Chuckawalla Valley Prison was scheduled for closure as the state’s overall prison population declined. The city of Blythe would lose hundreds of jobs with the closure of one of its largest employers. Blythe leaders have contested the closure, but their requests, and even the offerings of other prisons to willingly close, have gone unanswered as the prison remained listed for termination.

She floated into the prison’s fire station. The inmate firefighters were cornered behind the firetrucks by the bone golem from that day. That was what she detected on the way here, but there should have been another one.

“Come here to finish me off?” asked the bone golem.

“Yes,” stated GalvanGal. The golem flinched at the sight of her clenched fist.

A mound of dirt rose behind her to reveal a cannon that fired a plasma bolt into the open garage door. Hannah almost dodged on instinct, but with the inmates behind her, she dug in her heels and blocked the blast. Blood splatter melted into the walls, pillars, and fire trucks. The rest of the coagulation clung to her, devouring her electric defenses. She brushed off the plasma as best she could, but it had bored through to burn holes in her clothes. The golem had knocked down what pillars remained while she was distracted and ran outside to his partner.

“Adios, Wasichu!” said Delsin. What foundations were left in the fire station were torn out by the rumbling earth. The walls collapsed and the roof followed suit. GalvanGal dashed over to the inmates as they were all consumed by the collapsing building.

“You think that’s gonna hold her?” asked Philip.

“The plasma cannon should have eaten up the rest of her magic. On an empty battery, she’s just a normal girl. No way she survived.”

“Are you sure? She seemed serious about killing me this time.”

“Relax. She didn’t kill any of the other guys. Even if she gets up, she won’t have a zap left in her.”

One of the inmates had been knocked down in the crash. His vision was coming back to him now, but it was dark and blurry. The only light came in flashes from the sparks of severed wire. His sight got clearer, and through the flashes, he saw GalvanGal holding up the debris from engulfing the both of them. She was the only reason he survived. Though, from what he heard, a building should be nothing for her. She was supposed to hold up collapsing buildings with pillars of light that reached the sky. She was supposed to endure bullets without a scratch on her. What was in front him now was a girl, in tatters, down on one knee, struggling with rubble.

Struggling, but not giving up.

Hannah clenched her teeth so hard her gums bled. Her ear was pushed into her shoulder as she was forced to use her neck for support. The weight of the rubble threatened to crush her skull as the headache within threatened to split it open. Her muscles tore and her bones creaked. In her lunge stance, her heel and her knee dug into the concrete floor. The floor continued to crack under the strain. All but one of the inmates had been crushed before her eyes. Because she was too slow and weak.

One was all she could keep alive with the strength she had left, but by all reason under the circumstances, she could not save him in this condition. If she was thinking clearly, she would see that, and that she would die here too. It should have been the same as when she imagined herself against Immortal: a hopeless situation no matter the angle. Yet, all she knew was what lay in front of her and every neuron in her body coursed with one impulse: I have to help him. So she continued to push, even as her ribs scraped her lungs and every breath came in and out like shards of glass. A single moment of laxity would be letting this man die. Even in an impossible situation, when it came to the lives of others, failure was not an option.

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

The inmate tried to move, and only then did he realize the sharp pain of the rebar that nailed through his calf. He looked up at her as she coughed blood and continued to crawl. The rebar being nudged in the wound reignited the pain with every pull forward. He grabbed the livewire and brought the spark to GalvanGal’s stomach. The sparks grew into a stream of voltage that forced him to wrangle the wire with both hands until it burst.

The electricity lit up under her skin as it surged through her body. It was only a small amount, not enough to spread sparking shimmy across all the debris. Instead, she focused it inward. Her biceps bulged to enlarge the tears in her costume as she pushed the rubble off her neck. The concrete crumbled as she brought her other foot up to squat. The blood dribbling from her mouth boiled as she continued to push until she could stand with the rubble held above her head. She put her energy into her palms to blast the rubble off of her.

The inmate had passed out during the ordeal. The only ones to see her were the remaining immortals. What they saw in the ruins was a figure of ash, blood, and volatile voltage.

Even in daylight, the glare of those amethyst eyes was brighter than the sun.

“Okay, she might want to kill us now, but, like I said, she’s just an ordinary girl now.”

Delsin raised earthen tendrils around the remains of the building, each primed to skewer GalvanGal. Before they could, they were shaken loose of their form by vibrations.

“Just an ordinary girl, huh?”

“Shut up. She must be using the rest of her energy to do it. Go be useful for once.”

The bone golem stomped toward the ruins that she stumbled out of. She bent down with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. The Golem towered over, her, raised its ivory club of an arm in the air, and bashed her head. She stumbled but grabbed his arm to stop herself. Her grip splintered the bone down to the armor underneath. She pulled to hurl herself at him with a clothesline that knocked them both to the ground. She may not have the juice in her, but the muscle and weight were far beyond that of a normal girl.

He began to get up before her, but she grabbed his knee to throw him back down with her. He tried to get up again. But she climbed his body to jump above him and let herself fall to slam him down once more.

None of this seriously harmed him, and at this rate, she would collapse long before he did, but it bought enough time for the SWAT team to finally reach the fire station. They must have secured the rest of the prison, or been drawn here by the destruction.

Regardless, they opened fire immediately. GalvanGal’s energy had dwindled out of the environment just in time for Delsin to make cover for himself. Philip tried to cover him but was tackled from behind. Philip elbowed her in the ribs again and again until she slid off. Finally free, he ran across the open field heedless of the bullets that bounced off his bone plates to pick up Delsin. Delsin prepared an emergency tunnel that he could open up for them to escape into and close behind them; then, they could teleport home.

GalvanGal launched herself off of the cover Delsin had made. Philip turned just in time to see her fist come down like a hammer that smashed his bone visor and collapsed them all in the dirt. She landed on top of Delsin, pushed herself up, raised one fist—

“Not the face no!”

—and caved his face in, breaking his nose and knocking out some teeth. She slid herself off of him to lay with her back on the ground. Her hoarse breathing was all she could muster as she baked under the sun.

The golem still shifted but the last hit had made its mark. Even if Philip did continue to fight, with no means of escape, it would only delay the inevitable. Surrounded, Philip surrendered to the police.