenty years. Corporate capes also existed outside this framework. There were ‘good guy’ cape corporations, and even ‘bad guy’ cape corporations, funny enough. They, along with Rogues, existed in a gray area legally.

  What we wanted to do was carve out, yes, with billions of dollars, a third option for people. People could trigger with powers, and instead choose to live the kind of life they wanted to live, and not have to do it by expressly shunning all other capes. They could live ordinary, boring, perfectly mundane lives if they wished. The third way would provide them with much-needed healthcare, especially mental healthcare, and also create educational and work opportunities for them to be so-called ‘productive members of society.’ Those were the easy cases.

  The mid-level cases, in terms of challenge, were the people who needed some level of support. Parahuman discrimination was a very real thing and existed in all manner of shapes and sizes. From refusing to hire people with parahuman abilities because of fears of devaluing unpowered laborers, to people with unusual or radically different appearances. Would Gregor the Snail be able to work in a retail store? Highly unlikely. Of course, they’re not just going to come out and tell him that he’s too grotesquely ugly to get the job; he just won’t get it for any one of a myriad of other reasons. So financial assistance, nutritional assistance, and housing assistance would be needed.

  The final use case for this third way, and perhaps the most challenging, would be for cases of transition in parahuman status and legality. People who were heroes usually didn’t face too many problems with retiring unless their identity had been compromised, but there were still issues there. Retirement for villains? Entirely different story. You didn’t just decide to hang up your cloak and daggers one day and dust your hands. Charges stuck, and people would be looking for you for the rest of your life. Many parahumans fled their home nations for this reason. We’d be looking at ways to both allow for and assist people in stepping away from villainy without turning traitor. Framing it as ‘retiring’ was a convenient little lie we could collectively tell ourselves as an acceptable reason to leave a lifestyle behind.

  Reactions had been mixed-leaning-positive to the proposal, and then we broke out our secret weapons. First, we had the arsenal of PRT thinkers batch up projections as to what the actual effects would be in terms of lowering crime rates nationwide. The numbers were good–very good. Then we’d had one of our PR heavyweights step forward: Skitter. We’d decided to include her last minute for this trip, and this was one of the reasons. Co-leader and co-founder of Brockton Strong, now a proud Ward, and a former supervillain with an incredible, if short, reign of terror for her local PRT division. Here in the flesh, telling politicians what a difference it could have made with her life, and the lives of many people on the wrong side of the law.

  I didn’t know how she did it, but the girl with all the social anxiety was as cool and collected as can be throughout. Even Weld had more visible nerves, and he was a natural at PR. I, of course, also threw my full backing and support in, for what it was worth. I made the argument to simply look at what we were accomplishing right now, with Brockton Strong, and all the positive effects we’d been making–by being inclusive, not exclusive.

  When we’d finally wrapped for the day, it was just after 11 PM. Weld was a noctis cape; I was sort of one myself, and I’m pretty sure Taylor was running on fumes. I didn’t know what Director Piggot ran on. If you listened to the Wards, it was a combination of hate, vitriol, and paperwork. I half suspected that she just munched on those gas station alertness tablets like candy.

  I had positive feelings about things, but I was also trying very hard to temper my expectations. Our group had arrived at the hotel. Our route over to the hotel had been rather scenic, at least. A good chunk of it was alongside the Potomac River. The weather was nice out, and it was Friday night, so it was fairly quiet, but not nearly as quiet as it might have been on a weeknight. The rest of the group got out and headed into the hotel, which had a solid security detail present for us, once again, a mix of PRT and metro police.

  I went around the block to a relatively clear section of street and took off airborne, did my little disappearing act, and silently glided back around onto the hotel’s roof. The hotel had been nice enough to set up one of those big tents you’d use for catering, and I slipped in and changed over to Morgan. I’d be sleeping up here overnight, but I wanted to sit, eat, and unwind with everyone. I threw on my usual outfit–I’d packed light–and headed downstairs. We had an extremely fancy suite, and I was honestly surprised that Piggot was okay with swiping the company card for such luxury. She’d explained it was for security reasons, and not for the luxury, which was only an added benefit. We’d had a brief amount of time to eat and familiarize ourselves with it when we’d landed early this morning.

  Popping down to our floor, I had to pass PRT officers on the rooftop access, in the stairwell, and then again on our floor. Each entrance and exit on our floor was guarded, with only us and pre-authorized personnel allowed. I had a badge, but they knew my face. I fished out my hotel card, stuck it in the door, and let myself in.

  The Director, Taylor, and Weld were sitting in the front room and looking over menus. It was late, but they had been forced to eat light throughout the day by virtue of the time constraints. Taylor had her mask off, and Weld’s tie was loosened around his neck. Piggot snapped her menu closed and set it over her lap, waiting for the others to decide. Her steely gray eyes locked onto mine.

  Uhoh.

  “What did I say about displays and messaging needing approvals by PRT Brand and Marketing?” She asked me, her tone chilly.

  I squared my shoulders and stood up ever so slightly straighter. “I considered them carefully,” I said, and I saw Piggot’s eyes narrow. “ And I texted Mr. Chambers, who approved.”

  “And it never occurred to you to inform me?” Piggot asked. Weld set his menu down on the coffee table and then appeared to be doing his very best to shrink into the coated, reinforced chair the hotel had provided for him.

  I grinned at the Director. “I thought it might be nice to be surprised by something that wasn’t a horrible mess, disaster, or bad news, Director.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Coming from you, I might have expected as much. Why have I not heard from Director Chambers?”

  My grin deepened. “He was also a fan of the idea of it being a surprise.”

  Piggot maintained her squint, and her index finger tapped on her thigh.

  “Besides, Director, I had a very specific reason for our surprise, beyond the prank factor,” I explained.

  “I do not like pranks, Apex, but do share this bit of insight with me.”

  I held my arms wide and looked around. “Think of the big picture, Director. Even if everyone is paying attention to our city right now, only a certain percentage of the population is ever going to actually sit and watch something like a congressional testimony. The news will only cover little snippets and soundbites for whatever package they want to push to the masses. But Skitter and I were able to add a little flair and entertainment value that’s going to generate a large amount of buzz.”

  Taylor looked up and gave me a dead-eyed stare. I held my palms up toward her. “Sorry, sorry! I totally didn’t mean to make a bug pun.” She dropped her head back to look at her menu.

  I looked back at the Director, dropping my hands entirely. “Social media will be exploding over thirty seconds of what amounts to harmless fun. That in turn creates pressure that will work in our favor. The people here,” I gestured out the window towards the Capitol, “care a lot about riding free waves and getting popularity that doesn’t cost them anything.”

  I tongued my cheek while Piggot’s eyes stayed locked on to me. “Did you see the number of Brockton Strong pins today on the representatives? I dare say we’re the second most popular pin, second only to the American Flag pin.”

  Piggot straightened up in her chair and leaned back from where she’d been sitting forward to address me in a more aggressive posture. She leveled a finger at me, and her voice was still firm, but not quite as icy: “I care more that you’re thinking these things through and doing things to support your image and agendas than I do the display itself.”

  “They’re not my agendas, Director, they’re our agendas,” I gently admonished her.

  “Don’t push your luck, Apex. It’s been a long day,” was her response, and it carried finality with it to end the subject.

  She’s really not that hard to get along with. You just have to operate under the assumption that your best-case scenario is detente.

  Taylor sighed and closed her menu, offering to take Piggot’s menu, and then set the two on top of Weld’s on the table.

  “What’s everyone getting?” I asked.

  “A cheeseburger is about the only thing on the menu I can stomach paying the price for,” Director Piggot said. “These prices are criminal,” she grumbled.

  “I’m going to have one of those, too. Bacon cheeseburger, please.” Taylor said to Director Piggot, who had her phone out and was calling in the order to the kitchen downstairs.

  Damn, Taylor. Normally, she eats like she’s stressing over her weight. Guess Amy wasn’t joking when she said temporarily increased appetite yesterday morning.

  “Double espresso for me,” Weld said with a smile.

  “Does the caffeine do anything for you?” I asked him. He didn’t really eat and only drank for the sensation. He’d told me that he couldn’t really taste anything but really outrageously intense flavors, way too strong coffee being one of them.

  “Oh, no, at least, not that I can tell. Tastes nice, though!”

  He beamed a shiny smile, and I returned it.

  He’s always such a cheerful, positive guy, just like Carlo–

  My smile must have fallen off my face, because he tilted his head and asked me, “What’s wrong, Apex?”

  I rubbed my shoulder and rotated my arm around while I was at it. “Sorry, nothing you said. I just realized that you remind me an awful lot of Aegis. He was always a very optimistic and generally cheerful guy.”

  He nodded slowly to me. “Nobody has had anything but great things to say about him. I hope I can fill his shoes in a way that he’d have been happy with.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute, Weld.”

  His smile came back out again. It was a great smile. “I can see why you two got along quite well. You’ve got a lot of positive energy yourself.”

  “Pft! As if!” I laughed, which got me a glare from both Taylor and the Director.

  “Alright. I’m going to go see if they have any slop buckets downstairs in the kitchen. Otherwise, I’ll just put off eating until we get back tomorrow.”

  “I’m pretty sure most people don’t keep slop buckets in their fancy restaurants,” Taylor came in with the logic and reason.

  “Shush, you. I’ll be right back. Don’t break out the Uno deck without me!” I waved and darted out, heading downstairs to the ground floor so I could try and find my way to the kitchen.

  A few questions directed at the staff later, and I had a quick conversation with the kitchen staff that was still on duty at this hour. Turns out they sorta had my new favorite food, but the bones were made for cooking stock in-house, and the waste products had already been taken out for the day.

  Can’t win them all, I suppose.

  I was getting ready to head back upstairs when my work phone rang. I pulled it out and looked at it; it was Taylor.

  I answered with a curious “Hello?”

  “Hey,” she said, her voice quiet. “Can you make a quick detour on your way back?”

  I snickered. “Sure thing, you have a junk food craving, or something?”

  Her reply was serious. “No, it’s probably nothing, but I’d rather have someone check it out and be safe.”

  Business mode. “Of course. Where?”

  “Third floor, end of the hallway, uhhh, to the left of the elevators, then on the right side, last door.”

  “Going.”

  I took the staircase up two flights at a light jog, but otherwise kept as incognito as I could. I walked down the directed hallway and came to the doorway she’d specified. Looked like a janitorial closet. I tried the door, but it was locked.

  “Any chance you can get the door lock?” I asked Taylor quietly through the phone.

  “I’ve been working on it, but not really having any luck so far,” she replied quickly.

  “How important is it for me to check out this room?”

  “Potentially very important, I think someone’s locked in there,” she said.

  I tapped on the door. No response.

  Fuck. Just another day in the life.

  “Alright, well, I’m going to open it the expensive way, then. Let’s hope Piggot doesn’t literally murder me for damages. One sec, putting the phone in my pocket.”

  I tapped my power, put my left hand on the handle, my right on the frame, and pulled with increasing force. My muscles bulged and slithered around under the surface of my skin as I strained. I had one foot partially braced against the bottom of the doorframe, so if it did pop loose, I wouldn’t wind up bashing myself unconscious by accident.

  There was a series of ticking sounds from the metal around the door handle, then a metallic ping, and the door popped open half an inch.

  I pulled my phone back out. “Peeking in,” I relayed.

  It was dark inside. I flicked the switch on and saw several cockroaches turn in place from their position on top of a mostly-nude man resting against the wall. The roaches hopped off as I approached and moved to the side. I felt for a pulse, even though my eyes were already telling me I was wasting my time.

  He was dead, and his body was still at body temperature. I glanced around. No sign of his clothing, or any struggle. It was like he came in here in his boxers, sat down, and died. I was relatively certain by the way his head was resting on his chest at a slightly off angle that his neck had been snapped.

  “Skitter?” I asked the phone.

  “Yes?” Her voice was tight.

  “I’m pretty sure I hear some cicadas outside right now.”

  “Are you sur–”

  “Yes. I’m sure I hear them, and it’s definitely cicadas.”

  The line went dead, and I stuck my phone in my pocket.

  Never a fucking dull day, huh?

  I closed the door carefully and headed to the elevators, hitting the call button. There weren’t any PRT officers on this floor. Time for me to make a very casual retreat to our suite, make sure everyone was accounted for and good, then get changed back to Apex.

  Some kind of shit was going on, or about to go down. Chances were extremely high that this was directly related to us, considering the timing.

  We’d done a full security plan and brief on the flight down to DC. Cicada was our codeword for a panic or immediate lockdown situation. Our suite was equipped with a panic room. The protocol was that the Director and her staff go first, Skitter pulls up the rear, and they seal up. Both Weld and I were astonishingly hard to kill; we’d appraise the situation, engage threats as needed, and the Director would contact the local PRT division for immediate support.

  The elevator dinged, and I stepped inside. A member of waitstaff was in there with a trolley and what appeared to be the orders for our room. He looked shockingly familiar. I smiled at him, and he gave me a polite nod. “Going up to eight with the room service order?”

  “Oh, uh, yes?” He gave me a slightly confused look. I chuckled and pulled out my keycard to Suite 801.

  An ‘ah’ look crossed his face, and he nodded more firmly. “Yes, I have the order for you all.” The door closed, and we started moving.

  He doesn’t know who I am or what I look like. He was genuinely confused.

  “Mind if I steal a few fries?” I glanced down at the food. It smelled amazing. I glanced back up at him and winked at him. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  He coughed lightly and cleared his throat. “It’s your room service order.”

  I nabbed a pair of seasoned steakfry wedges and munched on them, licking the Cajun seasoning off my fingertips after I’d scarfed them.

  “Wow, really good. Have you all been busy today? Seems like there’s quite a number of people in town for the weekend.”

  He nodded, “Yeah. Some events this weekend in the city it’s been steady all day.”

  I turned my back to him, keeping myself nice and loose. I didn’t know who, or maybe more importantly, what he was, just that he wasn’t who he was supposed to be. If he were alone, it’d be best to try and take him out before he got access to the room, but I didn’t have enough information to make that call. He could be one of several, or even many, and moving early would tip them off.

  Probably either a Changer or a Stranger. Assuming he’s a parahuman. Possibly, he’s a spook or a foreign agent or something, but if that’s the case, Weld and I will have this handled without an issue.

  The floor dinged, and I stepped out. I waved at the agents standing outside the elevator.

  “Ma’am,” one of them said, then stepped forward to halt the waitstaff and the cart.

  “Need to look over the cart, just a routine inspection,” the officer said. The mirrored, armored plastic of his full-head helmet obscured his identity, and the vocal scrambler masked his voice.

  “Yeah, no problem, of course,” the waitstaff said, and took his hands off the cart, taking a step back.

  One of the officers waved a sensor wand over the cart, and the other had one of those mirror-on-a-stick things to look at the underside of each of the shelves on the cart, and below the bottom.

  “All clear, go right ahead,” the officer said to the waiter.

  I led the way to the suite with the waiter following along behind with the cart. I desperately wanted to signal or inform the officers, but right now, I had to operate under Master/Stranger protocols.

  The PRT had a set of protocols, called Master/Stranger protocols, that existed in the event that any member of a team, from an officer up to a member of the Protetorate, was to either get taken under the influence of a Master-type parahuman, or have their identity stolen by a Stranger-type. The protocols were both extremely strict and extremely specific. And for good reasons. They existed because it’d cost people their lives. All of us had to memorize challenge/response keys on a weekly basis, or even more often, depending on our access levels.

  There was also a whole host of specialized training programs that went along with some of the higher-end positions, mine included. Things from training on how to resist torture and data extraction, to cybernetic enhancement, or being exposed to other mind-altering parahuman effects, to build a tolerance or immunity to certain kinds of influence.

  I’d yet to undergo any of that stuff. I just did my weekly challenge keys and had to know the protocols stone-cold. I wasn’t quite there yet on some of the new stuff that got added with my promotion, but Hannah and I worked on it virtually every night.

  “This is us!” I pulled my keycard out and stuck it in the door, then pushed the door open. Weld was waiting inside. I waved and smiled at him. “You can take it right in, I’ll get the door for you.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Mr. Imposter said, and wheeled the cart into the front room of the suite. I stepped in and let the door close behind us.

  Weld and I stood off to the side casually as he laid the plates out on the coffee table with silverware and everything, and took up the room service menus.

  “Are the other residents here as well? Do I need to bring some takeout trays for them?” The waiter asked when he was done.

  “Oh, yeah, we’re all here. They’re just getting changed for bed in the other room,” Weld said easily.

  The waiter clasped his hands in front of himself and performed a shallow bow. “Excellent. Would it be acceptable if I said a prayer for you all before I leave you?”

  “I’m not really the god-fearing sort of woman myself, but what about you, Weld?” I asked.

  “That would be very nice, please,” Weld replied.

  “Apologies if this is a bit old-school of a verse, I was raised by a very traditional family,” the waiter admitted with a little chuckle.

  “Oh, no problem!” Weld again, with an easy smile.

  The waiter nodded once and cleared his throat.

  “For the Lord emerges from his dwelling place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their wickedness. The earth will reveal the blood shed upon it and will no longer hide its slain. Amen.”

  As the waiter was quoting his scripture, I was filled with a singular thought:

  Oh. This is like, really bad.

  Weld pulled out his wallet and had stepped partially in front of me when he was finishing to ‘tip’ him.

  I saw the waiter fiddle with the sleeve of his jacket, and something dropped into his palm.

  I jolted awake a second or two later, and literally everything hurt, from head to toe. I coughed, a wet, hacking thing, and my mouth flooded with the taste of blood. There was a buzzing shriek in my ears, and it was the only thing I could hear. My vision was extremely blurry, and I was seeing double. What little I could make out, my surroundings seemed like complete carnage.

  My power was wild in my head, and I activated it to revert back. I tried to push for a ‘swift' change, but not one that was ‘shower gore everywhere’ quick. Morgan rapidly ceased to be, and I was coming back up fully operational and ready for whatever. I went to press up on all fours while I was still changing, and two of my legs punched through the floor. I stayed put right where I was while I waited for the changes to complete and my senses to be restored. I didn’t want to wind up destroying the place.

  My hearing came back, followed almost immediately by my vision.

  My earlier impression of carnage was pretty much spot on. Chunks of both the floor and the ceiling of the room we’d been in were gone, the ceiling open to the sky. The walls were partially blown out in the immediate space of the front room of the suite, and all of the rest of the walls looked like swiss cheese. Dust and smoke hung thick in the air. Alarms inside the building were blaring, and sirens from outside the building were rapidly approaching. I coughed and swallowed a bit of blood that had gotten caught in my throat.

  “Weld?” I coughed again, nailing the volume I wanted on the second try, “Weld!”

  “In here! I need help!” His voice was coming from my right. I moved very carefully, shifting my weight around like I was tiptoeing. The floor was pretty heavily damaged, and I could hear the rebar and concrete of the structure protesting under me with ominous crackles. I made my way over and past where there was a partially Weld-shaped hole in the wall.

  He’d gotten blasted through one of the interior walls and was currently lodged in another. I saw the problem immediately.

  “Oh, shit, hang on, I got you. Is it going to hurt you if I cut the stuff you’re stuck to?”

  “No, and if anything, you’re doing me a huge favor by trimming it close. Otherwise, I’m going to be trying to move around with… yeah,” he sounded defeated with his present situation.

  His upper body was smashed into one of the structural walls, and he was stuck fast to metal framing beams that were bent and buckled around him. He looked rough, but considering he’d just been blown up and taken the brunt of the blast, maybe surprisingly good.

  I need like a giant metal-cutting scalpel blade on my tail to be able to cut Weld free with.

  My power bounced back after I made the request, and I triggered it, the claws on my tail merging and warping into an onyx black blade configuration.

  “Were you able to get everyone to shelter before we came in?” I asked him as I worked to both cut him loose and shave off excess metal. His clothing was mostly ragged, singed strips and wisps around his body, but there was enough around central locations to preserve his modesty. The entire front of his exposed body was marked by shallow pitting and indentations where whatever the bomber had used for fragmentation had impacted him. The silvery, coppery, and bronze-colored swirls and patterns on his body seemed otherwise intact; he was just left with a temporary case of metal-man acne.

  “Yeah, they got in and sealed the door probably about fifteen seconds before you opened the door,” Weld said.

  “Thank fuck. Well, I’ve almost got you loose here, Weld. You feeling okay, otherwise?”

  “Yeah, I’m not really hurt, beyond being stuck to a building at the moment.”

  I put a teasing tone into my voice and informed him, “Well, I have bad news. You’ve got a pretty bad case of acne at the moment.”

  He looked down at himself, now that his head was free, and chuckled. “Yes, I certainly do seem to have that going on.”

  I sliced the last beam free, helped stand him up, and told him to turn around briefly so I could get to a few places with a ‘closer shave’ than what I could when he was still stuck in place.

  “Alright. Let’s go check on them, but be careful, the floor isn’t stable in here, and I’ve already punched through it.”

  Voices of officers sounded in the hallway. I shouted out to them that we were currently alive and didn’t need medical, and to focus on sealing off the crime scene. Weld and I carefully circled around the remains of the room and went deeper into the suite. The bomb shrapnel had really done a number on the other rooms. Water was spraying out of broken pipes in the walls and the breakers had blown, leaving only non-functional emergency lighting.

  We got to the exterior door of the panic room. I thumbed the intercom, hoping it was functional. It was.

  “We’re clear, let’s get you out of there and relocated,” I let go of the button, and the speaker crackled to life with Taylor’s voice.

  “Thunder.”

  “Clouds,” I replied.

  “Six Tango Hotel,” she prompted a second time.

  “November Whiskey nine.”

  There was a heavy thunk from the inside of the big metal door, and it popped open an inch or two, but got stuck on the damaged flooring.

  I stuck my upper claws in the gap and gave it a little assistance opening more fully. I wasn’t nearly as worried about damaging the place now.

  Director Piggot stood in the doorway, looking like it was just another day in the office.

  “This is why I don’t like surprises, Apex,” she said in another one of her flat, dry moods.

  “Think of the bright side, Director.” She gave me a look. “You don’t have to worry about the cost of the room service now.”

  She grunted, and I held my arms out to her.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Apex?” She asked, more than just a touch testily.

  “Pretty big explosion, ma’am. I’m going to have to carry you out past the structural damage.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “She’s not exaggerating, Director. There’s a large hole in both the roof and the floor in between here and the exit,” Weld jumped in.

  If Director Piggot looked mildly cranky before, she looked pissed at the prospect of being carried out. “Let’s just get this over with,” she snapped at me. I glanced into the panic room, where Taylor and her staff were waiting. We had a line.

  She stepped forward, and I carefully scooped her up into a princess carry with my lower arms and made my way out toward the nearest fire exit.

  “If you mention this to anyone, I will make you regret it, Apex,” She said, barely above a whisper. It wasn’t so much a threat as it was a promise.

  I whispered back to her, “Don’t worry, Director, my lips are sealed.” I paused as I worked my way around the blast area. “Although you have to admit. Every lady wants to feel like a princess every now and again.”

  The look she gave me could have stopped any of the members of the Triumvirate dead in their tracks.