I woke up to my alarm after far too much not being asleep. My head buzzed, my eyes felt dry, my mouth tasted funny, and I was gross as hell. The latter of which didn’t bother me that much, but if I was going out, I needed to shower.

I struggled out from under Athan, who had a habit of cuddling in his sleep and dragged myself into the bathroom, taking a moment to look at myself in the mirror as the water heated up.

Crap wouldn’t be a poor description. My hair had encountered a spot or two of something which had dried sticky and was turning my normally straight sheet of hair into a gnarly, tangled mess. My eyes…ugh, bloodshot and with dark lines under them. I looked fifty. I couldn’t take much more and set my glasses down on the sink so I couldn’t see anymore, stripping out of the rest of my clothes and into the purifying steam just after.

Felt good. It felt dangerously relaxing, like if I stayed here, I’d pass out again. I kept my hands moving, but the tiredness kept crawling back up in me and making me stand there for long seconds before I realized I was doing it again.

Attacking the gunk in my hair helped keep me awake at least. Nothing to brighten up your morning like feeling like you were pulling out your whole head of hair.

I put on clean clothes before stepping outside, annoyed as they clung to my wet skin, but needn’t have bothered. Athan was still asleep, curled around the empty spot on the bed where I’d been. Funny kid, and cute. And I’d much rather spend another forever hanging out with him than heading off to kill someone, Exhuman or not.

But the world needed people willing to fight for it, not willing to sit around in their basements while it all went to heck. The day we needed the latter, I’d sign up.

I pounded some aspirin for the buzzing in my head and hoped I could steal a few minutes more sleep while in transit. But I was out of time. I had to get downstairs, buttoned up, and deploying now, if I didn’t want to risk Cosette’s ire.

“Hey,” I said, poking him in the side. He fell over sideways slowly as though a toppled rock formation.

“Ugh,” he said, summarizing my thoughts.

“Yeah, it’s time to head out. Keep your mobile on you in case Cosette calls. And if you’re bored today, can you look at the bathroom door? I think the lock is sticking. I didn’t use it this morning out of fear I’d be late to an Exhuman event because I got locked in my own bathroom. Bet Cosette would have loved that.”

He just looked at me bleary-eyed. If I didn’t feel like such garbage, I might have laughed. But I did, and my head continued to buzz loudly, making me wince.

“Come on friendo, if I have to slay an Exhuman today, the least you can do is fix the bathroom.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Sorry. Not disagreeing. Just not awake.”

“You’ll get better at all-nighters once you’ve done more. Have some coffee and food. I’ll see you when we get back.”

“Good luck,” he said, giving me a short, ambling hug. “Stay safe.”

There was hardly any conversation worth staying for, so I didn’t drag it out. I was outside and then downstairs soon enough, climbing into the back of the exosuit and doing final checks as I started the boot sequence and prepared for my ride.

When all looked good, I messaged Athan, who messaged Rito. And then I sat there with my eyes closed, waiting and hoping I could sleep standing up, just for a few.

“Proximity hostility detected. Deploy proximity countermeasures?”

The female AI voice startled me awake, and through my visor I could see Tower banging on the faceplate of my exosuit from outside. We were in a building seething with XPCA. A familiar scene.

“Mnnneeghhoo,” I slurred out, involuntarily trying to wipe drool from my face but succeeding only in banging the suit’s arm against its face.

“Unrecognized command,” the AI replied in its soothing voice.

“No,” I said, managing to get it out clearly.

“Unrecognized command,” the AI replied in its soothing voice.

“Urgh. Disable proximity countermeasures.”

“You alive in there, Athan?” Tower asked, banging on my faceplate again with an echoing that did not get along well with the ringing in my head.

“Enable external comms. Tower, I am fine. Knock it off and adhere to the stipulations of my terms?”

The voice that came out of the suit sounded nothing like me, cold and harsh and indifferent, but that was the point. I wanted to keep them at arm’s length, that was the only way to keep up this facade. It was the only way Athan was free to live his own life while I did this because I had to. Or felt I had to.

Of course now he’d kind of given up on having a life, and I hadn’t exactly asked why. There was a fire. Someone got hurt. That was about all I knew, and I wasn’t going to pry.

I considered asking where we were but that was stupid. Stupid enough that my tired brain considered it for almost long enough for it to fall out of my mouth, but I didn’t. Instead, I pulled up the exosuit’s map and located myself. Back in New York again, same as last time.

“Not to say you guys did a shit job last time,” Cosette said, her boots clacking on concrete as she showed up in person this time. “But you guys did a shit job last time. Our barrier girl survived, and now she’s progressed to technopath phase three. With gusto.”

Moon raised her hand and waited even after Cosette went silent and nodded at her. “Yes, Moon,” she said.

“Please clarify the nature of technopath phase three,” Moon asked. Tower sat down cross-legged on the floor, drawing a glance from Jack, as if this manner of impropriety was abhorrent.

“Phase three,” Cosette barked, “is the penultimate phase of the technopath life cycle where they take their developed tech, often in portable and miniaturized forms, and breach the surface world, creating an area of death and destruction. As ever, each phase is more dangerous than the previous, and the advances in mobility and application of phase three is no exception. Our barrier bitch has integrated her tech for both offense and defense into a light exosuit and is gleefully destroying everything she wants in downtown Manhattan.”

She crossed her arms and looked pointedly at me. “We have had strike teams engaging her since but they are only holding her interest. And dying. Two different shadow ops units were deployed and neither of them were able to breach her defenses. Both were killed. All of this in the last twenty-four hours.”

I got the memo. The time we’d wasted directly equaled lives. But it wasn’t like I could have come out here sooner. In fact, with my head buzzing as it was, I would have preferred later, if possible. But we didn’t have time for that.

“We have some of her abilities documented but do not assume this is all of her capabilities. Full encasing barriers are around her at all times millimeters from her skin. We have not been able to penetrate them with any form of ballistic or laser weaponry. She has fled from incendiary and sonic weapons or made a priority of dispatching their bearers. Her suit provides augmented mobility, capable of jumping around twenty feet in a bound, and any obstacles or impact damage she might suffer is negated by the barriers. Finally–“

She slid her finger across her mobile and towards us, beaming us each an image file. What it showed was…grizzly.

“–she has weaponized the barriers into blades on her forearms, which seemingly simply oscillate on and off every few nanoseconds. They have a range of about one foot, but they are very, very dangerous. Tower, as a displacement effect, we think your kinetic redirection will be ineffective as a defense, so don’t get cocky. Think of it like Jack being able to appear inside of an adversary, but attached to the arms of someone who can move very fast.”

“This sounds like bullshit,” Tower said. “How the heck are we supposed to bring her down? She can fly around, she can cut through anything, she can’t be hurt.”

“You were supposed to bring her down weeks ago in the tunnels. This is why the XPCA executes missions against nascent technopaths. This will be a good lesson for all of you to learn exactly why we do what we do.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Man, we didn’t even mess up. She was buried under ten tons of rock,” Tower said, looking around at us like we were supposed to chime in with support.

“Oh. You crushed someone who can generate barriers under a bunch of rock. However could she have survived?” Cosette intoned. Tower shut up. “If there aren’t any other stupid questions, get out there and kill me that Exhuman.”

“Question,” Moon asked, raising her hand as everyone stirred.

“Yes, Moon?” Cosette sighed at the girl’s inability to read body language again.

“What is the ultimate stage of a technopath’s progression?”

“After they’re done using their powers to take their revenge on the world which has always opposed and subjugated and terrified them, they’re stuck with nothing left, and settle down. Which might sound like a good thing, until you remember, these are paranoid, vengeful people by nature, and they project those insecurities onto everyone around them. They’ll build and fortify and expand a stronghold to wait for a retaliation against their phase three conquests, basically starting over at phase one again but bigger. Stronger. Worse. It’s projected that if a technopath hits phase four twice in succession, we’re looking at the end of the world.”

“So in essence, do not let it come to that,” Jack said.

“In essence, don’t let it get past phase two,” Cosette sniped. “Someone is running around unstoppable through downtown New York right now, and it’s not even her fucking Ramanathan Window that’s responsible. Get in there. Show me what you can do, you pricks.”

We replied with a very unenthusiastic hooah as Cosette strode off to a bunch of XPCA hunched over a set of holos and consoles. We loitered for a second before Jack kicked into leader mode.

“This will all be riding on you, Chariot,” he said, turning to me, his eyes glinting beneath barely-opened lids. “I don’t think anyone else here has the capability to get past that barrier in any way. I can’t blink through it, Tower can’t break it, and Moon…well…she can’t break it either. In fact, she should probably be riding with you to double our firepower.”

“I do not accept,” I said. Moon just shrugged, seeming totally fine with grabbing hold of Tower’s arm and collapsing in front of me.

“Wait, why not?” Tower asked. “Jack’s right. You’ve got the fire, the heat goes right through the barriers, and the fire power, you can make blades through them. You’re all we’ve got, Moon should ride with you.”

“No, she shouldn’t,” Moon’s ghost spoke from Tower’s shoulder. “I refuse.”

“What? Why? That makes no sense,” Tower argued.

“I will not shadow someone unwilling. It would violate my principles.” And then added, more darkly than I knew she could speak “Excepting specific circumstances.”

“Man, you’re crazy. And you’ve been crazier than usual today. Did something happen?” he asked.

“Nothing which hasn’t been addressed to my satisfaction. Now, I understand people are dying. Is this conversation so gripping as to be worth their lives?”

“She’s right,” Jack said, returning from leaning Moon’s body up against a wall with barely a flicker. “We need to move as fast as we can. We’ll talk as we deploy.”

We deployed much faster than before, me the slowest as usual, even pushing the suit along at a much quicker clip than I normally did, a slow jog with the loping strides.

I didn’t…like piloting the suit. I was an engineer, not a gunner. I didn’t like how it jostled me, even through the inertial dampeners, didn’t like how I couldn’t move without it moving with me, I never felt in control of the thing. Not like, a car, or a computer. More like, how in-control does one ever feel over their own clothing?

Clothing that if wielded wrong could smash someone in half or throw a ninety kilogram projectile over thirty meters, just by swatting it. Or, as my side throbbed just thinking about it, tear open its pilot without a thought. Of course there would be safeties to prevent it from surpassing the range of human motion, but the fact that it could was still there.

All around me. At all times.

I tried to focus on the cool parts instead. By now, I’d practically built this machine, and for a first real job, Athan had done great. I went over each of the fixes we’d made in my mind, and to my relief, found the buzzing in my head going away.

Interrupted by Jack talking about our plans, of course.

“If the intel is correct, the only dangerous parts of the target are the wrist-mounted barrier projectors. We can’t be certain, but if this is the case…Tower might still be very useful in suppressing the target.”

“I’m what?” he panted, jogging beside me.

“From the images provided it looks like the light exosuit isn’t designed to enhance upper-body strength. Legs, yes, but otherwise, it’s basically just a chassis to mount the barriers on.”

“And you want me to, what, arm-wrestle her?”

“No, but if you can hold her arms, you will disable her weaponry and immobilize her, which will provide Chariot with the opportunity to close within distance and manifest a blade…within the target.”

“He will burn,” Moon said. “Chariot’s blades are too hot for Tower to be in that vicinity without damage.”

“Hmm,” Jack mused.

“So I shall do it instead,” she continued.

“Now wait just a sec,” Tower argued. “If it’s too hot for me, it’s too hot for you. Duh.”

“Arguable. But suffice to say, I would prefer bear the brunt of it regardless.”

“Why, because you think your suffering means less than mine?” he scoffed. “That’s BS, Moon. You think whatever you want, but you know–“

“No, I am not an imbecile like Chariot who believes in monopolizing anguish. Rather, I cannot die while in this state, but you can. And also, damage inflicted upon this form dissipates when I return to my body. It only makes sense.”

“It never makes sense to plan to get hurt,” Tower said. “That’s stupid, and we’ll figure something else out.”

“We will not,” she countered. “Chariot is too slow to hit a moving target. Restraining them is the only way he will have a shot.”

“Perhaps…something with the ball lightning he demonstrated before?” Jack suggested. “Or merely leading the blade to be close enough and then rending it into a superheated nova, that has proven very effective against the hydrogenisist.”

“Too slow, and too slow again,” Moon intoned. “We aren’t in tunnels this time, and she modified her suit specifically to jump. She will be jumping.”

“I can boost his mobility with my powers, some,” Jack said. “If we can anticipate where she will be, a few seconds will be sufficient to move him.”

“And if nothing else, Jack and I should be able to safely keep her attention,” Tower added. “And give Chariot a chance to sneak up on her.”

“In an exosuit? Are we even planning the same scenario?” Moon asked, her purple effigy of Tower visibly bristling with irritation. “This seems ludicrous. I have proposed a viable plan.”

“It is possible he will catch her off-guard if he restrains use of his powers. If she does not anticipate his range correctly, the element of surprise could be in our favor,” Jack said, his voice heavy with thought. I could almost hear Moon bristling as she was ignored yet again. “Which…practically speaking is not a great loss, given the impenetrability of her barrier to begin with. Perhaps it is best to reserve use of your powers until a decisive blow can be struck.”

I nodded, but that didn’t convey through the suit at all of course. “Acknowledged. Will defer use of powers.”

“Eesh, so creepy,” Tower muttered. “Can’t you at least fix the voice synth so it sounds like you, Chariot? It’s like a damn robot.”

“Negative,” I said, as robotically as I could. They didn’t seem to get the joke, and I just sighed as I slumped back in the cockpit.

I didn’t like this op. I didn’t like being the centerpiece of any plan. I didn’t like that we’d already had a shot at this and failed, apparently. I didn’t like how divided we all were without any unified consensus on a plan which sounded like it would actually work. And I didn’t like how Jack just kept talking when he had nothing to say, because he felt the void was a failing in his leadership.

Which, hell, maybe it was. But he was making my head buzz like crazy just going on with more and more impossible plans, that Moon shot down one after another.

I went back to…well, I didn’t think of it in these terms really, but to my happy place. Went back to thinking about the exosuit reconstruction. Some of the welding we’d done came out beautifully, and how excited Athan had been when I ripped an entire core out of the suit’s chest to plug into a diagnostic tool and reprogram a few new specs.

I found myself getting lost as I hadn’t in a long time, my mind crawling over and drinking up the details of it all like a dry sponge. After an all-nighter, I wouldn’t think that thinking about our work more would have been anything I wanted to come near, but here my brain was, swimming happily in my imagined techno-refuge from the dreary bleats of soldiers.

I was halfway through mentally rerunning the data cables from the primary cores to the faceplate’s HUD when Tower suddenly stopped, dropping to a knee. I replayed the last thing I’d heard and not paid attention to and realized that Jack had ordered us to a full stop, and I throttled down the exosuit to stand idle.

“She’s here,” Jack said. Looking around, I realized he was right. We were on a pedestrian bridge, wide enough for six people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, crossing a deserted highway.

Here and there, on the road, on the bridge, there were chunks carved out of the structure, like a madman had gone nuts with a knife that was too sharp. There were some cars, some stopped, some smashed up and stopped, none occupied.

And worst of all, there were what looked like the occupants. From up here, I could see maybe four or five bodies, one of whom was an XPCA soldier, his exosuit cleaved clean in half from shoulder to hip. The others were just…people. People who lived or worked here, who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

All thoughts of the buzzing in my head or tuning out Jack’s words or rebuilding the exosuit disappeared from my mind as I looked out at the still, senseless carnage she’d left below. It was hard not to imagine the car as mine, the people as my mother and father and sister, from so many years ago. Pointless deaths from an animal.

The sky echoed with gunshots from the park ahead of us. There were yells. Screams. Laughter. Fewer gunshots, and then none at all.

“She’s there. In the park. The last of the strike team on-premise was just…there are no reinforcements in the park,” Jack clarified.

“Let’s do this,” Tower said, cracking his knuckles as he strode down the end of the bridge.

“She will not outlive this injustice,” Moon veritably growled, her voice set with steel.

“Stay safe, watch each other’s backs, kill that bitch and come back alive,” Cosette added.

We entered the park and saw her, clear in the open, perhaps fifty feet away, her barrier repelled the blood which soaked everything around her, giving her an out-of-place pristine look as she stood amidst the corpses of the strike team.

She stood up straight as she saw us, and laughed.

“It’s you,” she said, her voice bubbling. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

None of us spoke. None of us were Athan. We just fanned out and advanced on the psycho.

“I hope you like what I’ve done,” she said, leaning over and slicing the head off a corpse, sending it rolling and sliding away with a clatter. “I did it all for you. All to make you come back, so I could teach you a damn thing.”

“By the authority of the Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency, you are hereby ordered to surrender for arrest,” Moon shouted in Tower’s voice. “Failure to comply will result in your immediate termination.”

“I only wanted you to leave me alone!” she screamed, slashing at the dead body again and again. “I only wanted to be left alone! But no. And now you’ll pay for what you’ve done.”

Her eyes burned with righteous fury as she pounced.