Gods were not supposed to be impotent.

Jason had been promised power. He had been promised riches. He had been promised a kingdom. He deserved it. The Titan Gem had chosen him. He wasn’t some mere metahuman, at the mercy of genetics or the whims of mystical confluence or whatever caused them to suddenly start shitting lasers during puberty. The Gem had been passed down through generations, and had finally taken him as its final bearer. He wielded the forgefires of Creation, the force that had fathered the Sun itself.

And you cannot even keep hold of your woman. Never mind godhood, boy. What kind of man are you?

It had been only five minutes since Siege’s betrayal. Since Anna had been taken. Maureen had teleported away to investigate what exactly Siege had done. Ripper was doing laps around the open floor to work the kinks out of his muscle from the stunners.

Jason stood before the telegate, his body alight with fires hot enough to melt the concrete beneath his feet, deciding whether or not it was time to burn it all away. He could destroy everybody, everything who witnessed his failure, hide until his flames rekindled, and start anew somewhere else.

Running away? How manly.

“Jason!” a feminine voice called.

He turned to look. Flames burned in his eyes, but they did not impede his vision.

Maureen stood in her swaddling rags behind him, far enough back to bear the heat—and to have time to teleport, if he rushed her. At least, she believed he did. She looked at him, expression seemingly serene in the face of his imminent fulmination. Of course she was. She’d be fine. The tricky bitch.

“I have news,” she said. “About Anna. But you have to stop.”

Anna.

The name caused his flames to gutter, and his knees to tremble.

It had taken him five seconds to realize that he wasn’t going to be able to dig through the tar-like substance that had covered his face any time soon. Five seconds he’d spent clawing at it. Five seconds to draw up his flames, to evaporate it into nothingness.

But it had only taken three seconds for her to disappear.

Weak, slow, stupid little boy.

“Maureen,” he said, hearing how small and weak his voice sounded, hating it. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Jason,” she said. “We can fix it. But I need you to stop what you’re doing so we can talk.”

He felt his breath hitch.

Are you going to cry? What in the name of Ouranos did I do to get stuck with such a flaccid, womanly—

He shoved the voice away. He shoved the fire away. He extinguished.

“Talk,” he said, hoarsely. “Tell me what we have to do to get her back.”

There was a noise of disgust from the side of the room.

Hyperion slowly turned to look.

“We have more pressing matters than your esper,” Sakuraba said from across the floor, where he was still working to free himself from the adhesive. “If you’re through with your temper tantrum, I want to know what readings—”

Casually, Hyperion moved behind the cyborg at supersonic speeds and grabbed his arms, still stuck in the shell of hard goo. “Let me give you a hand with that.”

He put his foot on the gangster’s garish tattoo and, with no effort whatsoever, pulled his arms off of his torso.

Instead of the ripping of flesh and snapping of bone and tendon, metal rent and cables ripped. Fluids spurted from the torn mechanical parts, but it wasn’t blood. It wasn’t even oil, but some kind of clear, sap-colored gel.

Sakuraba stumbled forward, but only a single step before turning and firing off a picture-perfect side-kick into Hyperion’s diaphragm, rocket boosters firing to give him some extra impact. It landed with enough strength to shatter reinforced concrete.

Hyperion barely felt it. Sakuraba’s leg blew out at the knee in a shower of sparks.

Undeterred, the yakuza balanced perfectly on a single foot and glared defiantly up at the larger man. “You will regret what you have done.”

“The only thing I regret,” Hyperion said calmly, “is not killing you sooner.”

Sakuraba’s eyes narrowed. “It was treachery from the beginning, was it?”

“Absolutely,” Hyperion said. “How do you think the Council started honing in on your operations?”

Sakuraba, confusingly, smiled. “I see.”

A dozen voices groaned all together. Hyperion looked around before realizing that the noise was coming from Jailbreak’s drones still floating towards the ceiling.

“What?” Hyperion demanded.

One of them swooped down closer to him, but the voice still emanated from every one of the little hovering robots. “He’s recording, boss. Transmitting. Streaming. Someone’s watching through his eyes. Probably more Zaibatsu.”

“Indeed.” The gangster’s circuit-laden pupils dilated. “I believe the phrase you use over here is, ‘Say cheese?’”

Stupid, the voice in Jason’s head said. Idiot. How gullible are you that you didn’t think to consider—

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He shoved it away again. “So be it. Tell your masters that I’m willing to oblige them if they wish to die.”

“Funny,” Sakuraba said. “They told me to tell you the same.”

The cyborg’s bare chest split, his pectoral muscles sliding outward, revealing a brightly glowing reactor core. As he watched, a whirlwind of blue particles began to gather around it, and Hyperion suspected that it was either about to explode, or he was about to be blasted by some sort of energy beam. He set his feet and squared up to it, intending to take whatever it was head on before he squashed this robot bug.

Before either could happen, a hand sprouted from Sakuraba’s chest, fingers clasping around the reactor and ripping it free.

Behind him, Ripper grinned, his metal teeth gleaming. “Sorry. We were done with him, right?”

“More or less,” Hyperion said.

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Ripper pulled his arm out of Sakuraba’s back and let the cyborg fall forward. He held the reactor up like a prospector checking a stone for ore before shrugging. His jaw distended, opening wider than any human mouth should, showing he had not just one row of razor teeth, but a dozen, layered back into his disturbingly wide mouth. He plopped the still-glowing reactor into his mouth and bit down sharply. There was a muffled whumph and smoke began to emit from between his closed lips.

He chewed thoughtfully. “Mm. Spicy.”

Sakuraba twitched on his stomach, his arm in front of him, seeming to reach for Hyperion’s feet. He said, voice on the verge of failing, “Daisuki na ane, watashi, shuppatsu shimasu.”

Hyperion raised his palm towards the fallen yakuza. “Speak American.”

He loosed a flame hot enough to instantly evaporate steel, and about ten feet of concrete besides. Sakuraba disappeared.

Ripper, caught in the thermal wash, ducked away, yelping, “Hey, friendly fire!”

One of Jailbreak’s drones waved its little grabber arms despondently. “Well fuck me, I guess. I thought I was about to get my hands on some ritzy Zaibatsu tech. Oh well.”

Hyperion rounded on the drone. “Shut your fucking mouth. This is partially your fault. Your warning did more harm than good. Now, get that telegate up and running and get us to wherever it took Anna, or I swear to all of the gods in heaven, I will hunt you down and burn you from the inside out.”

“Been doing that since it shut off, chief,” Jailbreak said, sounding unconcerned. “It’s going to take some time.”

“How many drones do you need for that?”

“Uh, just one or two, I think—”

Hyperion raised his hand, and promptly began blasting the extraneous robots from the air.

Jailbreak tried to weave them around the gouts of fire, but if they were five times as fast, he still wouldn’t have had a chance. “Aw, come on!”

That done, Hyperion turned to Maureen, who still maintained distance, watching him warily.

“You said you had news,” he prompted.

“Yes.” She swallowed. “The fishing boats are gone. They were beached on the mainland, and then it looks like something blew them apart. There are hundreds of footprint tracks going up the shore, so I imagine Siege did it after they—”

Hyperion stomped, an act that might seem like mere petulance, if it hadn’t shattered the concrete beneath his foot.

No, it’s still something a child—or a woman—would do.

“I don’t care,” he whispered, hoarse, “about the goddamn fishing boats. You said that you had news about Anna. Tell me.”

Maureen hadn’t flinched. “If you would let me finish, I saw that the coastal road had quite a few odd treadmarks on and next to it, like heavy transports or tanks had been parked there. I went to check the bridges and other spots around the Wall and saw that SCAR was on high alert. They had an abnormal number of troops deployed, and nobody was patrolling. They knew something was up. They were ready for a fight.”

Jason heard a rushing noise that came from nowhere. “You think Siege gave her to them? Does SCAR even have a telegate?”

“I would bet money that they do,” she said. “And I think Siege has been looking for an out for a long time. Amnesty for Anna was probably an easy move, for them. If that’s the case, she’s gone, Hyperion. Until Jailbreak can find out where they took her.”

“If, not until!” one of Jailbreak’s remaining drones piped in from where it was cautiously inching towards the telegate.

She considered it for a moment, then resolutely said, “If.”

Jason’s world was falling out from underneath him, and he could do nothing to stop it.

Anna was supposed to be his queen. His Theia. They would begin a dynasty here. It had been promised.

There are two flavors of women. Bitter and spoiled, or pure and ripening. Only the latter is fit for a god. When you have one, you never let her go, no matter what.

No matter what.

“Jason,” Maureen said. “The Zaibatsu will be coming for us. They might already be on their way. We need to contact the Council—”

“How?” He shook his head, trying to shut the voice out. “Siege was our point of contact. And our recon.”

“The Skip is full of metahumans we can call on,” she said. “The territory leaders already answer to us. We need to rally them.”

Fulfill your responsibilities. Be a man, for once.

“I can’t do both,” he said out loud. “I can’t concentrate until she’s safe.”

Pathetic.

“She’s either safe enough or dead already,” Maureen said. “We can’t do anything for her if we lose control of the Skip.”

If you can’t pull yourself together, then consign yourself to oblivion and allow me to find a real host.

“Jason, you’re burning again—”

Go on, boy, let go, and then he’ll come for you—

“SHUT UP!” he screamed, and fire swept out from him.

Voidwalker vanished and reappeared at the edge of the room. Ripper cursed and leapt, his jump carrying him up the tiers of the panopticon.

Vagrant stood close among the flames, pure darkness against his scouring fire.

Run, the voice said, whimpering and quavering with unselfconscious terror. Run away from That Thing. That accursed, hideous, faceless thing, a messenger of naught but madness—

Jason forced the voice back down, took control of his power, and once more, extinguished.

He shut his eyes and took several deep breaths.

When he opened them again, Vagrant stood before him.

He was dressed finely today, for him, in a ratty waistcoat and a wide-brimmed black hat. The brim, of course, swooped low to cover his face. Jason had often considered grabbing whatever the strange little man was wearing on his head and pulling it off just to see if he had a face at all. The voice was convinced otherwise, but surely there was something there.

Madness, it whispered. Entreat with it not.

“Thank you,” Jason said finally.

Anna pleased the voice, the power, its drive to…own someone. To form a union, a bond, as it understood them. It was quiet when she was there. It was satisfied.

But it feared Vagrant.

Of course, most who knew his true name did.

“My pleasure as always, great Hyperion,” the strange man said. “And, if it pleases you, I have a solution to all of your problems.”

Maureen appeared next to them, openly disgusted to be standing so close to Vagrant. Absurd. He’d saved all of their lives.

“Don’t listen to it, Jason,” she hissed.

“Be quiet,” he snapped. He motioned to Vagrant. “Continue.”

“I have contacts who can find the hero that Darkstar met with,” Vagrant said, voice sweet, like cyanide. “That will give you the secret to getting her back and securing your kingdom.”

He frowned. “Fury? This did all begin with her meddling. Do you think she was in on this plan?”

“Not her,” Vagrant said. “The other. The man who saved her.”

Jason listened, and he felt power building once more. The voice was quiet, cowed by Vagrant. This power, this rage, it belonged to him.

After all, gods were not supposed to be impotent.