"How did he find us?" Alyssa whispered, as though speaking normally would shatter the door keeping Dragon from us.

"I don't know. I don't...there's too many things. He might have seen us...or deduced it out...overpowered the officers in the security room and saw us on cams...or just followed our trail."

"But we did so much to throw him off!"

"I know. I'm sorry. But we need to focus on what we're doing next."

Dragon wasn't just standing there idly, and we couldn't afford to either. I tore my eyes away from whatever he was doing in the small rectangle window and surveyed what we had to work with.

It was a rooftop. The next nearest building was the one we'd passed through on the way here, still a good thirty feet away. We had an abundance of what seemed like glued-down gravel, and a couple large housing units, the size of a crowd of refrigerators, which were an AC or inlet for the HVAC or something like that. Something with a huge fan on the top I could see in its whirling shadow.

So basically, we had nothing.

"There's...there's wires and stuff here," she said, rushing towards the housings, the only thing on the roof besides us. "Ya can...ya can...make a bomb or somethin' out of that?"

I joined her and discovered to my dismay that the casing was not, in fact, made of TNT or the like. Maybe if I had a few years and a pile of fissionable materials, I could use the casing for something, but in our situation it was as inert as things came.

But a bomb wasn't a good idea anyway. "I might just be able to cut the power and we can get back inside through the air intake. Here--"

"What?" she asked as I reached towards her.

"Let me boost you up on top. Tell me what you see."

She nodded seriously at me even as she flattened down her skirt. I locked my fingers to provide a step and turned my head to face the edge as she climbed over me.

"It's loud!" she yelled down at me, and I looked up to see her peeking over the edge at me from atop them, her golden-brown hair whipping around her. "There's grating and then fans spinning, and then more grating and then darkness."

"How are the grates secured?" I shouted back.

She shook her head. "Bolts, bigger than yer thumb."

I swore. I might have been able to wrench off some screws or rivets like I had with the access door, but I was no superman. For not the first time today, I found myself wishing my powers were back on, and I could just melt my way through the HVAC.

Or, for that matter, just creep up on the door and impale Dragon while he was busy with it. Fuck me that the one time I probably would have the drop on him, I couldn't do anything with it.

"There's a bunch of pipes and stuff on the other side," she yelled down at me, pointing towards the far end of the air intake from me. I jogged around it and found pipes and conduits connected in neat lines, suspended from the gravel roof by metal struts and bending at ninety-degree angles several times before vanishing into the roof.

There was a crunch as she landed next to me. "Can we get in through where they do?"

I shook my head. These pipes were a lot smaller, only the size of our heads at best. We might be able to fit after Dragon was finished with us, but that was hardly a plan nor a comfort.

But it did give me an idea. Better than where we currently were.

As with before, step one was to find a tool, and the metal struts seemed an ideal balance of leverage and accessibility. I found one about four feet long and hung off of it sideways, putting as much of my strength and weight into it as I could.

Damn thing didn't budge. Then Alyssa came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me. I was confused for a moment before I was suddenly out of breath as she jerked my body as hard as she could, adding her strength and weight to mine.

The strut made a noise, and she jammed me again, her wrists digging bruised ruts into my ribs. Then again. And once more.

And then we fell down, slicing ourselves up on the gravel roof as the strut broke free, clattering beside us while the unsupported pipes sagged and groaned to the screech of metal twisting.

I sprang to my feet, pulling up Alyssa with a nod, and then remembered to thank her. She wasn't Karu, despite her competence, and while Karu always liked to remind me that thanks were unnecessary between comrades, Alyssa definitely deserved some praise.

And then I went back to work, attacking the line of flexible galvanized conduit running power to the HVACs. With my new prybar, I was able to pop off each of the fasteners holding the line screwed down, liberating a metal snake of the stuff before too long. Finally I reached the end and took a moment to take stock of where we were.

I had maybe a dozen feet of metal conduit with live power wires inside, connected at one end to the roof and the other to the HVAC. It was a little slack, given the designer's predilection for right-angles, but only just.

Meanwhile, Dragon was apparently working a blowtorch or something similar. I could see half of my weld already burned through and the tip of a blue-white cone of flame peeking through as he worked. As an infiltration specialist, I shouldn't have been surprised he'd have something so basic and effective on him, but still. Come fucking on, was there anything that slowed this guy down?

"Are you ready to do something incredibly stupid?" I asked Alyssa.

"If it gets us away from him, anythin'."

"Stand back, then."

I pulled as much conduit and wire as I could out of the ground and then carefully peeled the metal tube apart, my fingers screaming at me at the abuse of pulling apart metal with bare hands, but I didn't care. Several times I had to use the end of my prybar to dig into the conduit, or just for leverage, but eventually I got there, bearing the all-important cables within.

"Stand back," I repeated, checking that she was well clear. I situated myself as far from the building's edge as I could, and then having a thought, pulled off my shirt and wrapped my hands in it to grip my stick. And then took a deep breath and counted to three.

And then swung the bar over my head like a headsman's axe, right into the exposed wires.

Despite my powers, or maybe because of them, I'd never actually been shocked before. And with the amount of power running through these units, if it happened to me now, it'd be both my first and last time. I hoped the distance of the bar and the soles of my shoes would do something to deter the electricity, but honestly, I was just playing an idiot shoving a fork into an electrical outlet and hoping it worked out okay.

It didn't exactly work out okay.

The first thing that happened is the strut in my hands, not designed for any amount of voltage passing through it basically detonated as it became a spontaneous member of the new circuit. Instantly heated to red-hot, the end in the wires was jolted explosively into the air, whipping past my head and over the edge of the building with a trail of smoke and acrid air.

It might have burned my hands off too, if I hadn't been gripping it through my shirt. Instead, it slipped out of my grip, only burning and slicing the fuck out of me and taking a layer of my palms. I dropped to my knees, cradling my hands, as the two ends of the wire sparked and zapped, still connected by a snaking tendril of lightning which made the conduit whip around as though possessed.

Within a few seconds though, the conduit whipped away and the circuit broke, dropping it dead on the rooftop, both ends smoking. That was why it was critical I cut the wire at the source. If I'd cut it nearer the HVAC, it would be jumping and sparking constantly.

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Instead it was just...catching fire, the sparking and crackling flame replacing the sounds of the fans spinning down. I swore and stood up, moving to the end of the now-melted cable I'd just worked so hard for and rethinking just how stupid this plan was.

"Are you okay?" Alyssa asked, approaching tenatively. "What's wrong with yer hands?"

"They're just burned. I'm fine. I didn't get shocked."

"Just burned?" she echoed, looking at them with wide eyes. "Fekkin' hell, Athan, ye've got no skin left."

I wrapped my shirt tighter around my hands, realizing just how fucked we were. But we had to try.

"We did all that for this," I said, holding the end of the cable. "It's secured on the other end...and long enough to get us...a couple stories down."

"And then we jump?" she asked, the same hesitation when she asked about climbing all the way up here, but mixed with a perfectly healthy dose of fear.

"I...hope not. I hope we can swing on it and kick in the windows and get back into the building."

She shook her head. "It won't work. I knew someone who used to lean on those windows for fun to creep people out. They can hold a person's weight."

I wished I knew that before I went and torched my hands. I was pissed at her for just a moment for not speaking up until I realized I'd just been making all the decisions and had never even tried to consult with her. Fucking hell. Fucking me.

And now Dragon was almost on his way in, and all I'd managed was hurting myself. The rooftop near us was on fire, burning slowly with nothing but concrete and rock up here, but if it found anything to catch on, the whole building could go up in flames.

And this stupid dozen feet of cable. I gave it an angry shake, making my burned hands throb. I should have cut the other end, then I'd have an electrocuted whip to wave at Dragon before he just threw a knife into my chest. It twisted and coiled around like it was as irritated as I was.

Fuck, what I wouldn't give for my powers back.

I didn't even have the self-reflection at the moment to consider the irony in wanting to be Exhuman again. I was too busy trying to focus on the now. Because the weight of the metal and wires in my hands just gave me an idea again.

I swung it overhead, whipping it violently, over the edge of the building. From below me, I heard a crack as it snapped and smashed into the windows below. Then I pulled it up and did it again, the crack sounding more like glass smashing and less like metal slapping against something this time.

"Yer doin' it!" she shouted. "Yer breakin' through!" She moved some distance away from me, and then very hesitantly, on all fours, peeked her head over the edge to survey the damage I was inflicting. "It's cracked up! There's a couple of tiny holes where the tip broke in!"

It was hard work working the whip, way heavier than a dozen feet of wire and insulation and metal had any right to be, and after my fourth go, I was completely out of breath. And then again, I found Alyssa's hands on mine, as she gently separated the wire from my shirt and took it from me, as gentle and tender as a mother with her child.

I took a step back and she spared me one more fleeting gentle glance, one more moment of tenderness. And then she spun and whipped the wire down the side of the building like a barbarian queen. I heard it crack, and then she pulled the whip up again, hand-over-hand, already red and dripping sweat.

She swung it again. And shortly after this crack, there was a second that made the two of us glance between us.

And then there were three of us, as the source of the second crack stepped onto the rooftop to join us.

"You've proven interesting," he commented. "but you must know that you are at your end. Rarely do I offer a second chance to surrender. I encourage you to take it."

"If you kill me, you'll never find the device," I growled at him, unpeeling the bloodstained shirt from my hands and raising them in front of me in fists.

"I find that unlikely. Even one as considerate as you leaves a trail. You may either save me the effort, or be removed as an obstacle."

I ran at him, right fist upraised and leading, ready to swing and catch him with a brutal hook on the ear. He barely moved, leaning sideways and taking half a step, a glint of steel in his hand as he prepared to retort.

But the right hook wasn't the attack. As I ran, at the last second, when I was blocking his sight with my own body coming in, I veered my foot and stomped on the top of his foot with my heel, driving it down as hard as I could, and feeling the bones give under me.

He staggered away, still on-balance somehow even as his foot gave under his weight, but so did I, with a new knife between my ribs. I looked down and gasped at the pain of it all, pure adrenaline no longer sufficient to keep myself together.

He was on me in an instant, right back at his knife, twisting it in the wound and making spots flicker in front of my eyes.

"Surrender," he ordered.

"Why...not just...kill me?" I gasped out at him. The knife had been shoved in too low to hit my lungs or heart, and Dragon didn't miss.

"I will repeat myself only once. Your cooperation eases my recovery of the device, and I have taken an interest in you."

"What….like, romantically? Sorry, I'm...taken," I panted, grinning at him with a mouth that tasted like blood.

"Your powers and capabilities have proven surprisingly resilient." He held his hands up towards me, one a broken stump just below the elbow, the other twisted and bloody, bones broken through his hand from the pistol exploding in his grip. "I do not like surprises."

It was a fortuitous line for him to end on as the cable whipped through the air from behind him and cracked into the side of his head and shoulder, making him bow forward from the force of the blow.

Alyssa stood there, breathing silently through a mouth hanging wide, barefoot on the painful stones of the roof so she could creep up on him as he spoke, the middle of the conduit gripped in her shaking hands. It was a glorious moment as she looked up at me, red eyes sparkling in triumph.

But it was only one moment. In the moment after, she grabbed at her chest as though confused, and through her fingers I saw the same gleam of silver. In one motion, Dragon rose to his feet and swept hers from under her, where she lay gasping, not comprehending, bleeding.

He did not miss her lungs.

I screamed and charged him, all thoughts of feints and strategy and plans gone in an instant. My hands flew at him as fast as I could move them, my feet lashed out like striking snakes.

But I never touched him. In my rage, I'd grown predictable, and he simply moved inches this way or that, my every strike unable to graze him.

After what felt like minutes, he struck back, a palm catching me flat in the sternum and throwing me to my back next to Alyssa, who was breathing fast and shallow, the blood trickling from her mouth the same color as her eyes.

"Why do you not use your powers?" he asked simply, his shadow falling over me.

"F-f-fuck...you," I spat at him.

As though expecting this, he moved to Alyssa, crouching over her body and placing his long, bloody fingers on the hilt of the knife in her chest. She tried to shy away, tried to melt into the ground to escape his touch, but his was not a grasp you could escape.

"Why do you not use your powers?" he repeated. Before I could respond, he twisted the knife, sending her into a fit of screaming that made blood spray from her mouth.

"STOP!" I screamed at him. "FUCK! STOP!"

"I have repeated myself once. I will not do so again," he said, as Alyssa gasped and writhed in sudden silence.

"They're gone, okay! My powers are gone!"

"You lie," he said, reaching out again.

"NO! THEY'RE GONE! I fucking promise, I swear."

His fingers hesitated in the air, inches from the handle. "And my device?"

"It's in the hands of the XPCA," I cried.

He stood up and headed towards the exit. "Then it's as good as mine," he mused. "Before I go, I hope you don't mind if I test your statement. I find it difficult to believe."

I didn't know what he meant until with a barely-visible glint, another knife flashed into my calf, sending me swearing and rolling all over again at the white-hot pain. But even through that, I understood. My shield would have blocked that. He really had confirmed my powers were gone, in the sadistic fucking way he would.

And with my powers, apparently so disappeared his interest in me, as he left without another word, like our lives and deaths mattered nothing to him. I felt myself crying even as I grit my teeth against the pain and saw that the fire was continuing to spread.

And Alyssa was still there, still gasping, though her breathing was shallower now, and her face was pale, making the lines of blood from her mouth stand out even more.

I shuffled towards her as best I could, the scrapes from the gravel nothing compared to the agony I was already in. I could barely use one leg and one arm, but somehow I reached her, drawing myself to collapse next to her, our eyes staring into each other's, looking for comfort we knew we couldn't find.

And then somehow, she smiled, despite everything. Despite all that had happened to us, to her, on this living nightmare of a day. Despite the fact that she had minutes, at best, before she choked to death on her own blood. Despite being stranded with some guy she liked who was dating someone else, who'd gotten them both killed with his fucked-up past and his stupid, stubborn arrogance.

Somehow. Despite all that, she smiled.

And in whispered breaths, barely louder than the crackle of the growing fire, she spoke.

"I got...to do...something brave...like you," she said. "I'm...so happy."

"Don't speak," I whispered at her. "Save your breath, please. Please."

She didn't speak again, just gave me the same smile as always. But somehow, it didn't look embarrassed or small anymore. She looked confident, happy, unafraid. At peace. She looked brave.

It was a mockery that she'd compare herself to me. She was braver than I'd ever been.

She didn't speak again, and when she closed her eyes, she didn't open them again either. Her ferenic breathing slowed and then stopped, and then she was still, strands of her wavy french-fry hair matted in the blood in her face still fluttering in the breeze as though her breath still flowed.

And yet even as she passed. Even as I cried and screamed at her body, begging her to stay, to open her eyes, to be, on her lips, the shadow of her smile remained.