It wasn’t every day that I got the chance to watch a murder happen right in front of my eyes. I usually happened to be the one stopping a bullet or a knife or a fist from ending someone’s life, or it was me doing the killing. This time, though, as I sat crouched on my haunches, my feet planted to the side of a sooty old factory building, I let it play out beneath me. Being back in New Olympus didn’t feel any different than when I had left—the smog was still thick, and the crimes were still plenty enough to go around. I hadn’t gotten to Ava yet, because my attention had been pulled elsewhere by a series of trucks leaving the Golden Guild a few minutes after I arrived.

Judging by old tire marks, more had either just gone back inside or just left. It had taken me about a day to get back home, not exactly shooting my way through the sky. The operation had been going on longer than the few days I had been gone, I’d just caught them in the middle of it.

Five armed trucks rumbling through the night, making their way through opposing gang territory without a pause, blatantly obvious as they carved through Lower Olympus. I had been torn about knocking on Ava’s window right away and ripping her a new one and then talking it out with her as she pulled herself together, or I could have followed the trucks and seen what she was still planning on doing tonight. The Guild itself hadn’t looked badly off. In fact, the lights outside of it were on, and the busted pillars and rubble scattered across the street had been repaired and cleaned up. Business, apparently, was booming, so I had decided on the latter of following them.

I just wanted to make sure Ava knew I was back in town, and not on her side anymore. Send her a message that said hey, you’re fucked, and I dare you to screw with me some more.

If it was another one of her operations, I wanted to see what she was planning, what she was doing, and if I could be the wrench in her works, then I was looking forward to making her life hell. I wasn’t sure if O’Reiley was in there with them, or if she’d sent any of her more important superhumans on this little night time mission. I figured it didn’t really matter, did it? Hindering any kind of her progress would put a smile on my face, and it would also stop any incidents from happening again on my watch. I was smart enough to watch and wait, but knew enough about Ava and the Jericho Triad to act with force and nothing less when the time came.

Ava and I weren’t going to be seeing eye to eye anymore, it was as simple as that. If I wanted this place clean, then I was going to do it myself. How, you asked? Easy, clear ‘em out.

Spring break was coming to an end, and hunting season was starting in New Olympus. I wasn’t going to discriminate anymore. Ava’s people just didn’t have a valid hall pass with me. I might not be the brightest bulb in the room, but I figured that if I wanted my city a little clean, then I was going to make sure of it the one way I knew how—through forcing the villains back into the dark where they belonged. I was out of ideas and I was out of patience. I tried, I really did try. I fell into the trap of thinking a supervillain could give me what I wanted in my life. The devil doesn’t come with horns and a pointed tail and all that. I made a mistake, and I was owning up to it.

I still remembered what Lucas had said about growing up, about thinking and making the hard choice for the sake of everyone else, but hell, he had also said that times were different now, and I had no reason whatsoever to dance to the same tune the Olympians had. Was it ballsy for me to assume that I knew better than someone who had saved the world? Maybe. Did I really care?

I think we all knew the answer to that question before it was even asked.

But getting back to the topic at hand: the murder. In fairness, though, to the dozen or so armed guards who had spilled out of the trucks, it wasn’t so much as a string of murders as it was a massacre that almost made me sick to the stomach. I had followed them deeper into Gallows, a borough that was really just an industrial district. Steelworks and the lot around these parts. Reinforced concrete that could withstand superhuman attacks. Speedster-proof glass. That kind of stuff. Villains had tried in the past, but Damage Control would leave them in the newspaper’s obituary pages if anyone so much as glanced Gallows’ way. That had been their destination, and in case you had missed how my life had been going for the past several days, I wasn’t in the loop with the Jericho Triad anymore to know what they had been planning on doing. My guess was an assault on a few factories, maybe to get some more resources or gain ground on the Triumvirate.

At least, that had been the plan before Knuckles had punched a hole through a mercenary's chest. It had been as simple as getting out of the truck, turning to her right, and throwing a jab.

His chest had caved in, and the rest of him had sprayed out of his back like she had squeezed a can of red spray paint, dousing a few other mercs and the gravel underneath their feet.

I’d been shocked enough to stay silent, sticking to the darkness of the grimy wall with my flight. I was in full Olympia gear, my hair tied back except for two parts hanging in front of my face. I wanted to blend in, to just watch as Knuckles kicked the feet out from underneath one man and smashed a hole through his ribcage with her heel. She was scarily efficient. Frighteningly. She swept up an assault rifle and shot at their feet, cutting them down to their knees, then she picked the ones that ran off one by one, hunting them through the industrial yard like rats running from poison. I followed her little warpath, watched and listened as she gutted a man with a stray piece of rebar and part of a chain link fence she used to make wet ribbons out of some woman’s burly torso.

Not once did she stop to talk. Not once did she break her pace. She only stopped to crouch, pull out one magazine and slip in another, cock the rifle and get back up again, shooting, cutting, punching and quite frankly slaughtering. She left their bodies behind her, a trail of them that made the gravel shine red. It painted the factory’s exterior walls and the outdoor machinery. Piles of steel shone crimson under flickering security lights. I held my breath as the stench began ramping up. It had been a while since the smell of death had been in my lungs, and it was starting to get sickly.

It must have taken her about twenty minutes to wipe them out. The final mercenary was some skinhead with a snake tattoo curling around his throat and across the back of his head. He had been dragging himself across the yard, trying to get to the trucks, maybe to call for help, maybe to try to escape, but it didn’t really matter. I watched Knuckles, still wearing my black face mask, still with those placid blue eyes and that nearly ghostly white face, pull a pistol from the holster on her thigh and shoot him three times—one bullet in his hand, blowing apart the fingers reaching for the truck’s door, and the next to the base of his spine, making him go limp. The last went right through his skull, killing him instantly. Then there was silence, a very, very loud silence.

A lot of the factories around here still chugged along through the night, billowing black smoke into the sky. The quiet came from the suddenness of what she had done. Knuckles was a soldier, the kind that would throw themselves onto a grade if their commanding officer told her to. Pulling a gun out on people she must have known and cutting them down wasn’t like her. Then again, villains didn’t really need a reason to do anything, just poor logic, and I knew that as much as anybody. Their reasoning was bullshit, skewered by more than what they said. But Knuckles rarely ever talked. She rarely gave out answers. She followed orders because that’s just what she did, so I couldn’t help but wonder if this was another order given to her by Ava or O’Reiley.

Was this Ava’s doing, too? Were these mercs Triumvirate spies she wanted dealt with?

Or, and I hoped, had she figured that working for that a-hole wasn’t worth it anymore.

Gods, right back into this stuff, I thought. So much for a warm welcome back.

I stood, now parallel to the ground beneath me. I wasn’t angry as much as I was interested in what Knuckles was going to do next. If Ava was behind this, she would be calling her soon.

Instead, Knuckles waited, and waited, standing beside the trucks, arms folded against her chest, until a group of men in filthy overalls hopped out of a beaten up work truck. What’s going on? Knuckles didn’t say anything to any of them as she got into the leading armored truck, though one of them slipped her a piece of paper she only glanced at, nodded her thanks, then she shut the truck’s door (but not before she shoved the dead body out of the driver’s seat), and drove off into the night. I glanced back down at the guys in the overalls, listened to them joke about the killing they were going to make with these trucks. They stepped over the bodies as if they just didn’t exist.

I set off silently through the air, following Knuckles. She cut back through Gallows, then went down a side street that led directly to an apartment complex I was familiar with. I kept one of my backpacks duct taped to the inside of an air vent around here. These apartments weren’t empty, I knew people squatted in them, but your guess to how many was as good as mine. The truck briefly stopped at the gate in front of the walled-off complex, but they quickly swung open seconds later. I continued tracking her as she parked in front of a water fountain, busted, of course, and just as dry as the concrete underneath the truck. She switched it off and opened the door, then waited.

I was high enough in the sky to be touched by a cold breeze, a gust that swept the hair out from in front of her face. Oil lanterns shone in apartment windows, blossoming before curtains were quickly pulled shut again. I heard the patter of feet on concrete, then silence, as if children were running around in those dark hallways, invisible to me. It didn’t take long, though, for a shadow stalking around the rooftops, a blur of movement hard to follow through the night, to leap down from above and onto a fire escape, bound off the side of a building and finally landing on top of an old lamp post to get my attention. It was a cat, a black, well-groomed cat that I swore I must have seen before. Its eyes were a luminous yellow, and the rest of its coat bled darkness.

When it jumped to the ground and into a puddle of black, I lost sight of it.

Then just as quickly, a figure appeared in front of the truck, standing away from its high beams. She was tall, lean, and wore a suit of white and black that hugged her body. Sections of armor plating on her arms and thighs and torso bulked her up, and the daggers in her belt glinted in the soft light. Great, I thought. Someone new. I didn’t have a good experience with meeting new people recently, and this woman with black hair, wearing a white mask with what I could assume were red whiskers carved onto it, was just another to add to the list. It was the sharpened silver claws in her hands, or maybe they were coming out of her gloves? I couldn’t really tell from here.

Or maybe it was the fact that she reeked of blood, just like Knuckles and I (to a lesser extent) also did. The sword on her back didn’t look like it was part of her gear—it wasn’t hers.

And neither was the glimmering silver necklace strung around her throat like a noose.

“You’re smarter than Ava gives you credit for,” the woman said. Nothing distinct about her voice. Nothing to mark her out as unusual. She was used to hiding in plain sight of everyone. The full face mask made it hard to see who she was. Old school, then. She wasn’t taking any chances.

Was she Ava’s shadow? I didn’t want to believe it. A freaking cat person had figured out everything about my life? My better judgment told me to stay put and not act out. Not yet, at least.

Plus it felt a little too… convenient. Easy. I was used to struggling for everything I learned about, usually by getting punched in the face during that process. Maybe I caught a break for once.

Or maybe this was something else entirely. A freaking new problem to deal with.

“What do you want?” Knuckles asked quietly. “I’m a dead woman walking now.”

The woman spread her arms. “Welcome to my life, I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“You joke like someone I knew,” she muttered, flat. “You’re just not as charming.”

The woman wearing black and silver walked toward her, and she didn’t make a single noise, as if she was some shadowy apparition. “You made the right decision. What you’re doing tonight is going to do more to weaken the Triumvirate than anything Ava has done in months.”

“Was it worth killing so many people?”

“I never took you for the sentimental type.”

“The effort was taxing, I mean.”

The woman laughed a little as she leaned against the truck. “More than worth it. If it doesn’t work out, then there’s always going to be someone wanting to hire a bit of good muscle.”

Knuckles remained silent as she flexed her hands. Her fingerless gloves were still wet.

She handed Knuckles an envelope she pulled from a pocket on her belt. I was too far away to see what it said as Knuckles read through it. Stoic as ever, all she did was nod, hand it back, and push a hand through her silver hair. For once I wished she would just show a little bit of emotion.

“Should be easy for you,” the woman said. “But this job wasn’t meant for you, anyway.”

“I’m the one who came, didn’t I?”

The woman shrugged. I got closer, seeing that the jade pendant was in the shape of a cat’s head. “You were the most convenient option. I have things on my plate that can’t wait, but the fact that you’re here means that you’ll do just as fine as my primary option. Although, if you do come in contact with her, then I hope it makes up for Christmas. I’ll see if she wants to join our party, because it’s either going to be very quiet, or very loud, but very lonely. You better start going, Ru.”

The silence that followed was laced with venom, as if Knuckles—staring at her from the corner of her eyes, stiff, unmoving—wanted to see just how easily that sword could kill a person.

The woman remained unfazed, though, and kept up the silence. I had to admit that I would have said something by now, but neither wanted to budge. She hates the sound of her own name.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Any word yet?” Knuckles asked, finally breaking the tension. “No key information?”

“Gone. Vanished into thin air,” Sword Cat said. “No trace of your little friend whatsoever.”

“I only agreed to this if you hold up your end of the deal. I drew my line in the sand tonight and Ava isn’t going to want to listen to what I have to say. Find her, and I’ll do what you want.”

Sword Cat stepped backward, slipping into the dark. “Aren’t we all looking for someone, Ru?” she asked, but it might as well have been the shadows whispering the words into the night.

Who was Knuckles looking for? It was someone important enough to get her to go against Ava’s orders. My guess was that it wouldn’t be long before Ava sent someone after her. I knew her, knew that she wouldn’t like it one bit that someone in her ranks—someone she thought she could control—had gone and killed dozens of her men in a single half-hour. In some way, it made me root for Knuckles even more as she turned the truck around to leave the complex. I could go and talk to Ava now, leaving her to deal with whatever it was she was planning on doing. And yes, it still pissed me off on some level that Knuckles had watched O’Reiley and Jane murder all those kids. But I couldn’t fault her, not after I had damn near done the same thing years and years ago.

Fear could make a person feel a lot of things, especially powerlessness, and maybe this was just the way that Knuckles was trying to make things right by making amends for what happened.

So I was a little confused when I followed her to a morgue at the edge of the city.

Tonight wasn’t any different than a typical New Olympus summer. It was humid, the kind that stuck to your skin like wet glue, meaning the sky was clear and the breeze was warm. A perfectly normal night, but a night that now stunk of dead bodies. The morgue wasn’t atop some hill, or buried in a forest of abandoned buildings. The streets were silent, sure, and cartoonish graffiti coated the sidewalk and the lamp posts. The light above the door hummed, blinking on and off, attracting moths that beat against the glass. I hated morgues on a personal level, not because I had some deep rooted trauma, but because, despite the bodies being frozen, they still reeked.

It was the same in high school when we spent biology classes cutting up rats and toads. Everyone else would be squeamish about seeing their tiny guts and stringy muscles come so easily off bones. I was used to seeing all that by then. It was the smell that got to me. It builds up, you know, and sits in your lungs and clings to your hair. Normal people didn’t notice it, but it would keep me going to the bathroom every other period to dry heave into the toilets. Morgues and graveyards were a big-no-no for me, but Knuckles didn’t seem to care as she parked her truck on the curb, pushing open the door and jumping out. Her boots smacked concrete, cutting the silence.

The pale neon lights coming off the surrounding buildings made her pistol glint as she pulled it out of its holster. The building was squat, one-story, and looked like an old laundromat.

Fitting, I guessed, for the problems it had made disappear for countless supervillains.

Welcome to Old York, the borough where even the girl scouts around here laced their cookies to keep their customers ecstatic (or comatose, desperate, needy or dead). I was just guessing what the morgue was for, but this part of the city was like a zit too painful to pop. It wasn’t exactly in Lower Olympus, and would probably be on the Greater Olympus boroughs map if anyone actually cared to think of it as anything more than a cesspit. Places like this fed off more than what I could handle, and were sustained by so many pulsating hearts it was like a hydra that reeked of blood and money. The villains here were too big for me to fight, too much, admittedly, for me to face off against. Not because I was weak, genius, but because the supervillains around here worked in high-rise offices, wore suits and ties, and played golf with their families on weekends. They were the one kind of supervillain I hated most—the CEOs and the politicians.

Why? Well, because the humans only liked killing powerful people if it benefited them.

And if I killed one, then suddenly I would be the bad guy. I knew my limits, all right.

Plus, quite frankly, I didn’t much understand how their politics worked. I kept it simple, and maybe I’d figure it out one day, maybe put them down, too, but that would have to wait.

Knuckles had finished surveying the area, searching through alleys and flashing lights at dark windows, trying to catch reflections. Nothing, she was alone. Satisfied, she walked toward the morgue, toward the dark, grimy little building sitting on its haunches, and reached for the door.

She swore and yanked her hand away. My brows furrowed as I neared. Her fingertips were bright red, as if they’d been burnt. I looked back at the door in front of her, catching a glimpse of…

Wait a minute, I thought. There had been a symbol on the door, now fading, vanishing.

What the hell kind of superpower could do that?

And… haven't I seen that symbol before? That upside down pentagram?

Knuckles stepped back, leveled her gun at the bronze lock, and fired. I couldn’t fault her for trying that—I would have tried putting my fist through it harder. But the bullet just disappeared. The gun’s muzzle flash briefly shattered the night, but the sound was dampened, as if suffocated by a pillow. I worked my ear, wondering if I was the problem, but even as Knuckles stepped back, her boots sounded soft against the concrete. A chill went down my spine, not because I felt someone watching us, but because I felt weird, odd, blind in some way. Vulnerable. My hearing was what kept me stable on damn nearly everything I stood on or hung from. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed to do gymnastics in school because of the advantage I had, so it being taken away left me feeling—

—barriers like this aren’t erected to keep people out. Less force will do. Much less.

“What the hell?” I spun around in the air, but, of course, there wasn’t anybody up here with me, but neither was there anyone down there apart from Knuckles. It wasn’t a good time for the concussions to start weighing in on the matter. But I knew that voice, and had heard it before, too.

I hovered a little closer, simply out of curiosity and the need to figure out why I was hearing a voice in my head talking to Knuckles, or was it talking to me? I couldn’t tell right now.

—the chances of being caught are high, so I suggest that—

It halted again, as if there was some kind of bad signal, like the thing between my ears was stopping the words from flowing correctly. I was dozens of feet above Knuckles now, making sure to keep my shadow far from her eyesight. She would spot me in a heartbeat, try and take me on even faster, but I wasn’t here to fight tonight. Not her, at least. I was here to figure out why she had killed Ava’s men so easily and taken orders from someone I’d never seen before. And again, she tried the door handle, and once more, that dark red-and-black upside down pentagram surged into view before vanishing. With it came a smell of rot, of burning rot, then all too quickly it was gone.

—the key to opening a hex like this is to relinquish— Completing that will— You cannot—

I dared to get that little bit closer, so close I could count the hairs on her head. That voice was still lingering in my mind, coming in and out of focus, a voice I knew, had known, because—

A force yanked me out of the sky and onto the tarmac, making me bite the pavement. I got up on all fours, groaning, shaking loose rubble out of my hair and spitting grit out of my mouth, and then I felt a presence appear above me. It wasn’t Knuckles, I was sure of that. The unrelenting force that shoved my face back into the pavement so hard that I left a Rylee-shaped dent in it made me certain that it wasn’t her. I strained to lift my neck up, my recent surge of power helping, but not by much, not enough to not make the muscles in my neck and shoulders not hurt as I looked up. My teeth were clenched. My fingers dug into the concrete and my palms dug shallow craters.

And I looked right into Witchling’s inky black eyes, staring down at me like some bug.

Olympia, I heard. Her almost otherworldly beautiful features were stunning in the pale light, making it feel as if I wasn’t even looking up at a human at all. My, I haven’t seen you around.

“Can’t say I’ve missed you all that much either,” I grunted. Golden light flickered around my fingers, spitting and sparking, but nothing solid. It wasn’t the time for my powers to act up.

But the rest of my body hadn’t gotten the freaking memo yet.

Knuckles appeared by her side. “Your assumption was correct.”

Like a moth to a flame, she followed us from the Guild to Gallows to hell.

“A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?” I asked her, as air was forced out of my lungs. I didn’t want to think that this had also been some game that Ava had planned out, because for the love of God I was getting freaking exhausted playing these fucking mind games every other gods damned day. Why couldn’t I just follow a normal lead for once without being a dozen steps behind everyone else? Gods, I could just about hear Lucas huffing on his cigarettes, nodding to himself right about now. How much of this was fake was beyond me. I was irritated on multiple fronts right about now and wanted to hit Witchling where it hurt, partly ‘cause, well, mom just knitted my suit back together and spent time cleaning it and the bitch was rubbing my face into the asphalt.

Witchling smiled, making my body crawl. Melodrama is what would make this night bearable. Where we’re going tonight is somewhere very unpleasant. Are you prepared, superhero?

She dropped her hand, and the skyscraper-sized pressure on my back vanished. I was a bullet, on my haunches, up in the air, and into her the first chance I got. We slammed into the armored truck, but before I even got there, she was smoke in my fingers, dissipating into the air and reforming just behind me. She was wearing all black tonight, from her black heels to her black trousers to the figure-hugging black turtleneck, meaning her smile was even more glaring today.

What is it with you children and being so eager? she asked. Be patient and use your words.

“Yeah, well, the last time I did that, I got into some pretty deep shit that I regretted.”

“If it makes this situation easier,” Knuckles said, “just know that this is our doing alone.”

With help, of course, from the woman you must have seen us interact with minutes ago. She sends her regards, but I doubt you’ll ever get the chance to meet her face to face any time soon.

I pinched my eyes, then wiped down my face. “I’m really starting to hate this hero gig.”

“It wasn’t all a ruse,” Knuckles said flatly, as if explaining away her series of murders and some elaborate plan to get me to follow them here was just as exciting as describing how amazing my alter ego’s life had been going lately (spoiler: it hadn’t, not one bit of it had, in fact). “We, the Triad, are done with Ava, who I’m sure you must have heard of by now. We aren’t here to fight tonight, and for that, I also apologize for punching you in the mouth on the beach. It was unkind.”

Well, I also slammed you into the beach head-first, so I guess we’re kinda even, I thought.

“So what exactly are you guys doing out here tonight?” I said, folding my arms, leaning against the truck. The New OlympiaTM was the listening kind of girl, the kind that understood what she was going to put her fist through first. Besides, if what Knuckles was saying was true, then this could change everything… Or it could just be a script Ava told her to read to me so I could join them on some wild goose chase that would probably lead me right back into the palm of her hand. You couldn’t blame me for being wary, okay? “Stealing bodies wasn’t on my bingo card, Witchy.”

If stealing corpses was so illegal, then I would not be here to speak with you so openly, she said, leaving me with more questions. No, we are here because we all share a common goal.

“Yeah, and what’s that?”

To part ways with our current situations, of course, she replied, pulling a cigarette from thin air—not the kind that Lucas smoked, but the long thin ones attached to a slender white pipe. The kind that rich women not in my tax bracket indulge in. Nobody likes working in the dark, child.

“I love your creepy little one liners,” I said, “but how much of this is also preplanned?”

Witchling breathed out a slew of smoke, then walked toward me, getting so close that the smell of her perfume became choking, almost masking the bodies. You don’t trust the words that come from a supervillain’s mouth, and I cannot fault you. Many a lie has been spun by our kind, and those same words have killed countless men and women attempting to decipher them. But the look in your eyes… She breathes in more sour smoke, exhales. Your trust has been ripped away from you and shredded by careless hands. Regardless, I doubt you would have trusted me to begin with, even if you still had your trust in place. You have been hurt, hurt deeply by many people.

“What are you, a fucking shrink?” I asked, hovering to meet her eyes. “Spit it out, Witch.”

You want justice, we want peace and closure, much the same thing. It can only be gotten through one way, and that way can only include myself, our friend, and that building behind you.

“So why exactly did you let me follow you all this way?” I said, eyes narrowing, voice lowering. Something didn’t quite make sense here. “A little bit too chancy with that, wasn’t it?”

This plan would have gone on with or without you, but I had a good hunch. The smile on her face, though, told me that she had more than just a hunch that tonight would work out this way.

Lucas said that times had changed, and yeah, I doubted he had to play these kinds of games with people so powerfully confusing that bothering to understand the limit of their abilities was pointless. I spared a glance over my shoulder at the morgue’s doors, at the closed sign hanging from its handles. It seemed so painfully ordinary that I couldn’t even see how it would be useful.

And I also wasn’t in the same lane as a supervillain, let alone her train of thought. Too many words, too many hands shaken, and it might take me a while, but I’d kill Witchling tonight.

Then Ava would be next. Trust me on that.

As for Knuckles… I didn’t know yet.

Witchling must have sensed a change in my posture, in how tightly my fists were curled against my chest. She let go of the cigarette, making it vanish, then she leaned in close, so close that the coldness of her breath swept against my neck as she whispered, “I have your answers.”

Her voice was… wrong. Not hers. Strained and rough, scraping out of her throat, tumbling out of her mouth like vomit, escaping from her chest and being swallowed the second they did. I rolled my shoulder, felt my neck, hating the glimmer in her eyes as I shook off my flaring nerves.

I glanced at her, into her eyes, scanning her face. “What answers?”

The ones from the night in the sewer. The markings on the dead man.

I stilled. What? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Witchling smiled and placed her hand on my shoulder. A touch so gentle it barely registered against my skin, let alone my gear. If so, then tonight will be just so fun for you.

Pressure on my shoulder, a beat of silence, then I was flung right toward the morgue.

And I slipped right through the doors and into a burning abyss before I could even blink.