My swords flashed out, feeling slower than before, even though I knew they were faster, and I sheared through the leg of a ruined DOG unit nearby. AEGIS watched with a mortified expression as I hobbled to it, leaving a trickle of blood in my wake. I took the shattered leg and shoved my left arm into it, balancing on it and my right foot. It was enough. I could still fight.

"Athan, no," AEGIS said, as I lurched ungainly towards the front lines. "You can't do this."

"I can't not do this. Don't try to stop me."

She stood in front of me for a few moments and then let out a defeated sigh.

She stepped up and put my free arm over her shoulder. "If I can't stop you, I can help you, at least. It's one way to die or another."

The echoing booms had stopped. I heard Lia swear in the comms and small-arms fire. Heavy breathing. She was running.

Karu gasped. She was hit. I saw a figure materialize in the air at the end of a ribbon of plasma, surrounded by VTOLs. They tracked on her and opened fire. She disappeared at the last moment, but she was getting slower. AEGIS and I hobbled together towards the last remaining line, explosions rocking the last few trenches and the remaining robots guarding them.

As we approached, the DOGs in our immediate path stopped fighting and formed a rough bridge for me to teeter across the trench, leaning on AEGIS and my crutch. Nobody had been shooting at us until now, maybe thinking AEGIS was escorting wounded from the fight. No, they finally realized, she was escorting me to the fight. It seemed all at once, fire concentrated on us from all sides, AEGIS flinched and screamed as she was showered in sparks and shrapnel, but I found myself in my center. This place of death was a zone of peace.

The bullets, explosions, roar of engines, Karu screaming in my ear to get out, they all were just white noise. The colors around me were so vivid and beautiful, the pain, within me, within all of those around me, exquisite. Every hobbling step I took, every breath, every drop of blood that leaked from my broken body, I saw, I felt, I became.

I was the battlefield, and the battlefield was me. I was the unstoppable force, and the thousands of men and guns and vehicles before me? A movable object. Slowly, insistently, unbreakably, I walked straight through the enemy line. Hundreds of blades spun around me. My beautiful children, finding partners to dance with on their own, while I simply moved forward. Proud of my daughters and the lives they claimed. Proud father of death.

The white noise became screams. The vivid colors became red. My children played and danced and sang a crimson dirge, and the enemy line broke under me. Heavy cannons on the APCs and VTOLs unloaded hundreds and thousands of bullets at me, with no greater effect but to make my shield strobe, outlining itself as a perfect semicircle around me, and outside of that, another perfect circle of corpses described the furthest reaches of my swords. Nothing lived within my reach, and with every step, my reach took me further and further into the heart of the enemies.

"Jesus, fuck," whispered AEGIS, her eyes wide. "Is this what it's like to be Exhuman?"

The crowd was in panic now. Beneath their faceplates, I could hear their screams. Men turned on other men. Anarchy descended upon them. It was more than panic, it was madness. Their discipline was not simply gone, it had actively been destroyed. Like a rippling plague spreading through them, they became rabid, crazed, and the entire battle line became a brawl. Something had happened. Something had ruined the peace of this warzone. The black and white tranquility I had created had been so easily broken into a malaise of greys.

I felt more than sensed the source. There, in their backlines. A tall, thin figure, standing resolute. My sister in death.

['Sup,] she said.

"I thought you weren't coming. You wished to avoid this...this," I said, sweeping my crutched arm over the melee, even as my swords hacked away at any foolish or crazed enough to come close.

[I was going to, but thought, ah what the hell.]

A bullet found her and she fell backwards, leaving an arc of blood from her forehead. The panic on the battlefield lapsed for a moment into mere confusion, and then she stood again, and the brawl recommenced in full.

VTOLs, their pilots gone mad streaked into the battlefield, exploding in a cascade of flying dirt, bodies, and gore. Shieldbearers were clubbing others with the barriers which were supposed to protect them. Nothing left to kill or evade, Karu was hovering over the battlefield, watching the madness unfold under her. One of the APCs floored it, its driver either dead or insane, and drove through a dozen men before crashing full-speed into a trench, the driver certainly dead after that.

"This isn't a battle, this is a slaughter," AEGIS said.

"This is horrible," Karu echoed. She levelled a shot and executed a man who was attempting to eat another flailing soldier.

[And this is the true face of humanity,] Saga said. [All they need is a little push, and this is what lurks in the mind of every person. Murder. Power. Deviancy. Lies. How ugly they look inside, this is how it looks on the outside.] She sounded bitter.

"Saga...that's enough. They won't fight after this," AEGIS said.

"Indeed. I believe the damage is done. Their numbers are already halved, there is no need to continue this carnage."

"Guys...I--" I heard Lia say, breathless. And then a scream. I turned to the treeline so fast, I almost fell over, only staying up because AEGIS held me.

"Where is she!" I screamed at Saga.

[Over...over there! I don't know, she's out of range!]

Karu disappeared in the general direction with a blue flash. I began to move back from the line, as quickly as my body would allow, but I was fading fast. The stims were holding, but I'd lost too much blood. I was becoming woozy, and at the same time, hyperaware of how woozy and slow I was. It was like watching myself in slow-motion as I fell down a set of stairs, analyzing every painful bump and scrape, but unable to affect it.

"I think," I heard a voice in my ear that made my heart stop. "That you may wish to reconsider my offer, Exhuman Ashton. Order your forces to stop your attack at once or the girl dies."

"Lia, no!" I screamed.

I heard her crying in the background of the comms. Apologizing. Like somehow she was the one who'd failed us.

"I am still hearing my forces die. Cease or suffer her loss."

"Saga," I turned back to her. "Let it go. AEGIS, stop the drones."

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The two hesitated, and for a second I was worried they weren't going to, but then each of them did. The battlefield lapsed into silence as drone and man stopped killing man.

"That's more like it," Blackett said in my ear. "Now we can talk. You have a very important decision to make, Exhuman Ashton. I understand that victory is within your grasp, but only if you are willing to sacrifice your sister. I doubt you will do that."

"Now, I could use this new position to make whatever demands I want, but I am an honorable man and will still uphold our previous arrangement. After all," I heard him do something that made Lia whimper "I don't care about the others in the least. So make your choice, Exhuman, I'll wait."

In my mind, there was no choice to be made. My life for Lia's is a trade I would make a thousand times in a heartbeat. "You win. I surrender," I said, as soon as he had stopped talking.

As the words left my mouth, I felt like an egg cracked open in my mind and I saw clearly.

This was...this was what everyone had been alluding to. This was the moment everyone knew was coming. The compel was broken, and I, having made my decision already, felt old memories and visions flooded in.

AEGIS and myself talking, when I broke the news to her about the XPCA. Moments after she began turning off her emotive indices which would lead to her breakdown.

"Someday, you might have to choose who to sacrifice," she said. "The world is a cruel place, and whether you know it or not, you've somehow become the leader and center of our little malformed tumor of a band. The hard calls land on your desk."

Lia and me arguing in the forest, before exploring the limits of my powers.

"Maybe we could make a deal? Like...I don't know, turn over Saga or AEGIS," she said. "Or Karu, she's the one they wanted, right? Tell them you've been living peacefully out here."

"I would never do that. I can't believe you'd suggest that."

"I don't like it either! But you're my only stupid big brother. You can't just walk in there and die, it'd be better to sacrifice some of us if that saved even one of us."

"There's that word again," I said.

"What, sacrifice? Yeah, it's ugly, but tell me how some of us being dead is better than all of us?"

Saga and me, the first time we spoke about the XCPA coming, what our options were.

"Anyway, the XPCA. The whole XPCA, and their elite forces to boot. Do we run?"

[They'll find you. It's not a very big Earth to them.]

"So we fight?"

[They'll kill you, too.]

"Then what?"

[That depends on how much you love your friends.]

The scenes, and dozens more flashed through my brain like vignettes. Lia, trying to get me to focus on training instead of considering the option of talking it out. Karu, always pushing me to act as a leader. Saga, mentioning that if she told me about the decision I'd have to make, it would influence it.

All the girls knew this would not be a clean fight. They knew there would be casualties. And they also knew that as soon as I was put to that, that if I had to choose between my own suffering or capture or capitulation and theirs, I would choose my own in a heartbeat. A thousand times in a heartbeat.

Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Through the conversations which flashed through my mind, the word popped up over and over. But I realized that every time one of the girls said it, what they were really saying was, 'kill me instead.'

It was why Karu wanted to negotiate without me. It was why everyone had been so defeated when I assumed responsibility instead of allowing Karu to give herself up. Nobody wanted me to do exactly what they knew I would do, exactly what I had just done.

And more, nobody wanted to be the one who I threw myself away over. I realized now why Lia was crying, and it wasn't because she was hurt or caught or afraid of dying, it was because she knew that her capture would mean my death.

Blackett was right. I did have the best friends. Even when Karu and Saga and AEGIS were at each others' throats, they had put aside their differences enough to agree on keeping me alive. Even if they were all cooperating to lie and mislead me, keep me busy with errands and drama and responsibility and not give me time to think about my options, they did it out of love. Each was willing to die, was happy to die, if it meant they were the sacrifice instead of me.

And that was exactly why it could never be any of them. I could not feel more proud, of myself, or of the friends who stood by me as soldiers timidly approached and escorted me to a van. They didn't try to keep me under armed guard or put cuffs on me, I climbed in the back of the APC myself and closed the doors behind me myself.

I heard the girls in an uproar as I left. Saga couldn't find Blackett, Karu trying to give her directions, shouting repeatedly 'he's right there!'. Lia wailing as she found out I was taken already. They were strong, and still trying. They would all do alright without me.

I should have listened to Blackett at the start, I realized. All those deaths, all that blood on our hands, it was pointless. A waste of good people. The front door opened, and Blackett himself hopped into the driver's seat. I don't know how he got here under Saga's watchful eye, as everyone else swept the woods looking for Lia.

"Your sister will be returned to your friends as soon as we are clear. You may keep your comms until then to confirm. Please do not attempt to attack me, or we will both die. Is this acceptable?"

"I already surrendered," I said. He just nodded and threw the vehicle into gear.

"Saga, he's in that APC," Karu's voice came in. "Stop the driver."

[There is no driver.]

"What the hell are you talking about, he just got in the car, we all saw it!"

"Stop messing around Saga, and stop him!"

[I'm telling you, there's nobody there!]

"Karu, can you take it out?"

"Not without hitting Ashton." She sounded desperate.

"Guys," I said, touching my comms, "I'm fine. This is what I want. Take care of Lia for me, I love all of you."

"Athan, you piece of shit, ass-blasting monkey butt-fuckasdfghkj--"

"Ashton, this is serious. I demand...I order you to kill that driver and escape. Ashton? This is not a joke. Ashton? Ashton? Athan?--"

"Bro, don't do this. They're bringing me back now, but this isn't what I want! Do you think you're the only one who would sacrifice themselves--"

My ear flooded with comms traffic as the girls all shouted their best at me. I took the earpiece out, I couldn't listen any longer without crying. I hobbled between the two lines of seats and joined Blackett at the front of the van, sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

"I'm sorry for killing so many of your men. They died very bravely."

"They will be honored. They knew what they signed up for." He sighed. "The XPCA is obsolete. Too many deaths for too little victory."

"Obsolete? You just defeated a rogue AI, a professional killer, and two Exhumans."

"Two?" He said, his eyes still on the path ahead of us.

I blinked and realized he didn't know about Saga. "Well, one and a half. My sister has this alter-ego as an Exhuman."

"I've heard rumors," he said, sounding disappointed. If anything would make him turn this car around and get right back to killing, that was it. I made a mental note to never mention her ever again.

"So, obsolete?"

"Yes. I have not lied to you in the time we've spoken, Exhuman Ashton. The XPCA is ill-suited to the role it serves. Though we may ultimately win out against every Exhuman threat thus far, our losses grow ever greater and it takes only one defeat to destroy the public's image, which is all we can provide."

"Maybe you wouldn't have quite so many losses if you weren't throwing all your resources at innocent Exhumans living in peace."

"Your capture is bigger than this. Do not speak of things you do not know."

"As a big boss man in the XPCA, doesn't it then fall to you to make the XPCA better instead of doing all this shit?"

He didn't answer, only shot me a sideways glance.

"So you've caught me, you can't imprison me, as I'm sure you remember. You spent all that effort getting me to surrender, so you don't want me dead. Mind telling me the plan?"

"Exhuman Ashton...or perhaps you wouldn't mind if I called you Chariot?"

"Do I get a say in what you call me? Anything is better than Exhuman Ashton."

"What is your opinion on being a house-servant?"

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."