Though the base had plunged into darkness, there were none who could not see him. Though his words came out in a breathy hiss, there were none who could not hear them.

"Which one of you touched my sister?"

Those who stirred did so in nerves alone. Those who spoke offered only murmured fear. I distinctly heard the phrase 'The Spark of Death' repeated, as the gathered Exhumans sought confirmation that the glowing man before them was indeed the infamous villain from the news.

They looked upon him with awe and terror. They trembled at being witness to the unleashed potency of his power.

I could not stop grinning, nor slow the warm flushing through my body. Now, only now, did the world see him as I always had. The terrifying, pure potential always lurking within him, as one of the most dangerous Exhumans I had ever witnessed, so rarely brought to the surface. Flesh more than man, sculpted by God in His likeness.

And was plain as day for all to see now, as it were.

In the darkness generated by his EMP, he easily outshone the distant city lights and even God's painted sky. His eyes appeared blank, the pupils of them lost in the white crackle of electricity surging off of every inch of his body. His hair rose as though heaven itself was tugging at him, and his clothes rippled in a torrent none could feel.

A hundred of his blades or more twitched and flourished, each with a mind of its own, darting to and fro, nervous movement, surrounding and filling Athan's range, thick enough to define it clearly, a sphere of light in the dark. A halo of death.

He knelt and put his arms around his sister, as though they were a shell which could protect her from anything. At his touch, she trembled, and in the small movement, I saw Ashton break, his heart, gone, and only cold stone to remain.

"WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKING BURNED MY SISTER?"

The sound of his bellow shocked a woman to action. She stiffened to hesitate, only for a second. I knew she was moving to act, knew I had ample time to draw and fire as fear and doubt swirled in her mind.

I did nothing. I waited for Ashton to exact his revenge.

She took one ungainly step forward. And then, as though emboldened by such, raised her fists. She began to yell. A battle cry, something about Vox-something.

I could not tell, because before it even came out of her, he was there. His body moved like a bolt of lightning, smoke joining the sparks jumping from his body, as he appeared behind her.

And with his sudden movement, in the fraction of a blink of an eye, only visible to me because of my visor, I saw every. Single. Blade. Punch through her, a hundred fatal cuts in an instant.

The last of which severed her head clean off, and Athan stooped to pull it from the ground by its hair, the eyes still moving, the mouth formed into a shocked 'oh!'

"WAS THIS HER?"

The blades seemed to jump again, entombing another Exhuman in a wall of light and heat. Even from this distance, I could see the victim stiffen, see sweat pour from his brow at the sudden, inescapable death pressed all around him.

And the sparking, glorious child of God who had suddenly appeared in his face, apparently without motion. "WAS IT HER?" he screamed, his voice breaking.

"N-no!" the man shouted back.

"WAS IT YOU?"

"No! I would...never! It was...was Skull...t-that way…" he twisted his head to the side, and even that small motion brought a blade close enough to his skin to burn.

The blades tumbled away from him, and he collapsed at their absence. Athan was already gone, a plume of dust marking where he kicked from the ground, and a streak of light chasing his resplendence further into the camp.

"...don't…" I heard a weak voice, which I again would have missed if not for my visor. I turned and found the source, with a frown.

Lia, safely isolated, shunned almost, by the wall of Exhumans around her. None of them wanted to be mistaken for encroaching on her, none even dared to look at her. All of these weak creatures had, only moments ago, ganged up on the helpless girl. And now that the situation had reversed, now that she was no longer helpless, they could not clamour over themselves quickly enough to leave her in peace.

It made my stomach turn. Exhumans were vile. Ashton would not be amiss in scouring this camp clean from the earth, if we did not have other, better plans for them.

I joined AEGIS in strolling to the younger Ashton's body, where she made soothing noises as she took in the injuries and broke out the first-aid kit.

"Not much I can do with the slipskin in the way," she muttered to herself. "And I can't cut it...and it's likely melted into the wounds. Oh, what a disaster."

"...Athan...don't," Lia pleaded. "Stop him...please…"

"Shh, it's okay now," AEGIS offered, the false smile back in her voice. "He's gonna be okay."

Lia shook her head, wincing as she did. I saw much of her hair reached down her shoulders and was melted into the mess, tugging at the wounds with the movement. AEGIS saw it too, and was there with a pair of tiny scissors, cutting back the affected curtain at once.

"Not...not him, them," Lia panted. "Don't let...him...kill them."

Saga knelt beside the girl and took her hand, squeezing it gently in hers. "We couldn't stop him if we wanted to, Lia. I've never seen Athan...lose it like this. He's so hurt inside, I don't...I don't know that he wouldn't attack even us, if we tried to hold him back."

"And why would we?" I spat. "Whatever coward has done this to you deserves punishment. To think, we came here to attempt to save these people, and the first thing we encounter is a warrant broadcast for your execution. It sickens me."

"What Lia here probably means to say," Saga said "is that we are still technically here to save these Exhumans. Even if...at least one of them is...a fucking cunt, who deserves to die horribly."

"Somehow, I do not think that is exactly what Lia intends to say."

"Well it should be!" Saga screamed, catching us all off-guard. "Fucking look at her! Even if you can't feel her pain, just fucking look."

Despite myself, I found my heart catching in my throat. Saga's outbursts of emotion were...resonant, in a way that I think had little to do with her weak, childish screams. Her powers, when unhinged, boiled her emotions through all around her.

It was unnatural and, to be frank, terrifying, that I could have a surge of feeling which were not my own, so keenly, as it were.

Saga ground her teeth as she squeezed Lia's hand. "I hope he brings them back alive. I hope he lets me at 'em. I'll teach him what real pain feels like."

AEGIS said nothing, merely tending the wounds to the best of her ability, as a code-X went rampant inches from her. She was designed to stop that very thing, and yet now, was allied with it. It said much about all of us, how we each reacted in the moment, and I paused to reflect on myself.

Because I had done little. I had not become the emotional maelstrom that had consumed Ashton or Saga. I had not made myself useful as had AEGIS. I had not kept the larger picture in mind as had Lia.

Instead, I supposed, I had merely gloated, which was unflattering. I had the opportunity to act, but had chosen not to. I did not deescalate the situation, because...on some level...I had wanted it to spiral beyond any of us. I wanted Ashton to rip and tear into this festering hive, and purify it with his touch.

Even if Lia was right, and their future weakness would merely reflect upon us when Justice came to call. It was a short-sighted, emotional mistake. And upon reflection, I was being just as emotional and foolish as Ashton, in letting him go, was I not?

Realizing this, I had just about made up my mind to address the situation and move to retrieve Ashton as best I was capable, when he landed in our midst with a heavy thunk, and a dazzling lightshow.

He dropped another head on the ground, accompaniment to the first. A man's, who had been savagely beaten across the face, with broken nose and shattered eye sockets. It did not appear to be Ashton's handiwork.

"Was this him?" Ashton asked. Lia shrinking back from the severed, still-dripping head was all the answer he would get.

I had to wonder if the beatings were some form of vigilante justice eked out; if Ashton had landed amidst the punishment already being dealt, and ended the punitive measure to satisfy his own vengeance. With his cold, broken heart, had he gone so far as to decapitate a helpless, beaten man?

I felt a realization ripple through Saga, and in her mind, felt the truth of the situation, lifted from Lia's. The injuries were inflicted by her, justice already dispensed at the hands of the wronged.

I found myself not caring. This man was the worst kind of creature, made increasingly evident as Saga unravelled more of the story. His death was well-deserved. If anything, he should have been made to suffer more.

"I'm going to stop this," Athan announced, seething with every breath. "I'm going to kill whoever's in charge, whoever let this happen, everyone who stood by and watched--"

"Athan, no," AEGIS said. "No more killing."

"THEY FUCKING BURNED MY SISTER."

"I know," AEGIS pulled at her hair as she pleaded. "But Athan, we can't."

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"I can," he said, his blades twitching as though to demonstrate.

The wisest in the crowd of watching Exhumans had begun to distance themselves at this exchange, though many stayed rooted, perhaps not capable of movement anymore, from fear, or from curiosity.

"We came here to save these people," AEGIS said. "Killing them indiscriminately is the last thing we should do, Athan. Please."

"How can you fucking say that?" he screamed. He spun, bending so he was inches from her face. "Look what they did to her, AEGIS. Look at what these fucking animals did to my sister. Leaving them for Justice is too good for them."

"Athan, you're just mad. And you should be! But...I don't want you doing anything you'll regret, please. We need to stick to the plan, we need to get Saga to convince their leader--"

"Fuck that," Saga crossed her arms. "Athan's right, this whole festering pile should go up in sparks. If I see their leader, I'm popping his head like a zit."

AEGIS looked around, defeated. "Karu, please, talk some sense into them."

I sighed. The AI was right. But I also knew that there were many situations where appealing to a man with logic alone would not suffice. There was only one person present who could keep the situation from breaking into slaughter.

I advanced on the youngest Ashton, her face lined with pain and her cheeks stained with tears. I gave her a comforting smile, as best I could, before applying the stim patch to her neck.

It took a moment to hit her, and then her body relaxed tremendously. I could see the pain washing off of her, the unwanted visitor which had taken up residence within her body, forcibly shunted out the door. Her soaring heart rate crested, her flushed skin cooled.

"That's really bad for her," AEGIS muttered to me.

"I am aware." It would temper her body's attempts to treat the injury. Every second of inaction by her body now would be days of recuperation later, would be deeper scars and unrecoverable mobility, would be pain she would experience from those injuries, forever.

And so I offered up a silent prayer, for Lia and for myself, for doing that to her. I prayed forgiveness for visiting a future of hurt upon her, for simple want of recovering her in this second.

She stood up, and Ashton's swords paused in the air as though frozen. All of the ferenic energy around him stilled, the crackle and sparks and light, trapped in time around him.

Step by careful step, she advanced, ducking under blades and wincing every time she moved. Given her burns, the heat of the swords must have been doubly uncomfortable, but Ashton was so unprepared, so flat-footed, it was not in his mind to unbar her way.

Until she reached out, and a jolt of electricity arced from his shoulder to her hand. She winced and withdrew for a moment, but did not halt her advance.

As though in shame, all of his lightning went out at once. He was Exhuman, too, and was just as capable of hurting her as any of those gathered here, as the bearers of those two severed heads had once been. An Exhuman was always a danger.

She wrapped her arms around him, almost collapsing onto him. He stood as a statue, his arms splayed uselessly, unsure of what to do or how to act, what was safe on the burned girl to touch, or how she could press against him without blinding pain wracking her body, even through the stims.

"Let's just go," she whispered. "Let's leave this behind."

"But the Exhumans--" AEGIS pleaded.

"Fuck 'em," Saga said.

"--our plan--"

"That sounds good," Athan said, his voice pained and relieved at once. "Yeah."

AEGIS stared at them, then at me, then at all the Exhumans gathered around us. "What...what about...everything?"

Saga turned on her. "They burned Lia."

"So what? I mean...not so what but...so that changes everything now? We just leave people to die? We let the XPCA get destroyed here, give up these resources we need to fight Justice, all because some dumbass hurt her?"

"Hurt her?" Ashton echoed darkly. "Is that all you think this is?"

"Athan, please. I'm not...I'm not trying to belittle your sister's suffering or anything. It's awful. I would know, I was treating her wounds--"

"So you know better than me?" He was shouting again. But Lia was still holding him, no current stirred the air.

"No! I just...I don't want you or...or anyone to lose track of why we came here, just because one person got hurt! I mean…" she tugged frantically at her hair. "...not just...one person, obviously…"

"She's my fucking sister, AEGIS!"

"I know!" she shouted back. "But what about the rest of the world! What about the New Edeners and the XPCA and Justice! What about the whole city of Las Vegas, and how many cities after that? What about Chiho, Whitney, Moon, Cosette, and Tem, who are out there somewhere? Or Trish, who seems to be our one best shot at stopping Justice, and she's in XPCA custody somewhere."

She let out a long, pained breath, and I saw her engines beginning to spin, the circling yellow lights dancing beneath her skin as her emotions flared.

"I know she's very important to you. She's important to me, too! But she's just one piece of this puzzle, and we can't stop just because she got...a little...hurt."

Athan seemed completely paralyzed where he stood, his heart was pounding and in my optics he seemed bright red from the heat coming off of him. Every fiber in his body was tensed, as though he might burst at any moment.

Lia squeezed him again, and at her touch, he thawed.

"Let's just go," she repeated. "Leave them all."

He didn't seem to want to agree. AEGIS' words just seemed to make him want to slaughter everything around him all the more. But Lia's gentle pleading pushed him, and where AEGIS' outpouring only solidified Ashton's fury, Lia's doused it.

"Okay," he breathed. "Let's go."

"Clear us a way," she said, taking a step back and grinning at him. "I'll follow with the rest. I'll have AEGIS carry me. She can do it gently."

He nodded, and then, with a crack, he was gone.

AEGIS slumped in his absence, and Lia approached her.

"I'm sorry," Lia muttered. "This was the only way."

"What only way? We're fucked," AEGIS sighed.

Lia took her hand. "The only way to keep him from going loose. AEGIS, I love you, but not was not the right time to put more ish on his shoulders. He was only barely keeping it together, and reminding him of everything else going wrong...you were just gonna make him snap."

"Oh," AEGIS frowned. "I...I'm sorry. I didn't see that."

"He's a big baby sometimes, you have to remember that. Mostly...when I'm involved. We just need to get him some distance and get me safe so that...so that..."

"So that his fury can abate into self-loathing," I finished.

She frowned, but didn't disagree.

AEGIS let go of Lia's hand and sighed. "And once he's done that...once he's back to normal, and blaming himself for everything that's happened just now...then we'll be able to go back to the plan."

"Yeah."

"We don't have time for that, though. Justice is coming in a matter of hours."

Lia grinned, through a pained wince. "I think you underestimate just how quickly Athan can dive into self-loathing. And...besides, the leader here...he's going to have the Exhumans move away. The XPCA will move with them, there's no huge fight going on here, today."

"Oh," AEGIS' eyes went wide. "That's fantastic."

"Not really." Lia's voice was steady even as her eyes shone with more tears. "He's gonna destroy Las Vegas, AEGIS. He's gonna destroy our home."

"Our...home? Was...already destroyed. By...the XPCA."

"You know what I mean." Lia struggled to hold them in, but quiet tears were breaking from the corners of her eyes. "After...after everything, when I finally found Athan, and...you guys...this city was our home together. It was the only place I really...had, since…"

"Since you couldn't go back to your parents."

"...yeah."

AEGIS gave her the gentlest of hugs. "I'm sorry."

Lia sniffled in her arms. "I should be the one that's sorry. It's stupid, I know. It's just a city, and there's so many already gone and so many at risk. But this one was...it was home."

I stepped up. "Save your tears for after, girl. The city will live on with its people, assuming we spare them. And so our priority is to ensure that these Exhumans and XPCA escape here as unscathed as possible. And to that end--"

I pulled the bag I'd been hauling off my hip. Huge, unwieldy thing, made me fly off-balance, and I was eager to be rid of it, even if the contents were the most portable of their type I could find. I offered it to Lia, and she undid the clasps to open it.

"Guns?" she asked, pulling out one.

"Exotics. Though every person here is already an Exhuman, most will not be able to utilize their powers until at close range. This handful of arms may not be much, but any assistance we can offer in keeping the XPCA and Exhumans separate is lives saved."

"Thank you, Karu," Lia said, offering me a hug in turn. Even through my armor and flightsuit, I could feel her small body burning up. How much pain must she have been in, before the stims, I had to wonder?

"I do not know if there are any you particularly trust with them--"

"There are," Lia nodded decisively. "I'll be right back."

"I'm going with," Saga said. "And if anyone so much as thinks about stopping you, or hurting you…" she grimaced. "...oh, I'll make sure they never think again."

The gathered Exhumans made generous way for them to sink further into the base, leaving just AEGIS and myself lingering at the outskirts.

"What a fucking disaster," she sighed.

"Concisely put."

"Those guns...those are the ones you stole from Oasis? Is it really okay to give those out here?"

"I know of little better use. I cannot mount them or fly effectively with them on me. I have taken to carrying the ennervator, but I am lacking the arms to bear more arms. I suffered plenty in their procurement, that they must be put to use equal to the effort."

"You...suffered? I thought you stole them?"

I shook my head as I briefly relived the scene. "To hear their High Priest Tobias blather on and on about his dreams of other dimensions. Travelling beyond reality, the means and the issues, dangers of worlds beyond worlds, and why such-and-such was possible or not, for literal hours. I had no idea there were so very many things I had absolutely no interest to hear of. Fractal gateways, probabilistic realities, Alcatraz data compression..."

"Alcatraz?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "The island?"

"Or some such."

But she didn't seem skeptical, more...intrigued. I shook my head, hoping I hadn't incited her into the same obnoxious curiosity.

"Are...you sure that's what he said?"

"Something of that nature. Why?"

"Was it possibly...alzstraz-beta compression?"

"Hm, yes, that was it," I frowned at her. "You would think, the number of times he spoke excitedly about it, it might have stuck better."

"You're sure?"

She was looking at me with wide eyes, like there was something of monumental importance here I was missing out on. But whether Alcatraz data or the other, it was nothing I'd ever heard of, and I was ever-so-slightly loathe to endure AEGIS explain it to me, for what would then probably be the fourth time, after Tobias.

"Yes, I am sure. Why is this suddenly so critical?"

"We have to talk to Athan," she said. "He's going to need to hear this."

"What of your vaunted plan? What of letting him cool, and then returning to the Exhumans as you intended?"

"He's not going to care about that anymore."

I blinked at her. "You are serious?"

"As a heart attack. C'mon, let's find Lia and go."

She bolted off and I kept up with her.

"AEGIS, against my better judgement, I must ask: what manner of thing is this alzstraz-beta compression?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head, her twintails leaving twisting arcs in her wake as we flew.

"Then...what exactly has you in such a tizzy, as it were?"

We landed, not far from where Lia was handing out guns like alms, and saying a few parting words with some of the Exhumans who I supposed to be her friends.

"Those words...they were written in the letter. The one we got from Soran, just before he attacked us in Georgia."

"The letter that had Athan in conniptions. That he was behaving so erratically over?"

She nodded.

"Yes. The last message from Mage to Athan. Those words were in that latter, which means that Tobias is somehow the key to all of this, to Mage's final prophecy."

"So what?" I asked. "Why should we care, the last words of a fading ghost?"

She looked at me seriously, her yellow eyes misty with thought. "Because," she said. "The rest of the letter, it explained -- in the same obfuscated way -- that whatever this stuff Tobias is talking about is, it's the key to end this entire thing with Justice. It's the key to everything, Karu, to beating him and saving everyone."