Maya threw another smoke grenade at their feet as Avanti cast invisibility. But, yellow energy gathered in Apex’s palm, and a quick Sunshot forced them to dive apart. Maya dodged to one side of the room, while Avanti fled to the other, both hiding in the narrow spaces between the server shelves and the walls. As the smoke grenade hissed and filled the room with white clouds, Maya fought to still her shaking hands.

Without being in Avanti’s line of sight, she was visible again.

“Uh oh. You Illusion Mages can’t keep up a trick without line of sight, can you? That means…someone’s visible,” Apex sang. “Visible and trapped in a room with me.”

Maya barely heard Apex’s slow and measured footstep over her own pounding heart. She clenched her fist around the strap of the bag. Apex’s voice stalked towards the other side of the room. Could she even release her trapped breath?

“Boo!” She snickered. “How’s that invisibility spell working for you, Avanti?”

Maya peered around the corner, catching slight movements in the smoke. Avanti was shuffling around the server tower into the center aisle, as Apex circled towards her side of the room.

“I can’t see you, Avanti, and I can’t hear you tiptoeing around to hide from me. Which means, you saved that nifty invisibility spell for yourself. You’re on this side, and you’re on that side, Maya.”

Overdrive would be back in seconds.

Apex’s footsteps rushed towards her side of the room.

Maya armed the heaviest grenade from her duffel bag with a beep and threw it down the narrow aisle, plugging her ears. Apex whirled around the corner, spotting Maya hiding between the server shelf and the wall.

Yet, she ran right into the sound grenade.

Maya could only hope Avanti had plugged her ears, too, before the grenade went off with a bassy, deafening boom that shuddered through her bones. Apex screamed, firing a wild Sunshot down the narrow space. Maya dived into the center aisle, her gun clattering from her pocket. The yellow blast scorched the end of her flapping long coat, but she went invisible a moment later.

Avanti could finally see her.

The spray and hiss of a smoke grenade went off in the corner of the room, where Maya had never thrown a grenade. Apex took the bait, popping Overdrive to spray the area with a Steelstorm and appear there herself. She panted heavily, facing the corner, her back to them for a brief moment. Maya scrambled to her feet and rushed behind the server shelf on Avanti’s side of the room, tossing a real smoke grenade.

They didn’t have to be quiet anymore. Apex wouldn’t be able to hear them over the screams of her shattered eardrums.

More dusty gray smoke filled the room, the hiss a backdrop to Apex’s cackle. Maya pressed her back against the server shelf, shoulder to shoulder with Avanti, trembling with every heartbeat.

One wrong move, and they were dead. One wrong move, and the case ended.

“It’s been a long time since I couldn’t hear my own laugh. I love when they fight back.”

Her footsteps thudded through the central aisle. Was she coming towards them? Did she still know?

Maya peered around the corner and watched Apex’s shadow block the light from the hallway.

“And I love taking that chance of victory away. You can deafen me and hide all you want. There’s only one way out of this room.”

The biggest problem wasn’t that she was right. It wasn’t that they couldn’t attack from her blindspot, since standing at the entrance gave her line of sight on anywhere they could attack from.

The problem was that Maya left her gun.

It fell out of her pocket and sat in the center aisle in front of the locked door, square in Apex’s sight. Hand to hand combat wasn’t an option. The pistol was their only way to attack, but if she lunged for it now, Apex would end her in the blink of an eye.

“Let’s talk,” Apex said. “I learned a lot about you since our last conversation, Maya. You should’ve told me you were Silk Music’s granddaughter! I could’ve played you a song.”

Maya’s stomach fell through the center of the Earth, all the way back to the nights when she slept over at her grandparents’s house. Grandpa Louis would serenade her to sleep. Saxophone in hand, he’d play one of his several signature songs, the one that would distract his opponent by showing them their most prized memory.

And Apex played her grandfather’s saxophone.

As she perfectly replicated every note, Maya tried to squint her eyes tight to fight the memory. Her mind fled the frigid server room, instead seeing herself on her grandfather’s couch in his living room, his large hand on her shoulder.

“You don’t need powers to be like me, pup. You have everything you need to be special.”

Beside her, Avanti wept a silent cry, yet the tears passed through her invisibility and stained the floor.

The memory dispelled once Apex finished playing. She tossed the saxophone into the center aisle like trash, with a loud metallic clang. “Useless old fool.”

Rage thundered in Maya’s chest, and she tensed, glaring at her gun on the ground around the corner. Before she could even consider reaching for it right now to shut her up with a bullet, Avanti grabbed her wrist.

She removed the invisibility on only her eyes. A squint. A wink.

Plan B.

Maya calmed her heart and shook Avanti’s wrist, a confirmation.

“I never thought it would be useful to show my opponents their happiness. But…you saw your Grandpa, didn’t you?”

Maya sat the duffel bag on the ground and pulled one last flash grenade, and their ace in the hole — a Limiter neck brace. They shuffled past each other in the narrow space between the shelf and the wall. Maya stalked towards Apex at the room entrance, Limiter brace in hand, while Avanti went the opposite direction towards her fallen gun. Avanti cast an illusion on the entire room, stirring and swirling the smoke, mimicking hidden movements.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Apex shot to her feet. Maya froze in place as a Steelstorm sprayed the center aisle and the other side of the shelf; she fired everywhere she could see. A shard landed only a foot away. She watched from around the corner, still invisible, glaring at her sworn enemy’s eyes darting back and forth.

“You're not exempt either, Avanti. You saw West, too.” Apex gasped. “Oh, so that’s it! That’s why you’ve ignored every red flag, Maya, and why you joined her crusade despite them, Avanti. This is about revenge, isn’t it?”

She threw her head back in laughter, but her hawkish eyes never stopped watching for movement.

"I told you you were naive, Maya. Revenge doesn't work unless you dedicate your entire life to it. Unless you're willing to kill love or watch it die. By that point, everything you do and everyone you talk to is for the thought of retribution, dragging you along a chain.” Apex’s cheery demeanor had faded. “Revenge is a shackle that's pulled you both to the basement of hell with the rest of us."

Maya snapped her fingers, a cue that Apex wouldn’t hear.

At that moment, a clone of Avanti would angrily step into the center aisle, on the other side of the room.

“You dare recite his name?!” Avanti spat. “If this is hell, let me show you a real demon!”

Orange light filled the room as Avanti’s clone grew taller, spouting horns from her head and dripping lava from her veins as her skin reddened. They’d practiced the form before leaving, of a seven foot tall demon from Mage Country legend.

“Save the act, you fraud.”

Maya became visible once again as Avanti directed all of her effort towards the final act. A clone of Maya rolled into the center aisle, picked up her gun, and aimed for the head. Apex disappeared from view.

She’d taken the bait.

Maya rushed around the corner. Sure enough, dying lightning crackled around Apex’s hand as she thrust through a Maya that was never there. She whirled around a second too late. Maya clasped the Limiter brace around Apex’s neck, and the lights shined golden. The menu indicator at Apex’s wrist turned yellow.

No more powers. No more Overdrive.

They could escape.

And yet, despite the checkmate, Apex only smiled. “He died crying like a bitch.”

Maya swung. Her knuckles crashed into Apex’s soft skin, and she drew back for a second one. Rage blinded her. Apex’s hands shot to her throat, cutting off the oxygen and flipping the tables in an instant. Maya pulled and struggled, but her hands were like iron.

She dropped the haughty and confident act, dropped the emotionless intimidation, wearing only a grin of insanity. Color drained from Maya’s vision as her lungs begged for air and her strength faded, a black haze swallowing her sight.

An ear-piercing gunshot exploded from behind Apex.

Avanti dropped the gun from her trembling hands as blood dripped from Apex’s back. Maya used the brief window to kick Apex away and watch her stumble to the ground. As Avanti cast invisibility, Maya threw a final flash grenade, and they sprinted for the exit.

“Where—” Maya rasped, her voice hoarse as they ran. “Where did you hit?”

“The left side of her lower back. I couldn’t keep it straight.”

Abdominal organs, a few muscles, maybe a kidney at the worst. Apex would live. But they bought time, and saved Maya’s life from being lost to her own rage.

"My hands. I’ve sinned by my ancestors’ will.” She threw Maya’s pistol back like a hot potato and met Maya’s eyes with a wide glare. “The ancestors are petty, Maya. Someone will die tonight in my steed!”

“And it won’t be us. Come on!”

Maya punched in the hacked code and threw open the door to the staircase back upstairs.

“Maya!”

The call of her husband’s deep, rumbling voice rooted Maya in place.

No.

Down the hall, Apex held a man two heads taller than her with a knife to his neck and a set of Limiter cuffs around his wrist, leaving a snail trail of her own blood. Maya couldn’t keep her pistol steady anymore. Her hands trembled like Avanti’s. John was never supposed to be on the other end of the barrel.

God, no.

“Do I look like I need my powers?!” Apex screamed. “I won’t need powers to gut him like a sashimi roll.”

“Let him go, Haruki!”

“You want your revenge?! Cast off your attachments. Become me. Shoot Avanti Mirage right now, and I’ll let you watch him die.”

“Let him go!”

Avanti outstretched a hand, her eyes gleaming pink.

“I don’t need to see to know where to stab, Avanti. What do your ancestors think about your skill with pistols? I’d be disappointed. You’re a sinner and you can’t aim, and we know how your ancestors strike back.”

Forced on his knees, John struggled in her arms. Apex pressed the knife against his neck. The tip of the blade grazed his skin, drawing a bead of blood.

“Huruki, don’t! He has nothing to do with this. Let him go!”

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Six.”

Maya gripped her pistol handle tighter, hoping it would steady her aim. She glanced over at Avanti. One shot could save John. She could file her body as a casualty, if it was ever found.

Apex wasn’t honest.

“Three. Two.”

She couldn’t remember what the training books had said for a situation like this. She couldn’t think, couldn’t decide; Maya looked to John for an answer with a tear in her eye.

John mouthed the familiar three words. “I love you.”

“One!”

“I won’t be a pawn!” With a bellowing roar, John shot to his feet. Apex’s blade dragged downwards, slashing his chest open. He struggled against her grabbing her by the wrist and neck as his blood spilled onto the metal floor.

She had to run. This was the plan they’d rehearsed together, in case one of them was taken as a hostage to threaten the other.

Apex was on the other end of the barrel.

If she ran, she’d never get another chance like this.

Apex shanked and thrusted into John’s stomach, slicing him open.

Maya pulled the trigger.

The world went silent as the bullet pierced through John’s back. She’d never know where the shot hit Apex, or even if it did.

All she’d know was the confusion and betrayal on John’s face. He gazed at her over his shoulders before his legs gave out, and he collapsed onto Apex.

Avanti pulled Maya up the stairs, and her legs moved on their own in a dreamlike trance as her brain watched through someone else’s eyes.

The eyes of a killer.

They rushed upstairs covered in smoke and soot, to the confusion of office workers and a security guard. Maya never felt her heart beat as they fled to the back exit. There, SRB agents waited in a black van to cover their escape.

The van sped out of the back parking lot, tires screaming against the concrete. Senior Agent Hale glanced back at them from the driver’s seat, as Avanti panted beside her. “Did you get the information, Agent Wolfe?”

“You shot him?!” Avanti yelled.

“When I said I’d do anything for justice, I meant it!” Maya yelled louder.

“You. Shot. Him!”

“She took Mindgame's eye. She took his mother’s eye. How many more—?!”

“John was already holding her! That wasn’t justice. You shot for revenge!”

“I know! I know, dammit, I know!”

The floodgates unleashed themselves, corrupting any other coherent words Maya could’ve made. Tears melted her composure. Avanti pulled her into a hug as she lost herself in the chest-wrecking sobs and cries.

She’d gotten all the information she needed. She could finally prove Apex and Arise Health’s connection, and the locations of all of her bases.

But John had died by her own hand.