In my eighteen years of life on this planet, I had kissed death and told her to call me back later twice. This time, though, was different, because it lasted longer, her lips were colder, and gods, letting go was always going to be the easiest thing to do right now. I felt like I was flying into nowhere, stuck at a speed slow enough to feel the warmth of the darkness around me, but fast enough to keep the coldness of it snapping at my heels. I felt a little…lazy, tired, kinda like I was finally being given the chance to knock one back, put my feet up, and relax for once in my life.

There weren’t any visions, no memories of younger me running around the house, trying to escape Veronica as she tried putting clothes on me. No daydreams of flying right alongside dad over New Olympus, slightly behind him, his cape snapping in the wind and the wrinkles of his smile peaking just over his shoulder as he turned to face me, to say something to me. None of that, that had all come the first two times. This time was just darkness, because hell, the highlight reel had been watched and watched again. I didn’t need my mom to sit me down on the porch as the sun slowly sailed over the horizon to tell me that, Hey, kid, if you don’t wake up soon, you’ll miss your alarm. I knew all of it by now. Knew that if I wanted to wake up, all I had to do was keep going. Keep flying forward, trying to go fast enough for the coolness of it to not wash over me.

It was scary, I had to admit, knowing what was chasing me, knowing it wouldn’t stop.

But you knew who I was and what I stood for. Giving up wasn’t something I knew how to do, even if it did leave me an inch away from death more times than I would like. She must be tired of chasing me; give the girl a pay raise. So I continued flying, continued rocketing into black eternity—-there was no light at the end, no hand reaching through the darkness grasping for me. I was alone here, as if I was in Dominion’s…what had he called it? I couldn’t remember. How had he even done that? Words, he had said some kind of incantation and poof, there I was facing down something so profoundly enormous I still had a problem trying to know how big it actually was.

Strange. Strange powers all around. A very freaking strange spring break that had all started with an argument, a decision, slammed doors and hurled, heated words. I didn’t graduate like I had wanted to, and didn’t even really know if I made it onto the list with all my absences and missed pieces of homework and…and…I shook my head and sped up a little. Mom got me a cap and gown a few weeks beforehand, and that was just one of the arguments we’d had. We were supposed to get it tailored just right for me, but something had scared me off the moment I saw the old man start trying to adjust it to fit me right. Standing there in front of that mirror, a cap on my head and blue robes pouring down my body…no, that wasn’t me. It just didn’t feel like me one bit.

I felt like I would be giving up everything I was building for myself as a superhero.

As my father’s only daughter.

But I can’t help but wonder if things had turned out differently if I had just smiled and nodded, bought shoes with her later on, then on that fateful day I silenced my phone, ignored Lucas’ call, got into the car with Ronnie, or hell, flew there and changed out of my costume behind the gym, got my certificate, and threw my cap so high that the boys in space would see it on their radars. I would still be at home right now, maybe wasting away my days drinking beers on the porch with Ronnie in the day, sneaking out to hang out with Bianca and Em at night, and trying to figure out what I was going to do in the fall. Get a job or go to Olympus U? Would I just rent a place close to campus, get a hostel, or just be flying back home every day? Then Ronnie would pinch my ear for saying it so loud, because the neighbors might have heard, but who cared?

The sun would have been warm, the breeze would have been homely.

And I wouldn’t be telling death to take a number and wait in line like everything and everyone else that wanted to see me buried and gone. One moment. One phone call. One decision.

I had slowed down long enough for the frigid air to climb my legs and reach my waist. I wasn’t wearing my Olympia gear, but shorts and a white t-shirt, no sneakers on my feet and my hair in a mess. Rylee, that’s who I was, because death didn’t really give a shit who was wearing the costume and saving lives and, admittedly, not doing such a great job of being the hero that I knew I could be. Nope, not death, that old bitch. I am who I am, whatever the time of day, whatever the situation, because whoever stood in front of that mirror every morning was the same person that I would always be: my parent’s daughter. Wait, no, that wasn’t right. A hero. I was a superhero.

Whatever, it didn’t really matter. Dad kicked it, so mom would be the one who would probably kill me for kicking it before her. Idiot. She was gonna ground me until the next decade.

At least I’d stop stressing her out every night, I thought, slow, swimming in black molasses, feeling light, cold, doughy to the bone. Nope, can’t do that if I never pop up on television again.

Can’t worry someone to bits if you’re dead, you know, because being stuck in some wet grave in warbrook cemetery would stop me from trying to get myself killed every single night.

The lackadaisical feeling only lasted for so long, though, because of a voice, a thought, an image that crossed my mind. It was a person that blossomed deep in my brain, a person I knew.

I had expected to see Bianca smiling, to feel my heart wrench at never being able to explain myself to her, to tell her that I was sorry for being a shitty person to her, and being Olympia isn't an excuse. Should never have been an excuse to me. I should have been there for prom, not as the superhero, but as the girl who walked home with her everyday, who would sometimes (it wasn’t weird) hovered over the athletics field when she was doing training, watching as she ran and ran and laughed and won and glimpsed up at the clouds, but couldn’t see a thing through her thick hair or the sweat in her eyes or the glaring sunlight I used to hide myself. I had my opinions about humans, but she was…strange, not much different from the rest, but she plucked at strings that…

Fuck, hold on, I didn’t have a crush on some girl who was probably too busy with her friends and maybe someone she had started seeing during my disappearances, all right? Gods, I wasn’t some doughy little human teenager who got butterflies in her stomach thinking about another human. What do you take me for? I was a warrior, a hero, a girl whose blood had flowed through the same arteries that saved the world. Blood that was hallowed and revered beyond just earth, but by even more than that, got it? From where I’m from, mating took place with whoever, because it didn’t really matter who you liked. Love wasn’t a concept we understood like humans so easily did. I hated it, hated that my gut did feel like a gnarly nest of butterflies right about now.

But I also loved how it could so quickly curdle into hatred, especially because the person who came into my mind wasn’t Bianca, but Ava and her fucking smile and those fucking glasses.

Something about seeing her now, right bloody now, sparked a bonfire in my chest. Got my heart rate going that little bit faster. I shook my head, blinked away the crust that had settled into my eyes, and dragged myself forward, getting faster, ripping myself free from the oily black shadows that had begun crawling up my body. I didn’t know where I was flying to, didn’t even know what I was flying toward, but I kept going, hating the idea that her face would be the last thing I ever saw before I finally gave into the easy route. There was fire in my gut, burning just for her, warming my veins, making me feel a hate so deep I had no other option to just keep going.

And all too quickly, I gasped awake, drinking in air, real air that flooded my lungs and made me choke. I coughed several times into my fist, then suppressed a silent scream as pain exploded in my gut. I clutched my side, reflexively curled into a ball around myself. I was on a thin mattress atop a bed barely strong enough to hold my weight, and the wave of nausea only subsided when I finished puking the little food I still had left in my stomach. A stomach, by the way, which felt like it had been torn apart and sewn back together with barbed wire. The hand pressed to my side felt wet, sticky. The room I was in was too dark to make out what it was, but I had an idea.

Bandages were wrapped tightly around my midsection, stained and bloody. I knew Cherry had hit me hard, but I didn’t know it had been hard enough to, what felt like, tear me in half. I shuffled onto my back, groaning as I did, feeling the bite of each stitch and each new possible tear I was creating for myself. Breathing wasn’t a fun activity to do, with air feeling like it was being forcefully rammed down my throat and into my lungs and back out again. My head felt heavy, with a pounding headache not aiding my cause. I shut my eyes and tried to stop moving so much. With my arm over my forehead, I may as well have been a corpse. Or a bride on her deathbed. The sheets must have been white a few decades ago, and the mattress new about the same time as the dinosaurs were wiped out. But hey, at least it wasn’t the floor underneath the bed, right?

Or in some pit covered with dirt, rotting away and feeding the worms.

Positives: I wasn’t dead and filled with worms eating away at my insides.

Negatives: I was wracked with pain so vicious that my bones felt like they would shatter if I moved, and there were sounds coming from the dark around me. Scuttling and slapping, skin against cold bare concrete. I opened one eye and glanced to my right, and caught a shadow slipping away into the blackness on the other side of the room. Giggling and shushing came with the tiny patter of feet on the floor, then hushed, quick murmuring. I shut my eye again, too exhausted to care, because if Frankie wanted me dead then she would have gotten her ugly little pet to turn my body into meaty paste already. But sure enough, I felt a presence beside the bed, and again felt tiny huffing breaths against my cheek. I waited, waited, then a finger pressed my cheek.

“I think she’s dead,” I heard a voice whisper. A tiny voice. A child. “Like, really dead.”

I would have wanted to scare them, but I barely had the strength to keep my heart beating, so all I could offer was a turn of my head as I stuck out my tongue at them. It was more than just one kid around the bed, but several, about seven of them, staring at me intensely. The closest one, a girl with a medical eye patch over her right eye, giggled and ran off with three others. No, they didn’t so much as run as they did limp and scuttle and drag their feet behind them. Their heads were shaved to the skin, and their bodies were covered by hastily kept together medical gowns.

One of the boys who stayed by my side had a pincer for a hand, one that he used to scratch his head as he continued staring at me, as if expecting for me to say something to him. They smelt of medical alcohol, and their skin was clean, so clean that it stung my nose being so close to them. The four older boys remained standing, and the faint lines of old stitches crossing their shoulders, necks, and heads were all too visible in the dim light coming through the bars across one wall of the room. Some kind of cell, I thought. The corridor beyond was empty and silent. A camera stared down at us from the top corner of the room, its tiny red light blinking monotonously at all of us.

I didn’t remember anything after getting hit by Cherry; unconsciousness will do that to you. Someone had taken off my costume, leaving me in the biker shorts and sports bra I normally wore underneath my gear. They’d had the decency to give me large gray sweat pants big enough to fit dad, but that was about it. The air was cold here, made colder by the emptiness in their eyes. There was accusation in their stares, questions that were being answered as more blood seeped into the bandages and darkened the white sheets pulled up to my waist. Olympia could bleed just like they could, and she was just about to take death hand-in-hand to wherever it was that superheroes went.

“Aren’t you meant to get us out of here?” the boy with the crab pincer asked quietly. It clicked once, twice, and I briefly glanced at the bloody gauze wrapped around his wrist near it.The other boys were the same; bloody gauze marked the end of skin and the start of something else.

I stopped staring when one of the boys hid his forearm behind his back, looking away.

But, in fairness, I didn’t even know where ‘here’ was to answer them properly.

“Yeah, just give me a sec,” I muttered. “I just want my guts to feel like they’re back in place before I pull apart those bars and take you all out for some ice cream. Five minutes tops.”

“You look like you ruptured a stitch,” another boy said. He was Black, at least, I think he was—the fish scales coating his body made it hard to really know. “A couple of them, actually.”

It sure as hell feels like that, but thanks for the insight.

“I’ll be fine.” I shut my eyes, counted to three, got my hands underneath me and—

The pain that forced me onto my back nearly knocked my lights out in the process. I held my gut, clenched my jaw, and tried not to look so weak to these kids, but it was a losing battle.

“You shouldn’t push yourself too hard,” a voice from the dark said. I turned my head slowly, and watched as the boys around me parted to reveal a guy maybe just around my age coming from the other side of the room. He was in the same gray sweatpants as I was, shirtless, too, with a body that bordered more on lean than muscular. He was tanned, had a mess of black hair on his head and the first inklings of hair on his chin. I almost thought he was completely normal, until I saw the giant white feathery wings sprouting from his back. I internally shuddered, thinking about how they might have connected to his skeleton, but now wasn’t the time. But could you blame me? I've had mixed interactions with Kaiju lately. “Don’t hurt yourself more, now.”

I waved him off, forcing my legs to move as I shoved the sheets off the bed and forced myself to sit upright. Hell. I sat with my hands clenching the steel frame, so hard my knuckles blossomed white. Pain. I forced myself to stand, stumbled, and got caught by the guy with wings. I wanted to thank him, but if I spoke, I probably would have passed out. Besides, that was the only bed in the entire cell, and there were coloring books at the end of it, crayons and pencils scattered all around it. The kids owned this bed, and I figured that they needed it more than I did. The floor was fine, yeah, just fine, especially as I slumped onto it and the cold bit into my back as I lay down. I was panting, sweating and shivering, and told the kids to use the bed; to rest and color.

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

One of the younger girls brought me the pillow, holding it out the way she would a teddy bear if she had one. The guy with wings thanked her and took it, putting it underneath my head.

“Hey,” I said around breaths that wanted to so quickly leave my chest. “Where…?”

“I was hoping you could tell us,” he said softly. He had an accent, something vague that made his words musical to listen to. He sat beside me, and I noticed the golden cross hanging from his neck. “I don’t know how long we’ve been here for, either. If you have any information…”

“Only questions,” I muttered, staring at the ceiling and the camera. “Who put me here?”

“The one who stinks of blood,” he said quietly. “That monster made of flesh.”

“Cherry,” I said. He tilted his head, confused. “That’s it’s name: Cherry.”

“How can something so vulgar have a name so pleasant?”

“Because the sicko that made it is twisted in the head,” I said, keeping my eyes open because I didn’t trust what would happen if I relaxed too much. “How long ago was that?”

He shrugged, using his wings to drape over a few of the boys close to us. “About an hour ago if I could guess, but sunlight doesn’t seem to like this place, so I can’t exactly be sure.”

“Kanz,” a younger girl said, tugging his arm. “Is she going to help us escape?”

“She looks like she’s just as good as dead,” Pincer Boy muttered. “Just like Jake.”

“Sam,” Kanz said to the boy, then turned to me. “I’m sorry, but they asked me a lot of questions, and children just don’t know when to give up, so when they heard that you’re a hero…”

I smiled as laughter caught in my throat. “Sorry to disappoint, kids. Times are rough.” I looked up at Kanz and asked, “Not to flaunt, but…kids their age usually know me by now.”

“Maybe you’re not as popular as you think,” Sam said.

“The last time they saw a television was when they were probably still learning how to talk,” he said, looking at Sam in a way that made the boy glare. “They’ve missed out on a lot of learning. I’ve tried my best to tell them about the world, but really, how much should I tell them?”

“All of it, duh,” the girl tugging his arm said. “We want to be smart, like you.”

He rubbed her head, smiling. “I wish I was as smart as you think I am, Kit.”

“So you lied about her helping us?” Sam asked him, dark brows lowering. “You told us that if she’s here, then everything’s going to be fine, but we’re still stuck in this fucking—”

“What did I tell you about using that word in front of the younger children, Sams?”

I worked my way into an upright position, my back pressed against the wall. Kanz tried to help, but I waved him off, because if it was strength that Sam wanted, then I was going to give it to him (even if my stomach was screaming at me to stop and unconsciousness was whispering in my ear). “Hey,” I said, getting his attention. His chin remained high, jutted, daring. Not broken by whatever it is that Frankie is keeping you in here for. I dig it. “Sam, right? Come over here for a second, I want you to hear something that nobody else should hear. It’s a secret just for us two.”

His eyes narrowed. “If you’ve got something to say, just spit it out.”

I looked at the rest of the children, seeing their large eyes and how eagerly they were glued to me. I had a lump in my throat, one that stopped me from talking for several seconds. I hadn’t told anyone about this for my entire life. The first thing I learnt about this planet was that humans reacted very differently to what I was used to. They were volatile, quick to get their emotions into the picture before their minds caught up. Fear and anger were always the first on the scene, that much I knew, and for kids who had grown up in the dark, in a cold cement cube, being cut up by some villain who toyed with body parts like they were toys, then I wasn’t sure of what to expect.

But I had to get through to them somehow. Had to make them believe that I was on their side, that I knew how they might have felt, but I wasn’t sure. It was hard to relate to children who had probably been stolen and experimented on for gods knew how long, but I knew what comfort sounded like, and they wouldn’t get it if I was groaning and shuddering on the concrete floor. I figured that they needed to hear a few words that sounded like hope, like I knew what I was doing.

And maybe I can lie to myself good enough to believe it, too.

“Well,” I said weakly. “I’m not even entirely human, you know. I just look like you guys.”

Silence followed for a long time. Long enough for Sam to finally break it and ask, “So?”

“So,” I said. “I’ve been stuck in a space a lot smaller than this before, and I know what it feels like not being able to do anything because there’s people stronger than you with the keys, and the one time when someone might be able to help you, they’re pretty damn weak and exhausted. It sucks, I know it sucks, and you’re angry, and you’re hurting, but listen up—that won’t make your stay any easier.” I swallowed saliva, wincing. “You’ve got someone on the outside, don’t you?”

Sam remained silent, but nodded ever so slightly.

“Don’t you think they miss you every day that you’re not with them?” I asked softly.

He shrugged one shoulder, looking away and folding his arms across his chest.

“Then I’m more than sure you’ve got to hold onto that thought for as long as you can, and smile about it too, ‘cause guess what?” I looked at the kids, smiled at them as they listened. “Fuck ‘em, that’s what. They can take a hell of a lot away from you, but they can’t take away that. Keep that memory warm, and you’re gonna be able to just keep going at it, and hell, if your smile and your hope is the last thing they can take from you, then they didn’t win. And besides, do you really wanna lose to a bunch of people who lock up kids in the dark? I don’t know about you guys, but people who do that are cowards, and you know what happens to every single coward, don’t you?”

They shook their heads. Even Sam was listening, at least a little. In all honesty, it was hard to tell if he was; my mind was swimming, my breaths were short, but I had a fire going in me.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, “‘cause they never make it out alive long enough to tell me.”

“Your rallying cry to these children is to kill their captor?” Kanz asked.

“Do you want ‘em to pat her on the back and tell her what she did isn’t nice?” I gathered enough air in my lungs to pull my leg closer toward me. I steadied my breathing, my heart rate, and then I stood, this time without stumbling. I swayed on my feet, using the wall to get me steady, and slowly made my way toward the iron bars. Even before I got close to them, the hum of electricity was loud enough to be a deterrent not to touch them. I glanced down either side of the hallway, seeing nothing except darkness. It must be Wraith doing this, keeping the shadows thick and soupy and impenetrable except from the sole fluorescent bulb above the jail cell door. “Listen, Sam, I might not be the greatest superhero in the world, or the one you wanted, but I’m what you’ve got, and you’re what I’ve got, so if there’s one thing you can do for me it’s to not give up just yet.”

Kanz stood, unfurling his wings and draping them over his shoulders. “You sound as if you have some kind of plan, and I must say, I don’t really like the glimmer you’ve got in your eyes.”

“I’m Olympia,” I said to him. “When do I ever have a plan? All I have is a gut feeling.”

“I was just about to start trusting you,” Sam muttered.

This would be a good time to start talking to me, Witch, I thought, shutting my eyes. I didn’t know what kind of connection she had to me or how this worked, or if she was even in this hellscape with me, but all I could do was try my luck for once. Things aren’t going particularly great down here, and this was your bright idea in the first place. Frankie’s got kids trapped here with me. Kids she’s been hurting. If you wanted me to find something out, then sure, I’ll do it, but get these kids out first, and I’ll go running through this place for however long it takes me to find the bitch and her brother and whatever answers you wanted me to search for. Do we have a deal?

I heard nothing, which, I guess, was indicative to half of the plans my mind came up with.

A sound behind me. I turned around, then nearly doubled over to puke as raw agony pooled in my stomach. The shadows around us were frothing, stewing, and the children were starting to scare, to huddle around Kanz and hold so tightly onto his arms that they dug their short fingernails into his muscle. Even Sam stayed close to him, his tiny fists balled, his eyes darting and panicked. I knew what this was, knew that, when the first slithering hand of darkness came out of the shadows, this was just a warning to get the children huddled together. Frankie wouldn’t bother opening the jail cell and risk them escaping. She would just have Wraith pull the kids into the abyss whenever she needed them, like fishing your hand into a bag of popcorn and pulling out a handful big enough to satisfy your cravings. But soon enough, a plan began to come together in my mind.

Gods, I hated my plans sometimes, and being stuck with so much aching pain in my body was making me realize that they weren’t as great as I thought they were. Fuck it, didn’t matter right now. The shadows were swelling, and then came a figure through the wispy darkness. Slender, gary, looking half-dead with his tattered black shirt and baggy white pants. Slouched and reeking of that same sickly sweet golden brown powder. Wraith’s hollow, sunken eyes looked around the room, and his blackened, toothy smile left some of the children clutching onto Kanz even tighter.

Finally, after slithering over the kids, they landed on me. “You’re awake,” he said, raspy.

“Where’s Frankie?” I said, trying to put force behind my words. “I want to talk to her.”

He shook his head as he began walking closer to me, his bare feet slapping the concrete, the smells of sweat and sweet nectar clashing. “Talk. No, she doesn’t want to talk. Not yet.” Wraith stopped in front of me, so close I nearly touched the electrified bars. He was taller than me, leered because of his slouch. My nose wrinkled with disgust as he licked his cracked bleeding lips. “But you come with me, and…goodness, you smell so much more different than on the docks. You smell like rot. Disgusting. I hate—I hate how you smell, but she wants you now, so we’re going.”

I didn’t have time to object. The floor underneath me warped, snatching my legs out from underneath me and dragging me into a pool of air so frigid it felt like I’d smacked my head against the concrete floor, snapping me into a stiffness so sudden pain shot down my neck from how fast I stilled. I jerked, gasped, then stopped falling as soon as I landed hard onto a metal table. I groaned, the pain in my gut soaring, screaming, wild in my ears as blood raged in my brain. Fuck. Fuck, it hurts. The bandages were soaked. It was a task to keep my eyes open and my brain thinking. Where? Room. Tables. I smelt Wraith, couldn’t see him. I blinked for what felt like an hour. I saw a face, heard the noise of a door being opened and closed. My hands were snatched upward, yanking them away, just like my feet were. My head lolled as I tried to look around. Nothing. Or was there someone there? A person was talking. Talking to me? Fuck. Breathe, Ry. Get it together.

I floated in and out of consciousness, fighting the blistering torture brewing in my stomach that rapidly consumed my body. I wanted to puke. To pass out. I barely had it in me to think.

Light, dark—I blinked, heard something, saw someone appear from my right.

A pinprick of ice jabbed into my thigh, then slowly, the world cleared, and I was more than a little disappointed to see Frankie’s pale, slender face right up close and personal. I looked around the room, saw the bench of operating tools (none rusted and filthy; all glinting and clean) beside me, and the dozens of scattered documents all over the walls. Dashes of dried blood were on the floor, but none were on Frankie herself. She was smiling at me, perfectly still as if she was a corpse left standing here. I couldn’t see the rest of the room—Frankie wouldn’t let me when she grabbed my jaw and stared dead into my eyes. Her fingers dug into my cheeks, dug and dug until it hurt.

“She’s alive!” Frankie said, setting down the syringe and needle she had emptied inside of me, which I hoped (and hoped dearly) was just adrenaline. “And just like that, I did what Jesus could in a matter of minutes compared to the freaking days he spent rotting in that tomb.” She let go of my jaw, and my head immediately rolled to one side, too heavy to move. I watched as she circled the table of instruments, as she slid her finger over each one, then stopped at a tiny red vial.

“Know what this is?” she asked. When I didn’t reply—I wanted to, but my tongue wasn’t willing to move any further than sloshing around in my mouth—she smacked me across the face, making me jerk awake that little bit more. “This, my darling little damsel in distress, is a vial of blood which I so kindly borrowed from you when you offered for me to take it.” She held it in front of me, crouching so we were at eye level. Frankie turned it around, as if showing off a pair of diamonds she spent millions on, but hell, my blood was probably worth a hell of a lot more than some shiny rocks. I moved to try and take it from her, weak as I was, but my hands were bound to the table. Kept in place by leather bindings so tight they bit into my wrists, keeping me in place.

“Give…my…I didn’t….”

“Speak in a full sentence, why don’t you?” Frankie stood up and then sat on the operating table, right beside my midsection, putting one leg over the other and looking at me. “It’s really amazing taking blood from something that isn’t very normal. Let me explain it in a way you’ll understand: usually, humans start to go limp when you take enough blood out of them. They’re kinda like…water balloons—useless if they’re empty, but pretty fun to pop if they’re full. But you? Oh, no, you’re different. Your body is brimming with blood. See, athletes usually have more blood than your regular old humans, and Supers have a little more than Normals. You, on the other hand, Oly, just ooze the stuff.” Frankie tilted her head, almost wistfully. “You’re so perfect I could kiss you, but my goodness, why would I want to put my lips onto something that’s dying right now?”

“What…” For the love of god, you idiot, speak! “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“This,” she said, holding the vial of blood up toward the sole naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. I squinted upward, trying to focus my hazy vision on the tube balanced on her fingertips.

It took me a moment to see it, but…there, right in the mix of red was a hint of black fluid.

Frankie slipped the vial into a pocket over her left breast, right behind a stitched love heart that read Best Doc, Love Mom. She dragged her fingers through my hair, then stroked my cheek. “You’re as cold as a corpse,” she whispered. “Just as brittle, too, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to count the number of people who would want to drag a knife across your throat right now on one hand.” Frankie clambered onto the table, straddling me, nearing me, her warm breaths pouring out of her red parted lips. “You’re dying, Olympia. You’re rotting from the inside out. Caesar wanted your blood because he’s learnt that the only thing that can kill you, is probably something just like you. Something that can fight like you, live like you, be just as strong as you. Or something like that. I don’t pay attention to him when he’s giving me orders or telling everyone how he’s going to do something with your body when you die, whatever that means. But he won’t be too happy with you if you die on me. No, no, that won’t do, Oly, but I just can’t seem to stop it happening now.”

She lowered her voice, as what little light dimmed in her eyes. “I can’t save you. I tried.”

“Rotting?” I asked hoarsely. Gods, it was getting harder to focus on her. “What do you…”

“Your insides,” Frankie said, punching my stomach. Stars exploded in my vision. I groaned and swallowed a cry of agony. “They’re rotting even as we speak. Your body is decomposing!”

“What did you do to me, bitch?” I said, spitting the words and blood onto her face.

All she did was smile and slowly lick the droplets that landed on her lips. “Nothing, all I did was take a couple of gallons out of you, and I guess it doesn’t matter, ‘cause they’re all useless now. Yep, rotting, the lot of it. At first I thought it was some kind of contamination created by this godforsaken filthy labyrinth, and I swear, Bloodforge could have helped me at least a little bit, but the truth is that whatever half of you is doesn’t like sharing a body with the other half of you. Your powers aren’t working, or else you would have said the whole ‘I’ll put my fist through your face’ bit by now and probably have killed Cherry, so my hypothesis is that your powers are what keeps you alive and ticking. It keeps whatever disease you have inside of you from killing you outright.”

I was holding onto the pain frothing around my stomach to keep up with what she was saying. “My powers don’t keep me alive, idiot,” I said. “They’re the same as everyone else’s.”

“Oh, honey, please. We both know that you’re as good at lying as you are a superhero.”

“So what now?” I asked weakly. My voice was ebbing, watering down. Frankie got off of me and stalked the bench of medical equipment, her eyes not leaving me once. “Try to kill me?”

“God, you’re stupid,” she said. “Your body is already doing that for me. My job is a little harder than that.” She leaned against the bench, scalpel shining in hand. “I have to keep you alive.”

“Why?” I asked.

She took her time walking toward me, then rested her elbows on the table and smiled. She watched me for a while, then leaned close and whispered, “Nobody likes watching the hero die.” She straightened after patting my chest, but it was closer to groping me than anything. “But wouldn’t you just love to know the real reason? I’d tell, but I doubt you’re gonna live to hear it.”