I watched through my optics as the fight unfolded in front of me. AEGIS was managing surprisingly well, keeping Dragon on the defensive and only just missing with her attacks. But then in one motion, he tagged her, and she froze and then dropped. Looked like a data scrambler, nasty little device which could, at extremely close range, essentially randomize the state of a quantum core.

But before she was even out, everything went black.

Peculiar.

I pulled my optics away and looked out with my own eyes, and confirmed that, no, they hadn't broken. Everything really had just gone black.

There was a half-sphere of just total blackness where the substation had been, which was a bit concerning. I hoped none of the Defiant had the power to simply erase a section of the world, or if they did, it was erased in some convenient way such that it came back with all of its occupants intact.

After all, I did have a job to do here, and if Athan was dead already, I'd be doing a fairly terrible job of it.

I put the optics back up and flipped through different filters and spectra, discovering quickly that the world had not, thankfully, vanished, but rather just everything in the visual spectrum. IR, sonic, X-Ray all came back fine and showed me different glimpses of what was going on in there. Someone had just turned out the lights.

And I had my suspicions who. I overlaid as many useful visors as I could, and quickly picked up that there was another person there, currently engaged with Dragon in the pitch black. Temperance, I presumed, given the situation.

She was holding her own, though was relying entirely on her brute strength rather than any intelligence, from the look of things. I had a drone positioned nearby, kept out of range in case of any incidental electrical attack, but with Athan down, I could move it closer. I had it synced to my optics, and was able to switch between my two perspectives seamlessly, after I spent a few moments getting the drone's input out of the visual spectrum as well.

And then I had eyes on the fight from up close and could confirm with what I saw and heard that the girl wasn't fighting very smart at all.

"I'll kill you!" she screeched at him. "You hurt him and I will kill you! I will kill you and climb into hell to kill you again and again!"

Dragon, for his part, was expertly avoiding a constant barrage of lasers which emanated from everywhere, visible only to me after they'd already shot off as superhot burst, sudden drop in air pressure, and release of new chemical frags. He didn't move like a blinded person, never seemed unsure of where his body was, evading consistently, constantly trying to press towards her or towards Dillon -- the Defiant who'd run off -- but finding himself with a face full of lasers every time he tried.

But he was blind. As surely as he moved, I saw him catch a foot on a protruding hunk of metal wreckage and trip over it, but even then he just rolled forward and got his feet back under him in a second. That he had such control over his body in the dark, that he could evade Temperance's attacks and keep himself oriented to move towards Dillon still...truly the man's reputation was deserved.

Which was fine by me. As long as he couldn't see, I could act without worry I'd be his next mark. Getting Athan up and out was my first job, since he was the target I'd been hired to protect.

If he didn't have his powers, I could have shot him from here, a dart full of some stims, a little grenade of medical gel, get him up and going again. But of course he couldn't be that easy, which is why I'd loaded my drone up with needles of the stuff instead. It flew over him and I had it administer some painkillers, spray down his bruises and broken bones with medical gel to help them hold, and even gave him an injection of medical nanobots to help with the whole punched liver damage. They were expensive, but so was I.

Immediately, his vitals were stabilizing under my drone, and once I'd waited as long as I thought I could, I hit him with a stim to wake him up.

Watching through my drone's eyes, I could see Athan suddenly jolt to life and then fumble blind. All he could see was blackness, and all he could hear was the constant tearing of air as Tem attacked relentlessly. I nudged him with the drone and hoped he took the hint.

Well he put his hands all over it, getting whacked by the rotors pretty good but ultimately let it go. I flew it just above and in front of him so he could hear the motors whine and led him away from the fighting.

We were halfway there when he suddenly dropped, tripping over something which I'd thought was just noise in IR after AEGIS had blasted the whole place with her body heat, but then realized it was AEGIS he'd tripped over. He was stumbling in the dark, putting his hands all over her, generally just going to town in a way which could really wait for afterwards.

But finally he did something and she popped back into visibility on IR, sitting up and talking to him.

"Athan?" she asked. "Something's wrong with my optics, I can't see except in IR. Are you invisible again? Or...where's the rest of the world?" She paused, and right as Athan started to speak cut back in. "Wait, where's the Defiant? What's going on? I lost the last few minutes."

"It's okay," Athan said. "I think we're in Tem's powers, she's made it pitch black. Your drone led me to you. I think...Tem's still fighting, from the sound, but I can't see anything."

"My drone? DOG?"

"No...this...little quadrotor. It administered first aid while I was fading in and out, and then hit me with some stims."

"I don't have any medical quadrotors," she said looking around and seeing my drone. "Oh. Is that mine? I must have lost more than I thought."

"We need to get out of the dark," Athan said. "If Dragon attacks, we'll be helpless."

"Dragon? Right. Oh shit, Dragon. He's right there, Athan!"

AEGIS was also not using her brain today, as Dragon turned instantly the second he hear AEGIS yell. He turned to sprint that way, and Tem hadn't quite caught on yet that Athan and AEGIS were up yet. He jumped at them, and AEGIS rose to meet him, diverting his attack but getting a knife in her chest.

"Jesus he's fast!" she said. "And I'm hurt already...was I shot? Athan, get the fuck out of here!"

"Tem!" Athan shouted. "Drop the darkness, now!"

To my eyes, nothing changed, but the four of them all began moving and acting a lot more coordinated, and I took a glance over my optics to confirm the dark sphere was gone.

Athan, the damn idiot, ran in and met Dragon halfway, his blades defensive this time, but still not fast enough for Dragon. As good as he was, Athan wasn't a fighter, and he didn't move or think like one. He was a tactician, trained from his lifestyle of football, and used his weapons like he used teammates, positioning them offensively, defensively, adjusting based on an evolving situation.

But that wasn't how a fight worked. There weren't rules or breaks here, plans and improvisation were obviously useful, but not when you were getting punched in the head. There was simply no time for stopping and thinking against a foe this fast, this relentless, and Athan was being punished for his methodical approach wherever Dragon had the chance.

Still, Dragon couldn't get in more than one or two hits at a time with Athan being more guarded, but he was still simply demolishing the boy. Every blade which lashed out was a hole in Athan's defenses, and every blade which stayed guarding him was distance he surrendered. Thrown knives flared against Athan's shield constantly, which seemed to blind and disorient him more than his opponent.

AEGIS wasn't being useful either, to say nothing of Temperance. The scramble had set her back to before minute zero of the fight, and she was re-learning the enemy and his capabilities, and was beginning to slow from her wounds. Temperance seemed unwilling or unable to unleash any attack which might catch Athan in it, and as Dragon was on him constantly, that meant she could do nothing.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Which just left me.

I put my optics down and looked through the scope of the rifle instead.

Nothing about that man seemed exactly normal, but it wasn't the kind of thing you could pick up at a casual observation. Even I was having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what it was, but I did notice that from his body language, when he moved, it seemed completely unplanned. There was literally no hesitation or anticipation, just movement, which gave a bizarre, unpredictable mania to his actions I found unsettling.

Significantly, this made him hard to target. Even though the smart sensors in this rifle's scope were top of the line, automatically detecting and compensating for everything from wind currents to miniscule differences in gravity or air pressure, at the end of the day, I still had to point the bullet at him and pull the trigger with my own human reflexes.

And also not hit the target I was supposed to protect. That probably wouldn't go over well.

Athan was yelling at Temperance and in a moment, the battlefield was filled with visual noise, a hundred thousand copies of the three of them all moving and feinting and jeering at Dragon. But it did exactly as much good as the darkness, and for his overconfidence, Athan was rewarded with yet another combo of blows down his body, and AEGIS another knife in her core when she tried to intercede.

The knife could have just as easily gone into Athan but didn't. I didn't know why, but I really didn't want to find out.

But the effect was the same. Though she'd held up well, until now, this one seemed to have hit something critical and AEGIS staggered, riddled with bullets and blades. From one knee, she still reached out at Dragon, almost pleadingly, but he just slipped past and made for the other two. Where, again, Athan's inexperience made him vulnerable prey, taking painful blows he shouldn't have, too reliant on moving and on his weapons and seemingly unaware that he had two perfectly good arms which would go far in mitigating the beating he was taking. He was getting destroyed, and still managing to stand in the way of my shot while doing it.

And then the world seemed to lurch. Dragon went flying backwards and slammed into the ground, AEGIS following suit. The downed debris and wires leaned inwards, scuffing on the gravel as something pulled them down and in. Athan made a gesture as something flew off his body towards where Dragon and AEGIS were locked together, wrestling impotently.

I checked my optics for a moment. An electromagnet, and a very strong one. I had to commend the kid for not just wasting his time while he got beaten, and for knowing when to kick it off before he got too wasted. He was advancing on Dragon slowly, breathing heavily, holding his wounds, trickling blood.

But this was a situation where he needed to move fast. I could already see Dragon unbuckling his kit, and the more he got off, the freer his movement to take off the rest. By the time Athan saw what was going on and charged him, Dragon had already mostly broken free and rolled sideways to put Athan's slicing attack through his missing arm.

Which was...again curious. No man should have adapted that fast to their arm being gone. Protecting oneself, all of oneself, was instinctual, and it could take years or decades to train those instincts that a limb was no longer there. There was no way Dragon should have been able to use a missing limb to his advantage like that so soon.

And then Dragon was up again, and Athan was just doomed. Even without his equipment, Dragon was more than a match with AEGIS pinned, and Athan seemingly distracted to maintain the magnet. He should have let it go the second Dragon was free, but seemed to want to keep the man from his supplies, unaware of what his divided attention was costing him.

But Dragon didn't advance. Instead he started to speak.

What he said was probably going to be very important. An explanation for why he wasn't killing Athan, maybe. Or his true motives in being here and hunting the Defiant. What he'd meant when he said the deaths of Talon, Mini, and Micaiah hadn't been on him. Words which might reflect the state of Exhumans, the XPCA, or even China.

But I wasn't getting paid to let Athan hear words. I was getting paid to keep him alive. So I pulled the trigger.

I wasn't an assassin. I'd warned Lia of as much before I took her job, but she'd insisted. I'd handled a gun or two in my time, but never had I the opportunity to sit behind a beauty like this one. This firearm was hers, an AM-12.7 'Lachesis', a marvel of engineering which utilized both a mass driver and the explosive power of a .50-caliber round to fire with dozens of times more speed and power than any conventional firearm. Penetrator rounds fired from one of these had a propensity for punching straight through exosuit plating, the pilot, the plating again, and then the plating and pilot of any other unfortunate to be behind them. Even tanks and other heavily-armored craft offered little protection against it, unless layered with a kinetic barrier.

So when I pulled the trigger, I felt it. Even on a bipod, even with my body fully prone and braced, the beast erupted into my shoulder, the recoil immense, even through kinetic dampeners.

I cycled the action manually as I peered through the scope, pivoting around to find where I'd been before the recoil had sent my vision flying. The gun hissed at me, dissipating the enormous heat it'd just generated by pumping coolant and air. Five seconds, it would take before it could fire again.

The good news, I had hit. The bad news, Dragon was not so easy to slay as potshotting him from a rooftop a couple blocks down. He was standing up, knocked flat by the force of the shot, but my bullet hung in the air in front of his head, trapped in a glowing orange-white semi-solid field. Personal kinetic barrier, and by the fact that it'd just taken a shot from the Lachesis, probably the most expensive and high-tech one I'd ever seen.

Still, the barrier was compromised now, and if he just hung out for another few seconds…

Of course, he wasn't that foolish. The moment he was back on his feet, he'd dove for his abandoned supplies, and in an instant, an explosion filled the air with a semicircle of black to rival Temperance's. A smoke bomb, a very high-tech one, which exploded with a combination of substances, chaff, smoke, burning primer, all designed to defeat as many different modes of detection as possible.

I knew it was futile, but I pulled my eyes from the scope and back to my optics, flipping through channels and finding nothing but an impenetrable dome. Dragon would know which direction the shot came from, and would not be so stupid as to run out of the smoke in any direction which would expose him, but he could certainly escape behind it.

And sure enough, after another twenty or so seconds, the smoke began to clear and with it, any traces of Dragon on the field. I began to pack to redeploy immediately.

He wouldn't come back, not out in the open, I was sure of that. But he also had a general bearing of where I was. I'd deliberately ignored several other more optimal -- and therefore obvious -- perches when selecting this one, hopefully enough to buy time for my escape.

The real trick was going to be whether I left behind enough for him to ID me, and if so, if he chose to pursue me. Pulling that trigger may have cost me everything.

But it's not like I was paid to sit and watch, right?

I still had my ears in my drone, listening to Athan and AEGIS and Tem as I made my escape. I couldn't fly the drone without stopping, and I sure as hell wasn't going to have it automatically follow me, that would be painting a flag on my backside for Dragon to follow. Athan and AEGIS could have it, it couldn't be traced back to me anyway.

"He's...he's gone?" AEGIS asked, her voice sounding vaguely stuttery and broken from her damage.

"I think so," Athan said, and I heard him collapse on the ground heavily. "Fuck. Jack was right."

"Jack?"

"He said Dragon would kill me. Said I wouldn't stand a chance. And he was right. I couldn't do anything. I was just...slow, and weak...and I didn't even have time to think about how to use my powers. I was just lashing out and hoping to keep him away and…"

"Hey," AEGIS interrupted. "It's fine, Athan. It's all fine. We're alive and that's what matters."

"Maybe the Defiant will realize who the bigger problem is now."

"The Defiant!" AEGIS said. "Shoot, I remember! Damn that scrambler. Athan help me out here a second--"

I heard nothing but some sounds of movement for a minute while I ducked into an empty house with an easy-to-shim lock. One with a nice, thick basement that my optics had a hard time getting anything useful out of, and where nobody was home. I'd hide out here for the next few hours until I could hightail it properly.

"What's this?" Athan asked. "And why are we stealing?"

"This," AEGIS breathed with pained exertion, "is the most important thing we'll ever see, maybe. This is what Dragon's after."

"This ball? Is he playing fetch?"

AEGIS made a sort of robotic noncommittal noise. "I'm serious, Athan. I heard him, and my memories are unscrambling some. This is it. He wants this, not the Defiant."

"Why? What is it?"

Again, a robotic noncommittal noise. She wasn't doing well.

"I dunno, Athan. All I know is, as long as he doesn't have it, he'll keep coming after it. It's important to him, all he wanted, and that means he absolutely can't have it. He wanted it badly enough to do all...those things. To...oh no. Oh no, Athan. The Defiant!"

"Yeah, you said that already. What about them?"

"The bombs, Athan! We have to get the bombs out! Fuck...Athan, help me move! I can't...can't..."

The next couple of minutes were just her panicking and him confused and helping her move towards the warehouse.

I already knew what he'd find in there. I wasn't a religious man, but I still closed my eyes and offered up a silent prayer for those he was about to see in there. I was a realist, and I knew what Dragon was capable of, and preventing the other Defiant from intervening in his fight would be one of the first things he'd do.

But there was still a part of me which hoped that somehow, he'd never pulled the detonator. That the bombs were safely inert for the moment with all of Dragon's equipment left behind at the magnet.

It was a stupid hope, but one which still crossed my heart. And it broke when I heard the shocked gasps of Athan and AEGIS and Tem walking in that room, choking and stunned and throwing up on the floor. Those poor fucking bastards.

I turned off my comms and pulled out my earpiece, leaning against a cold concrete wall in the dark basement alone, while Dragon ran free in the dusk.