“I hate cities, I hate cities, I hate cities,” I kept mumbling under my breath. We had just teleported, all agreeing to land in Times Square, and I nearly puked from how sudden the shift was. Tall buildings—absurdly, impossibly tall buildings—and Ethan Harper simply did not mix well together. No amount of seeing the city on television or in movies could have prepared me for how monstrously colossal everything was.
The buildings were enormous and never ended. Narrow roads cut through them like slender rivers and canals through a vast desert. Even though an evacuation order had been sent out right after McLeod’s threat, all the screens in Times Square remained active. A dizzying array of colors, sounds, advertising, and other branding surrounded me. I knew New York was massive, and even without being fully prepared for that, the sensory overload I experienced when getting there was on a whole different level.
“Whoa, you guys can’t be here.” A police officer made his way over to us, waving his arms in the air above his head. “Governer’s orders. You guys gotta scram.”
“You managed to evacuate all of New York City?” I asked, dumbfounded. I looked around again, getting a little more adjusted to my surroundings. It looked like each building could hold a billion people at least.
“We can’t save anyone who’s too stupid to save themselves,” he said, “but we did what we could. Now, you lot need to leave.”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid we can’t.” Lori walked up with a smile on her face. Given the officer was a little taller than I was, it looked like a child talking to one of their parents. “You’re not equipped to handle this problem.”
“Yeah, smartass? What makes you think you are?” He glanced over all of us before his stare fell on me again. His eyes narrowed before realization hit him. “Wait, you’re that guy from Arizona.”
“Ah, yeah, I am.” I blamed going a little red in the face on the brisk November chill in New York. “Look, my friend’s right. He destroyed Pittsburgh like it was nothing. He wants to do the same to New York, and you have to fight fire with fire.”
“This world’s going to shit,” he muttered. From movies I’d seen and my limited experience with authority, I knew that New Yorkers and cops could be very proud, so I was worried he was going to fight us more on the issue. “Fuck it all, you’re right, we won’t be able to touch him. If you can save the city, can you at least keep the mess contained? Having this bleed out into the rest of the city is going to be a disaster. Not everyone thought they needed to scram.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Lori promised. “Trust me, we don’t want this going on any longer than you guys do. We’re all over this whole thing.”
“What we need you to do is keep civilians out of harm’s way. Get them out of here in any way you can. Can you do that?” Alex took a step forward and offered the officer his hand.
The officer hesitated for a moment but took it with a firm handshake. “That’s what we’re doing now. Good luck, guys.”
The officer jogged off down the road. I couldn’t see any other cops, but I did spot a few cars and a little barricade set up a couple of blocks down. They would be completely helpless if McLeod set his sights on them and decided to attack. I knew there was no way they could have evacuated the entire city, and even the section we were in had to have some stragglers behind. I just had to hope that he wasn’t going to target innocent civilians while dealing with us.
“Get ready,” Lori whispered.
We all turned to see McLeod walking down the street, arms outstretched like he was getting ready to give someone a big hug. He was still too far away for me to tell for sure, but I could have sworn he had a smile on his face. A knot formed in my stomach when I saw four people along with him, one of them with the unmistakable pale skin and black hair of Heather. We had hoped for four people max, but we were about to deal with five.
When McLeod and his team stopped, there was maybe twenty feet of space between us, every inch loaded with tension. I didn’t take my eyes off Heather, who was glaring at me just the same. So much hate and rage filled her eyes. That had to have been such a terrible way to live.
Val, clad in her new gold armor, took a step forward. I got to see the armor right after the meeting we had at my place ended, and it still amazed me, especially in the bright sunlight. They took the doom and gloom of her black armor and turned it into a radiant symbol of hope. Plus, apparently, her armor and sword had been enhanced by an Anomaly to the point it could withstand extreme temperatures. I didn’t know who did it, but according to Lori, it drained the guy who beefed up her gear to the point he’d need bedside care for a little while.
“My daughter, how nice to see you back in your armor. This new color suits you.” McLeod smiled and took his own step forward. He held out his hands again as if he had been expecting Val to just sprint forward and jump into his waiting embrace.
“If you ever truly thought of me as your daughter, if you ever really loved me, you’d turn yourself in and stop this madness.”
Smiling, McLeod slowly drew his sword, blue flames dancing along the exposed blade. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, daughter. Humanity’s failure will be remembered as they were unable to accept the simple truth that we’re the next step in their evolution. They’re afraid they’ll be left behind, and they will be. If left alone, they will use their fear to persecute us and continue to force us into hiding. Any hope we have to coexist will be to live under the foot of inferior beings. I cannot tolerate that existence for any of us. There will be no more children like you abandoned in a frozen wasteland. We will pioneer the advancement of Earth and its people.”
I heard a sigh from Val before she drew her own sword and flew at McLeod. With the last attempt at talking out of the way, it was time to go for real.
Once the battle properly started, Heather didn’t waste any time trying to impale me. The ground shook beneath my feet, so I got off the ground. Putting my armor on, I jumped in the air and created a barrier beneath my feet. When I was a few feet in the air, pointed spikes stabbed at my barrier, putting hairline fractures in my new floor. I grimaced at how easily she’d managed to crack the barrier.
When I made sure I wasn’t about to go tumbling back to the ground, a compressed shot of water whizzed past my head, an attack I only barely managed to dodge. It was more like a bullet of water with how it sped through the air. I’d never seen anything like it before. The culprit was the guy standing next to Heather, a tall bald man who looked like he was on every possible steroid known to man. He might have been bigger than McLeod. Wrapped around his left hand was a steel chain that led to a tiny anchor that he was spinning around with his right hand.
Perhaps it was a bit on the nose for a water-based Anomaly, but I had to admit, using a miniature anchor as a weapon was kind of cool, even if I had no idea how practical it might have been compared to other weapons used.
Everyone else scrambled to do their own thing, whatever that ended up being for them. Yells, grunts, and sounds of all sorts of Anomalies filled Times Square. Every bit of me wanted to glance over and check on my friends, but if I was facing a one-on-two fight, I couldn’t break my focus for a second. I had to trust them to handle their business while I handled mine. We went over everything. In fact, if I could draw two of them away, it put the numbers back in our favor, or at least something close to it.
Heather had already covered herself in a suit of rock armor. Small flowers grew out of the dirt that lined the cracks and vines crawled along her arms. In her right hand, she held a long bit of rock that was sharpened to a point on both ends. That thing would slice through my skin like scissors going right through paper or a knife through soft butter.
“I’m the one killing him, Gabriel,” she growled, her voice somewhat muffled by the armor on her face. Gabriel just shrugged next to her, not seeming too interested in who got to claim my head.
“You have to realize that your brother was a nutjob, right? You know if it wasn’t me, it was just going to be someone else. There’s no way you can be this delusional.” Seeing the anger flare up in her eyes was exactly the result I wanted. Last time, using her brother against her had been an easy way to make sure she wasn’t thinking clearly. Obviously, she hadn’t been able to move on from that.
She lifted tiny stone daggers out of the ground and sent them all speeding toward me. I put up another barrier in front of me where they all got embedded, spiderwebs of cracks radiating out from each point of impact. Two more volleys were sent into the barrier, nearly shattering the thing entirely. I hadn’t put everything I had into it, but that was a little worrying.
I’d tried to master moving the platform under my feet in practice. I thought it’d help save more energy than constantly needing to create new platforms and footholds beneath me in the middle of a fight, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. I would keep falling on my butt or sliding off entirely, so I was forced to expend the energy needed to create new footings in front of me as I tried to dodge Heather’s and Gabriel’s attacks.
Jagged rocks missed my head, shattering windows and digital screens behind me. Glass rained down all over the street and sparks popped from damaged electronics. I really wanted to fight on the ground with a solid base. I hadn’t fully gotten the hang of using my Anomaly to create platforms, so my confidence in fighting on those was a little shaky. Heather’s ability to open up the ground and swallow everything whole didn’t do a lot to fill me with more confidence either. I hoped staying in the air would be enough to deter her from trying to destroy the surrounding buildings.
I put up more flooring in front of me, only for it to immediately get blasted by high-pressure water bullets. It shattered beneath me when my foot touched it, sending me tumbling to the ground. I tried to land in a roll, but it wasn’t a move I’d managed to practice much, so I nearly broke my neck trying. When I got up to run, a thick vine was wrapped around my right leg, holding my ankle in an awkward position while the rest of my body kept trying to go forward. Hot pain shot through my ankle and ran up my leg.
“Shit,” I muttered, summoning a large axe to cut through the vine. I didn’t need a doctor or any scans to tell me my ankle was sprained. Justifying the choice I made before the battle, the healing power Lizzy gave me was already going to work, slowly mending the damage that was done and mitigating a small amount of the pain it brought.
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Heather calmly approached me, removing the rocks surrounding her face. Her thin, sunken face looked so much worse up close than it did back in the Tomb, and that was saying something. I wasn’t someone who wanted to pick on how someone looked, but she was clearly unwell in more than just her head. The months she spent hating me and wanting to kill me turned her into a husk of a human being. It was almost amazing how her loathing had been the strings that kept her body moving forward.
“You took my brother from me.” She kneeled in front of me, grabbing my face with her thin fingers. “Every night I see his face. The face of my dying family, their eyes pleading for me to save him. I’m going to slowly break every bone in your body, and when I’m done with you, I’m going to find your little family and do the same to them. When they’re begging me to stop, I’ll tell them they’re dying because of you.”
I kept hacking away at the vine, something Heather didn’t seem to mind all that much. She didn’t know about my temporary healing power, so if I could keep selling the ankle injury and keep her distracted, I was pretty sure I’d be able to turn the tables on her after just a little bit of time. I just had to keep her focused on wanting to torture me instead of anything else going on around us, which didn’t seem too hard.
“Look, I’m sorry about your brother.” Part of me did genuinely mean what I told her. I didn’t mean to kill him at the time, but I had such poor control and understanding of my Anomaly that it just sort of happened without any intention behind it. It put me in a bad spot that took me some time to get out of. “You have to know this is insane. How many people have you killed? How many brothers and sisters were separated because you, your brother, and all these other lunatics joined up with that sociopath?”
“He’s going to make the world better for people like us!” Heather pointed at herself, then at Gabriel, before pointing at me. “He would have made it better for you. You have an incredible gift, and you squander it by living under people who’d celebrate your death because they fear what you are. You’re a pathetic child who can’t see what the world should be beyond his own little fantasy. You’re the delusional one here.”
I just needed another whack or two and the vine would be gone. My ankle had a dull throb in it, but I was certain that it could bear my weight well enough while Lizzy’s bonus power kept healing me. It just wasn’t going to be comfy. I needed to move while Heather wasn’t quite ready to start killing me. Thankfully she seemed to enjoy savoring my helplessness and her victory.
“That’s pretty sad, isn’t it? I’m a pathetic child who couldn’t control my Anomaly, and your idiot brother was still too much of a hack to finish the job.” I made the laugh that left me as condescending as I possibly could.
Her eyes flared with rage, giving me just a moment where she wasn’t prepared for me to attack. I conjured a fist, slammed it into her face, and finished cutting the vine. My ankle could take it, though not without some pain and discomfort. I tried to hop back to give my healing power some more time to work while creating some distance between us. That helped me while giving Heather time to recover and conceal her face again.
“You know I don’t want to hurt you, right?” I tried to plead with her one more time, still clinging to a tiny shred of that she might have been willing to end the terror she’d been a part of.
“She doesn’t care, lad.” I was pretty sure Gabriel’s accent was British, but I couldn’t narrow it down more than that.
“I know, but it’s worth a shot,” I muttered.
Heather charged at me with the impossibly sharp bit of rock she had in her hand. I met her in the middle of her dash with a few conjured swords, gliding harmlessly off her rock armor. Behind her, Gabriel spun his anchor and sent it flying right into my gut. It was like I got hit by a small car, and for a second, I understood exactly how Heather’s brother felt when I hit him with the strongest piece of my power I could have mustered. I stood my ground while Heather tried to push her way through my swords.
Water bullets hit my shield and cracks formed almost instantly. The anchor didn’t make me stumble, but those did. Each one made me take a step back and it didn’t look like Gabriel was going to run out of them soon. He’d fling his anchor at me between shots, aiming for my sprained ankle. A couple of those flings got through and dinged my armor, sending small waves of pain and instability through my leg. The timing of his attacks was remarkable, showing how practiced he was with his Anomaly and his anchor.
Between his offense and Heather breaking through any of my weapons just a few seconds after creating them, I knew I couldn’t stay like that for long. Despite their individual skill and competence, I didn’t think their attacks were well-coordinated, so it was unlikely they’d spent any significant time training together. I wasn’t sure if I could use their lack of chemistry against them, but trying to fight them both with raw power wasn’t something that would get me the win. It was worth a shot to use the advantages I had.
When there was a brief pause in their combined attacks, I turned tail and sprinted down the street. A blast of water caught me in the back, nearly making me lose my balance and send me tumbling to the ground below. The attack had a fantastic bonus of propelling me forward on my path. Heather yelled something to Gabriel behind me. I couldn’t make out what it was, but it didn’t sound like she was happy with what he was doing.
Having never been in New York City, or a city anywhere near the sheer size and density of it, I didn’t know where I was going or how to even begin attempting to navigate it. My plan was to reduce the space around us and hope they would hit each other, so an alleyway was my target despite the inherent dangers it brought me. Maybe tightening the battlefield was going to be a bad idea for me, but I knew it could be a disaster for them. I hoped it would be, anyway.
Water bullets and rock shards hit my armor from behind. Gabriel and Heather were both in pursuit, which was perfect. Not only was it exactly what I wanted for my slapdash, Hail Mary plan, it pulled them away from my friends. I was fast enough to outpace them and make it difficult for them to land any dangerous hits against me. That didn’t stop my armor from gradually taking damage and needing repairs, but it kept me in good fighting condition while I ran away.
For such a huge city, I was having trouble finding an alleyway anywhere. Most of the buildings I was finding were large and connected, which forced me to stay in the open street against my wishes. I kept trying to dodge their attacks while searching for some kind of opening anywhere. The cracks were appearing in my armor with greater frequency, taking a longer time to repair with each one that I got.
Right as another water bullet whizzed past my head, I turned to find the tight alley I was looking for, suitable for about two and a half people standing next to each other. There was nothing but sky overhead, so I could push myself up with a platform if I needed it. I slowly backed up while watching the only entrance. I would be able to sandwich them both between an array of weaponry. Skewering either of them wasn’t a major part of my plan, but if it came to it, I would do what I needed to survive.
“Ah!” A tiny voice next to me cried out when I was halfway down the alley. I jumped with my focus on the plan I’d created breaking. It was a little girl, maybe Megan’s age, with a toddler and their terrified mother. They had been silently hiding behind a full, foul-smelling dumpster when I passed them.
“Please, d-don't hurt my kids,” she whispered. She put them farther behind her and tried to shield them with her body.
“Oh shit,” I whispered. I looked back toward the entrance of the alley. They weren’t there yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Turning my attention back to the family, I got down on a knee. “I’m not going to hurt you. Why are you hiding here?”
“I tried to get us out, but we ran out of time. I didn’t know where else to hide. They said staying inside the buildings wouldn’t be safe.” The fearful mother adjusted her position to hide more of her kids.
“I’m trying to stop those guys.” I frantically searched the rest of the alley, not finding anywhere else the terrified family could hide. It was either behind the dumpster or down the way I was trying to lead Heather and Gabriel. “Okay, two bad people are following me. Can you both line up against that wall? It’s not safe for you here, but I can put a shield up to protect you a little more.”
The mother hesitated and her kids didn’t move.
I sighed, checking the alley’s entrance again. “Please? I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. All of this has been a huge, unfair mess. I need to make sure the three of you are safe before I can focus on stopping the two people who will hurt you without a second thought.”
Again, the mother hesitated, only getting her oldest child to go up against the wall after a few seconds of thinking. She picked the toddler up and sat down next to her daughter. When they were in place, I put the strongest barrier I could muster up in front of them. The family being there didn’t take away from my plan, which was a positive. It only added another complication I had to worry about.
“You stupid or something, boy?” Gabriel asked, his voice echoing down the tight alley.
“Maybe,” I admitted, turning to face him and Heather. They were both examining the immediate area, probably looking for traps or something else I may have set up. If I could have set up discrete traps, I would have done so in a heartbeat.
“She can knock these down with a thought.” He gestured over to Heather.
I just nodded. “I know she can. You guys talk too much.”
I created rows of swords behind and in front of them, and with a flick of my wrist, I sent them all flying forward. Gabriel put up whirlpools of water around him, shredding my swords to pieces. Heather wasn’t as effective in her defense, with a few of my swords penetrating some of the softer parts of her armor. Annoyingly, the look on her face said she wasn’t too bothered by my attempt at offense. Any of the swords that missed and got close to me I broke apart with my mind to make sure I didn’t lose in the dumbest way possible.
Before they could counterattack, I did the same thing again. More swords managed to break through parts of Heather’s weakening armor, sticking out at odd angles, none of them able to land the decisive blow I needed for victory. She grunted and tried to rid herself of the swords by pulling at them and attempting to shake them off. She managed to get some, but all her careless motion put her right arm against Gabriel’s shield.
She screamed and pulled her arm back. The rock that had been protecting it was destroyed. Some small strips of skin were pulled away, leaving trails of blood to ooze out and drip to the ground. Heather clutched her wounded limb and stumbled back against the wall, panting and gasping.
“What are you doing!?” she yelled, quickly covering her arm back up with rock.
“Watch it, you put your own arm in there.” Gabriel wasn’t concerned when he took down his shields. Some sweat coated his bald head, the only sign our little scuffle had tired him out at all.
“Don’t get in the way. If you’re going to cause me problems, you need to leave.”
Gabriel ignored her and looked past me, his eyes narrowing. When he saw the family, he took a small step back. “No one said anything about hurting any kids. I wasn’t paid to do this.”
“You were paid to do what we tell you!” Heather shoved Gabriel, her voice echoing down the alley. “I don’t care who or what is down there. You’ll rip all three of them to little pieces if that’s what I want.”
Gabriel flung the anchor over his shoulder and shook his head. “Then you’ll have to find someone else. I’m done with this, and I’m done with you guys. You know where you can shove your money.”
Heather cocked her head to the side. There was a slight rumbling sound and Gabriel was impaled with three stalagmite-like pieces of rock. “Looks like you are done with us.”
Gabriel briefly struggled, attempting to free himself. The guy didn’t have a chance in the world. His arms fell limp at his side and his head hung forward. Blood dripped off the tips of the rocks to the ground beneath him.
I was disgusted by how truly heartless Heather was more than I was the body of the man who’d been my enemy only moments before. “Does human life really mean so little to you that you’d just kill everyone without a second thought?”
“There were two lives I cared about and you took one of those.” She turned to face me. “I would crush every person on this planet with a smile on my face to see my brother again.”
I was over trying to make her see just how nuts she was. There was no way I was going to reach her, and even if I could, it wouldn’t be before she killed everyone left in New York City. Her killing of Gabriel was going to make it a lot easier for me to win, so I needed to make his death count for something.
With the battle evened up to exactly where I had wanted it, I sent two more rows of swords flying toward Heather.