For the first time that I could remember since dad died, New Olympus was quiet. Wind silently snaked around us, carrying a haze of fine dust that turned the sky a deeper orange. I sat still, so stiff that my heart might as well have stopped too as I stared at him. Up, I thought, because my neck ached as it craned upward, the muscles in my shoulder bunching with tense unease. I blinked slowly—once, twice—and tried to speak, to ask him who he was, why he looked so much more like dad than I ever did, but my tongue was fat, useless, stuck to the roof of my dry mouth.
He didn’t move either, choosing to stand above me, staring at me for what felt like hours. It must have only been seconds, with my senses twisted so incredibly high up that everything moved at a crawl. I felt each heartbeat. Saw each fiber in his eyes tense and relax as they moved over me.
All I could do was watch, frozen, as he tilted his head at me, inspecting me. Looking me over with those eyes that shouldn’t belong to him, but instead to the man who only ever looked at me this way a handful of times. They slithered over my cuts and bruises, and then examined the bloody grit smeared all over my face, and finally the ripped clothes hanging off my body. I was a mess. Weak and tense and bubbling with the cold remains of thin adrenaline. He was tall and proud and dressed in Olympiad standard black and white. His shirt was pressed, his collar sharp. His badge hung from his belt, the shield on it glinting in the early morning sunlight, blinding.
I would have said embarrassment was the feeling in my gut, but it was in such a mess that I couldn’t really tell you what I actually felt. Anger, maybe. Misplaced resentment. Who was he?
And why does he feel so much like dad, too? I thought. Why does he feel like the sun?
“You look starstruck,” he said, and I almost recoiled. His words were clear, cut and clean and so direct they had no other option than to slice through my hazy mind. “I’m blushing, really.”
“Alex,” O’Reiley said quietly, getting Ace’s attention. “You know this kid?”
“I ain’t even hear him coming, so that means we should probably get the fuck out of here.”
“I need a sec, alright, hon?” Damsel whispered. “So get off my ass for just a little while.”
The boy turned, looking over his shoulder. They all stiffened, like hairs caught at the end of a muzzle. Witchling was the only one to tense, get ready. “Don’t bother, ‘cause then I’d just ki—”
“Adam,” Poseidon said, his voice low and carrying through the wind. The boy’s mouth snapped closed and, like all of us, stared at the man with writhing tails of water snaking around him begin to speak. “You weren’t given any kind of command by the Olympiad to intervene.”
He shrugged one shoulder, as if he didn’t really care what he had to say. “You taught me to take the initiative, and these… people”—he waved a hand around him, indicating us—“shouldn’t really be that much of a pain to deal with, ‘cause, well, look at them. They’re kinda pathetic.”
Velocity, still cradling her leg meters away from me, hissed through clenched teeth, “You’re not meant to be out in fucking public, idiot. You’re meant to stay in the fucking headquarters.”
“I would too if my bones broke so easily,” Adam muttered.
“Who…” The word sprung out of my mouth. He finally looked at me, his eyes narrowing, and his head tilting once more. “Why… Why do you look like him? Why do you look like Zeus?”
Why do you look like the pictures Veronica keeps on her night stand, in her wallet?
I wasn’t sure how loudly I asked, because he remained silent, as if I hadn’t said anything at all and my mind had just conjured the questions for itself. He isn’t meant to be outside. Only meant to be in the Olympiad. He was some kind of secret, something they didn’t want the world to see, but he’d made the decision to be here, like he was so important that his presence alone would put a stop to every kind of crime you could think of, and… he would be right. He looked like dad. For anyone who hadn’t seen dad since, they might have thought that Zeus had come back to life, and for what that meant to damn near every supervillain in existence, I had no clue. Zeus returning from the dead would shake the entire world. Would screw up so many laws I didn’t even want to imagine the kind of migraine Cassie Blackwood would have when she learnt about his existence.
But not even the most powerful person on the planet could do that, come back to life.
And the last time I checked, dad didn’t have a son.
He smiled. My gut turned, making me feel sick. “If I was his son, would you believe me?”
No. No, no, no. I wouldn’t want to believe him. I couldn't believe him. A coil of panic wound tighter and tighter around my heart, making it thump thump thump in quicker succession. If he was dad’s son—and my brother, a thought that carved through my mind like a knife through skin—then he could hear it bang against my ribs. He could smell my sweat and the bitter stench of fear clinging to my scalp as it trickled down my temples. I wanted to move, get up, grab him by the neck because gods, I didn’t know what else to do, and make him talk. Make him answer. Make him give me the truth on who he actually was, and where he’d been all of these long, long years.
But now was a bad time to learn that I was spent. Empty. My muscles were lead clinging to my bones. I felt nothing in my gut. No warmth. No build up of searing heat. I curled my fingers into a fist, and they shook. Shook. Not because of fear, but because I was on the verge of passing out. I was partly sure if I stood up too fast that my world would go pitch black right afterward.
Learning to use my powers sparingly took nearly a year to master. It was like a scale, except it was always on maximum when I used them, and had to dial it back most times. That stunt I pulled saving Velocity and Knuckles in the blink of an eye drained me. Maybe faster. He must have seen the lightning, the golden sparks that spat and died in my hair and around my fingers.
Or maybe (and I hoped, and hoped dearly) he had been too focused on killing Knuckles.
“I’ll say this once, and won’t repeat myself.” Poseidon took one step forward. The slick sheet of water layering the road slapped against our feet (and in my case, my rear). “Go back to headquarters, and if you must, take Bellatrix and Dominion with you, as well as Velocity.”
“No, wait!” Velocity said, then gasped in pain. “I can still… I can still help here.”
“Maybe you should’ve stayed in bed, Vel,” Adam said.
“Go to hell,” she snarled.
Knuckles ever-so-slightly nudged my pinky. I glanced at her, and she jerked her chin toward Witchling and the others. They’d huddled a little closer together, getting in touching range of one another, all surrounding Damsel. Still, some drug packets were strewn across the street, and I could see at least several special grade rifles in several pieces near the boardwalk. We wouldn’t get everything, but we would get the majority of it. The mission wasn’t a success, but it was over. At least, we had to escape Adam and Poseidon first, and then it would be curtains on my supervillain debut. But it couldn’t end with me getting beaten to death by whoever the hell the guy standing here was. I couldn’t allow it, because… Gods, the Olympiad cloned my fucking dad.
That’s what I figured, at least, and gods above if they actually had, then Olympia was going to have to pay them a visit in that damned black building and rip them all a giant new one.
Because if all they had to do to replace me was make someone better, then why else would they tolerate me for so long? Keep me around? Maybe Dominion was right, they’re not the heroes.
They’re just the guys who have to do what they have to for everyone else’s sake.
And I was the girl who wasn’t going to let that fucking slide, not like this.
So I spat on his shoes, and said, “Fuck you, you piece of shit. You’re just a knock off.”
Silence for several beats. He stared at me, cold, dumbfounded. Witchling’s fingers twitched behind him, and she met my eyes, saw the look in them, I hoped, and nodded once. I’d say it was a plan, but anger was in my belly, deep and hot and raging, and I threw myself at Adam the same second that Witchling stretched her hand toward Knuckles and yanked her toward the group. They vanished in an instant, leaving me on the street as Adam effortlessly stepped aside. I stumbled past him, could have kept going, maybe tried to fly, but instead I whirled around and punched him.
Nothing. Like punching a brick wall, my knuckles smacked against his chest.
Adam glanced at Poseidon as Velocity muttered several swear words. Bellatrix was waking up, and I wasn’t sure what had happened to Dominion, but Franklin didn’t look one bit pleased. He wasn’t even looking at me, but instead at Adam. He was a professional Cape, once a junior member of the Olympains, and knew how to settle his emotions in an instant, but this was different, because the disappointment was bright, bitter, like the early morning winds in the air.
“Apprehend her,” he commanded, and this time there wasn’t any room for argument in his words. “It’s the least you could do after interrupting what had been planned. We’ll talk at HQ.”
His jaw tensed, wanting to say something. Then his eyes turned down at me, at the fist forced against his chest, and then he swiped his hand across my face. Blood burst into my mouth, hot and sour, as it filled my throat. I stumbled back, spat, bared my teeth and ran forward. He did the same, this time punching me in the jaw, making blood spit through the air and onto the tarmac.
Pain throbbed around my body, a pulse that devoured the little energy I had left. My head was light. My muscles were heavy. I threw another punch, then he landed one back that sent me flying, skipping and skidding across the road, rubbing my flesh raw and red, and into a street light. It fell with me, smashing to the ground. I groaned, gasping with pain and choking on blood. I rolled over onto my elbow. Got the pavement underneath me. I saw blurred bits of concrete. Heard the distant sounds of Franklin talking to Velocity as Bellatrix rose. Then I saw his shoes, his legs, then his shadow as the sun rose behind him. His face was dark, the lines around his eyes sharp.
“‘Apprehend her.’ Now I get it,” Adam muttered, grabbing me by the throat. He lifted me with ease, then slammed his fist into my nose. My head snapped back. Agony burst through my face. “Because you’re such a goddamned pest that killing you would take way too much time.”
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“Like you fucking could,” I growled, gurgling and sputtering, then spat at him.
The slew of blood landed on his tie, seeping into the white fabric.
His eyes narrowed, and then he slammed me head first into the concrete. Blackness. Hot pain. It felt like my body separated for a split second. Adam knelt beside me, leaning close as he said, “I don’t know who or what you think you are, but you’re making a mess of your chances of seeming innocent. We’re technically not allowed to kill, but by all means, give me a legal reason.”
Oh, I gave him a fucking reason, alright, when I slammed my fist between his legs. It was an awkward angle, something that wouldn’t have landed if he hadn’t been leering so close. Dirty, stupid, but I was out of options, and you couldn’t blame a girl for not wanting to find out what it felt like to get a hole punched through your chest. Adam swore, stood and stumbled backward, then continued cursing as I charged him down, smashing my knuckles into his jaw, his throat, then he grabbed both of my arms, seizing my wrists, fury blazing in his eyes, and I didn’t think twice as I smacked my forehead into his face. He reeled back in shock more than pain, letting me go.
“See? Nothin’ but a knock off,” I said, gasping for air. “Pack it up and go home.”
“You’re giving me orders?” Adam asked quietly. There, where his fingers met as he clenched his fist—golden electricity. My stomach sank as he stepped forward. I wouldn’t believe he was my brother, and I definitely wasn’t going to believe the Olympiad had cloned my freaking dad. He was a fake, a fraud, maybe a really good shapeshifter. But no, not him. Not one of us.
“You heard me,” I said, shuffling backward, feeling bits of rubble and the sleek layer of water underneath my feet. “Just like your boss said, you shouldn’t be here ‘cause you’re not good enough, jerk. You let the villains get away. You screwed up all of their plans. You suck, dude, and no amount of hair gel and power-stealing is going to change that. So leave me alone before I start getting serious, because I’m warning you, any closer and I’ll use my secret power against you.”
Adam stared at me, seeing right through me. I steadied myself, raised my hands. You could see the gears working behind his pale eyes, and see his body almost start resonating cold heat.
He chewed up the concrete in a sudden rush toward me. He went for a punch, I could see it, wanting to put me through the boardwalk and into the water, or maybe just to take my head off.
I would have to thank Lucas for making me sweat all those times in his sparring ring, making me throw up from how exhausted he made the likes of me feel. I had stamina, maybe not my powers, but I could keep going just a little longer. Just long enough to slip away from him.
And I did just that, slip his punch.
Adam tackled me instead, catching me off guard. Air shrieked in my ears for a moment, then my world erupted in an explosion of wooden shrapnel as we went through the boardwalk. We crashed into the water, feeling like a fist of concrete punched my spine. Air burst out of my lungs. I grappled him, wrapping my legs around his waist as we sunk deeper. I thrashed around him as he wriggled and squirmed and grabbed. Not trained properly, still fresh. Relying too much on just his powers—his strength, his speed, invulnerability, and reflexes—to get out of anything and everything. Still, it was hard, like trying to hold onto some raging bull bucking and punching.
Then I got myself onto his back, arms around his throat. If I had my powers, had the strength to use them properly, I would have choked him out right there and then in the frigid blackness. Instead, I did what any self-respecting superhero would do, and sank my teeth into his ear. Hard, like biting into sun-beaten leather. But I felt him jerk, twist and swat at my face. I tightened the grip I had on his throat, tugging and tugging, feeling my arms burn with the strain.
And his immediate reaction was to shoot up, right up toward the dark blue surface. Panic, anger, getting the advantage because up in the air was the place I thrived the most as well.
In seconds we were above Lower Olympus, me still clinging on, now relying on him to keep us in the air, even if he was erratic, side-to-side, up and down. I tasted blood—probably my own—as he grabbed my hair and yanked my head off his ear. I kicked his chest. He let go, still pumped full of adrenaline, his eyes still hot from actually being challenged by somebody, probably for the first time in his life, and I was going to bet everything that he didn’t know about one of the only things that could weaken someone with our powers. I just hoped it wouldn’t kill him.
Because I couldn’t exactly put that on my resume to the Olympiad.
I cupped my hands as he darted toward me, his mouth twisted into a snarl, almost grinning, most definitely hungry for some kind of challenge, definitely hungry. He was their experiment. Their probably millions worth of investments. He wanted to prove he was worth all of it and more.
But I’d been doing this superhero thing for a while, and power meant nothing if you had no idea how to use it. A gun can kill, sure, even if a kid fires it, Lucas had said. Adam got closer, nearer as I fell through the sky. But a soldier? Trained and understanding? That’s an execution.
Adam was on me, inches away. I swung my hands out, aiming for the sides of his head.
The clap of dull noise thundered through the sky when my hands met his ears. His eyes glazed over, his body went limp. He crashed into me, his momentum rocketing us through the sky. I was a passenger, too exhausted to fly, too damned stupid to realize that I didn’t have a way to break my landing apart from smashing my body to pieces all over Lower Olympus. Panic came, quick and fast, filling my gut with lead as I scrambled toward Adam’s spinning body. He wasn’t out cold, not completely, but he wouldn’t be flying straight any time soon. Not soon enough to save us. Shit, shit, shit, I thought. I reached for him. Grazed his finger tips. Grabbed his hand.
I pulled him toward me, the ground rushing to meet us. The sun was higher, bright and burning as it watched us fall. Adam groaned something I couldn’t heat over the shrieking wind, something gurgled and jumbled. Past the antennas on top of skyscrapers. Racing past the shining office windows perched above the city. We spiraled down, down, down, faster and faster, my grip so tight onto him he should be glad that my fingernails couldn’t cut through the skin around his arms. I screamed for him to get his senses together, to goad him like I had before into focusing.
No use, we were in free fall. The edge of a building neared, ever closer. I wrapped my arms around him and spun around in the air. We clipped the edge, separating us, sending him flying out of my grasp, and myself consumed in pain as brick smashed into me, or rather I smashed into the ledge of a building, dislodging bricks and concrete alike. Sky, ground, railings, glass. Over and over like broken film. A sense of deja vu when my stomach flipped around as I tried to get the sky above me and the ground beneath me like they should be. Nothing. Pain. Concrete. Agony Bricks. Blood in my mouth, fingernails cut and torn from when I tried to grab hold of a ledge.
Then I hit the ground, and kept hitting it until I rolled to a stop in the middle of an intersection. Cars shrieked to a stop around me, leaving black tire marks. My head pounded. My body lay still, even as I tried so, so hard to move. Where’s Adam? I couldn’t see him. Too many cars and people. Did I hit anyone? Fuck. Fuck, please no. But they weren’t rushing away, but closer to me. Were they shouting something? I couldn't tell. My ears hurt. Everything hurt. Someone tried touching me, maybe to see if I still had a pulse. I groaned, warding them off.
Damned humans, touching me, asking me questions I couldn’t hear. Unconsciousness was calling, a song I couldn’t help but listen to. I almost gave in. Very nearly gave up standing.
Then I heard it: Adam’s voice, a bellow that shook the ground, “YOU!”
He’s alive, I thought. Shut my eyes. Forced them back open. Good, he was alive. I figured if he had taken that first hit on the building’s edge, he would probably be in my state right now.
But, even as I fell, I was still a superhero. Still Olympia.
Even if I didn’t look like it when I got on all fours, gasping for air. Saving people came with the powers, and Adam technically hadn’t done anything wrong. I was the villain here.
I kneeled, swaying. The Normals around me were talking into their phones, maybe calling Damage Control or the Olympiad or even one of those fake Olympia hotlines. Adam was at the end of the street, a mess of grit and saliva and a deep, dark red ear swollen to twice its normal size. Blood trickled from them, oozing down the sides of his face and along the edge of his jaw.
C’mon, I just saved you, I thought. I teetered as I stood, then fell onto one knee. No, no more. I had to get home, get some rest. Fighting him now would be a public execution.
Adam took several steps, tried to fly, then collapsed into a heap.
You could train all you wanted in a facility, but exhausting yourself in the field was different. At least, that’s what I figured. It was hard to sound philosophical when the advice you were getting came from a head that’s been hit so many times tonight I lost count after Cherry sent me through a dozen train carriages. I was in survival mode, working off instinct. I didn’t know how long it took, but I knew the Normals were watching, knew they were filming me, as I knelt beside Adam and checked his pulse. I waited, shut my eyes. The blaring noise of Damage Control’s emergency vehicles cried through the city as the sun’s rays hit distant windows.
A soft thump followed by several more. He was fine, just exhausted.
He would be angry, maybe vengeful, but that was for another time.
“What the–” a guy in a beige suit said to my right. I looked at him, and his phone camera stared back at me. “I thought… Aren’t you gonna, like, kill him or something?”
I stood, swaying. Stay on your feet, Ry. “You want to see a dead Cape?”
“No,” he stammered. The crowd stepped back as I turned to look at him. My hair obscured my face, most of the black dye still clung to its strands. “But supervillains kill superheroes, so…”
“You’re fucked up, dude,” I muttered, turning away. “Nobody likes seeing them die.”
“So you’re not a supervillain?” a woman yelled. Damage Control appeared at the end of the street, starting to usher the crowd away, going straight for the people who probably paid for their premium services before dealing with everyone else. They made a beeline toward me.
Nope, just some kid who made a stupid decision.
I crouched, jumped, fell, then launched into the air. Not high, and not flying, but a controlled fall that left me crashing into alleyways and startling cats and homeless people for several minutes as I crossed the city. I clipped buildings. Stumbled and fell and smacked my face into the ground, eating shit as I dragged myself into crouch after crouch, flinging myself into the air and soaring high, caught my warm sunlight and the silence, the quiet, of being so alone up here.
Then I would fall, and each leap through the sky would be that little bit shorter.
I was about a block away from home when I finally gave into the exhaustion and collapsed in an alley. I slumped to my knees, gasping for each breath, feeling like every single one of them might be my last, was how much my lungs felt like they were being ripped straight out of my chest. Yellow morning sunlight flooded the alley, pushing thin shadows deeper into the city. I rested my back against a wall, shut my eyes, and breathed through my mouth. Someone was listening to the early morning broadcasts, something about supervillains or whatever. It eventually changed to some music channel that filled the alley, some peppy, up-beat song that Bianca would have loved to listen to. I almost smiled thinking that she probably was listening to it right now.
In her bedroom and getting ready to go on a run, slipping on one sock at a time as she watched whatever new superhuman video would be trending throughout the entire week.
It was a thought that came from nowhere, considering the bloody state of me. A thought that blew cold wind across my arms, over the bumps and the scrapes, the blood and the grit.
I rubbed my arms, warding off the thoughts and the coldness of the dark alley.
It was a good thing someone had painted an Olympia mural in this alleyway, that way I could focus directly on her golden eyes and her shining fists leading her toward the blazing blue sky so I could distract me from… well, myself. The golden lightning around her was bright, the paint fresh.
The lightning bolt on her chest glowed in the sunlight, glaringly bright.
No, Olympia wasn’t looking at me, not even close - the sky was more interesting - and why would she bother?
I was just a supervillain, some street thug too small for her liking. Too little to bother looking down at.
I wanted to feel the irony, to smile and wonder what Emelia would have said. But it was hard to feel like that staring at yourself, at the person everyone wanted you so badly to be.
So I stared at it—at her; myself—until I had the strength to stand back up again.