The concrete wall split once more, weak yellow-green light flooding in.

Sheriff Grey, as usual, headed the jackboot brigade. “Miss Jones, good news! I’ve got clearance to keep you on the table until you give up the—”

She finally comprehended what she was seeing in the room.

“Good evening, Sheriff,” bill said politely. “I have to say, the look on your face was well worth the trip.”

The Sheriff drew her blaster with a speed that would have been impressive for the average speedster meta. “What in the fuck are you doing here?”

bill raised his thick wrist and pulled his sleeve slightly back, revealing a white-gold Rolex that matched his suit. “Distracting you for roughly three more seconds. Two. One…”

The seven-and-a-half foot mountain of muscle vanished.

Revealing a skinny five-foot-three form standing directly behind him, holding a brightly glowing ball of white energy.

I didn’t bother with a pithy one-liner.

I also didn’t bother with a beam, like I had used against Paragon.

I met the Sheriff’s eyes for the briefest of nanoseconds, and unleashed my power in a flood of light and fury.

----------------------------------------

You’re probably not surprised to hear that I reacted strangely to bill’s sudden presence. Reacting strangely is kind of my thing.

You may be surprised to hear that I didn’t really react at all.

It surprised me too.

Generally speaking, when a demon starts speaking to you from the darkness, some type of response is warranted. For most people, it would probably a trip to the psychiatric ward and a lifetime of remembering to take your pills at the exact same time every day. For others, it was time to go out and make your neighbors’ skin into lampshades.

Really, even that was a more appropriate than…nothing.

bill’s eyes glinted in the darkness, pinpoints flickering behind iron slats.

No surprise, no alarm, no joy, no fear.

Nothing.

"bill?" I asked, dull. "Are you real?"

"That is an interesting question with a variety of totally correct and totally contradictory answers," bill said. His eyes began to move back and forth across my little space—he was pacing. "While it is tempting to bargain a price for the truest answer to that question, it would be far more prudent to move this interaction along, given its location. Suffice it to say, Darkstar, that I am every bit as real as you. Do you doubt my presence?"

"I don't know." I swallowed and shook my head. "I think I'm kind of losing my mind? I spend a couple hours every day drowning and hallucinating. How would you even be here in the first place?"

"You called me, of course."

"I just said your name."

"Indeed, and yes, normally, that would be insufficient to catch my attention," he said. "However, the Club yet has outstanding debt to you. It gives you something of a metaphysical megaphone."

I frowned. "Debt?"

"Indeed, Darkstar. You never received payment for your information."

"My informa—" It hit me. "That night. Memorial Square. I gave you my location."

bill made a pleased noise in his throat. "Indeed. You have quite the hefty line of credit, and we are disinclined to leave a debt unanswered. That’s a very dangerous position to be in."

Something lit inside me, a spark struck, but refused to catch. "What can it get me?"

bill chuckled. "Many things."

"Can you get me out of here?"

bill busted out into full belly laughter, jolly and good-natured, like an uncle you had just told your favorite joke to. After a solid twenty seconds, he wound down and cleared his throat. "Heavens, no."

The spark died and I slumped, shutting my eyes—for no real reason, it was already pitch black—and fully intending to fall back down into a hole of delusion.

“Darkstar?” bill asked, sounding almost concerned.

I grunted.

“Is this the appropriate time for a nap?”

“bill, go away,” I sighed. “If you can’t get me out of here, I don’t need anything from you.”

bill asked, thoughtful, “Darkstar, have you ever been to a mechanic?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I took my Ferrari in the other day. Apparently it wasn’t firing on all pistons.”

“Glibness without wit is the refuge of the rhetorical coward,” bill said primly. “But since I am such a generous conversational partner, I shall continue.” He cleared his throat. “Let us say, for a moment, that you actually did take your hypothetical Ferrari in, and they did fix it. They would then—and do take a moment to admire my intricate and deeply meaningful wordplay here—hand you a bill. After a moment of abject horror, you would realize that the majority of the cost comes not from parts, but from labor. It would have cost you significantly less to have done it yourself. Do you understand?”

“I get it,” I said, not even able to summon the energy to be irritated. “You can’t get me out, but I can get what I need to get myself out. The problem is, I don’t want to. I’m tired. I’m hurt. I can barely stand up by myself. I’m done, bill. I’m tired of fighting so hard just to end up worse than I used to be. I can’t do it anymore. I’m done.”

Really, why would I leave? Sure, the torture, but that might stop if I just gave them what they wanted. I could get my MREs and a bed and some paperbacks and that would be that. It might not be pleasant, but my life had never been pleasant. At least here, there would be no more struggle, even if there was pain, even if they came up with something new they needed from me that gave them an excuse to do what they were already going to do. Really, these assholes were less creative than my high school bully. I knew, on a level that terrified me, that I could live like this. I could make do. I might even prefer it. That the only reason I hadn't broke is because, in here, I didn't wake up screaming at the thought of living another day.

In here, I got to see my dad again. Even if it was just hallucinations as my mind splintered under the strain. It was the only thing I wanted anymore.

bill was silent for several long moments before clicking his tongue. “Ah, I see. You’re beginning to understand the scope of the Enemy.”

I frowned. “The enemy?”

“Indeed. It’s daunting, at first. To understand that you’re nothing but a microscopic cog in a catastrophic plan. To know that even if you throw your body upon the gears, the odious machine will simply grind you into dust. To first catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, to begin to comprehend the incomprehensibility of it. To know that you could give your body, heart, and soul to the fight and not even leave a memory behind.”

Listening to him definitely didn't help. It was like every word he said was designed to drive a knife into my soul and twist it. “bill, your pep talks suck.”

“A pep talk will cost you,” bill said. “I’m not here to give you pep, Darkstar, I’m here to balance your account so that the Club has no outstanding debts. Would you like a pep talk?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Just leave me here, let me rot in a cell, and eventually I’ll die. No more debt.”

“One, that’s not really how it works,” bill said. “Two, aren’t you the one who prides yourself on surviving? I seem to recall that being the case.”

“It is the case,” I said. “I’ll survive in here. They won’t kill me.”

bill’s eyes glinted in the darkness. “You could live like this?”

“I’ll survive.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. Get me a bed, a toothbrush, and the ability to breathe underwater, and we’ll call it even. That’s what you’re after, right? Are we good?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. “Those things would not benefit you. Not here. Not as you are. They’re worthless. You’re worthless.”

“What do you want, bill?” I demanded. “You want me to charge out of my cell, maybe make it out, definitely get my ass kicked, and then get hounded until I’m right back here? No thanks. I’d rather practice holding my breath.”

“I see.” bill’s eyes abruptly tilted, like he was cocking his head in thought. “This is an unusual circumstance, Darkstar. Usually, I’m chasing down debtors and convincing them to pay, not debtees to buy. Still, my master would be irate with me if I did not think of a creative solution to this puzzle. He’s rather fond of them.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“You have no idea.” He clicked his tongue again. “How about this—allow me to expend one-fifth of your credit, and I will provide you with the motivation you need in order to spend the rest.”

“And if it doesn’t? If I tell you to get bent?”

“Then I will go, report my failure, and suffer the consequences,” bill said.

“And you won’t come back?”

“I doubt I’ll be in a state to,” bill said, grave.

I wasn’t really a big fan of that. Don’t get me wrong—bill was a vaguely sinister inhuman demon creature thing, but he was also one of maybe three people I talked to on a regular basis who I knew wasn’t actively trying to kill me. That made him pretty much my closest friend after Alex, and I had my reservations about Alex.

“Okay, bill,” I said. “Motivate me.”

“Very well,” bill said. The glints of his eyes disappeared. “I shall show you the face of your enemy.”

A dim red light began to rise in the cell. It seemed to come from every direction, making no shadows, casting everything in a surreal, dreamlike state of suspension. Which was honestly the most terrifying way to suddenly see bill, because he already looked like a bad acid trip. But, there he was, cartoonishly huge and hulking, in his fifty-thousand dollar suit, head in a cage.

As I raised my eyes to meet his, however, I saw something much more horrific than his iron-obscured face. I saw a beast, a loathsome aberration, an unspeakably hideous monstrosity, a creature unfit to exist in this universe or any other.

He was, of course, holding up a mirror.

I came to my feet in an instant, ripped it from his hands, and threw it as hard as I could at the wall. It shattered into a thousand shards of jagged glass, and every shard somehow seemed to capture me in miniature, mocking and spiteful.

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I rounded on bill. “You think you’re fucking clever?”

bill nodded, his cage creaking.

I drew my fist up to hit him, then realized how completely futile that would be. I wasn’t exactly sure how tough bill was, but I knew that he didn’t get to be the bouncer of the only nightclub in the underworld by collecting SFC rookie cards. I would need to get this helmet off if I wanted any real chance of—

My jaw tensed, and I lowered my arm. “Damn you, bill.”

“Your sense of irony is both noted and appreciated, Darkstar. Now, shall I leave, or…?”

“Get this helmet off of me,” I snapped.

“Another one-fifth,” he noted.

“Fine.”

He simply reached forward, hooked his black talons into the steel lattice of the helmet, and plucked it from off of my head, whatever had been holding it there either deactivated or overridden by whatever magic bill had at his disposal. There was a buzzing from it, like a wire shorting, before it popped and started smoking.

Immediately, I drew in power from around me. It hummed through my body, and I lifted into the air, surrounded by a faint cocoon of white. The sudden feeling of strength and lightness did wonders to banish some of the mental fog caused by physical fatigue—and emphasized just how terrible of shape I was actually in. The amount of energy it took to bring me up to normal was a significant investment all by itself.

bill apparently let the red light die, because suddenly I was the only thing lighting the room. I glared at him, now on level height with his onyx-glint eyes.

“There she is,” bill cooed, sounding delighted.

“Fuck you,” I said quietly.

“You couldn’t afford me,” he said, smug. “Now, let us explore what you can afford.”

----------------------------------------

As fast as I acted, Grey acted faster.

Her other arm blurred down to her belt, but not for the second gun. It came away with a small handheld device that sprang to life as it separated from its small holder—one of their red energy shields flared right as my attack hit. As the other officers were swept away by the wave of light, she hunkered down behind it and managed to divert much of the flow over the top of her.

She rode out the wave, sliding backwards a bit, but keeping her feet and composure. Then, as soon as the force let up enough for her to withstand, the aimed her gun over the top of the shield and pulled the trigger.

Whatever she was shooting at me with, the blaster definitely wasn’t set to stun this time—a red bolt of crackling plasma ignited the air between us. She was shooting to kill, and directly at my face. Worse, my psionic abilities still couldn’t do diddly-squat against energy-based attacks. They went through my telekinetic shields like light through a window.

The bolt plinked harmlessly off of my own SCAR-issue energy shield, which had cost me most of half of my remaining credit with bill.

Grey stared, wide-eyed. “What in the hell—”

I dove through the air and blitzed her.

Grey’s machine arms made her shooting fast and deadly accurate, but unlike Sakuraba, she was still mostly human. She wasn’t the local bigshot for SCAR because she, personally, could go toe to toe with a metahuman—that’s what all their overabundance of hardware was for. I imagined she got some sideways looks just from how her arms made her metahuman-adjacent.

I crashed into her, my shield versus hers, and knocked her backwards, out of the cell—and out of her stupid cowboy hat.

She was still fast. Her gun peeked over the lip of my shield the very moment we met and she almost managed to get another shot off, but I reached up, grabbed the gun, and squeezed. It shattered beneath my fingers. In an attempt to be tricky, she let go of her shield and went for her other gun, but right as her fingers touched it, we slammed into the wall where the hallway first bent, pinning her against it and trapping her—which was mostly unnecessary, because her very human head hit the concrete wall about about twenty-five miles an hour and knocked her silly.

Still, even as her eyes went loopy, her arms seemed to be acting with a certain degree of autonomy, twisting in ways human arms definitely couldn’t, the cables comprising them writhing like snakes. Her “fingers” coiled around the edge of the shields and tried to push them away, and to be fair, they managed to generate an impressive amount of force for a position of such poor leverage, but ultimately, barely succeeded in wiggling them.

I pushed, kept her trapped, and then kept pushing, slowly increasing the pressure. I watched her blue eyes attempting to refocus, then watched them snap sharply back into full consciousness as her ribcage began to creak underneath the force. They went from alert, to panicked, to furious, boring into me with more hate than I thought a person capable of.

“Make it quick, damn you,” she said, barely able to force the words out.

“Make it quick, says the torturer,” I echoed, voice sounding eerily calm even to my own ears. I reached down to the other gun on her hip with my free hand and crushed it in my grip as well. “Do you people have zero self-awareness? It seems like you keep extensive logs of others peoples’ perceived crimes, and then you’re just totally surprised when confronted by the consequences of your own actions.”

“Hilarious,” Grey gasped as I jacked up the pressure even more. “Coming from you of all people. You really think you’re going to get away with everything you’ve done just because of some archaic legal loophole? I’ve got bad news for you—you’re not getting out of here alive, and even if you did, we’ve already made sure you’re not getting anywhere near that school. So go ahead and kill me. We can always throw another charge onto the tally.”

I considered it for a moment, and thought about how good it would feet to squeeze her until she popped. I thought about her standing above me as I lay on the table, looking down with eyes that were white all the way around, so uncannily reminiscent of Judith’s eyes right before she beat the shit out of me in the bathroom at prom that I almost wondered if they were related. I thought about the satisfaction I saw as those eyes disappeared, as everything disappeared into a sopping darkness. I thought about the special level of spite and odium it took to torture somebody with Paragon’s cape.

I pushed harder and heard snapping noises from inside her.

I pushed harder and heard what little air she had left inside her escape in an almost comically high squeal.

I pushed and pushed and saw the hatred melt from the inside, giving way to a much purer emotion—terror. I saw the moment she became convinced she was about to die.

Worse, I felt it radiating out from her, flares of a star about to go supernova.

And I abruptly felt sick.

I pulled back and let her fall.

She fell to her knees and gasped, her arms coming to hug her stomach.

“You’re lucky,” I told her quietly. “I won’t say that I’m not like you. It’s kind of a cliche, and I’m far worse. No, you’re lucky that I have a weak stomach. You’re lucky that smearing you on the wall like a squashed bug would be gross.”

She looked up at me, uncertain.

“And most of all, you’re lucky I need you alive. For now.”

----------------------------------------

“We’ve got to be deep,” I told bill as we planned my escape.

I had opened my psionic senses as wide as they would go, feeling as much of my surroundings as deeply as I was able.

Psionics aren't just about mind-to-mind hijinks or moving energy around—the basic vector through which both of those things are accomplished are the various extra-sensory perceptions that allowed you to sense them in the first place. You have to feel the fundamental state that all of that exists on top of, the basic physical reality of the universe itself. The degree to which any particular psion could parse this information varied based on their natural talents and skill. Some psychics could tell you the order of cards in a deck that you were holding. Others would barely be able to say with certainty that you were holding something.

I wasn't super great at it yet, mostly because of my near total refusal to deal with the less tangible, non-combat-oriented aspects of psionics, but I was more than good enough to sense where there was something and where there wasn't. That was the psychic equivalent of saying I wasn't technically blind, but it was good enough for what I needed.

I felt pressure. I felt chaos. I felt particles that were tighter than air, looser than dirt, and bearing down on the facility we inhabited. We were deep, deep underwater. It was actually mildly terrifying, as sensing the energy involved in systems was a whole aspect of my power, and the amount trying to crush us to death right now would do for metas many times more durable than I was.

That was probably the point. My very first instinct had just been to open up with a concentrated force blast on the wall. bill had coughed and politely as suggested this as an alternate course of action, and now I realized that he had saved both of our lives—or saved me the trouble, as I doubted that I would have been actually able to get through the walls. Aside from the dozen feet of reinforced concrete surrounding us, the entire facility was encased in a solid durasteel shell that went on for long past the range of my senses in both directions, which was not only a marvel of engineering on par with fucking Pharos, but fully capable of repelling my most concentrated attacks. And was probably a good thing, because any breach in the outside would probably lead to a catastrophic implosion and kill us all instantly.

Basically, the only way out was the way I had come in.

“How much would it cost for you to open the telegate?” I asked.

“More than you can afford at the moment,” bill said. “Though I can tell you what you need to do to open it for a pittance.” After I gave the affirmative, he said, “Capture Grey. She knows all of the current codes and procedures.”

“She’ll never help me,” I said.

bill shrugged. “As my master says, everybody has two things—a price, and a point of failure. Find one and you can make somebody do something you want. Find both and you can make somebody do anything you want.”

“He sounds like a peach.”

“I believe a date would be a more appropriate fruit comparison,” bill said.

“Regardless, I don’t have anything to offer Grey and something tells me she’s the ‘death before dishonor’ kind of fanatic,” I said. “So I don’t really see threatening her working out for me.”

“Perhaps, Darkstar,” he said, before his voice dropped back down into its more demonic registers, “turnabout is fair play?”

I stared at him.

----------------------------------------

I picked Grey’s shield up off the ground and deactivated it, the red energy popping like a bubble, so that it was only a small handheld device, a handle with nothing else attached. I realized I didn’t have anything to attach it to—they’d taken the belt that I’d been wearing with my bodysuit—so I reached down and started unbuckling Grey’s.

Her metal arms flashed to my wrists. “What the fuck—”

She could make it difficult for me to perform the fine maneuvers necessary to unbuckle a belt, but I was still much stronger than her in general. I jabbed her in the ribs, which I thought were broken. Her expulsion of agonized breath pretty much confirmed this.

“Relax,” I said. “I just need your belt. I’m not getting weird.”

I continued, and hit a small snag in the form of the cuffs she had dangling from her waist—two pairs of thick durasteel shackles, tough even for physically gifted metahumans to snap. That was easily solved. I promptly put one of those on her, slipped the belt the rest of the way of, and cinched it around my own hips. Then I attached the extra shield and the extra set of cuffs to it and straightened.

“Right about now,” I said, “you’re wondering where your backup is, why there’s no alarm, since this is all happening on camera. Long story short, my demon friend is going to make sure that they have no idea what’s happening. Nobody is coming to help you. Not for a long time.”

She didn’t say anything. She tried getting her aura of Texan toughness back, but it had been shattered at about the same time the air had been crushed from her lungs in a pathetic whine.

“So keep that in mind while I take you where we’re going,” I said, before flashing forward and twisting her hair around my hand. I didn’t give her time to stand up before I started jerking her down the hallway.

She scrabbled after me. I jerked her forward again every time she was about to get her feet under her so that she fell again and had to quickly crawl along behind me.

We went around the bend, and to the room with the table.

She realized what was happening about then and tried to catch herself on the door frame, but at that point, I simply grabbed her by her mechanical wrists and threw her inside. She flew towards the center of the room, hit the ground, rolled, and came to a stop, clutching her ribs in breathless pain.

Before she could recover, I hauled her onto the table, uncuffed one of her wrists, and wrenched her arms backwards. I snaked the other cuff under the table and, with a little telekinetic assistance, hooked the two pairs of handcuffs together.

I let her go and she immediately tried to sit up, but didn’t get very far before the durasteel cuffs and metal table stopped her. Her eyes were wide, and I turned away from them to talk towards the little basin they got their water from. There was a small collection of plastic pails—literal children’s toys—stacked next to it.

“Darkstar, don’t do this,” she said behind me.

I didn’t answer. I just grabbed one of the pails and started filling it.

“D—Anna. Anna Jones.” Desperation as starting to show through the pain in her voice. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh, now you know my name,” I said. I stopped filling the bucket. “I’ll tell you what. You go ahead and give me the activation code for the telegate, the address of the city-powered gate in Tokyo, and the password I need for them to open the connection. Then, I’ll just go. Sound good?”

Grey was silent.

I resumed filling the bucket.

“It could have been worse,” Grey said. “I stopped them from doing worse. Much worse. You’re still wearing clothes. You should thank me for that.”

“Thanks,” I said with what sounded like genuine enthusiasm—which was impressive, given that the only thing the comment provoked in me was genuine rage. “I guess you’re not a fascist anymore.”

“What does it say about you?” she asked, challenging. “What does it make you if you do this?”

I actually chuckled, even though there was not an ounce of humor to be found in my body at that moment. “So, to be clear, you know that people who do this are scum, but you justify it through thinking your victims are subhuman, and now you’re trying to appeal to my sense of decency by saying that if I were to do to you what you did to me, I’d be just as bad as you.” I paused. “Do you see where the logic sort of loops back around and chokes itself to death there?”

“I’m protecting the world,” she said, resolute. “You’re protecting yourself.”

“Protecting the world from what?” I demanded. I finished filling up the pail and leaned on the basin for a moment. “From anyone or anything different than you? From people who have experiences or abilities you don’t understand? You’re not protecting the world—you’re trying to stop it from changing.”

“I’m trying to stop another Horror,” she snapped.

I turned back to her. “Me too. That makes this okay, right? That’s how it works? I just say that and it’s morally justified?”

She just watched me.

“Give me the information I asked for.”

“No.”

I walked back over to the table with the bucket and set it down.

Then I realized I was missing an important piece of the setup.

I turned and saw Paragon’s cape sitting in the corner, thrown on the floor. I walked over and picked it up.

It was still damp and kind of dirty. I shook it out. It was still white and gold and big and billowy. The exact sort of cape I had wanted, once upon a time.

I stared at it for several long moments.

Then I closed my eyes and sighed, realizing what I had to do.

I put the cape around my shoulders, walked back over to Grey, kicked the bucket over, and pressed my fingertips to her temples.

I created a telepathic link between us and entered her mind.