Derek defended against blow after blow, but he couldn’t bring himself to fight back. Rob’s attacks were unflinching.

A kick sent Derek to the stairwell. He gripped the metal railing, nearly flying over the stairs. His legs weak, his heart pounding, Derek rolled away from the stairwell, narrowly dodging another kick. Before he could recover, Rob swept Derek’s legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground.

Derek held his hand out as Rob made to throw another punch. “Wait… wait.” He just needed a moment, a single moment to catch his breath.

As Derek sucked down air, sweat dripping down his face, Rob cocked his head to the side.

“This… isn’t you.” Nausea roiled in Derek’s stomach, and his chest ached as he rolled onto his hands and knees, his lungs begging for more air.

Rob reached into his back pocket and removed a syringe. Its plastic cover rolled across the floor. He lunged, tackling Derek to the ground, and plunged the syringe downward.

Derek blocked his arm, the needle an inch away from piercing his skin. He held strong at first, but Rob was overpowering him. Exhaustion weakened his arms, his body forcing air down his throat. The needle closed in on his neck.

“No,” Derek pleaded. “No, I can’t turn into one of these things.” He sent his knee into Rob’s stomach and threw all his weight into a punch to his face.

Rob staggered back, cradling his bleeding nose. The syringe fell from his hand.

Derek clambered for it. Rob dove for him, and Derek kicked him away, grabbing the plastic cover.

He covered the syringe and pocketed it, watching Rob carefully as he stood back up.

Derek spat blood onto the floor. Rob didn’t give it a second glance. Derek couldn’t bring himself to hurt him. Caleb knew Derek wouldn’t be able to fight his own friend. Bastard.

Derek pointed at the blood on the floor. “You see that?”

Rob still didn’t look.

“That was once yours. It’s not too late. I know you didn’t want this.”

Rob made to attack again then stopped. He dropped to one knee and groaned, his hand on his head. It lasted for a second before he shook it off and looked at Derek. His eyes watered.

“I… Derek?”

Derek gulped. If this is a trick… “Rob… you okay?”

Rob shook his head—not a no but a motion to get something out. Like a bad thought he was trying to avoid. “What am I doing?”

Derek gawked as Rob stared at the ground, his face twisted in confusion. He stared for the longest time, and Derek waited for the trap, waited for Rob to charge again. But when he met Derek’s stare, his eyes lit up.

Derek charged him, not to attack, but to wrap him in an embrace.

Rob choked on his words as he said, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” Derek said. “I’m sorry I let them take you.” He let the tears flow down his cheeks. It felt good to cry, not in mourning this time, but in happiness.

Rob was alive—alive and, for whatever reason, back to his old self.

When they separated, Derek laughed, wiping his cheeks. “I can’t believe that worked.”

A voice rang out from the stairs above. “It didn’t.”

Derek’s smile shattered when he found the source of the voice. Kaela descended the stairs, her glowing purple veins and eyes flashing for a moment before she extended her arm and Rob flew back into the wall.

Derek reached out to Rob, but he escaped his grip. An invisible force held him aloft, flattened against the wall.

Derek looked at Kaela, a plea in his voice. “NO!”

Kaela didn’t look at him, only closed her fist and lifted her chin. Her veins flashed again, and Rob’s flashed in response. “I’m helping him.” Her voice was eerily calm, and Derek made to charge her. Her eyes flashed at him too. “Don’t. Just watch.”

Derek’s legs turned to stone, panic blurring his thoughts. Caleb had gotten to her. Now what?

Rob’s body cringed. Slowly, his veins dimmed, and purple blood floated from his mouth.

Derek balled his fists and readied himself again to charge Kaela, but Rob’s eyes met his. His stare was composed, as if telling his friend to stay put. Derek found it hard to breathe, hard to stand here and do nothing.

Kaela seemed to notice his impatience. “I said I’m helping him, you idiot.”

Well, she was at least acting like Kaela.

Kaela manipulated the blood in the air into a ball, and it solidified. The ball glowed, then with a flash of her eyes, it flew up the stairwell. Seconds later, a boom echoed from above.

Rob gasped for air as he crumpled to the floor. Derek ran to him, kneeling at his side, a hundred questions already on his lips.

Rob’s hand went to his chest. “What did you just do to me?”

“I took the nanobots out,” Kaela said, walking down the stairs. “Well, most of them.”

Rob laughed, though Derek didn’t know why.

“There’s still some in there, but at least you can’t be controlled anymore.”

Rob sat up straighter, his skin pale from losing blood. His breathing was unsteady.

Derek spoke. “We can’t have so many people running around with purple veins. We still need a cure.”

“And we’ll get it.” Kaela stared downward, as if sensing something. Wordlessly, she descended the stairs, quiet as a ghost.

“Where’s Caleb?” Derek asked.

“Dead.” Kaela kept walking.

When she disappeared, Derek sat down next to Rob, groaning at his aching back.

“You’ve gotten better at fighting,” Derek said.

Rob smiled. “Well, I did have a bunch of little robots making me stronger.”

Derek chuckled then went silent. “I’m sorry… again. I should have done more to help you. Instead of just watching them take your body away like that.”

Rob shrugged. “It’s not that bad. In the end, it’s my fault I got caught.” He sighed. “Besides, it all turned out for the better. Being dead was weird, though. But that’s a story for another day.” He rested his head against the wall.

Derek opened his mouth to protest, but Rob glared at him, so he closed it. They sat in the quiet of the staircase.

Rob laughed at his hands. “Guess I’ll be stuck with these veins for a little while, huh?”

Derek nodded. He’d missed that laugh.

He had his friend back.

Rob’s eyes didn’t glow purple anymore, but they remained that color.

Derek sighed and laid his head back against the wall alongside him.

No matter what it took, he would make sure never to lose his friend again.

“So…” Rob started, still out of breath, “this is probably a bad time, but… I’m pretty hungry, and—”

Derek shook with laughter, and Rob joined in, hesitantly.

“Heh heh, yeah,” Rob said. “No, but seriously…”

* * *

Eric stared at the fake wooden walls of the cramped bathroom. Lance was sitting across from him, his legs braced against the wall. His head fell forward every few seconds.

Eric chuckled. “All this gunfire, and you’re still nodding off? You must be exhausted.”

Lance didn’t look at him. “I’m trying to get as much energy back up as I can so we can get this over with. I hate just sitting here.” Now he looked. “And that gunfire isn’t showing any signs of stopping. One of them is going to run out of ammo soon enough, and my bet’s on the chief.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“We also don’t know where Caleb is. We don’t know where Derek and Kaela are, either. Hell, we don’t even know if they’re alive. So why don’t we get up and go check on them instead of staying in here?”

Eric glared at his son, but he couldn’t meet those green eyes for long. Not when they looked right through his—just like she always had.

Kaela and Derek would be fine. That’s what he told himself. He wasn’t about to leave Lance, and he certainly wasn’t about to let Lance leave.

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But Lance seemed to take Eric’s silence as an answer because he emitted an irritated groan and struggled to stand. Eric shoved him back down, ignoring the swears of protest.

Lance hissed, “I am not some child you need to protect. I’m a grown man, now let me out!”

“I can’t!”

Lance stopped midstruggle.

Eric frowned. “I can’t let you go.”

“Why?!”

“Because the last time I let you go, you spent years in that damned orphanage, then more years in the streets…” Tears welled in Eric’s eyes, surprising him before he could shove them down. “I’ve done a lot of shitty things, Lance! And I’m probably going to keep doing shitty things, but if there’s one good thing I ever did, it was jumping in that taxi with Carrie… That was the last night I had to spend with her, and I made the same mistake with you. I will not lose the one thing I have left!”

Lance just stared at him. Anger shadowed his face for a moment then disappeared. “I… What do you expect me to say to that? ‘Thanks, Dad, I love you too’?” Lance made to stand again.

A heavy thud resounded outside the door, and Eric shoved his son back down. Before Lance could protest, Eric shushed him and put a hand to his ear, a silent order to Lance. Listen.

Footsteps sounded outside the bathroom. Eric racked his brain for a guess as to who was on the other side of the door.

The gunfire outside ceased, and Eric’s cane blade whined as he drew it.

Eric burst through the door and found four guards standing before him. The moment their helmeted heads turned toward him, he knew they weren’t the chief’s. Fear clutched his heart at the silence in the lobby.

Eric almost lunged but stopped as the men looked around as if confused. Their guns were on the floor.

The officers stiffened suddenly, as if paralyzed.

Eric slowly weaved through the soldiers, their bodies as stiff as statues. The bodies on the floor—the ones still intact—were paralyzed as well.

Almost in unison, their helmets shattered, and purple blood floated out of them. Their faces were twisted in shock.

Eric sheathed his blade and tossed the cane to Lance. He caught it and leaned on it, exhaustion dimming his eyes.

Then Eric stepped out of the break room, surveying the dozens of bodies on the floor. All their helmets were broken, all their mouths open with purple blood floating out.

Rachel and the other officers did the same. Rotoya just looked around, her hand clutched to her chest as worry creased her face.

Even the soldiers outside froze.

“Chief?” Eric called.

Rotoya’s eyes shifted to him, drenched in fear.

Then footsteps clicked on the floor from around the corner. Another prickle of fear hit his spine, and Eric readied himself. “Caleb.”

But the footsteps, light and graceful, didn’t resemble Caleb’s at all.

And when Kaela rounded the corner of the hallway, Eric’s legs buckled. The cane slipped from Lance’s hand and clattered to the floor. His face twisted with emotions—fear and confusion, anger and sadness. He spoke, but no sound came out. He just mouthed, He drugged her.

Eric didn’t know whether to run or to fight or to do what he was doing now: standing in fear, watching her carefully.

Kaela’s sharp purple eyes shot to Lance as if she could hear what he’d mouthed. She shook her head at him, lightly, almost invisibly. Then she looked at Eric, and something calmed his fear. Not a threat. Not an enemy.

An ally.

Kaela scrutinized the men and women lying across the floor, blood leaking from their mouths. She focused on all of them, her fingers dancing at her sides. Eric gulped. She was ordering the blood. Manipulating it as Caleb did.

So where was Caleb? Where was Derek?

Her eyes met his again. “Trust me.”

Her voice was still Kaela’s yet monotone, laced with nothingness, as if all emotion had been ripped from her. Like her heart had been torn from her chest.

Purple blood continued to float from the mouths of the soldiers. Eric waited for blood to leave Lance’s mouth, but none did.

Kaela’s eyes repeated what her mouth had said: Trust me.

* * *

Kaela sighed as a flood of calm washed over her. The nanobots inside her… they granted her such power. Beyond her own, she could feel the nanobots in the rest of them. The alphas ignored her commands, save for the ones in her own body, but the betas listened. They obeyed her orders and left the bodies of the soldiers, inside and outside the building.

Most of the soldiers weren’t truly dead. They were clinging to life by a thread. That thread was the nanobots. Their bodies were waiting for whoever was in charge to revive them. With a wave of her hand, every laid-out soldier was pulled by that thread, returned to the land of the living. Hearts beat to life, and lungs sucked down air—their last chance at living a life. Their last revival.

A second wave of her hand directed the bots she hadn’t removed to heal their wounds. It would be slower, and it would only last until the remainder were gone, but at least they wouldn’t die all over again. She kept them still and paralyzed for now as she continued the extraction.

She felt Rotoya’s blood, but only a handful of betas were swimming around inside her. Not enough to rip out without hurting her, just as the rest of the soldiers risked injury if she stole every single beta from within them. The cure would finish off whatever she didn’t remove, should one ever exist.

Lance, however, held none of the beta strain within his body. But something was inside him, just like the thing she’d held inside of herself. It moved around, snarling at her presence. She knew Lance felt it too. It would be easy to smother it, just as she had her own. But that would have to be Lance’s choice.

Finally, most of the beta strain left the bodies of the soldiers.

With the bots gone, Kaela lost her control over the soldiers. The paralysis disappeared. Groans of pain and relief flooded the room, and slowly, Kaela closed her eyes and formed the gallons of blood she held before her into one large ball. She waited patiently for the blood in the stairwell, in the floors above, and outside to travel to her.

It took minutes, but time was a luxury she could afford to waste. Every ounce of violet blood, filled with billions of nanobots, formed into one large orb before her.

Kaela stole a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, her arms were stretched out. The bundle of nanobots and amethyst blood blocked the lights, plunging the room into a purple haze. She moved it out the front door. The ball shifted and flowed, pushing the armored vehicles out of the way. The blood floated high in the air, and the farther it rose, the weaker the nanobots held in Kaela’s grip. They became a distant whisper.

She stopped, holding them miles in the air, barely feeling them anymore. Any farther, and she would lose her connection to them. This would have to be good enough.

Kaela took a steadying breath, and while she didn’t see it, she knew the ball glowed brighter than any streetlamp in the city. Then a boom broke the night sky. The building quivered, and a tremor shook the ground. Silence fell until the soldiers groaned and moaned as they stood. A few from the break room screamed in pain. Several bodies still peppered the tile floor, all without heads. They wouldn’t be coming back.

A weight lifted from her chest, and her mind cleared, rid of the whispers of their nanobots.

Eric stepped toward her, then Lance. She shook her head at them and scanned the men and women across the room, then outside. Some remained on the floor in pain, but the rest of the soldiers wasted no time in helping the injured.

Rachel hunched over like she was going to throw up, while Rotoya rubbed her back. The rest of the soldiers walked around as if they’d forgotten what the world was like without the foggy lens of Caleb’s control over them. The officers did the same. Rotoya nodded at Kaela, a silent thank-you. Her eyes darkened as she scanned the headless bodies strewn across the floor.

How many had been her officers?

“How dare you?” Rachel spat, anger flashing in her eyes. “I trusted you! I took that damned drug because I thought you would never do anything to hurt us.”

“I tried to release control, but I couldn’t,” Rotoya said as Rachel stepped back. “Sands, please understand, if I could have turned them off, I would have. I didn’t know all of this would happen!”

Rachel’s mouth formed a deep frown. “Do not… call me Sands.” She stormed off and disappeared into the crowd.

Kaela took one step forward then another. Her steps felt light, like she was walking on air.

Some of the soldiers approached to thank her, their eyes and veins no longer glowing but retaining their purple hue. Some of them had seen past the lens, had known they were doing wrong, but had been unable to fight against their orders. It would take years for them to get over the things they’d done, but that would be their job. Their responsibility.

As far as Kaela was concerned, she only had one job. One job for one friend, and then she was finished, done with anything else for a long, long time.

Eyes followed her as she left the building, and a frown etched on her face. She couldn’t turn their heads away. There weren’t enough beta bots within them to control them anymore. So she wielded her frown as a shield and walked down the stairs. She looked out at the street, searching.

They hadn’t been on the highest floor, yet… Amari was so broken.

Kaela ignored the stares as she picked up her friend’s broken body. A pool of purple blood surrounded her, which meant there had been much more before Kaela destroyed the beta bots.

That purple blood trailed down her arms and clothes. Footsteps approached, and Kaela sensed Lance’s presence before he made it known. Just like the others, she ignored him and kept walking, Amari in her arms.

She looked down the street for a long moment, considering walking the entire way. It was what she deserved, having to walk a body all the way to her destination, but that would take too long.

Kaela breathed a silent apology to Amari as she carried her damaged body to a police car and laid her gently across the back seat. She folded her arms over her chest, and the crackling sound that ensued chilled her to the bone. She put a hand to her mouth, muffling her sobs as she rounded to the driver’s seat and started the engine.

She drove until the buildings turned to trees. The streetlights disappeared. Only the headlights and a sliver of moonlight guided her. The window was rolled down, the cool wind tugging at her hair and stinging her cheeks. Crickets chirped.

The entire way, she called to her own nanobots, begging and pleading with them to heal Amari’s injuries. But despite how strongly she reached out, no answer came from the few nanobots left within Amari. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t healed when the soldiers had. She’d lost too much blood and therefore too many bots to heal properly. That, and… maybe her body had just been too broken. Kaela slowed the car, barely able to see through the tears in her eyes.

She ascended a hill and parked at the destination. She stepped out, surveying her surroundings before sliding Amari back into her arms.

The moon was little more than a crescent tonight, but it provided enough light for Kaela to watch where she stepped across the clearing in the trees.

Kaela set Amari’s body on the cold ground with another apology.

She knelt and clawed at the ground with her bare fingers. It didn’t hurt at first, but after she had dug a foot of dirt, her fingers bled, her nails ached and cracked, and her back groaned. She didn’t care. Whatever pain she endured in doing this was nothing compared to the pain she’d put Amari through.

She didn’t stop for an instant, even as her body griped. The nanobots provided strength and endurance, and even so, she ached. The nanobots healed her bleeding fingers, her broken nails, seconds after she broke them, over and over.

When she finally dug deep enough, the sun peeked over the horizon, and a morning breeze flowed like silk along her skin. They sat in the growing shade of the tree.

Kaela inspected Amari. Her face was so peaceful. How could she possibly look so peaceful when her last moments had been filled with shock, fear, and sadness?

Amari had likely blamed herself, Kaela thought as she lifted her body again. That thought weighed the guilt heavier on her chest. Gently, she laid Amari to rest in her homemade grave. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she couldn’t wipe them away in time before a few dripped onto Amari’s face.

Kaela wiped her eyes, sighing at the cool morning air as it caressed her healed but still-sore fingers. The auburn light of the rising sun shone on the clearing. So quiet. So removed from everything else. A slice of the world where nothing existed but the hill, the bench, the tree, and the view. Kaela smiled, but only for a second. She reached down and wiped the tears from Amari’s cheek. She looked over at the bench, where she and her parents had always sat. She remembered the laughs, the tears, the arguments. This had been their favorite spot. But now her parents were gone. She was the last one to enjoy its view, its peace—its last guardian.

“I should have brought you here when I had the chance. You would have liked it,” Kaela said, looking down at Amari’s sleeping face. “You would have covered yourself in hand sanitizer, but you would have liked the view, at least.” She attempted a laugh, but it broke halfway through, almost into a sob. She glanced out at the city of Arachna, spread out below the hill. “I’m so sorry…” Kaela choked on the words as more tears leaked from her eyes. “I’m sorry for what I did. I should never have put you through all this.” She cried until her head throbbed and the weight on her chest lifted, if only for a moment. It gave her a reprieve before it stomped on her chest once again. She didn’t have much time left. If she spent too long out here, somebody would come after her.

In fact… She perked her head up.

Lance was headed in her direction, moving fast. She shook her head and looked down at Amari one last time. “I can’t stay here with you long, but I swear I’ll make up for what I did. I’ll come visit you as well.” Her voice shook. “I don’t even know if you can hear me, wherever you are. But make sure you get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

Birds chirped in the distance, and Kaela allowed herself to enjoy the sound for a few seconds before returning to work. Lance would be here soon, and he would insist on helping. She didn’t want that. This was her responsibility.