"I know I didn't hear that right," Moon said.

"You want to surrender?" I echoed.

"I want to surrender." Soran held his hands forward like he was awaiting handcuffs.

I narrowed my eyes as I scrutinized him from the ground. This had to be a trick. Had to be a trap. He'd already used Steffie against us once, what was the trap this time?

But...on the other hand, here I was slipping and sliding on ice, very nearly helpless, and he'd warned Karu about her guns instead of just killing her. Why?

"Well...perfect then," Cosette said in our comms. "Put him in the biggest restraints we have, and bring him in."

"There's no way this isn't a trap," I said.

"Then let's spring it," she said, impassively. "Then you can kill him. Or he comes in peacefully. Win-win in my book."

"If he hasn't killed two of us yet, that just means his trap is bigger than two people," I said. "I'm not going to let him kill anyone."

"He's a peacefully surrendering combatant," the other hunter said. "Last I checked, the New XPCA doesn't execute those anymore?"

"But he's killed before."

"And that's why we're taking him in, so he can stand trial for his crimes. That's how the police are supposed to work."

"We're not police," Moon said. "We're heroes. And heroes stop bad guys."

"And here I am, stopped," Soran said with a shrug.

Tower was walking around the snow-covered ice patch to where Jack was lying and checked on him. "He's fine. He's coming to. Jack?"

"Ow, damn," Jack said as Tower helped him sit up. "Chariot, kindly watch the lightning in the future. My body feels like…" He paused thoughtfully. "...every part of me was run over by a bus, perhaps?"

"Sorry, Jack," I said. "Jack, you want this...this Dipshit dead, don't you?"

"Is he not? I just assumed since it seemed the fighting had stopped."

"No, he surrendered. Is surrendering. Or, we're discussing if we should let him."

"Oh." Jack smiled. "Okay then."

"Okay then?"

Jack shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because why would he surrender!" I shouted back. Was I crazy, or was everyone else? "He killed Mage, remember?"

"And if we fight, I will certainly kill more of you," Soran said.

"Exactly!" I said.

"Um," Jack scratched his head. "So you want more of us to die?"

"No! Just...he's a killer! He needs to be stopped."

Jack's smile fluttered for just a moment. "Chariot, how many have you killed?"

"That's not fair."

"Why not?"

"Because…it...it wasn't my fault?" I said. "I tried not to...or they were attacking me, first."

"And here we are attacking him first, so he is justified in killing us, by your logic?"

"No!"

Karu landed behind me and helped me to my feet. "Ashton, I stand with you. This Exhuman is a pestilence upon the world. Whatever his reasons may be, I am certain they are ignoble."

"Right," said Moon.

"Damn it girl, get off my back if you're gonna be like that," Tower said to her.

"Tower, Jack, how can you two possibly side with him?" I asked. "He killed Mage."

"Jack's right, I think," Tower said. "We can't just go killing Exhumans because we feel like it. That's not what the P-Force is about. Not what it's supposed to be about, anyway."

"I thought making a world where Exhumans could be given a chance without being executed and subjugated was your idea?" Cosette added.

"It...it was. But not him!" I shouted.

"That's not how laws work," she chided. "Just arrest him and believe in the system you helped to create."

"That isn't good enough," Karu said. "Laws and systems are flawed. It is only by taking righteous action with your own hands that we can assure good triumphs in the world."

Cosette sighed in my ear. "Look, I'm not a damn lawyer. I'm trying to run a military op here. The mission is to defeat, rout or detain the hostile Exhuman. So detain him, damn it."

Jack advanced towards Soran, a pair of restraints in his hands from somewhere.

"Tower, put me down!" Moon shouted. "Let me have my own body back."

"Yeah? Why?"

"So I can shoot him, obviously."

"No. Bad girl. No shooting anyone."

To her, this was the same as Ethan. No matter what debate there was over whether this Exhuman should live or die, she would do what she thought she had to and take the consequences on herself.

It was noble. I liked it. I unholstered my sidearm and pointed it at Soran. Jack, standing a foot away from him, froze.

"Don't do anything stupid, Chariot," Jack said.

"What's Chariot doing now?" Cosette sighed into comms.

"He's got a gun pointed at the target," Jack said.

"Damn it, you stupid hypocritical dumbass. Put the damn gun down!" she shouted at me.

"Chariot, don't," Moon warned as she struggled uselessly, attached to Tower as securely as his own shadow. "Let me."

"No," Karu said, and pulled my arm down gently. "Let me." She raised an arm and without hesitation, fired a single round which punched a fist-sized hole in Soran's chest and threw him backwards into Jack and the wall, leaving a trail of red on the circle of snow.

"Hunter, hold your fire! You are no longer authorized!" Cosette shouted.

"What the damn hell, Karu," said the other hunter, advancing on her in his multicolored Exosuit.

"Get out of my way, Deej," she said coldly. "Evil exists only to be purged."

"And things are only as evil as they make up their mind to be, yute," he said back.

Already I could see the wound closing on Soran's chest, and readied a handful of lightning. Before I could throw it, Jack was there, holding my wrist.

"I did say to be careful throwing the lightning," he said with a smile.

"Jack, let go."

"Chariot...Athan, trust me. Murder will only get you so far. You have to let go sometime."

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"He killed Mage. How can you let him go after that?"

"We're not letting him go. We're taking him in. That's the opposite of letting him go. But you have to let go. You need to stop blaming yourself for Mage's death."

"I'm not blaming myself. I'm blaming him!"

"If that were true, you'd let him stand trial, like Tower and I are willing to do. But for you, this is personal. It's a vendetta, it's revenge. This isn't justice."

"The only justice for those like him lies in death!" Karu hissed. She stepped to get a shot around Deej, but he moved with her to block her. When she rose up, he moved back towards him, keeping himself in the way of the shot.

"This isn't justice, this is murder," Deej said.

"He is a bad guy!" Moon shouted in an angry, excited voice I'd never heard Tower use before. She pounded ineffectively against his shoulders, completely unable to affect him with his own spectre. "Bad guys need to be stopped!"

I sort of wondered what had happened to Moon to make her like this. From our experiences so far, she seemed quiet, studious, a little fatalistic. Not the kind to go off screaming about 'bad guys'.

But it was only half a thought. I didn't have time for that now. I wrenched my hand free of Jack's and then he was in front of me, smiling right in my face.

"Do you really want to fight me, Jack?" I asked.

"Do you really want to kill a helpless man so badly you'd fight me to do it?" he asked back.

I had to think about that for a second. The way he phrased it...of course I didn't. But this wasn't just a helpless man. This was a murdering Exhuman. This was a trap, or a trick, or a ploy. Just because I hadn't yet figured out what didn't mean it wasn't. Why couldn't they see this?

"Since you haven't responded, I'll assume you're thinking it over Chariot," Cosette said. "Well, let me help you make your decision. If you willingly and deliberately attack a fellow soldier on the field, do you know what we call that?"

"Dealing with an idiot who can't understand that this is all a trap?"

"We call that fragging, a court-marshallable offense. And when you are up there, the recording of this comms will be Exhibit A before they have you executed. So knock it the fuck off." She sighed heavily. "Chariot, could you just once not be a huge pain in my ass?"

"You do realize this is all part of Soran's plot, right?"

"Maybe. I don't really care. If or when he makes trouble, we'll stop him. But you can't just go around unlawfully killing people you don't like, no matter what they did in the past."

I peered over Jack's shoulder at the man lying on the ground, the front of his shirt stained red from Karu's shot, the wound almost closed now. Everything would be so much easier, so much cleaner, so much better if he were dead.

But…

But the same could be said for me. Even though I knew I was trying to do good and Soran was up to something evil, I'd still killed dozens of XPCA, brave men and women who threw their lives away to protect the world from a threat they couldn't even fully comprehend; in many ways, the bravest and most noble among us.

That made me...in this situation, that made me Brick? I was the one seeing myself as a hero to get rid of a dangerous Exhuman before he could harm those I cared about?

The comparison made my skin crawl. But I also couldn't accept that I was wrong. Soran needed to die. His powers made him more dangerous than any other Exhuman, because with his powers, he could be any other Exhuman if he got his hands on them. If he ever managed to get the drop on Saga...I shuddered to think of it.

It's not that I didn't understand what the others were saying, it was just short-sighted of them. The system didn't apply to people like him. It couldn't. But even as I had that thought I felt the hypocrisy burning in my brain. A few months ago, the system didn't apply to people like him, and I'd fought tooth and nail to change it so it would. And now I wanted to take it all back.

I needed...I didn't know. I needed Lia, or Saga maybe, someone with a good view of the bigger picture, who could tell me what was right. I knew what was right, right now, but there had to be rules, enforceable and consistent. It's not like I could fly all over the Earth telling everyone the right decision all the time, or even know the right decisions.

Slowly, my indecision was made for me, and I realized, if nothing else, given my own lack of confidence in this situation, I wasn't about to lead Karu and Moon to attack Deej, Tower, and Jack.

I lowered my hands and my head fell like I was a marionnette gone slack. Jack smiled and advanced to pat me on the shoulder reassuringly.

"When he attacks, pray that nobody dies for your weakness," Karu said, but lowered her weapons as well.

"No!" Moon shrieked at us in Tower's rumbling voice. "No! I refuse to believe this!"

"I don't know what else to do, Moon. I'm sorry."

"It's not hard to know what to do. Be good. Stop evil. He is evil and we all know it, so stop him!"

"He's already stopped," Jack said, repeating his argument to me before.

"He is stopped for now. But he is evil." She shook her head, looking as incredulous as I felt earlier. It was so obvious, why couldn't the others see? I felt her frustration, but I knew my choice would not change. I couldn't fight my friends like this.

Soran was put in restraints and we all moved back towards the convoy, Moon shrieking protests the whole way. He was loaded up with narcotics to keep him under, strapped in to a chair, and driven off between two cars full of XPCA.

"Thank you Chariot, for once," Cosette said as they drove out of sight. "You're a little slow but you got there. You did the right thing. He'll be confined in New Eden, face trial, and serve his sentence."

I blinked a few times and next to me saw Jack's smile diminish slightly.

"New Eden?" he asked.

"Yeah. I know what you're thinking, the place isn't a prison, but that doesn't mean we don't have any prison facilities there. We can't just throw him in a standard prison, you know?"

She had no idea what I was thinking, nor what Jack was either, apparently.

"Steffie's in New Eden," Jack said.

"Lots of Exhumans are in New Eden," I said.

"Uh. Yeah, that's the point…" Cosette said, and then lapsed into silence. "...oh. Shit."

"Yeah," I said. "Now I think I know why he wanted to be captured."

"Hang on, I'll...I'll figure something out," Cosette said, and I heard her making a call on her end, indistinctly.

I felt a little vindicated that I was right that Soran was up to something, but also a little stupid for not putting it together. Of course he'd want to be taken in, if it meant he got to be locked in with all of the Exhumans in America. It'd be a buffet for his powers, and when we finally tried to intervene, he might be powerful enough that we couldn't stop him. There were hundreds in New Eden now, I couldn't begin to imagine how we'd fight one Exhuman with that amount of power.

"Damn me. Damn, damn, damn, damn," said Jack, who seemed to be flickering around randomly, anxiously. "How stupid. How reprehensibly moronic. A damn idiot, I am!"

"I don't...don't want to say I told you so but…" I reached out towards him and he vanished to behind me.

"I have gone too soft, it seems," Jack said. "Thinking optimistically about second chances and chances for redemption, and in trying to give that...that asshole his, I might have threatened mine. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"Hey, Jack. Language."

He glared at me over his smile. Kind of terrifying to see both on his face at the same time.

"Okay, not the time, I get it. But look, everything you said still applies. If he acts, we'll stop him, right?"

"By then, it might be too late for her."

"And if his trap had been something he set off here, us arguing might have let him kill one or more of us just now. And yet you were okay with that?"

"No...I just...like I said, I was an idiot and believed him."

"An idiot indeed," Karu said, stepping into our conversation with her visor under her arm. "Exhumans cannot be trusted." Her green eyes blazed as she looked off at the buildings across the street, seeing something much further away.

"It'll be fine though," I said. "We figured it out in time. He'll be...put in an old XPCA facility and everything will be okay." Neither of them seemed capable of looking at me. "Right, Cosette?"

"Sorry, Chariot...I'm still...trying things here."

"How hard can this be?" I asked her. "You're in charge of this op, just have him shipped somewhere else."

"Ordinarily yes, it might be that simple. But uh…"

"But, uh, what?" Jack asked.

"Uh, some kind of...administrative meddling. The troops in the convoy are refusing to acknowledge my orders, saying they have superseding orders from a superior."

"Who?" I asked. "Who the heck would jump in like this?"

My question was answered as a familiar voice joined in our conversation over comms.

"Hello, Chariot. It has been a while."

"Blackett?" I couldn't possibly mistake his voice. But what was the leader of the entire agency doing scumming around in our op?

"I must insist you refer to me as Director Blackett, despite our prior cordiality." I could hear him smirking into his comms. "Your friend Saga paid me a visit the other day to ask about some sensitive information. She didn't like my answers."

"What did you do to Saga!" I shouted before I could stop myself. Wait, could he even do anything to Saga?

"Nothing, unfortunately. Well, killed her a few times, but you know how that goes. She's on her way to Tampa, I believe, to look into Mage's family situation." He paused for a few moments before continuing. "But enough pleasantries. Chariot, Major Dawn, the Exhuman Soran will be taken to and detained in New Eden."

"But--"

"This is not a negotiation. This is an order. Please confirm that you have heard and understood."

"...y-yes, sir," Cosette said. "May I ask why? He's a very--"

"No, you may not. Chariot?"

I gritted my teeth. "Go fuck yourself, Blackett."

"I will take that as an acknowledgement. Good day."

Before either of us could say another word, he dropped out of our comms, leaving only a pained silence.

After a few minutes, she spoke again. "You still did the right thing, Chariot," she said, though I'm not sure it was entirely me she was trying to reassure.

I shook my head. I knew I hadn't, but that wasn't the issue anymore. If Blackett was playing around with Exhumans again, that could only mean one thing.

Clearly, being head of the XPCA wasn't enough for him. Clearly, he was still up to something. And clearly, whatever it was, if it involved Soran, it was bad.