“Wait!” Cassie said. I stopped myself from walking forward. Her hand tentatively pressed against her side, and judging by her weak breathing, a few broken ribs were jutting against her lungs. “Fine. You’ve proven your point. You’re stronger. You’re faster. Congratulations for damaging government property until it bled all over my floor. But we need to keep these god awful creatures down here for a reason, Olympia. Humanity would never have made it this far if we never cut up our dead to learn from them. You think that I want these things here, so close to my own office? We’re learning how to treat them, how they work, and that can’t happen if you trash this place.”
“Then why not tell the government?” I said. “Why keep it a secret?”
“You know the public. They’d get terrified of everything here.”
That didn’t answer my question.
I narrowed my eyes. Cassie only stared right back at me. “The Ambrosia Project.”
Silence. I waited for her to speak. Finally, she said, “We’re a pharmaceutical company. We deal in medicinal drugs, derived from superhumans or otherwise, because it’s profitable to us.”
“What the hell does that have to do with not even curing these people but leaving them in cages to rot and die?” I said, my voice hotter, louder. “Doesn’t look like you’re healing anyone.”
“We’re trying to help them!”
I’d had enough of hearing about this. “Yeah?” I said. “Tell that to the SDU.”
Then she smiled, and I saw a flash of movement reflect in her eyes. I spun, and my gut caved in as Adam’s knuckles dug deep into my stomach. Air exploded from my lungs and rushed right up my throat and out of my mouth, dragging blood and saliva with it. The world blurred. Shook. He swung again, smashing his fist against my face, my ribs. Still no golden light. Still more blood flowing from his mouth, his nose, and now mine, too, when he slammed the heel of his palm hard against my face. Metal gushed down my throat as I stumbled back. I licked my lips. Then spat, trying not to be sick at the taste. Adam stood in front of me, fists raised, blood running down his hands and bleeding into the sleeves of his white shirt. I knuckled the blood away, then spared a glance behind me, at Cassie watching almost gleefully, and mom, stiff as a corpse as she stared at Adam, shaking her head so gently you might have thought a gust of wind was blowing her hair.
I looked at him, swallowed hot liquid iron. “I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
“Right thing?” he asked. “You want to threaten the one person trying to save these people, whilst all you ever do is get people killed. You murder civilians whenever you try to save the day, Olympia, and stopping everything here would just mean more innocent people get hurt. Look at you, Zeus’ daughter, so proud and mighty, but he’d probably kill you if he was still alive to see it.”
My fists tightened, fingernails digging into the meat of my hand. “How would you know?”
“Because it’s what I want to do,” he said, then rolled a shoulder. “You’d be doing the world a favor if you just keeled over and died. What good are you, really? If it wasn’t for the heritage, for that symbol you stole off a dead man, then you’d just be some higher-than-thou chick deciding the fate of the city because nobody can stop her. You’re fucking pathetic. The Olympiad knows that. The public knows. You know that.” His voice dropped, getting deeper, quieter. “You’re a villain at heart, but nobody ever wants to say it because we all know how quickly you’d spark off against them. They tolerate you because they’re afraid of you, not because they respect you or love you.”
“Villain?” I whispered. An arc of light jumped between my fingers. “I save people.”
“You want to control this city, to make sure it’s spotless,” he spat. “Villains tell that lie.”
“I make decisions for New Olympus because it’s my birthright.”
“You make decisions for this city because you know that the worst thing that can happen to you if you fuck up is someone calling you names on the news,” he said. “That’s gonna change.”
The floor splintered underneath his flight. No movement. Not yet. Glaring death at me.
“I don’t fight superheroes,” I said quietly. “But you’re defending a monster.”
“I’d be killing one,” he whispered, “and doing this city a damned good deed.”
If mom had anything to say to stop us, I couldn’t hear it over the sound of smashing concrete when I put Adam halfway through the wall behind him. Rubble gushed out from the wall, same with his blood and his spit, and a gasping wheeze of a curse when I punched him once, twice, three times in the ribs so hard that his shirt tore and his skin split open. He grabbed my wrist, twisted. I cried out, then my teeth sank into the meat of my tongue when he smashed his elbow across my jaw. Fuck. It hurt. I swallowed, spat blood on his face, in his eyes. He froze for a second, and I smacked my forehead against the bridge of his nose, then sank my teeth into his ear and came away with a piece. He shrieked, then hit me, hit me again in the chest, winding me. He grabbed my arm and spun me around, smacking me into the wall, then darted upward and used me to carve through concrete until we reached the ceiling. The wind blew out of me as he dug both his fists into my stomach, let me fall an inch, then shot right back up toward the ceiling, slamming me against it.
Fluorescents crashed onto the floor, their metal chains snapping as the ceiling shuddered. Glass exploded all over the ground, cutting through clothes. Metal shrieked as Adam threw me through the air, breaking apart high beams dangling from the ceiling, sending them crashing into piles below me, one after the other, skipping across them until a sturdy beam bent with my impact.
I groaned, pain lancing through my body with each breath I took. I clambered onto the beam, falling onto one knee, my head a dizzy, pulsating mess, and my mouth filled with blood.
Adam floated just feet away from me, watching me pant and glare and curse.
“You can always give up,” he said. “Always find another hill to die on.”
“And who the hell do you think you are to tell me to do that?” I spat.
He didn’t answer me. His fist was an inch away from my jaw when I blinked.
I dodged, letting him slip past me. I grabbed his arm, twisted his body over my shoulder, and drove him hard back onto the floor, straight through a metal bench that disintegrated under the impact. I dove on him, heat in my blood, crimson screaming in my ears as I planted my fist into his mouth, his face, his jaw, wove my fingers together and smashed them square down the fucking middle hard enough for blood to gush in a short fountain onto my chest. I tasted it, the bitter liquid pouring from his face. Saw how it sizzled and steamed on my fists and the lightning bolt he said I had stolen. The same bolt of lightning that burned bright gold as I stood up, swaying onto my feet, picked him up by the collar, pivoted on my heels, and threw Adam across the warehouse and into the elevator, crumpling the metal, shattering the lights, bathing him in sparks and shards as he crumpled into a heap. I breathed hard. So hard that it hurt. I turned slowly to look at Cassie.
She hadn’t moved, hadn’t even glanced over her shoulder to look at Adam.
She was staring at me, her mouth ever-so-slightly open.
Mom remained silent, her face blank and mouth sealed.
“You’re gonna do as you’re told,” I said to Cassie, “or risk losing an arm or two.”
Rett’s soldiers leveled their sleek rifles at me, those golden beams of light making my stomach twist as they brightened the laboratory. Their hum was a silent scream, like some banshee’s warning cry that only I could hear. It hurt to listen to, and would hurt even more getting hit by one.
And all the while, that golden light made Cassie a silhouette. Slender, elegant, her eyes cast in shadows, and the blood on her teeth glossy and wet, like she’d just sank her canines into a neck.
Then Adam stood.
He rose, hovering in the elevator, shoving metal and shattered ceramic off his shoulders. His hair was a mess, matted in blood and grit. His shirt was filthy. His teeth were lined with black dust and scarlet blood. Adam’s eyes were still pale, still not glowing. Just above the soldiers, that’s where he was, as if they were his frontline, his little fucking army of protectors. The boy wearing my father’s face had eyes like daggers and a slit-thin mouth, a tensed jaw and low brow. There was death in his eyes, brewing in his stomach, flooding his veins. I could smell it. Hear his heart pump it through his body. He wanted to fight? Fine. He wanted to get his shit kicked in infront of the people who thought he could beat me? That was his embarrassment to bathe in. My goal tonight was Cassie Blackwood by any means necessary. I’d fought tougher. Survived far, far worse than him. I wasn’t afraid, hell, a part of me almost wanted to smile, to tell him to fucking try to kill me.
Zeus had one child. A sole off-spring. I didn’t care what they said about me.
I was proud of it, and I was going to make them know that.
My boot shuffled through the rubble at my feet. I lowered a little as tendrils of light raced up my arms and shoulders. The soldiers tensed. Their hearts raced. Then, as one, they fired at me.
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A rushing wave of torrential golden heat consumed the space between us, swallowing the darkness and making the Kaiju shriek a terrible sound. I shot upward, high enough to avoid them, but Adam was waiting, already there before I’d even gotten past the beams, and punched me back down to the floor, right back into their path. No time to react. No time to gasp, to cross my forearms and shoulder the blast. I braced, then the collective beam of golden light slammed into my chest, and it felt like the Emperor himself had caved my chest in. My skin erupted in agony, like I’d just been dipped into liquid hellfire. I wheezed, sucking in dry air. Where? Sludge. Pasty sludge and a weak body, whining noise echoing through my mind, my head, rattling around my tender brain.
I tried to breathe. Couldn’t. Wanted to puke, but choked on my own tongue. I rolled over, the sticky gray sludge doing me no favors. Pain. Moving. Breathing. I collapsed onto my chest, half my face in the steaming muck. My arms shook, trembled, as I tried to pick myself up. Fuck, Ry, come on, don’t give out. Adam’s shoes just above me. A hand knotting through my hair, tight in a fist, yanking me off the floor, out of the liquified reinforced concrete, so I could face him. I felt sapped, weak, so drained that I could barely form a thought. Might’ve vomited, coughed blood and said something. Hot saliva dribbled down my chin, fell to the floor and evaporated in the heat. Something was shrieking, shrieking and shrieking and not stopping. The Kaiju. The one so close to us that I could see the fleshy blisters made from the heat popping on its skin, peeling back like angry red mushrooms blooming in spring. Tiny fires flickered around us. Smoke choked the air.
“She’s still alive?” a voice asked quietly. I wasn’t sure who—Cassie, I figured.
“Barely,” Adam said, almost disgusted. “But I can still hear her heartbeat.”
“What….” Mom said so silently I wasn’t sure if my mind had conjured her voice or not.
“My friends down at Aegis Tech made them for me, V. You like?” Cassie asked.
Silence, then, “There’s no weapon on Earth that can—”
“Well, several just did,” Cassie said. “The future is golden, Veronica, and it’s stunning.”
I forced my mouth to move, cracked, bloody, and dry lips aching with pain.
Adam tilted his head, peering at me like I was roadkill. He pulled me closer, still using my hair. He stared into my eyes, but he was blurry, smudged and distorted. “What did you just say?”
“Tell them…,” I said hoarsely, “tell them to stop fucking talking, my head hurts.”
His eyes narrowed, glaring. “What’ll it take for you to stop playing the part?”
I wanted to give Adam a response he’d remember, so I blew his eardrums out by slamming the heel of my hands against the sides of his head. He dropped me, screaming out in agony as he cupped his ears and the blood flowing out of them. I landed on my chest, which snatched away what little air I still had left in my lungs. On my hands and knees. On one knee. Panting, sweaty. Cassie smiled, smiled even wider as I swayed to my feet, stumbling, fighting for balance. Adam spun in the air, then fell, knocking against a research bench, leaving him in a crouch. His fingers dug into the side of his head, dug and dug until I was sure he’d draw blood. Hurts, doesn’t it? No flying. No balance. I wanted Cassie. Grabbed her shoulder and jerked her to my side, making her grit her teeth, suppressing whatever pain she felt. Rett paused his people. Mom took two steps, but I couldn’t tell where exactly or who exactly she was planning on talking to or checking on. I watched her eyes flicker from Adam to me, to the screaming, mewling Kaiju behind us, and her boss, this woman who couldn’t stop being so wide-eyed, so passionately engrossed in my being.
“You shoot,” I warned Rett, “and you might just hit her, and nobody wants a dead CEO.”
“Rett,” Cassie said quickly. “Tell them to shoot. Unload another round just as violent.”
I didn’t think they could if they wanted to. Those rifles were glowing red hot, the air around them dancing in lucid waves. Rett said, “Olympia, let her go. You’ve caused enough damage.”
“You’re the one who put me through a fucking wall.”
“You bitch,” Adam snarled. “You’re no hero, you’re just selfish.”
“What I am,” I said, trying and trying hard to stop the lingering pain in my chest from pausing my conscience, “is better than you, Adam. I don’t give a shit what you think, because at the end of the day, you’re nothing but a lapdog that was never trained to be anything more than a show pony for those lazy bastards in the Olympiad. What you think means nothing to me, because I could pick you apart, bone-from-fucking-bone, Adam, and make everything you say worthless. Nobody’s gonna remember you if you’re dead, so sit this one out, before I stick my hand through your spine and leave you down there at my feet for the rest of your pathetic little fucking life.”
I didn’t kill superheroes, but Gods, this heat, this anger, this feeling in my body that curdled with the pain soaking through my skin was making it very, very hard for me to care about that.
I’d had a very bad day for two months now—it was time I changed that the hard way.
The white-haired bastard just didn’t want to see me do that yet.
He lunged at me, but it was unbalanced, his brain and body still reeling from his blown eardrums. It made him sloppy, made him slam into the cage just behind me as I spun him around with his own raging momentum. For several silent moments, my heart leaped into my throat. The glass cage rattled, shook, groaned as the beast touched it, but didn’t break. It splintered. The tiniest of cracks slithered from the floor to the top, crawling across the glass pane. Adam stumbled, rage in his eyes, in his face, yanking back his jowls to reveal his teeth as he lunged at me again. This time he was accurate. This time, I pushed Cassie away just before he careened into me, sending us sliding through the burning hot sludge, along the floor until I rolled off him. Couldn’t fly, not yet—my stomach was undulating up and down my throat. My head still rang. We were both grounded. Both staring death into each other’s eyes as we picked ourselves off the cold hard floor.
We stood breathing for several seconds, doing nothing but waiting, staring, watching.
Then I exploded forward at him, using enough flight to carve the distance in half in just seconds. He did the same, slamming his fist into my mouth when we met, following through with a gut-wrenching uppercut to my midsection. I coughed saliva and a swear word laced with blood as I smashed my elbow against his temple. A hook from me. A jab from him. I swung him around by the shirt collar, smacking him against the floor, straddling him, going to work on his face, his jaw, loosening his lower molar so much and so suddenly it splintered and spat through the air. He bucked upward, tossing me off. We scrambled onto our feet, quick to murder, quick to draw more blood that splattered onto the floor, our clothes, the computers and the pillars and the glass cages filled with screaming Kaiju. Then Adam slowed. Just a fraction. Just enough for me to swing—-
I missed, he dodged.
His foot arched through the air and felt like a cinder block against my skull.
Stumbled, fell to one knee. Tried to get up. He stomped downward, his heel into my eye, snapping my head backward and smashing the back of my head against the floor. My body jerked. I moaned in pain, in slight confusion, as Adam got on top of me, fury in his snarl and ghost-pale eyes as he raised his fist, and then swung. Pain. He swung again, snapping my head to the left. Again and again until he became a blur of blood. The meaty thud of his knuckles against my face, of blood splattering onto the concrete. Silence. Pain. A wet, squelching smack. Then he stopped, breathed. I tried to move. Couldn’t under his weight. Move, Rylee. Move now. My muscles quaked, and the sparks of light burned the blood into a dark red crust on my fingers. Then he hit me again, killing the light in my hands, shattering the concrete underneath us. He toppled over me, resting on his hands and knees, his sweat dribbled into my eyes, making them sting, mixing with the blood.
I coughed, spluttered, blood splattering onto his chest. I couldn’t see out of my right eye. He’d slit the skin open, from my eyebrow to my cheek. It stung, hurt—fuck, it was entirely dark.
Adam glowered and rose, grabbing me by the cape and hauling me to my feet. He dragged me along the floor, leaving a trail of blood in my wake, until he threw me hard—very fucking hard—against a wall. I slumped. He kept me upright with a kick to my gut. I tried to block his fist, but he shoved my hand aside and planted his knuckles into my ribs, my kidney, grabbed my torso and kneed me so hard that I fell to the floor, gasping for air through a throat that wanted to do nothing more than to squeeze tight and stop swallowing gallons of blood. I struggled to blink, to stay awake. He was saying something. Someone was screaming something. Everything was a blur, the noise, the colors, the sounds and the tastes. All disgusting. All painful. I wanted to switch off, but my body was on all fours, shuddering as it was, shaking as it tried to get back into the air.
Adam helped me onto my feet, my throat clutched in his hand. He stared at me, then drew me closer, close enough for me to feel the warmth of his hot breath on my neck. “I should kill you right here and now,” he said to me, his voice deep, gravelly, pained. “But superheroes don’t kill.”
He threw me across the laboratory, making me skid across the floor. I came to a dead stop when I hit a concrete pillar, a final stab of agony shooting through my side. I lay there, weak, confused, my body so wracked with pain that breathing in just meant choking, swallowing, puking up saliva and blood and fragments of my own teeth. The world was flickering in and out of view, and those voices, those same damn voices I’d been hearing since I’d been with Witchling, were harrowing. An orchestra, no, an orgy of grotesque noise that filled my head, accusing me, berating me, hating me for lying here in a puddle of my own blood. I blinked, and that thing I had seen, that creature that had told me it had wanted something from me for years, vanished from view just as suddenly as it had appeared right behind my mom’s hazy outline. I didn’t want to shut my eyes. Didn’t want to give in. Couldn’t afford to let my body finally shut down after months of abuse.
But my vision was dimming, ebbing and flowing. Darkness engulfed me once, then twice, and both times I sat beside myself, both times I watched the blood pouring from wounds, from swallowing gashes, smearing the floor crimson and dyeing my gear dark. They were right. Enough to be more than the creatures they saw procreating on this wet rock, but lesser than them. They were always right. An abomination that shouldn’t have lived. A grotesque thing that crawled out of her mother’s womb, only for her own people to reel away in disgust. And now this. A clone. A copy. A boy who hadn’t once met my eyes with golden light flushing through his own, but was still just as fast, as strong—standing there above me, watching my fingers twitching, waiting for me to try and get back up so he could force me back down underneath the heel of his bloody-smattered sneakers.
The Empire was built on the benefactors of our perfection—your flaws will cause us ruin.
Always that little bit less. Just that bit more to give that I could never find.
Adam forced his foot onto my back, snuffing my energy, taking my flickering golden light.
They didn’t want me on that planet. They didn’t want me here. What the fuck did they want me to do? A cosmic fuck-up that was going to get the one piece of home she’d carved for herself get taken away my the boy standing above her—above me. They hate me there because I’m human, loathe me here because I’m nothing like them. Gods. Gods. My hands shook and my fingers trembled. They accepted my father for what he was. Loved him. Cheered for him. Built a monument in his honor because he wasn’t like them, but more than them, better than them, and then the humans did it, too, and spat in my face and told me they didn’t want me, that I was their problem, their burden to carry. The blood on the floor simmered, burnt—stank of hot iron that flooded my mouth with sickening saliva. All I wanted was to do good by them, to show them that I deserved a place on this godsforsaken planet just like the rest of them, and to hell with it, ‘cause I was going to take it, make my own place amongst them—make them have no other choice but to accept it, accept me. I wasn’t ever going to be like him, I knew that, but never wanted to accept it.
But his blood was in my veins, more than my mother’s ever was.
I was more him than human, that was just a fucking fact.
Adam swore when the blood around me began to bubble and froth, spit and stew and burn as if it had been lit up by some ferocious invisible flame. The heat that had been building in my gut and itching underneath my skin, almost burning it raw, simmered to the surface, flooding my veins and arteries and gushing through my entire body like a spring filled with golden electrical energy. He darted backward, putting a hand out in front of my mother, leaving Cassie bare in front of them all, watching as I floated into the air and back onto my feet, staring as I turned to them, golden electricity humming around my body. Tiny tendrils of light wove the split skin around my body together, pulling together flesh until it healed. My darkened left eye brightened that little bit more, but it wasn’t my irises glowing—it was my eyes, the entire orb, shining like twin blazing suns.
Silence, the hordes of Kaiju behind me all but muted to my ears as my hair flowed around my head.
A flicker of light, then blood, tissue, veiny gore and tendons vomited onto the floor.
I threw the arm that Adam had held out in front of my mother to the ground at his feet.