It had been so...so senselessly cruel. Walking into that room had been been like crossing the threshold into a nightmare...but not one of mine, one belonging to someone with an even sicker mind than mine.

The Defiant had all been standing or sitting together. Packed in like they were posing for a group picture, or huddled for safety or comfort, or just because Dragon fucking told them to.

And that was how they'd died.

Three bodies with knife wounds in their necks, two with the handles still sticking out of them, including Stag. Whatever I thought of him, he didn't deserve this.

One body without a head. The others had stayed far away from the corpse, and it sat in its own small pool of undisturbed gore.

And twelve dead Exhumans with holes in their chests, their faces intact and still showing the fear and pain of their last living moments. Each was splattered with the blood of each of the others, each body propped up by the ones next to it in a way which reminded me of a neatly stacked pile of kindling for some reason.

And they were still. So unnaturally still. The only thing which stirred in there was the slow dripping of exposed viscera.

I'd only seen them for a few seconds before AEGIS covered my eyes, but the image of it was burned into my mind. Tem had just thrown up through her fingers.

I just felt as cold and empty as those bodies.

I couldn't...couldn't process what I'd seen, it felt like. My mind refused to accept it. It had to be wrong, I had to go back in, look at it again, and I'd see I was mistaken somehow. The Defiant couldn't be dead, they just couldn't. Dragon had been pressed back, we'd given it our all and been hurt and broken and done it. So they had to be alive. They had to.

Because if they weren't, what had I been doing this whole time? What was the point of all the fighting and the suffering and running I'd done if it would all just end this way?

I was sitting in a daze, not really there, the stims beginning to ebb away and reveal the true pain in my body. AEGIS was trying to tell me something and I heard the words 'police' and 'XPCA' and 'leave', but I didn't care.

In my hand was a scrap of black fabric. When I'd desperately unleashed an electromagnet to try to buy myself a few seconds, this had ripped off my neck and flown into the conflux. But that wasn't possible, I made very certain that nothing I carried with me was magnetic, except the charm on my mobile, which I wrapped in current to keep from flying off.

It wasn't possible, just like so many things today. For months, I'd been wearing this choker, and today it decided to be something else for no reason I could determine. It was a small thing, but it hit me hard...a piece of unreality which was insignificant enough to penetrate my denial. Even if I couldn't face the Defiant dying, I could still look at this cloth and know, that I knew nothing. That I was nothing, that my efforts and desires and time...all I'd done here, all meaningless.

Something flashed in my eyes and I blinked slowly and looked up, seeing the flashlight of a police officer. They were saying words to me I couldn't understand while their partner was walking around looking at downed lines while staying well back from them.

In a matter of minutes, police and emergency crews had flooded the scene. There were a dozen engineers in bright yellow insulated suits trying to get at the shed of breakers, police swarming in and out of the shed where the Defiant were, and a thousand people trying to ask questions of AEGIS and me.

AEGIS said nothing, just held me. Tem, invisible, also said nothing, looking at me every time a question was put to me, but not sure how to act. And I just did nothing.

Finally, they'd had enough of our recalcitrance, and I was pulled upright.

"Don't--" AEGIS said.

She was arguing with them, passionately. Shaking her head with ungainly movements through her damage. I didn't understand what there was to argue about. The Defiant had died. What else was there?

My question was answered as my arms were pulled behind my back and dread rose into my chest. I pulled against the officer but I was weak and slow and couldn't resist effectively.

AEGIS tried to protest again, tried to move, but she was too broken. But it was fine, I had this.

The cop stumbled backwards with a shout of alarm as blades manifest in his face, his restraints falling to the lightning-scarred gravel with a clatter. I found myself too weak to stand unassisted and joined them on the ground in a moment.

"Call Colonel Cosette Dawn, XPCA. Call her!" AEGIS kept repeating as I felt myself fading away. I gave my blades a menacing twirl above my body, watching them spark and glimmer against the velvet sky of dusk.

I struggled to hang on. I had to fight them off. I couldn't let anyone else here die today. I had to...had to save them...had to protect…

I saw a light which wavered in front of my face, and when I blinked, saw it was a harsh, naked lightbar, casting its relentless glow across the ceiling. I stirred slightly and felt pain all across my body, painful bruising all along my front, my nose swollen, my arm feeling like it was broken, my hand was ruined for shoving two different blades into it. All of the dull aching which had pushed me down into unconsciousness as my stims wore off, all returned now when I moved and let me know, in no uncertain terms--

Hey, maybe don't move, dumbass.

I was in a cell with the door blown off. There were scorch marks on the walls and if I turned my head, streaks of blood on the floor. My vision swam with the movement, but even so, I could make out Tem opposite me, half-standing, half-sitting on another bed. She was bloody like she hadn't been before, holding her side and breathing heavily.

I turned my head further and saw outside the cell, SWAT police in full gear, body armor and riot shields, helmets and guns out, just...standing, tense, poised, ready…

And, of course, facing us.

"Tem, what's going on?" I croaked. She shuffled to my side at once, still holding up a hand threateningly at the police.

"They tried to take you, hurt you," she said. "I would s-s-sooner die than--"

I sighed and she shut up on the spot.

"Are you hurt? How did you get hurt? They didn't shoot you, did they?"

"No...it is...it is nothing. I'm s-sorry."

"Tem, just tell me. I need to figure this out."

"It's not important."

"Tem?"

"S-s-sorry," she muttered guiltily. "It was...you. But it was an accident! I was following to make s-sure you would not be hurt...and when they closed the cell…"

"My shield went off," I finished, my heart sinking painfully. I took another look around and realized those blood streaks...those were probably bodies dragged from this room, not too long ago. I'd failed yet again. And hurt Tem again.

"Where's AEGIS?"

"They are in the cell two over. They told me to tell you they are s-sorry, but they cannot move."

"AEGIS?" I called into the hall over the line of guards.

"Keep it down, prisoner!" one of them outside my cell yelled back at me.

"You do not tell Chariot to 'keep it down'!" Tem shrieked, and they all recoiled backwards half a step. What the fuck had she been doing while I was out?

"Chariot?" I heard AEGIS' voice echo from the hall. "Athan? Are you there?"

"Athan?" Another woman's voice asked.

It took me a second to place. "Whitney?" I asked back.

"That girl?" AEGIS called. "Why is she here?"

"I was arrested!" Whitney shouted back. "Where else would I be!"

"Quiet!" The SWAT barked.

"YOU QUIET!" Tem hissed, and spots of darkness seethed around her.

I sighed again. This wasn't going well, I felt heavy and achy and even the limited motion I'd made so far had made my head spin and my vision streak in front of my eyes. And if I went out again, there was no telling what Tem and the police would get into.

So as best I could, I pushed all thoughts of the Defiant and their grizzly, pointless deaths from my mind and focused on what we could do here and now. I took deep breaths like I was starting to tilt on a game and needed to re-find myself in that zone of unfocused focus.

It didn't work. The world didn't stop spinning just because I wanted it to.

"Why were you arrested? I thought they were just questioning you?" I called out of the cell, my voice a croak.

"They didn't like my answers," she huffed. "Speaking of which, should I even be talking to you? Are you actually...are you...an Exhuman?"

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Maybe this isn't the time for that?" AEGIS asked.

"Enough!" shouted the SWAT. "You will wait without any further scheming or conversation or we will engage. You are here to wait in containment, not hold a forum."

"Officer, please," I pleaded from my back. "I'll wait for the XPCA, just let them go."

"Bullshit, we're leaving you. If we were just going to abandon you, we'd have just hidden when they were coming for you," AEGIS said, and Tem nodded with a decisive snort.

"Guys, we don't need to make a big fucking scene about this. It's just...a little bit of being arrested."

"Yeah," AEGIS scoffed. "And the three officers who died bringing you in. And the one who died locking up your cell. And the two Tem took out when they decided you were helpless when you were asleep and got way too smart for themselves. And the eighteen dead Defiant plus the previous dead bodies. We don't have Dragon, and as you've pointed out before, the XPCA doesn't exactly mind scapegoating. Where the fuck do you expect the blame to fall?"

"Me," I said, wondering what was so complicated about this. "And it's fine. The Defiant...they're dead. Whatever happens to me now...I did my part. Things are safe for now. There's no more chance of the XPCA blowing up."

"Yeah, that's stupid." I could practically hear AEGIS rolling her eyes as she replied, even as her voice was breaking up a little from her damage.

"All right, enough!" The SWAT yelled, stepping forward to jam a gun towards my face. A shotgun, from the looks of it. "Not another word until the XPCA are here, got it?"

I wasn't sure if 'not another word' included agreeing so I just shrugged as best I was able, making my arm burn, and the pit of my stomach ache from the pain.

"I asked you a question, Exhuman!" he barked, and touched the barrel of the gun to my temples.

And then he screamed as he was engulfed in a pillar of searing light. The others opened fire at once, their bullets passing harmlessly through the decoy Tem in my room and scarring the painted concrete with even more scorch.

The pressure and sounds of the blasts made me close my eyes against the pain as my brain throbbed inside my head. I felt myself slipping, my body feeling further away from me somehow. I tried to tell Tem to stop but couldn't get coherent words out, and definitely not above the gunfire. It took all I had not to just stay and be.

So I was a little shocked when my consciousness finally stabilized and my ears stopped ringing to still hear the voices of the police, yelling to each other about formations and pulling back. I expected a little more...eradication out of Tem. But then again, they'd only been firing at her illusions and not at me, so I guess this was just straight-up murder for her instead of berserk slaughter.

I opened my eyes and then closed one of them when two perspectives was more than I could take. There was a shimmering cloud of white flakes slowly encroaching on them, and they were just falling further back down the hallway at its advance. Gashes on a few of them indicated they'd tried to touch the hard-light motes and learned they were not something to fuck with.

Tem, for her part, watched with uncharacteristic focus from her hiding spot at the foot of my bed. Aside from the killing, I was proud of her. She'd come up with a way to de-escalate all on her own. Quite the step forward.

From the other end of the hallway, opposite the guard's new pen, I heard the heavy tread of boots, not rubber or metal, but the hollow clacking of composite armor. Expensive stuff, I could tell, just by the sound.

And then, swimming into my view, a soldier in white with a glowing red visor wrapped around her shaved head.

"This is the Exhuman in custody?" she barked at the XPCA. "Why is this cell not secure? What in God's name are you imbeciles doing cowering in a corner?"

"Ma'am, this is no longer a secure area--"

"I am a hunter. Everywhere I set foot is a secure area. Now answer my questions with haste or risk my impatience."

"This cloud, ma'am, it's like razors--"

Karu made a dissatisfied noise and turned on me with a frown. She gave only the slightest indication of a nod before her wrist snapped upwards, and with a crack, a shock net flew spiraling outwards and enveloped Tem cleanly. She wailed only for a moment as the net clicked ominously, and even from here, I could feel the electricity discharging.

"Karu what the fuck--"

"Silence, Exhuman scum," Karu shouted me down. "I am here by order of the XPCA to retrieve these dangerous captives, and I will tolerate no failure in doing so. You will comply or you will face similar judgement," she said, levelling her wrist at me instead.

With Tem down, and her hard-light beginning to disassociate, the SWAT began to rally and rejoined Karu at the head of my cell, their shields and guns all pointed in at me.

"Why is he injured? Is this how you manage your prisoners?" Karu barked at one of them.

"He was...injured before we brought him in, ma'am. He seemed...stable enough, considering."

"Considering what?"

"Considering...we were just...going to send him to die, probably, ma'am. A couple guys even had the idea to...help him along a little, but the girl killed them."

"How so many amateurs can keep finding employment galls me," Karu said with disgust. "Have none of you any idea of proper protocols? Can none of you imagine those protocols were created with purpose? Or did you simply imagine yourselves smarter and better than all who preceded you?"

"Ma'am...we...it wasn't a normal situation--"

"I care nothing for your excuses. Those who died paid for their foolishness. Next time you encounter an Exhuman, do not let the foolishness be yours. Let their deaths serve purpose in that."

"Yes ma'am."

"I will now recover the Exhumans as I have been ordered." She frowned at me with her guns still trained. "Did you use a cart or gurney to transport this one in here?"

"No ma'am, we just dragged him and threw him in."

Karu winced a little under her visor. "Well fetch me one now."

"Karu," I whispered at her, and she leaned imperceptibly closer. "AEGIS, and Whitney."

She frowned. "Were these two the only ones involved in the incident?"

"No ma'am, another injured woman."

"Just one? Not two?"

"Uh...no ma'am."

Karu oversaw my body being moved into a gurney and rolled carefully out the way she'd entered. As we passed, I saw AEGIS in a cell, also apparently just thrown in there, and also apparently with about as much mobility as I had. And then a further cell, I saw Whitney, and she gasped as she saw the shape I was in.

Karu stopped and frowned at her. "Whitney?" Karu asked, and she nodded. "I need this one as well," Karu announced, and kept us walking.

"This is...your transport?" the officer pushing me asked when we stopped outside the rental car.

"Is there an issue with that?" Karu asked, glaring ominously.

"I just...expected an XPCA vehicle, ma'am."

"I am a hunter, not a bus driver. Now secure the prisoner in his seat and permit me to do my job without any further questioning."

I had to admit, Karu could steal a scene. From the moment she'd walked in here with her visor blazing and her guns pointing, she'd taken utter command of the situation. She was a hunter and a politician, and had no problem selling herself or her act. As I was buckled in, and Tem, AEGIS, and Whitney were all crammed into the sedan with me, Karu filled out forms for the transfer with the confidence of one who'd done this a thousand times before.

Of course, thinking about it, Karu maybe had done this a thousand times before. Invariably she'd gone through something like this for every bounty she brought in, and it was just a little bit weird to be feeling like she could abuse that power to get us out of jail.

Finally, after what felt like far too long, Karu gave the tablet over and offered a crisp salute, before joining us in the car herself, sitting next to Whitney as the two women with the longest legs.

And then we pulled away, and within seconds, were on the road with all of the other cars.

"Holy crap, Karu," AEGIS said. "I did not expect that, and I wasn't sure how we were going to get out of there without you."

"Yeah, that was some grade-A butt-saving," I said. We hit a bump and I couldn't catch a pained choke before it escaped my throat. Without speaking, Karu dug in a pouch and put a stim patch on my knee, and I peeled it and put it on my neck readily. "Oh God, thanks. I was on the verge of passing out that whole time. But did you have to shoot Tem?"

"It was something I have always desired to do," Karu said with half a grin as she pulled off her visor to drive. Not something she should have been doing while going fifty with traffic on a surface street, but fuck, I wasn't going to complain about anything from now on.

"Wait...we're not...in custody?" Whitney asked. "What's going on? I'm so confused."

Now with my pain safely quarantined, I was able to laugh. "This is Karu. She's a friend of mine."

"You really do have hunter friends?" Whitney asked in a half-whisper.

"With benefits," Karu mused.

"Over my dead body," AEGIS seethed.

"That could be very easily arranged at this point," Karu said with a glance in the mirror. "Perhaps consider your words more carefully, AI."

"Guys, no fighting," I said, cutting in with unnatural speed and energy from the stims. "We're safe for now, we survived Dragon and...and the threat of the Defiant...well, it's gone. For better or worse."

"I'm not safe," Whitney said. "I'm in a car of Exhumans. Please drop me off, I need to go back to the police station. I'm going to get in huge trouble."

Karu laughed a more sinister laugh than usual. "Unfortunately, you are now legally in my custody. Were you to run off, it would be my responsibility and obligation to hunt you down and bring you to justice. I know not who you are miss, but it seems for now, you are stuck with us, as it were."

"R-really? No…" She looked at me in the side-view mirror, her hands shaking as her fingertips tapped against both sides of her glasses, her face white and trembling. "You're...this is...this is all a joke, right? Kidnapping? Athan...I thought…"

I saw her face fall and I already knew the conflict tearing her up inside over who and what I was. As much as it sucked to have to do this to her, I knew that if we just left her off now, she'd never be able to realize that Exhumans like me were out there, and we were okay. It would always start and end as a story of an Exhuman who lied to her and used her and got her arrested and then sorta-kidnapped her.

Well, as long as we were already here, I was prepared for a full kidnapping, if it meant clearing the air. I wanted to do that much for her at least.

"Where are we going, Karu?" I asked.

"My luxurious hideout, for the moment," she said. "Only the very fanciest of motels for this operation."

"Can we swing by somewhere first? There's some things I want to pick up."

"Certainly. Where and what things?"

I caught Whitney's eyes in the mirror again.

"A repair shop nearby. And anything Whitney is going to want or need."

"Need...for what?" she asked, tentatively.

But though she spoke hesitatingly, her gaze had become familiar again. The same rhythmic switching from eye-to-eye, the same non-judgmental curiosity. Interest, at least as much as fear.

"Well...I know you haven't met yet really, but AEGIS here is a completely unique AI like the world's never seen. And she's a little broken right now. I thought you might be interested in helping be her hands."

"Hey, I'm fine," AEGIS pouted, her cracking voice doing nothing to sell us. "I just need...need some components...to get a DOG online...and maybe a hand or two, but not hers!"

I laughed again, and so did Karu, while AEGIS fumed.

Whitney eyed me seriously. "Are you doing this...for me?"

"Yeah. Sort of an apology for mucking up your life so badly. I hope that's cool with you."

"It's...it's the coolest thing ever. But...I still don't know what to think, Athan."

"I know. And I know you're confused right now. I just want to show you that you don't have to be. That you can be an Exhuman and a decent person all at once."

"I think I could stand just being confused, honestly."

I smiled back at her. "Well...sorry but I guess I'm not done mucking up your life just yet. I really would like AEGIS fixed, and there's nobody I'd trust more than you to help."

There was relative silence for a few minutes as Karu managed the car and nobody seemed to want to push Whitney.

Until finally, AEGIS spoke up.

"So. Giving away my body for favors," AEGIS asked. "Am I getting whored out, Athan? Seriously?"

Through the strange, detached mindset of the stims, I was able to laugh, even now. Even in this most fucked up of situations, fugitives adding kidnapping to the list of their sins. I laughed at AEGIS' indignance, but mostly her way with words.

"Yes," I told her. "Yes, but it's for a very good cause."

"It better be," she grumbled, as we pulled into a parking lot.