Days later, and the city was still in limbo after the Kaiju attack on 12th Avenue. The media were calling it a disaster, a terror attack that was gonna shake America to its core, and for once, I agreed with them. I hadn’t kept up with the ticking casualty numbers; hadn’t even bothered to check the missing persons fliers going up around the city, around neighborhoods, flooding social media pages like wildfire. I had tried to help as best as I could, but the city was in shambles, and so was I. I hadn’t slept in three days because of the scale of the attacks. Clearing up the rubble of the shopping complex was the city’s duty, but digging out dead bodies, killing all of the Kaiju still lurking around in back alleys, in office buildings, in homes and sewer lines, had been down to me. There had been looters, tiny riots. Pain in the neck humans trying to grab what they could quickly.

Most of them ended up getting killed by said stray Kaiju, then it was me they were screaming for when they got trapped inside of an apartment building with a half-spider person.

I lost count eventually, and at some point, the hatred and anger had bled away. I didn’t want to have it feel like a chore, something a little too similar to mopping the floor at Dennie’s after my shift ended, but Gods, my powers were working overdrive, working on this level I wasn’t fully used to yet. I hadn’t gotten more powerful, but it felt like I’d opened some valve and now it was all gushing out in a torrent I couldn’t quite stop. And it was scary. Terrifying, because there was just so much of it that it felt so un-earned, like I was cheating somehow by getting all this power on a day like that. What used to take several punches now barely took a grazing of my knuckles. They died like, well, animals, some of their bodies blown to pieces. Others painted alleys and offices.

The worst, though, must have been that lady who spat on me near the fountain.

She had run, like several of them, into the underground parking of the shopping complex, trying to find shelter and hide from the monsters slaughtering dozens on the surface. It took us a few days to get to them, because Damage Control wouldn’t work with me around them. In the end, we compromised, with me being the first to go down there when they cleared enough rubble. The fire department had done what they could, because the shopping center wasn’t the only attack that happened throughout the city. More chaos. Other half-eaten corpses to pull from the rubble. You understand how it is, then they’d nod their heads at me, grime on their faces, and head off.

I couldn’t blame them for leaving. The N.O.F.D wasn’t just a regular fire department. Their gear was heavier, able to withstand temperatures that only superhumans could create. They had to be strong, mentally and physically, but they were humans, just humans, and there was only so many bodies you could pull from the rubble, some eaten, some crushed, some still in a death grip clutching a baby they didn’t want to let go of, before something inside of you finally caved in.

The underground parking had been dark, gloomy, and so sickly sweet to my now more sensitive nose that I had started tearing up. I went in by myself, threatening the Damage Control units to give me some time to search the shadows and the dark and to find where the pungent smell of rot came from. I knew it would get relayed to their bosses, then leaked to the media, then they would talk about me not cooperating with proper law enforcement, but I didn’t care. Not when I started finding bloated human bodies scattered around cars and stairwells, around corners and huddled together in frightened little communities. Their eyes, when I found them, were hollow, bloodshot. The first to reach for my hand had been that woman who started the shouting match.

And that’s when I’d seen the bulges under her t-shirt. The moving bulges.

It didn’t take long for them to point me toward the first body to spill open, with bugs oozing out of a hollow stomach cavity, wriggling and squirming, choking on their own acidic digestive bile as they consumed and ate. Fat little larvae feasting on guts and muscle and bone.

I shuddered thinking about it, and getting that sight out of my head would take a while.

The dozens in the dark would stay missing from the public until Damage Control and the SDU figured out what to tell everyone. Mercy killings were a thought, because, well, how the fuck did you solve a problem like that? The larvae were huge, bigger than a twelve year old by the time they were bursting from a person’s intestines. But no, they didn’t burst out. They burrowed and ate, chewing through flesh until they were finally out in the open. Fuck. I massaged my eyes, because Damage Control had wanted to see it, study it. And sure, it made sense to learn what happened in case this shit ever happened again, but Gods, I’d had to kill the poor bastard screaming for God and her mother. Nobody, for once, argued with me about killing someone.

That was a few days ago, and everything since had been a blur. Right now was the first time in days that I could remember sitting down by myself without anything to do. I hadn’t been home since before Em and I went flying and running through the city. I hadn’t washed up since yesterday, but it didn’t matter, because the second I put this gear back on, I’d reek of blood and guts and that stench that Snake had left clinging to my skin. I stank of Wraith, of that burning sugar smell, and it would have been comforting, distracting, if I didn’t have bloody grit under my nails. If every time I listened to the city, I didn’t hear sirens crying throughout the night like scared children.

Being a superhero was one thing, but seeing things like that, being the person they cried for, even as their breaths reeked of death, of something living inside of them, wasn’t supposed to be part of it. I was meant to save people, not kill a mother in front of her kids because there was something growing inside of her. I saved the city, not contributing to an argument about whether or not we should use dynamite, a controlled destruction, or myself to collapse this entire part of the shopping center and later tell the media that we just couldn’t get into it. I was supposed to save the world, but here I was, covered in innocent blood, because I’d wanted to have fun being free.

If I’d listened to the news broadcast like I was meant to, taken what Emelia had said with more seriousness rather than just a blind, half-baked promise, then a lot more people could be alive.

Instead, all I wanted was to be Rylee again. Hold Bianca’s hands again. Be normal again.

I cursed myself out quietly, the wind atop this billboard I sat on pulling the words away.

Maybe I couldn’t have stopped all the attacks. Maybe the attacks happening around the city at similar times could have been stopped, or made less worse, or… I leaned forward and dug my fingernails into my head, trying to fight the banging headache. A superhero, that’s what I was, and as the city was about to get turned around, as the Kaiju Society was gathering, plotting, stewing together plans so sick that I was forced to swallow vomit just now, I had been arguing about high school bullies with a girl who thought she’d fallen in love with a superhero. It sounded so fucking stupid now. A waste of my time. Mom kicked me out of the house because I’d given up on being Rylee. I wasn’t going to go to college, killing her dreams for me. I was going to be a superhero.

And were you watching, Ronnie, as I saved the city? I bet you did. I bet you were proud.

Just not quite there yet. A little bit more, Ry, and you’ll be there eventually. A bit more. More focus. More strength. And less Rylee. Less silly little human love spats every waking hour.

It didn’t sit right with me, thinking about getting my own statue. Not right now.

A soft sound beeped beside me, and I glanced at my earpiece. I’d set it aside, wanting some down time. I stared at it, listened to it beep, afraid that there would be something new I would have to deal with soon. I put it in, pressed it and accepted the call, bracing myself for more bad news.

“Hey, Ry,” Lucas said, his baritone a little watered down. Wary. Tired. “Busy?”

I leaned my against the billboard. “Clocked in for the night shift. Something new?”

“When isn’t there?” he muttered. “Just a friendly this time. No command. No news.”

I shut my eyes, nodded. “Been one hell of a rough week. I’ve seen shit, Lucas. I’ve seen stuff before, but those were supervillains, so who cares? These were normal people who got—”

“I know, kid. I know.” His voice was gentle, and a part of me guessed that he must have had this talk with his sidekicks in the past. “And it’s hard for me to tell you to push it all down.”

I chuckled dryly. “I doubt I’d even bother listening to whatever you’ve got to say, then.”

He laughed a little, husky and also dry. We sat in silence for a moment, then he said, “You know, things were never this bad, even when I was active on the scene. Complicated, harsh, but this is plain in our faces now and all over the city. Lower Olympus was yesterday’s problem.”

I wanted to change the topic a little, but still, I asked, “How was it back then?”

Lucas rarely ever talked about the Golden Age, despite being one of the names that would stop any supervillain dead in their tracks. The Olympians never had a trifecta. Each one of them was a bastion, this pillar of justice that would snuff evil out before it even had the chance to ignite. Dad, Cleopatra, Heka himself, Shrike and Void, Poseidon later on and who could forget Ares and Miss Mars? Even just thinking about it brought a weak smile to my face. I wasn’t close to dad’s statue, or the memorial sphere that each of the fallen Olympian’s held over their heads as a way to remember what they did for everyone on the planet the day Titan tried to end it all for the humans.

But despite the amount of times I asked, Lucas always got quiet, distant, like the way he was right now in my ear. I guessed I couldn’t really blame him. Losing everyone you knew in the span of a single day would stop me in my tracks, too. Hell, thinking about Emelia, seeing the pain in her eyes, hearing it in her voice, still got to me. Still made me sick and angry on some level.

Lucas sighed for a moment, and I thought he wouldn’t say anything, until he cleared his throat. “It was wonderful, Ry. You’ve never experienced it, but going into hell knowing the person beside you is just as powerful, if not more, than the person you’re trying to put down, is a feeling you just can’t find anywhere else. You’re teammates to the media. Best friends to the kids who watch whatever tv shows they made about us back then. In truth, we’re all we had to each other.”

Silence, and I let him have that silence for once instead of running my mouth.

“We fought the Chaos Legion and won, even though Nemiza, that crafty little witch, wouldn’t just give up for once,” he said, chuckling softly. “We fought the Night Watch and the Nocturne. Took down governments, kid, all before the meatloaf got cold for dinner. Our problems were… different, but we handled them easier because there were more of us. Your generation is you and a couple of other people dressing up at night and beating up purse snatchers. You get the occasional somebody who makes a name for themselves, then a thug gets a lucky shot and puts one between their eyes. At this point, for everyone in the world, you’re all we’ve really got, Ry.”

I listened as he spoke, watching as the sun slowly hid itself behind the watery horizon, casting one more orange glow over the city. The sounds of cars and horns, of people shouting at each other or calling names, birds fluttering, music playing… I shut my eyes, and heard all of it. New Olympus was huge, growing, as wide as it was tall, and it would only get wider, and taller, and more shiny and glimmering as time went on, but it didn’t feel like that right now. It felt like we were all pretending. Like everything we knew was slowly going away and we were all too afraid to acknowledge what was going on just down the street in the alleyways of Lower Olympus.

I doubted this city had ever been perfect, even when dad was still around.

But it could still be a lot better off than it was doing right now.

“And how was that?” I asked quietly. “Working with people who would die for you?”

“It made us feel invincible,” Lucas said, his words trailing. “Like we’d never die.”

I’d never considered working with people. Grant had begged Olympia—not me, he didn’t know it was me in the costume—to join his team when being a superhero was still his dream.

And I entertained it for a while, teased it, and stayed up late at night thinking about it.

But dreams died hard when they slammed into cold black stone. I couldn’t figure out how someone would go about dealing with disappointing their teammates. If I screwed up, I’d have nobody but myself to blame. I didn’t like pointing fingers, because I had the powers (right?), had all this strength that I was so damned proud of, this heritage and legacy that quite literally was the reason New Olympus existed as it did today, so if someone died, then that was blood on my hands.

Just like the city, which was bleeding because I hadn’t taken it seriously enough. I could sulk all I wanted, be so tired I was a walking-flying corpse, but tough—that was just how it was.

I just wished that… I don’t know.I couldn’t think about the future right now. Problems to deal with here and now, and maybe one day I’ll sit back and tell my own prodigy about the past.

But I’ll have to make sure there’s a city for me to sit back in and tell stories about first.

I breathed in, a deep breath that filled my lungs, and sighed through my teeth. “You know,” I said to him, finally. “You might not talk a lot, but you do know when to give a damned speech.”

I could almost see his tempered smile from here. “Blame Ares. He loved a good talk.”

Quiet. Pause. Then I asked, “Nothing’s going to get easier for a while, is it?”

“Well, superstar,” Lucas said, sighing. “Remember what I told you a few years ago?”

It’ll get easy when you’re dead, he’d said, which had been one hell of a line to tell a sixteen year old. But at the time, I’d needed to hear it, because I’d fucked up, fucked up really, really bad.

It was a good thing, I guessed, standing up, that I wasn’t planning on kicking it yet. Who knows, maybe I’d make it to the end of spring break without putting myself in the ground first.

“I hate to admit it, old man, but I needed something to get me up,” I muttered, stretching my arms over my head and getting hit with a whiff of super-sweat. “I’ve got a bit of a question.”

“Anything,” he said. “As long as it’s not something I’m not… aptly equipped for.”

I smiled, remembering the time I’d needed a certain something to stop myself from ruining my costume. But for a man who didn’t have any superpowers and stood beside Zeus no less of a man, who had fought alongside people powerful enough to carve mountains right in half, watching him go bright red because I needed to grab a tampon quickly had only been just a little bit funny.

Now that I thought about it, Lucas had been the one to try and talk to me about how girl hormones worked here on earth. Mom had to step in and shoo him away, told him to go make tea for the both of us and find a sport to watch on the tv as she had the oh, so enjoyable talk with me.

I knew he was probably trying to distract me, to get the edge off a little by making me think about simpler times when things made sense, and I appreciated him for that. Loved him for that.

But if anyone asked, I hated the old geezer just as much as anyone, got it?

“Nothing ‘bout that,” I said. “It’s about my powers. About dad and his powers, too.”

And just like that, the seriousness in his voice was back. “What about them?”

“They’re… more,” I said, trying to explain. “It sounds strange, I know, because normal superhumans don’t get more powerful than when they first awaken, but they’ve been on overdrive lately. I even killed this one Kaiju with nothing but my electricity, Lucas. I’ve never done that before. The best I could do was shock someone awake with a tiny jolt from my index finger.”

He was silent, as he usually was, then he said, “Your old man rarely ever spoke about his powers, kid, and when he did, he never told us much about how exactly they worked. Secrets, all the time, no matter how hard I tried to get them out of him. There was no budging from your dad.”

I massaged my eyes. “Does that happen, then? Like, I don’t know, a second awakening?”

“Never heard of one,” he answered. “Conspiracies and hacks, but nothing concrete.”

“Great,” I muttered. “I think the only bet I have now is to ask my mom about it.”

“Do you feel any different?” he asked. “And what triggered the change?”

I could hear his old commanding tone coming back in. Beating on humans got them to talk, but scaring superhumans to their core was mostly the only other way for a normal person to do so.

“I feel pretty much the same,” I said, walking along the billboard grates and back again. “But whenever I touch something, I’ve got to pull back a little. It kinda feels like when you’ve just worked out, and your muscles are all a little bigger, but it’s all the time, all day, every single day.” I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “And like I said, it just happened when I fought Snake.”

“Creative name,” he muttered, continuing. “Have you been using your powers a lot more recently? Through the night, just around the house when you’re minding your own business?”

I thought for a moment. “Yeah, actually. On and off, though.”

He hummed in thought. “If it’s like a muscle, I guess you might be over-extending it. Listen, I’m figuring out your powers just as much as you are, and we haven’t had a breakthrough ever since you learnt how to fly and carry people at the same time. But I figure that making you strain them, actually strain them for once, has pushed you to a new level. That, or you’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep pushing it. We can only really tell if you keep going, but slow down a little just in case, Ry. The last thing anyone needs right now is for Olympia to be out of action.”

“Afraid that I can’t slow down now, Lucas,” I said. “An entire city to save, remember?”

“Then let’s hope that you don’t lose your powers before that happens.”

I paused, freezing in place. “Hold on, you’re saying I can lose my—”

“Listen, Ry, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you soon. If you need me: ring. Stay safe, kiddo.”

He cut before I could ask him more questions, like the most important question being what would happen to my body if my powers just stopped working. And I thought getting a power up (don’t look at me like that, I didn’t know what else to call it) would be a good thing. It turns out that it might be the opposite, but I guessed we’d find out, because Lucas’ guess was as good as any. Maybe I was just more powerful now, finally scaling up toward what dad had been when he was alive. Maybe I had broken through some kind of subliminal mental barrier when I fought Snake, just like all the other great superheroes did in the comics. Or maybe I was just hitting puberty again at the ripe old age of eighteen, and this was just one of the things that happened.

I could just go back home and ask mom more questions about my physiology, about what was really going on underneath my skin and through my blood, but not after the week I’d had.

Either way, I had things to do, like answering a call coming through my earpiece.

“Rylee,” Ava said. It was a shock to the system; a hot poker against my skin. “Here. Now.”

Needless to say, I was irritated with having to deal with supervillain nonsense at a time like this when the city needed a lot more superheroing rather than a touch more villainy. Lucas had said Lower Olympus was yesterday’s problem, but my problems tended not to care about days.

Flying through the thicker, more smoke-tinged air was like putting on an old pair of shoes and finding out they still fit. But the smoke flooding my nose was fresher, more acrid, rising in wispy, lazy pillars climbing high into the sky. I was in full Tempest gear, hair dye still so fresh it dripped down my neck. Ava had sounded urgent, even angry, but I took a few minutes to fly over the lower east end, over the sludge covered river and the kids playing in the muck around it. Over abandoned apartment buildings and factories belching smoke. Two guys on a smoke break pointed and gave me a two fingered salute. I gave them one back, later hearing laughter from them.

But the destruction around this part of the city was clear. So clear that I was a little pissed off that the news cycle had barely mentioned it. Entire blocks had gone up in smoke. Rubble littered streets, clogging traffic. It was a disaster zone, nearly as bad as the upper west, but I couldn’t compare destruction on this scale. The Kaiju had attacked the entire city, not just the rich folk. The islands connected by the Athena Bridge must have been the only ones not affected by the attack. Still, this place was getting worse. A sore spot that was getting harder to ignore. I hated to admit it, but getting someone in charge of this part of the city was starting to make a lot more sense.

Either that, or I had to do something about it pretty freaking quickly.

I flew a little lower, pulling back my powers and making the light fade from my eyes. I felt the tightening of my muscles begin to strain my skeleton. Skimming rooftops and over alleyways, past windows that people quickly pulled curtains over. Night was falling just as quickly as I was getting here, but the curfew was a joke, and the White Capes around these parts were having a riot (not literally, but sometimes literally) by throwing old couches and furniture and piles of wood together and dousing them in gasoline. Bonfires lit Lower Olympus in a sickly orange blaze. Their chanting was sickly, ghoulish, and their faces were made hollow by the fire they danced around.

The things they were burning must have come from Kaiju apartments. I pressed my lips together, not really knowing how I was supposed to feel about that, but after what I’d seen, I wouldn’t stop them for now. Just as long as they didn’t start stringing them up from lamp posts like the more extreme White Capes had a fetish for from time to time. What Ava said was true: they were starting to become more of a nuisance, and I’d have to come up with a plan for them later.

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I landed outside the Golden Guild, my new pair of boots crunching against rubble and broken glass. It looked like it had been through hell. An entire pillar out front was missing, and I could still smell the stink of smoke coming off charred black bricks on one face of the building. Craters littered the boulevard toward it, more than last time, and there were a lot less people wandering around at this time of night. I knocked on the door, waited for Dumbo to open it for me whilst I looked around. Saying that I must have missed something was a hell of an understatement.

It looks like there was an entire freaking war going on for the past week, I thought.

I heard movement coming from the surrounding rooftops. I glanced upward and saw a mercenary with her sniper barrel pointed right at me. I waved at her, and she lowered it, pressed her ear, then slipped back into the shadows. The door to the large hotel shuddered open, throwing dust down from the ceiling that went right down my throat. I coughed, waving a hand in front of my face to shoo the dust away as I entered. Dumbo looked badly off, with bruises and fleshy scars crossing his arms and back and chest. Once he shut the door, he slumped down in front of it. His radio was off, his large meaty hands gingerly touching the fresh, bloody scars across his forearms.

The casino hall was empty, silent, except for a few mercenaries smoking cigarettes and playing a game of half-hearted poker. They looked at me, not exactly smiling as I flew past.

The mood, as you must have guessed, was sour, hanging in the air like spoiled fruit.

I flew toward the elevators, and found even more mercs clearing rubble away from the lone shaft that had been working last time. One of them didn’t even look at me as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the grand winding staircase that spiraled up toward the executive suites. I offered to help them, but they grunted, waved me away, and I took the hint when a few of them narrowed their eyes at me from just beneath their brows. Pissed off, I thought. Then I must have missed something more than just a little big, or maybe it wasn’t directed at me specifically, but at the people who were inside of those executive suites whilst they slaved away downstairs.

I left them to their clean up, hearing them mutter curses under their heavy breathing.

The upper suites were surprisingly clean compared to the ground floors. I couldn’t even imagine what the armored basement must have looked like. The carpet here was clean, almost fresh, as if it had been vacuumed recently. Lucifer must have reinforced the VIP rooms a little more for his wealthier guests. The lights were on, glowing softly, making the cream-colored walls stand out against the freckles of dried blood that were scattered over vases and paintings. I passed several empty bedrooms, all looking lived in and messy. Beds not made. Towels and take away on night stands and on the floor. There was a lovers' suite, too, and I figured Ace and Damsel had been in here recently, but I wasn’t the type to check. I continued down the hallway, lost in the luxury, following the sound of muffled voices coming through thick wooden doors at the end of the corridor. I didn’t know what to expect, but there was arguing, shouting, and maybe some spite.

Just everything I needed right now: gang warfare led by some girl who was trying to be something she clearly wasn’t. The mole had screwed over our plans last… No, not last night, nearly last week. I shook my head, trying to get the cloud of fuzz between my ears to leave.

I knocked on the door, and I heard someone mutter several swear words.

O’Reiley’s face was the first I saw when the door was pulled open, and I involuntarily sucked air through my teeth at the exhausted sight of him. “Nice to finally have you around.”

The office space was magnificently huge. Floor to ceiling windows looking over the ocean, partly blinded by heavy scarlet curtains. A painting of Lucifer sitting in the same exact seat that Ava was in loomed above her, except he filled out the large leather chair, where she looked like she was sitting somewhere only the grown ups should be. The desk in front of her was littered with papers, maps, and several empty coffee mugs, as well as a pistol with a magazine beside it. To my right, a small sitting area (I say small, but my entire apartment would have fit right on the carpet between couches) held Damsel and Ace, the merc woman from before, and Knuckles, too.

Mr. Campbell was standing beside Ava, down to nothing but a sweaty waist coat.

Witchling wasn’t in the room with us.

The news was on, showing a broadcast that wasn’t anywhere near as popular as Olympus News. But it showed a bird’s eye view of Lower Olympus, playing back footage of the recent attacks. The reporter was wearing a bulletproof vest, and stood in front of a destroyed hospital. I turned from Ava for a second, watching as the reporter mustered up the strength to start talking.

“Yes, Julia, I’m here outside the remains of the Grayson Hospital building, and…” He paused for a moment, and then cleared his throat. “As you can see, it still remains in ruin. Some brave helpers have tried to clear the debris and help others search for loved ones, but…” He shook his head, then looked dead in the camera. “Lower Olympus needs help. It is dying, and everyone in the upper west side isn’t even watching as it happens, and yes, I know that there were attacks there, too, but Mayor Blackwood, Cassie Blackwood, anyone who can help, please, there are people on these streets who need food and clean water, who need shelter and safety from—”

“Would you turn that off?” Ava muttered, massaging her eyes.

“Wait,” I said, before Knuckles could reach for the remote. She looked surprised to see me, her eyes widening. She still wore the black metal ski mask around her mouth, and wasn’t wearing any of her gear. Knuckles looked at Ava, then back at me. “I said keep it on for a second, alright?”

“—is not like the rest of Lower Olympus,” he was saying. “This destruction will linger. This rubble will litter our roads and clog our drains. People will starve without help, urgent help.”

“Ruslana,” Ava said quietly, staring at Knuckles. “Turn it off, and let’s start the meeting.”

I walked closer to the tv, staring at the man waving his hand behind him at the chaos.

The reporter’s eyes were starting to get wet, his words hurried and jumbled. “Olympia,” he said into the microphone. “Whether you’re watching this or not, please don’t forget about us. New Olympus needs its heroes, not only where the cameras are, not just where people are watching, but everywhere, here on the streets, in the homes. I know and understand that you’re busy, that you help as many people as you can without hesitation, but please, dear God, don’t you see what’s—”

Ava stood. “Turn it off, Ruslana, because you don’t take orders from her.”

I looked at Knuckles. “Keep it on, ‘cause I’ll just turn it back on myself.”

“We need a hero, anyone, powered or not,” he whispered. “Our people need saving.”

“K-42,” Ava said measuredly. “For once, just do as you’re told.”

Knuckles turned off the television without a second of hesitation. Something hung in the air between them, between everyone, as I turned to look at Ava. She wasn’t looking at Knuckles, but at me, as if challenging me on some kind of personal grounds. The others watched, the closest being O’Reiley, a cigarette in his mouth and steely eyes watching me from a thousand miles away. I wanted to do something, say something, but I swallowed my tongue and folded my arms, staying quiet for my sake more than anything else. I hated the way she just spoke to Knuckles, I’ll admit.

But if I said something, then my guess was that Ava would go straight for the one thing she held dangling over my head. Too many threats right now to test her with that kind of information.

So all I could really do for now was dig my fingernails into my bicep that little bit more.

“Good. Thank you,” she said, smoothing her shirt. She put out a hand, and Mr. Campbell quickly put a folder on her palm, saying nothing, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Now that everyone is here, finally, and since this is the first time in days that we’re all able to meet, I’d like to go over a few things that have been less than satisfactory, not just here, but in Lower Olympus as a whole.”

I sat on the armrest of Knuckles’ seat, then said, “Fill me in on what happened here first.”

“We got fucked,” O’Reiley muttered, his voice low. The bags underneath his eyes were black, the soot and grit on his face not much brighter. “Attacked right in our own damned HQ.”

“The good ol’ caught with our pants around our legs,” Ace added. He looked at me, slyly jerking a thumb at Ava and quietly adding: “She lost her cool and didn’t know what to do.”

Shocking, I know, that I wasn’t all that surprised. “Kaiju attacked down here, too? I thought you guys had the entire street locked down. How the hell did they manage to do that?”

“Ask the puppy sulkin’ in the corner, love,” Damsel muttered.

“Mr. Campbell was with me during the attack,” Ava said. “Besides, he’s not involved with the Kaiju Society, so I don’t really know why arguing about it right now will do us any good.”

“Safer than sorry,” I said, shrugging. Her eyes narrowed at me. “I’ve been busy dealing with the mess they’ve been causing, so you can’t really blame me if I don’t trust your little dog.”

Mr. Campbell flinched, and I would have felt bad some other time, but I hadn’t come across a stray pack of dogs just like him fighting over a half-dead woman in an alley just to turn a blind eye to them. Yeah, yeah, I knew they weren’t all bad, but I didn’t discriminate against evil; superhumans, humans, Kaiju and everything and everyone in between would get a fist through their mouth eventually if my week continued the way it had been going so far, believe me on that.

“What did the Society want, anyway?” Ace asked. “We’ve got nothin’ for ‘em over here, unless they want guns, ammo, some fuckin’ Chinese takeout and whatever the hell Witchling is always brewing in her bedroom. But the last time I checked, dogs don’t really need pistols to kill.”

“Mama always said if a dog bites ya, put one through it,” Damsel murmured.

“Hicks,” the merc woman muttered. “Gotta love ‘em.”

“It’s the same reason that they attacked 12th Avenue, Grayson Hospital, the harbor, the boardwalk,” O’Reiley said, “the municipal building in the upper west, some preschool just a few blocks from here. There isn’t any reason because they didn’t want to make it obvious. If they hit depots and warehouses alone, then sure, that would make it easy, but they planned these attacks, coordinated these goddamned attacks, because they knew that we weren’t going to be ready.”

He looked at Ava, then pointed at her with his cigarette. “That’s what your little document says, doesn’t it? We got hit because you didn’t expect to get attacked a few hours after the dock.”

The merc woman—I’d call her Jane, she looked like a Jane with that rugged scar on her face—leaned back on the sofa and put her boots up onto the table. Her assault rifle was nestled on her lap, like some child she wouldn’t let go of. “The Triumvirate,” she said plainly. O’Reiley nodded for her to continue. “They know that Lucian isn’t the one in the driver’s seat anymore.”

“And that means they wanted to teach you some kind of lesson,” I said to her.

“The battle doesn’t stop just ‘cause everybody’s gone home,” Ace added.

“Blame can only go so far when you have people with experience telling me what I did wrong when they were the ones who were here when the attack began,” she said, clear as crystal. Ava tilted her head at me, her glare piercing. “And as for you: where were you when I called?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I was busy dealing with my own things.”

“The last time I checked, ‘your own things’ encompass what the Jericho Triad has planned,” she said. Ava set the file onto her desk, then opened it and plucked a piece of paper out of it. “Twenty of our warehouses just got ransacked when you were all, from what I can only presume you were doing, sitting around with your thumbs up your asses. Our stock is significantly depleted. Our resources are now a fraction of what they once were.” Ava placed her hands on the table and looked at everyone with eyes she was starting to grow into; eyes Lucian had worn proudly. “As I was meeting with the White Capes, as I was figuring out how to strengthen our network around this part of the city, trying to at least create a system that’ll for once work for us against the Triumvirate, the next thing I find out is that we’ve been crippled because of unbridled incompetence that could have been mitigated if a single one of you had the capacity to just think.”

Ava walked around her desk, now standing right underneath the faint light coming off the chandelier above her. It casted a slight shadow over her eyes, whether she knew it or not. “We have a mission, a goal, and so far, it feels as if the people in this room aren’t too focused on it.”

“You know,” I said, barging against the growing, bitter silence. “You’re the one in charge.”

“Yes, I am,” she said dryly. “And you’re all capable of independent thought, aren’t you?”

Oh, I didn’t like her tone at all, less than I had last time. And maybe, once upon a time, I would have snapped her neck or painted her across this lovely little office space, and I really, really wanted to do that, but the problems just beyond those leering windows were bigger than the arguments happening in here. People were hurting right this second as we argued and bickered and threw words at each other, and the longer this went on, the more time I felt that I could be doing something useful slipped through my fingers. Whatever, I thought. She’ll get what’s coming to her.

Learning that we had lost that much in the attack, though, wasn’t something that had been on my bingo card. The Triumvirate knew we would be weak right after trying to get those crates off that Aegis Tech cargo ship, and they had the resources to spare to throw another attack on us when we were still licking our wounds. They got away with at least one truck full of special grade rifles and whatever that powdered drug had been, and now they were swimming in even more assault rifles and ammunition, defensive armory and who knows what else Ava had in store.

It was starting to feel like I was fighting a wildfire that didn’t know when to quit.

“But why so many attacks?” Jane asked. “Unrelated attacks, like at the preschool.”

Ava waved her hand through the air. “I don’t know. Maybe the Triumvirate wanted the SDU and Olympia distracted when they were hitting key parts of the city. Lost in the confusion.”

I heard the accusation sitting on her tongue, but she hardly took a glance at me.

“Are we sure that it is the Triumvirate?” Mr. Campbell said. We looked at him, and the half-dog man seemed to shrink a little. “Our enemies seem to be getting more plentiful recently.”

I nodded. “My guess is that it is. When they started popping up ‘round where I was—”

“And where exactly were you?” Ace asked me. “We coulda used your help, you know.”

“Like I said, I was busy doing my own thing,” I answered him plainly. “But like I was saying, those Kaiju appearing all over the city? My guess is that a lot of people didn’t notice ‘em because Wraith was using his powers to transport them all over the place. This was planned.”

“I’m sorry,” Ace said, pulling his arm away from Damsel and looking at me. “Wraith?”

“Know the guy?”

“I’ve never even heard of the guy.”

“Tempest and myself came across him during our pursuit of the Aegis cargo,” Knuckles said, finally breaking her silence. She sat stiffly on the couch, as if she wasn’t used to sitting on something soft for so long. “He is able to control darkness, or some facet of it. I presume he feeds off living beings by way of his shadows, as well as transports himself and others through them.”

“Great,” O’Reiley said, rubbing his eyes. “Even more superhumans to deal with.”

My thoughts exactly, soldier.

“And you’re certain he works for the Triumvirate?” Ava asked me, ignoring Knuckles.

I shrugged. “Pretty damned sure.”

Damsel said, “What if, say, his shadows appear in this room right now. What happens?”

That’s a good point. “I don’t really know what would happen. Maybe he can only make shadows appear if he’s close, or maybe he can do it if he’s had a good look at the place from afar.”

“Latter,” O’Reiley said. “Surveillance, most likely. Monitors that screen wherever it is that the Triumvirate wants to get hit, and he focuses on that. It’s the only way his powers make sense.”

“I’ll need the entire guild swept through again,” Ava muttered, biting her thumb nail. “Bugs, cameras, the whole lot. I can’t have anything like this happen again. It was a show of force, a warning. They want to scare us, because now they have our weapons, our gear, and can send monsters wherever they want in the entire city in a second’s notice. Before we know it, they’ll be sending them not just on our doorstep, but right under our noses.” She slowly paced, her dad’s portrait watching her from behind the hand he had over his mouth and just underneath his nose. “If we hide for too long, they’ll just hit us again, probably a lot harder than before. They want us out.”

“I don’t like the way she’s talkin’, hun,” Ace said to Damsel. “She’s planning something.”

And the last time she came up with a plan, the dock incident happened, and I went flying across half of Lower Olympus and through a freaking building. So, for once, I was on Ace’s side.

“I suggest we take a small hit squad,” O’Reiley said, snuffing his cigarette on her carpet. Avs noticed as he stepped on the sizzling end, eyes flickering up and down, quiet anger on her face. “No more than around six of us. We pierce right through something they don’t want us getting at any time soon. We make it seem like a bigger force than it actually is. We hit fast, and we hit them hard, and we leave before they can retaliate, hopefully with more of them dead than us.”

“What’ll that do to shake their confidence?” I asked. “They’ve already got one on us.”

He nodded. “It’s about the message it sends. If we wipe out one of their warehouses, one of their depots, or any of their strongholds, then it shows that we aren’t down and out just yet, kid.”

“But…” My brows furrowed, my mouth soured a little. “That’ll spark something. A war.”

Silence, then he quietly said, “Yeah, maybe, but there’s no other choice now, Tempest.”

The last thing Lower Olympus needs right now is to become a battlefield.

“They took from us knowing we couldn’t retaliate immediately,” Ava added. “They stole our goods and spat in our faces by attacking us on home turf. They don’t see us as a threat.”

“They see us as vermin that they just need to get rid of,” Jane spat, rifle in her arms.

I stood up. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, hit them where it hurts? We got a few of those special grade rifles. We can use those on their home turf. Push them back into their little hole.”

Ava folded her arms and leaned against her desk. “And do you know where that is?”

“No,” I said, spreading my arms. “But we could go out there and find it. You have your little informant running around somewhere. Just send them to go and search for their main base.”

“And what do you propose we do until then?” Ava asked me, curious, testing.

I waved my hand at the tv. “Go and help people in need. We can wrestle in the shit all we want with the Triumvirate, but if we got some food and water to some people, maybe kill a few bad apples walking around the streets that are making it hell for the civies, then maybe we could get some kinda grip on LO. We get their support, they’ll tell us more, and we won't start a war. You wanted a stronger network, right? Then let’s build it with the people actually on the ground.”

If the silence had been loud before, it was deafening now. Every single pair of eyes was looking right at me like I was talking gibberish. A smile grew on Ace’s face, then he started laughing. Nobody joined him, but O’Reiley looked at me like I was some chimp that just threw shit on his wall. Ava watched from her desk, arms folded, a quizzical look in her dark brown eyes.

“Oh, man!” Ace said, his laughter dying. “Tempest wants us to play superhero!”

“We don’t have the manpower, the logistics, nor the time to parade around resources to people who could very easily start working for the Triumvirate as soon as they were given more supplies.” O’Reiley signaled for Jane to stand. “Yes, we want to control them, kid, but how do you expect us to do that without making ourselves look like Good Samaritans? You’re new to this, I get that, but playing the peaceful, good guys–bad guys card never ends well in this business. The good guys have their morals, and then what? The bad guys throw a bunch of cash, food, water, weapons and protection, insurances of safety from us, things that we don’t have at the problem until it goes away. They’ll turn us into the people they should all hate because we’re the ones still fighting.”

“Sarge has a point, Supes,” Jane said, walking past me, her heavy boots thudding against the carpet. “The civilians take from us, they expect more, which we don’t have, and who comes in to sweep them off their feet? Right, the same guys who just tried to blow up the damned building.”

“I’ll break it down easy for ya, kid,” Ace said to me. “We give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a block, and before we know it, they’re telling us to shell up some cash or else they’ll screw with what little business we’ve got left. And at that point? Well, we’re just some street thugs to them.”

I was being forced to pick the lesser of two evils here, but, grudgingly, I had to swallow the bitter logic that they were all somewhat right. But couldn’t there be some other way to do this?

A way that, you know, didn’t end up with hundreds of people dying under my watch?

“O’Reiley,” Ava said, getting his attention. “Get your group together. You come up with a plan on where we should hit tonight. I’ve got a list of places that are valuable to them on some level. Heavily fortified, though, but if you do this right, it’ll be a walk in the park for us.”

He nodded as Jane opened the door, her heavy black rifle hanging off her shoulder. “I’ve got an idea of who I’d want with me,” he said. “Nothing too complex. Plain old shoot and run.”

Ava nodded, and when he left, she told everyone else to leave the room as well. Ace and Damsel didn’t waste any time vanishing, but not before Ace muttered, “Superheroes, the kid wants us to be superheroes!” Then Knuckles stood, snapping off a salute at Ava, then glancing at me before she slipped past the door. Mr. Campbell was the last to leave, and only did so when Ava explicitly told him that she wanted the room to only us two. Alone. Then he left, and we were.

And the room hadn’t been so small, so quiet, for as long as I could remember.

“I suggest you don’t speak out of turn again,” she said quietly, not moving from her place. I figured it was some power move, forcing me to use my super hearing instead of walking toward me. “Dishing out ideas like that is the reason that your friends and family end up getting hurt.”

I glared at her. “And tones like yours are the reason people like you suddenly vanish.”

Ava smiled, flat and emotionless. “Ah, yes, you’re right, because that’s what you do to people like me: make us all go missing. You know, you’re not quite the supervillain just yet.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Tempest,” Ava said, pushing off her desk. “That for someone who prides herself on her good nature and very focused and, dare I say, honorable goal of ridding this city of evil, you do an awful job of sounding heroic, and of being heroic, too. All the deaths this week, and why?”

I remained silent, not trusting that the next thing I would do was put her through that desk.

“I’ll tell you why,” she said, smiling wider this time. “Because you’re a terrible hero.”

I was in her face in seconds, the gust of wind so strong she stumbled back against her desk. The curtains shoved against the glass. Papers fluttered around us. “Say that again. I dare you.”

Ava adjusted her glasses and stood up straight, looking me dead in the eyes. “You heard what I said just fine, I’m sure of it. In case you forgot, we have a common goal, so if you’d like to be a better hero, then next time”—she stepped closer, right in my face; so close I could almost taste the shot of alcohol she must have taken recently—“do as you’re told, and come when you’re called.” She stared at me, not blinking, not moving. Her heartbeat was slow, gentle and pulsing.

She wasn’t afraid of me, didn’t even stink of the pheromones that humans usually did.

How much longer do you want to be someone’s pet? Dominion had asked me in that boiler room. His voice was clear in my mind, so clear it felt as if he was right here with me. I had argued that I wasn’t anyone’s pet, or anyone’s property, but I felt stupid now, looking into the eyes of something that should be below me. Things like Ava got turned into pulp on a normal day. I put her head through a brick wall and didn’t even think twice about her as I had dinner that same night. And yet here I was, not able to do anything to Ava except watch her stand proud in front of me.

You’re just as dumb of a little dog as your owner probably thinks you are.

So next time,” Ava said quietly, “you stop pretending that you’re a hero everyone so desperately needs at every second of the day, and come right here if there’s a problem. I shouldn’t even have to call you for you to be here; it should be automatic.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m beneath you,” I growled. “We’re not equals.”

“Correct. You’re an employee that needs to do better.” She put her hand on my shoulder and tilted her head as she looked at me. “So please, for your sake, get your shit together and do it.”

I swiped her hand off my shoulder, then jabbed a finger into her chest hard enough to make her bleed. She didn't buckle, even as my finger got deeper into her chest cavity. “One day,” I warned quietly, “when this is all over, I’m gonna make a choice, and I’m not gonna choose you.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Ava said. “Until then, do as you’re told, and at least pretend to be a supervillain. You’ll seemingly do a lot more good for Lower Olympus this way, anyway. At least now as Tempest you can shrug off all the people you kill as being a villain instead of lying to yourself and saying its for a greater cause.” She shook her head slowly, canines glinting as she spoke again. "Now go on, do what you do best and kill for me."