"Athan, I think we should leave," AEGIS said.

It wasn't what I was expecting to hear. From the look of the situation, it was her, Tem, and myself against one older dude with a pistol. From how he had glanced at us, how he moved, his uniform, I knew he was trained XPCA. But I also saw he was scared, and knew who we were.

Behind me, the blue egg shimmered silently as though beckoning. It would only stay open for a few seconds more, tops.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because that's Director Hall of the XPCA. We don't want to be here."

I gave it a moment's thought. And then took a deep breath and let it go.

And with it, the portal disappeared like it had never been.

There had never really been a decision to make here, in my mind. Aesa had done as she'd promised and dropped us off close to Karu. Even with the world against us, even here in...whatever shiny metal examination room we currently inhabited...if it meant fighting for my friends or not, I knew which I'd choose.

But the fact this was Director Hall made things a lot more interesting. Potentially great news. I stared at him evenly.

"Hi," I said.

He shot me in response, because that's how XPCA said hello. I didn't take it personally. Instead, I took the time to send my blades through the locks and cameras, ensuring we had a nice private chat which wouldn't be interrupted.

"Won't matter," AEGIS said, taking shelter from the gunfire behind me. "The doors can't be disabled that easily, and the cameras aren't monitored. They're just for incident surveillance."

"What's that mean?"

She gave a little shrug. "Means when they take apart Exhuman stuff down here...or Exhumans...sometimes things don't go well. And they want footage of it for research."

"How do you know what?" Hall barked at us. "Extracts labs protocols are top-secret."

AEGIS just gave him an enormous grin, which only magnified as the director emptied his mag into my shield and paused to reload.

"Director, I want to tell you that we're not your enemies here," I said.

"Bull," he replied, with a fresh round of bullets to slap against my shield. I shook my head.

"Look, I just wanna talk to you. If you could stop shooting--"

"Talk? You should be more concerned for your own well-being, Exhuman. When reinforcements arrive, you've nowhere to go."

AEGIS stroked her chin thoughtfully as I deferred to her. "Hmm, true and false. We do have nowhere to go, but reinforcements are unlikely. In order to elevate an alert in this sector, I'm pretty sure a state of emergency has to be established in order to override security clearances. That'd mean...you need two active authenticators?"

He gaped at her, and even though she'd just been saying we should leave, I wasn't sure I'd ever seen her quite so cocky and gloating as now. She pushed her glasses up for effect as she finished.

"And I'm fairly certain the guy we just spaced was the chief head of research. Meaning the rest of the authenticating staff are all upstairs, far upstairs. And that's in the unlikely event you can get to an alarm."

She shrugged for maximum effect, as though saying who doesn't know this stuff?

"But we're not here to gloat," I said, eliciting a frown from AEGIS. "We only came here to pick up Karu--"

"Over my dead body," he growled. Marvelous, gravelly speaking voice, really a grade-A pick for director, I thought, especially given the last couple of turds.

"Well, I'd rather not that. Because as I said, we're not your enemies here. We just want to be left alone...in fact, we've been actively working for the XPCA's interests…"

He didn't even argue this time, just shot my shield right in front of my face. I frowned at him.

Not that I was surprised, exactly. This guy, or someone else up there had declared us public enemy number one, even above Justice. Probably the only reason he'd even pretend to hear us out was to avoid death, and that was only if he was a coward.

Which, to this guy's credit, he didn't seem to be. Probably knew he was screwed as soon as his sidearm did nothing to me, but he wasn't about to let that change anything.

"Okay...AEGIS, change of tack. Can you relate what we've been doing the last few weeks?"

"Sure," she said, turning to face Hall. "June second, two-fifty-four PM. Interceded in unfolding Exhuman event in Bartlett, Texas. Two casualties, maybe fifty in damages. Exhuman was subdued and left for authorities. June fourth, eight-oh-two AM. Dissuaded a potential Exhuman threat from rising up by exerting diplomatic means. Zero casualties or damages. June fifth, one-oh-one PM, crisis management, evacuated a plaza minutes before an Exhuman targeted it for an attack. Twenty-two casualties, maybe three mil in damages. Engaged the Exhuman, but were driven off after nine minutes of conflict by XPCA intervention."

She began to start on the next item but I jumped in. "Do you see? What we're doing?"

Hall stayed resolutely shut, so I spelled it out for him.

"We're helping. As best we're able. Everyone thinks the P-Force went bad or some shit, but it was you guys who turned on us. When the XPCA started taking bribes and diverting resources because an international assassin told them to. Or hell -- when a civilian senator did, that was the corruption we pointed out, and then fought against. And for doing that, everything went to shit."

"Say I believe you," Hall barked, suddenly. "Say I did. What the hell difference do you think that'd make? You think anyone, me included, is just going to wave my hands and accept your apology? You're an Exhuman, and to most people, that means you're a corpse that doesn't know it yet."

I grit my teeth. "Short-sighted as that may sound, I trust that the Director of an esteemed agency like the XPCA would be more capable of understanding nuance than 'most people'. Your problem, as you see it, is us running around stirring up trouble. And I'm telling you that if you just look at it from an angle of what troubles we were preventing--"

"If you look at any problem from enough angles you can see why it happened. That doesn't make it any less of a problem. I say, the only good Exhuman is a dead Exhuman. And that goes double for you."

"With all due respect--"

"I don't want your respect," he said. "I want nothing from you but a corpse. And maybe you'll kill me. Maybe you'll whisk away like you got here, get away with it for a time."

He saw the glance AEGIS and I shared and sneered.

"Or maybe you'll die trying to break your way through the heart of the XPCA. Even you can't kill your way out of this one. Which tells me why you're so interested in talking your way out. You think if you can just get Director Hall on your side for one minute--"

"No!" I shouted at him. "Seriously, dude. AEGIS, tell him more of what we've done…"

"The XPCA's got its share of troubles, that I'll admit," he scoffed. "Too many young men with ideas bigger than their britches. But you've never faced a man like me before, and that's why you're going to fail. Because unlike them, I serve something greater than myself."

AEGIS put her hand on her hip and jeered. "And that's supposed to, what? Make us feel insignificant or something?"

"No," his moustache bristled. "It means, I don't mind dying an inglorious death down here if it means taking you all down. It means, all I have to do is refuse your offers, and you two are bones."

A hint of a grin slipped through his gruff demeanor, and he punctuated his sentence with another bang, stunning me for an instant.

Though it wasn't the bang that did it, but his words. What the fuck was this stubborn old geezer on about? Thinking himself some kind of noble martyr because he'd die while canning us? That didn't help anyone, that was just...toxic stubbornness. It was the worst possible outcome for everyone involved, all because--

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I blinked.

Aw shit.

"What?" AEGIS asked me.

"Nothing. I think we just need a different tack again," I muttered.

My mind raced with my new context in place. Trying to avoid being pissed off, I instead tried to imagine myself in his shoes. If I were staring down this situation, what would I do? Or...more specifically, what could they do to convince me?

I spent a few minutes just standing there, staring at him, thinking. And in the end, came up with nothing at all.

"Jesus Christ, this is infuriating," I said aloud.

"Got your new plan?" she asked.

"No. I'm just realizing how hard it is to deal with some stubborn jackasses sometimes."

She gave me a sympathetic smile and a pat on the back, and Hall's sidearm clicked as the hammer dropped on an empty chamber. He fished around, but I was pretty sure he was out. Two magazines was pretty standard for officers off the field.

"Now that you've shot yourself out, maybe we can talk?" I suggested, pulling out one of the chairs. "Look, all we want is Karu, and to help you…"

I trailed off as he came around the table, and then picked up the gun at his end of it.

Karu's gun. An Ennervator. An electricity nullifier.

I threw a handful of lightning at him, swearing that I hadn't walked over there and kicked it away from him the second I entered the room. But with a faint click and what felt like a dip in the floor, they winked out of existence, along with my blades.

AEGIS didn't say or do a thing, she just crumpled, her eyes wide like a corpse, Saga landing at her feet. It reminded me of Alyssa, too much, and I felt my pulse slamming inside my ears.

"Tem! Handle him!" I screamed, my hands clawing towards AEGIS. I couldn't even move towards her, I fell over, my exoframe completely locked up.

The room turned white, but only for an instant. The dark metal walls somehow seemed to drink up the light, and I saw Tem standing there, visibly confused beneath her invisibility, her hands outstretched but no laser forthcoming. She'd shot something, and it had scorched the table, but it wasn't the eruption of destruction either of us had expected.

I disengaged my legs and pulled free, crawling towards AEGIS' body as more half-aborted lasers flashed. She was, at once, on her face and her knees, her arms splayed wide in an unnatural, painful position that I couldn't associate with the living.

But it's only AEGIS. It's okay.

I kept telling myself that, but that didn't make seeing her there, her copper hair sprawled under her like a pool of blood any less heart-stopping. She had the stillness of death. I couldn't breathe.

A gunshot rang out, and Tem whimpered, red flecks materializing from nothingness to splatter next to me. She fell to one knee, panting, holding her arm, both confused and frustrated at the situation. Her return volley sent Hall ducking beneath his end of the table.

"You okay?" I shouted at her. It'd been fucking moronic to assume he only had two magazines. He'd even fucking spelled it out for me that he wasn't like other XPCA brass, and what? I just jump to some assumption and hope nobody gets shot? Stupid fucking idiot.

"I am...am okay," she said, wincing and glancing too much at the blood seeping from her arm. I scrambled to AEGIS and tried not to think about her as I rummaged the pack she kept at the small of her back. It was organized to a fault, and took me no time at all to pop out the medical gel and spray Tem down with it.

When I finished, it seemed very important to put it precisely back, same location, same facing, everything. When she came back, and her pack couldn't be in disarray. It was a stupid waste of time while Tem was dodging bullets, but my mind was still blank at seeing AEGIS shut down as she was. After a moment, I sprawled her out, finding her enormously heavy, but still managing to get her prone. Less like a corpse, more like sleeping.

Not that she did that, either. It was still unnerving. I felt an enormous urge to just fucking run. Some kind of human aversion to death, magnified by it being AEGIS' face, or by seeing Alyssa's face no matter how much it wasn't.

I forced a scream instead, propelling myself forward. I worked that panic into adrenaline into aggression. Blades popped out of the air all around me as I skirted the table.

They vanished as Hall waved the gun across me, and then my charge ended abruptly as I was thrown backwards, feeling like I'd been punched in the shoulder, as another bang echoed in the long room.

I was prone now, a few feet from AEGIS, and stunned. My shoulder felt wrong. Felt tense in a way I hadn't felt before. Hot, almost like, burning. And no wonder, as I touched it, it was covered in blood which was searing to the touch.

Shit, that's my blood.

I tried to conjure more swords, but they wouldn't come. Hall had popped around the side of the table to get an angle on me without exposing himself to Tem, and it was all I could do to throw myself back towards cover, as his shots hit and ricocheted seemingly all around me, way closer than my shield ever permitted.

Suddenly this room seemed a lot more dangerous. It felt a lot more like a tomb in here than the lab it was, or the meeting place I'd fancied. I was beginning to hyperventilate, and my arm was beginning to register the pain of getting shot.

Belatedly, my swords popped out, once I was behind cover. But I hardly saw them, as we were all deafened by a monstrous crack-BOOM and a flash of light almost as bright as Tem's. I couldn't make out what was going on except a huge electrical surge.

Once my eyes cleared, I saw the door had been blasted open. I'd panicked, I realized. I'd thought of the room as confining, and my shield had lashed out. This was why I needed to be in control of myself and my powers at all times.

Peering in through the blasted-out door was a pair of XPCA in exosuits, protected from the blast and its debilitation. They looked in on us as though curious.

"Get help!" Hall shouted at them, waving for them to run from over the table. "Call reinforcements!"

Fuck. THAT was why I needed to be in control of myself and my powers. I tried to cut them before they could get away, but only nicked one before Hall Ennervator'd me again.

So my shield was down when the hail of gunfire came in from outside as well. Fortunately he didn't have a good angle through the wreckage of the door, but I still got hit in the side of the foot I had hanging out, never quite appreciating until now how good those exosuits' targeting and accuracy really were.

I swore and clambered for under the table. Solid metal, it might help some, but if that exosuit outside got an angle, I was fucked. If Hall got an angle, I was fucked. I needed my powers back up, needed Hall distracted, needed to cut off the fleeing guard before we were well and truly drowning in soldiers, needed…

I looked around. I needed a hell of a lot. I couldn't give chase without my legs, and they were basically useless as long as he had that gun. I couldn't go after him without opening myself up to the doorway, and couldn't go after the doorway without having my powers ripped off.

"Tem, invisible me!" I shouted, and she did. That at least bought me a few moments, since standard exosuits didn't see into thermal. But he had a lot more bullets than I had space to hide. From the clomping, crushing footsteps, he was closing on the door, and once he took up position there, he could shoot anywhere in the room.

Anywhere except the end of the table where Hall was hiding. Fuck me.

I couldn't hide from both at once. There was just no cover here. There was just the table and AEGIS prone and Tem standing there and Saga crumpled…

Saga.

Tem was doing her best. The lasers weren't working, but she was working on coercing lights into solids, and if I could buy her a few more minutes, we might hold out. Hold out until reinforcements came and completely dicked us, but that was another concern. I just needed to keep us alive until then, for now.

I used my new invisibility to pick up the nearest scraps of Karu's armor from the table, heavy shoulder-guards and plates for the upper arms. I pulled them on as quickly as I could, feeling like anything was better than getting more shot. My shoulder screamed at me as I tightened the strap down on it, and I saw spots flashing before my eyes as the pain of it threatened to black me out.

Also, I now looked like a pair of floating shoulders, because Tem hadn't invisibled them, too. I couldn't quite find the words to scream at her before I was getting shot at again.

I dove, shoving off with my one good leg and grabbing two handfuls of flesh to pull over me. Saga's flesh, and probably not the handfuls she would have wanted me to grab. She was scrawny, narrower than me by a lot, but I had the arm guards on now, and also was down a leg which needed cover. Holding her in front of me and hearing the bullets slam into her back made me feel sick, especially when her thick blood began to pool on my other leg.

But she was an effective enough barricade for the moment. Some bullets were passing all the way through her, but I seemed to be hard to gauge quite right, being invisible behind her, too, and they mostly missed. Mostly.

I looked into her dull face, wincing involuntarily as shots slammed into her back and then relaxing as she reset. I offered her a lame apology for using her in the most undignified way possible...though that was probably hyperbole considering some of the ways she used herself for the fun of it.

There was a moment's pause where nobody was shooting me. Probably trying to figure out where I'd gone or if I was dead. I heard the other exosuit still clomping away, still going for backup or whatever. I hoped he wasn't allowed to be on general comms while down here, or we were already fucked...but the fact he was leaving instead of shooting had some promise.

But the fact was, this was a losing situation. Without my powers, I was completely nothing. I couldn't swing a sword, I couldn't even walk. AEGIS was just...there, face-down. As defeated looking as I felt like I might be in a moment. Tem was working frantically, trying to do everything, and not the least of which was sheer panic at seeing me bleeding my own blood in front of her, when she really needed to focus.

But who the hell was I to criticize? I'd made too many bad decisions here too. AEGIS was right that we should have just left. But the opportunity to talk with the head of the XPCA...he was right there, alone! It'd been...had been…

Had been about as successful as talking to Justice. Just another hostile force that didn't want to hear anything I had to say. Just another enemy.

Why, though? Why did we all have to be enemies?

I just didn't get it. We could all want the same fucking things, but because they were different than us, it just wouldn't ever happen? What the fuck was that? That was bullshit. Just absolute, straight-up bullshit. Dogshit on a plate of guano with a heaping of crap.

Saga snorted in her sleep at the thought and I froze, hesitating for just an instant at how I was still holding her. But that didn't matter. Somehow, my invective soliloquy had gotten through to her. She was in there, listening, somehow. On some level.

I had put off trying to go into her mind because of the threat present, and that I should go after Karu first. Well, we'd now seen how that had gone. Perhaps diving into another's demented consciousness in the middle of a firefight wasn't the brightest idea.

But fuck, I'd had it with my own bright ideas for the day. It was time to do something enormously stupid.

I shut my eyes and opened my mind, my body sagging under Saga's as we became one.