Working from an old, coffee-stained map that was outdated before the world fell apart, Paul manages to navigate them along the back roads, away from the Vanguard’s main transit lines. The old world seems to wave at them from the shadows, watching them drive by from the rusted hulls of abandoned trucks to the crumbling houses almost swallowed up weeds. They pass pockets of civilization, auras of light on the horizon.

Paul wants to chew through the wheel of his car in frustration. It’d be so much easier to take the transit ways, the roads the Vanguard rebuilt after the Affect. But it’s too dangerous, with Gabe. Paul can only hope that each road he chooses to go down hasn’t been melted into nothing, reduced to rubble, or worse, twisted high into the sky like a tree made of pavement, which has happened at least once on their journey.

When Houston’s light pollution starts to creep into the night sky, Paul pumps his fist, and nearly loses control of the car because of it. Gabe grunts as he slides around in the back while Paul corrects their path. Must be more drunk than I realized.

After nearly three weeks of hiding and driving by night, they’ve made it. They’re out of the reach of the Vanguard.

A sudden patter of rain hitting the windshield dampens Paul’s enthusiasm, not because of the mere fact that it’s raining, but because the rain is red.

“Is that-” Gabe asks, and Paul answers.

“Blood.”

Paul looks up into the night sky, into roiling, crimson clouds. Thunder illuminates lumpy masses of flesh falling from the storm.

“Carnality.” This is her doing, writ in giant script. Her name leaves Paul’s lips like a prayer. Along the whole three-week-long journey, he hoped she wouldn’t come to Houston, cursed himself for even mentioning the idea of where he was headed to her. He’d considered turning around, finding a new place to go when he’d learned about her arriving in the city, but he’d hoped that perhaps they could use the confusion to hide. She’s the perfect scapegoat for Megajoule’s death. They’ll make her one of their so-called Cloaks, a supervillain bogeyman for everyone to fear… and bringing that energy to a metropolitan area means massive death. “Metis, the engrams flowing over this city must be incredible. Fear to her, hope to the capes. If she’s become this strong this fast, it must be a titanic amount of emotion…”

They can’t just drive into Houston. It may not be part of the Vanguard, but it’s one of the biggest free cities, and thus has checkpoints and gates and its own capes guarding the place. Even if the capes are distracted by Carnality’s change of weather, it’s still safest to stick to the plan.

Said plan waits for them down a side road, inside a patch of woods with trees that are glossy and black, almost chitinous, ending in thin mops of verdant green leaves. The trees seem to move away from Paul’s gaze as he leans over the steering wheel to study them, fogging the windshield with his whiskey breath. A rumbling box truck ambushes them from deeper inside the forest, its high beams shining on the skeletal remnants of a house. The headlights of their own car briefly illuminate the simple red lettering that says, “If it’s Nguyen it’s a Win!” before Paul parks parallel to the truck.

“Who is Nguyen?” Gabe asks, saying every consonant of the name.

“It’s pronounced ‘Wen,’” Paul corrects.

Gabe shoots Paul a blazing glare. “Whatever.”

“Nguyen is smuggler. He was one of the guys we tried to work with but he only moved product.” Another surge of guilt, pushing over Paul’s protective walls. They’d wanted Nguyen to bring them subjects like some of the other traffickers they were aware of. He shoves it down with a sip of the whiskey. Before getting out of the car, he pulls a ski-mask over his face and reaches into the back seat to hand another one to Gabe.

Gabe scowls at his mask. “It’s itchy. Do we really have to do this? Why can’t he see our faces?”

“It’s not my face, kid, it’s yours.” Paul shakes his head. “I don’t wanna argue. Get it on.”

With a grimace, Gabe tugs the ski-mask on.

Thanh Nguyen leans against the hood of his box truck, smoking what must be the last cigarette in Texas. If anyone could get their hands on tobacco, it’d be someone like Thanh. He doesn’t dress or look the part of a smuggler, which Paul supposes is smart, opting for a plain black t-shirt and a simple jean jacket to cover his thin body from the rain. He holds a shoddy umbrella that allows some of the red to plip-plop through and run down his sleeves, but he doesn’t seem to care at all, not that there’s rain or that it’s blood.

His eyes narrow at Paul’s mask, suspicion wafting from him as they step out of the car. “Those masts are a little hot for Houston. But I suppose not for the truck.” He gestures to someone standing on the opposite side of the truck, and two men who look like they could be Thanh’s cousins saunter over with umbrellas of their own.

One of the men pops his open, and despite Paul’s protest, shelters him from Carnality’s blood. “That’s not necessary,” Paul says, feeling like the man, a burly youth with hungry eyes and a scar above his lip, is too close, like he could see through Paul’s mask. Perhaps he can… perhaps that’s his power. His Affect blooms with enough strength for him to have something.

“So, you’re Paul.” Thanh takes another drag of his cigarette, his eyes flitting to Gabe. Unlike his two cousins, Thanh doesn’t have much of an Affect. They defer to him, but they don’t feel strong emotions about him. His meager flames of suspicion soften into curiosity. “I was hoping to see what you’re having me bring into town. Who’s the kid? Someone from the lab?” Those last words come with an avalanche of disdain.

“My son,” Paul lies.

Thanh arches an eyebrow, and his curiosity reverts back to suspicion, but he gives up and shrugs. “You brought coats to go with those masks?”

“Why would we need coats?” Not that Gabe would need one regardless, not with his Affect, but maybe Carnality changed something about Houston’s climate?

“Vanguard capes are swarming Houston’s borders right now. All across the 99 wall. There will be a checkpoint.” Thanh sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’ll need to hide in one of the freezers.”

“The Vanguard National’s incorporating Houston.” Paul grimaces. He should have turned around. Gone anywhere else the Vanguard wasn’t… except where aren’t they, now? The East Coast is too wild and lawless to be safe, but Houston had been the last truly free city.

“City’s leaders and Affected all agreed to it. You haven’t seen the damage she’s done…” Thanh shakes his head.

Paul had always known that eventually Houston would be forced to either accept the Vanguard’s rule or go the way of Dallas and so many other cities, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.

“The city will die without the capes, now,” Thanh finishes.

“What so the city’s Affected, they’ll all just become capes?” Paul can’t imagine all of them are happy giving up their independence.

“Some capes, some masks. I don’t know.” Thanh shrugs. “It won’t change my business. I already cross Vanguard lines.” The smuggler raps the back of the truck with his knuckles. He may act indifferent, but he can’t fool Paul. What little Affect he has blooms with negative emotions, all tinged with fear. He doesn’t like the Vanguard setting up shop in Houston either.

“What are you going to do?” Paul asks.

“What we agreed on. Provided you got what I asked for.”

Paul produces a tiny, green, plastic ring, barely large enough for his pinky, and hands it over. Initially, Thanh had wanted money. A hundred thousand old States dollars. Paul obviously could never have found that much in his situation, so instead he’d promised a piece of tech plucked from the lab itself.

“The ring masks the wearer’s real emotions and powers with an artificial Affect, a fake soul, fake superpower, fake emotions jammed inside the green plastic by scientists at Lilac. It can fool scanners and empaths into thinking that the person wearing the ring is something they aren’t. At least, at a glance,” Paul explains.

The ring fits quite well on Thanh’s ring finger, and he admires it skeptically. Paul bites his lip, wondering if this is too high a price to give out – what powers could Thanh want to mask?

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

A large amount of Affect blossoms out from the ring, and Paul shudders at the sudden and intense wave of power. Thanh then retrieves a scanner from his truck, a small wand meant to measure engram energy. He waves it over himself and grins as the number climbs higher and higher, to a score of well over 100,000 engrams. On the Vanguard’s rankings, they’d mark it as a Cruiserweight power – the second highest ranking. “A shame it isn’t real.” He takes the ring off and pockets it.

A blessing, Paul thinks. “Yeah. Real shame.”

One of Thanh’s cousin-minions pulls at the truck’s cargo door. The hinges creak and groan, and with this rusty rattle icy air churns out to caress Paul before being subsumed into the Houston heat. Inside, metallic shelves filled with various ingredients (here a package of pork bones, there a flat of canned tomatoes) stand over freezer units that are just big enough for a person or two to fit inside.

Paul’s eyes widen as he realizes what he’ll have to endure.

“So no coats?” Thanh asks.

“No,” Paul says. He’d left the lab with nothing but the plaid shirt on his back. “How long in the fridge?” He could put up with this for about ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

“Oh, not long for Houston. We’ll go through a couple of checkpoints. A little under an hour.”

An hour? Paul tries not to wilt and fails. An hour locked inside this freezing van.

He looks back at Gabe, who is running his hand along the side of the truck, his eyes wide with the awe of a newborn. All the trials the kid has suffered, all the death, churns in Paul’s mind.

“Okay.”

And so in they go, climbing up a few steps into corporate tundra, led by the burlier of Thanh’s cousins. Paul’s flannel shirt puts up some fight against the frozen air, but in the end, the cold prevails and finds its way through his skin and into his bones. The ache sets in immediately. As Paul stumbles forward, each step colder than the last, he rests his hand on tubs of batter, using them to support his weight.

“You’d be amazed by what all you can hide in plain sight. In that tub there are old world bibles,” Thanh muses from outside the truck doors. “A few firearms in other places.”

Thanh’s cousin lifts up one of the freezers, revealing the vacant space in which both Paul and Gabe will hide. A two by eight foot box spitting out a chill that makes the A/C of the truck feel balmy. Cousin Nguyen grunts and gestures for Paul and Gabe to get inside.

Paul glances back to Thanh, reading his Affect for any signs of betrayal. “Y-you’re sure they can’t f-f-find us in here?”

Thanh shrugs. “I am not.”

Back at the lab, Paul worked with smugglers – the nature of some of the work demanded flesh traders and slavers. Traffickers. People who’d rip your shirt off your back to sell it to the next man, people who’d kick you down a hole for a profit. But Thanh, without wearing the ring Paul gave him, doesn’t give off the energy of those who visited the lab. He’s a smuggler… but an honest one.

“You’re shivering,” Gabe whispers to Paul. “Is it cold?”

“N-nah, k-kid, I’m…” He can’t say the last word, so he just waves his hand. He steps into the freezer and lies down, and Gabe folds up all his height as much as he can. Thanh’s cousin gives them a tight smile before closing the lid and plunging them into darkness.

He’d hoped, maybe, that he’d be able to feel some heat from Gabe. Just the barest bit of warmth to get him through this last leg of their journey. But the kid’s skin is like marble, cool to the touch and just as impenetrable. All those little passive defenses they coded into Gabe’s Affect, into his very body. Gabe could give off heat, could try to wrangle with his power… but Paul can’t get the other Gabe out of his head. If the boy tries to use his abilities…

No. He tenses his core and tries to warm himself by rubbing his hands along his arms and chest.

“I could make you warm,” Gabe says.

“No!” Paul hisses.

“So what, you wanna freeze to death, old man?”

“You heard him. Don’t use our powers in here or else drones and scanners might pick it up.”

“We’re not there yet,” Gabe grumbles.

The truck roars to life, lurches, and their journey into the city begins.

Paul closes his eyes, trying to endure the cold. He clings to Gabe, but it’s no help. All he can focus on is the Affect itself. He grits his teeth, closes his eyes, and feels out the city of Houston as they drive through it.

Despair. Pain. Terror. They spread like inky tentacles through the city, fumble awkwardly around Paul, tickling at the edge of his being. Like ferro fluid responding to magnets, the city sends hundreds of stubby tendrils of bad emotions out beyond where Paul can sense. A million-limbed monster, an amalgamation of the fears of many minds moving like one beast.

And to make that look like a light Sunday afternoon, something immense enters his perception, a black hole dawning on the horizon. All these negative emotions, feeding into one source, expanding it beyond what any human should contain. Something in the air shifts, like gravity pulling Paul toward this terrifying new feature in the world’s Affect landscape. As if Paul stands on the edge of a cliff, leaning over into the abyss.

They called it a Null Domain in the lab, an Affect that has spread beyond its host to contaminate a region, to smother out all other Affects. This one, surely, is what’s left of Carnality. Something beyond mortal. Dead yet alive. All dark emotions of fear, dread, and pain roll outward from Carnality’s Null Domain like gravitational waves. It’s almost worse than the cold of the freezer.

The truck stops suddenly, pulling Paul’s attention back to the real world. Very very faintly, he hears muffled voices outside.

“Several people and some kind of flying machine,” Gabe whispers. The kid’s senses are good. They’d theorized he could only sense input coming directly to him, like a traditional sensor, but it seemed his perception could extend out of him, like a field.

“Good,” Paul manages, the only word he can get through gritted teeth.

Heavy boots thump loudly, audible even through the freezer. Accompanying this is an Affect that dwarfs the fake one in Thanh’s ring. This Affect thunders with engrams – they must be one of the Vanguard’s better-known capes.

“I can-” Gabe says, but Paul clamps his hand over the kid’s mouth. Gabe gives him a death stare, but lets it go.

The truth is, Gabe could. While the cape in this truck must be very strong in their power, Gabe’s well of engrams is in the billions. Somehow all the good will and hero worship that Megjaoule earned over a lifetime of cape work, the countless engrams contributing to his immense power, had been passed down to Gabe. How or why… Paul still doesn’t know.

Even with all that, Gabe will be up against the entire city even if he wallops this cape. He could take one… maybe a dozen. But all of the city’s Affected, all of the Vanguard’s powerful capes? A much more doubtful prospect. It’s not a matter of power but a matter of skill and endurance.

Muffled voices. Thanh’s, and another. Paul strains to hear, to recognize, but he can’t make out the other voice. He waits, waits for the cape’s prying hand to open the freezer and doom them. Waits for the drone to catch the barest hint of their fear. Paul, for his part, restrains his emotions as only an empath can. But Gabe… Gabe’s soul is loud. He feels all of his emotions deeply, and right now he’s angry and scared, to the point that he cracks the edge of the freezer with fear and anger. Paul can only do so much.

A long, electric moment passes.

And then the cape leaves, their Affect moving off like a passing storm.

Paul heaves a sigh as the truck grumbles back to life. They’re in the clear.

#

An eternity later, the truck stops again, the cargo doors open, and like mercy the freezer door opens again. Paul practically leaps out and dashes past the laughing burly cousin straight into a metal scrapyard. It could be anywhere, it could be Gehenna, and Paul would have shouted in relief as he felt the warm, humid air thaw the ice from his skin.

He glances back to find Thanh regarding him with amusement. “I’m so glad you like it, because this is where you’re going to live.”

The hiding spot Thanh chose for them is a small lot scrapyard wrapped in a corrugated metal fence, with piles of rusting junk filling every corner. The actual building is an old world manufactured home with blue steel walls, resting on a concrete slab. Harsh fluorescent lights buzz above a flaky red door. A fading sign nailed on the door reads, “Nguyen Scrap Services.”

“And not too many people get a job right away when they move to a city like this.” Thanh saunters up to Paul and pats him on the shoulder. “It’s not too much work, just take inventory as it comes. I can trust you with that, I think, because you’re trusting me with your safety.”

There’s the twist of the knife. Not a bad one, all things considered. Indentured servitude is magnitudes better than being back in the hands of the Vanguard.

“The boy, too?” Paul asks, looking back at Gabe stepping down from the freezer truck.

“Put him to work, put him in a Vanguard charter school, put him through a Guild work program. I don’t care,” Thanh says with a shrug.

Paul nods. He offers his hand for Thanh to shake. “Thank you.”

Thanh sniffs, wriggles his mouth, but then takes Paul’s hand. “Whatever you do… do right by him. From what I’ve heard about your lab, he’s earned it.”

Paul winces, pulling away from the handshake like it stung him.

The truck rumbles away, leaving Paul and Gabe to explore their new home. It’s a thousand square feet with vinyl floor and badly painted walls. A tiny kitchen provides low, atmospheric light. There isn’t even a table or chairs, but the kitchen cabinets hide bowls and cutlery. No furniture in the living room. A bare mattress in one bedroom and a naked bed frame in the other.

Gabe sits down on the mattress. He lays his head down and falls asleep almost immediately.

Paul, restless, steps outside into the hot Texas night to revisit his whiskey.

The skyscrapers of downtown, only a short mile away, lean in on Paul like he owes them money. The few stars he can see through the light pollution seem within his reach if he stands on his tiptoes. Shadow faces in the warehouses around the scrapyard appraise the guilty man drinking amid the mounds of detritus. The sky roils with crimson clouds, with bloody lances of lightning. Wine dark rain falls in small showers here and there, and larger lumps of flesh occasionally crash into the yard like hail.

“I really caused all that pain, didn’t I?” Paul asks the sky. The sky does not answer. The dense curtain of Affect above him is roaringly silent – churning with the terror Carnality inflicted on the city. Other older scars from Affected battle are evident even beneath the blanket of Carnality’s gore. The warehouse just beyond the gate has a large, blackened chunk in the wall, probably from some fire-based power. It’s a dangerous world out here. Paul feels very exposed standing outside.

He doesn’t want to go back inside, though. The inside of that house is a super void, making the outside world feel tiny. One thousand square feet feels like an entire goddamn universe, and the only people who exist in that realm are Paul and Gabe, murderer and victim.

Houston’s skyline gazes on the guilty man. The city is too large to care about one lone person, surely, and her labyrinthine corridors will hide them well.

Hell of a place to raise a kid.

Hell of a place to hide a clone of Megajoule, the greatest hero in the world.