Several things happened at once.

  Bravo One, foreseeing the imminent failure of the containment barrier, reached into his shoulder pouch and withdrew a working, not bothering to have the paper clear of the pocket before igniting it and letting it fly. The construct, an angular, translucent polyhedral, was still forming as Joseph flung it up and over Gull’s prison toward the upper corner of the warehouse, where the wall met the roof. When one of the many faces of the dodecahedron struck the solid metal of the roof, that face of the construct failed, releasing the stored force and potential in a directed explosion.

  The impact must not have been a perfect one, which was the danger with using one of these constructs. It struck on an edge, causing a fan-shaped blast that ran along a vertical line, ripping a long gash in the warehouse’s roof and northmost wall. In an instant, the corrugated tin ruptured and peeled back like a blooming flower, allowing the bright daylight to pour in.

  Simultaneously, a blackened and burning Gull burst from the containment dome, rocketing up and into the building’s rafters. What Joseph could see was a gruesome sight, the super’s skin almost entirely gone where Joseph’s fire webbing had bound him before, exposing charred muscle tissue and bones underneath. Though the working seemed to have burned itself out or been extinguished, what was left of Gull’s hair still blazed on his scalp.

  A superheated mixture of air and rancid smoke blew outward from the failed barrier and mingled with the oxygen in the air, causing a short, violent backdraft that knocked Joseph off his feet to slide insensate across the floor toward the exit.

  Finally having an opening and something to shoot at, Wilhelm opened up with the LEP. Its 20 mm rounds streamed through the new skylight/window every half second, tracking Gull as he leapt through the air, trailing an inferno in his wake. The solid, thumb-sized rounds hit the crackling, red-hot foundation with a *THWUP* *THWUP* *THWUP* *THWUP* that sent massive geysers of glowing, aerosolized concrete streaming into the air.

  Joseph came to face down on the floor. He’d lost time, probably no more than a couple seconds, but his instincts told him he needed to be up right the hell now. He flipped over onto his back and, with a speed born from muscle memory combined with adrenaline, had a wrist shield humming on his arm in under a second.

  “Bravo One, do you copy?!” Overwatch screamed in his ear.

  Joseph got into a half-crouch, one hand on the floor to take some of the weight off of his injured leg, the shield held out in front of him. His vision flicked from one corner of the warehouse to the other, to the chunks of metal on the ground, to the still burning patches of debris.

  No Gull.

  “Bravo One, do you copy? I don’t have a shot. I say again, I don’t have a shot.”

  Reaching up to his throat mic, he keyed it twice, sending the signal to Overwatch that he was listening, but couldn’t respond.

  Their bird was in here somewhere, hiding. If Gull had made it outside, Wilhelm would have piped in the drone feed to the goggles. The best course of action now was to get outside and peel the building open like a tin can until Mr. Crispy showed himself.

  Bravo One slowly, carefully took a step backward, awkwardly sliding his bad leg in the direction of the open exit then doing a sort of hop to get back into a fighting stance. All the while he kept his eyes moving, always checking the shadows and the corners. The maneuver didn’t cover much ground, and it hurt. Still, he didn’t want to just sprint to the exit and turn his back on a psychopath, so he was stuck with the awkward shuffle.

  Slide. Step. Pause. Slide. Step. Pause. With every repetition, the moaning wind and floating particulates that swirled around the warehouse played games with his senses, projecting for him illusory threats always at the corner of his hearing or vision. Nothing jumped out at him from the dark, though.

  Now with his back to the exit, a single two foot drop from the building’s foundation to the ground outside was the only obstacle in his way. The warm daylight played over the backs of his legs, the outside tantalizingly close.

  Daylight meant safety. Daylight meant backup.

  Joseph held out his shield, getting low to take the ponderous step down into the sun. He keyed his mic for the first time in what seemed like ages.

  “Overwatch, I’m about to e-”

  *WHAM*

  Suddenly, Bravo One was airborne.

  Luckily, his body had been tensed to make the climb down from the ledge to the gravel, so that when Gull had pounced from somewhere in the shadows, Joseph didn’t end up flopping like a ragdoll. Instead, Gull had hit Joseph’s shield, dispersing a good portion of the impact but having more than enough left over to fling Bravo One backward, out of the building, to painfully roll to a stop against a stack of rotting railroad ties.

  He’d had the sense to keep his shield tucked to his chest to avoid getting cut on the edges, but that meant he couldn’t use his arms to arrest his momentum. Consequently, he’d just experienced a dizzying few seconds of rolling before he came to a stop. His head spun.

  Ow. At least he stayed conscious this time.

  Sweet, sweet adrenaline saw him through, giving him the ability to spring to his feet, the nerve signals from his leg and probably a few other parts of his body mercifully muted in the immediate aftermath of the blow, so he was back on his feet, ready when Gull came at him again.

  “We’re outside!” Joseph shouted into the mic as he blocked Gull’s opening slash that would have bisected him but for the shield.

  Gull didn’t give Bravo One any space to recover. The attacks came fast and furious, a non-stop storm of wild strikes. Gull was all over him, clawing at him with blackened hands, leaping up to get around the barrier, kicking at Joseph’s knees, snarling through bared, blackened teeth.

  The gen one super was like an animal. His strength and speed were incredible, barely comprehensible to someone like Joseph, but there was no technique in Gull’s attacks, just desperate fury, a desire to hurt the thing that had hurt him. It was this fact that allowed Bravo One to stay just ahead of his foe, bringing his shield in line just in time to absorb a kick or to bat away a grasping hand.

  With every blow, the shield flashed a bright blue that dimmed the rest of the world in the compensated lenses of his goggles until all that existed was the two supers, an atom thick disk the only thing separating them. Sometimes the shield cut into Gull, sinking into flesh only to stop at the bone, but the super didn’t seem to feel any sort of pain in this state.

  Gull’s eyes… His eyes were closed and sealed, seeping thick clear fluid down his ruined cheeks like silicone tears.

  He was blind. He’d found Bravo One by sound when he’d spoken to Overwatch.

  Joseph made a note of that.

  Joseph wasn’t exactly mobile. He was holding his own but only just. He could block Gull’s strikes, but every blow sapped some of the energy out of his shield, decreasing its up time. The shield would flicker and die within seconds, and then Joseph would be at the man’s mercy. The strength disparity was too great.

  He hopped over a stomp that would have broken his ankle, barely getting his shield up in time to stop a grab that came from the left. Again, Bravo One tried to make Gull pay for reaching in by cutting him with the shield’s edge, but the man didn’t seem to feel it.

  Taking a risk, Bravo One stooped low and allowed a punch to sail over his head, then angled the shield, lunging upward to haul Gull off of his feet and into the air, dumping him on the ground afterward. It didn’t hurt the deranged super, but it was a step in the right direction.

  Having gained a second of breathing room, Joseph hobbled back and half leaped, half rolled over the waist high stack of rail ties to put them between him and Gull. It was just in time too, because his shield winked out of existence just as he got his feet back under him.

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  Joseph only had a second to contemplate the error he’d just made. It was when Gull barreled into the stack at full speed that Joseph realized that an obstacle like a stack of rotting wood only really counted as an obstacle if you couldn’t lift a car, which he suspected Gull probably could do. Gull slammed blindly into the thick wooden beams at full tilt, sending the stack spilling over like a wave at the beach directly into Joseph’s legs.

  The wave of heavy, treated wood bowled Joseph over, flattening him, forcing him down. Unlike a wave, however, the hundreds of pounds of wood didn’t recede. They stayed there, pinning him in place, one painfully stuck under his chin and making it hard to breathe. Others pinning his legs and one of his arms.

  If the air hadn’t been forced from Joseph’s lungs, he might have cried out or tried to struggle free before his better judgment could take over. However, as he lay there, gasping like a fish as he regained his breath, Gull was up and over the splayed wooden ties and on the other side, lunging and snarling, blindly trying to fight an opponent that wasn’t there. He’d missed Joseph, not realizing what the rail ties had done.

  After a few seconds of coming up empty, Gull’s motions became a bit more methodical with wide, sweeping arm motions and sudden sprints in random directions. When that came up with nothing, he seemed to just stand there, staring straight ahead, his wet, rattling breaths the only indication that he wasn’t dead on his feet.

  Wilhelm’s voice whispered in Joseph’s ear. “You’re still behind the building, kid, but I’ve got you on the drone. You’re too close together for me to guess at my shots. Wait him out. Get some distance.”

  That sounded like a plan, one he wished didn’t involve him pinned in place and waiting for Mr. Crispy to get bored and move away. Joseph’s right hand had some wiggle room, so he did his best to get into one of his pockets without shifting any of the ties or gravel.

  Gull seemed to be stuck there, swaying on his feet, his broken body seeming to sag as he relaxed his muscles and came down from whatever rage state he’d just been in. The muscles in his throat seemed to spasm and he doubled over, hacking something onto the ground, red and wet. He moaned, a raspy, tired exhalation that only half-activated his vocal cords.

  Then, for the first time since they’d met, Gull spoke. His now ruined lips and teeth distorted his words.

  “Stopff,” Gull croaked, that otherworldly distortion Joseph felt earlier rippled into existence yet again.

  Joseph had found a pouch and was feeling inside when it hit him. The overwhelming presence of something slammed into Joseph like a shockwave. His thoughts disintegrated and scattered like burning leaves. His hand, halfway in the pouch twitched and fell back to his side.

  Distantly, he knew there was something that he’d wanted to do, something important, but, try as he might, he couldn’t gather the disparate strands of thought together to complete that particular puzzle. He blinked, confused. What had he been doing? If not for the wooden beam on his chest he’d have sighed in frustration.

  “Con’ out naoow,’' Gull commanded, more forcefully this time, before hacking up another bit of bloody phlegm.

  The power flooded over Joseph like a deceptively dangerous stream, glassy above but swift beneath the surface. Joseph felt it wash over him. Pull him down below.

  His conscious mind swam against the force of the current. He kicked and fought. He clawed at the water, trying to get another lungful of air, but the surface tension of that stream never broke, wrapping around his face like cellophane, smothering him, pulling him back down into the water to die.

  Following the mesmer’s command, Joseph’s body was already attempting to free itself. He could only look on with stupefied fascination as his muscles worked on their own, heedless of the injury they were doing to themselves as they strained and wriggled to get free. The bones in his leg ground together as he used it to kick up and out, to follow the man’s dictate.

  Nothing mattered so long as he obeyed.

  The radio buzzed in Joseph’s ear. “Bravo One! Bravo One! Hey! Don’t listen to him! Whatever he’s saying, evade, distract. I’m lining up the shot.”

  Panting heavily and sore in so many places, Joseph found himself on his feet and turning around to receive more commands. When he did, Gull was there, his eyeless stare boring into Joseph from mere inches away. The smell of charred meat and coppery blood emanated from the super in a thick cloud. He was so close, Joseph could feel the residual heat pouring off of his ruined body like a burning coal.

  When Gull opened his jaw again to speak, blood dribbled from the missing half of his mouth.

  “Hwace to fhace, at last,” Gull gurgled, a little spasm of his chest implying a chuckle or maybe a weak cough. “Tell nee yur name.”

  Gull’s power was dragging Joseph lower and lower. The stream had become a river, a river mouth, deep and wide and full of brine. He could barely even see the surface anymore, but, simultaneously, he saw with his actual eyes and spoke with his own mouth, though slightly slurred.

  “Bravo One,” his mouth said. The current of the river tossed him tumbling end over end over sharp rocks and jammed him between crevices, only to fall inexorably downward.

  Gull slowly shook his head and shuddered as he leaned in and inhaled the smell of his defeated enemy. “I know that one. I neant your real name. Your virth name. Tell me.” Gull was mastering his speech now as he practiced. Sometimes he had to stop between words to wet his mouth again. “The truth.”

  “Joseph Jaeger,” Joseph said without hesitation. His mind was in a place with no light, drowning, the power pressing in on him, crushing him. The surface was a distant memory.

  “And who shot at me?”

  “My-”

  There was something else here in the dark. A disturbance. A slight sideways drift that he could barely feel.

  “My- Uh- My partner,” he mumbled.

  Gull reached up with a hand nearly stripped of flesh and placed it on Joseph’s shoulder, the fingertips of his hand just blackened bone. If the injuries diminished the strength of the super’s grip, Joseph could not tell, because when Gull squeezed, flesh ripped and bones popped.

  “You’ve had some mental training. I can tell. You also know that’s damned well not what I asked, Joseph. What is your partner’s name?” he asked, his voice a growl, dripping with undisguised loathing. His power hummed in the air, drowning out the entire world.

  Joseph felt drool soak the corner of his mask.

  “W-” The abyss wasn’t entirely still. There was a current here. A place where the water flowed. It flowed… down… further… deeper in the dark.

  “Wilhelm Jaeger,” he felt himself saying.

  Downward. Blackness. Something about it felt so-

  Wilhelm must have thought Joseph was calling for him, because he was right there on the earpiece. “It’s alright, kid. I’m here.”

  It felt so…

  “Good. Where are you from?” Gull asked with a winning grin made ghoulish by his missing flesh.

  -so familiar.

  Joseph allowed himself to drift down into the dark, into the ragged walled chasm that he felt beneath him. The wound went on for miles and miles like a giant hunk of flesh had been ripped from the ocean floor.

  “Gregory Basin, Montana.” A voice answered Gull from far away.

  “Thank you, Joe. Can I call you Joe? I feel like we've grown close enough for that. When I get to Gregory Basin, Joe,” Gull crooned, putting another hand on Joseph’s opposite shoulder. Again, his fingertips dug into Joseph’s flesh until they felt like they were grinding against bone. “They'll all die cursing your name.”

  Down. Down into the dark.

  Claws on linoleum.

  Snuffling. Baying.

  Stinging smoke in his eyes.

      No. Please.

  Ripping flesh.

  Pressure around his waist.

  Sticky, wet red on his face.

      No!

  Fire.

  Tears.

      Don’t come any closer.

  Fire.

      I don’t want to hurt you.

  Joseph came screaming back to full consciousness, mid punch, a working burning in his clenched fist. His right hook connected with Gull under his rib cage just as the working fired. The familiar, crackling pulse of power shot up through his arm and into his body, outward into the air, into the universe itself, calling to its counterparts and summoning their stored power. Simultaneously, wherever they were, Joseph’s force batteries dissolved, their power liquifying and coalescing to a single point just in front of Joseph’s hand ready to be unleashed.

  Gathered, primed, the summoned energy erupted.

  *BOOM*

  The detonating force blasted a shocked, open mouthed Gull up and away in two rapidly deviating trajectories. His upper half slammed into a tanker in the distance with the sound of crunching metal, the force rocking the train car up on two wheels, tipping it precariously until it gave up its fight with gravity and toppled onto its side.

  Joseph was still screaming. He screamed until he doubled over, out of breath, unable to take another. His heart hammered in his chest. His vision tinted red and narrowed down to a pinprick.

  On a ridge to the north, Wilhelm's LEP went cyclical, its fury shredding the train car and what was left of Gull with supersonic, steel cored death.

—-------------------

Far away in Washington D.C. Nimue felt a pull, something small but integral shifting inside of her like a string being ripped from a seam.

Her vision blurred, and the room gained a severe tilt.

Her powers, struggling to find a new equilibrium, strained at her channels, rupturing many of them and running wild through her aura. Suddenly, she was on the floor.

With a shaking hand, she pulled her phone from its folded space and dialed a number.

Her consciousness wavered at first, but she marshaled her strength quickly, already getting to work repairing her pathways even as the connection established.

“Get- Get QRF in the air,” she demanded. “West. Full sweep- I don’t know- Just get them out there. Right now!”