You really should have seen the look on the guy’s face when I landed on him. I would say it was priceless if I didn’t smack both of our heads against the concrete, the difference being that my skull is kind of thick and his isn’t. His head bounces off the floor with a sickening whack, and I quickly get onto my hands and knees and make sure that all the blood spilling onto the floor isn’t because he’s just split his head open. Then I sigh with relief. Just a cut. He’s out cold, groaning, but I also didn’t just kill a random guy after trusting another random guy I just met, either.

It takes me a few seconds to realize that one, the weird guy was right, and two, that’s a rifle beside me.

I’m not talking about a normal assault rifle, but the kind that were made to put down Supes during the war. Wanna know how I know that? Because when they grabbed Sunwalker, they wanted to make an example out of him with their new toys, so they put him there on his knees, the flag snapping in the wind on a mast towering above him, and the new president’s first act of service to the American people was to punch a chunk of his brains out onto the soil. I think I’ve got a problem, because I remember things like that all the time, maybe because of the amount of times I’ve watched it on the internet, but kind of like I was standing right there watching it, sick to my stomach.

As if I had been just as powerless to stop it like the rest of the world.

The guy got executed for wearing a cape. For being a Cape.

But those rifles aren’t meant to be in some guy’s hands, or in the dozens of hands that point them at me. They’re meant to be in museums where kids like me go to see them on some field trip we can barely focus on at the time. I’m still on my hands and knees, bearing over the unconscious guy underneath me, staring down the fat black muzzles of the assault rifles glaring at me. The people holding them are stiff, dead on their feet, their eyes just as dark as the holes of the guns they’ve got on me. Fuck me, did that Asian guy just screw me over? When I slowly try to sit back on my haunches, they creep closer, and goddamn, these guys are scarily efficient. I’ve never been shot before, but I kinda know (kinda hope) that I’m far enough along now that I’m not going to curl up and die…I think.

I count ten guys surrounding me. People in black carrying rifles that were meant to be decommissioned a very long time ago. I stare at them and they stare at me, nobody moving except the twitching guy underneath me.

Fluorescent lights hum above me. I’m in a large warehouse filled with wooden crates and metal caskets full of God knows what. I don’t see any patches or anything identifying them. They’re silent and in all black fatigues.

“Woah, woah, alright, let’s calm down,” I say, putting my hands up. “If you’re mad about your buddy, he’s fine, just taking a nap that I accidentally forced him into.” Nothing. Their black masks hide their faces perfectly.

The entire warehouse is quiet, deathly quiet. There’s more of them above me on catwalks, not even with their guns raised or unslung from their backs, but they’re all poised and straight, shadows that I can just about see in the gloominess they hide in. I swallow past the dryness in my mouth, hating how bitter the saliva is on my tongue.

Don’t panic, think fast. Thugs with big guns. Illegal-looking operation. Be a superhero.

Only problem with that was that my fighting skills are just as good as the videos I watch online to train myself. Up until recently nobody was sure that I would even get powers, because people bloom early, not this late. Training me was never going to happen. I got into a few fights in school and learnt how to handle myself, but these are thugs, no, mercenaries with guns surrounding me right now. No dirt to throw, hair to pull, or cafeteria trays to slam a face into. Can’t buckle now. Not until you find Bubblegum. People, very innocent people, died a few hours ago, and the police will help, and so will the Protectorate, but if this is where she went, then it’s where I’ll be going.

My hands are shaking as I slowly put them to my side. First big fight. My stomach is in knots. I can’t see properly through the raging sound of blood rushing past my ears. Then I ball my hands into fists, steadying them.

I have to, because superheroes aren’t meant to be afraid. They’re brave. They’re heroic.

If I had the chance, I’d spit the puke that just rushed up my throat. But I swallow, try not to wince, and look around me, meet their eyes, breathe deeply through my nose, and very slowly grab hold of my wits, zeroing in.

And when I stand, the gun pointing right at my chest bucks, cracking the air like a whip.

Like the bark of some snarling dog that’s just torn itself out of hell.

I watch the muzzle flash in real time. I throw myself to the side, rolling over my shoulder and scrambling back onto my feet as the bullet punches a chunk of the concrete floor into oblivion. I stare at the smoldering hole and the smoking gun, at the dozens of eyes that soon turn to face me. Panting, sweaty, my stomach in a tight knot.

“Fuck that was close,” I whisper, then louder: “I’m not here to fight! I came looking for a girl. Pink hair?”

Two more gunshots ring out, and I lunge away again, using my flight to leap onto a towering stack of wooden crates. I crouch at the top, watching as they tap their ears and say something I can’t hear for some weird reason, as if they’re not speaking at…Telepathic link, Kacey. Of course. Then they move, several of them running off in different directions, scattering like insects that just lost their hive. The guys above me still don’t move, but keep watch of me like ravens staring down at some little rat that’s slowly rotting. Then I slowly stand up, staring at them too. I look around, but the warehouse is just so plain it could literally be any of the dozens in the bay area.

Wherever Pink-Hair went, she’s not here. I think. I doubt these guys will let me have a look around.

The sound of rumbling quickly fills the warehouse, and very, very bright headlights shine directly at me a few dozen seconds later. Whatever was happening here, the people in black just figured it wasn’t worth sticking around for, even if most of the crates they were dealing with are still right here for the taking. Doesn’t matter. Gotta stop ‘em and see what they were doing, because maybe one of them knows where Pink is. Plus, come on, guys with guns in a warehouse dealing with large metal crates just screams problems waiting to happen. I don’t get out much, especially not as a superhero, but nobody’s here to watch and pin down my identity, so it looks like I’ve got a fight.

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The large bay doors judder aside, groaning as fast as they can so the fleet of trucks can race out of here. They open up to darkness and a pale moon that reflects off the ocean, the night as silent as you could wish it to be.

I blast my way off the wooden boxes, blowing some of them apart like a shotgun blast just sent wooden shrapnel whistling through the air, as I leap right toward the truck. Seven heavy duty-six wheelers, all black and armored and probably built to tank hits from people like me, but I go for it anyway, slamming into the concrete in front of the truck closest to the doors. Then I slowly stand, my knees aching a little as the harsh white headlights spread my shadow out behind me. Destroy them, and make sure that these guys aren’t getting any further is the kind of plan I’ve come up with on the spot, ‘cause I had no reason to over-complicate any of this. Just stop the bad guys.

I’m about to run right up toward the first truck and, I don’t know, maybe slam my shoulder against it, or try to put my fist through its radiator or engine block, when a gust of wind suddenly slams me in the stomach. I gasp and spit saliva, buckling a little as I clutch onto my gut. I glance around me, hearing footsteps skidding on concrete and the rapid beating of a Speedster’s heart. Getting fun now. I knuckle away the spit and wait, the trucks still not moving, but the gust of wind is snapping my hair against my face. Faster in circles, going around me and next to me, just out of reach, too slow, can’t catch them, and then another impact lands hard across my jaw, dropping me.

I shake my head, feeling like my brain is rattling around my skull. Then the wind and the footsteps stop.

Standing above me is a guy in running pants, no shoes, and a filthy white t-shirt. He’s bald, too bald, with barely a single strand of hair anywhere on his face. He grins at me, then crouches faster than I can blink right now.

“Hey, think I’ve seen you before,” he says, suddenly to my left. “And you look kinda familiar…”

“Stop playing games and end this.” I tense and look upward, up near the rafters of the warehouse where someone is crouched on the railings. He’s large enough to be a grown man, but that’s not the worst thing about him. It’s the deep scarlet color of his armor, and I’m not talking good old kevlar, but the reflective shine of something metallic. Fuck me, a Technomancer, too?! He stands, then lands beside Baldy the Speedster, cratering the ground a lot more than I had. Then he rises above me, his metal face plate reflective and glossy, and the bulkiness of his build so complete and slim that it would make Iron Maiden herself salivate, which is really, really not good for my health, especially when he points his palm toward me. “She’s trespassed. The chances of her being a problem are at 97%.”

“Me? A problem?” I ask him, getting onto an elbow. “No way, dude. You guys seem totally legit.”

Baldy asks, “Really? I figured as much. Wearing a costume and acting menacing would blow our cover.”

It felt like there was something in that sentence directed toward the Tech, but I didn’t care.

I lunged upward, my fist driving toward his—

His metal-gloved hand wraps around my fingers and squeezes, making me scream out. His head tilts slowly.

Then he shatters my hand.

Blood spits on my face and dribbles down my arm, and he doesn’t let go. Not as my fingers snap and my wrist bends as he throws me down onto the floor. I gasp and clutch my hand when he lets me go. I swear and cradle it and can’t even think with the pain that’s raging up my arm and through my body. The blood doesn’t stop flowing no matter how hard I press my hand to my chest. No matter how much my white t-shirt soaks it up in seconds. My fingers hang loosely by skin alone, dangling and awkward and fuck, Kacey, fuck, get out from underneath him!

Baldy, somewhere next to me, whistles. “A little overkill, don’t you think? She’s just a kid.”

The next second, and I’m skidding across the floor, tumbling over and over when the Tech slams his foot into my chest, decimating any chance of breathing through my aching lungs until something very, very hard stops me from continuing onward. The impact is sudden, almost back-breaking. I whimper in pain and barely have the strength to look up at whatever I’ve just slammed into. I find a pair of legs that go up and up, connecting to a toned body and then a woman who has her thick arms folded over her chest. She’s in black cargo pants and some kind of white compression shirt, with nothing covering her face or the glare she’s got me pinned under. I turn myself over onto my back, trying to drag myself away, but she slowly walks toward me, stepping in the bloody stain my hand is leaving behind until she eventually steps down on my fingers so hard that shriek. Scream until it feels like my throat is going to tear open. Until all I can hear is my own agony. I plead with her, genuinely plead and splutter through saliva and panic and pain as I try to tug my hand out from underneath her boot, but she doesn’t move.

Will not fucking move.

She grabs me by the throat and lifts me up, raising me high above the ground, then raises her voice as she says, “What is this?” She shakes me, like I’m some meat she just found on the floor. “And why is it still alive here?”

I grab at her hand, using the fingers that still work, but it’s like prying at bars of impenetrable steel. I choke and I wheeze, struggling to breathe, my chest in agony from being kicked, my t-shirt covered in so much blood that it sticks to my chest, dark crimson and wet, and she must have noticed it eventually, because she slams me head first onto the floor at her feet. The world dims and flickers. I can’t move. Then I feel as she starts dragging me toward the doors, my hair in her fist and my body useless. Blood smearing underneath me along the floor like a garish tongue.

She drops me at the feet of a mercenary that’s hopped out of the truck, rifle in hand pointed at my chest. The woman forces me to sit upright, and blood trickles down my forehead and into my eyes, making them sting.

Then I hear a distant bang.

I find myself gasping and coughing blood in the next second, buried deep inside a crate filled with straw and wood and pieces of metal that I can’t make sense of as I roll onto my shoulder. I choke on liquid iron. Shake my head. Then pain lances through my chest, knocking the focus right out of my skull. I clutch my t-shirt, and my hand comes away soaked in blood. I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Every single breath feels like liquid fire flooding into my lungs. I shudder. My body rattles with agony, making it feel like my bones are digging into every muscle and organ and I can’t breathe. I try to clutch at my chest, to rip off my shirt, but all I’m pulling away are pieces of my crop top.

And…and is that flesh on my hand? Pieces of my own fucking chest cavity?

Gore slips past my fingers, splattering onto the scattered hay underneath me.

A shadow appears above me, dowsing me in darkness. My eyes struggle to adjust, and then they do.

Just in time to see the gun pointed at my head go off, making the world briefly turn white.

And then pitch black.