I didn't even have to look to place the voice. It was one I'd heard thousands of times, and yet still never expected to hear again. I let out a deep sigh, and then turned to face her.

"Hello ma'am," I said dutifully.

"Still so polite. I wonder if you were so polite when you killed my son."

She was a large woman, tall, broad-shouldered, and with a personality to match. Her skin was pale, her hair light brown, but peppered with more grey than I remembered, and lines on her face indicated her advancing age, but that she wasn't quite there yet. In build and demeanor, she'd always reminded me a lot of her son, a lineman for the Black Sharks, and my best friend.

Brick's mom looked at me like she wasn't sure what all to make of me, which was understandable given I didn't know what to make of me either right now. But given her nature and what I'd done, I was honestly just surprised she wasn't coming at me with a frying pan right now.

"You're not trying to kill me. That's kind of a surprise," I said.

"Haven't finished making up my mind yet," she sighed. "My husband and your father, they'd jump on you soon as they seen you and let their fists sort out the rest."

"They were both always similar like that, I guess."

"Comes with being in the army. Everyone who serves goes in different, comes out the same."

We stared each other down for a few more seconds before she spoke again.

"Barry had it coming, Athan."

"What?"

"As his mother, I should always be on his side, should always believe in him, because that's what family's for. But you can't fix stupid, no matter how hard you try to talk him out of it, and the last time I saw him, with crazy in his eyes, yelling about justice and heroes and the whole town worshiping him, I saw he wasn't my son anymore. He was gone, possessed by something he put there himself."

"Uh...wow. I never expected to hear that from...you."

"Well I'm a lot of things, Athan, but liable to bury my head in the sand ain't one of them. I know crazy when I see it, and even if you are a freak, you're more sane than he was. He had no right to go running off chasing you if he wanted to live, so I have to assume that dying is exactly what he wanted." She swallowed hard. "Did you do it quick and painless? Or were you as cruel as they say?"

"He didn't even know he died," I said. Even if it wasn't exactly a clean way to go, Lia's rifle was thorough and faster than sound. There was nothing left of Brick to hear or feel the bullet by the time it passed through him.

"Hmph," she said, as though that wasn't the right answer.

"Would you prefer he died slowly?"

"I'd prefer you didn't kill him. Or that if you did, you'd sound like you have some regret over it. I knew Barry had lost it, but you sound just as callous as they say."

I blinked at her. "You asked me a question. I answered it. Ma'am."

"A question about your friend and my son's death. How many people have you killed to speak of it so candidly? Are you just an Exhuman instrument of death, leaving tears and broken families in your wake because you don't have them yourself anymore?"

"Ma'am, I gave myself up to the XPCA. I was a good little Exhuman."

"Then why is Barry dead? Why are you here?"

"Because the XPCA is shit, ma'am. Because they decided to use me as a guinea pig for some stupid pet project instead of wiping me out. Some stupid plan by some ambitious asshole to save the world by hurting and endangering a crapton of people. They fucked up, again and again, so here I am. Ma'am."

She looked at me icily for a moment and then turned towards my house. "If that's true, then what's the point of it all? Monsters like you, free to roam the streets."

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"Ma'am, if I were blowing up people with my powers left and right, the XPCA would be on me so fast I wouldn't even realize I was dead either."

"Liar."

"I'm not lying!"

She turned to me and put her hands on her hips. "You've killed plenty. I can tell just by the way you talk, the way you look at me. You're like your father and my husband, you're what came out of the army."

"I'm what came out of the XPCA, certainly. And yeah, I've had to kill sometimes. People like your son, who are dangerous, who are crazy, who are starting things they can't finish. I've never once enjoyed killing someone, I've always felt it in my heart when I do." I stared into her eyes. "But Brick the least of them. Do you know what he did to Lia?"

"Saved her, to hear his side of it."

"Yeah, that is how he saw it. And he thought she owed him a debt she could pay only with her body. I might not be happy to have killed him, but I'm happy he's dead."

"That's my son," she growled at me.

"That's my sister," I snapped back.

Again we just stared at each other for a minute, the sun baking our backs.

"There's nothing for you here. Go away. Leave us alone," she said.

"Yeah, probably," I said. "I honestly don't even know why I'm here."

"Revenge?" she snorted. "At the family that cast you out?"

I shook my head. "That's so ancient history compared to everything I have to deal with. I exchanged like, twenty words with Dad after I turned, and never saw him since. Honestly, everything he did before that night bothers me a lot more."

"Then revenge for that?"

I was still shaking my head. "No, that's the other Exhumans, the ones who find themselves empowered and use it to take out their petty gripes on people who wronged them. The ones who have events and then die."

"Oh, so I'm speaking to one of the good murderers, then."

"If you weren't, I'd just have killed you by now, so probably, yeah." I sighed. "Didn't you say Brick was crazy for doing exactly this? Why are you here, talking to me? Why didn't you just go home and call the police when you saw me?"

"Because then I'd never know how you felt about his death. You already had the police called on you by our family once, and it brought us nothing but misery. Now I've lost my son, but you expect me to do the same thing again?"

"I guess."

"Then you're stupid in addition to being a murderer."

I bristled at her. "Look, ma'am, how do you think you'd feel if you woke up one day and found yourself in my situation? What would you be doing right now? Do I just piss off because everyone hates me for what I am? Do I attack you because I can and you're fucking infuriating, and you don't seem to expect anything else from me? What? What? I'd love to hear it. Seriously."

"Nothing you do could ever satisfy me," she said in a low, threatening voice. "You're a killer, and a monster, and even if you dropped dead this moment, the world is still worse for you passing through it."

I blinked at her, this old, bitter woman who, honestly, life had dealt a shit hand alongside mine. It wasn't her fault Brick was dead, or that I had turned, but now here she was, adrift and pointless as I felt like I was. She was pitiable, strong as she was, and while I'd only really yelled at her out of frustration, whatever her thoughts on me were, whatever she thought I could do to make amends...it would have been really valuable to hear, the unfiltered opinion of one of my victims.

Which made it liberating, what she said. I could do nothing. She would never be satisfied.

She, like so many, would never accept me, both because of what I was and what I'd done, and there was no other way around it. That might be frustrating or unfair or shitty...but it was also incredible. Why seek these people's approval or acceptance? Why kill myself over someone like this? Why beat myself up for what I'd done, when no amount of doing so would ever be enough? It was pointless. It was insane.

I found myself with a dark grin that seemed to confirm all her worst suspicions, but her words had pushed me beyond caring.

"Thank you ma'am. I'll keep that in mind," I told her.

"You're going to hell for all you've done."

"I'm well aware."

"Those murdered souls, Barry too, they'll have their vengeance for all eternity on your black soul."

"I hope they have a nice time with it. Dismissed, ma'am." I gave her a mocking salute and she just glared at me.

"Fuck you, Athan," she spat and turned to go. As she did, she pulled her mobile from her bag and began dialing. It wasn't the easiest shot, but I didn't particularly care if I missed and hit her, as I flicked a few fingerfuls of tiny bulbs in her direction, and while several hit her in the back, making her flinch and yelp, at least one fried her mobile with a satisfying pop.

"Burn in hell, Exhuman!" she shouted at me from half a block away. I repeated my salute, even more satisfied with her opinion.

She definitely hated me now. But why should I care? I could grovel and kneel and beg all day and she'd hate me. At least this way, I'd escaped the conversation and given myself a few more minutes before the XPCA came, and by then I'd be long gone.

I was just standing there, wondering if I should do the same to my folks when I heard yelling from inside the house. Screamed apologies and the sounds of violence.

I was about to move in when abruptly, I felt a buzzing in my mind as Saga located me, and a moment later, the violence stopped as both of my parents collapsed to the ground.