I wasn't sure what kind of sign it was that I was back in this little town. Given how Mage's powers worked, I guessed a bad one. But whether that was bad for me, or for Soran, that was anyone's guess at this point.

Nothing had been on my mind the entire second-half of the flight except that message. Cosette's words as she briefed us, Moon's quiet joudan, Tem rejoining my shadow, and Karu's enthusiastic greeting after we landed, none of it registered. My mind was definitely elsewhere, even as Karu criticized my current lack of awareness.

But she also didn't know Mage like I had. I wasn't sure anyone, except Saga, and maybe Lia really knew the extent of her powers, and what they did to a person. As far as she went, as far as Soran went, literally every possible thing was fucky until proven otherwise. And that letter was maybe the fuckiest thing I'd ever seen.

"Earth to Ashton? Please come in," Karu waved an armored hand in front of my face again.

"Huh?" I replied eloquently.

She shook her head. "If you are this spacey, the mission is aborted. I will not have my entrails extrailed because you were up too late pounding your robot girlfriend, as it were."

"Hey," AEGIS huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. "I'll have you know that I get him to bed early when--"

"AEGIS, please. Karu, I wasn't up late, I was just...trying to figure out something. About this op, in fact."

"Oh ho? Was briefing that interesting?"

Cosette strolled past. "No, he didn't hear a word of it. But he did get this."

She clapped the tablet to Karu's chest, which she began to read aloud.

Information-predicate. THE SORAN is beyond us. It is factual to conclude this missive may be the last control we exert on THE SORAN. There are too many, and we have been negligent in predicting their effect. We cannot see, and therefore cannot predict. As a result of our negligence, it is good-taste to offer a formal apology.

Formal-apology begins.

We have been negligent, and for this we apologize. All is now in peril.

Formal-apology concludes.

Virtuous-solicitation begins. Through the imperfect-sight, we have seen a potential. It exists at lower certainty than operation-threshold, yet remains best-option. Advice to THE ATHAN to hold concepts, listen to muse-song, and not to die. Pursue ??? through angle-gate via alzstraz-beta-compression and arrive at THE BEACON. Additional bindings may alleviate and/or compound danger-situation presented by THE LIEV. Further instructions to follow.

Virtuous-solicitation concludes.

And then the post-script, which made her cock a glance at me.

"This seems nonsense," she said. "This is what has your head on backwards, as it were?"

"I did read the PS first."

"As a matter of negative space and capitals drawing the eye, many do. It is a parlor trick. Misdirection used by charletains to convince fools of the gift of prophecy."

"I might be a fool, but this is for real. He's got Mage's power, and that provides some kind of future-sight thing. I've seen it in action myself, and so have you, the first time we ever fought Soran."

"She died, when we fought Soran," Karu chuckled. And our aim this day is to kill him. He has already proven it achievable, so all that remains is for us to execute."

"Look, I'm just trying to take this seriously. This was a letter written by...by Soran. Or by 'muses' and Soran, or...maybe that's just a fancy way to refer to someone, since it's how he...or they? Addressed me too…though I'm really more looking at the 'THE' in all caps for some reasons..."

Her blank stare made it very obvious that I was not selling her well on my point.

"...but anyway, the thing is...he sent it to me. Soran. To arrive at this time, on this day, before we fought him, through a system he shouldn't have been able to get into. Either it's true, sent by his powers-thing to warn me he's on the loose...or it's not, and he's using that power to get in my head and manipulate me to do exactly what he wants. I don't know which, but I do know he's a super dangerous Exhuman, so regardless of whether this letter is all nonsense or not, I want to take it as seriously as I can."

At that, her glare settled into satisfaction. Taking a threat seriously was something she could get behind. As she started to respond, Lia chimed in over comms.

"And by the way guys, I was just working with TARGA, and we found the place where he breached into XPCA missives to insert that weirdo letter. Looks like that's literally the only thing he did in the system. Didn't take any data or anything."

I could hear the disbelief in her voice and understood. If she'd gotten in, she'd have scraped everything. Lia loved data, especially shit like personal memos.

"Be that as it may," Karu continued. "The letter on its own merit is gobbledygook. If it serves a purpose, I suppose its purpose to confuse and disorient you on the eve of battle. There is a line to not die -- of all the garbage in this missive, I urge you to follow that precept and push the rest from your mind."

I nodded at her.

"Good." She smiled and straightened. "Then shall we hunt down this son-of-a-bitch?"

Cosette strolled up, answering for me with a clear voice that brought all the others in. "Let's get rolling, ladies. Everyone keep his known powers in mind. Especially the fire illusions. If you see fire, it's fake. Or Karu set something on fire. Uh. Maybe keep us in the loop if you use hellfire, Karu."

"I will refrain," she replied with a smirk. "I utilize it mostly in solo ops. Fire is as dangerous to an ally as a foe."

There were a few more minutes of preparation as Cosette worked with the other XPCA guys with us. Moon was riding with me today, though Tem was an option. Whom was just standing by the door, almost nervous or impatient looking. And not clinging to me, which was odd. AEGIS was doing leg stretches in a manner that seemed to always have her short dress riding up in my direction, and Karu finalized her system checks and brought her weapons to life.

"Ready?" AEGIS asked, too cheery for battle.

"For Soran? Never, probably. But we'll do it anyway."

She frowned. "That's kind of a terrible attitude to have right before you fight him."

I shook my head at her. "I told you before. With Mage's power, there's no way to avoid it. If I didn't want to come out here and fight today, instead he'd be like, showing up and fighting us somewhere else. Maybe even today, with whatever else we decided to do."

Cosette peered up from her computer. "If you have to flap your lips, you have time to walk. Roll out guys. Operation: start."

With that flaccid fart of fanfare, we sort of massed our way out of the drop zone and away from the VTOLs and computer setup, and headed into the center of town...if a town this small could be said to have a center. We strolled past the diner where I'd argued with Ajax and Celia, and headed in the direction of the Library, which had been converted into an XPCA field station.

From parts of the briefing I had heard, they'd finally moved out and just taken over the clothing store in question, building a nondescript base over the breach area, where bizarre murder-robots still probably popped up from time-to-time, following the path those two had taken into our world.

I was just about to ask AEGIS if she knew if anything had come from that, when she spoke up, apparently continuing our previous conversation.

"Except that letter seems to imply that Soran isn't in control of Mage's power anymore. If we assume that he didn't want to write you a letter...and let's face it, why would he want that? Then the one who penned it was his power, without his consent. Which makes sense, given how...moon-speak it is."

"I resent that terminology," Moon said from my shoulder. AEGIS rolled her eyes.

"Yeah. I was thinking the same. About sending the letter anyway."

"So then," AEGIS concluded "If the letter is true -- and that's a big if, I know -- but that means Soran doesn't have, can't use, or something's weird with Mage's power. And that means...well, it means you don't need to take this fight if you don't want to. But it also means, you may want to, because we could win at lot more handedly."

"It's true," Moon added. "If there is any chance of putting him in the ground, I would leap at it."

"Even without that, it's still dangerous," Lia warned. "He's not a weakling. He obliterated the strike and recon teams sent after him. And shadow ops."

I looked around and counted us. "We've got three Exhumans, Karu, and AEGIS. And he's got like, ten powers that we know of."

"It is not linear," Karu shook her head. "He is not the same strength as ten Exhumans, as there is still only one awareness behind them all. If I were to double my armaments, I would not become twice as mighty."

"But twice as versatile, yes," AEGIS said.

"Perhaps."

We cut chatter as the civic buildings came into view. City hall, pretty much the only concrete building here in this little wooden two-road town. The aforementioned library, further down. And closest to us, and our aim, the courthouse.

Stolen novel; please report.

It looked more like a big victorian house than a civic building, red brick with wood trim painted white, and a large spire that seemed out of place, like someone had put a clock face on a tumor.

But the most bizarre and definitely the most dangerous sign -- the sight which had made us all drop our conversation and come into focus on the situation -- was the trail of ice in the road. Like a sign saying Soran had come this way, with the trail ending ominously at the base of the courthouse steps.

"He came this way fast," Cosette reminded us. "We're still in the process of evac'ing civvies, and there's plenty still in the courthouse. Try to keep the fight contained, and try to get them out as soon as you can."

I picked up the pace, kicking off the ground to a superhuman jog. Karu's armor clattered as she kept up, and AEGIS of course was right beside me opposite her.

Uh, Tem would catch up, I guessed. Civilians were in danger.

We made it through one set of doors into a sort of hall. The door directly in front of us led into the single courtroom, and it was completely encased in ice. Without pausing, I raked at it with four blades, cutting a jagged X through the frost. And then I squared up for a kick, AEGIS imitating my movements perfectly as we lined up.

Our metal legs snapped out against the door, and it exploded into a storm of hail and splinters. People screamed from within, a dozen in the gallery and a dozen more in the juror's panel, with a few others scattered around.

One who did not scream, but simply turned to look, his eyes registering surprise, which I'd never seen there before, was Soran. He was standing over a pile of bodies, some of whom I saw were in police uniform, and one seemed to be the judge. He was holding another by the head, and I realized we'd caught him draining someone's powers.

Which explained why he was here. We didn't know there was another Exhuman on-site, but that wasn't important right now. What was important was kicking his ass.

Karu got off the first shot, jumping over a row of benches and unloading a rocket with a screeching roar that echoed too loud in the room, spacious as it was. I was running forward, aiming to crash right through the little wooden half-door and cut Soran to pieces myself, when I saw the rocket hit.

Felt it hit. The blast washed over me, sending me back half a step, and tumbling my exoframe's auto-gyros for a moment. But also the wet splash and smell of a body detonating.

If I hadn't been watching, I wouldn't have believed it. I saw it myself, Soran just standing there, looking surprised, as the rocket nailed him in the chest, and his body rupturing in the way they tend to do when hit with direct rocket-fire.

My charging stumble became a confused stroll as I peered into the smoke. That couldn't possibly be it. Without Mage's power, he wasn't that vulnerable...was he?

"Ashton!" Karu yelled. I moved on instinct, laterally. When one of those girls shouted, I moved.

And it fucking saved my life. Some whip of red liquid slashed at me from the smoke like a tentacle, missing me by inches. It looked like blood.

Which...moving sideways, and unloading into the middle of the room with swords and bulbs, I realized I didn't have blood on me, from the blast. I'd felt it, saw his gore explode across everything, blinked at it flying into my eyes...but looking now, it was nowhere. I was so confused.

AEGIS flew into the smoke, just a yellow blur. She could see in there better than I could. And again, I watched as Soran died, a spinning roundhouse kick sending him flying through the chaos towards me, where my blades caught him in the air.

But after he landed, he became nothing.

"Some kind of illusion!" I shouted.

"Not illusion, copies!" AEGIS shouted back.

But by now, the smoke had cleared enough for me to see for myself.

There were...dozens of him. Facing every direction, moving in an unorganized mass. Their faces flashing with different emotions. Triumph, pain, confusion. They moved apparently at random, passing through each other in a confusing mass. Some even seemed to have not seen us yet, still facing the body.

Right. The body.

I hacked my way through the crowd, finding them surprisingly easy to dispatch. They didn't react to me properly, most seemingly oblivious to the fact I was even attacking. Somehow, though, that made them even more dangerous: they seemed to act without intelligence, attacking at complete random, and more than once, I found my advance halted by the sudden emergence of a spear of ice thrust in my direction, that red tentacle whip, metal barbs slicing through the air, or the flash as he used Haley's power to hurl pieces of the courtroom at us at lightspeed.

But despite the chaos, the real one was easy enough to pick out. He was the one physically touching the body, draining himself a new power in the middle of the madness. Greedy.

I reached out to cut him apart, my blades punching through another four of his bodies on their approach. Before they reached him, I was blinded, falling backwards, as fire appeared in my face.

The fucking illusion. I let my fury burn me instead as I forced myself to walk through it, easier to do on mechanical legs than my original. But by the time I'd passed through, he was gone, the body left behind.

"Looking for me?" he whispered, from my side, and I turned to find one of the many of him facing me with a grin. Ice crept up my arm from where he touched me, the air impossibly cold, the hot humid day turning to antarctic winter in an instant.

Somehow, I could only watch. My mind just locked up at feeling the cold, at seeing my flesh freezing again. I found myself somewhere else, somewhere I'd been helpless, and I was helpless again. Screaming echoed in my mind, and I realized, remembered, it was mine from back then.

God, it'd been so long ago. I was so young and stupid then. I didn't even really know death. Soran had been my first, in that regard, taking Mage away from me. The ice rupturing out of her chest, her whimpering, pained, gurgling as she tried to breathe through broken lungs.

My skin seemed to freeze as I watched her die again. The air was so cold. I was going to shatter, feeling that numb burning...my own flesh peeling away, already frozen and dead like I was handling meat. My heavy breathing and whimpering as I clawed my own flesh away, seeing the bone.

I heard yelling in the distance. Cosette's voice, or AEGIS'. I shook my head and tried to listen. When they yelled like that, it was important. I was supposed to move. I just couldn't.

Vaguely, I saw the Soran in front of me swear and vanish into a crowd, as something yellow streaked past, delivering an upward kick that slammed the wrong one into the high ceiling. There were flames everywhere now, and I knew I should be able to feel them, but I was just so cold. I couldn't feel anything but cold.

I did feel a burn. And then another, as the tears in my eyes somehow became the only reason the room was swimming. My face hurt. And then I saw AEGIS slap me again.

"Ow fuck," I stammered, rubbing my stinging face. "That fucking hurt."

"You're with us?" she asked, her voice shaking with concern. She had to pause to lash out at another decoy which got too close. Even with dozens of them dying by the second, they seemed to be growing in number, not shrinking. Though I really couldn't tell through all the fire.

"I'm...I'm here, yeah," I said, shaking my head. I looked down at my arm, my forearm blistered and blackened in places, grotesquely. I shuddered, and felt faint, and AEGIS pushed my arm down and away.

"Don't think about it. Focus on the fight," she said, her eyes darting between mine, and the situation around us. "If you get cold...close your eyes. Focus on the...on your...power-sight. Block out the real world, okay?"

"AEGIS, what's wrong with me?"

"Not the best time to ask," she smiled, the moment interrupted by her needing to kick another Soran into the ground so hard he bounced. "Just a little unresolved trauma. But I'll be right next to you making sure--"

A red tendril whipped around her neck, and she clawed at it, her eyes going wide. Where she touched it, blood streaked across her fingers and face...but not hers, I realized. It was blood. It was thrashing, sharp somehow, shredding her synthetic skin and revealing the dull metal beneath. She couldn't pull it off, couldn't twist out of its grasp.

By instinct maybe, or just stupidly, I reached out to help, clawing at it with her. My fingers sunk into the mass, for maybe a second, before they...weren't.

This spray of blood hit me in the face and was decidedly not fake. My hand just detonated, like my bones were dynamite. My whole hand, right up to my forearm where he'd frozen me before.

I could do nothing but stare. There wasn't even any pain, just...it was gone. Everything in the vicinity was red. I was horrified.

But not half as horrified as when the fresh blood I'd just had thrown everywhere started to move. Started to crawl up me and AEGIS, started to bridge the gap between us, reaching out towards me, reaching out to touch more of my flesh.

AEGIS said to close my eyes if I were ever feeling cold. This wasn't cold, but I was still overwhelmed. At least with my eyes shut, I couldn't see her standing there, thrashing against the blood. Instead, she was like a goddess, the circuits and machines inside her, blinding to my sense. The rest of the room was filled with bodies, real, as she'd said before, at least a hundred.

And with the chaos of the fire and the reduction of people to just masses of nerves, I could see clearly for once. I could see the one off to the side, facing us, attached to the other end of the blood whip, the one pulling the blood from AEGIS and the ground, towards me.

With my other hand, I sunk my fingers into the blood again, and I saw him react instantly, perking up, maybe smiling, his frame triumphant.

He went from upright to screaming in an instant, as I sent lighting coursing down the channel of blood. The tendril burned off and splatter-evaporated before I could hurt him too badly, but I'd wounded him.

To my surprise, he screamed again, but not at me. Alarming enough that I opened my eyes to see.

"Let me fight him!"

"I am him," I shouted back, not quite caring that I didn't get his meaning.

But he'd made a mistake singling himself out. Karu and AEGIS descended as one on him. Walls of fire erupted everywhere, but they were pressing through. I joined them in closing in, but found a claw of metal slashing at me, as though wielded by an invisible foe. It had caught me out, focused across the room as I was, but Moon blasted it away with a magnetic burst that sent the whole room rattling.

"Damn this, my optics were not made for such chaos," Karu complained. "I can see nothing but alerts."

"I can't keep up either," AEGIS said. "There's too many. I'm...trying to...there's an algorithm in here somewhere about their density and the fact they're spawning from him, but I can't focus and fight at the same time!"

"I'll pull in TARGA," Cosette said. "Jesus, what a clusterfuck."

But there wasn't any need. The calvary had finally arrived. The room turned white, and a precisely-placed beam vaporized a few dozen of the copies, angling between all of us. I turned and saw Tem in the doorway, huffing and puffing, as more of the civilians ran past her towards safety.

"Group up, guys. Let's give her a clear shot and end this all at once," I ordered. Each of us shot backwards towards the door, and I saw a glimpse of terror on one of the many Sorans in the throng. When we were clear, I saw the hazy clouds of a laser forming in front of her.

And then, the room exploded. Rubble fell from the ceiling in a cascade, and a wall of dust swallowed us.

Which confused the crap out of me, because it was after that, when Tem's laser unleashed, the dust reflecting the blinding white, and turning the whole room into an impossible sunbeam. A sunbeam which roared like a bonfire I was standing in.

So it was several long seconds before I could even see or hear again. And maybe a minute before the dust had settled enough that I could make out the far end of the room. And when I did, I wished that I was blind and deaf again.

The ceiling had collapsed, not from the laser, or from anything Soran had done, but because it had been impacted by something from outside. Something which had punched straight through the thick masonry and landed inside with the rubble. Something which was now ominously floating in the middle of the room, taking us all in with mute, black, writhing eyes.

Silently, he floated to the edge of the debris, coming towards us, and reached a blood-blackened hand into the benches and pulled a person to their feet. A man in a suit, now grey with dust, like his hair, his skin. He was lifted into the air, only seeming to realize moments after he'd left the ground.

And then the thing spoke to him.

"Prosecutor. You have defiled the natural law. You have corrupted innocence. You are a perversion of order, and a parasite. I sentence you to death. I am Justice."

Justice's black hands plunged into the prosecutor's chest and ripped him open, blood running down his arms to coat them anew. The lawyer screamed and writhed. There was a sickening wet crack, and then the screaming stopped. His body hit the floor with solemn finality.

Then those disturbing, horrifying black eyes turned to face us. He stared at me with an intensity I couldn't comprehend, a glance that reminded me of some kind of madness I couldn't recall.

And then he began to move again.