The ground shook again under my feet, explosions ripping through the air around me, even here in the very center of our little fortified sliver of Vegas. And as the situation boiled out of my control and spiraled into what could only be described as a terrible plan, I was doing my best not to feel like Athan.

Because, dang, screwing up this badly and having everything go wrong was sorta his thing, not mine. I'd have been embarrassed, if it weren't quite so certain I was looking dead instead.

I remembered when I heard that Justice was headed for Vegas. It was funny, almost. Completely unexpected, to me.

Not that he was heading there. But my reaction. I was so mad. I was so...I don't know...irrational about it. Most of the world hears 'Las Vegas' and thinks of the strip or downtown, just lights and glamour, gambling and hookers.

But having lived there, for me, it felt like home. The strip wasn't even in Las Vegas, technically. Vegas was AEGIS' garage and Whitney's loft. Saga's tree and Athan's bedroom. The uh...bathtub, where I had my first...experience.

It was all gone now, the whole area around it was a huge scar still, as far as I knew. Utterly wrecked by the XPCA and by Tem and Moon holding them back. Hundreds of homes, gone in an evening. All the families and kids I ever saw when roving the neighborhood or catching the bus, displaced. They seemed like fine, ordinary people.

It made me feel sick. Made me feel guilty for existing, that somehow, the problems I had to deal with were more important than these peoples' lives.

It'd taken a fair bit of work, but that was one reason Black Shark had gone broke there leading up to Japan. All the money I could pull in, I was putting back into those people. I'd started and run a donation-relief foundation, and then funded it myself. Millions put back into those lives, the normalcy they deserved.

And now Justice was threatening to destroy it all over again. Not because of any threat or danger, just because he was a sick whackjob.

Well I was tired of it. This wasn't exactly how I'd planned things, but one and one sorta fell together and became two, when I worked to get my nationalistic Exhuman army, and heard he was coming here. Seemed as good a place to make a stand as any.

And then the XPCA showed up demanding to be destroyed. And now Khol.

I'd turned to him out of necessity. I needed a body double who was convincingly large and male to play Vox Humanus in person. Knowing he was sharp, and that I'd spring him from the holding cells where he was still serving the charges I'd pinned on him, I figured he'd make the perfect proxy.

The problem was, he wasn't under my thumb anymore. I tugged uneasily at strands of my hair as I waited.

"Vox will see you now," an Exhuman announced, and I bounced off my heels to get through the door.

And there he sat, as regal and imposing as we could set up given the situation. These Exhumans were here, mostly out of faith in themselves, a spike in nationalistic patriotism I'd injected them with...but he was still the figurehead of it all. He had to look the part.

"What the hell, dude," I shouted at him, as soon as the door was closed. "What the heck is with you making me wait?"

He pulled the mask off, sweating in the cloud of steam we had for his imposing appearance. "Sorry, 'Shark, I had other things to take care of."

"More important than the army beating down on us? Or the flying dude coming to fight?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "No. But you are neither of those things. You're pretty quick to complain, after dumping all the responsibility on me, by the way."

"Well it's apparently the only thing being done quickly around here. I just saw a handful of psychos on the eastern flank gleefully bombarding the XPCA's lines again. I thought you made clear that we're trying to reduce casualties."

"Hey, I've told them," he shouted, standing. "But if they want to take out some of their struggles on -- oh, I don't know -- an army trying to kill them, I say let them have at it. These people have suffered XPCA oppression long enough, I'm not going to demand they die to spare them."

"They were laughing as they shelled the ranks with exploding gemstones, Khol. It wasn't self-defense, it was sadism."

"Again, the XPCA deserves it. Now was that it? You just came here to complain?"

"I came here to tell you to get your act together. This kind of behavior is infectious. If you permit it to go unchecked, soon the whole group will be lashing out. Then they'll be chasing down the remnants, and this whole bastion of solidarity thing we've got going on? Gone. We'll lose half of everyone, and the rest will be standing here, feeling like morons for holding the line, and double-morons for trying to fight Justice when everyone else pisses off."

"Because of a couple idiots, throwing rocks?"

I sighed at him. "Yes. People's beliefs are a fragile thing. Justice -- the concept, not the guy -- is a big thing in hearts and minds. If others see wrongdoing go uncorrected, unpunished, it erodes their own morals, makes them feel stupid for not joining in."

He sighed back at me, but donned his mask before pressing a button. "Nex, bring a few men to the east flank, I've heard there's some kids out there throwing rocks at cars."

He glowered at me from behind the mask while Nex confirmed, and then cut the comms. "Happy now?"

"Always. But yes, that helps. Thank you."

He pulled the mask off again, wiping sweat on his face. "I'm still waiting to hear your plan, Ms. Shark. We've got the XPCA beating down our periphery and a couple hours before the big bad man shows up overhead, and you haven't told me or the others anything."

"I'm...still working on the details," I lied.

"Uh, huh." He glowered at me. "You know, I'm not stupid."

"I never said you were. I wouldn't have recruited you if I didn't think you were capable. You don't see Argus wearing the mask, do you?"

He didn't even crack a smile. "You keeping me in the dark on the plans really can only mean one thing. That I need to be ignorant of the plan for it to work the way you want. And y'know, that's really got me questioning if that's a plan I want to see succeed."

"Khol, what the hell? We can't start fighting now."

"Or else, what? You'll lose your pawn to sacrifice?"

"I'm not sacrificing you!" I shouted. "You or anyone here. I'm just...it's a big operation, okay? There's a ton of moving pieces, and I'm accustomed to only planning for myself."

"Just get out," he said, donning the mask and resuming his seat in the clouds and dim light. "Come back when you have something for me."

"Try not to make me wait outside for ten minutes."

"Maybe I will, if you keep proving yourself useless, 'Shark."

I turned on my heel and stomped out. Stupid, selfish, arrogant, jerkface, jerkbutt, McJerkerson. Not for the first time, I had to wonder, why the heck did everything always have to land on my shoulders? I started this, yes, but why did that mean I was the only one responsible for coming up with everything, seeing everything executed, doing everything.

I was trying to save a city, and it felt like I was the only one who cared about doing so. Sure, there were a few hundred Exhumans here, ready to fight and die, implicit in their very presence. And of course I respected that. I wasn't going to be on the front lines.

But holy hummingbird, everything else? What the hell?

I barely made it outside before seeing another group of Exhumans taking out their aggression on the army encroaching. They were idly chatting while one of them hurled fireballs into the air to rain down indiscriminately.

"Hey what the hell do you think you're doing?" I barked at him. "Vox made it clear that we're supposed to leave the XPCA intact."

He rolled his eyes at me. "Piss off, twerp."

"Seriously? Dude, he made himself completely clear. Only hit those who are advancing. Stop shelling their reserves, or you're going to provoke them into a suicide charge."

He shoved me, and I staggered back a few steps while his friend laughed. I almost collided with another Exhuman, who didn't even acknowledge me. More around didn't even look up. New Eden was even more successful than New York at getting people to ignore others' problems.

"I said, knock it off," I shouted, feeling my face red in at least two different ways now. Morons like this were threatening not just the plan, but the lives of everyone here, and they didn't even care. Didn't even care enough to know. I felt my slipskin shifting subtly as my blood flushed with sudden heat.

"Yeah? Or what?" he asked, turning on me, his hands aglow with flame. I stood my ground, right in his face.

"I'll tell Vox."

At that, both of them erupted into howling laughter. "You're gonna tell on us? How old are you, kid?"

This time, when he shoved me, I felt my shoulders burning as the flames touched me. My slipskin did what it could, but I knew I'd really messed up. as soon as I was falling backwards.

I howled and held myself involuntarily, prompting him to laugh again, the maniac. My shoulders screamed where he'd touched me, blistering excruciating pain. A heat that wouldn't go away, like his touch had set me on fire, or like I'd been bitten by something and the venom was spreading through me.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I couldn't see through the tears, couldn't stop myself from screaming and rolling. Finally, it seemed, a line had been crossed, and others had begun to intervene.

I just cried and rolled, my mind a static of pain. I didn't have a cohesive thought for entire minutes, just whimpering and weakness and hating myself and everything else. At some point, someone drenched my torso with water from somewhere. I don't know if it helped, don't know if it could even penetrate my burned slipskin.

Eventually, I was abandoned. Just left propped in some corner to cry, near some other wounded Exhumans. I remembered thinking they'd probably been shot by the XPCA, they probably had real injuries, from the actual battle unfolding. Not like me. Me and getting burned by some...some...butt-turd for trying to tell on him.

I was pathetic. I was worse than useless. In a way, I was grateful to the fire-maniac-butt-turd, because he'd reminded me that I wasn't anything significant. I was just a stupid little girl, in over her head, the only non-Exhuman in this whole camp. I couldn't stand up to the slightest application of powers, what the hell did I think I was doing trying to tell Khol how to run the whole damn thing?

The next few minutes of crying weren't just from the pain in my shoulders. It was just pure self-pitying despair. I knew it was a toxic waste of time. I knew it wouldn't make me feel any better, that at the end of it, I'd just feel worse for letting myself indulge in my stupid, broken emotions, and that was just yet another failure on the heap which was my life.

But I couldn't stop it. I wasn't strong enough, right now. I couldn't get my lips to move to recite my mantras. I couldn't keep tears from squeezing out as my shoulders throbbed with fire. I was just a pile of human garbage, incapable of controlling her own stupid body, much less anything around her.

I cried for, I don't know how long. But when I finally opened my eyes and looked out again, it was dark. We had to be getting close to when Justice was coming.

And from the sounds outside, the fight had intensified. I took a few steadying breaths, and then sat up, feeling my new blisters screaming against my slipskin.

I hated burns. I hated them so much. I'd had all kinds of injuries playing sports, but a broken bone was nothing compared to a burn. Sometimes people broke bones and didn't even know. You had to get an x-ray just to verify.

But nobody's confused when there's a burn. It hurts, and it keeps on hurting. It's like the fire that touched you set off a fire inside you, and it just...kept...going. For weeks, I would just be kindling, flinching at every movement, pain was now my life.

I wanted to roll over and cry again at the thought, but I slapped myself, the stinging in my cheek, nothing compared to the pain of moving my arm.

Screw you, Lia. You wanna suffer? Do nothing, and try to live with yourself when the world ends. You think this pain is bad? How about when Athan and Chiho die, because you didn't do enough?

It was stupid of me to question. I knew why things always fell on my shoulders. It was because I wouldn't let them fall on anyone else's. I stood up and tried to keep my legs from shaking under me. But even if they did, they could still walk. I wouldn't let the frailties of this body hold me back.

I had to get back to Khol. I didn't have a plan, but I could at least tell him that. He was smart, maybe we could come with something together. Keeping him in the dark because I was too proud to admit that I didn't know what I was doing was just stupid. I'd been worried this whole time that if he knew I was useless, he'd just cut me out.

But what the hell? I was basically out anyway. I was just a stupid, stubborn girl. If he was Vox now, so be it, as long as he saved the goddang world, I didn't really give a rat.

I heard a laugh as I shuffled towards Khol's room, and stopped dead in my tracks. The same two bastards as before, swapping stories and laughing like nothing had changed. And now the fireballs he was chucking were into the indiscriminate darkness. He could be missing the XPCA and destroying civilian houses for all he cared.

I paused for a moment, feeling my burns and collecting myself. And then, like I never had a choice, pivoted on my heel and marched towards him.

"I thought I told you to knock that off," I said.

He turned slowly, looking down on me. It took him a second to recognize me, which just pissed me off all over again.

"Oh, lookie who's back," he drawled. "Did you want another round of screaming and crying like a baby? Here to ask me to stop, or else you'll go crawling to mama?"

"I'm not asking anymore. I'm telling. Listen to Vox' orders, or else."

His face stiffened. "Make me, you little--"

The rest of his sentence came out in convulsing gasps as I rammed the shock prod in my left hand into his chest. With seizing breaths and jerky movements, he ignited his hands, trying to draw them close to me again.

And that's when I brought out the baton in my right hand. Smacked it right into the side of his face, and sent him into the dirt. And then again, and again, and again, until his face looked as bad as my shoulders felt, until he was the one whimpering and crying on the ground.

His friend watched with unrestrained terror. And the only time he moved, I pointed the prod at him, and his hands went in the air and he took a step back.

"Listen to Vox, or I'll be back," I threatened, panting for breath. My body throbbed. My hand felt broken, from all the beatings I'd just put into him. And my shoulders screamed with fire.

He just groaned, which I took as a yes. My job was done here.

But not my revenge. So I kicked him as hard as I could, right in the nuts. He crumpled and cried like a baby.

It was on that momentum that I barged right in on Khol, finding him frantically trying to put his mask on at the sudden intrusion. When he saw it was me, he tore it off again.

"Shark, what the hell?" he asked.

"That's what I've been saying for the last hour, now."

"You can't just barge in here like you own the place. You said it yourself, we have to protect the image of Vox--"

"Yeah I don't care about appearances right now." I crossed my arms and sat opposite him. "We need plans, and we need them now. How soon will Justice be on us?"

He stared at me. "Have you been crying?"

"I asked you a question. How much time do we have?"

He didn't answer, just stared. And in his stare, in his body language, I realized, I'd screwed up big time.

Because Vox wasn't the only one with an image to protect. Black Shark was just as fragile a concept, and it was only in being a master manipulator, an infopath, and one step ahead, that Khol cared about me even slightly.

But for him to see me now, blackened, burned handprints on my shoulders, dirt in my hair and tears in my eyes, storming in here all emotional and demanding a simple question I should have known the answer to...

"You don't have a plan, do you?" he asked. I let out a slow breath, and wished that perhaps, I'd picked someone less sharp after all.

"No," I confessed. "And that's why I need you now. Together, we can come up with something--"

"You're an infopath without a plan," he stated. "You're literally worthless."

I glared at him. But only because I couldn't argue.

"Get out," he told me. "And if you still want to be useful, tell the others we're withdrawing. We're not dying here today, over this."

"No, you can't!" I shouted. "We need to fight Justice!"

"Yeah, maybe when I thought you had some future knowledge of how this might turn out! But now, with you having nothing? Maybe the reason you don't have a plan is because your powers aren't working. And maybe the reason for that is there's no information for you to see. Because you -- all of us -- die."

"That's not it at all!"

"That's not a gamble I'm willing to take. We're leaving, 'Shark. Maybe if you had something concrete."

"You can't," I said again, but this time was a threat. "I know who you are. If you try to do this...I'll unmask you in front of everyone. I'll...I'll release the raw cuts of Vox' tapes, I'll prove it was me. You can't take him away from me."

He stared me down for another long minute.

"Please," I pleaded. "We've got one shot to make this stand. We're in position. Do you know how many XPCA we'd have to kill to leave?"

He didn't answer, just pulled down his mask and touched the comms. "Nex? I need you to come in here."

I waited with my breath held. "Please," I whispered, my shoulders burning.

Nex was prompt, I had to give her that. She waltzed in the chamber and kneeled before Vox' impressive silhouette. "For humanity," she muttered.

He paused for effect. Then when he spoke, even my shoulders froze from the ice in my veins.

"Black Shark has tried to manipulate us one too many times. She has betrayed Vox Humanus, and every word she utters is a threat to our movement. Dispose of her."

"No! Khol, please!" I shouted.

Khol shook his head, his mask glinting in the dim light. "Khol? Even now, her words are deceit and poison. The man you speak of is still rotting beneath New Eden, in a prison you placed him in. Take her out, Nex."

"As you say," Nex said, rising. Ethereal tendrils sprung from her fingertips as she rose and turned on me. "I was never a fan of you scheming types," she confessed.

I turned and bolted. It was all I could do. I had the presence of mind to throw a handful of shock rocks in the doorway as I fled, having no idea what her powers were, or if that would even slow her down.

But it was all I had. I was trapped here, on this little island of Exhumanity, and to venture into no-man's-land was death. To say here, with Nex was death. Fighting was absolutely death, and running was probably death, just slower.

So my options were pretty bad, and my odds were slim at best. And that was before the speakers squaked to life.

"Brothers and sisters!" Vex shouted with fury and passion. "There is a traitor among us who has tried to bring harm to our glorious leader! The waif called Black Shark, a brown-haired girl, slender and wearing a grey bodysuit. Her power is to spout enchanted lies, so don't listen to a word she says. If you see her, kill her. For Vox Humanus! For humanity!"

At least four of the Exhumans near me turned and eyed me with a dark hunger as the missive played. Before any made up their mind, I slipped away, thinking my chances perhaps suddenly better in the XPCA lines.

But I'd never get there. I'd never even get to the neural zone. I found myself surrounded, almost instantly, bright lights from somewhere blazing down on me like God himself wanted me found and killed.

I froze on the spot, twenty Exhumans or more, caging me in. Some jeered with the sadism that New Eden put into these people. Some seemed unsure. Most were dutiful, committed to Vox, and the job I'd done too well in building him up.

"Please," I pleaded. "I just want to live."

"Should have thought of that before you crossed Vox," a woman told me, her hand shimmering with unnatural water.

At least it wasn't fire, I thought. At least, if I get put out like this, I won't have that pain to suffer through, of being seared from the inside-out. Water seemed a relatively nice way to go, all things considered. I didn't know how she'd do it...drowning or slicing or...forcing water down my body until my insides burst…

But at least it wasn't burning. I could take that solace.

And I could almost accept this ending. I was just a stupid, useless girl, dying in a stupid, useless way. I'd rolled with the big boys, bluffed my way to the final round on a pair of twos, and now it was time to cash in, I guess.

I found tears in my eyes again. Stupid me, thinking I could save a city. I couldn't even save myself.

"Any last words?" The woman asked.

"Don't give her any words," a man answered. "Vox says words are her power."

"Oh yeah."

I almost had to laugh. Here, at the end, I wasn't even allowed to speak. Couldn't even bluff, one last time.

She drew back, and I closed my eyes. If it was all the same to everyone, I'd rather not see it coming. I didn't want it to hurt. That was all I could ask for right now. I stood there, praying to God in silence, please. Make it not hurt. I don't want to hurt anymore.

And then I heard murmured confusion erupt all at once. I felt a tingle, my hairs standing on end. I opened my eyes and, somehow, saw the same blackness.

No, not quite the same. There were stars. There were lights in the distance. Everything here had just suddenly gone dark. The spotlights on me, the ones I'd felt like were from God...they'd gone away.

Someone was opposing God here.

And as a hundred swords made of lightning lit up around me, around him, I knew who.

Athan was practically glowing, electricity crackling off of his body and sparks leaping into the air, his clothes and hair billowing in an aether wind of pure current. His eyes were dark and dangerous, as I'd rarely seen them before.

Behind him, AEGIS, Saga, and Karu. Their faces promised death, a loyalty and fanaticism that even Vox' supporters couldn't match.

As they advanced, the circle surrounding me reeled at his approach, but didn't break. They glanced at each other nervously, not sure what to do, not sure what Vox had to say with the power cut.

He spelled it out for them, very clearly.

"You all stay the hell away from my sister."