The reaction was immediate, a body suddenly realizing that there was a pathogen, it seemed everything in the base erupted into frenzy, all around or at me.

Everyone in guns and suits began to gravitate forward. Everyone in uniforms fled. In my mirrors, I could see techs clinging to or flying off of the truck's scaffolding behind me, as the machine jumped forward with surprising speed.

The first shot came after a few seconds, chipping the bulletproof glass with a tiny crystalline spiderweb. And then following it, a thousand more. The comms chatter had changed entirely in tone from when I'd arrived. It had become urgent and frantic, no longer men standing back and looking at a situation strategically and issuing orders, but suddenly aware that there was danger at their feet.

As the truck flashed past, I saw my newest friend emerging from the building where I'd landed, turning and watching me go as she dragged a stretcher with one of my victims on it.

I jammed the wheel sideways and whipped the truck around a curve, way too fast, feeling the vehicle under me rear off of some of its titanic wheels for a moment. But we landed back down and were headed for clear roads, free and able.

I'd probably succeeded already, I thought. By turning the truck, I moved the dampening field and that probably opened up Saga for doing her thing. All I had to do was make sure they couldn't get it back in place and we'd be golden. It seemed too easy.

And then I realized I was still in the field myself of course, and that's why I probably forgot about the part where I had to survive this road trip too, and that wasn't easy at all. Still, I had all kinds of advantage here -- until they ID'd me and locked me out, I could see all the enemies ahead of me on their IFF, I could listen to their chatter, I had a monster of an engine under me, and the advantage of a few minutes' head start.

I made sure the petal was all the way to the floor and kept forward, tearing down the road. If I could just get a few miles out, I'd be beyond their perimeter, and then there'd be people I could blend in with, maybe. Although...no, that was a terrible idea, I was wearing an exosuit, and under that, my exoframe and the whole leg-missing, slathered-in-some-guy's-blood thing. Maybe if I got new clothes?

Shit, were all my plans this bad right now? I kept having ideas and they kept being dumb as hell with even a moment's retrospection. It made me worry about the whole greater plan I was currently embroiled in, and I decided to do myself a favor and double-check with the one person I knew I could trust who wasn't affected by the field at the moment.

And then I realized I couldn't actually reach my mobile inside my suit while wearing it. And then I realized that even if I could, AEGIS was still being jammed and wouldn't get my call. And then, I thought, wait. Even if I did somehow connect with her, they'd be listening to our plans, to all the 'net traffic in this area. And they'd figure out more about who I was and what I was doing.

Jesus Christ. I knew this thing was annoying but having it right behind my head was...just a clusterfuck waiting to happen. I had to be rid of it, fast.

And for another reason. My head was starting to kill me, my brain feeling like it was pounding inside my skull. Everywhere was hurting but especially my leg. I really couldn't believe how intense the pain of it was, wondering if the drugs somehow had just delayed all those sensations from hitting me, or if the difference between the nothing I'd been feeling and normal was just elevating the sensation now that it was coming back.

My eyes watered and I actually tried to breathe deeper and focus on the smell of the blood in the suit. It was better than the pain. Well, until I started gagging and was at serious risk of throwing up inside my faceplate. Could I have any worse ideas?

Something banged against the side of the cabin and I had to do a double-take. There were no IFF indicators there, I'd been driving to keep away from them, heading away from the focal point around the house. And then there was another bang and sounds of struggling, just outside. I looked around frantically for anything to...to...I don't know, throw them off. Defend myself from whatever was coming.

The side door popped open and Karu let herself in, landing in the seat next to me with a heavy thunk.

"You did not think to lock the door?" she asked, like we were picking up a conversation.

"Karu where the hell have you been?"

"I have been fighting," she said, holding out arms marred with scorch and blood, guns scuffed and gritty. "What else would you expect?"

"We haven't seen you in forever. I just thought you disappeared."

She laughed. "If you had seen me, would they not as well? And then would I not be an easy mark? I have told you that a battlefield is wholly different from the more intimate combats to which you are accustomed, it is not a place to fly around and be visible from all angles."

"So I've noticed," I said, sticking out my leg for her inspection. And then realizing it was hidden under an exosuit, and fuck I was so stupid right now. "Wait how did you know it was me in here anyway?"

"Are there many other rogue operatives hijacking mission-critical apparati at the moment? This maneuver has your style of reckless selfishness written all over it, as it were."

"...thanks?"

"It was not a complement. So what then are your aims? To bring down the neural disruption and in so doing, free the code-X to work her wiles?"

"Yeah. You're pretty sharp. How'd you pick that up so fast?"

She tapped her visor. "The neural uplink of this device detects and corrects external influence as best it can. It is not perfect, but it is protection, of a sort. I had it installed to insulate myself from Saga, yet it has proven infuriatingly inadequate for that task. I am relieved that it has served some purpose, however."

It got me thinking about just how different this suppression was from Saga's influence and, yeah, I couldn't imagine any amount of tech shielding you from her. Being confused easily and having your thoughts hard to focus on was one thing, but Saga wasn't some passive force that messed with my neurons, she'd actively dig around in there and do whatever she wanted, physics and brain chemistry and technology be damned.

"It will not work," Karu continued, and it took me too long to realize what she was talking about again. "Even should we get the code-X functioning in our favor, they will simply establish a perimeter and wear us down. We had a fortuitous combination of her aptitude and a vehicle last time, allowing us to plunge her into their ranks easily."

"We have a vehicle now?" I suggested.

"Too ungainly and despite the appearance, too fragile."

"It's like, twice as tough-looking as the van was."

"Tough-looking and tough are often opposites. And besides, we only endured prior because we were actively driving away from their forces. To arm this vehicle with Saga would require driving directly into them, and more dangerous combatants than we fled from before, besides. No, that will not work."

"You could carry her? That'd make her mobile."

"If she could even concentrate whilst in flight, perhaps. But again, I would be shot down the moment I surfaced on wings. Ashton, Saga is not a silver bullet which shall solve all of your difficulties, no matter how potent she is. Humans are cunning and can overcome any threat so long as they understand it and prepare adequately. That is how I have survived thus far, and I do not think it unreasonable to expect at least one of our many adversaries to be as competent as myself."

"Okay then," I snapped at her, not sure why she was wasting one of our apparently remaining breaths with bitching me out. "Then what would you have us do?"

She smiled at me broadly, her visor burning red, the action punctuated with the explosive cracking of glass as the window was hit again. "We leave. All of the essential personnel are in this cabin."

"Fuck that and fuck you. AEGIS said the same thing about just surrendering."

"And you did not jump at the chance to give yourself up to spare your comrades? My, you have grown."

"I'd be giving up myself and everyone else, Karu."

"Ah, so it is not growth but that foolish stubbornness that none shall be permitted to die. I should have expected."

Her stupid superior grin was just pissing me off, and the pain in my head and body seemed to be reaching some sort of crescendo. I hoped. If it was just going to keep building after this, I wasn't sure I'd be able to bear it. My plans were all stupid and failing, Karu was no fucking help, if I didn't do something soon, AEGIS would just begin questioning her 'emotional' decisions and might turn on Tem and Moon.

It was all so fucked. And then I heard some random bit of comms chatter and...didn't understand. I barked some commands inside my exosuit to try to turn it up and tune to the conflict it didn't think was super important for me to hear.

"Another squad down at three-five-seven. The fire support did drop the code-X target however, and has managed to advance while keeping her suppressed."

"Acknowledged Lance One. Pike One, what is your status?"

"Pike One--" I could barely hear him over the roaring of laser fire and knew he was close to the house. "--currently engaged with the code-X. We are keeping her suppressed but...she is tearing through us every time she recovers."

"More support is inbound. Three squads."

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Send everyone you can--"

There was a rush and a roar and then Pike One cut off.

I swore and slammed my fist into the wheel, denting it inadvertently. They were closing in on Saga, the only one outside the light wall, and they were killing her too fast for her to stop them. From the sound of it, somehow the dampener was still holding her up too, she wouldn't have had nearly this much trouble with a dozen guys any other way. This thing must still be projecting on her, not just forward, somehow.

All this time I'd spent driving around, I'd thought I was buying her time but all I'd done it waste it. This wasn't a solution at all, I had to actually shut it down.

"Take the wheel," I said. She looked at me funny for a second and then I unbuckled, stood awkwardly, and punched out the front glass. It didn't break, but hung like viscous fabric but I punched it again and again, pulling it away from its frame of it as Karu dove for the wheel and jerked us back towards the road.

"Have you gone completely insane?" she asked from behind me.

"I'm going back to shut the thing down. Keep us away from them."

"How? They are everywhere. And now there is no bulletproof screen at our fore."

I tried to reply but all of my thoughts just led to how stupid I was. She didn't have the IFFs to avoid the enemies, she hadn't heard the comms chatter to know the situation, she didn't have armor or shields like I did to ward off bullets.

I closed my mouth again and got climbing. Fine, I was stupid. All she had to do was keep the truck on the road. I hated everything about everything right now, and as I pulled myself through the window and onto the hood of the truck, my leg screamed as it drew through the gap.

"That is all you have to say to me?" she shouted up. "Silence, and orders that will be the death of us?"

"I need to shut it down!"

Her mouth went thin and her visor, if possible, flashed even more menacingly at me. She twisted her grime-caked arm to flip me the bird.

And then she disappeared from sight as I climbed over the back of the cabin, taking advantage of the angular design to find flat footholds and strong grips. The exosuit mostly muted the air whipping past, but the crack of bullets paired constantly with potential friendly-fire alerts.

My feet clanged with echoing metal as I landed on the catwalk, swaying even on the auto-gyros on the narrow foothold. The whole machine was like, sixty feet long, and maybe ten feet wide. That was a lot of area to cover, and ways to cross from one side to the other were limited to clambering around the rear or balancing over the top. Neither of which I wanted to try to manage given how just climbing out the window had already felt with my leg.

I put my hands on the nearest part of it and felt inside. Something shot me in the back and just being this close to it, I still felt my mind slippery and numb, and was having a hard time focusing. I closed my eyes and blocked out the alerts, the pain, the chatter, just focused on me, and the metal under my fingertips.

It...didn't work very well. But it did work some, somehow. I could feel my powers forced through the layers of baffles and insulation and structure, penetrating at my will...slowly, cautiously, pausing at junctures and barriers as though timid. But after long seconds of work, I could feel my electricity surge within, touch the delicate machinery and circuitry, could hear the pops and snaps of things frying and melting. A wall of sparks exploded out of the side of it, showering me like confetti, vanishing in an instant against the wind.

I listened and nothing had changed on the battlefield. Saga was still being pressured. I looked up and saw a beam in the sky, pure white and so far away. Moments later, the chatter reported a hit, a drone snuck through the barrier somehow and 'had successfully deployed against the violet exhuman'.

I punched the machine in front of me, not caring if I dented it and screamed at it all. I took two deep, blood-tinged breaths and walked further down the machine, more gunshots deflecting off my shield and off my back as Karu unwittingly took us nearer to enemy threats.

I poured lightning and rage into the machine this time, and worked faster than before. There was no satisfaction in it screaming and popping, just the urge to move further on, further down, keep listening to see if that was what it took to turn the fight.

Again, and again, and again, I went. The entire front half of this side was blackened and twisted and spitting smoke, but still the fight was raging in my ears. More than once I staggered and almost fell off the trailer, the auto-gyros keeping me upright when my legs failed me. Alerts of friendly fire and systems damage and medical assistance required were flashing in front of my eyes.

I saw my own heart rate monitor spiking with flashing warnings. Two-hundred forty BPM. The system threatened to hit me with a tranquilizer and I gave it an override. Less than a third of this side of the fucking machine to go.

I hit it again and again, and was certain that by now, it must be dead. I'd destroyed over a third of the entire fucking thing. How many redundancies and failsafes could it have? How much tech could possibly be in this thing that wasn't necessary for its function? I began pushing my powers deeper and deeper into it, blindly lashing out, slashing and destroying everything inside, desperate.

There was another burst of gunfire, and then the sound echoed as an entire squad opened up fire on us. The truck suddenly veered sideways, almost throwing me off, and I knew Karu had been hit. I swore and punched the machine again and again, my metal fists putting dents in it the size of my head. But still I could hear the XPCA advancing on the house. I could see Tem shooting up the signal for me to help, over and over.

I tried not to think of how desperate she must feel, how to her, I'd just abandoned her again. She was stuck attached to Moon, and if Moon was hurt, Tem would feel all that pain as well...every bit of desperation I was feeling, they felt twice. It made my heart hurt, my head hurt, my body hurt...everything hurt, and the vehicle careened on the road, squealing as Karu struggled to pull us away from her shooters without fishtailing us.

I thought about her, her motivations for even being here. They were practically nonexistent; I was here, and nothing else. She'd already stated that she'd be fine with up and leaving, and based on how we were still driving away from Tem's desperate signalling, we were. But still she'd been here with us, still she'd been fighting, killing, bleeding, all on my account. And the second we'd reconvened, I treated her like shit. I got her shot. I threw her as the likely point of failure into my shitty, failing plans.

The truck hit something, a van or roadblock I think, and everything went soaring. The truck bounced into the air, the cabin and trailer jackknifed from another, the enormous broad wheels spinning in the air, the bullet-pocked cabin and char-streaked machine nearly kissing as they rose.

And then all at once, it all tumbled back to earth. The machine crashed, a noise so shrieking and violent and metal that it still tore at my ears in the moment before the suit neuralized it. It spun and spun and spun, impossibly, rolling right through and over houses like they weren't even there, the cabin whipped free and snapping off with Karu somewhere inside.

I flew like a ragdoll, seeing tumbling lights and blackness as I crashed again and again and again, seeing nothing constant but the warnings of critical structural damage, medical warnings, a twisting overlay of the horizon which darted all across the globe of my faceplate like a twitching eye.

And then I was on my back, my legs partway through a brick wall above me. Everything was still spinning despite being still. Everything hurt, unbelievably. I heard and felt the hiss of medical gel dispensing, the suit was torn up in the impact and I knew if I looked up, I would be too.

My head clanged against the back of the helmet and I closed my eyes. The comms chatter remained as threatening as ever and the flashes of Tem's lasers were still visible through my eyelids, but I couldn't move even if I wanted to. I hoped Karu was okay. I hoped everyone would be okay, somehow. Despite me.

I'd failed, utterly, I realized. I'd talked a big game, I'd thrown everything I had at the fight, I'd had plans and enacted them time and again, and in the end...what? Sitting here in a wreck, waiting for the XPCA who shot Karu to descend on us, waiting for Tem to finally give out and realize I wasn't coming, for Moon to die, hanging off of her, for AEGIS and Karu to give up on me and flee or surrender if they still could, for Saga to spend the rest of her life as some sick meat puppet for the XPCA.

I really wanted to die before any of that. I didn't want to have to face a world where I'd failed everyone at everything. These people had followed me, been here because of me, been attacked because of my actions. Maybe AEGIS was right. Maybe they should have just surrendered, renounced me from the start. It was stupid for them to fight an army by themselves, stupider still for me to encourage it, be filled with hope against hopeless odds.

The whole fucking point of the XPCA was to win fights like this, I knew. This was what they did best. And I, in my stupid, fucking, goddamn arrogance, just assumed that I could beat them at it.

I realized...a lot of things. Had a lot of thoughts. And then, confusingly, realized that I had realized a lot of things and had a lot of thoughts. My brain felt perfectly normal, minus the...minus the everything. The dampener was down. It had been down, for most of the time I'd been pulverizing it. There was hope, there was a way. If Saga just got a few seconds to herself, she'd tear the whole XPCA a new asshole...all these soldiers descending on her would become our soldiers, the greater mass of the army, turned and fighting itself!

My heart raced with the thought even as someone stepped out of the shadows and smiled at me. It took me too long to remember who he was.

"Hello, Athan," Soran said. "Laying around?"

"What the fuck are you doing here?" I growled at him, though the pain made it come out more in a whimper. "Don't tell me you're caught up in all of this too? Or are you just here to claim my powers when I'm at my end?"

"I have two numbers to throw at you," he said evasively. "Two-hundred thirty-eight thousand, nine-hundred and nine. And two." He circled around me and I watched him from my rear cameras as he fiddled with the back of the suit. Abruptly, my faceplate went blank and I found myself lurching forward as the suit opening pressed me upwards some. Strong hands grabbed at my torn clothes and dragged me out into the breaking dawn. He threw me to the ground where...pain just...wracked everything. Just the movement had been enough to send my world spinning, but landing almost knocked me out. I laid there and breathed, my blades unresponsive at my twitching efforts to put them through his smile.

He advanced on me and crouched in my field of view, just a pair of pristine black loafers and tailored pants backlit by the sunrise.

"The first number. Two-hundred thirty-eight thousand, nine-hundred and nine. Would you like to guess what that number means? "

I spat at him best I could. By which I mean I drooled a painful, bloody syrup in his general direction.

"That's how many times I died," he said through a grim smile. "That's how many times your friend Tower eradicated me from this world. It hurt, you know. Every single time. Dying isn't something you ever get used to, not matter how many times you do it."

"I don't understand," I spat at him. "If you're going to touch me and take my powers, just do it and save your breath."

He lifted me by the torn remnants of my collar, my limbs hanging uselessly off of me. I blinked at him, about all I could do, and even though I was kinda seeing double, I realized he was only using one arm to hold me.

"You've been taking powers again," I realized.

"I never stopped. I just needed you to think I did in New Eden so you'd cooperate. But things are different now. I have a lot more control than before."

"Control over what?"

He just smirked at me. "The second number. Two. Any guesses?"

"How many of your balls I'm going to kick." I struggled and he just stood there smiling as my exoframe snapped to kick him in the chest.

"Very nice. That never gets old. You stupid child, didn't you ever wonder why your plan failed? You disabled that machine and still--" he pivoted to put the streaks of Tem's SOS in front of my face. "Still you've got problems. And you never even stopped to consider why."

"...two?" I muttered.

"Two." His grin broadened. And I understood.

"Two disruptors all along. Of course. They knew Saga was on her way here, they couldn't risk her hijacking one of them without a way to fight her off."

The air roared and I felt my clothes and limbs pushed earthward as a VTOL suddenly crested the block and hovered, turning to bear on us. In an instant, a wall of flames, tall as a skyscraper materialized between them and us and began pushing the VTOL back.

"Our time together is drawing near its end," Soran said, not sounding sad at all about it. "So I have another few numbers for you to keep in mind. Number thirty nine. Fifth at ten. You got that?"

I just glared back at him and he just gave me that dumb, flat smile with the corners of his mouth curled up.

And then he drew me back, the jostling of my body almost making me black out, swaying like a toy in his grip. He pivoted on his hip and threw me, my collar tearing as it strangled me, my body whipping around, feeling heavy and weightless at once.

And then I was...flying. But not over the city of Las Vegas anymore. The world had turned to streaks around me, from what was in my head or outside of it, I couldn't tell. All I saw was the Earth itself vanished, and I was just in streaks of red light.

I had only enough time to be confused and wonder if I'd died, if hell looked like a confusing mess of black and red. And then I landed painfully with a crash against some rust-red painted wood siding and felt the world go dark, as a crowd of feet and voices closed in on me.