If they call restful sleep the sleep of the just, then I must have been wicked. The drugs had long ago worn off, and I found myself aching too badly for rest to find me, but too exhausted to be awake. My arms were like molten metal, both in functionality and searing intensity, and I could not move one of my feet, below the point where my calf had nearly been severed entirely.

I hurt with every breath, and the cooling night did little to temper it. But I was alive, was recovering, like the others in this spartan barracks, and despite our suffering, we were the lucky ones. We had survived, been found and retrieved, been given medical attention, and discharged. At each of those stages, I knew the numbers had grown thin...especially the first, with how brutal Justice had demonstrated himself.

It was dark in here, half-lit, so as to encourage sleep whilst not inhibiting the aid workers as they quietly scurried through the hall, as though it would be their careful footfalls and not the pained groans and distant shrieks and explosions which might wake us. I looked at the other shadows around me, wondering if I knew any of them, how many might be hunters or had served beside me. I almost did not wish to know.

But also, I did. Gingerly, I reached out and laid my fingers on my visor, the composite plating sapping the heat from my fingertips and making me shiver under the thin blanket. I put it on and brought it to life, knowing that in a few minutes, warmed by its function, it would be a boon.

With new eyes, I could see into every corner of the hall. Many were sleeping, and that was a blessing. Some looked so defeated and exhausted they could do nothing but, while others appeared to rest easy, perhaps confident that they had done their best and trusting in their comrades to carry a victory they could no longer abet. It was in the middle ground where I caught the shine of eyes looking back at me, a mirror of myself in being too injuried to help yet not enough to be helpless.

Names and faces flashed past on the callouts as I peered from bed to bed, finding strangers I did not know. The room was massive, yes, but I doubted very much that these were the entirety of the recovering injured. Perhaps the others were elsewhere.

I sighed and closed my eyes, my head refusing to sink any further into the thin pillow behind me.

Or, more than likely, they were dead. I had seen several downed before me, and who knew what had transpired since? Aello, Wisp, Trance...had any of them survived? I somehow doubted. Justice was not fighting to defeat us, but to crush our morale and assert supremacy eternal -- the annihilation of any soldier with a reputation or a public name would be paramount. He had even gone so far as to torture and taunt me before the kill, his cruel manifesto echoing over the battlefield.

I closed my eyes to the scene of agony around me, willing away the deaths of which I was growing increasingly certain, and pulled up feeds instead, filling the air around me with augmented-reality projections of what I had missed in the time that I had been out.

What I saw made my brow furrow. There had been many attempts on Justice's life, more than I had given humanity credit for. Several, I recognized as being from sources I knew, and it gave me a small thrill and unwarranted pride to see Jack and Tower rescuing others as they had done for me, Temperance and Moon surviving an attempted ambush, and Deej on the front lines, his sonic attacks able to defend the ranks by targeting specific material resonances while leaving the allies he fired through rattled, but unharmed.

But as my feeds drew towards the present, I felt Justice's plan to sap hope working on myself. Things had gone awry with the assault of Trish against him. In mortally injuring him, he had lost all composure, and now, rather than a man, it seemed we were fighting...something else. A tumbling entity of flesh and reconstruction, bound to a scar, pulsating with dark fire, ringed in light. Bipedalism, even limbs, seemed more a suggestion to Justice's form than defining it, as the mass of darkness and flesh scoured the battlefield at incredible speeds, erecting unspeakable monuments of pain in explosions of violence.

Why had he changed his tack, I wondered? Had he decided that the strategy of eroding our hope was no longer sufficient once we had struck back and made him bleed? Or had he simply snapped, his mind no longer capable of even the brutish strategy he had concocted, and now capable only of producing death?

My head ached as I studied stills and flipped through feeds to find the best angles. No...he was not without strategy, at least not yet. His movements appeared random, but...it felt as though he were making an effort to kill equally across the battlefield, to leave no corner safe and untouched. But to what end?

There was strategic merit in breaking our formations, preventing the XPCA from bringing a wall of shield-bearers to protect the more valued exotics...but the foe could already fly past any ranks we could throw up. That theory held little water.

It may be an evolution of his previous effort, to instil despair and shatter hope and cohesion. If nowhere was safe, nobody could feel safe, no matter how many they stood beside or behind. But this was an Exhuman event, nobody felt safe anywhere. Even lying in this bed, without a shred of combat capability, I would not have batted an eye at finding him suddenly here, slaughtering us all for the sake of it.

Then there was the fact that he seemed to never kill the same way twice when he descended. Always, it was new powers brought to bear, as though to show them off, creating little localized spheres of harm for each of his abilities, the bodies he created always left as an effigy which left no doubt what manner of power created it. Breathtaking works of cruelty of imagination, almost like art.

Which, more than anything, scared me, to be honest. It was one thing to deal with a crazed man, and one who believed themselves justified, another entirely. But an artist…? In my experience, they were the most unhinged and unpredictable of all. Art knew no strategy, no pattern. Establishing a pattern just to break it, that could be considered art. If my suspicions were correct, Justice could be even more dangerous than feared.

I pushed that thought to the back of my mind and attempted to finish catching up on the feeds. My shock was palpable and my frustration nearly boiling when Saga appeared with a golden six-armed, three-eyed Hindu deity, and then immediately lost it. I had to physically stop the feeds for a moment to compose myself at what a goddamned moron she was.

Words my father had instilled in me came bubbling to mind. Those who know power lack discipline; and those without discipline lose power. Struggle is what teaches us to be strong.

Granted, I mostly heard those words in the context of being forced to eat my vegetables or buckle into an onerous assignment. Yet how well it applied to the omnipotent moron who was Saga...it made my head reel.

I skipped through the remainder of the footage, finding little else of comfort, and significantly, still no reappearance of Athan, AEGIS, Aesa, and Al. I wondered what the hell they were doing, wherever they were doing it, and if they knew that at this very moment, the fight...very much was not, any longer.

As of a few minutes ago, the ranks had broken. The fighting retreat which had persisted since Trish had turned the Exhuman into macabre mode was now open flight. The Oasian army, which had stubbornly and inhumanly held their ground, was annihilated. The XPCA had retreated towards the city, and the New Edeners, towards the desert.

Although, retreat was something of a misnomer. Justice was still here, and he was still fury and death incarnate. He showed no signs of slowing, just because his opponents were beaten, and descended again and again, showering the broken ranks with their own viscera. I found myself silently pleading with him as more surrendering, even unarmed soldiers were brutalized, their spines ripped through their skulls, vital organs removed, or in one sick case, swapped with those of another victim. And so much blood continued to stain his blackened hands.

I knew the rate of death at the moment was relatively low. Killing a man every second was very little to the swath of hundreds of which he was capable. But the means by which he did it, the exultation of...what should have been joy...it made me sit in wonder, feeling outside my body, as though I were watching this all from somewhere very dark and very far away.

It made me feel a cold trepidation that humanity would not outlive this. He would not stop, he would kill and kill and kill and kill, until every person on earth was a grizzly, bloody edifice, and the land itself would be stained red from the slaughter.

Even without my armor, my body felt impossibly heavy as I sat up, careful motions to keep the blood from fleeing my brain and blacking me out. It felt like I was flying too fast, my eyes going dim and my mind stupid as the pain wracked my body and my thoughts threatened to shut down.

But I swung my feet over the side and gingerly put my weight on them, finding one leg capable of supporting me, and the other beyond uselessness. If I were walking, I would need a crutch. I wasn't, and I began to pull my jetpack over my body as slowly and carefully as I could manage, many arms on the thing sheared off, perhaps in as pitiable a state as me.

A stim helped, but did nothing to the fact that much of my body was useless. Deadening the pain did not make my leg work any better, nor helped with the intake of my breath. I still hobbled, leaning heavily on the beds as I jerked past them, muttering my apologies to their occupants as they watched me go.

An info callout popped up on my visor that gave me pause as I passed one bed, and I hesitated to face the person inside it. She was no acquaintance of mine, but from stories and from the feeds I had just witnessed, she was familiar to me. She was awake, but crying softly, and beaten to nine types of hell, missing teeth, half of her hair and scalp torn off, stitches all up and down her face, and bruises and swelling almost concealing the human beneath them.

The Exhuman beneath, that is.

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At seeing me standing there, pausing, looking at her, she glared at me through teary eyes.

"What the fuck do you want?" she sniffled.

"You are...Trish?" I asked.

"Who the fuck cares?"

"My apologies. I do not mean to make you self-conscious. I am a soldier, and have seen far worse than you, for whatever solace that might offer. My name is Karu, I am a friend and associate of Athan Ashton, whom I believe is a mutual acquaintance?"

"Fucking Athan," she spat, and seemed to choke and cough for a minute on the words. Her injuries were not merely surface-level, it seemed.

"My apologies if this is a sensitive subject, but might I ask why you scorn him?"

She stared at me, nearly bug-eyed, and I saw her face twitch. "Fucking look at me!" she shrieked, drawing glares.

"Erm, I am certain that Ashton did not do this to you."

"Not personally. But where the fuck is he? He had me dragged out there to fight Justice, promised me a chance at redemption at…" she took a few swift breaths "...at vengeance, and I was just dumped out into fighting the fucker, all on my own, basically? Why would Athan even bring me here if he was just going to leave me by myself?"

"You clearly were not by yourself. There are thousands fighting, dying, and dead."

"I meant, him. Where the fuck is he?"

"I do not--"

"I'll tell you," she said, her voice suddenly a growl. "Same place he was when all these other poor fucks were dying. He left them to go find me. And he left me to go find some other unfortunate bitch that he thinks might work. He's a fucking coward, trying to outsmart the world's most unstoppable force."

"And you would have him, what? Stand in front of it, and be annihilated?"

"That's what he asked me to do. And you, am I right? Every one of his so-called 'friends'."

"I am here of my own volition. And I am returning to the fight now, to lay down my life in whatever small effort I can yet provide. Ashton instructed me on none of this, and I fairly imagine he will disapprove of my efforts."

She eyed me again, her face softening. "You're not seriously going back up like that?"

"I am. I have determined...this is the end of things. Today, there are those who fight, and tomorrow, all who remain will flee. I am not one who flees."

"So you're just gonna die?"

"In the same way any soldier dies. There is that possibility, I cannot deny it. But I also cannot simply defeat my enemy by the force of my desire and wishes. I will return to the fight and give it my all."

"You can't even stand. You've already given it your all. Are you insane?"

"My all is more than mere standing. I have thoughts in my head and strength enough to hold a weapon. To give all is to give all, there is no quota I am pretending to pass, no man I am aiming to impress -- either the task is done, or there is work yet to do, and either I have strength to contribute, or I do not. There is nothing more than that."

She looked at me funny, a little sideways. Perhaps she could not see terribly well through the somewhat-swollen eye.

"What about Taglock?" she asked.

"What about him?"

"He's dead."

"That is unfortunate, and surprising. I was under the impression he knew how to take care of himself, and was quite risk-averse, when it came to actual danger."

"He died saving me, even though he was useless in a fight, like you currently are. If you go, you'll just share his fate. You'll just be throwing your life away."

I smiled at her. "Your own words are inconsistent, friend. You say his life was a waste, but also that he managed to spare yours. There is value in that."

"No there isn't," she spat. "Look at me, I'm beaten halfway to death. I'm useless."

"I am beaten halfway to death as well, but my uselessness will only be determined when I face Saint Peter. Speaking of, I must get going--"

She moved with surprising speed, and stifled a groan as she reached after me. "Wait, don't."

"I have determined I will. Thank you for your concern."

"No, seriously, don't. You'll die."

"There are worse fates."

"You are insane," she frowned at me.

"If that is how you see it. I apologize for disturbing you. I wish you swift recovery, in whatever world comes after today." So saying, I gave her as much a gracious bow as I could, given my mobility, and then hobbled further towards the exit. Following our exchange, we now had something of an audience, and their stares were making me feel as though my cheeks might light up the room somewhat. Another failing of this body.

I was nearly to the door when I heard her again behind me, her voice clearer this time, though still punctuated with a cough.

"How can you do it, Karu? How can you just...not care...that there's so many dead...and you're gonna wind up just like them?"

I turned and found her standing at the foot of her bed, haggard and leaning on it, heavier than I had. Painfully, enough to make me wince inside, she limped forward and made it to the foot of the next bed.

"Taglock's dead. So is my husband. So are my kids."

"I am sorry to hear that."

"Save your stupid patronizing," she bit at me, tears still running down her cheeks despite her seething. "They all died propping me up, pushing me forward, like I'm some hero who can fight that lunatic and save everything. But I've fought him twice, and I can't, okay? I'm not strong enough to beat something like that. I'm fucking sick of everyone dying and hanging themselves on my shoulders. Do you have any fucking idea what that's like?"

"I am well-acquainted with disappointing others. There are many corpses lining my path as well, and I am certain, many of them would roll in their graves at what I have done and become."

"Then stop...fucking...doing and becoming!" she shrieked. "Let them rest!"

"Give up?" I laughed.

"Stop fucking laughing at me!"

"Then cease in being a joke," I spat. "Do not attempt to talk me out of fighting merely because you have already given up. The arrogance, to assume yourself wiser, better, than all those who have died today...the smug satisfaction that their deaths only prove you right in your cowardice--"

"Do I fucking look satisfied to you right now, bitch? I fought Justice twice, and you're calling me a coward?"

"If you have strength enough to argue with me, you have strength enough to fight him a third time. The fact that you picked me over him informs me of your cowardice."

"Listen, you little bitch--"

"But you miscalculated," I informed her. "You think this little battle of wills easier and lighter than putting your life on the line again. But you are wrong. You will find my resolution harder to crack than anything Justice has to offer. I offer you no acknowledgement, no sympathy. If you wish me to respect your decision, then make the right decision. You sit here and cower because of those who have already died. I see those deaths, and they are the reason I cannot stay."

She trembled but said nothing. I turned to go.

"As I said. I wish you a speedy recovery, in whatever future comes."

"That's bullshit," she shouted. "You're just like them! You're just pressuring me, and pressuring me, and pressuring me, just like the others, until I fucking die. That's what you want, and you won't be happy until then, will you?"

I turned back over my shoulder to stare at her one final time. "What I want is Justice defeated. I care not who does it, or how. I care not about you, nor myself, nor any other individual here living, so long as he does. He must be stopped, or our lives are forfeit regardless."

"You...you just...you…"

"You have made this a personal thing, between yourself and the dead, between yourself and Justice, between yourself and me. You feel the weight of expectation hanging off of you, of obligations you have failed to live up to. But those are cruel imaginings."

I grinned at her. "The dead do not care what you do. Justice cares nothing about you. And I care even less. Do as you will, or surprise me. But do not waste any more of my time."

I turned back and dragged myself across another few beds, the exit drawing nearer with every hobbling step. After a few more, I heard her bleating behind me, shouting and telling me to wait, breathless coughing and shouted knives.

As I drew on the exit, some doctor informed me that I really, really, should stay. I thanked him for his advice and for his service, and offered him most of the stims and what medical supplies remained in my kit, which he took graciously. It was difficult with nothing to hold onto but I made it through the plastic curtain at the entrance and into the cold night air.

"I said wait, goddamn it." Trish grabbed at my shoulder, and both of us wavered unsteady on ill-functioning legs.

"And I informed you to waste no more of my time."

"I'm...well first off, I don't give a fuck what you say."

"Good. You are learning, then."

"And second, I'm going back with you. You're right. I can still fight, even if barely."

"I am right?" I echoed. "My, and I thought you did not give a fuck what I said."

"Shut up, bitch. Look let's...can you fly me over there with you?"

"I doubt it very much in my condition, and even more in yours. Let us just…" My eyes scanned the area and landed on a still-running car, the back of which was smeared with blood from a recent medivac. "We can borrow this."

She didn't argue, just saved her strength for getting there, the two of us doing much better now that we were in the open air and my jetpack could do some good in keeping us upright and forward-moving. Staff were watching us go, many looking like they wanted to say something, but none doing so. Even when we clambered in the car and spent a minute breathing, none made a move to stop us.

"We're gonna die, aren't we?" she asked, breathless, from the passenger seat.

"Statistically...yes. Does that matter?"

She seemed to think it over for a minute. "No, I guess not. Either we get him, or we're dead anyway, right? He'd never allow either of us to live in his world."

I laughed again. "My, that arrogance again. I doubt he thinks much more of us than any other human. But you are still correct...I do not think he would suffer a single being to remain, should he prevail today."

She didn't say anything else, just went another shade of white as she buckled up.

It crossed my mind to ask if she was sure about this, or any number of other pleasantries or politenesses I could offer...but the simple fact was, I did not care. My body was broken and I was heading towards a probable death, and I would be damned if I were to spend my last free moments pretending to give a shit about another as broken as I.

Either she was ready, or she was not. But either way, she was buckled in, and we were off.

In the distance, I could see Justice floating, bolting across the battlefield and scouring life wherever he landed. I threw the car into gear and floored it, driving directly towards him, the black glow visible against the night sky.