I couldn’t remember the last time I was inside of a sewer system, and now that I was standing above a rusted, circular drain cover, my stomach turned at the smell brewing just beneath it. The wind had picked up around the bay, sweeping mist into the streets of Lower Olympus. The storm Mr. Campbell smelled earlier was on its way; I could sense it in my bones and smell the distant stink of ozone creeping closer in the atmosphere. Nights like this were never fun to fly through, especially because criminals never seemed to get the memo that fighting in the cold wasn’t fun for anyone involved. I always figured comics blew the dark and rainy night atmosphere out of proportion, but being surrounded by supervillains and a mercenary as the moon watched from just behind a tuft of darkening clouds was so on the nose I almost found it a little funny in all honesty.

But I couldn’t smile underneath the mask on my face; not with the wind so bitterly cold against my skin. Over my shoulder and across the city, the towering black skyscraper of the Olympiad stood watch over New Olympus. Not far from it, dad’s statue stood in the bay.

Keep running around in your father’s shadow, and see where that’ll take you.

I shook my head. It wasn’t the time to think about Veronica. Or dad, either, for that matter.

These kinds of nights were made even less enjoyable by wading through the stench of the New Olympus’ foul underbelly. Dark spaces and I weren’t a good mix, and I apologize for hating being trapped in them ever since I learnt how to fly a few years ago. You would also start to hate small spaces if you were in my shoes, too. I didn’t sign up for flying through a sewer with Zeus-knows what else down there. Then again, I put myself in this mess, in these clothes and this suffocating mask, and I was going to see it through until the very end. Well, until I saw fit.

Just until you get enough money to get into the Olympiad. Until you get your statue.

“Run this by me one more time,” I said to O’Reiley, watching as he checked and re-checked his assault rifle. “Why can’t Damsel just teleport us onto the ship and skip this part?”

“Because,” he said, fitting a mask to his face, “Damsel can’t go to places she’s never seen before. She already has her hands full making sure the rest of our gear is ready in a heartbeat. If this all goes to shit, she’ll be there—but that doesn’t mean we should tire her out. The rest of the teams will make their way there through other sewer lines to avoid detection, as well as abandoned train routes along the bay; we just have it a little harder because we’ll come out right underneath their feet and about a dozen feet away from the ship. Thank God for poor waste treatment.”

“Yeah, thank God we’re gonna have to wade through shit,” I muttered. “Can’t wait.”

He slapped my back. “That’s the spirit, kid. Keep it up and we’ll be done in no time.”

“Could you be any less serious?” Knuckles—formerly body armor—growled.

“Any more serious and you’ll be dead in a casket,” he said. “Lighten up before we get to the hard part. Then we won’t have any time at all to think otherwise. T-minus ten ‘for Damsel gets going with a few of the trucks. If you’ve got any more to say, save it until she’s done ‘porting.”

I’d never read up on Damsel, to be fair. She wasn’t a villain that frequented New Olympus enough times in a year for me to consider figuring out a way to beat her in a fight. Europe was her playground, judging by the number of forum posts drooling over her, and the neck-beards who were desperate to figure out where she got her start, and if she and Ace were actually a thing or not. The modern day Bonnie and Clyde, tabloids called them. Heists. Jewelry theft. Bank robberies. Shoplifting. That was her gig, but I guessed she’d never actually had to push her powers to this extent before. She can’t teleport heavy loads multiple times, I thought. Once or twice, depending on the distance, too. I filed that information for later. I’m sure Lucas would love my valuable intel. I could just about see the twinkle in his dead-pan green eyes right about now.

“We’re in position, ready on your mark,” the merc woman said from O’Reiley’s earpiece. He tapped it, then said, “Follow the GPS and rendezvous in your allocated areas. ETA in ten.”

We were spread out near the Lower Olympus dock, about a stone throw (for me, anyway) from Patriot Broadwalk. From what I scraped together, we’d be using the sewer tunnels to get into the port, quite literally sneaking in underneath their noses and, like O’Reiley said, come out near the rocky shore, and infiltrate the ship as it docked. Smugglers kept the sewers relatively easy to access, and we’d be avoiding the parts clogged with rubble and whatever else superhumans didn’t want anyone finding down there. Storming in was a no-go, apparently, because Triumvirate thugs were already there, trucks idling and scouts poised in the dark, watching, from what I’d been able to scope out in the sky. It hadn’t stopped me from arguing my case that I could take them out on my own. “Then what?” O’Reiley had said. “Get the Olympiad's attention?” Which… I’ll admit, just this once, that the Normal had a point on his part. I needed to stop thinking like Olympia.

But the last thing I wanted to do tonight was fight an S-Grade Cape. I was dressed like a villain tonight, sure, but I wasn’t going to sully my hands with whichever poor superhuman got the call. Superheroes don’t kill superheroes, and even if Lucas thought I wasn’t that great at being one, I still had my standards. It would have to be quick and silent, efficiently deadly. Fill the abandoned alleyways of the dockyard when they don’t suspect anything, and be ready to take them out when the time comes. They didn’t know we were here, so close I could smell the aftershave on their jaws and the sickly sweet smell of gunpowder in their special-grade assault rifles. And, I had to admit, a spike of adrenaline was coursing through my bloodstream, making my shiver with energy.

Ronnie would have been calling me off the hook right about now, I thought, stepping backward as Witchling snapped her fingers and turned the drain cover into gray mist. Just like that time our bus got hijacked on the trip to the Grand… I bit my tongue and tasted blood. No, Ry, enough—focus on the here and now, not on what I used to do. No more games. No more stray thoughts. It was time to get serious and actually help clean the streets of Lower Olympus.

By dressing like a villain and scurrying around in the dark like filth, I reminded myself.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and squared my shoulders. The brew of stenches slithered down my throat and into my lungs, making them burn. Making me focus. I was first in, making sure my brain didn’t have a single moment to linger on any other thoughts. Witchling followed, standing on a piece of concrete she ripped from the grimy, graffiti-covered sewer wall. Knuckles—who I’d learnt had an actual name, but I hadn’t bothered to remember it—was next, leaping down the hole and onto the rusted platform. I expected a thudding impact, something that would echo down the tunnel. Instead, it was as if they had stepped on cotton. They made no sound at all, even as they stepped back to let O’Reiley climb his way down the rusted ladder beside me.

Maybe Knuckles had some kind of super strength, the kind that… Hell, I didn’t know. That field of distortion still resonated around their body, almost invisible in the shadows around us.

I studied them for a moment, catching a glint of the white irises behind their mask. I wondered who was beneath the kevlar, if they were tougher than an average human usually was.

But what difference would it really make? They were still human at the end of the day.

Finally, O’Reiley dropped down with a thud of his own. He started forward, we followed. The sewer water was shallow and dark, grimy and stuffed with junk that flowed beside us. We passed several maintenance hatches, each of them owned by splashes of graffiti. The distant stink of a kaiju lingered in the air, maybe from scales or fur littering the catwalk beside the sludge river. It made sense for monsters to hide in the dark, scurrying around underneath the city. It started to make more sense why I never got to see any out in the open. Seemingly neither did they, with that symbol of theirs—a blazing snake devouring its own tail, encircling the globe—carved into the moss-covered bricks all around us like some silent warning. A threat. A promise to steer clear of them. The lights were busted. Man-hole covers were sealed from the inside. The place reeked.

Whatever the Kaiju Society was up to down here wasn’t my problem for now. They never bothered anybody, except for scaring a few kids who stayed up playing in the streets way after the street lights came on in the evening, and the poor parents who gave birth to a half-human, half-animal hybrid, so I never really bothered paying ‘em a visit. Only the ones who snapped caught my attention—the ones so twisted and consumed by pain and anger and beastial rage that tore up buildings and homes were worth my time and effort. Hell, I missed my own graduation because a cannibal (Man-Eater, that’s what he called himself) was tearing up small towns in Oregon. That had been a very, very long flight home. One I didn’t like to think about too often.

I don't get nightmares that much anymore, but seeing a kid get eaten alive sticks with a girl.

But the Kaiju Society had been quiet recently. No large attacks. No rallies in the streets.

Maybe a little too quiet, but I would rather them being quiet than a pain in the ass.

What looked like the corpse of a rat caught my attention. It was bloated, belly fat with who-knows what kind of bacteria. Its sharp little nails and tiny yellow teeth shone in the dim subterranean light as it floated along the river of waste. Fungi grew from its mottled, gray skin, poking from its fur like the pudgy fingers of a child were ripping apart its flesh with its bare hands.

I didn’t really know if fungi was meant to grow out of animals, but I looked away before my nose could lock onto the ripe smell of decay undoubtedly oozing out of the poor little rat.

Hm, I heard Witchling say in my head, an echoing sound. How peculiar.

Never seen a dead rat before? I thought. Kill a superhuman, and that’s what they look like.

Not this death. She used her powers to pick up the rat, making it float beside her as she pulled the fungi from its flesh, coming off with a suckling pop. I’ve studied death; this is not her.

“Witchling, Tempest,” O’Reiley said. His voice was hurried, sharp and silent. He jerked his head to follow. “You can stare at dead mice all you want later. We’ve got tunnel to cover now.”

Witchling snapped her fingers, making the rat disappear in the blink of an eye. The smell lingered, and so did her pinched gaze at the tiny pink fungi—flowering, I noticed—on her palm. Her fingers curled into a fist, and the pink fungi dissolved into smoldering white ash. Her lips parted as she muttered something, but it was wordless, maybe some prayer to whatever god she thought created something as evil as her, so I didn’t catch what she said as I caught up with him. More rats below me in the vile river of sludge, each of them with fungi growing from their mouths and eyes and along their spines. I saw one of them twitch, its tail flicking before freezing still.

“You’re pretty confident for a guy with no powers,” I said quietly, flying beside O’Reiley. I didn’t like having Witchling behind me, but I guess we were teammates now. A momentary truce.

I think he shrugged, but I wasn’t sure under all that kevlar. His rifle was poised, notched into the crook of his shoulder and chest. A flashlight on his shoulder illuminated the darkness for him. “Superhumans aren’t as scary as Fox makes y'all out to be. Hell, I wouldn’t be in this business if I was scared shitless of every Super that I crossed paths with, so yeah, that’s why.”

“And how many superhumans have you crossed paths with?” I asked.

We turned several corners before he answered me. “Enough.”

“Put any in the dirt?” I said, flying underneath a hissing pipe.

“I don’t keep count,” he said plainly. “What’s the point?”

“Well, I figured someone like you would be proud of it,” I said. “Kicking ass and taking names and all that. I bet you notch your rifle with the number of Supers you’ve zeroed.”

He turned to me. I couldn’t see his entire face, just his narrowed eyes. “Why’s that?”

I shrugged, stopping when we hit a junction that went left and right. Floating upside down, I checked over his shoulder as he looked at the GPS, then followed as he continued right. A part of me thanked whoever made humans for making them a little slow; it made flying at this pace easier, less energy consuming. I needed what I could get for what was coming our way. “Because you wear that scar on your face like it’s something you’re proud of,” I said. “It’s a badge of honor.”

He grunted, ducking underneath a patchwork of pipes. “I got this scar when I was a kid.”

I frowned a little. “That’s not a great origin story. Makes you sound less intimidating.”

“There’s nothing less intimidating about a Normal who kills superhumans,” Knuckles said. Their voice was hoarse, muffled by the mask. “Much less with his bare hands and a smile.”

I could just about see his cheeks enlarge with a grin. “Gonna make me blush, Steel.”

You’re talkative for a girl supposedly new to this, Witchling said in my mind. It felt like an itch I couldn’t scratch, or like a fly that wouldn’t leave me alone. Afraid, maybe, of getting hurt?

If you think I’m talkative because I’m afraid, then you’re as stupid as I thought.

Witchling hovered beside me as O’Reiley slowed and tapped his ear piece. Her dark, almost ebony eyes fit perfectly in the dark, hollowing her porcelain skin and turning her face ghastly pale. This isn’t your first time hunting people down, is it? No, you’re not green, are you? With an attitude so relaxed, and at a time like this, you’re much more experienced than you let on. I wonder, I wonder, who you are behind that mask. A secret for a secret, only if you remove it?

I jabbed my finger into her chest; she barely moved. “Stay out of my head.”

Witchling shrugged. I suppose, for both of us, that’s a good idea.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

What? “And why’s that a good idea?”

Because your skull is… Well, hard to breach.

I scowled at her. “Did you just call me dense?”

She waved her hand through the air. Inhumanly so, yes.

“Who the f—”

O’Reiley held up his fist for silence, cutting me off.

A body was floating on the sewage, bloated in the cheeks, gray in its thin flesh. It was riddled with scars in strange circular shapes all over his body, like he had been livestock branded by a white hot iron stamp. My first time seeing a dead body was way back in high school; Tanner Kent, a football player, had accidentally slipped and smashed his skull against the edge of the stairs. At least, to the people who couldn’t see the person who shoved him, that’s what it looked like. I had known someone was there, someone behind him that was invisible to the Normals in the hallway screaming their lungs out. That was the first time I felt my powers trying to break through in my bloodstream—I sensed a superhuman. It was an itch I couldn’t scratch, a rash that wasn’t on my skin but just beneath it, impossible to reach. Being around superhumans was irritating, but it saved me countless times. Sensing superhumans was a power I never told anyone I had, just because it was bizarre to explain why humans felt different from superhumans.

The test people took around puberty to check if they had the potential to become a superhuman wasn’t even that accurate, so nobody would ever give me the time of day to explain why some kid just happened to know how to tell the difference when billion dollar companies couldn’t. Plus explaining it to anyone would mean exposing who I was to the world. A no-go.

But even in death, I could always tell the difference between the two.

Superhumans were a pain in the neck to kill. Naturally a little stronger, more durable to anything you threw at them. Humans, on the other hand, were just humans at the end of the day.

Naturally, that meant superhumans didn’t usually look so mangled and ravaged. As far as I knew, there weren’t that many S-Grade villains lurking around New Olympus to do this.

Witchling seemed just as surprised—and intrigued, judging by her staring—at the body.

“What the hell could do that?” I whispered. We were close enough to the exit of the sewer line for silver streams of moonlight to just about illuminate the body’s empty eye sockets. “Why?”

“I didn’t think this would be your first corpse,” O’Reiley said quietly.

I shook my head, hovering closer. I was right, that feeling was all over my skin. A superhuman. It had to be. “You’re right, it’s not. But what the hell are all these symbols?” I looked at Witchling, who had taken a keen interest in the cadaver as well. “Know anything ‘bout them?”

I suppose the name doesn’t lend me any favors, does it?

I glared at her. “Just answer the question.”

Possibly, she said. But there are things in this city better left untampered with.

“Yeah, and what the hell does that mean?” I said. “Look at the state of this guy.”

It means, Tempest, that some questions are best answered by not asking them.

Before I could ask what she meant—what she really meant, because her eyebrows had lowered, sharpening her darkened eyes as she searched the shadows surrounding the sewer exit—O’Reiley approached the rusted iron grates separating the bay and the sewer line. The bloated corpse pushed against it, as if trying to escape from the stench around us. He tapped his earpiece, listened to something, then nodded at Witchling. The body wasn’t his problem right now, and I guessed it wasn’t anyone else’s problem the moment Witchling waved her hand and turned the metal bars into silver mist. Trash spilled from the sewer, regurgitated into a shallow pool that oozed into the frothing ocean. I flinched as the body tumbled down onto the rocks, limbs loose, head whacking against slick black stones. I wiped the sour look off my face after a moment.

I saw Knuckles staring at me from the corner of my eye. I folded my arms and squinted my eyes to where O’Reiley was pointing, ignoring Knuckles’ searching gaze. He was pointing far to our left, where the darkness was the thickest, and the largest blotch of it was hunkered in the water. We must’ve been dozens of yards from the dock, right where O’Reiley said we would be. So close that the echo of voices was muffled by the waves crashing against the titanic black cargo ship.

I frowned, narrowing my eyes more. Why was it still so dark? Shouldn’t I be able to…

I flew past O’Reiley and onto a jutting rock face, landing softly and lowering myself into a crouch. I pinched the bridge of my nose, then tried again. Something was cloaking the ship, like a living shadow was crawling from the belly of the ocean and swallowing the ship whole. The lights were off, sure, but that shouldn’t be a problem for me. The Triumvirate mercs wore night goggles, each of them with headsets on their faces, meaning they wouldn’t attract any attention by switching on the industrial generators. No lights. No sounds. Muffled and dim, like I was staring into the black, soundless molasses where nightmares lived. A superhuman, someone powerful enough to cloak an entire freight ship. I doubted it would pop up on a radar, considering how powerful a superhuman would have to even have that kind of power. I almost smiled behind the mask.

On the other hand, my skin still felt irritated. I scratched my arm involuntarily, calming a feeling I hadn’t felt in years. I’d say it was excitement, adrenaline, not twitchy nerves.

I didn’t get nervous, not anymore.

Where have you been hiding? I thought, as O’Reiley climbed the slippery rocks and crouched beside me. I can’t wait to see who’s packing that much power. Finally, some fun.

“Superhumans,” I said to him. “They’re all over that ship. And a powerful one, too.”

“How can you tell?” Knuckles asked. Again, they hadn’t made a sound climbing the rocks, nowhere near the sounds O’Reiley made. “It looks pitch black to me right now.”

I shrugged. “It’s like a feeling in my gut. I just know they’re there.”

“How many would be nice to know,” they said, voice nearly a growl.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “But I could throw you over there so you can tell us.”

They remained silent, warped aura pressing against my skin as they balled their hands.

“Not surprised superhumans are on that ship,” O’Reiley whispered, lowering his night vision goggles. “Other squads are getting ready. Two teams got stuck dealing with blockages.”

“We need to move now,” I said. “I can hear them opening containers.”

“There’s a process to what we’re doing,” O’Reiley muttered. “You go in there right now, you’re blind, and our cover is blown. No Capes. No alarms. Letting them do the heavy lifting means we’re not going to waste time having to shift all that weight ourselves. Less meandering.”

Maybe it was seeing the dead Super and looking so closely at the pentagrams carved so deep into their flesh, but I was on edge. Put off by something close to us. Was it because of the freight ship? I couldn’t smell a single person on its deck, and could barely hear the sounds of creaking containers and boots on concrete. The Triumvirate was here, I saw them from above several minutes ago, but I couldn’t even sense them. I felt… blind, like someone had put their hands over my eyes and told me to try to see through their fingers. My senses picked up enough from the ship dozens of feet away from me, but it was more like a guess than knowing something was there. Hell, if I closed my eyes and focused, I doubted I would even know a ship was there.

C’mon, I thought, pressing my fingers into my bicep. If dad could do it, so should—

A fifth heartbeat joined our four. Irregular. Stuttered. Weak. But right here with us.

A split second, and I glanced behind me. The cadaver lurched, arms jerking, torso snapping upright as it lunged toward us. It took my brain a second to readjust, to realize what was flying through the air toward me. A body—a dead fucking body. Mouth slit open into a garrish grin, eyes wild and empty. Then I acted, bursting upward from my crouch and catching the corpse mid-air in my hand. I held its face, squeezed my fingers into its pasty flesh and brittle skull. It kicked and squirmed and tried to speak, but I figured that was hard to do with its head being crushed in my hand. Under pale moonlight, I noticed the stitches crossing its throat and splitting its chest in half. Hell, a part of me guessed I could pull the bloody thread and pour its guts out into the ocean. But… I couldn’t. Dead bodies don’t just come back to life. No supervillain had that power.

It was almost an insult, because some human was able to, and not dad?

Plus it would mark two times in one night it happened. Two too many.

A second later, and the rest of them caught up. They whirled around, seeing the wailing body in my hand. I saved them the hassle of asking questions by digging my free hand into its chest and ripping its head off its body. I let the body parts fall to the rocks below me.

“What the—” O’Reiley swore under his breath. “Did that thing just come—”

“Back to life, yeah,” I said, flicking my hands free of the sticky, foul-smelling blood. When did humans ever have black blood? “Doesn’t matter, anyway. Probably some villain’s powers.”

So that means… That means I was wrong, he wasn’t a superhuman. I glanced at the body, at the dead eyes deep in its skull. Maybe some leftover experiment by some villain nobody’s ever heard of, at least, I hoped it was nothing more than that. But why could I still feel something—

I watched its flesh melt back together, grew sick at the sight of bones fusing and veins knitting together. Just like Ava, I thought, but unlike Ava, the body was done fixing itself in the blink of an eye, and a heartbeat after that, it was already lunging after me again. I ducked under its fist, grabbed its ankle, and threw it against the side of a jagged slab of rock. Brain matter. Blood. They flew through the air like I popped a human-sized balloon fat with decaying organs. For extra measure, I slammed my fist through the rest of its skull. Nothing. No movement. My fist dented the rock by about an inch. I blinked past the sweat dripping down my forehead. See? Not so hard.

Like killing a cockroach that didn’t die after the first time you stomped on it.

My fist was engulfed in soft, greasy tissue, bones and brains and blood, too, as it reformed around part of my arm. Skin crawled up my bicep, and I jerked away, freaked by the sensation. But it didn’t let go, grabbing hold of me as I flew backward in the air. I grabbed at the flesh, pulling and swearing, but it felt like gum, albeit warm, reeking of fresh wet blood and sweat. It had one arm free, the other writhing around me in snaking fleshy tendrils. It reared its arm back, and glinting white bone tore through its skin and jutted from its forearm. I swore as it slit the air just close enough to my ear to feel it nick my skin. It stabbed at my face, and I caught it in my one free arm. I tore it free, flipped the bone, and jammed it into the side of its still half-formed skull.

It weakened for a moment, one I took to rip the damned thing clean off my body.

“What the fuck?” I snapped at Witchling. “You just stood there and watched.”

“You don’t look any worse for wear,” Knuckles said. “Just dandy.”

I thanked their bad eyesight in this level of darkness. Grabbing hold of the serrated shard of bone had sliced open my left palm. I could have healed it as Olympia, but using my powers would mean generating that damned golden bi-product electricity. I curled my fingers, making a fist, causing blood to ooze from the gaps between each of them. It hurt like hell, and I hated it.

Would you have preferred I threw you into the rock face? Witchling asked.

“I would have preferred that you killed that damned thing,” I snarled.

I didn’t have time to answer as she flicked her finger and sent a rock no bigger than my finger zipping through the air and through the reformed body. Again and again, like the stone was a pissed off hornet, it tore through the body, spitting flesh over rocks and cutting bones like it was a knife through butter. The body staggered. Stumbled. Its knees slammed into the rock and the sewage, as if suddenly forced down by God himself. Its upper-body was nothing more than a mangled chest and one arm that dripped off the side of its torso like wax melting off the stem of a candle. Witchling snapped her fingers, and the stone vanished. She smiled at me. Even now, then.

“Oh, man, that hurt like hell!” a voice said. We collectively looked at the body and its morphing, mangled skin, and how it carried its own head. Its eyes were still glassy and pale, its teeth still lined by that vile black blood that poured from its open wounds. “Kill me faster next time, woman. Well, I guess that’s advice for if you get so much as another chance at it.”

A shout from the darkness near the freight ship caught my attention. More containers getting loaded into trucks. More movement. Where were the other squads? Where was Damsel?

O’Reiley tapped his earpiece, craning his neck toward the ship. “I’m getting nothing.”

The body put its head back on its shoulder, and I swallowed bile as I heard the crunch of bone being forced back together. “Yeah, I’m just the distraction. Or was it the lookout?” He shrugged, a sight made more disgusting by seeing the muscles under his still forming skin work. “That must be one of the other guys jamming your signal. Spoilers, that guy is probably me.”

“What the actual fuck are you?” I asked. “I’d recognize something like you.”

He grinned. “I’m new to New Olympus. At least, this version of it.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Does it really fucking matter?” Knuckles hissed. “We need to get to the ship now.”

“To meet up with the rest of your friends, right?” he said, hand on his hip. He waved his free hand through the air. “There’s nobody left to meet with you. I killed the rest of ‘em.”

I glanced at O’Reiley. He was speaking into his earpiece, answered only by static.

“Well, which one is it?” I said, buying him time. “Jammed signal or dead mercs?”

“Don’t know, kiddo, it doesn’t really matter right now. Maybe both. Who knows?”

I know what I said a second ago, but on the other hand, I couldn’t help but catch him off guard. I shot through the air, and was in his face a moment later. My fist met the side of his jaw.

And all he did was take the punch across his face. His head didn’t break apart, and not even his skin tore and bled. He turned, a wild smile on his face, and swung at me instead.

I ducked out of the blow, stepped back, and slammed my fist into his kidney. Nothing. A dull thud echoed through the air, reverberated up my arm and into my teeth. What the hell? I went low and swept his feet, spun in the air and slammed my foot straight into the center of his chest.

Or I would have if he didn’t roll out of the way. My foot smashed into stone and sewage, spraying me with both as I watched him through strands of my hair. He flipped onto his feet.

He laughed, a shrieking, gloating sound that sounded like nails on a board. “You’re quick! And if you hadn’t torn me apart earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been able to eat that hook.”

“Tempest, Steel,” O’Reiley barked. “Take him out. Witchling, with me. Docks.”

“Why do I get stuck dealing with this freaking guy?” I asked, a little angry.

“Because if you think you’re as good as you are, then he’d be dead already.”

Witchling raised him off the ground with her hand, and this time, spoke to me alone. Following the humans’ orders isn’t fun, I know, but we aren’t here by choice. We’re here because we want something, so you do whatever you can to get it. And I know you don’t wish them well.

So you can read my thoughts, I, well, thought.

No, she said, lifting into the sky and toward the ship. More noise from revving trucks and banging crates. Boots beating against tarmac. Something had gone wrong. Just your intentions.

And that’s what you want as well?

I’ll tell you what I want when you join us on the ship. You believe you’re the strongest, no?

I know I am, I thought, tensing my jaw, looking down at the man and his violent, hollow smile.

And sometimes the best kind of strength is refrain. It makes humans more afraid us.

It took me several beats, but I got what she said: let them think they control you, let them get comfortable telling you what to do, even if they don’t have the power to do so, but a part of me—Olympia, I guessed—just couldn’t stomach that. But I had to for now, just this once.

Maybe that’s why they were so terrified of dad after all the times he faced S-Grade villains and made them look like C-listers. Not because he was the most powerful person to ever walk the earth, but because he made them all think their laws mattered to him. He made them think they were powerful.

Hope, I figured, was what Witchling was telling me was more powerful than fear, simply because you could take it away from the humans at any time.

“Well, they’re no fun,” the walking dead-man beneath me said. “But how about it, you two? How about I kill you this time?”

Knuckles leaped down to the rocks beside me, silent as a gust of wind. “Ever killed a dead person before?”

I’ve never teamed up with a supervillain to kill another supervillain before, I thought.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said, flexing my hand, feeling the skin that tore open on my knuckles when I punched him across the face. “I can hear the trucks getting further away, and I don't want to waste my time dealing with a sack of human organs with an attitude.”

“I guess it’s time we earn our stripes, then,” Steel said.