ONE MONTH BEFORE THE MASK COMES OFF

Bedevil shouldn’t feel guilty about slinking around the Shrine’s computer lab this late at night, but she does. Something about the entire thing feels so clandestine. Maybe it’s because she’s not explicitly following up on a lead on Home Run. Instead, she’s trying to splice together footage from drones around PK Resonance’s main campus in the week following the dampener attack.

And after a couple of hours, she thinks she’s got something.

The first bit of footage she finds is a bird’s eye view of the facility. It’s a squat, black building from the drone’s perspective, and all of the windows are tinted so the drone can’t see inside. Everything about it seems designed for privacy.

However, what can’t be hidden is the truck trundling around the back of the building and pulling up to a loading dock. The workers are careless, leaving a gap between the truck’s cargo bed and the dock. Bedevil watches two workers in PK uniforms load up blow torches, sanders, and other machines into the truck, and most curiously of all, multiple body bags. But there was only one casualty from the incident as far as Bedevil knows.

“Someone besides he lab tech died there,” Bedevil murmurs.

The workers then close the truck door and pop a few pills each. They shake their heads, roll their shoulders, and then climb into the trucks.

Unbelieving, she checks the time stamp. It’s within thirty minutes before she and Flashfire had arrived. Metis, Park was overseeing this, whatever it was.

She pulls up several different screens of different camera angles on the same truck as it crawls through the Houston streets. Moving around impassable areas, through roads maintained by the Vanguard. It passes underneath one of the broken highways, using the tunnel pass, and she worries she’ll lose it for a second. But she finds another drone with footage of the same truck after a couple minutes of digging.

The truck winds its way toward the Shells. Crowds of people part before it. As finally pulls into its destination, a warelouse with “Marskin Deliveries” painted on the side, Bedevil nearly shrieks.

It’s the same fucking warehouse they first saw Home Run. It’s the same warehouse where those bodies were found.

#

Call Home Run, or not? Bedevil mulls that over, her burner phone in hand, sitting in a rooftop garden by herself to watch the sunset over Houston. She’s found the next link in the chain connecting PK and Pandahead, the original Marskin warehouse. She knows they’re still using it. She knows if she waits long enough, they’ll lead her somewhere else.

But going it alone or asking one of the capes seems foolhardy.

Asking him to come with her seems foolhardy, too.

Because, deep down, as her finger lingers over the little green phone icon, she knows why she really wants him there. And it’s not as back up.

Butterflies fill her stomach just thinking about him again.

Which of course, shouldn’t be possible, not after the disentanglement. The attraction survived the procedure, of course, but the feelings shouldn’t. And she has to admit the way she’s feeling, this is more than just attraction.

An accidental twitch of her thumb (accidental… riiiiight) makes her push the call button.

“Oh. Fuck. Wait,” she says, internally relieved that the decision was made already. The line rings, once, twice, thrice, whatever’s beyond thrice, and just as it seems like it’ll go to voice mail, the call connects.

“…mmmhello?” Home Run asks, his voice sleepy, low, and gravelly and DAMN she wants to hear that in her ear.

“Hot stuff!” Bedevil leans back on the bench. She drops into her Kitsune persona, adopting a flirtatious tone. “You’ve gone to bed early.”

“Mmm… no…” Bed sheets scratch on the other end as he shifts. “I’ve just been asleep for the last twelve hours. Catching up on my beauty sleep after the Null Domain.”

“So, you actually went!” Bedevil can’t believe it. It simply boggles her mind. I mean, she can believe he ended up going, but she can’t believe he’s just lying in bed, normal, after going out there, like it was some hiking trip with his buddies. “You and the kid?”

“And some other friends,” Home Run says. “We found something.”

He tells her all about it, like they’re two friends and he’s telling her about his workday. Which, she supposes, that’s really what’s happening. They are two friends, a little more than that, maybe, and he’s just telling her what he got up to on the job. It’s almost domestic, in a cute way. And it does nothing to help the butterflies.

“So, you didn’t find any other leads?” Bedevil asks when he’s finished.

“I don’t know. I’m hoping maybe Pandahead will think we got our pound of flesh and move again when he’s ready. My friends are kinda pissed at me about all that, though.”

“Hmmm, and you fought a Heavyweight?”

The blankets rustle again as he tosses in bed. “Yeah, some crazy lady. Nose busted, bob cut.”

“That’s two Affected hirelings, including Mr. Spiral, for Pandahead. I’d bet there’s a few more waiting in the wings.” She takes a swig from her flask, gathering a little liquid courage. Which she shouldn’t really need, but she’s already accepted that things are unusual between her and Home Run. “Hey, look, I called you for a reason.”

“Oh, and here I was thinking you just wanted to hear my voice.”

“No, I do!” She almost shocks herself with that admission, which doesn’t feel like a manipulation or a play on his emotions.

It feels real.

“I do want to hear your voice,” she affirms. “It’s nice.”

After a few seconds, he says, “Yours is, too.”

She can’t help her smile. The way her heart races. Her Affect hasn’t felt this warm in years.

“Uh… What was the reason, though?” he asks, sounding a little short of breath.

“Oh!” She blinks, shakes her head. “Right. Um. I might have a lead. You know the Marskin warehouse, the one that you were first seen in? Well, I learned that there’s been trucks there recently. From PK. They’re still using it.”

“Oh. Oh shit.”

“Exactly.” Her heart pounds in her chest as she asks, “So… hot stuff… I was wondering if maybe we could have another date? Bust some human trafficking gangs? Make out? Y’know?”

#

Even after three months, Houston is unfamiliar and strange to Bedevil. Superficially, it shares many details with Denver. Big skyscrapers (although these couldn’t pull underground like theirs could), concrete hodge podge, neon lights, a lot of people. Tonight, a building she thinks she recognizes misguides her, leading her far astray from where she wants to go. An unfamiliar intersection beckons her along the wrong path.

That’s why, when she finally arrives at the Marskin warehouse, Home Run is already there, waiting on the roof of an abandoned strip center a few buildings down the road. Sans his little sidekick, which Bedevil has to admit is a relief.

“Sorry, got a little turned around. Still new in town,” she says. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Nah,” Home Run says.

She walks up, and, a little bit to her surprise and a lot to his surprise, pulls him into a quick hug, pressing her masked cheek against his. “Nice to see you again.” Then she steps back quickly, flustered. She’d been trying to flirt with him a little, sure, but not this much. “Mind if I go look around?”

Home Run nods. “I’ll keep a look out.”

“You haven’t gone inside?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Didn’t really want to. I felt it out. There was no one in there. At least, no one alive.”

That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to find, she thinks. She pulls the piece of steel that she uses to cover for her powers as Kitsune and slings her way cross the roofs toward the Marskin warehouse. She makes a show of peering through one of the side windows, to make it look like she’s doing something, but really, she’s looking with her Affect at the molecular structures of everything inside. Mostly air, that familiar mix of nitrogen, oxygen, and many other gases; steel; and concrete.

There is something interesting inside, however. A set of large plastic boxes, usually reserved for laboratory equipment. More coffin than storage crate, they are slate gray and have rainbow circuits running where the lid meets the bottom. Strangely, she can’t see inside the boxes. They’re likely blocked by Affect tech, meaning they’re from PK Resonance for sure.

She’s guessing someone is planning on picking these up soon. She swings back to Home Run on the roof of the strip center and says, “I saw some boxes in there. Like, big plastic ones that hold science equipment or something.”

“So what do you want to do? Get them out, break them open? We could learn what they’re transporting.”

“Or… we could wait around, see if someone comes to pick them up.” Bedevil leans toward him, her hands behind her back and asks, “You do know how to be patient, don’t you?”

Home Run groans and she can feel his bemusement. He likes being teased. “How long are we gonna wait? What do we do?”

“Flirt our faces off? Eat some snacks? Play some cards?” Bedevil offers.

“You got snacks?”

“Mr. Run, didn’t I say I was going to help you practice flirting? If a gal offers you three choices and one of them is flirty, pick the flirty option.” She huffs, playfully crossing her arms, and turns away from him, but then she gives him a quick glance over her shoulder. “Although I’m not opposed to a bite to eat.”

Home Run laughs and says, “What are you in the mood for, foxy?”

“Mmm, you can do better. Also, tacos.”

Home Run vaults off the roof. When he’s gone, Bedevil sits down. Good grief, I’m going to do unholy things to him if I get the chance.

She shakes herself, refocusing. This warehouse must be a major storage unit for PK, or at least for whatever project is going on behind the scenes. But the warehouse doesn’t appear on any guild registries or with the city governance, meaning no one claims it officially, even though Marskin is registered under the PK name. Marskin’s now listed as a defunct guild, gone bankrupt a year back. So they wouldn’t use the warehouse for any guild activities, it could definitely be used for the things PK doesn’t want anyone knowing about.

Which, duh, but the fact that they’re still using it after everything that happened around it means Park Dae-seong is obviously comfortable with the capes knowing it exists.

Home Run returns, disrupting her train of thought, carrying a couple of greasy bags. “There was a joint not far. You ever had tongue?”

“Well, I was hoping for one at some point tonight.”

Home Run stammers, and she takes one of the bags from him, unable to stop her smirk under her mask. “C. U. T. E. But no, I know what you meant. I’ve never had it.”

Home Run clears his throat. “It’s good.”

“I bet.”

They share the tacos. Bedevil likes them well enough, but the tortillas are soft. She’d expected a crispy shell like some of her former teammates under Megajoule had described. She’s a little less focused on the food itself, though, and more on Home Run’s jaw and mouth now that he’s lifted his mask to eat.

She likes his mouth, his smile, though he doesn’t look like he smiles often. Each one comes slowly, awkwardly, as if he doesn’t know what to do with one that lingers on his lips longer than a few seconds.

They eat and they talk, and without naming names or describing faces, they talk about their lives. The stories they can get away with sharing, at least. She tells him about capes she knew in Basics, arrogant young kids who thought they were invincible and looked good in spandex, and he tells her about the masks he’s met, the downright weird ones, the people squabbling over what amounts to pennies in the dirt.

“I once fought a guy with five noses,” Home Run says, out of nowhere.

Bedevil almost chokes on the last bite of her taco. “What the fuck?”

“I thought it was his mask at first, but no, he just had five noses, like uh, what’s the word… radially across his face? Like, right along the line from ear to ear.” Home Run laughs through his nose, and when he laughs, his whole belly rolls like he’s doing a crunch. “You can imagine what his voice sounded like.”

“Metis, was it nasally?” Bedevil has to hide her mouth to avoid spilling crumbs everywhere.

“Think of the most nasally person you know and hit them with a maximum nasal ray. Then multiply that by five.”

Bedevil laughs, and she looks up the sky, feeling like she hasn’t felt in a long time. But she notices, slightly too late, the rain drops preluding a quick but harsh summer shower. While they had been laughing it up, a small rainstorm had crept up on them.

“Aw man!” Bedevil shouts. She can’t use her power to block the water, not without giving away that she controls more than steel. She has no choice but to allow her Kitsune outfit to get soaked. “The warehouse!”

“Come on!” Home Run says, offering his hand to her. “No one’s come yet. It’ll still be there.”

She takes it.

They jump down to the street, and Home Run leads her into the alley behind the strip center, to an awning covering a recessed back door. He opens the door to see if anyone’s inside, discovers that the building is leaking like crazy, and closes the door. “Looks like this is where we’re hunkering down.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The rain falls heavily. Bedevil can barely hear her own heart hammering over it as she struggles to fit in this tiny alcove with Home Run. He’s tall, all limbs, and takes up about seventy percent of doorstep.

“You’re soaking,” he murmurs as he takes off his jacket and offers it to her. He takes off his gloves, too, and sticks them in his pockets, so all he’s left wearing is his mask, undershirt, and jeans. Said undershirt does no work to hide his abs and chest, and with the jacket off she can drink in the sight of his broad shoulders and neck.

Bedevil can’t help it, she sinks into his jacket.

While he looks out at the rain, Bedevil looks at his bare arms, at the veins running up his forearms to his biceps, at his lovely, long-fingered hands that might’ve played piano in a different life. Metis, I wish he’d put those hands on me.

Bedevil has to fight not to ogle the curve of his back, the way his shirt clings to the valley between his shoulder blades. His jeans hugging his ass and thighs. Good lord, she’s practically drooling.

Home Run looks down suddenly, and a wave of self-consciousness arises from him. “Uh… you okay?”

“I’m-” Bedevil says. “I’m good. Are you good? You look wet. I don’t want to hog your jacket.”

“Then share it with me.”

She gasps softly. With a smile, she says, “Now was that flirting?”

Home Run leans over her. “You tell me.”

Bedevil puts her hand on his forearm - current arcs between their skin as she brushes her fingers along up his arm, jump-starting her heart.

He reaches up and tugs his mask up, just a bit, up to his nose. He’s got just the right amount of stubble on his cheeks, and a jawline that Bedevil needs to put her lips on. It’s past teasing and tempting.

She lifts her own mask the same amount. She’d love to know who he is, but honestly, there’s something so fucking sexy about the masks right now.

“Are you sure?” he whispers, low and hot.

She grabs his neck, finally putting her fingers on his skin, and pulls him into a kiss. At first it seems like he has no idea what to do, just letting her do all the work, but then he falls into step and pushes his whole body into her. His leg finds it way between hers, his hands, his fucking hands grip her hips with all that strength. His breath is hot, hotter than most, and quickens as their kiss grows more intense.

Bedevil slips off the jacket and lets it fall to the ground. Then she leans into him, kissing him again, and guides his hands under her soaked shirt, to her ribcage. Then she slides her hands up under his shirt. His skin is ridiculously warm, like a stone left under the sun all evening. She lets out a little gasp as his hands find their way to her chest, and she moans into his mouth. If this keeps up, she’s going to rip his pants off right here in this little doorstep.

I am going to be in so much trouble… but it’s so worth it.

Except, before they can really get into trouble, the unmistakable squeal of a truck’s brakes pulls them from the kiss. Down the rainy street, pulling up to the warehouse, is an unmarked box truck. The back of the truck rolls up, and several people dressed in black clothes step out. They enter the warehouse, then come out with the boxes.

“Oh, that’s so not fair,” she says, putting her forehead to Home Run’s chest.

“You’re telling me,” he moans.

Bedevil wheels around, grabs his chin, and kisses him again. “Don’t make that noise if you want to get any work done tonight.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, picking up his jacket.

“And definitely don’t say that either.”

Home Run grins at her, pulls down his mask.

#

The truck leads them out of the rain, across the Shells, under the Broken 45, through more rain, and all the way into East Downtown, where the houses and streets are just a touch nicer. They follow it all the way to an abandoned office building with no name or label, and take up a position on the roof of yet another strip center. They listen in as the men bring the boxes up an elevator.

“Jeez, a lot of moving around for some boxes,” Home Run says. “I can’t see inside them.”

Me neither, Bedevil almost says out loud. At this point, it feels like a game to her. Does she want him to know who she is? “Looks like we’ll need to go in there.” She could also feel out the inside of the office with her power, but she’s worried about passing out again if she looks too hard, like when that building collapsed on her and Flashfire. She can’t afford that, not here.

Home Run takes point on that, anyway. “There’s actually some power sources inside. I can feel the heat surging from them. Looks like it’s some kind of lab.” He reaches out, grabs her arm excitedly. “They’re opening the boxes!”

Bedevil leans in close, as if she could see what he sees. “What’s inside?”

“Uh…” He gasps and says, “A person.”

“Oh shit. What do we do?” she asks.

“We could bash in the door?”

“Let’s try to use our brains, instead,” she suggests, patting his arm. “Maybe there’s a skylight.”

Home Run picks her up in his arms and her heart just about stops in her damn chest. “Going up, then.”

They fly upwards with a pop of hot wind, all the way to the top of the office building. Sure enough, there’s a skylight in the roof.

Bedevil pats Home Run on his beautiful chest and says, “Thanks for the ride, hot stuff.”

“Spare a horse,” he says playfully, before making his way over to the window. Bedevil has to count to three before following him.

Below them, the office building has been converted into a lab, although not a clean or orderly one like the ones the Vanguard runs. At least twenty workers in plainclothes are pulling apart ten of those strange boxes from the Marskin warehouse. And inside, as Home Run mentioned, are people… but they’re not like people she’s ever seen before. Their bodies are naked and featureless, without any genitalia or faces, like the world’s most fucked up Barbie dolls. They are all gaunt and emaciated. Each of them has a gaping wound in their chest.

“Holy shit,” Home Run whispers. “Those are the people from the dampener.”

“The people?!” Bedevil starts, remembering the PK dampener. The experimental, unique one. The bleach she’s sensed on it. Bleach to remove organic particles.

Organic, as in living. As in a person.

“No fucking way,” she whispers. She’s seen the inside of other dampeners, at other facilities. There weren’t any people in them.

Park Dae-Song had told her the Houston one was different. Had a farther range, covered more people, prevented more Affect from getting moved around. He hadn’t said they’d achieved that using people.

So the question is… did Oracle know? And why didn’t Bedevil?

Two men stand above the chaotic scene, looking down from a balcony onto the lab below. One of them is dressed lightly, a simple jean jacket and camouflage pants, and the other can be no one besides Pandahead.

He wears a full motorcycle helmet, painted black and white to resemble his namesake. At some angles it resembles a Panda, and at others it resembles a skull. His leather jacket swallows him alive and his pants billow, suspended by a very tight belt. He’s got to be 120 pounds soaking wet. Bedevil thinks, “That’s the guy that’s torn up the masks of Houston? That guy? Really?”

A storm of negative emotion rolls off Home Run. He wants to burst through the skylight right now.

“Wait a second,” Bedevil whispers.

“No!” Home Run hisses back at her. “I’m not going to let this bastard get away.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about that. We’re absolutely going to knock the walls off this building,” she says, squeezing his forearm to reassure him. “But I want to see if we can hear his conversation first.”

Home Run nods, seeing the reason in what she’s saying.

Bedevil throws out a lasso of steel, to avoid someone looking up and seeing them trying to open the skylight, and catches it on the latch.. She secretly uses a little bit more of her power to make sure she gets the job done, and after a second, the window pops up.

“-you really don’t see the fun in this?”

The voice buzzes through an electronic filter in the mask.

“These things give me the fuckin’ creeps, boss,” Jean Jacket replies.

“It’s a good thing this is where they dispose of them, isn’t it!” Pandahead clasps Jean Jacket on the back. “Isn’t it a little wild none of those workers will even remember this?”

The workers bring the lifeless bodies to a row of barrels, filled with some sort of liquid, along the wall. Working in trios, they tip the bodies into the barrels, and the liquid inside begins bubbling. It can only be a cocktail of chemicals meant to break down biological material. Not a quick process - these bodies might be bubbling in these vats for a week. But each vat is equipped with stainless steel apparatuses, pipes and lids that make Bedevil think they might be a pressure cookers, too. Something to speed the process up.

“PK Resonance, man. Creepy as shit,” Jean Jacket says.

“Haha,” Home Run whispers to himself.

“It’s all for the capital W Work, man,” Pandahead says. “That new world order’s gonna feel real good and you’re gonna forget all about this creepy stuff, promise.”

Jean Jacket doesn’t look very convinced.

A stiff breeze suddenly hits the skylight, knocking the window closed. The noise clatters into the lab below. “Fuck!” Bedevil hisses.

Pandahead, Jean Jacket, and every single worker looks up.

Home Run doesn’t wait. He bursts through the window with a heated gale. Bedevil barely has time to get her shield up before the blazing wind washes over her. She doesn’t waste any time, either, her body already moving to chase after him before she’s even aware of what she’s doing.

Metis, maybe they’ll solve all of this tonight. Maybe she can go home.

The workers, to her shock, pull out guns from holsters inside their clothes. She hadn’t noticed before, but now that she’s looking, she sees the bulges of the shoulder straps under their shirts. Bullets impact against her steel skin, falling harmlessly to the ground.

Home Run goes for Pandahead, one hand reached out to crush his helmet. But Jean Jacket, that fucker, intercepts. The man’s got steel skin, too! It’s a wild coincidence, but his looks like his actual power. He catches Home Run and whirls him around, throwing him down among the workers below.

Pandahead turns his helmet Bedevil’s way and reaches for something at the side of his belt — a gun? No… a thermos. He reaches for the top and she gets the feeling that she’s tipping forward over the edge of a cliff. Whatever he’s about to do, Bedevil knows she has to stop it. She tries to get past Jean Jacket, but he’s damn quick, grabbing at her ankle as she swings by his head. He throws her into the balcony with alarming force, sending her through it and down to the lab below.

“Ugh,” she groans, fighting to her feet. Her stomach turns, alcohol climbs her throat. The workers jump her, mobbing her and firing their guns at point blank range into her head. If she just had the steel skin… she’d be dead. But she conjures extra protection to keep them off her.

Home Run suddenly appears, a whirlwind of shining, fiery limbs knocking the workers away from her. Amazingly, he doesn’t kill them, but they don’t look like they’ll be getting up soon.

When she looks up, Pandahead is gone, having disappeared down a dark hallway. He’s left her and Home Run alone with this thug of his, and the rest of the unconscious workers.

“Go after him. I’ll take care of this guy,” Home Run says, lifting his fists. Jean Jacket marches forward, rolling his shoulders as he prepares for another bout.

Bedevil nods and slings herself back up to the balcony and down the dark hallway. She only hears the first exchange between them - a thunderous explosion - before she dashes down the hallway after Pandahead. A set of stairs leads her down, down, until she finds that it only returns her to the main lobby. “Damn it!” she shouts. She searches that whole damn floor for him, searches every floor until she’s sure - he’s gone. He’s given them the slip.

It’s fine. She can send drones, learn more about this place in her official capacity. She climbs the stairs back to the top floor, where Home Run has subdued Jean Jacket. He looks up at her expectantly, but she shakes her head, which sparks fury in his Affect. He glares down at his prisoner, one hand pressed on the man’s neck, the other raised as a threat.

“Screamed a lot, didn’t ya, big dude?” Home Run love taps the man on the chest with his fist. Jean Jacket groans in pain.

Damn, Home Run. Doesn’t even look like it was much of a fight. She wonders about why he struggled so much with Mr. Spiral back when they first met, then. “Didn’t scream anything specific, did he?”

“Not yet.” Home Run squats down on his haunches and leans over Jean Jacket. “Listen. Capes will be here soon, I’m sure, after all that noise. Do you want to go with them in handcuffs or do you want to go with them in a body bag?”

Turns out even Pandahead’s thugs can cry. “H-h-handcuffs.”

“Good.” Home Run slaps his chest. “Pandahead. Tell me about him.”

Jean Jacket pales. “No way, man.”

“You know who I am?”

“You ain’t shit compared to the devil.” Jean Jacket grabs at Home Run’s jacket. “The horror he can dispense, man. He has plans with PK.”

“Tell me,” Bedevil says, nudging him none too gently with one foot. “Tell me about his plans with PK Resonance.”

Home Run glances at her, but allows her to take over questioning the guy.

“I don’t know shit. I just know he says it’s gonna change the world.”

New world order, he’d said. “In what way?”

“Talks about overthrowing the capes, like… a lot.”

Now that’s something. Whatever Pandahead and Park Dae-seong are cooking up… they think it’s capable of standing against the might of the capes. That’s not something you hear every day. “Where did he go?” Bedevil asks.

“I…” Jean Jacket pales. “I’m gonna die if I tell you.”

She presses her heel into his hand, metal against metal. “You’re gonna die if you don’t.”

“If she doesn’t kill you, I will,” Home Run adds.

But before they can get another answer out of him, a streak of white hot fire lights up the sky through the window.

Flashfire. They’re out of time.

“Damn it,” Bedevil says. “We’ve gotta go.”

Home Run welds Jean Jacket to one of the pressure cookers by his hand - a process that doesn’t sound pleasant given his screams, but fuck him, he works for a human trafficker.

Neither of them are in a sexy mood when they make it to a safe alley at least a half mile away from the office building. Worse, Bedevil knows the night is at an end for her. She’ll have to go investigate as a cape. She fumes, disappointed that the night turned out this way.

“What now?” Home Run asks, still looking back toward the building like he wants to go over there and tear it apart brick by brick until it coughs up his prey. Bedevil can’t deny she shares his frustration. If they’d managed to collar Pandahead tonight… maybe a lot of questions could be answered.

Her handheld is buzzing in her pocket. Probably messages to meet up with Flashfire. She sighs, reaches out and hugs Home Run, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. “My day job. I’m so sorry.”

He hugs her back, pressing his cheek to her temple. “Yeah.”

“I’ll call you,” she says, before swinging off into the night.

#

#

The office building feels very different when she returns wearing her cape uniform. It’s gone from feeling like a beast’s lair with the monsters all still inside to nothing more than another crime scene, wrapped up in yellow tape and swarming with drones. The shadows are banished by their sapphire light and the mighty gaze of the Vanguard. Flashfire and Highheart are already both there by the time Bedevil steps inside.

“Heh,” Flashfire says, making a show of kicking at Jean Jacket when Bedevil arrives. “Somebody welded the metal man to this pressure cooker.”

“H-Home Run did it,” Jean Jacket says.

That name elicits a split second of fury from Flashfire. But then he calms down and says, “Still kinda funny. What’d he want here?”

“I don’t know man, I was just in the area and-”

“Oh, bullshit,” Flashfire says, dropping to his knee on Jean Jacket’s chest. When he realizes the metal isn’t exactly comfortable to kneel on, he relents and squats next to him. Then, he starts mocking the guy. “Oh I don’t know anything I’m just a poor little cruiserweight guy who happened to be in the area! Yeah man, we’ve heard it before. Now talk before things get hot.”

“I said, I don’t know nothing!” Jean Jacket protests. “He and his girlfriend just-“

“His girlfriend!” Flashfire shouts, his eyes lighting up suddenly. “Tell me about her!”

Before that can get too personal, Bedevil hightails it out of there. Besides, she wants to dig around that stairwell and try to find where Pandahead escaped.

Only, at the top of the stairs, she finds Highheart waiting, her Affect unusually stormy. She looks at Bedevil with wide, accusing eyes, and asks, “Why did I find your Affect print here already?”

Damn it. Bedevil had hoped in all the flurry, it’d be hard to tell who all had been here. But Highheart is a very good empath. She’d already untangled the scene before Bedevil could come back and get more of her Affect here.

“I don’t know. I’ve been to a lot of rooftops over the last couple of nights,” Bedevil says.

“No. I found your print all over these stairs, in this lab behind us, and all the way to the bottom lobby.”

She frowns, feeling her authority attacked. “Okay. I was here. But I was here on Vanguard business. Remember your station, Highheart, and mine.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m aware.” Bedevil can’t help but notice Highheart’s fist clench, her Affect freely exuding anger. “I’m more aware than most of the Vanguard’s ranks, of their rules. I had them branded into me when I agreed to join, when we had no other choice after Houston fell. And you might get away with flaunting them because you’re her daughter-”

“Highheart, you better watch yourself,” Bedevil warns her.

“But you can’t get away with it to her.”

Her mother doesn’t appear, but neither does she take Bedevil to her heart. Instead, Oracle’s voice floats on the air as if she stands just outside the shadows of the stairwell. Highheart doesn’t seem to hear this, but instead only watches Bedevil intently.“I gave you permission to work with Home Run to uncover more about this Pandahead and how he relates to the capes. I didn’t give you permission to engage in a romantic affair.”

“You went over my fucking head?” Bedevil’s anger is almost immediately iced over. She already knows she’s fucked, but damn it.

“I had to,” Highheart said. “Once I realized you were here with Home Run, I had to know what was going on. And Oracle wasn’t very happy to find out you’ve been working with him.”

Metis, that’s not it at all. “Oracle trusts me.”

Highheart’s eyes widen. Then, she shakes her head, scowling. “That’s not what she told me.”

Oracle’s voice continues to speak directly into Bedevil’s ear. “I expected you to have more mastery of yourself. Especially after the disentanglement.”

“No. You should have known it failed this whole time!” Bedevil barely restrains herself from shouting at her mother. Highheart can’t hear Oracle’s half of the conversation, so Bedevil’s sudden outburst catches her on the back foot, silencing her.

Bedevil doesn’t feel anything specific from her mother, not in the Affect, she just notices… a hesitation. “I- I should tell you something…” her mother whispers.

Suddenly, Bedevil is no longer in the office stairwell, no longer in the shadows. She stands alongside Oracle on a burning hill, overlooking a town wrecked against a bloody sea. A few Vanguard capes stalk over this ruin, climbing over mounds of bodies and cracked streets.

“We’re losing, aren’t we?” Bedevil asks, looking down on what must be the aftermath of a massacre.

Oracle’s vicious glare almost feels like it could sheer Bedevil’s head off her shoulders. “The Vanguard is victory everlasting. We will not lose. But the situation has required much of my attention, yes. We’re in open war in the Pacific Northwest, now.” Her mother’s voice is tight, icy and cold. The empath’s armor, betraying no emotion. “His forces are strong, but he doesn’t have the Heavyweights we have. Still, I’ve had to be ultra vigilant. To keep him from taking anyone. But now, I’ve returned my attention to you. Thanks to Highheart, I’ve read your mind. Seen what’s mounting. And it’s unacceptable, daughter.”

Bedevil sighs. She knows. She even knows it’s partially a lie when she says, “I was using him, still.”

“No, you know you feel real emotions for him. And if the emotions mount much further, you’ll be donating who knows how many engrams to him. It could become love. And love is the strongest bond of all, Ruby. It’s how you’re so strong.” Her mother’s phantom fingers brush her cheek. “Because I love you.”

“What do I do, then?” Bedevil asks, steeling herself for another disentanglement.

“The next time he calls… it won’t just be you. You’ll bring the Houston Heroes, too.”

“Why don’t we just go get him now?” Bedevil asks. “We have his location from the tracker I slipped into him.We know where he is.”

“Because, very soon, he’s going to find his way to Pandahead. And we will kill two birds with one stone.”