I’d never seen so many airplanes in one place before. Hundreds of them, just left to sit in the sun, dark red dust swirling under them in the hot breeze, the most air they’d ever get.

I didn’t know what was wrong with old airplanes that VTOLs utterly replaced them, but I definitely now knew where they wound up. It looked like salvage operations were ongoing at the speed of government, as about half of them had visibly missing components, though I’m sure the others were probably less complete than they looked.

Karu, AEGIS, Saga, and I walked slowly past the lines of planes like we were stepping through a graveyard, the heat and the silence of this remote place equally oppressive.

[You’re sure it’s way out here?] Saga asked, strolling like a tourist more than the rest of us.

“That’s what AEGIS says,” I answered.

“What’s what AEGIS says?” she asked.

“Saga asking to confirm if the device Dragon’s after is here.”

“Oh. Yeah. It got deported to this crappy little facility, and I knew that meant Dragon was coming for it.”

[Ask her why there’s nobody around.]

“Ask her yourself,” I muttered.

[But I don’t actually care. I just want to make you do more work.]

“What’s she saying now?” AEGIS asked.

“She’s just trying to get me to play telephone,” I sighed.

[Not trying. Succeeding.]

“Should we have perhaps left the Code-X back at home?” Karu asked. “If this is her idea of contributing to an operation, it is very likely that death is imminent for all of us.”

We rounded the last plane on the row, a fighter jet of some kind with its nose completely lopped off, giving the impression it was forever wide-mouthed in a cyclopean scream. With the stillness and quietude of everything, that certainly wasn’t at all adding to the creepy.

In front of us was more than planes, there was a small facility here with large warehouse doors, indicating storage. Indicating that what we wanted was probably inside. There was a guard on duty, but from the looks of it, only the one.

“So do we just walk up and say hello?” I asked.

“Did you seriously think this so poorly through that you are formulating a basic plan only now?”

“My plan was to be here when Dragon was here and stop him. Everything else is irrelevant,” I snipped at her.

“Oh Athan,” AEGIS crooned. “That’s a terrible plan.”

“Screw you guys, I’m going to go say hi,” I said.

“Oh certainly,” Karu said at my back. “Just neglect the fact that we are not intended to be here. Neglect all facts, while you are at it.”

We approached the guard, the others trailing in my wake, when suddenly I felt a jolt of alarm through Saga that made me stop dead.

[That’s not a guard,] she said.

“Who is it then?” I asked.

“A corpse,” Karu said, adjusting her visor’s controls. “Propped upright.”

We ran the remaining distance and found the man’s back pressed to the wall, his uniform pinned to it with a familiar-looking knife. He was, of course, also completely dead.

I swore.

“I told you he wouldn’t wait. He’s in there right now.”

“That’s impossible, the device was moved here like, half an hour ago,” AEGIS said. “We got here the second the logistics guys left.”

I pointed at the body pinned upright. “Is it impossible, AEGIS? Is it?”

She chewed her lip but tugged the door. Locked. “Of course, this guy’s badge is gone. Probably how Dragon got in. I could uh, hack us a way past this lock but that could take a while.”

“We could simply wait for Dragon to emerge and ambush him on exit,” Karu suggested.

“That’s assuming he doesn’t have any other way out of here. I bet he’s got something planned. I don’t want to be rushing around like an idiot if he suddenly blows out the back wall or dips into the sewer or something.”

“And were he to do that, why would have have entered through the front door?” Karu asked.

“I don’t know. Just…AEGIS, kick the lock a little, would you?”

“Sure thing. Stand back,” she said. She took two running steps and slammed her heel against the lock, visibly denting the door and twisting metal. The digital lock itself just exploded into buttons and scraps of silicon. She backed up and then ran at it again, and then again.

“It’s not giving,” she panted over the sound of her engines.

“Here, let me help,” I said, conjuring up a pair of blades and jamming them into the door’s thick hinges. Over several seconds, they began to glow red, then yellow, and then a white so pure it hurt to look at. She nodded and wound up for another kick.

And with a final crash, she carried right through the door into the lit room beyond. I put out my blades and helped her to her feet from the wreckage, finding a small office area with windows overlooking the huge storage room adjacent. There was a little potted fern here, which was a nice touch.

“Saga, are you picking up anyone?” I asked.

She shook her head. [No Dragon. Nobody else either. Have the XPCA gotten really soft in the last hundred years, or is one dude covering a whole facility really abnormal?]

“It is tremendously abnormal,” Karu said, adjusting settings on her visor as she looked into the warehouse. “When you spoke of reassignment of guards and personnel, I had not thought it might be this bad, yet the evidence is before us.”

“Do we know where in there it is?” I asked.

“It’s supposed to be in bin EE-215, but from what I hear, at long-term storage facilities like this, they tend to just throw things in with the expectation of never caring about them again.”

[Is anybody else really curious what else might be in there?] Saga grinned. [All the XPCA’s buried secrets.]

“What’s she grinning about?” AEGIS asked.

“She wants to know what’s in there,” I sighed.

“I already know the contents,” AEGIS said, pushing up her glasses. “And it’s not as exciting as you might hope. Mostly files that shouldn’t be destroyed but aren’t useful. Lots of aging surplus arms bought in excess because of political deals that they can’t repurpose because that would just make it obvious they were wasting money on favors. Most interesting stuff is some experimental weaponry that didn’t pan out too useful, but is too dangerous to release.”

[Ooh, let’s go find some strange devices and push all of the buttons.]

“You are pushing my buttons with the flippancy,” Karu grunted. “This is a serious matter. Treat it accordingly.”

[Yes, master. Of course, master. Are you boots dirty, master? Shall I lick them clean, master?]

I bonked Saga in the head while Karu ignored her. “Seriously, dude. Dragon’s in there, and this is serious. Let’s go.”

We crept through an adjoining door, like we still had any element of stealth after kicking in the entry, and paused briefly while AEGIS let a handful of cam-drones loose. She spoke in a hush as we wound down a set of back-and-forth metal stairs that took us down to the underground level of the warehouse floor.

“I’ll keep a couple at the entrance in case he tries to go out that way,” she said. “The rest should spread out and cover the grounds here nicely. I’ll have him in just a second.”

Karu waited for us to pass and then knelt at the base of the steps and fiddled with a device I didn’t recognize and the wall. She looked up at me while I watched her work. “A tripwire mine. Do not head up the stairs without disarming it,” she said.

“What’s it for? I mean…aside from being a tripwire mine?”

“In the off-chance Dragon slips past us, it will give us one final line of defense to disable him before he escapes. Such devices are often of immense value when pursuing slippery Exhumans, as it were.”

Meanwhile, Saga was just taking a few steps towards the heart of the area with a big frown on her small face. She shook her head several times as we rejoined her.

“I found him,” AEGIS breathed. “He’s disassembling a box in the far corner.”

[How far?]

“How far?” I echoed.

“Not too far. The place isn’t really that big. A hundred fifty feet or so?”

[I don’t like this at all. I should be able to feel him. Ask her to make sure he’s real and not like…another body. Or a holo or something.]

“AEGIS, Saga can’t feel him. Can you make sure he’s not some kind of decoy?”

[(If it’s fucking Blackett all over again…)]

“It…looks real to me. The cargo he’s moving is definitely real.”

“I see him as well,” Karu said, still twiddling her lenses. “I can detect the thermal reading.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I think we should leave,” Saga whispered. “I think this is bad. Really bad.”

“We knew it would be bad, he’s Dragon,” I hissed back. “We need to stop him before he gets his hands on whatever’s in that box. Come on.”

“No, seriously,” she grabbed my sleeve. “I can barely see him, like he’s only kinda there. Last time that happened…you remember last time it happened.” She held me tightly and I saw her eyes wide and serious, all hints of her joking vanished in an instant.

“Is Dragon perhaps Exhuman after all?” Karu asked. “With a shrouding ability or the like? Some manner of resistance to Code-X?”

I pulled Saga off my sleeve. “He’s not resistant to bullets or having his arms torn off, we’ve already proven it. Let’s go. I don’t want to find out what the device does, so we have to keep it out of his hands.”

I jogged off, and the sounds of AEGIS’ barefoot padding and Karu’s heavy boots fell in behind me. If Saga was afraid, she could stay out of the fight. We ran a dozen aisles and turned, spotting Dragon and the crate he was unpacking at the end of the row.

My ears rang as Karu fired a single round, the crack of the shot echoing a thousandfold off the bare metal walls. Dragon barely glanced up as the bullet disappeared into him with the orange flare of a personal barrier. The barrier flashed several more times as Karu unloaded a few more shots, and then, as though she was irritated at being ignored, she launched into the air with a burst that rippled my clothes and shoved me half a step sideways.

“I’m going too,” AEGIS said, and she roared to life, the lines on her joints flashing and glowing, the circles on her hips visible even through her cream-colored light dress. She ran alongside me for just a couple steps like that before kicking off, engines flaring and the concrete under her cracking as she launched forward like a bullet.

Meanwhile I just ran like a normal dude. Kinda hard to feel super badass when those two could just break the sonic barrier whenever they wanted.

But my relatively slower approach did give me time to watch the three of them clash. No longer could Dragon ignore them as the two descended on him with instant violence. He bobbed and weaved, dodging each of AEGIS’ precision strikes by what seemed no distance at all from here, while Karu unloaded into his barrier, which was now emitting the white flashes of pre-burnout.

He struck back at AEGIS, knives flashing silver under the glaring warehouse lights. I remembered the last time these two fought, and how AEGIS had just tanked shots and stabs all to the face while bearing down on him with inhuman strength and speed to compensate the difference in skill.

She wasn’t doing that this time. She was sticking close to him and trying to find angles where even if he moved faster than she could react, he’d be in poor position to actually harm her. She seemed almost preternaturally attached to the outsides of his elbows, constantly circling him, staying as close to him as possible, both of them spinning and reversing direction constantly as though in a dance.

It reminded me for a moment that this AEGIS was, technically, much older now, and she wasn’t just more skilled but also more experienced. This is the AEGIS who had fought beside us all in Canada and Eryendria. The previous one had pretty much just…woken up, tried to kill me with DOGs, and then hyper-fixated on giving me diabetes. Her fight with Dragon might have been her first serious fight ever. Seeing her twisting around him and only being grazed here and there made my heart leap.

Not that I was happy she had died or anything. But the current version was much, much more competent. I was allowed to celebrate that much, wasn’t I?

With a white flash and a small explosion that made my hair whip, Dragon’s shield burnt out as Karu unloaded yet more munitions into the spinning pair. I wasn’t sure how she was hitting the right target every time at the rate they were moving, I felt like if I was shooting, it’d be pure luck which one I’d hit. But Karu was doing it, so apparently there was no luck involved. Without threat of imminent attack, she was hovering stationary further up the aisle, the red of her visor glinting off the metal ceiling a few feet from her head, carefully aiming down her straightened arm at the pair.

And then it was my turn to join. Knowing that AEGIS was shockproof by design, I just whipped out as many blades as I could as I sprinted the last few steps and swung them horizontally right through the pair. AEGIS winced as I slashed through her, but Dragon was forced to jump up and backwards, knees tucked to his chest as the blade swept under his feet.

Without ground to push off of, he was a sitting duck for AEGIS, who spun and kicked him straight on, her foot slamming into his legs and sending him crashing into the shelves with an echoing metal ping. She grunted and kneeled for a second, and I saw that in the exchange, he’d put two daggers into her calf.

So fast. I didn’t even see his arms move. And for him to react like that while still in midair.

He pushed off the shelf seemingly unhurt, and an instant later a bangsplattered expanding white foam where he’d just been. He cartwheeled, and a shock net slid across the ground under him. I took the moment to stomp the ground, my mind reaching out for the turbulence my action stirred up and making it real. Making it lightning.

In a moment a dozen faint orbs of energy drifted away from me, and a dozen more after that, as I focused the churning of the air into trapped, semi-stable balls of current. They drifted down the aisle like ghosts. If I could keep him off the ground, Karu and AEGIS would have a much easier target.

And just for an instant, I saw Dragon stare at them, and then at me. And then I realized…Jesus Christ, was I super duper racist?

It wasn’t even the same fucking guy. His nose was different. Similar skin tone, similar hair…maybe the fact he had two arms should have tipped me off. But this guy had a much bigger nose, and it took me that of all fucking things to realize I wasn’t even fighting Dragon here.

“Wait, who the fuck are you?” I shouted, even as he jumped and kicked off a shelf to bounce over my ball lightning and tag AEGIS in the side of the head with another blade, sending her stumbling a step while she lashed out blind.

He didn’t reply of course. Unless you counted having a thrown knife explode on my shield as a reply. He moved like Dragon. He was here where Dragon was supposed to turn up. He was definitely a fuckin’ Sino assassin. He just wasn’t the same guy.

“Fuck,” AEGIS said. Which seemed fitting for having a blade punched through her cheek. But apparently that wasn’t it because she continued after pulling it out. “Athan we need to wrap this up, XPCA is inbound.”

“That’s a good thing,” I grunted, as I cut through the air over him this time. “We’ve got him trapped.”

“No…I didn’t call them. None of us called them. But they’re responding to a first-priority alert.”

“Perhaps the destruction of the front door was excessive,” Karu said. I glanced at her, and my heart fluttered painfully for a second to see her looking down the arm of her gun at me. But her shot barely missed me and forced Dragon to bounce another step away. I could only imagine how AEGIS must have felt with Karu’s weaponry whizzing all around her.

“No, the door wouldn’t do that,” AEGIS fretted. “Athan I think we’re in trouble. I think this is a setup.”

“A setup?” I panted. “It is, we’re catching Dragon!”

He did a spinning flip and landed a few paces from us, twirling again once to sidestep a shot of scattergun fire from Karu, which bounced off the ground in glowing streaks.

He said nothing still. But his face told me they were right. His cocky, confident little grin. This wasn’t a man being ambushed, it wasn’t even a man who felt remotely threatened. If anything, I could say he was having fun evading our attacks like they were nothing.

I stood still too long and he dashed in on me. Reflexively, my hands went up and my head went down to protect my chin. I barely saw the strike coming, barely started moving, way too slow, before a knife embedded itself in my forearm. I grunted my anger at him, slashing three times with the blades I had closest.

I didn’t see if they hit him, he was already dancing away, unloading a hail of gunfire into my shield to blind me as he went. It was like he knew if I could see him there, I could cut him. Like he knew everything about all three of us already.

[I’m here,] Saga said, panting. I could only afford a half-glance to see her a few rows down from us, before she swallowed hard, and then continued walking. [I…still can’t see him that well. But we’re gonna fuck him up.]

He eyed Saga with suspicion, even breaking a few feet from the fray to study her more closely. She had clearly not been in his plans, and the look of ease on his face had vanished into one of concentration. His eyebrows narrowed, same as Saga’s as she held out her hands and I felt psychic energy pouring past me.

Somehow it didn’t even make him falter. But he did abandon his duel with AEGIS and seemed to readily accept another kick to the arm in order to close the distance on her.

I stopped him with a facefull of lightning, but again, he just took it and continued on, his body burned and clothes smoking. She had a moment of hesitation and then blasted him twice as hard with the same lack of effect.

[It’s…not working!] she screamed in my mind.

“Just get out of here!” I yelled at her, throwing more blades in his way, which he twisted through, snakelike. His arms reached out for her, only inches from her now, as her eyes went as wide as I’d ever seen.

[(He’s gonna get me!)] she yelped, only now considering turning and dodging.

But I was ready. I discharged an electromagnetic burst that sent everything flying. Saga and I, non-magnetic in any capacity, stayed rooted to where we stood. But we were the only ones, the eyes of the storm which erupted in an instant around us.

Dragon went slamming into the ceiling with a crack. Karu and AEGIS were similarly blown away, and I winced as they crashed and hoped they could forgive me later.

And more, every single shelf, huge and sturdy though they were, slid and careened, hanging upright on edge like a breaking wave. And then the first one crashed, echoing, deafening, and the others tripped over it and joined it, the whole place falling down away from us at once. Thousands and thousands of tons of crates and boxes and gear smashing into the concrete, blown around and away like a goddamn meteor crater.

I ran to Saga and grabbed her, and she yelped as her small weight took its place in my arms.

“They’re here!” AEGIS warned, peeling herself off the concrete where I’d put her and helping Karu to her feet. “The XPCA!”

Like he was waiting for the news, Dragon bounded for the entrance. Did he already have what he was looking for? Was he just rifling through that crate to waste time until we arrived? My stomach dropped at the thought, even as I focused another magnetic surge to grab him.

But as I pulled at him, tearing AEGIS and Karu from their feet and making the mountains of debris jump, he just peeled his arms from his sleeves, and continued running with his kit and coat left behind. I swore as he reached the bottom of the steps, the three of us in pursuit, Karu staggering some, AEGIS blazing ahead.

He was running towards the black, zig-zagging staircase, and as my eyes followed him, they were drawn to a spot of blackness at the top of it. Weapons drawn and ready, black metal gleamed, and the white symbol of the XPCA, the sword laid across the shield shone from the shoulder of every exosuit arrayed. Dozens of them, arrayed and facing us.

Dragon jumped straight vertical, kicking off a few of the railings on his way up, and completely bypassed both the steps and Karu’s mine. He landed with grace directly in front of the soldiers in the door.

“No!” AEGIS screamed at them. “Come fucking on!”

I didn’t know, didn’t see, until I looked back up and saw them parting, the suits stepping to either side with a crisp salute as Dragon walked right between them and out the door.

I felt like I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. I didn’t…couldn’t…what?

“Oh my God!” I yelled, finally, once my mouth re-engaged. “For fuck’s sake, stop him!”

“Silence!” boomed the synthesized voice of the leading soldier. “Exhuman Athan Ashton, you are hereby under arrest for murder of an XPCA agent, destruction of property, unauthorized entry into a secure facility, criminal damages, and the crime of Exhumanity. You will refrain from using your powers and surrender immediately.”

I just stood there in shock as the dozen weapons pointed at me while the last glimpse of Dragon’s greasy black hair slipped away between the rows of exosuits. AEGIS and Karu rejoined my sides, while Saga was still frozen in my arms, her eyes as wide as when Dragon had borne down on her. She wasn’t blinking, and I snapped my fingers in front of her face with very little reaction but to make her eyelids flutter.

“She’s in shock,” AEGIS muttered. “She saw too much of New Eden happening again.”

“Well if she doesn’t snap out of it, the whole part where we had to kill a bunch of XPCA is about to repeat itself at least,” I said. “C’mon Saga. C’mon.”

“I do not think we will have much of a choice,” Karu said from the corner of her mouth, her lips barely moving. “They approach.”

Soldiers were pouring down the stairway now, metal clanking on metal as they advanced carefully with their guns still trained on us. To replace them, dozens more were appearing in the front door; over fifty now, and I had to wonder, was this considered an event? Was that how the XPCA saw me right now?

“Be ready to fight,” Karu muttered, and I realized what she meant. The very foremost soldier was almost at the bottom of the steps. Almost in Karu’s trip mine.

“Wait!” I shouted at them. “Don’t — there’s a mine!”

But XPCA were trained specifically to disregard the words of an Exhuman. We were, after all, less than human to them. Just a dangerous mark to be dehumanized. Repressed, or ignored, until we could be put down.

The blast sent exosuits flying, and the stairway collapsed, as the sound of it echoed through the debris-choked warehouse.

AEGIS and Karu pressed in against me as hundreds of rounds made my shield burn pure white, the crackle of lightning and the roar of gunfire deafening in the underground vault.

Not a vault, I thought, looking at the dozen bodies already strewn by the blast. A tomb.

“We can still catch him if we exit now,” AEGIS shouted, barely audible even right by my ear.

“We will have to blast our way out, as it were,” Karu shouted back, her arms snapping forward. Guns hummed and primed as she brought them to bear.

I grabbed her wrist. We couldn’t just kill all these soldiers. They were just men and women doing their jobs. They had homes and families, I might have worked alongside them. Beneath those faceplates, it could be anyone.

But then I thought of Dragon’s eyes. His dispassionate, bored glances at a world he cared nothing about. How he could kill without hesitation. How Alyssa had choked out her last words at me, left to die as he turned his back.

My knuckles were white as my grip on her hardened, and then I let her go and gave her a solemn nod.