I couldn't believe what I was seeing, what I was hearing. I didn't understand.

How could this happen? How could the reporter on the holo flickering in front of me speak with such relative indifference? Her words were apologetic: 'This is obviously a great national tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been hurt or affected by this terrible, terrible event.'

But her voice was the same even, inflective tone that all reporters used. I wanted to cry, wanted to scream, and the fact that for most in the nation, the way they would hear about this was through the even timbre of a disaffected reporter...I wanted so badly to reach through the holo and grab her and shake her. I wanted to stroll with her through the destroyed streets of Atlanta and let her see and smell the fires, the blood, the cracked sewage, the carcinogenic clouds of cement which even now, stymied rescue workers.

I saw no reason or way that anyone could or should be calm about this. Which was not, I realized, an ideal position for the director of the XPCA to hold.

"Are you...you okay?" AEGIS asked, her eyes shining with concern. But it was concern for me, not for the hundreds of thousands who'd just been wiped out. Somehow that was even worse.

I just shook my head in answer. How would I be okay? How would any sane man in my position be okay. I felt like the fact that she'd expected me to even answer that question was an affront to the dead. Nobody should be okay right now.

Some of this was probably due to the drugs. I'd only just come out of a regenerator again, and hadn't had any time to recuperate before AEGIS had whisked me over to fill me in on what happened...and what was still happening. My hand felt twitchy where it had regrown, like the skin on it was too hot, and I wondered if that was just in my head on account of yet another traumatic brush with Soran's ice.

Karu was still mending. AEGIS had spent some time putting herself together, though there was a discolored patch on her neck where her synthetic skin hadn't quite set yet. Lia was here.

As was TARGA. Hunched-over and beetle-like, she glowered at me as AEGIS pawed at me soothingly. Despite how much XPCA stuff she was doing, it seemed she still had the bandwidth to give me the stink-eye.

And some words, apparently. "Doesn't it hurt when you do that?" she asked, her voice oddly sweet.

I just shook my head again and flexed my hand a few more times. "No."

"No, not that. Exist. If I were you, I'd have been happy for an opportunity to end it."

"Not really the time," AEGIS cut in, and I agreed. "What's Justice's current position?"

TARGA perked up at once. "Nearly halfway to Birmingham, Darling. He'll be there in... five minutes, given current route and velocity."

I swore, and stood up, feeling the tranquilizers rise up with me and felt like the world was spinning under my feet for a second. Maybe more than a second, because next thing I knew, I was seated again without remembering doing so. AEGIS was fretting over me.

"Athan, you're in no condition to be getting up and doing any heroics. I know that's what you want. But I brought you here because there's a different capacity we need to fulfill, and that's as acting directors of the XPCA. This agency needs you now more than ever."

"To do what?" I scoffed. "To send everyone we have to their deaths? Just what the hell are we supposed to do?"

The door opened and I looked up to find Lia, who seemed as pissed as I felt, her shoulders tense and hunched, and giving her a much more solid profile than her typical bouncy-flowy one.

"We do everything we can," she sniped, and I could hear just how bitter she was. "Everything. Anything. We're the freaking XPCA now."

"Yes, but what is everything, anything? What the fuck can we do against an Exhuman who can just destroy an entire city like that?"

She threw herself into a chair beside me and glared at me with vitriol. "Evac, anyone we can. Waste Justice's time with distractions. Sacrifice a dozen people to save a hundred. Do the same things the XPCA has always done, but for real this time, with everything on the line."

"What good will it do?" I asked. "If we can't stop him, he'll just go to every city in America, one after another, until there's literally nothing left. Probably beyond America, probably the whole world. This is the fucking end of everything."

"And it's all your fault," TARGA said, almost cheerily. The three of us turned to stare at her. "What? He had a completely different MO until you informed him that he was breaking the world order and gave him this great idea to make it deliberate. In violation of very nearly every single XPCA operations doctrine. So thanks for that. Maybe read the manual next time."

"That doesn't matter," AEGIS clarified. But just the fact that she wasn't arguing informed me that she agreed. Because, of course she would. TARGA might be a bitch and a blowhard, but she still had AEGIS' intelligence under all that, and no desire to coddle me.

"It does matter," I said. "She's right. I fucked all of us."

AEGIS frowned at me. "Athan, no--"

"No, I did! I'm a fucking idiot. I should have listened to Cosette and just tried to take him out when he was distracted. I should have done what any XPCA would have done and ended the threat...or at least tried. Instead, I have this stupid fucking delusion that talking to people and being open with your needs and perspectives can somehow fucking help, when it doesn't. All it does is bring about this fucking apocalypse. The XPCA's been keeping the world intact for hundreds of years by clamping down on Exhumans and treating us like shit, and now I finally get it. Now I know why we have to be so cruel, because if we aren't--" I waved my hands at the holo, without words to describe more.

There was metallic, sarcastic clapping from the other side of the room. "Wow, very good introspection," TARGA said. "I'm so impressed, I'm bumping you up to second-stupidest person in the world."

"I get it, you hate me, you can shut the fuck up about it now," I told her.

"Oh I wouldn't say that. I would never say that. To your face."

"Enough," AEGIS barked, glaring daggers at TARGA.

"Yeah, don't you have cycles to run or something?" Lia shouted. "Of the people in this room, you're the only one who can actually be doing something of use right now, so why don't you do that instead of picking on my brother?"

TARGA scoffed. "As though it takes any capacity at all to point out the blindingly obvious truth. And don't you dare question my dedication. I am committed to my duty as you could never understand. I am--"

"I said enough," AEGIS barked, and this time TARGA did shut up. "What's the ETA?"

"Two minutes until downtown. He's passing over the outskirts now."

I felt like I could do literally nothing but stare at the holo. Obviously I couldn't fight him, he was too strong. But here I was, unable to even stand without passing out. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, couldn't think of any orders to be given which TARGA wasn't already enacting. I was just useless, at a time when the world needed help more than ever, I was nothing.

TARGA helpfully put a countdown projection in the corner of our displays, so I had something else to stare at and feel helpless about. The consistent inevitability of the timer seemed almost too appropriate.

It hit a minute and a half and Justice hit the edge of downtown, the sea of one- and two-story buildings under him suddenly surging around him, as though the city were being pulled upwards at his approach.

At a minute, he crossed the first skyscraper, indifferent as his sphere of antimatter destruction just bored clean through it. In the streets below, I could see police still trying to usher people away. We had so much less time here than with Atlanta, evacuation looked like more of a panic, and the streets were clogged with cars and people fleeing between them.

Thirty seconds. Midday on a Thursday, offices full of people at work. How many of them had been watching, horrified as Atlanta was burned to rubble? How many could have expected that he'd turn on them the second he was done? Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the XPCA.

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At fifteen seconds, AEGIS turned to me and frowned. "The President is on the line. He's demanding an explanation, and threatening us to resign."

"Where the heck was he the last half hour?" Lia asked.

"Boarding Air Force One. He was--"

She stopped as the timer hit zero. And so did Justice, hovering silently over the panicked chaos a hundred feet below. Even from this distant feed, I could hear the terror intensify as he came to a halt.

Everyone knew what was coming. That didn't stop them from screaming their very loudest when it did.

He dipped lower, and as he did, the people around him held themselves and writhed, many falling off their feet to thrash on the roadways. Fire came first this time, and it was only moments before those he'd affected burst into pillars of conflagration, smoke pouring out of their eyes, their mouths lit from within at the fires burning deep inside them, their skin aglow. Many of them just ran, blindly, and served only to spread the flames.

One of the buildings nearest him shuddered, and then the ground beneath half of it just seized up and veritably vanished. The skyscraper seemed to hang over nothingness for longer than possible, before painfully, by inches, it tilted and swayed and began to bow. It picked up speed as it fell, whipping towards the ground, cracking apart into meteoric chunks to bombard the panicking masses below, before burying them all with a shuddering explosion that blanketed the entire city in grey haze.

It had only taken mere minutes, somehow both shorter and longer than I thought, before the city was indistinguishable from Atlanta. One by one, block by block, the blurry sphere which was Justice moved and systematically brought down the skyscrapers onto the burning cement fog below. All I could see was grey and ember, and him.

He paused above another cross-street, this one very close to the camera giving us our feed. When he brought down this section, I didn't know that we had any more cameras which weren't buried in debris. We were close enough that I could see each of his fingers, misshapen with the thick folds of dried blood, twitching as he worked his powers around him. I could see his face, impassive, uncaring...apparently deaf to the screams around him, blind to the carnage he was unleashing.

And then, still watching his face, I saw his eyes widen as he fell. I wouldn't have caught it if I hadn't been staring at the time, but it was there, for an instant. Nothing approaching human emotion, but like surprise.

All of us were completely surprised, Lia jumping to her feet, and TARGA freezing on the spot, her finger-drones halting entirely in the air.

"Did he just drop?" AEGIS asked.

"He didn't look like he did it on purpose," Lia confirmed. "What the heck happened?"

All we could see was they swirling grey, the thick clouds of dust which hung everywhere and drowned everything. Fruitlessly, I switched feeds, changing to anything in the general area, seeing nothing more than haunting shapes looming in the fog, and only darkness and fire beyond a few inches.

"Wait, go back!" AEGIS shouted, as I switched between two identical-looking feeds from exosuits stranded in the grey. I flipped backwards, channel by channel until she leaned close, breathing hard, not noticing as her hair cascaded over my lap.

"Listen!" she said, cranking the audio. All I could hear was distant fire, distant rumbling, the continuous sound of people screaming and coughing, so constant and oppressive.

But under that, I heard it, too.

"Someone's yelling," I said, and AEGIS nodded. "Someone's literally shouting at him."

AEGIS gave TARGA a glance, but she was already adjusting the audio, a weird look on her pixels :^ as she distorted the sound this way and that, trying to bring out the words.

And then, suddenly, she had it. And I was glad I wasn't standing, because I'd have fallen over.

"You like that, you bullying fuck? You want to spread pain and misery? You wanna take kids away from their mothers? Fuck you."

It was Trish's voice. Muffled, as though she were speaking through something, although that could have just been the audio quality. And as clearly as I heard it, still, I didn't fucking understand. That was not a voice, or words that should have been coming from that cloud of death. Justice was an unstoppable nightmare, destroying entire cities in minutes.

And yet, somehow, there she was.

AEGIS leaned further over me and began flipping through feeds while keeping the audio going. Trish didn't say much more, just surreal grunts of exertion, echoing in the grey, that made me feel voyeuristic to hear.

And then AEGIS finished, having brought up the vid from right before Justice plummeted into the fog. She was playing it back, at maybe a tenth speed, looping the part where he suddenly dropped, the look of restrained surprise obvious. And almost comical.

I still saw nothing of note. Just masses of grey and black, but mostly his face. It was hard to look at anything but his eyes.

"There," she said, pausing it. An instant before he fell. It looked like Justice hovering over grey billowing clouds, with corners of buildings, still standing, looming in the background.

It wasn't until she pointed at the still, tracing...not exactly something, but more...nothing protruding from the darkness.

No, I realized, it wasn't protruding from the darkness, it was the darkness itself protruding. A lance, made of shadows, almost invisible against the grey turbulent mass.

"Her shadows," I remembered. "They sorta turn off your powers when they hit them. They make you forget for moments at a time."

"He's got telekinesis," Lia nodded. "Which is what he uses to fly, and must be what that whole sphere of death around him thing is. It's just tearing up anything that flies in range. But then the shadow hits it…"

"And suddenly he can't fly," I realized. "She hits him, and both his shield and his maneuverability are gone."

The sounds of Trish grunting and straining were suddenly punctuated with a sharp gasp that set my hair on end, and then her seething breath as she staggered somewhere in the cloud.

"TARGA!" I spun to face her. "Dedicate all resources in the area to getting her out of there!"

She stared at me. "But...she's an Exhuman."

"Did I fucking stutter?" I shouted.

"There are...civilian lives...that could be saved...and you would have me abandon them...to save one Exhuman?" She turned her pixels, somehow pleading, towards AEGIS.

"Do you have problems with taking orders from a superior?" AEGIS barked. TARGA seemed to make a whimpering noise, but my holo lit up with thousands of new orders being issued, as the area we were watching up suddenly lit up with waypoints and other digital overlays.

"This goes against all XPCA directives," TARGA insisted. "The preservation of civilian lives is paramount. I will be reporting this to the President himself, whom, I might remind you, is on the damn phone waiting for you."

I picked up the line, and after waiting a moment, the phone in my hand, not yet to my ear, realized I should pass it to Lia. She gave me an apologetic half-smile, which struck me as bizarre and backwards, since it should have been me apologizing to her. But she said nothing to me, just took the phone and started pacing as she introduced herself.

Me, I didn't hear her. I was fixated on the dots on the map, sluggishly moving around as though lost ants, some of them making it towards the waypoints, but most either staying where they were, or obviously ignoring orders to stay with the civilians. I couldn't blame them, but at the same time, I knew that Trish was more important. Those people's lives were present, important...and who'd want to leave them to charge directly into the mayhem? To go right where Justice was?

But someone had to, because from the sounds of it, Trish was getting flayed now. She wasn't the point of screaming or crying out, but her breathing had gone shallow, her gasps were pained. It sounded like she was bracing and wincing against every movement she made.

Still, every once in a while, she'd mutter something. "Fuck you" was the most common. But she would make other references. Usually about murdered children and broken families, and as much as I wanted to hear, I wished I didn't.

Lia was pacing and anxious. From the amount she was listening instead of speaking, and how every word out of her mouth seemed like a protest, it was obvious she was getting reamed.

And I just sat here feeling useless as before. It almost felt like nothing had changed, except that my anxiety was over a woman now, instead of a city.

Except that wasn't quite right. Something was different, and it wasn't until I heard Trish whispering to herself that I realized.

"Even...if it's not me," she panted "Someone...sometime...is gonna...put you down. You can't...beat...the whole...fuckin' world…"

It was hope. It was proof that, when I'd said that Justice was unstoppable, inevitable, I was wrong. He could be made to bleed, by the hands of special, incredible people like Trish, who had the power and the will to throw themselves at him, at certain death, because fuck him.

And if those people did, if they could, then death wasn't so certain after all. She'd been fighting him for most of two minutes now, and that was two minutes of the city evacuating, of buildings still standing. Of hope.

There was a crunching noise and finally she screamed. Her breath only came halfway out before she was choking, the shrill in her voice cut short. Lia froze in her pacing to look at me with wide, fear-filled eyes, and it was all I could do to stare at the holo and the grey billowing void.

"F-fff-fuck...you..."

Suddenly the fog turned turbulent, as though being torn in half, as though water, being parted, splashing against the buildings. In the feed, I heard a familiar noise, turbofans screaming, but not the engines of a standard XPCA VTOL. These were higher, quieter, but echoing through the trench of the city streets.

It was a Sirius-class VTOL, smaller and faster, which had braved the hazard to respond to TARGA's order. I heard the vague, high-pitched vrrrr of exosuits rappelling, the solid clunk clunk of metal boots slamming against pavement. And then the familiar sound of gunfire, XPCA assault rifles, not even exotics, as they moved under their own covering fire, spreading out to maximize control and minimize collateral.

And then, half-breathless, I heard an angel. It was nothing like an angel's voice, spoken in Tem's warbling half-shushed tones, but with Moon's precise enunciation.

"Exhuman Trish," she said. "We are here to rescue you."

"Not...until…"

"Rescue is non-negotiable. Please do not attempt to resist until the operation is complete. Thank you for your compliance."