Dan appeared in his foyer and let out a relieved sigh. Finally, he was home. He heard Abby banging away in the kitchen and was drawn towards her presence like a moth to flame. He rounded the corner to his living room, took in his comfortable couch, his coffee table, and the little island separating him from his destination.

Abby turned as he approached, probably alerted by her upgrade the moment he walked into range. She wore a loose shirt and tight leggings, a smeared apron, and a wide, welcoming smile.

"I'm home," Dan told her. "Safe and sound, as promised."

She crossed the distance between them in three long strides, and threw her arms around him in a tight hug. It felt like being enveloped in steel cables.

"Welcome home," she said, her head tucked up against his neck. Her breath tickled his ear. Her arms tightened. His bones creaked. "I never doubted."

"I can tell," he groaned, but he didn't retreat. This was where he belonged. Right here.

Home.

Later, once they were both cuddled up on the couch, Abby asked, "How's my grandmother?"

Not 'How's Mama Ana?' Dan noted. Some of Abby's familial blindness had been pulled back in the wake of the UT Massacre. She knew what kind of person Anastasia was, she always had, but it was easier to put consequence to thought, now. But the concern was real; still there, deeply buried, and so Dan answered.

"She's better, I think." The last time he'd seen Anastasia in person she'd been moping over the ruins of her mansion. "Maybe a little down, but some violence ought to perk her right up."

Abby swatted at him. "Be nice."

Dan shrugged. "Seriously, though. She's obsessed with the People. I mean, proper obsessed. More than usual, even. And I get it— really, I do. But it's starting to cloud her judgement."

Abby pursed her lips into a frown, so Dan explained, "Echo got one over her and she's in a real hurry to pay him back. You know, she was about five minutes away from boarding a flight to Memphis? I don't even understand what she was hoping to accomplish with that."

"Find Echo, I'd assume," Abby said quietly.

"Well sure, but how? It's not like she had people in place; there weren't any agents on the ground other than the feds." Dan paused, took a breath, then admitted, "I think she was just gonna roll up on them and hijack the operation, just like she did here."

Which may or may not have directly led to the wholesale slaughter of some brave, stupid college students.

"She's used to getting what she wants," Abby muttered.

Dan grunted an affirmation. That was the truth. He shifted himself on the couch, so Abby's body tucked tighter against him. She was warm and soft and comforting; a pleasant distraction to the news that played in the background. There was nothing comforting there, just grim announcements, one after the other. None of it, though, what he was looking for.

"Still nothing about Memphis," Dan noted with a scowl.

Abby rolled to face him. "There won't be. Not on television. Not until it starts."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

What a deceptively mild way to phrase things. "You mean once everyone starts to kill each other?"

"Hopefully it won't come to that." Abby's free hand reached behind her, blindly fumbling at the coffee table. Dan reached over her shoulder and retrieved the phone she was searching for, earning himself a kiss on the cheek.

"Look," Abby said, unlocking the device and scrolling fast. Dan peeked at the screen. Abby flicked through a series of images: Men in dark suits walked along city sidewalks, posted atop buildings, stood on street corners. Almost all those little tactical earpieces that secret service agents seemed to favor. It was so obvious, Dan thought it had to be fake.

"Where'd you get these?" he asked.

"Internet," came Abby's reply. After a moment, she added, "They're real."

Dan snorted incredulously. "The feds really don't do subtle, then."

"It's intentional," Abby chided him. "They're building a perimeter. Next will be a grid search, while they evacuate citizens. It's an old school tactic that was used against the People back in their heyday. I read about it in one of my history classes. It's a pretty outdated tactic, now, though."

"How's that?"

"Well, these days, a villain is just gonna hold everyone nearby hostage. Or go on a rampage and start indiscriminately killing people. That's what SPEAR teams are for. They go in with maximum force; take down the target before they get a chance to do anything dramatic."

"The target... and everyone nearby," Dan pointed out, being well-acquainted with the grim realities of the job. Cornelius was not often a sad drunk, but when he was, he was a very sad drunk.

Abby nodded matter-of-factly. "It's a trade-off. Moderate collateral damage to prevent massive future damage."

"That being the exact justification for the UT Massacre."

"Thus, the change in tactics," Abby agreed. "The People can't take hostages. It would destroy their popular support, which they need now more than ever. I mean, it's right there in the name: the People. They can't be seen endangering the ones they claim to represent. They can't engage while civilians are at risk, so they have to sit tight and wait as the feds close in. Once the civvies get clear, they'll duke it out."

"Linear tactics," Dan summarized.

"What?"

"Two sides, lining up to shoot at each other. Like how we fought during the revolutionary war. It's all very formal and respectful, except for the blood, shit, and screaming."

"Yes, well, let's hope it's the other side doing the screaming," Abby offered with a grimace. "Besides, in a straight fight the feds have the advantage. Numbers and coordination trump straight power any day."

"Assuming they get a straight fight."

Abby shrugged. "The whole point of the strategy is to engineer one. They're being obvious as a declaration of intent. The People can try something sneaky, but then they're the ones putting civilians at risk."

It felt like the roles should be reversed, here.

"You're saying Rawls' guys are using civilians as a shield?" Dan asked in alarm. "What if it's not the People? What if it's someone else pretending to be Champion, who doesn't give a damn about collateral damage."

"If they're pretending to be the People, they've got to use the People's playbook. The ploy would be too obvious, otherwise."

Dan wasn't sure he agreed, but there was a bigger problem that needed to be addressed. "I don't get it."

"Get what?" Abby asked.

"The People have a teleporter," Dan pointed out. "We know this. They know we know. What's stopping them from just... teleporting away." Dan was intimately familiar with how convenient such a tactic was, and how very difficult it was to deal with. Anastasia claimed to have seen through the weakness of the man's power, but that felt like wishful thinking. How hard could it possibly be to gather up everyone of note, and whisk them out of the city?

"What's stopping them?" Abby asked. She seemed to consider the question, then shrugged. "I don't know. But there must be something. Rawls wouldn't employ this tactic if he didn't think he had a counter for the most obvious way out of it. You have to understand, Danny, the FBI have probably been working on this for months now. Ever since the teleporter showed himself."

If that were true, Dan thought, things wouldn't have gone so sideways at the university battle. Echo had gotten away clean, albeit after unleashing an enormous amount of chaos upon the city. Maybe there had been countermeasures in place, only for Coldeyes' assault to have stymied them. He could only hope. Otherwise, Rawls and all of his agents were about to look like massive fools.

Or worse, Dan realized; If it wasn't Echo and his goons, then they were in completely unknown territory. Anything could happen. Anything could go wrong. And nobody could even begin to predict how.