Will Herd, teleporter, crouched behind an abandoned car in the streets of New York, listening as his friends fought for their lives. Breathing heavy, dust slick across his armour, he peered out at the chaos around him, feeling helpless as the carnage unfolded. Disruptance. Some sick bastard had raised a Disruptance as soon as he’d brought the last of the Acolytes in, trapping nearly the entire Legion in place. It was like Matt said. If he’d jumped him back to Morningstar they would’ve chased after them, shutting the door behind them to keep the Legion bottled up. Will swore under his breath, chancing another glance out at the battle beyond, watching as a roaring man with arms of bladed crystal hacked a horde of Deathless fiends to bits.

This was not how he had envisioned this fight going. This was not how he envisioned any fight going. Will should have been able to jump as he pleased, bring in reinforcements, ferry wounded, move people to better positions, help them set up overlapping fields of fire to best keep these freaks at bay. But he couldn’t. For the last ten minutes Will had been sprinting, block after block away from the fighting, struggling against the lead weight of the Disruptance atop his powers, but to no avail. The Disruptance covering the city was huge, military grade, a billion dollars’ worth, or else a thousand networked little regular ones overlapping anti-teleportation bubbles into the street. Teleportation only it seemed, since he’d seen Nour phasing through the ground earlier. Freaking hell.

He'd come back, run back, once he couldn’t find a gap in coverage. And now Will was stuck in the middle of a superhuman warzone, unable to use his powers, while only a few hundred feet away the Legion battled and rampaging mutant abominations screamed.

This was a shame. A real damn shame. Because Will Herd was a good teleporter. A very good teleporter. Very quick, very precise, very fit.

But the difference between a good teleporter and a great teleporter was not how well they could jump. It was being useful for more than just teleportation. It was about being proactive, not just sitting around gormlessly because someone had turned on a Disruptance, twiddling your thumbs and going ‘ah well’ while your friends fought and died.

And as he crouched there surveying the situation, leaning his sweat‑stained forehead around a car, listening to the roars and the rushes, the explosions and gunfire, Will heard a crack off in the distance unlike any of the other sounds around him. A distinctive boom, deeper, louder and thicker than other weapons, and coming from way higher up. A high calibre rifle.

They’ve got guns. They’re trying to kill Matt.

Will’s mouth curled into a scowl. He glanced up briefly, ensured the coast was clear, then leapt out from behind his cover, sprinting across the dust‑blown street and into a slide behind one of the Legion’s weapons boxes. He slammed his fist on the silver button, causing the lid to slide open, exposing the crate’s contents. Will stood up and leaned over, pulling out a heavy black case.

You know what also made him a great Legion member, just generally? Liking guns. So many superpowered people forgot about guns, and were really just not prepared to deal with a sudden sucking chest wound appearing from half a kilometre away. Those people were short-sighted. Guns were fantastic. Will loved guns.

Grabbing the black case in both hands, the teleporter sprinted towards a nearby hotel and its internal fire escape, racing for the stairs.

*****

Further. Further! Jane pushed onwards, the roaring in her ears deafening now, the weight of Divine undead power pressing down from all sides. Only a few blocks now. Only a few more blocks!

Golden light streamed from her hands, from her mouth, from everything, her eyes and cheek and hands burning unstoppable, radiant, as she plunged further and further in, each step harder and heavier than the last. But she did not relent. She would not relent. The howling winds reached fever pitch, the power of Dawn rushing and burning not just the very air but her body and her thoughts, surging through every atom of her being, shaking with the fury of the sun.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The light flared high and unbreakable, burning against the shifting grey as Jane pushed forward, a storm of all‑consuming gold.

*****

Bam! Will kicked open the door to the hotel rooftop, clutching the black case tight. His breathing was ragged, his brow slick with sweat, but in the space of a moment he inhaled deeply, flushing the fire from his lungs. Will broke back into a sprint, darting between the exhaust vents and air conditioning units of the paver‑clad roof, sweeping his eyes over the city and the destruction, towards the north‑east buildings, where-

There! Two figures in standard‑issue military green, lying prone atop a building, facing west half towards him several stories below like malicious, distant slugs. Will slid onto the ground, slamming against the half‑foot ledge running the circumference of the rooftop, then set down the black case, flicked up the clasps and threw the lid open. Hello old girl, he wanted to say, but there was no time for sweet re‑seduction. He grabbed the lower receiver, flicked up the two front legs of the rifle‑stand, pulled out the locking pins, grabbed the upper receiver, extended the barrel out, pulled back the spring, slid the two receivers into one another, slotted the locking pins back into place and snapped a cartridge up into body of the weapon. And then, in a matter of seconds, Will Herd was sitting pretty on a hotel rooftop, aiming at his enemies down the distinctive square‑nosed barrel of a .50 Barrett M82A1.

Up here, he chuckled, squinting through the pre‑attached scope, peering down. But the two would‑be assassins were too busy off aiming at their quarry to notice Will’s rifle gleaming, above and to their right.

There were two, he saw through the telescopic lens; one with a long-barrelled rifle, what looked to be an AWM, the other with a black pair of binoculars. The shooter was a man, pale skin, cropped black hair, the spotter a woman, white and tanned, a blonde ponytail. Will took aim, steadied his breathing, adjusted for drop and wind. “I would like to solve the puzzle,” he whispered to no one in particular.

He fired.

BANG

Five hundred yards away, the head and upper body of the black-haired man exploded like he’d gargled a stick of dynamite. The M82’s recoil slammed hard into Will’s shoulder and a spent fifty calibre casing the size of a pencil flew out the side of his gun. Will took a deep breath and leaned back in, taking aim at the other assassin. Through the round constraints of the scope Will saw the blonde ponytailed woman silently scream and roll, scrabbling away from her partner’s body. He tilted the barrel, following her movement – and then saw through the scope as her head snapped up towards him, as she saw his muzzle gleam, and as her hand flew to her forehead.

Die!

Pain, telepathic agony. The rifle dropped from Will’s hands as suddenly the world burned, searing, hot talons of pain raking down the inside of his mind. All at once he was five again, he was three, he was every moment of silence from his mother and his father’s disappointed stares and he was reeling, tumbling down into oblivion, but- no! He gritted his teeth, pushing the intrusion back, forcing his walls up, clinging to- what was it he had to cling too, from those afternoons with Matt and Wally, he couldn’t remember, she’d taken him by surprise, and though Will reached desperately to marshal his thoughts, for mental defences, he felt himself slipping, felt his concentration starting to fall-

I THINK NOT

And suddenly another voice, a towering thunderhead, came roaring into his mind. A third person, a familiar indignant fury, rushed into Will’s consciousness, through the Legion’s long-distance psychic connection, a cyclone of black and feathers and ivory that even from hundreds of feet away swept through his mind into the interloper, picking up the petty blonde psychic by her mental throat and slamming her choking into the ground.

KNEEL

In a world of endless white the titanic spectre of Natalia Baroque rose, a swirling shadow‑robed leviathan, unfurling wings of bottomless darkness that shook and gleamed with a thousand ebony eyes. The enemy psychic screamed. And through the connection she had foolishly made with Will, the woman he now knew as Blaine could do nothing but shriek as the colossus of Natalia’s mind lunged down, tearing with claws of black‑veined porcelain and pounding her consciousness into the dirt.

Back in reality Will grit his teeth, the world suddenly shifting back into focus, though his mind still reeled, the conduit for Natalia’s counterattack. He sat up, shook his head angrily, spat out blood where he’d bit his tongue, shrugged the gun’s stock back into the crook of his shoulder, took a deep, jagged breath, aimed once more down the scope-

-and blew the bitch’s brains out.