Over a week after Bedevil’s arrival, it’s not one of the capes or the Houston Heroes that delivers her a lead on Home Run – it’s Tim Prince. He finds her in her office, where she’s working while sipping coffee and vodka out of a pink sequined travel mug. This morning, she’s been following an interesting rabbit trail – in the year following PK Resonance’s arrival in Houston, immediately after incorporation into the Vanguard, PK’s owner Park Dae-seong snapped up a ton of real estate. Including, she’s surprised to find, the warehouse that Home Run was initially seen at and several other properties on that street. She’s got a PK Guild doc pulled up – the establishment of a small storage and moving company named Marskin – when Tim Prince arrives.
He’s considerably more put together than he was at their initial meeting, this time in a sharp dress suit with his hair pulled back and neatly combed. The red splotchy marks around his nose haven’t gone away, and Bedevil realizes that perhaps he’s irritating his skin with something. Makeup, perhaps? Or a mask?
“Knock knock,” Tim says, entering her office without explicit permission to do so.
Bedevil glares. “Ask before entering.”
Tim’s smile fades and he takes a step back out the door. “Uh, may I enter?”
She’s content to let him stand outside for a few more minutes, to teach him the lesson, so she turns back to her tablet to review Park’s holdings, but then Tim adds, “We’ve got a lead on Home Run.”
“Lead with that next time,” she says, waving him to enter.
“Is this how you’ve been talking to all the capes?” Tim asks, strolling in as if the first take never happened. “You do know you want their positive engrams, right? More potent than the negative variety?”
She doesn’t care about that. “Tell me about this lead.”
“I’m serious,” he says, sitting down on the couch. There’s a shelf on the wall above him that bears fake plants; he looks up and idly plays with the plastic leaves. “Word throughout the Shrine is that you’re someone to walk on eggshells around. You may be Bedevil, but Houston represents an opportunity for you and the Vanguard itself to earn a city’s goodwill.”
“If they asked before entering my offive, maybe they’d find me more welcoming. And respect is still a positive emotion.” But with this rebuttal, Bedevil turns from him. She doesn’t want to admit it, but Tim’s right. Her mother said as much a week ago. She sighs, knowing she should regain control of her ego. This place is just so repulsive to her. She can’t get over the fact that Julian died not ten miles beyond the wall that separates Houston from the Null Domain. Not even the vodka in her coffee can help her forget that. “And this lead?”
Tim tucks his lips into a thin smile. He nods, and says, “Well, right. Home Run. One of our drones overheard some masks talking about him, members of a local drug running gang. Seemed to indicate they knew him. One of them even bragged about being in the same room as him once. They’re mostly Welterweights, but there’s one Heavyweight among them, a man named Rex. He’s got a rap sheet longer than my resume and a power that lets him change into some kind of dinosaur monster.”
“Great! What’s the location?” Bedevil stands up, twists her hand, that familiar little somatic gesture to focus her mind on her power. The outfit she’s been wearing – a comfortable golden blouse and loose suit pant combo – melts away into her cape costume. Within a second, she’s in her silver uniform with the golden lines, sans the cape, which isn’t practical for combat.
“Wait, wait. I appreciate the gung-ho attitude, I do.” Tim stands up, giving her his best Media Man smile. The one that is so practiced and shows off every single one of his pearly whites. Bedevil wonders if he has veneers installed. No shame in that – half the capes she knows have them. “But I think this should be a team-up. The Houston Heroes need a morale boost, and Krater’s numbers in the Hispanic community have flagged this last month. And Metis knows Flashfire’s were never good to begin with.” He shakes his head. “Do you know what they call him? Out there on the streets?”
Bedevil does, actually. She’s read it in his file. “The man who sold Houston.”
“He was the city’s golden boy Affected,” Tim says, nodding sagely. “Fought off who knows how many threats before the Vanguard arrived. But they’ve never forgiven him for being the most prominent voice among the Affected for joining up.”
“Probably because he had fought off so many threats himself,” Bedevil muses. “But I think this is a mission I should go on alone. I can isolate the one who seemed to know Home Run and make him talk fast. I think the Houston Heroes would appreciate that morale boost more than a dog and pony show.”
Tim sighs, loudly, like an unruly teen. “Bedevil, please. You know that’s unwise. Not only because of the aloof impression of the Vanguard you’re giving, which hurts Flashfire, by the way, and Danger Close, who both stuck their necks out for you when you incorporated Houston. But also because I can smell the vodka.”
Bedevil feels herself paling, feels herself getting out maneuvered to this man who has barely any weight class of personality she can feel. But that’s the Affect – weight of personality and weight of mind are two different things. She pulls her sequin mug away from him.
He throws his hands up, giving her a smile of surrender. “Don’t worry. I won’t snitch, I promise. I’m far from one to judge.” But the threat is still there. Rumors spread so easily. Engrams can be lost in teaspoons.
Her initial suspicion was right – whoever sent Tim did so with an agenda. Someone has rails they want to put on her while she’s in the city. Those rails seem to line up with what the Vanguard wants, but that’s just what makes them good. No doubt there’s some other path that she’s not supposed to uncover.
A quick breathing exercise to master the emotions that train of thought kicks up, and Bedevil manages to smile back at Tim. “Fine. I suppose we better gather the Heroes. Tell them to meet me on site. Make a show of it and televise whatever’s appropriate.”
#
Bedevil descends onto the scene just outside the eastern edge of downtown Houston. She studies the city’s layout as she falls from the sky on invisible wings woven from the air. She tries to piece together all the roads and alleys and hidden paths that masks could take. She feels a chill; the city is a web of escape routes. No wonder they’ve never caught the Front.
She lands amid a thorny bramble of suburban houses entangled with swanky apartment buildings and old, rusted warehouses. A perfect soup for a gang like this to hide in. It also means they’ll need to work hard to minimize casualties. She sets a rendezvous point a few blocks over from the address, sets Dotty to work scanning the area. Then she closes her eyes. She may not be an empath, but she can get a feel for the major emotions in an area. No clarity, just the big picture.
Of course, there’s the cloud of Affect laid on the city by the PK Dampener Network. It’s less of an actual emotion in the air and more how the Affect itself is shaped – constrained, almost. Most people wouldn’t even know the field is there, maybe not even an empath if they weren’t aware of it. It’s not a perfect shield but it prevents a sizable chunk of potential Heavyweight threats. It halts engram accretion above a certain threshold – unless one is already above that line. The strong capes stay strong and the weak masks stay weak. Unfortunately, it seems that Houston had its fair share of strong Affected become masks, so they stay strong too.
Beneath that there’s the frenetic energy of an agitated people. She doesn’t like that, not at all. They aren’t docile like the other cities she’s seen, not reliant on the capes. It’s like the difference between a pot of room temperature water and one that’s boiling itself away.
A loud crash draws her attention a few blocks over. A plume of dust rises over the street, covering what looks like an abandoned strip center. As she puzzles that out, the world quakes at the sudden arrival of Krater with Highheart riding on his back.
So much for the stealthy approach. Bedevil smiles at them while counting to ten inside her head.
“Where’s these bastards?” Krater says, rolling his shoulders and neck, spoiling for a fight.
“Easy,” Bedevil says. “I need them alive. But keep your guards up, in case some of them have stronger powers.
Krater grumbles, turning to look out at the patch of Houston these masks are presumably hiding in. “I know, I know.” As he looks out, Highheart struggles up to Bedevil’s side, grimacing as she pulls at some of the armor around her legs. She’s wearing an exoskeleton of some kind, an older model built by the Vanguard for capes that weren’t as physically tough. Highheart likely has elevated physical traits consistent with other Heavyweights, but her power, unlike Krater’s, doesn’t make it easier for her to take a hit.
“You lost some armor when he died?” Bedevil asks Highheart. Danger Close was the team’s Affect engineer and created not only his own suit but also equipment for many of the other Houston capes. Now that he’s gone, none of it works anymore. As with all technology made through Affected means, with the exception of PK Resonance and the Templar network for communications, none of it has outlasted him. Likely there’s a storage room somewhere full of metal junk now.
Highheart nods, pulling at the collar of her suit, which is leaving a rash on her neck. “This new exoskeleton was commissioned from the Vanguard, but it seems they didn’t have one with my measurements.”
“Who lost armor from him?” Bedevil asks.
“Almost every cape in Houston had a few pieces of his equipment, even Krater.”
Krater sighs loudly. “I miss that little watch. Used to ping me the very instant someone started causing trouble in town.”
Highheart pats him on the arm. “There were even some capes in Dallas and Austin who had his gear.”
So much lost with just one cape. Bedevil shakes her head.
A searing white light slices the sky in half, followed by a thunderclap. The light fades and Flashfire emerges from the spots in Bedevil’s vision. His eyes are dark, his expression grim, as his hair dances in disturbed gusts of heated air. Painfully bright tongues of fire flicker inches away from Flashfire’s skin.
“That is offensively bright,” she says.
Krater gives Flashfire a small tap on his arm with a huge fist, and with a grin, says, “Yep, I’ve learned not to look at him too much. His fire burns brighter and hotter than any other pyro I’ve seen.”
Good to know. Bedevil claps her hands. “Great. The gang’s all here. We have some other heroes on standby if things turn out to be a little tougher than we thought. But between the four of us, we should be able to clean this up quickly. Only one Heavyweight, the rest are small fries.”
“If it’s that simple, can’t you just use your power to turn these guys into mist or something?” Flashfire asks. “Why do we need to fight them at all? You can just disintegrate all of them except the one that knows about Home Run.”
Bedevil shook her head. Metis, did no one teach these capes about any basic Affect mechanics? “The Rhodes’ engramic reinforcement field. The higher someone’s Affect weight class, the less you can disturb their physical form with powers. You’d have to strip their engrams first, which is, basically, what we do when we fight them. And as to why you need to fight them, well, you’re down in the polls, bud.”
Flashfire sneers at that. “I can’t help that some of these neighborhoods don’t like me. They hate us because they ain’t us.”
“This ain’t the place for a science lesson.” Krater stands up straight, rolls his shoulders. “I’m definitely not gonna remember it.”
“Basically means that no, I can’t just dissolve them into mist. I have to interact with them through the physical medium first. It’s the same reason someone who can conjure water can’t just do it one of our lungs.” Or why Carnality had to cut open someone’s body to draw their blood, she thinks, bitterly. She catches herself before that blip of emotion might slip out and adds, “If our target were a Lightweight, though, I might be able to do it.”
“Don’t waste your breath trying to cram that through his rocky brain,” Flashfire says, smirking at Krater. Krater makes a fist as if he’s gonna punch Flashfire, but then a grin cracks open his face. Just two boys, joking with each other.
Highheart, meanwhile, is studying the location of the hideout. She points, saying, “A Heavyweight mask is there. Many of the people living in this neighborhood donate their engrams to them. He’s on par with Krater.”
On par with Krater?! “Metis,” Bedevil whispers. “Alright, team. Then we’ve got to focus up.” She pulls out her phone and requisitions some of the nearby drones to do scans of the area. She hates surprises. Then, she puts a note out to the local networks, letting the capes patrolling nearby about the operation. “Make sure your earpieces are good, we’ve got to stay in communica–”
“They’re wise to us,” Highheart interrupts with some urgency. “They’re making a run for it.”
In response, a small brick building ahead of them bursts open, ripped asunder by a humanoid creature growing larger than a house. This bipedal monstrosity is all sharp antlers and claws wrapped up in bright feathers, like a hybrid between human, dinosaur, and moose. It swats one of the drones out of the air and then turns, locking frightening yellow-black eyes on them. That must be Rex. Below this massive, feathered beast’s feet, four people in masks make a mad dash away from the Heroes.
Great, Bedevil’s first operation here and she’s already about to tear up a city block. If it were any other city, this probably would have been handled quietly. She’d heard Houston was rowdy, but this wasn’t quite what she’d expected.
“Highheart, you and me on those masks, can’t risk you getting hurt trying to shut the monster’s power off. Flashfire, Krater, you’re on the big guy! Move!” Bedevil uses her power to wrap herself in air so dense and tight no attack should be able to penetrate it. She shoots out tendrils of this same invisible material and launches herself into the air, pulling Highheart up with her.
Krater bounds down the street, each of his steps shattering the pavement beneath him, and smashes into Rex’s legs. The monster falls over, trying to catch itself by hanging onto one of the buildings, but it rips through the brick like tissue paper.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
A bright rocket screams across the street, chasing after Krater and leaving an after-image in Bedevil’s eyes. Flashfire rains white fire down on Rex, barely leaving Krater any time to get out of the way of his barrage. Even so, their overwhelming power seems to be more than enough for the big guy.
Bedevil flies herself and Highheart down the street, gliding toward the masks trying to make their escape. They soar over the road, through a patch of small homes painted in bright pastel colors, quiet and sleepy but waking up to the sound of Affected battle. Already the screams are spreading, already the panic gushing up in the Affect of the neighborhood as masks and regular citizens try to escape.
The fleeing gang members haven’t yet gotten the good sense to try running through yards or the side streets. They simply make a mad, straight-line dash away from the scene. An easy target. Bedevil pulls out her usual tricks – she whips out more invisible tendrils, she manipulates the density of the air around her to influence their buoyancy – and slingshots herself and Highheart past the fleeing masks. It’s so easy, she could do it in her sleep. Could do it drunk, like you are right now…
“I’m not drunk,” she thinks to herself as she wraps up the masks in envelopes of shimmering air before they can even process what’s going on. They startle and shake as Highheart moves over to do her magic on them – cut them off from their powers for a little while until they can get dampeners on them. “Could a drunk person do that?”
“Who are you?” Highheart asks, and Bedevil allows the barrier to dissolve where her hand touches one of the three’s shoulders. “Remove your mask.”
He complies wordlessly, to the shock of the other masks nearby. “Wait, what are you doing!” a girl asks, still floating helplessly in Bedevil’s bubble. The man Highheart touched pulls his mask off, revealing a grizzly old face, cheeks marked with stubble. Luscious silver curls fall to his shoulders. He sighs, saying, “Just take em off. We’re cooked anyway.”
The girl that spoke does, showing herself to be a red-haired youth, maybe sixteen or so, but the the third member of the group doesn’t seem to want to comply. She’s trying to cut through the barrier with a knife, but as long as Bedevil maintains her concentration, the only thing this woman is at risk of cutting is herself. Highheart does her touch on them too, the empath’s touch. The woman puts her knife away and takes off her mask, revealing red hair turning white. Bedevil thinks she’s looking at a nuclear family now, the mother carrying the knife, the father giving up, the daughter between them.
“We’ll bring them in,” Bedevil says. “No use questioning them here on the-”
“Look out!” Highheart shouts.
She snaps her head up, sees a rusting blue truck sailing through the air toward them. With her power, she conjures an impenetrable barrier, but her grip on the three masks slackens. They slip out of their little envelopes – and start a mad dash down the road again. But before she can turn to stop them, the battle between Rex, Flashfire, and Krater is rushing toward them like a rolling ring of rock and fire. They’re crushing the roads, the buildings, probably killing and maiming bystanders as the fight gets out of their control.
“Fuck! Highheart, go after those masks. I’ll help them get this under control!” Bedevil shouts.
Highheart places a hand on Bedevil’s shoulder. “Here.” With her touch comes a feeling of empowerment, of courage, of strength. Bedevil doesn’t suddenly have more engrams, but she does feel like she can access them more readily. Like loosening a valve. After that, Highheart turns to chase the family running off.
Bedevil launches herself into the air and takes flight on her invisible wings, shooting down the street to meet and hopefully stop the battle. Rex locks eyes on her as she flies in. His monstrous hands grab a piece of someone’s house and hurl it like a shot put at her.
There are two dueling powers in her head right now – Highheart’s empowerment, and this morning’s coffee vodka. They wrestle as she maneuvers herself underneath the house-missile. She moves deftly, but each movement comes with a turn of her stomach.
When Rex sees that he hasn’t knocked her out of the sky, he reaches to grab another piece of the same house. As he does, Krater grabs the monster by his foot and wrenches him away – not a moment too soon, as Bedevil can see the family inside screaming and crying. One more of Rex’s handfuls might have collapsed the whole building.
But then, Flashfire swoops in, white fire pouring from his body, and catches the lawn and house ablaze. He doesn’t seem to care, as long as he lashes Rex with this same attack. Bedevil scowls and flies in after him, conjuring water to put out the fire he started. She waves at the family. “It’s alright!”
Rex smashes the back of its fist into Krater, sending him flying. Shards of rock scatter from his skin as he careens through the air toward Bedevil. She conjures a huge pillowy balloon to catch him. She sets him down on the ground, and he groans as he climbs to his feet. “Come on,” Bedevil says, frustrated they can’t seem to work together. “Flashfire, you keep it distracted and let Krater-“
“Distracted? I’m gonna melt this thing’s skull!” Flashfire says that, but even as he rains white hot flames onto it, the creature’s feathers seem to take most of the heat. Krater leaps back into the fray, and Bedevil chases after him, rising into the air to look for something heavy to hit it with.
“Come on!” Krater roars, going for the monster’s knees. “You and me, let’s go!”
The monster roars out: “You ain’t nothing!” It kicks like it’s got a wrecking ball for a foot, barely missing Krater as he steps out of the way, but smashing the walls out of yet another house. People scream and cry out.
All Krater is doing is pissing this thing off, making the situation worse. But he seems like the kind of guy who just wants to punch something really hard. “C’mon! I can take it!”
The monster swivels its head, smashing Krater with its horns. They aren’t sharp enough to cut through anything, but they would definitely gore a normal person through sheer force. Krater, however, just turns his entire stomach to rock and takes the blow. He flexes his abs, sloughing the debris off his gut, and grins at Bedevil.
That’s when she spies Rex picking out a chunk of rock from between its feathers – the jagged end of which comes out slick with blood. Fire can’t pierce this thing’s coat, but maybe a projectile can. “Hey, can you keep this thing distracted for a minute?”
Krater gives her a thumbs up and rushes back into the fight.
Bedevil flies up to the top of a nearby building with at least ten floors and finds a chunk that’s been knocked loose, ready to come tumbling down to the street below. If she does this right, she could end the fight fast, without expending too much energy, either.
She slices a sedan sized blade clean off the corner of the roof, sharp enough to pierce this monster right between the eyes. Bedevil stands on her newly formed weapon, whistling idly as the weight shifts beneath her feet. Then, the projectile fully dislodges and falls. “Keep it distracted, eyes down,” she says into her ear piece. “Flashfire, stay close to the ground, don’t let it look up here.”
“Got it,” Flashfire says, swooping down to street level. He hits it with another beam of fire, scalding its horns, and then flies away from Bedevil’s falling from. Sure enough, this pulls Rex’s attention, distracting it from the incoming attack.
Bedevil surfs the missile, guiding it with invisible tendrils and wings, right into the back of this thing’s skull. The sharp end of her ride pierces the back of the skull, crushing its head.
This kills the monster.
#
In the aftermath, several other local cape teams and Vanguard agents move in to check on bystanders in the neighborhood. Bedevil has Dotty scan the Affect impressions left by the monster. This guy’s signature has never been on any of the scans that came from Home Run’s scenes, but that doesn’t mean anything necessarily.
“How was that, Bedevs?” Krater asks as she folds Dotty back up into her phone. “I knocked him good, huh?”
“Uh, yeah!” She struggles to find where she last left her sidekick grin and puts it back on for him. “Great team up.”
Krater beams at her, and she feels like she’s gotten the hang of his internal life. And… well… it puts her mind at ease. He seems genuine, sincere, and despite his incredible strength, gentle and kind.
“That’s our Krater!” one of the capes shouts, pumping his arm. Several people start to applaud, even some of the citizens who were just trying to survive. Bedevil can’t help but smile at the bloom of Affect that follows – the feeling of engrams flowing into Krater from these people. It’s a warm, beautiful feeling.
Meanwhile, Highheart rejoins their group with several other capes in colorful costumes, as well as the two older masks now properly in dampener cuffs. The mother and father. The young woman is nowhere to be seen.
The mother stares in horror at Rex’s corpse. The horror becomes rage – she shrieks, pulls at the two capes restraining her. Whatever power she has isn’t coming now, not with the dampener on her wrist. But Bedevil can still feel the woman’s Affect. All that mother’s fury is aimed at her… but then it switches targets as Flashfire strides onto the scene.
“Easy! Didn’t know being dogshit masks was a family affair,” Flashfire jokes, walking up to them. “All you have to do is tell us where Home Run is, and we’ll get you processed in no time.
The mother spits in his face. “Fuck you, sellout!”
Flashfire blinks at this remark, and then a dangerous, dark expression creeps over his face. Killing intent washes from him. “What did you just say to me, cretin?”
“Flashfire, stand down,” Bedevil barks, seeing all the eyes watching them. The other capes, the civilians, an audience of dozens. He’s already unpopular.
Flashfire doesn’t listen. His hand sparks with flame. “What. Did. You. Just call me?”
“You used to be one of us!” she shouts. “Houston’s man! You never let anybody bully our city. But now the Vanguard’s made you into their dog-”
Flashfire reels back with a wordless scream and a roar of white flame, ready to melt this woman’s skull in.
Bedevil can’t allow that kind of indiscriminate killing, even if the target is a criminal mask. She reaches out with her Affect, transmuting a lasso of air to wrap around Flashfire’s arm, and pulls him back to her in one sharp jerk.
Flashfire falls back onto his ass and seems, for a moment, genuinely surprised. Everyone around is suddenly very capable of minding their own business as he sweeps his gaze across them, aside from the two parents. Then, he snarls, rips his arm free. “What the hell?”
Bedevil shakes her head. She contains her rage and manages to speak evenly. “Were you gonna kill them all before I got to talk to one? Leave me to my work. Go help someone else.”
Flashfire looks like he wants to bite back, but decides better of it. He glances at the captive masks. “Fine.” He stalks off.
“Fucking hell,” Bedevil mutters, watching him go to help one of the other teams with bystanders. The Houston Heroes are the most willful, stubborn capes she’s ever come across. Most capes in other cities just bend over backwards for her, but Houston has managed a different breed.
“Anybody care to tell me about Home Run before I change my mind and call him back here?” she snaps at the parents.
The two of them exchange glances with each other, but otherwise remain silent.
“Hello?” Bedevil snaps her fingers. “Anyone know who I’m talking about? Maybe I track down that daughter of yours and ask her, if you won’t tell me.”
“I do,” the father says. “I do. Home Run. Mask, killed Danger Close.”
The mother hisses at him. “We don’t sell our own.”
“He ain’t our own!” the father replies. Then the words tumble out of his mouth, eager to save his daughter. “There’s a guy that we know, who knows a guy who lives in the Shells. He says he’s seen that baseball jacket before, that same outfit, but no one knew his name before all this.”
Bedevil arches an eyebrow. It’s a lead. “Where can I find him?”
#
After the father gives up that snippet, which is apparently all he knows, Bedevil goes looking for Flashfire. She feels him before she sees him, tucked away between a crumbling office building and some houses wrecked from the fight. His anger reeks as much as the smell of smoke left his flames left across the neighborhood. He’s hunched over, arms on his knees, and his face has the look of one feeling very sorry for himself.
“Hey,” she says, taking her earpiece out and setting it to the side. “Real shitshow of a day, huh?”
Flashfire coughs, turns away and rubs at his face. Did that outburst actually drive him to tears?
“You okay?” she asks.
He nods. “Yeah. Just… nobody gets it.”
She’s heard that from a million men. Woe is me, no one could understand. But she’s got to be the bigger person, so she just shrugs and nods. “Sorry.”
“None of these ungrateful assholes even gets why we had to join the Vanguard,” he says. “They all blame me. They all act like it’s my fault you’re here. But it would have happened over my corpse if it hadn’t happened with my handshake.” He scowls and shakes his head. “And before that, they didn’t see how hard we had to fight every day just to cling to life. Now that we’re with the Vanguard, it actually feels like I can breathe.”
“Sometimes all people know how to do is tear down someone above them,” Bedevil says. “Believe me, I’ve heard it a hundred ways. It’s all the same thing. Envy. Resentment.”
Flashfire nods. “Maybe they just wish they were the ones that got to make the deal. I don’t know. But everyone blames me when Krater’s right there. We both agreed. Somehow I became the poster boy for it.”
She sits down next to him. “You did a good thing. Houston wasn’t going to survive without us.”
“I know,” Flashfire says, nodding to her. “We had to fight just to keep the lights on. And then DC shows up and the city’s got all these engineers and Vanguard guilds and we’re alive again.”
“DC, the man of the hour.”
Flashfire grunts. “I don’t really want to talk about DC. Not unless it’s about finding that bastard that killed him.” He’s deeply wounded. Bedevil can see it in his eyes, feel it in his emotions. His face is home to smirks and jeers, not scowls. A light-hearted man saddled with darkness and mourning.
Unfortunately, she’s got to probe his wound. “Do you have any idea why he’d turn his cameras off?”
Flashfire’s expression sours as he meets her gaze. “You already asked Highheart about that.”
“Look, you were close with him. Would he have a reason I can buy that doesn’t come off like a cover up?”
Flashfire’s eyes glisten with silver light. “He’s a goddamn hero. I don’t care if it was a cover up. He had his reasons. I trusted him with my life and I trust him now that he’s dead.”
Bedevil chews on her bottom lip, unsure of what to say.
“Danger Close was one of our own. Whatever he did, it was right. And this Home Run and anyone else that wants to take a swing at us?” Flashfire snarls and turns away from her. “They’re all cocksuckers. And we’ll put them in the dirt where they belong.”
Great. Bedevil can sympathize with cape-gripping, but it isn’t exactly helpful in an investigation. “I didn’t mean to offend you.” Better to be diplomatic with the people she has to work with.
“Sure you didn’t,” Flashfire replies.
The office building looming over them shudders, interrupting their conversation with a grumble of rock and glass. Flashfire glances up and furrows his brow. The shudder becomes a groan. The wall wavers.
The death knell is the sound of support beams cracking. Bedevil sees the molecules in the metal and cement ripping apart. Billions and billions of connections broken. The collapse is inevitable.
“Watch out!” Bedevil shouts, just too late.
With a roar, the office crashes down on them. Bedevil transmutes the air into an invincible shell around them, and the avalanche breaks against her power… only to bury them in rubble.
When everything is still, Bedevil takes in a long breath. No light breaks through the debris swallowing them. She can feel she sheer weight of it with her Affect. An entire building. Even if the capes saw the building collapse, and immediately start searching for survivors, it could be hours before they’re found. Her body wobbles, the coffee vodka settling badly in her gut. Her limbs shake. After all the fighting, she’s physically spent. The engrams are there… it’s her body that doesn’t want to work.
“Dotty,” she calls to her drone.
Dotty doesn’t respond. Bedevil reaches out into the rubble with her molecular senses, looking for metal roughly in the shape of Dotty, but finds none. “Good, she got out,” Bedevil says, keeping control over her emotions. She measures each breath and then calls out, “Flash, you okay?”
Flashfire lies prone on the ground behind her, groaning. Her senses pick up the iron tang of blood. He’s been hit, maybe on the head. But Bedevil can’t move to help him, not without breaking her control of the shell.
“Flash, are you conscious?”
“Y-yeah,” he manages. Then he moans in pain.
“Okay, I need your help. Can you do something for me?” She needs to be strong. She’s the ranking cape here. “Do you have your earpiece? Can you signal for help?”
“I…” Flashfire shuffles around behind her. “No. It’s crushed somewhere.”
Bedevil grimaces, feeling already at the end of her rope. She’s going to pay for this.
From the air she conjures an invisible drill, something to aid the process of digging their way out. She needs to do this as efficiently as possible, or else she’ll prolong the aftereffects. “I’ll need your help after.”
Flashfire is silent for a moment. Then he asks, “You’re not drunk, are you?”
“No,” she lies, ignoring her own indignation. No time for flawed emotions.
Bedevil reaches out with her Affect. She dissolves the molecular connections and transforms them into fine dust. Carefully she navigates the debris, dissolving it in pieces while maintaining the shield of air around them.
Sweat drips down her forehead. A full minute passes.
The first shaft of light pierces their dark prison.
She sighs in relief.
The individual atoms of carbon dioxide spill from her lungs, mingling with the myriad of other chemicals in the air. The insulation and the metal beams are no longer just that: they are a mass of uncountable inorganic particles, woven so tightly together light can’t pass through them. The cement of the walls becomes a mosaic of minerals compacted into impossibly dense shapes. The skin of her arms, of the body of Flashfire behind her, all break down under her awareness into their composite parts.
Everything is moving. Everything is scraping against everything. A bundle of metals and plastics swims through the chemical soup swallowing her.
Really, though, the thing that does her in is the stream of photons coming from the bundle she vaguely understands is Dotty. They scream their wavelengths and scrape the tender biological material of her eyes. She is lost in that blue haze, suspended in a space both impossibly large and tiny.
She floats in this awareness of the infinitesimal until the heightened state granted by her power recedes. The abstract merges with the real in sips, and she wakes in the back seat of a medic van, her face warm from a nosebleed.