I held my swords even and waited for him to come, waited for him to end it, but he didn't. He couldn't. The sweet cacophony of exploding ordinance echoed in the street and then a huge boom so loud and so bright my eyes went white and my ears heard nothing but ringing for what felt like forever. I'd been hit with a stun grenade before, from Karu even, so I knew what was going on in some level of my brain.

But that level of my brain wasn't really running things at the moment. Instead, it was whatever section dictated screaming a lot and rolling around and grabbing at my own ears and eyeballs. I did that for quite a while until my vision came back although I still couldn't hear anything or feel much other than agony.

The guy was gone, but Karu was still here, standing by looking very anxious and concerned, but not approaching. I realized why when another of my blades flashed past and cleaved through the air near her. Bad reflex to have sometimes, I guess. I blinked back more tears and put my swords away.

She was saying something but I didn't know what. I couldn't do much but lay there and wait for my body to figure out what the fuck happened to it. I felt a stab of pain on my leg and realized Karu was spraying medical gel on the deep gash on my calf, already preparing a bandage from the first-aid kit she'd laid out on the ground next to me.

I waved at her and yelled, I think. It was hard to tell when I could hardly hear my own voice. She looked at me with concern, and with my good arm, I pointed at her neck. She said some words and cocked her head, touching the choker she was wearing which matched mine. I shook my head, which made my vision go double, so I stopped that, and pointed again. She said something else but got out a stim patch so I guess I got across to her.

When she put it on me, it was as though all the pain in my body politely left and stood on standby. It was there, it was present and waiting, but it wasn't forcing itself into my skull anymore. I gently lifted myself into a seating position and said what I hoped was thank you. She didn't respond, still dressing my leg.

After another long minute I could hear over the ringing in my ears again, though it was definitely still there, and experimentally tried talking to Karu again, who'd now taken to fixing up my arm.

"Hi?" I asked experimentally.

"Hail," she said, methodically winding a bandage around my arm.

"Thanks," I said. She gave me an icy stare through her visor though her hands kept moving.

"Thanks are unnecessary between comrades," she said.

"Well...good thing we're friends then?" I said and tried to give her an apologetic smile. Her face twitched.

"I do what I must because I must," she said. I remembered...she said that earlier…

And then the context of the situation hit me and the stims in my brain connected a hundred million different recollections to the moment. I'd been so euphoric and stressed from the running fight that I'd completely forgotten about the situation with AEGIS and Karu. But now that I was aware of it, I couldn't not think of it. My laser-guided focus turned over every detail from AEGIS being in my arms to the way Karu sat motionless at the table, her strong fingers touching at the choker on her neck like it burned her.

"I...I am so sorry," I said, feeling the words falling out of my mouth faster than my mouth was quite able to say them.

"Apologies are also unnecessary between comrades. Just do your damn job, Ashton," she said, and stood up. She took my arm and pulled me up beside her, letting me go as soon as I was up.

"I was trying to," I said. "I just fought off three Exhumans."

"Two," she corrected. "AEGIS is handling the third with aplomb. While she is merely very nearly as fast as him, he has discovered that cutting her flesh does not actually harm her meaningfully. His loss is inevitable."

I rubbed my head where I'd been punched and added to the queue of pain for my body to process was the sensation of swollen tenderness. I hadn't cracked my skull or anything but damn if that didn't hurt. The cut on the nose was practically ornamental, and now that I was up and on stims, the wounds on my leg and arm weren't really that bad either. I'd limp around, but I could walk.

"I will find the others and detain them properly, if I can," Karu said and turned. I started to say something, but the arms of her pack extended right in my face and turned to nothing but blue streaks as she exploded away with the roar of an engine.

I sighed, finding the familiar gesture peculiar feeling through the stims. She had graduated from sad to angry, and I hoped that was a positive step. I picked myself up and headed back towards Steffie's, where we'd agreed to reconvene after this was over. Only half a block away, it shouldn't pose too much trouble, even for me in this state.

What was waiting for me outside however was possibly trouble. I no sooner got within sight of the place before I found myself surrounded by at least two dozen XPCA in full exosuits.

"Uh, hi, guys," I said, raising my hands. "We uh, caught some resistance members for you."

"Oh, is that what you did?" said a familiar voice that added 'cringe' to the list of debilitations the stims were holding off. I looked towards the source of the voice and found a very different exosuit, still black and gold like the others, but much slimmer, much faster and lighter looking. "Because what it looks like you did was deliberately blow up my city. AGAIN!"

"Hi...Targa," I said. "Nice to finally meet you in person."

"Captain. Targa." she said, stabbing one of the exosuit's stubby fingers in my direction in time with her only half-synthesized voice. "Let me be clear, there is nothing nice about meeting you. You are such an...such...so frustrating, I can't even find words to put it into."

She made a gesture like stroking her collarbone, the metal fingers of the suit sliding down the black chestplate. Something habitual. Or something frustrated. Something that didn't carry over to being in an exosuit very well, anyway.

"Look," I said, hands still placating. "We're on the same team here, right? We're all XPCA, we all want to stop the resistance from tearing New Eden up. I might disagree with how you're running things, you might disagree with…" I struggled to find words other than 'blowing your city up.'

"Blowing my city up?" she suggested. No, that wasn't quite it.

"Anyway, we disagree but we're all in it together anyway, right? We only...blew your city up...for the best possible reason. We lured the resistance into the open and captured some of their agents. They tell me where Steffie is, you do what you want with them...so win-win?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

She shook her head, a gesture not normally detectable behind a standard XPCA faceplate, but this one moved slightly with her head's motion. "I told you what was win-win already. You fuck off of my city and I don't have to deal with you. Yet here you remain, and now I have another fucking half of my city to rebuild, with Director Blackett coming to inspect tomorrow."

"It's Blackett?" I asked.

"DIRECTOR. BLACKETT. Do you even know what a title is? For fucking--"

"Right, right, Director Blackett," I apologized. This was bad. No wonder she was so pissed...it certainly looked like I was actively sabotaging her prospects yet again.

"Look, I'll explain everything to him," I said. "I'll take responsibility, he'll understand. We have something of a rapport."

"You're kidding."

"No, really, we used to uh...live together. I did his laundry."

She just stood there looking at me for a minute, her faceplate inscrutable.

"Even if that were true, the answer is no, Chariot. There is no way I am letting any more of my life fall into your hands. You have already caused me an impossible amount of disasters, and I'm not ever going to hand you the keys to make more. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a city to rebuild and you have a sentence to serve."

Two of the soldiers behind me clamped their suits' impossibly-strong grip on my arms.

"Targa...sorry, Captain, I have to warn you...you can't detain me."

"I know," she sneered. "Unlike some people here, I know how to read. Take him in for processing."

"Don't do anything stupid, Targa, I'm warning you. I can't prevent my powers--"

"I know, I know," she said, turning away and sounding bored. "I don't think you realize just how much I already know about you."

"What's that supposed to--"

I jolted with another suppressed pain as I felt burning in my neck, and glanced down to see a needle sticking out from it as one of the soldiers pressed the plunger. I tried to say something but my speech went from hasty to slurred to nonexistent as the drug took effect and I felt my body go limp.

And then, like no time had passed at all, I was awake. Messed up in the head, from my fights, or from the stims, or from the drug, I didn't know. But I did know my thoughts were moving around at a crawl, and I was having a hard time figuring out where I was or what anything I was seeing meant.

I was in a circular room, only about four feet across. There was one door, right in front of me, and it was open. Standing in it was Targa, still in her exosuit, and behind her, another pair of exosuited guards.

She kneeled and put something on the ground in front of me once she saw I was awake and spoke a sentence so simple even my addled brain could comprehend.

"Eat."

I picked up the tablet and looked at it, my vision swimming in and out and having a hard time focusing on my hand.

"Eat, damn you. It will neutralize the after-effects of the drug."

I put it in my mouth and chewed on it. Chalky and a little bitter. I swallowed heavily, and continued slowly figuring nothing out.

After a minute or so, things began to make more sense. I realized this room I was in was probably an elevator, or the world's most ornate isolation cell, I guess.

"Good," she said, staring at me like she'd been doing this whole time. "That elevator you're standing in goes straight down twenty stories underground. Do you know what that means?"

I shook my head, feeling my brain sloshing around painfully, it felt like.

"It means, if you blow anything up, you'll fall to your death. So keep a leash on your powers," she said with a smirk in her voice, and pulled a lever which closed a door between us.

"Hey! What is this?" I yelled at the thick curved transparent wall which had just appeared. "What the hell are you planning to do to me?" The sudden jolt of adrenaline pushed the rest of the haze from my mind and I pushed myself up to bang pointlessly on the glass.

"Careful there," she sneered. "Don't think of it as confinement or your powers will drop you straight to your death."

"Targa...I don't know what you're doing, but--"

"What I'm doing, Chariot, is exactly what I promised. I told you to get out or I'd deal with you. Now I'm dealing with you."

"You're...you're going to kill me? Seriously? With an elevator?” I screamed at her.

She laughed. "Killing you without a court-marshall would be a violation. Have you still not read the XPCA's military law codexes? I'll have my secretary send you a copy. I think you'll be very interested in them soon…"

She began to walk off, and the elevator began sinking into the ground.

"What then? Torture? Targa, goddamn you, tell me!"

"It's Captain Targa. And you'll find out in about ten seconds!" she called back as the last sliver of light disappeared from the top of the door and the elevator picked up speed into the black earth.

It was a few seconds before I picked up on something that made my heart stop. I couldn't be sure, with my head the way it was, but staring at the black outside the elevator and seeing my reflection warped in the plastic...it reminded me of the mirror I'd seen what felt like forever ago.

Even despite the pain, I shook my head. It...it wasn't possible. It made no sense. It just couldn't be. I refused to accept it.

"HEY!" I screamed at the black outside. The black did not reply. I huddled at the bottom of the elevator, feeling a fear creep into me, a fear and hurt and despair I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around. It was like someone had distilled those emotions down to their purest possible essence and jabbed them directly into my brain.

All sense was fleeting. I could only barely breathe. My heart slammed in my chest like it wanted to escape, escape me and escape this infectious fear.

But it couldn't escape any more than I could. I remained huddled at the bottom of the elevator long after it had come to a stop and opened, revealing a sterile metal room. I couldn't tear my eyes off the floor. I was too afraid of what I'd see, afraid of what I already knew. Afraid that somehow, that sick fucking witch upstairs had done the impossible, the unthinkable, the inhuman.

I wanted to leave and pretend I was never here. Wanted to pretend I was never an Exhuman, never met any of my friends, never lived this life. I couldn't live a life that led me to this point. Everything had gone wrong. Everything had to have gone wrong in order for this to happen, and I couldn't even understand what was happening.

The knives in my mind twisted, and I screamed. I was on all fours like an animal, drawing ragged breath. My vision unfocused even on the ground in front of me, everything was pain, everything was anguish.

Everything was pointless. Everything would end.

Inch by inch, my eyes roamed upwards against my will. I knew what I would see, and I didn't want to see it, but I was too afraid not to.

Strong metal struts erupting from the metal floor, bolts as long as my arm, as thick as my wrist. Machined with terrifying precision. Ninety degree angles, straight lines, orderly, efficient, heartless. Walls so brightly lit, no shadow was cast upon them.

A serene, sterile world a hundred feet underground.

In the exact center of the large square room, hanging twenty feet in the air was a body. Suspended by smooth metal enclosures locked around its arms, spread wide like a body on a crucifix, it was a morbid organic centerpiece to this perfectly machined room.

The body had no legs. No pelvis. Its guts and vertebrae hung out from below the naked torso which was pale and bony, like this victim had been malnourished in life before being torn in half. Black hair hung in front of the face like a funeral pall.

But it wasn't dead, I knew that. She was alive because I'd sensed her presence halfway down the elevator. Hers was the pain and the fear and the despair which infected my mind. The torn body, hanging there limp and naked and broken somehow lived still, though its every breath was agony and its every thought was a plea for death.

There, in the sterile metal tomb, buried in the earth, hung Saga.