Who next needed justice took me no time to decide, but lots of time to consider. It was someone who had been close to me once, someone personal, someone I'd once loved like a brother.

And while I knew he was evil, a bastard among bastards, I also didn't want to stain my crusade with personal vendettas. Justice was aspirational, it was something pure and incorruptible, it shouldn't be meted out only to those who wronged me. This was the land of liberty and justice for all. The thought of beginning with someone who'd betrayed me put a bad taste in my mouth.

But at the same time, he also didn't deserve to escape justice. His number would come up, and so...it didn't really matter if it was today or tomorrow, did it? It was coming for him at some point.

Yes, I decided, convinced, and nodding to nobody but the clouds. I would get him out of the way early. And as long as I was doing it at some point, why not now? And then I could be impartial as I brought justice to the rest of them, satisfied.

With a thought I turned myself in the air, pointing myself back towards what I believed to be north, and fired myself with tear-jerking speed. The wind whipped at me, so loud and so violently that I could neither hear nor see, but somehow I kept myself warm without effort.

It was, I thought, a very convenient way to fly. It hadn't been like this the first time I ran from the XPCA four years ago. Back then, I'd just blindly shot myself into the night, the pounding of gunfire and distant roar of VTOLs as loud as my heart slamming in my ears. I'd wound up crossing half the country before I was sure I'd lost them, after many, many twists and turns and suddenly finding new units popping up in my path -- a fox harried by ten thousand hounds from everywhere.

But I'd made it. From near Orlando up towards Raleigh, a detour north and then dipping south and then west to where I'd squatted in the undesirable part of Texas, clutching at the leghairs of civilization. Where I'd stayed for four years. Hidden, undisturbed. Safe, I thought.

I laughed into the wind roaring past. Safe? Maybe them, from me. Those four years had changed much. They'd changed me. They'd changed my little stretch of land to be worth something to somebody. But I knew they hadn't changed my target. You didn't just betray a man like he did and then turn around and become a saint.

You become a goddamn corpse. And if someone else hadn't sorted that for him yet, I intended to.

Land rushed into view, almost before I was ready. The velvet of the early-evening water under me suddenly was green, and then just as fast as it came, it was gone again. Cuba or something, I thought, gone in a few seconds. I kept on, pushing myself even faster over the waves below.

It didn't take long to get over land again, the coastline just a tiny sliver of sand holding back miles and miles of crusty grey buildings, peeking out towards the water.

It just went on and on, no matter how long I followed the coast. Miami. Fort Lauderdale. Palm Beach. It was all just one continuous sprawl. It looked like a mass of barnacles on a post, all fused together and impossible to tell what even was living or dead.

I veered inland, the grey of the city disappearing into the grids of rural development and then disappearing altogether. There were just white ribbons, highways, glinting with the cars choking them even at this hour. And where they converged, I found my goal.

It was in Orlando, or in part of its barnacle spread, close enough that there wasn't really any distinction. A soulless house in a soulless neighborhood, in a soulless residential development, probably made by someone soulless like Richard Rothersford had been. Seeing it from the air, I was appalled to see just how similar all the houses looked and how parceled the land had been. Tiny squares in neat lines, thousands of them and nothing but, for miles.

I touched down in a backyard, the fences painted white only on this side and the natural red of the wood for all the neighbors. The house was just as I remembered it, single-story, low sloping roofs, a pinkish-beige that was both inoffensive and hard to describe. It was nice out, and the windows were open, despite the lack of a car in the driveway.

I let myself in by removing a circle of the glass in the backdoor and reaching through. The latch still stuck, as it had when I'd lived here.

And no sooner did I turn the light on and see the familiar living room, smell the familiar smell of my own house, of carpet powder and the cold tang of ventilation, I found memories flooding back. Good memories, turned black with the passage of time and betrayal.

And trotting to greet me, Hunter, a long-haired ginger tabby, who set about at once rolling on her back and meowing up a fuss at me, demanding both love and food without reservation.

Despite her name, Hunter was a girl, and had been named by Lisa and myself before we'd sexed her correctly. I remembered the argument the two of us had when we found out, and I'd suggested we change her name to Huntress instead.

"You can't just change people's names," she said, with an inordinate amount of ridicule.

"Good thing she's not a people."

"Girls can be hunters, too. Are you saying we can't?"

And so saying, she'd held the kitty up like a weapon and boxed me with her fluffy paws until I relented. She'd taken great pride in explaining the name every time we had visitors.

As for Hunter, she was the best cat pretty much anyone could ask for. A dog, in other words. Greeting me at the door without so much as sniffing me after four years and demanding love, that was Hunter in a nutshell.

But seeing her roll around, the white tufts of her underbelly showing just pissed me off. This had been my cat. This had been my house, my life, and it was stolen from me. Years had passed, and who knew how many strangers had set foot here without me? How many belly rubs had Hunter whored herself out for, to strangers and strange men, because I hadn't been here?

Suddenly her antics didn't seem so cute. She was just a slut, is what she was. She didn't care that it was me, or any other man who could satisfy her selfish wants. As long as she was pet, Hunter hadn't given a single care that I was gone, hadn't let a single goddamn thought pass through her stupid cat mind that I was living in misery, far away, or who was to blame for it all.

She'd betrayed me too. She hadn't missed or mourned, she was fatter and stupider than ever. The useless, worthless, parasite.

My anger flared out of my control and Hunter froze on the spot before seizing once, twice.

And then she fell apart into bloody chunks, the gore matting into her silky fur.

I turned and looked around the house for any other signs of betrayal and saw them everywhere. Pictures on the mantle. Books I'd bought that she'd kept. Familiar sheets on the bed. A cast-iron skillet I'd bought with her protests.

"You'll never use it," she complained. Until I'd used it to make the best goddamn omelette she'd ever had. And now it sat there on the stovetop, recently-used and scoured, mine, that she hadn't even wanted, and yet here it still was.

The pictures I burned. The sheets I reduced to shreds. The pan I ripped open a seam to nothingness and threw it through. The whole house was sick with reminders of how this had all been mine, stocked with loss and tears and hate. It was a goddamn temple to injustice, and I would see it purged.

Papers were flying through the air as I tore apart the living room's bookshelf, my rage seething as I turned a cookbook from my own mother into ash in my hands. It had been signed with a loving note for my birthday, yet here it sat--

"L-Liev?" a voice called out, and I snapped upright.

Lisa was standing there in the front door, framed by dusk. She flipped a lightswitch and stared at me through the carnage I'd wrought on our house.

And I stared right back. Feelings which I thought long dead flooded through me, memories rushing back as though they'd been locked away and her face...her familiar face, every line of which I knew and yet had forgotten...was the key.

"Lisa," I breathed, dropping the half-autopsied books. "Lisa."

"Liev, what...what is this?" she asked, her voice terrified. "Where's Hunter?"

Her mention of the slut brought me back down at once, and I swallowed hard. "Is Eric still alive?"

"Y-yes? S...should he...should he not be?"

"I need you to call him. Tell him to come here. Now."

"Liev, I don't...I don't understand," she stammered. "I don't know why you're...here, or…"

"Call him!" I shouted, and she jumped. She turned on her heel, but I ripped the door out of her grasp from a distance and slammed it shut in her face. "Now!"

"Where's Hunter?" she asked again. I ripped her mobile from her pocket and shoved it into her face.

"Now."

There were tears in her eyes as she dialed, and I pretended not to see. "W-what do I say?" she asked.

"Tell him to come here."

"But...what--"

"Just tell him that."

She cleared her throat and waited with her eyes closed. After too long, she perked up all at once and spoke in a voice hardly affected by tears or fear.

"Hi! Eric! Hey. Um...I need you to...come over right now. Please." She glanced at me and then took a few rapid breaths, as though just the sight of me scared her. "Actually, no," she said, her voice suddenly rushed. Never mi-i--"

The phone floated out of her hands and towards me, and I picked it out of the air. "Hello, Eric," I said. "Do you still remember me?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I heard him suck down a breath, which was a yes.

"I'm here, Eric. Come now, and come alone, or I'll kill you in ways you can't imagine how slow and painful they'll be."

He said nothing, even though I waited. Just when I was ready to hang up he spoke.

"And you won't hurt her?"

"What?" I asked.

"If I come, you won't hurt Lisa?"

"Sure," I said. And hung up. I threw the phone back to her and she caught it, holding it like she wasn't sure what to do now that it was in her hands.

"Where's Hunter?" she whispered.

"Gone. Along with everything else I found which was mine. Gone like I was, Lisa. Gone like the time stolen from us. I was ripped from here, like a beating heart, and I come back and find my whole life still here, intact, just moved on without me? What the hell, Lisa?"

"Where's Hunter?"

"You think this is fine, Lisa? Living in our house and with our cat and cooking on our cast-iron pan? Do you have any idea what the hell I've been doing these last four years while you pretended nothing changed? Did you even consider for one second how garbage my life was, how much I suffered, how scared I was every, goddamn day?"

"Where's--"

I turned and picked up the remains of Hunter from the back room and threw them at her, pelting her with the still-hot pieces of our cat. Her hands shook and she wailed silently as her fingers brushed the tips of the orange fur.

"I'm RIGHT HERE, LISA," I bellowed. "And all you give a damn about is the goddamned cat. The cat, and the damn house and the god-damned, motherfucking frying pan. Did you care at all that I was gone? I used to think about you until it hurt, Lisa. I used to imagine where we'd be if none of this happened, that we'd be married by now, how many kids we'd have, whether they would be walking or reading."

I slashed my arm sideways, tearing a gash in the wall. She just trembled and held my cat, her fingers dripping with gore.

"And you thought of, what? Just living off of what I'd left behind? Pretending nothing had changed, nothing was wrong? Just rolling in the void I left behind like...like...like some kind of parasite?"

I felt my chest burning and my breath came out in frost as I screamed at her.

"That's it, isn't it!? You're just like them!"

"I don't understand!" she screamed back. "Why did you kill Hunter? Why are you here?"

"Justice," I spat. "I am here to right every wrong."

"W-what wrong did Hunter commit?"

I slapped her with a shockwave of force that sent her spinning and to her knees.

"Don't you fucking question me," I roared. "I am justice incarnate! You're just a filthy parasite, desperately clinging to the edges of the life we used to have together. You are nothing without me, do you understand?"

I blew up the rest of the bookshelf, sending a white column of paper exploding through the room. "Every goddamn thing in this house was mine. Without me, you were nothing."

She didn't reply, just held the largest pieces of Hunter and herself where I'd hit her and cried. It was pathetic. It was disgusting. I wanted to put her down right then and there, just to end this pitiful spectacle, but at the same time, I wanted her to live forever with me, to be back together like we'd once been, to have what we had.

Even now, seeing her clutching that bloody mess and wailing without dignity. She was still beautiful to me. She always would be.

This time I heard the car door slam and the hurried footsteps. I let the door open as Eric burst into the room, white and out of breath. His eyes found me first, and then landed on Lisa. Without hesitation, he knelt at her side and put a hand on her shoulder.

And then I threw him backwards against the closed door.

"Don't you fucking dare touch her," I spat, the walls shredding around him as my loosed powers tore the air. "You disgusting, traitorous, verminous--"

"...let…" he gasped.

I stopped in front of him, increasing the pressure on his chest until it cracked.

"...her…" he wheezed.

"Go?" I finished. "What does she matter to you? You'll be dead in a moment."

I let up a little so he could bleat out his answer.

"...you...promised…"

"Oh spare me," I said, pulling needles of ice from the air, thousands of them, and driving them an inch deep all across his body. When he tried to scream, I crushed his ribs until he didn't have the air to, and just squeaked like a broken toy instead.

And then I let him fall, let him crash to the ground, shards of ice splintering everywhere as he struggled for breath.

"Before you do though, I want you to know exactly how I suffered because of you. I want you, in the next few minutes, to live through as much pain and fear as I felt the last four years. I want justice, Eric, and I will extract it from you in pain."

He lay still, gasping, drawing in painful breaths. But even through that, he somehow worked up the gall to speak to me again.

"...let...her…"

I ended his sentence with a weak scream by tearing off one of his fingernails, and then jamming it crudely under one of the others.

But even if he was screaming and writhing, this wasn't like it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be pleading for his worthless life. He was supposed to listen to my story, my story, to get a glimpse of comprehension of what he'd done to me. He was supposed to regret it, regret every moment of his pitiful existence, regret ever pretending to be my best friend, regret turning me in to the XPCA, regret the disgusting life he'd eked out in my absence.

Justice was about regret. It was bringing regret to those who were too sick to repent.

Instead, he was fighting back with a discipline and a selflessness a worm like him shouldn't be capable of. I slashed his face twice, setting a deep pattern of criss-crossed lines into it. Like the waffles we'd made together as roommates, before I found Lisa.

"...et…" he gurgled through blood and cleft lips.

I just couldn't understand. How could someone so degenerate, so willing to throw me away, commit himself so wholly to another? I wanted to scream the question in his face and flay him until he told me.

Wanted it so badly, that I stopped. That I held back the pain for him for a moment and let him speak.

"Why the hell would I do that?" I spat at him.

"...said...so…"

"And what does that matter?"

He rolled onto his side and fixed me with one eye, bloodshot and streaked with blood. His other had been raked and had a clean line across it where the pupil had been slit in two. Yet somehow, through the pain and the blood, I knew he could still see me, as the eye focused slowly on my face.

"...s'...not...right…"

"Not right?" I laughed. "That's your best argument? It's wrong of me to kill her?"

"...you...said...ain't...just…"

I stopped laughing. And then, for good measure, I raked out his other eye, and let go of his ribs, letting him go back to suffocating on his own pain. "Not just? What the goddamn fuck do you know about justice? I AM JUSTICE," I screamed. "I learned all there was to know about justice by having my closest friend in the world stab me in the back. I came to you for help when I turned, and you said you'd give it to me. You said. And now you lecture me about doing the same to you? That's what justice is, friend. How bitter does it taste?"

He couldn't respond, only writhe and moan and gurgle out his gasps. But still he was defiant, and I wanted to end him on the spot, just to show him what his defiance was worth. I wanted him to suffer for eternity, or four years, or something poetic and fitting.

And instead, he was there, shuffling towards me. Blind. Crippled. Still defiant.

No, not towards me, I realized. Between me and her.

What the fuck.

"How can you possibly be so loyal?" I screamed. "How will you, even now, go to defend her? Where was this when I needed it, when I was afraid for my life? How can--"

And then I stopped, realizing. The white-hot rage inside me abated in an instant, suddenly ice-cold.

"You loved her," I said. "You always loved her. That's why you turned me in, to get rid of me, so you could have her."

He shook his head. "...no…" he gasped.

"You LIAR!" I screamed, throwing him back against the door, clear over Lisa's trembling head. "You've always been disgusting and jealous, always been a vile parasite, just waiting for what was mine! Well you can't have it. You get nothing. Justice will strip from you all that you've stolen in your disgusting life, and then your life itself. You will die with nothing but suffering. And you will suffer like nobody has before."

The ice cold hole in me solidified into hatred as I'd never known. A thousand torments flooded into my mind, each more painful than the last. I'd do them all. I'd make him live through every single one of them, until his body wasn't even suitable for feeling pain, until his mind was so broken he would welcome death.

Reality rippled as powers I didn't even know I had coalesced and found focus in the man in front of me. Time and space bent, reality shuddered, every single object in the room around us rose and turned to him and served me, prepared to do their damndest to make his suffering legendary.

And then I paused, because she was there. Lisa, taking her turn to defend him.

"Step aside. I have no intention of killing you," I told her.

"No."

"It would be effortless."

"I know."

"So move, girl."

"I won't."

I sighed enormously. "Why not? Is this some other appeal to a justice that you parasites are incapable of understanding? An impassioned plea for love or mercy?"

"No. I know you don't have love or mercy anymore." There was a soft thunk as what was left of Hunter fell out of her hands. "But you're wrong."

"About what?" I scoffed.

"He didn't...do what you think. He didn't turn you in."

I looked at her, at the pathetic fear in her face, and at the millions of shards of the universe arrayed around us like knives.

"He did, though," I said. "Nobody else knew."

"I knew," she whispered.

He gurgled something and clutched at her heel. She gave me one final glance before crouching down and murmuring softly to him. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Eric. I was scared."

They said nothing resembling a conversation, muttering and whimpering to one another, but I heard little of it. Her words were still echoing in my ears, words too simple to avoid understanding, but at the same time, completely beyond my comprehension.

And so the three of us remained for many long minutes, the sound of whimpering and wheezing breath all that broke the silence. Until finally, I turned and looked at her.

And she was still beautiful. I truly didn't understand.

"Why?" I asked.

She pointed at Eric, and for a moment I thought it was she who'd found motive for them to cheat on me, but then she pointed at the nearest daggers of crystalized air, at the tears in reality, at the distortion which tore the house's room sideways, and finally at Hunter.

"This," she said. "I saw this."

"You saw I had powers?" I scoffed at her. "Like every other goddamn Exhuman story--"

"I saw cruelty. I didn't like who you were becoming. I was afraid."

I digested her words for half a moment, and decided I didn't like them. After all I'd endured, everything that'd happened to me, it was all because she'd just arbitrarily made some goddamned judgement call that I was simply bad somehow?

The thought disgusted me. But at least I had my answer. I lashed out with all of my powers, imploding the room through her and into him in a death so final and absolute that it penetrated several universes.

And then I left, her words still echoing in my head as I fled for my haven over the ocean.