We’d been lucky and somehow our plan seemed to work for the most part. There were a few XPCA who had to go, and a few of them who had to be incited to incidents of sabotage in order for our presence to go unnoticed, but it looked like with all the other damage we’d been causing and the general disarray of getting hundreds of soldiers activated and mobile, nobody noticed a few more missing or broken things. Or people.

After all, right now, they weren’t looking for us. They were chasing us. They thought.

Saga, Karu, AEGIS, and I all sat in the back of the van next to two other XPCA, while two more sat in the front, driving and keeping up the comms chatter expected of them. None of them did a thing to recognize our existence, treating us like Tem had blanketed us and muted us as well.

Which also led to us ignoring each other, bizarrely. It was hard to speak up when feeling like you didn’t exist to half of the room, and more than once, anything we said was just spoken right over by the guards who didn’t…couldn’t…recognize that we were already talking.

We were also tired and saving our strength for when we arrived…or when we stopped. Our decoys had, so far, done a fantastic job of driving as recklessly and quickly as possible towards our destination, but without our powers and weaponry, it was only a matter of time before the XPCA decided to try their luck again and blew them away.

But so far it’d been a quiet ten minutes. We had to assume they were setting up some kind of trap or roadblock ahead and were just biding their time until then, and I was happy it wouldn’t be us springing the trap at least.

And tried not to think about the poor bastards we were making do it for us.

More likely, the convoy had just gotten its shit together a little better and wasn’t going to keep risking people driving into Saga’s influence. Which was just a bit ironic, because by all hanging back, they were all unknowing concentrated inside of it right now, where she was working furtively to compel as many XPCA as she could get her brain around for when things did reach a head.

So yeah. It was quiet, relatively. The doors were closed, the van wasn’t getting shot, people weren’t screaming about incoming rockets. Saga was focused on work and the rest of us were just idling. Karu checked her guns and resupplied from the munitions on-hand as best she could. AEGIS was back on the ‘net through the XPCA’s network and was checking things discreetly. And I watched the blackness rush by out the window, reassuring myself constantly that this was the fastest way to Lia.

“Still no word from Rito,” AEGIS said with a frown. “For a bit there, her mobile was gone, which meant she probably jumped somewhere and it lost track of the relays…or maybe even means she made it to Vegas and was in the jamming. But now it’s just refusing to talk.”

“So it’s off?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Why would she do that? That makes no sense.”

AEGIS pulled at her hair. “We don’t know what it’s like over there right now. Maybe…she’s just…trying to keep it from waking everyone up?”

Karu snorted and AEGIS gave her a sideways glare. “I’m sure everyone’s fine,” she insisted.

“You can’t get eyes on the situation or anything?”

She shook her head. “I told you. ‘Net traffic is being monitored pretty closely on the op. Nobody here is supposed to be looking at pictures of puppies or anything right now, or even necessarily supposed to be on the civilian ‘net in general. If I started pulling other ops information, I’d trigger an alert, I almost guarantee it. And considering how…fragile the situation is…I don’t want to push anything.”

I watched as a parking lot emerged from the darkness and whipped past us, gas stations and strip malls materializing as well, the yellow lights we’d seen in the distance becoming realized as buildings and landmarks.

“They will act soon,” Karu said, checking the sights of one gun before slotting it onto her wrist hardpoint with a lethally-satisfying clack. “It behooves them to resolve the matter in less-populous areas, to reduce overhead of evacuations if nothing else.”

“And how are we doing?” AEGIS asked.

I looked up at her. “Me?”

She smiled back sweetly. “No. Was asking Saga actually, but…how areyou doing, Athan?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

She reached across the aisle and patted me gently on the knee. “It does to me.”

“We’ve got…a decent force,” Saga said. “But basic math tells me we need half to stand a chance and we’re way fucking short on that.”

“We’ll even the odds,” I growled.

“We’re not trying to eradicate them,” AEGIS fretted. “We only need enough to sow discord and make them unable to contain and pursue. It’s not a war.”

“Look outside,” Karu said. “Look within this vehicle, at the faceplates of these soldiers, at the arms they bear. What would you say they are dressed for? A Sunday picnic?”

“They are dressed for an Exhuman event,” AEGIS said. “Which this is not.”

“Is it not?” Karu asked. “How many have died already to Ashton or to our Sino? How many has she just gripped in her thrall?”

AEGIS crossed her arms. “Well Exhuman events are some Exhuman deciding to go postal because of a power disparity. Athan’s just reacting as any person would to his loved ones being in danger.”

Karu snorted. “As any person would? I believe you may wish to undergo a social recalibration, little robot. If every situation of danger brought their families rushing pell-mell across the globe, as it were, slaughtering all who stood in their way, the world would implode into anarchy in a heartbeat.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Pointless hyperbole does not benefit the situation. Exaggerating the state of the world to provide Ashton an illusion of normalcy does him no favors.”

“Well, neither does your blood-mania of killing everything in our way,” she fumed. “I just want this whole situation put to rest and everyone safe, but you guys seem to be taking it as a personal challenge to get him and everyone around as fucked up as you can manage.”

“I am doing nothing,” Karu replied, crossing her own arms now. “All I provide is experience and context for the inevitable course which Ashton follows.”

“Inevitable? This is inevitable?”

“Conflict is inevitable. And when as powerful as Ashton, that conflict will be magnified.”

“And then what? Just because he’s strong and they’re not, he kills them all?”

“Do you witness something else unfolding? Even despite your efforts to divert into more pacifistic routes, he follows the most direct path, as all do. And if that path ends the paths of untold others,” she shrugged “that is only natural.”

“Death and killing is not only natural. It’s a failure,” AEGIS said. “It’s a failure of your own strength or your own endurance or your own principles. It’s you saying ‘it’s easier for me to kill this person than to deal with the consequences of them being alive.’ It’s lazy. And it’s the result of poor planning and poor execution, not a natural inevitability.”

Karu started to respond when I reached back across the aisle and touched AEGIS on the knee, her skin soft and warm under my fingertips.

“AEGIS, I love you, and I think you’re right and I agree,” I told her. Karu’s mouth snapped closed and she watched me through her burning visor. “And maybe this all could have been avoided if I was smarter or stronger or better. But I’m not, and I’m also not willing to risk Lia’s life just because I’m weak’. You’re right that it’s wrong. But sometimes, we have to do the wrong thing anyway.”

She seemed taken aback, and sat back wordlessly, one hand at her breast and the fingertips of the other gently touching her lips. I saw her mouth the word ‘love’ to herself and sighed.

“We’re here,” Saga said. “Buckle up boy and girls.”

Strange as it was to have her being the serious one, it was an interesting change of pace. All around us, the convoy began to slow, the damaged van in the distance speeding away and gaining distance. Comms chatter between the soldiers among us erupted into a series of checks and affirmations and different units reported their status and readiness for the next step.

For a minute it just looked like they were letting the van go. It continued, unhindered, shooting off into the burgeoning sprawl of a town’s edge.

And then the front windshield went white. I squinted, and then closed my eyes, and then put my hand over them, but even through that, I couldn’t get the white out of my eyes. It was like the sun had landed in front of us, though it lasted only a moment, except in my afterimages. After it faded, the black of the sky seemed to creep back in, melting back into darkness, the colors seeping in like a towel soaking in water in a puddle.

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And in the middle of it all, framed by the lights of the town I hoped had been evacuated, which looked dark compared to the light in the center, a towering pillar of smoke, tinged red like a flaring ember. Even inside the van, even holding on, the shockwave hit me hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs and making my eyes water as I was shoved back into my seat. AEGIS held my ears before the boom rattled the van and all inside it.

It wasn’t a mushroom cloud, just a huge plume of smoke and fire. But it didn’t need to be to ensure that our unfortunate friends from Burger Off! were all now just ash and dust.

I felt the familiar swelling inside me and pushed it back down. They were dead and it was my fault. I’d catalogue that guilt with the rest I’d piled up today. It could wait.

“Are we ready?” I asked.

Saga nodded. “In about five minutes the impact zone will be habitable again and they’ll all move in to secure the area and check for survivors. That’s when we’ll make our move.”

“Five minutes,” I said, feeling like it may as well be an hour.

The seconds seemed to scrape past, Karu checking and re-checking her guns, AEGIS tapping her fingers in the air, Saga staring into nothing with rapt concentration on her face, and the incessant chatter of the XPCA comms.

Every second was just another moment something might happen to Lia. Another instant the ghosts of those whom I’d killed today could catch up to me. Every second spent sitting still was just torture, as I felt we were slipping away, falling backwards. Losing. All those deaths, for what? So I could hurry up and waste five minutes? So Lia could die while I sat here doing nothing?

It made no sense, I knew. It wasn’t like I could get out and walk the rest of the way any faster. But doing nothing hurt.

It seemed an eternity of battling back emotions and realizations, AEGIS giving me concerned glances and Saga shooting me irritated ones, before finally the driver took us forward again, following the lights of the vehicles in front as the entire convoy mobilized. Slowly, at normal driving speeds now, we crept onward, drawing ever closer to the newly-formed crater, fire still burning at the bottom.

Suddenly the men around us rose, exosuits whirring, as they moved in unnatural unison to the back door and exited, stumbling only slightly as they hit the moving road. The last one out spun as he departed, slamming the doors shut as he fell to the asphalt, and I realized, he probably landed pretty hard and hurt himself. All so that none of us had to stand up and close the doors of the moving vehicle.

People were just a tool to us now, I guess.

Questioning radio chatter flared up the second they emerged, and it turned to panic as all of those in Saga’s thrall suddenly opened fire on the others. Shouts of confusion and terror as XPCA solemnly turned on one another filled the air. Demands for order and updates cut short as the hijacked operatives made a point to wipe out as much leadership as possible in their deadly opening volley.

And our driver just threw the van into gear and floored it, driving around the crater and out of the emerging carnage, leaving the XPCA to sort out their own turmoil by themselves.

I turned to look out the rear window but AEGIS was already there, rising and putting her hand on my cheek to turn my face towards her eyes instead.

“You don’t need to see that,” she said, her eyes burning as bright as the blast. “You don’t need to punish yourself.”

I tried to rise anyway but she just locked her fingers around the buckle of my seatbelt and wouldn’t let it go.

“AEGIS, come on,” I told her. “People are dying because of me. The least I can do is see them off.”

“It does nobody any good. Just look forward to the people you’re trying to save. Looking back won’t help anyone.”

I fell silent and stared at my feet, but she didn’t let go of my buckle, sitting next to me while she held on. The screams in the comms already told me everything though. It was so much worse than I ever thought it’d be.

I knew Saga didn’t have time to do a good job with them. She needed to put a compel in them so that it would stick around after we drove out of range, and she needed to do it as quickly as possible to hit as many as she could. There wouldn’t be time for nuance or strategy beyond who they should focus on killing first. The simplest trigger and mental overwrite she could manage…when the order came, kill all the XPCA who weren’t doing the same.

Saga had told me often while she worked on my brain that the hard part was leaving the brain intact afterwards. Stitching a specific compel into a person’s thoughts while leaving the thoughts unperturbed was difficult. Turning someone into a mindless killing machine for the rest of their lives, someone who didn’t even know they had a family, didn’t understand the concept of guilt or mercy, someone who was death, and only that…well that was easier.

And from the sounds on the comms, it was more brutal than I could imagine. They had nothing in them but the urge to kill everything. And a human being dedicated to one single purpose was a fearsome thing indeed. And then I imagined there being a few dozen of them, and imagined the ends they would go to, imagined the horrible deaths that only a truly remorseless killer could execute, and only then did the sounds on the comms begin to make a bit of sense.

Any one of them, I realized, was like Dragon. Just a monster that produced death. And Saga had spewed dozens of them into the world. None of them would survive…none of them could survive, unless they succeeded in slaughtering the whole world…but the fact that I hated Dragon so much, that we’d worked so hard to find him, to fight him, to kill him…and then we could sow dozens more over most of an hour, it made me sick with myself in a way that wouldn’t go down, wouldn’t be pushed aside.

And with it, all of the rest of my feelings seemed to burst from confinement as well. All the hundreds already maimed or killed, the hundred miles of road we’d turned into a warzone, we prompted a fucking missile strike in the heart of some shitty roadside town, out of desperation to keep us from reaching the suburbs and cities which were currently whipping by outside. To say nothing of those three innocents, who I’d knowingly mindfucked to their own execution.

All that death and carnage, for what? Because to me, my sister was worth more than any number of other people? Did I even consider Lia’s feelings in this? Was all of this slaughter all for me?

Something grabbed my face and I realized it was AEGIS. My vision swam but through it I saw burning yellow eyes in front of me, eyes brimming with tears as they stared into me.

The eyes got closer and closer to me. And then suddenly her lips met mine, warm and soft in a way which was completely incompatible with my current thoughts. I tried to push away, tried to…breathe. My mind just spun and spun and spun and spun. The belt slipped off the motor. It turned, and nothing moved.

She tilted her head slightly, her nose brushing my cheek, her lips never leaving mine. She tasted sweet, smelled like eraser shavings. The hand grabbing my chin moved to the back of my head, fingers lacing through my hair as she pushed herself deeper into the kiss, our breath coming in shudders through our noses, hot on each other’s skin.

And still she pressed in closer to me, which I didn’t understand. There was no space between us at all, but still she pressed forward, until all of her and all of me were impossible to distinguish, just heat and togetherness, and the painful stab of the seat belt buckle still in her hands, still forbidding me to leave or to look away.

My body trembled. My stomach dropped, and I felt a heat inside me almost as hot as she was, as her wet lips pressed against mine, tongues sliding across each other, hand desperately clutching at me, pulling me ever inward, short, desperate half-breaths, steamy with our mingling heat.

And then it was over. My body took breaths without me. AEGIS hovered in front of me, eyes still burning, still swimming with tears that still hadn’t fallen. Behind her, I saw that Karu had taken her feet, her face twitching under her visor, but in all the time of the kiss, she hadn’t managed a single step closer.

“Sorry,” AEGIS whispered, her breath still ragged, still close, still hot on me. “I can’t stand to see you so hurt. I didn’t know what else to do.”

My mind felt so knocked on its ass that it took me a minute to remember what I was hurt about. My entire life seemed divided in two — the time before and the time after that kiss, and the only thing which bridged them was AEGIS. Thoughts, feelings, guilt…all of it had been drained out of me, pulled through my lips by that beautiful woman.

So I sat there, feeling stupid and empty and full and dumb. My mind went from careening wildly out of control to frozen solid in a skipped heartbeat, and my panic, my guilt…they went back to the confines of the corners of my mind and locked themselves back up, as silent and bewildered as I was.

“Don’t hate me, okay?” she whispered.

“How could I ever do that?”

She smiled at me a little. “It…that…” she laughed. She was blushing madly. “Um. Everything I’ve ever learned or thought, I just kinda…threw out the window there. Running your life. Giving you space. Planning things out. Forcing you into…things.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that it’d been okay, that she didn’t need tears in her eyes because it was all going to be okay. But I didn’t have the words. All I could think was how familiar that kiss had been, how I hadn’t been here, but transported back by her touch, by her smell, to a time when things were simpler, things were right.

Things were…a thing. Between her and me. A love which had died with her.

But this wasn’t her. But at the same time, it was. For all the things the prior AEGIS had done to me, she’d never once made my heart skip as that kiss had done.

“Well if you’re done sucking face,” Saga cut in, “We’re coming up on Vegas soon. In the next ten minutes.”

Karu sat back down and tried to rub her eyes, fingers jamming into her visor instead. I finally looked out the back window and saw nothing of our mess back there, lost in the distance. A few XPCA vehicles chased us, but it was just a paltry handful, the huge majority of the force lost in the chaos.

I sat back in my seat, my mind just…buzzing. Approximating thought, but unable to reach it. Like I’d been overstimulated, and then AEGIS kiss had been too much on top of it all and just dumped the contents of my whole brain on the ground, where they sat, looking distant and pointless.

We’d be at Vegas soon. And we’d deal with whatever we found there. We’d pick up the others, ditch the XPCA, and be fine. It wasn’t a panic situation. Heck, AEGIS got through to Rito earlier, it was entirely possible the whole thing was already sorted. Rito might be a bit scaredy and a bit dim but she kept her appointments at least.

“Oh…oh man,” Saga gasped.

“What?” Karu snapped. “What now?”

Saga just pointed out the front windshield, thin arm steady towards the horizon we were headed towards.

A storm, I thought at first. Lightning. But lightning didn’t flash like that, lightning meandered, jagged through the sky. These were pure, monochromatic streaks, like God was smudging the air with a divine brush loaded with titanium white. And flashing in counterpoint, harder to see against the black sky, streaks of deep purple.

“Those are Skyweb,” AEGIS said, pointing at one of the darker streaks.

“And those are Tem,” I said, recognizing the white, brilliant beams for what they were.

I felt my jaw set as we drove straight towards the point where all the different beams were converging. Just as my panic had vanished with a kiss, now my cool had boiled away in those beams of horizon-burning light. There couldn’t be any doubt now, there was no room for optimism or happy coincidences here. There was a war being fought at my sister’s house.

I steeled myself and felt my emotions wash away from me again as the streaks of dark and light burned into my eyes. The war was still being fought. It wasn’t over. There was something we could do. Something I could do.

I swallowed hard as the van blew through a police line, a mass of civilians standing and gaping in fascinated awe at the lightshow, while we, just another XPCA van, raced into the scene.

We’d get there. We’d join the war. And we’d win it. There wasn’t any other option. There wasn’t any other way.

Something squeezed my hand and I looked down and saw AEGIS’ in mine. I looked up and found her eyes, still yellow, but no longer threatened with tears. Streaks shone on her skin where they had fallen and were gone.

“They’re going to be fine. We’re here. We’re going to save them,” I said to her.

“I know,” she said. “It’s all going to be okay.”

We both knew we were lying, that for all we knew, everyone was already dead, with Tem destroying anything left. But we couldn’t acknowledge that, couldn’t even look at that possibility without the terrifying implication of somehow making it true.

We drove forward as the first blush of dawn broke the horizon.