It wasn't in my nature to work pro-bono, but if something would press me to the exception, it would be the end of times. The hunters were fighting an enemy beyond any bounty they'd ever willingly take, many doing it for free, and I'd heard rumors that some of the US armed forces were defying orders to leave the XPCA to face down Justice alone and rendering assistance. Anarchy was becoming the order of the day, and who was I to resist its beckon?

Anarchy, only because order was currently madness, afflicted by some virus of politics, prohibiting all from presenting a united front. Even now, as I checked my feeds and waited for a patrol to walk past, I could see the three factions, scuffling with each other as they fought together. Some idiots just didn't know when to bury the hatchet.

I supposed if I were any kind of 'real man', I'd be down there with them. I laughed at myself, and at the idea; how unfitting an end would that be, a spy and saboteur hanging up his clogs to pick up a gun. That was a level of courage or stupidity I lacked, though which it was, I had no idea.

Instead, I was doing what I did best. Staying safe, watching my own back, providing what assistance I could from the shadows. It seemed that Lia had gone ahead without me, following her own plans to mobilize a menagere of Exhumans to the battlefield and then left them there. I wished she'd included me on her plans, but for her to assume that no money meant no service was reasonable. If she had asked, I could not say yes, professionally speaking.

But also, in seriousness, the end of the world was sort of hanging over our heads here. Even if my business ran a high price for strategic retrieval or deletion of things, I still required things to exist, to retrieve or delete. Apocalypse was bad for business, no matter one's trade.

I'd just have turned her down, and then done it anyway. Better not to set a precedent of working for free, but that just meant I had to avoid the precedent, not the work.

Work such as this door, and the things beyond it. The patrol had passed and I crouched on the ground, tools in-hand before the lock, the gleam of an ignorant security camera shining above me.

The stubborn door didn't let me in. I'd had no end of trouble cracking passcodes recently, the XPCA had some new security system I hadn't been able to figure out just yet, no matter how fresh my codes, they always seemed expired. It was equal parts impressive, and annoying, and when I figured out what was behind it and incorporated it into my own kit, I'd be a happy man indeed.

I put away my passcard, my hand going to my pocket by muscle memory, since I could see neither hand nor pocket through my optical camo, and I reached for a different pocket, a prybar and a shim.

The strongest encryption in the world is only as good as the hinges, so they said. The prybar popped the faceplate of the lock off in a single twist, and I got the shim deep inside the lock's guts, feeling for the tension spring keeping the deadbolt latched.

Took me two tries, which was one more than I'd hoped, but I got through without a peep, and with hope, the patrolling guards would not notice the vandalism. If they had been in exoframes, their in-suit HUDs would probably detect the damaged lock and show a callout, and I'd have need for digital masking over the damage. But those resources had been called to the front; remaining were just some guys with guns and eyes, the very worst kind of security.

Beyond that door was another, and this one I got on the first try. Clearly I was improving. I'd never been too bad with a physical override, and the XPCA's new digital security was giving me a lot of recent practice.

With that double set of doors out of the way, I walked onto the cell block floor. Cozy place, metal bars from ceiling to floor, two levels, ringed by a lovely balcony, done up in the same matching dark metal grille and railing to match the cells. And a scuffed glass floor on the main level, where my kinetic dampeners kept my feet from click-clacking, just under which I could see the enormous coils used to electrocute the entire level in the event of a lockdown.

Just lovely. Tied the whole room together, really. I heard that each prison in the XPCA's ward was unique, featuring different kinds of obstacles and deterrents to detain different kinds of Exhumans. A legendary one, Aliento Último, supposedly didn't even have walls, just standing curtains of lethal gas streaming down, for prisoners who could not be contained but could be killed.

I'd never found any reason to believe such a place even existed, and if this much more normal cell was any indication, if it did exist, it certainly wouldn't be in use. The prisons had been mostly cleared out when New Eden had opened.

Still. It wasn't completely empty. Some Exhumans were too unruly or asocial to keep with the rest. Some, there was a political or personal interest in keeping them buried. Others were presumably just too difficult to relocate.

But my mark had been placed here very recently. Scooped up and shut away, forgotten in a time she shouldn't be. I walked across the cell block, to stand in front of her cell, and immediately felt like I was violating something intimate.

She was there, exactly as my information had indicated, dark hair, fair skin. I couldn't see her eyes, but she matched the pictures I had obviously enough. Recognizing her was not the issue.

The problem was, she was crying. And I did not think it was for the cuts and bruises scoring her body; those would be the result of her tussle with Justice, the proof that she was the only Exhuman on Earth who had so far stood up to him and survived.

I cleared my throat, and she jumped, peering around intensely, hands grasping at shadows that didn't exist in her garishly-lit cell. I let my optical camo fade off and shook out my heel, pulling back the hood of my slipskin. All very practiced, to make some noise and appearance, to appear human and unthreatening.

"Hello," I said. "You are Trish?"

"Who's asking?" she barked, lashing out through the shock of my arrival. Although, her voice caught in her throat and her threatening was utterly unconvincing as she wiped stubborn tears off her cheeks.

"Taglock, at your service," I said, with a deep bow. "Your friend Athan sent me," I lied.

"Athan?" I saw a glimmer of recognition pierce through the pain. "Lightning?"

"The very same. I'm to see to your freedom, to give you another chance against Justice, should you desire."

She sat stunned on her cot, her body all knees and elbows as she hesitated, one palm against her cheek where tears were still streaming across it, her legs pulled in close, but splayed at the same time. Her hair was every direction, and adding the fresh injuries across her body, it was safe to say she looked a mess.

Not the worst I'd ever rescued, but far, far from the best.

It was a lot for her to take in in a moment, I knew. My appearance, and then the sudden offer of freedom, and the promise of a fight with Justice. She seemed to be breathing to herself, muttering words without vocalizing them. I waited with patience as she got her head together. It wasn't like a guard patrol was due in a couple of minutes, or I was standing in the open in the very extreme depths of a secure facility, or anything.

Even if those were true -- which they were -- the mental health of these people was often a still greater obstacle. Rare was it when I was sent in to extract an intact, mentally healthy, cognitively-balanced individual with a supportive family and put-together life. People like that didn't wind up in places like this.

"Can you stand?" I asked. Simple questions, to get her mind focused on the immediate.

"I can," she said fiercely, doing so as though to prove me wrong.

"Would you like to fight Justice?"

She paused, and emotions played across her face again. She really should never play poker. Fear was a pretty reasonable reaction, given who and what Justice was, and also the anger. But beyond anger was a deep misery, a profound sadness that spoke to me of loss. She wasn't just angry at Justice, I realized, she was vengeful.

And, manipulative as that may have made me, I found that incredibly useful.

"Do you want to make him pay?"

She crystalized, galvanized, tranquilized. I saw her pupils narrow as the fear left her. The wild hair suddenly looked less like that of a battered victim and more like that of a deranged lunatic.

"Yes," she said. "Get me out."

"With pleasure."

This lock was harder to tamper with, designed to be in constant exposure to one who might have too much time. I took one look at it before deciding it wasn't worth the trouble, and bringing out a burn strip, sticking the tape-like substance onto the metal all around the lock before peeling off the backing and watching it swell, as the endothermics did their job.

There was a minute of hissing, boiling, sizzling, and then a heavy clank as the lock fell out of the door, landing in a pool of its own molten metal with a hazardous splash. I held the door open for m'lady, and directed her to step carefully around the new addition.

Checking my wrist holo, we had about seventy seconds before the next patrol came into view. Time enough to get out, but not to wait for the evidence to cool. After confirming that she could keep up, I led us off.

Ironically, getting out of these places was always easier than getting in. You'd think the opposite of a place designed to hold people, but the simple fact was, once you knew your way through, so much of the suspense just disappeared. You bypassed the same locks, saw the same security measures, crept past the same guards...not quite with an air of invincibility, but certainly with a measure of feeling that you'd done this before.

Even the added difficulty of having a tail hardly mattered, if the planning was sufficient, and any dangerous devices were properly disabled on the first pass. Cameras given false feeds, doors left with a shim keeping them from re-latching.

And then, very nearly seventy seconds later, just as the guard was probably spotting the evidence of my handiwork and investigating the pool of cooling metal, the two of us were basking in moonlight and fresh air. I felt my slipskin shifting, as though to breathe it in, though I knew it was only adjusting to the cold. Trish seemed chilly, shivering in her prison jumpsuit, though it wouldn't be for long, and I wasn't exactly made of blankets to offer.

"How do we get there?" she asked.

"I have a helicopter," I told her. "Hidden nearby."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"A VTOL, you mean?"

"No, a helicopter."

I think she spent the rest of our hike wondering just what that meant. She'd probably heard of a helicopter, maybe even seen one in an aerospace museum, the same as one might see a Roman chariot, but to be in one, I suspect, was the second shock of the night for her.

She certainly eyed the blades with healthy paranoia as she buckled in and they began to spin above her head, craning forward to look up and back at them slicing through the air above us.

"Won't we fall over?" she asked.

"Does a unicycle?"

"Yes."

I chuckled as I finished the preflight checklist. Green across the board, and we were ready for liftoff. The rotor's whirring lengthened into a constant low scream as the propeller came up to speed, and she was clinging desperately to the dash as the helicopter lurched off the ground and forward.

"Oh, I do not like this," she said. "Oh, I don't like this at all. Where are the other turbofans? Why's it got to be so loud?"

"Beggars can't be choosers. Transport vehicles are at something of a premium at the moment, and this was the most economic option. Do try not to scratch up the dash, it's vintage."

Fortunately, once we were in the air, and I proved that the vehicle could fly in a straight line without spinning itself apart, she seemed to relax. Though perhaps it may have been a blessing to keep her mind focused on the immediate, for in the glances I stole as we flew over the sprawling desert, I saw a creeping anxiety overcoming her.

I couldn't fault her. It wasn't like I was going to go fight Justice myself. Breaking into prisons and piloting ancient deathtraps were about the extent of my courage.

The XPCA facility we'd fled was mostly abandoned; not out of disuse, but because very nearly everyone within it, who were not still remotely operating logistics or coordinating, were in Vegas. It was the closest base to the action, and that was probably why she'd been thrown in there, on the off-chance that they did decide to throw all policy to the wind and use her.

So we were close, in other words. It wasn't too long before the battle drew into view. We had a spectacular vantage point from up here, it was easy to make out the battle line specifically, studded with flaring weapons and glowing yellow personal barriers, sparks of vivid color flashing out as some Exhuman or some exotic brought their powers to bear. Flares in the night.

And the man himself, of course. Harried, but at the same time, the harrier. I was alarmed to note that the hunters, who had until now been leading the attack, seemed quiet. It had been a while, and I wondered if they were just depleted...or if he'd caught up with them. It didn't bode well for our forces if our elite had been picked off.

Without them, Justice seemed mostly free to do what he wanted, and he drifted towards the lines as though specifically to draw fire so he could shrug it off or evade it. Wherever he went, the shadow-things he'd been creating clawed to life at the soldiers' feet, recognizable from here only by the sudden, unnatural darkness beneath the soldiers' feet, and the sudden eruption of gun- and powers-fire.

But every time he did, I noticed he was being countered. Purifying light washed over the affected sections, burning away all shadows with effusive light that was almost hard to look at from up here, seeming to come from the ground itself, as beautiful as it was unnatural.

One of Lia's friends was a helioist, I recalled. I wondered if that was her.

"I'll bring you to the line," I suggested.

"Don't bother. Put me down anywhere near him, and I'll do the rest."

"You might live through that, but I don't think I would. I'll see you to the line."

"Whatever."

The XPCA seemed confused at seeing a helicopter as much as she had been, and alarmed at an Exhuman in a prison uniform deboarding. But when they came to accost her, I stepped between.

"Special orders," I said, flashing a fake ID. "This one is headed to the front."

The looks I got weren't skeptical, they were of disgust. I wasn't sure if that was for my role in weaponizing an Exhuman, or for her existence, or whatever presumed amnesty this obviously-dangerous Exhuman was earning. But disgust was something I could work with, it wasn't a reaction that solicited a lot of follow-up questions. Twice, and then a third time, I was told to move along, or keep a leash on her, or get her out of my sight.

Again, just lovely. I could see where they'd drawn the inspiration for the decor they'd hung up around her cell.

Until finally, we were there, and I couldn't stop her if I'd wanted. As she was slipping away, diving headfirst into the ranks of exosuits and discharging firearms, the outermost bounds of men slashing at shadows which slashed back, and the rubble and broken walls that had once been a city, she glanced back at me only once.

"Good luck," I told her.

She mouthed 'thanks' before disappearing. And I took that as my cue to exit as well, before anyone too smart started asking questions.

I stuck nearby though, in my borrowed helicopter, watching things unfold as I listened to the news report what I was witnessing, over the sound of the chopping propeller. I even had myself a little snack of some nutrient paste, only my second meal of the day, because of just what kind of hell of a day it'd been.

It wasn't too long before I saw her up there. Stepping out of the line, pushing her way through the sparsely-knit formations of the exosuits, ducking under a yellow barrier, and walking into the battlefield, to stomp her way around the corpses.

She looked all fury now, and an unprofessional part of me wondered just what had pushed her there. From her file, I knew she had a husband and a pair of adopted kids, and the fact that upon breaking out, her first wish hadn't been to go see them was telling. As for how she survived and they didn't?

Well, that had to be all in her powers, now didn't it?

Justice weaved in the air as a shadow ripped through the space he'd just occupied, and then again, and a third time. Trish was screaming obscenities as she pulled shadows from the ground and hurtled them at him.

She was a shadow-user, an umbrist, just as I'd heard. But it was dark now, and both the shadows at her feet, and the ones she was throwing at him were indistinct. I pulled my eyes away from her display to bring up the footage of when last she'd clashed with him.

And found...there wasn't any. More specifically, none visible. This had been in one of the destroyed downtowns -- and how depressing it was that such a statement didn't narrow it down terribly far -- and she'd confronted him in early evening under a cloud of dust from skyscrapers crashing down.

I mused for a minute longer, as Trish exhausted herself, screaming instead of breathing, and throwing ineffective attacks instead of thinking. Justice seemed satisfied with just baiting her, and eradicating any who drew close to support her. I wasn't sure if he just didn't care, or if he was being a jackass on purpose.

I sighed as I pulled the helicopter further from the fight. Justice was winning, I could see the damage already from here. The three armies were reeling and he was hardly lifting a finger. The most demoralizing fight in the world was one where you never landed a blow, and that was exactly what Justice was doing to these bastards, just staying frustratingly safe, letting his longest-range powers do all the work, throwing scraps of metal and umbragenesis monsters and dodging.

Frustrating. Shitty. Very effective. Something I might do.

But the problem, I thought, with posing as untouchable, was that even a single landed blow could reverse the momentum. All the accumulated emotional damage of an army seeing their best unable to do a damn thing, it could all be washed away in a moment, as soon as a rally struck.

I held my breath and thought myself an idiot as I reached for the switch. I may as well be painting a target right on my face. I worked in the shadows, and this was anything but.

But hell.

I was doing this one pro-bono, against my nature. As long as I was breaking the rules, I may as well break all the rules.

I flipped the switch, and winced as everything below me turned to light. Not in the explosive, fun sense, but in a very literal way.

Light. The biggest, baddest, most fuck-off floodlight I could mount on this ancient piece of crap, shining down at an angle directly at Trish, casting long, severe shadows from her feet, dozens of feet across the battlefield.

She looked back at me. I'm sure she saw nothing but glare. I didn't even get a 'thanks', just a 'what the fuck.' Sometimes there was more magic in the world if you didn't read lips.

But even if she didn't know who or why, she knew what. The two-dozen-foot long, razor-sharp shadow at her feet jumped to her hands, just as long and just as sharp, and she whipped it upwards as though it were weightless. The tip of the spear carved the air around Justice, making him do an erratic, panicked ballet.

He didn't mouth anything, but he didn't have to for me to read his words. As soon as he got an inch of clearance from the attack, he came straight at me. I sucked on the last bit of my nutrient paste. Meatloaf flavor, just like mom used to make.

But he didn't reach me. Not just yet. The lance whipped around and caught him, drawing a red gash across his chest, and he dipped in the sky like a clipped bird, surging and wobbling as he fluttered, flustered.

The droplets of his blood hitting the earth may have well been rain after a drought. The line erupted into a cheer, and there wasn't a single gun among them that wasn't zeroed in and spitting at him as he stumbled.

And he bled, really. The bullets hit him and punched through, something about that umbrist's ability, he wasn't healing it off like he had with the others. He was staggered, perplexed-looking almost. Blood kept spilling and the lance kept swinging, and he kept falling as he dodged, barely keeping ahead, barely putting himself back together as the hail of gunfire and shadow carved him apart. He lunged towards me, without getting any closer.

I allowed myself a hearty grin. This was the victory they needed. I hoped it helped, somehow. It was not the victory they needed, but he could bleed.

Seconds later, he decimated the line. Fire and electricity and pestilence poured out of him those nearest simply turning to ash and rot. He failed to reach me, but he could fall freely, and did so with vicious ferocity. Now dethroned, no longer able to sit aloof and let his shadows pick clean the enemy's corpse, he got his hands dirty.

And as the blood dried on his hands would indicate, he was very, very capable.

He broke clean through the line, tearing through a hundred men in seconds, flying close and exposing himself to the Exhuman powers, he took numerous blows in return, but somehow shrugged them off, his body hemorrhaging and reassembling even as he kept fighting.

He tore through them until he was there. Right in my windshield, as pissed as any I'd ever seen, pure seething hate seeming to rise off his shoulders like steam on a cold morning. Most of the wounds were healing, but not the shadow-gash on his chest, and many of the other injuries, burns and deep cuts, they were scarring up, mending in misshapen bulges and twists of flesh. He was going to be as ugly on the outside as he was within, if he kept diving the lines.

I gave him a lazy wave, and when he didn't return it in kind, unloaded the sidearm I'd been concealing in my other hand. I had the good fortune of seeing him stagger, witnessing two of the half-dozen shots I squeezed off actually impact, watched his body recoil beyond his control for once as the metal slugs punched him in the shoulder and chest, the bullets detonating within his body, the very best I had.

And then darkness, as he shredded the helicopter around me, and me as well.

That figured, the helicopter was borrowed, and in my line of work, that was sort of asking for it to be destroyed at great personal expense. Never lend what you couldn't afford to lose.

I felt the wounds hit me, reached down to feel the sudden wet warmth seeping from my chest, and realized I didn't have an arm there anymore. Gone, above the elbow, the rest of it probably somewhere in the remains of the cockpit, falling to the earth around me somewhere. It was hard to tell with how dark everything had suddenly gone when he'd put the lights out.

I reached for my pocket of shock rocks with my other hand, but found that part of my leg was also missing. Just a big, greasy, wet mass of warm flesh there, touching it didn't even hurt yet. It'd probably hurt like a bitch in the morning.

If it took me that long to hit the ground rushing up at me. Kinda doubted it. Kinda made me wish I hadn't picked meatloaf. Too sentimental, I guess, the flavor. Made me think of mom and home. And I hoped it was the wind in my eyes that was making me cry.

This was why you didn't do pro-bono work. This is why you never tried to be a hero. I'd told Lia so many times, the closest thing I had to a protege, the closest thing I had to family.

Don't be a hero. Heroes wind up dead.

I had so many pithy phrases like that. So many heuristics that got me to where I was. Where I had been, before I'd gone and broken them all. Knowledge, canned up in glib remarks, how many had I passed on? Enough?

It got harder to think as the wind picked up in my ears, as my body realized the pain it was in, how many pieces I'd been sliced into, that the warm rain falling all around me was red.

The blackness of the ground rushed up to greet me. I wasn't ready for it. I was still just a coward at heart, afraid of the dark after all this time. I wished I'd told my mom I loved her more, when she was still alive. Wished so many things, so much left to do in this world, I didn't want to leave it. Not just yet.

I'd never even gotten to spend all that money. What was the point? What was my pride worth, as the ground rushed up, and my body rained down?

I felt like in the end, all I had was questions. And it sucked, knowing that I'd never find an answer to a single one.

The blackness met me, and then went into me, and I lay very still as it filled up every corner of my senses.