Maureen Murphy. Voidwalker.

Coward.

She watched Darkstar stalk away, wishing she could do something, knowing she couldn’t. The girl seemed to hate her, for one, but even thinking that was adjacent to a good reason not to help her felt disgustingly petty. Maureen was nearly forty years old—too old to be cultivating personal animosity with a teenager.

She wasn’t the only person too old to be doing something in their little group, though.

Hyperion held his composure until Anna had gone down the stairs, then started trembling. He raised his hands to his head and started breathing heavily. Fire began to race along the surface of his costume in wild, random patterns.

Maureen and Ripper shared a glance. Ripper looked like he wanted nothing more than to say, “Yikes,” and leave, but did neither.

Siege, as always, barely reacted, and Vagrant only smiled. He only ever smiled.

Their fourth man was unremarkable in most respects, average height and neither particularly skinny nor fat. He put the least effort into his costume, even less than Ripper and his stupid denim vest—Vagrant just wore normal clothes, a bit frayed. The only thing off about it was that, whatever he wore, his eyes were always hidden, like they were now by the lip of his hooded jacket.

He didn’t need to wear colors to convince people he was a villain. Just looking at him made Maureen’s skin crawl.

Hyperion finally turned around and faced them, fires around him flickering out. He studied each of them in turn, a strangely childlike sullenness on his face.

“She makes me crazy,” he said, sounding more like he was talking to himself than them. “It’s not my fault.”

“Sure, yeah,” Ripper said, sounding unconvinced. “I saw how she hit your hand with her face. Who does something like that?”

Maureen tensed, shooting Ripper a frantic look. The chrome-toothed berserker shrugged at her. He tended towards glibness, sometimes to an alarming degree, and in most other company, his strength would make anyone’s offense a non-issue. He was nearly unstoppable in a fight, and his bite was known to be able to pierce almost anything, even the most durable ultratech materials. Even metahumans who could shrug off missiles like they were popguns.

Provoking their leader was a different matter entirely.

Hyperion was an Omega.

It was almost impossible to judge the strengths and weaknesses of metahumans on a linear scale. Powers were too varied, and even directly comparable ones often had their own little intricacies and quirks that made them outperform seemingly stronger ones like them in certain situations. It was why there were something like ten widely used classification and ranking systems, all of which mostly disagreed with each other.

There were a few universals, however, and one of them was that, no matter how you stacked things up, the Guardsman was on the top of the pile. Once, Revenant had shared that space with him, until the Guardsman had finally killed him.

Beneath them were what people had come to call Omegas—metahumans who could, in some way, challenge the golden guardian, if not defeat him. Since the Guardsman was outright immune to most typically predominant power effects—Ripper’s bite, for example—this meant that an Omega was usually of the walking natural disaster variety, possessing enormous raw destructive power. The bar you had to be able to jump was as simple as it was hyperbolically difficult: If you could knock the Guardsman off his feet, you were an Omega.

And Hyperion had done just that, once, many years ago.

He could kill everybody at this table with little effort. Everybody in the Skip, which was why the Skip in its current incarnation existed in the first place.

Which is why prodding him in his current unraveling mental state was a terrible idea.

Instead of incinerating them and half of the city, however, Hyperion walked back over to his seat in the booth and collapsed into it, looking exhausted. They all watched him, waiting for whatever happened next.

“Apologies for interrupting,” said a ridiculously posh, slightly effeminate British accent.

Maureen started, and turned to see that bouncer, bill—even thinking his name was somehow muted—was now standing next to their booth. She hadn’t seen him approaching, which felt hypocritical to be startled by.

Hyperion eyed the huge enforcer distrustfully. “What do you want?”

“Mister Debouth, sir, I’ve come with a query,” bill said. “Can you read?”

Hyperion froze, and then his body language transformed. All traces of exhaustion died as he leaned forward, fists clenching, muscles tensing. “Excuse me?”

“Can you read?” bill repeated politely. “Are you capable of interpreting symbols imprinted upon a surface for the purpose of transferring intention and meaning from one party to another?”

Maureen readied her escape method.

“I am,” Hyperion said, sounding deceptively calm.

“Then you did see the sign at the door,” bill continued, “that warns patrons against using their powers inside and fighting on the premises.”

Hyperion blurred out of his seat again, unnaturally fast, exactly as he had with Anna, except this time, he ended up looking up at bill, instead of vice versa. If the height difference intimidated him, it was impossible to tell.

“Listen,” he said, still eerily calm. “I’ve been having a bad day. Why don’t you get to the point?”

“Certainly,” bill said with utter aplomb. “Mr. Debouth. You are allowed certain privileges within this establishment for the sake of the wider peace of the borough. However, management feels that it’s time to outline clearly what will be expected of you and your companions if we are to continue extending said privileges. If you would kindly follow me, the master would like to speak to you.” The bouncer gestured to the side.

Maureen looked where he was indicating. As she watched, a small, discreet door at the back of the upper level swung open. It was labeled “MANAGEMENT.” Maureen was one-thousand percent sure it hadn’t been there five seconds ago.

Jason glanced that way too, then looked at bill and raised his chin. “If he wants to talk, I’m right here. Tell him to come on out.”

bill spoke, his voice lowering in pitch with every word, until the end of the sentence sounded appropriately demonic—but still somehow posh. “I do not believe that is going to happen, Mister Debouth.”

The air around the booth started to get very, very cold. Below, she noticed, the band had switched from uptempo swing music to a foreboding, almost orchestral piece. It was an odd choice for a dance club.

Maureen was a half-second from fleeing what was sure to be a fight with extensive collateral damage, before a new voice cut in.

“Go have a palaver with the old snake, Jason,” Vagrant said in his liquid rasp. “No need to burn any bridges, yet.”

Hyperion looked over his shoulder at Vagrant, then back to bill. Abruptly, he jerked his head in a nod, and began stalking towards the door, behind which was presumably management’s office.

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“Once again,” bill said to the rest of them, voice back in its normal light register. “Apologies for the interruption. Enjoy the rest of your night.” He followed Jason.

After they were gone, Maureen and the others sat in silence.

Ripper, predictably, spoke first. “Well, if business is done, I’m going to get drinks. Who’s feeling whiskey?”

Siege put a hand on his arm. “We’re not done, but let’s continue somewhere else.”

“Oh?” Vagrant said, sly amusement evident in his tone. “And where would you like to go?”

“Somewhere away from you, you execrable shit beetle,” Siege said, their professional tone and demeanor driving their words home even more. “Nobody has to indulge you when Hyperion isn’t around.”

Vagrant chuckled wetly. “Oh, the irony of you calling me an insect.”

Siege stood, and also stayed seated. There were suddenly two of them, dressed identically, one rising out of the other with a surprising and somehow off-putting lack of special effects. Like they had been two people sharing the same space, and then they weren’t.

“Later, I’ll apologize to the insect community,” Siege that stood said. “Voidwalker. Let’s go.”

Wordlessly, Maureen offered her hand to that Siege, who leaned forward and took it. Ripper did likewise.

And with that, she pulled the three of them into the darkness behind reality, leaving Vagrant and the sitting Siege behind.

They were only there for a second—or rather, what they would perceive to be a second, as her tests had proven that functionally no time passed when she voidwalked—but it still felt too long. They hung suspended in a darkness that seemed both absolute and insubstantial, like they weren’t just seeing a lack of light, but a lack of the potential for light. Or sound. Or smell. A true nothingness.

Almost.

She sensed things there sometimes, on a level she didn’t understand and didn’t want to.

Saying she navigated the nothingness misunderstands both operative words of that sentence, but if she ever had to explain her powers, that is what she usually said she did. Really, she just knew where she wanted to go, and went there. There was no sense of motion because there was no sense of anything.

They reappeared in their special meeting place, the mouth of a massive outflow pipe for the Skip's sewer system. The pipe had been blocked long before supervillains had taken the borough over, probably sometime after the technophage had rendered the entire island a barren wasteland of useless factories, a hive of metal and rust.

They hung over the waters of Lake Superior, their pipe extending out a hundred yards from land. The rest city wasn’t visible from here—they were on the far side of the island from it and the mainland—but its light still made the tail end of dusk feel like the beginning. Maureen remembered her old apartment Downtown, how it was always daylight even in the Roots, how she’d needed to install blackout curtains to sleep, which her landlord had eventually replaced with ultratech blackout windows with the post-technophage infrastructure stimulus grant.

Several small, black-painted boats trawled the waters beneath them, dragging nets as they went. This was the area they’d called the Undersling, the Skip’s own private little fishery. A long time ago, they’d gotten the idea to string mesh below the surface of the water from the Skip to the mainland shore in several key areas, and filled the area with freshwater salmon to create a potentially endless food supply for the borough. The problem was, they had drastically underestimated the sheer bulk needed to even make a dent in the food shortage, as well as the logistical issues inherent with aquaculture, like feed and maintaining viable hatcheries. It had only gotten worse when their expert on the subject had been killed in a territory dispute between the Council and the now-defunct Nihilists.

Their second expert had ended up killing himself after his kidnapping. Maureen still had nightmares about it.

Their third expert was Siege. They were also all of the fishermen.

Fisherpeople, she corrected herself.

Ripper stretched and yawned. “Alright, what do we got to—”

Maureen whirled on Siege, got in their face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Siege raised their eyebrows and said nothing, but didn’t back down.

Ripper looked between them, blinking, then sighed. “Fuckin’ seriously? Have we not had enough drama tonight already?”

The grey-robed woman ignored him. “Why, Siege? Why did you vote no?”

“Because I didn’t believe Anna’s plan had a reasonable chance of—”

“It’s not about the plan,” she snarled. “It’s about getting her away from him.”

Siege was silent for a moment. “That’s not my job, Maureen.”

“Don’t you dare hide behind your job,” she spat. “Like that means anything anymore. You don’t get points for being a good henchman.”

“Sure you do,” they said, unflappable. “You get one point every year you remain alive. I would like to keep accruing points for the foreseeable future, and upsetting an Omega-level metahuman seems like a quick trip to a game over.”

“I like Pac-Man,” Ripper said helpfully.

“How many copies do you have?” Maureen said. “You’re seriously worried about survival? You have the least to worry about of anyone here. You’ve probably got copies living on a tropical beach somewhere right now.”

“I have one-thousand two-hundred and eleven iterations, six-hundred and fifty-four of which are currently active in the Skip,” Siege said. “Three-hundred and twelve deceased, including our original iteration. Our minds are all linked, and we are all perfect replicas of the last at the point of divergence, but we’re all functionally autonomous. When one of us dies, they don’t get reabsorbed back into some kind of nebulous whole. They just die.”

“Did you guys know Ataris still work?” Ripper said. “The technophage doesn’t eat ‘em as quick as even, like, Nintendos.”

“Furthermore,” Siege continued, inexorable, “were the Skip to collapse, I would be the only one of us who wouldn’t be able to easily escape, considering my lack of mobility powers or superhuman physiology. Therefore, I quite literally have the most to worry about by virtue of quantity alone, and the most to lose personally if the situation goes FUBAR.”

“Pong too. The old arcade machines.”

“You’re right, Maureen, to say this isn’t just a job,” Siege said. “We took the Skip to give persecuted metahumans somewhere to go, somewhere they stood a reasonable chance against SCAR. But make no mistake—if they wanted to take the borough back, they could take it. There’s only one thing stopping them, and that is Hyperion. If he goes nuclear, it wouldn’t just kill everyone on the island. It would probably wipe out a substantial portion of Sanctum City along with it. And that’s it. We’re not here because we stand a chance against them in a fight, we’re here because they’re too afraid to risk provoking one man. Our job, therefore, is to keep that one man alive, well, and most of all stable, because if they think he’s going to blow, they’re not going to sit around and wait for it. They’re going to come, and then no matter what, we lose. Possibly even you, if you can’t teleport faster than an explosion.”

Voidwalker felt her stomach churning more with every word he said, bile rising to her throat. “He’s getting worse, Siege. She’s making him worse. Isn’t that a good reason to get her away?”

“And Donkey Kong. Not Donkey Kong Jr., though, and that was only released, what, a year later?” Ripper sounded thoughtful, leaning against the wall of the pipe and looking out over the lake. “Wonder what changed.”

“I think, at this point, the only thing worse than her presence would be her sudden absence,” Siege said. “For better or worse, she’s an…outlet for him.”

“She’s a child,” Maureen spat.

“Legally, she is an adult,” Siege said. “By the Bogeyman’s reckoning, even, she is an adult. Any value judgments aside from those are ones we’re not in a position to make at the moment. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe their relationship is…physical.”

Maureen sneered. “You mean aside from when he hits her?”

“I mean sexually,” they said, blunt. “As unhealthy as it is, their ‘bond’ is mostly emotional. And it’s not a one-sided affair, either.”

Ripper pushed himself off the wall. “Alright, I’m done. You guys crossed the grossness threshold, and I ran out of games. Siege, buddy, you gotta knock off the robot act. If we don’t figure out something, Jason’s gonna use his super-superstrength and accidentally-not-accidentally take her head off one of these days. Maureen, if you really wanted her gone, you are literally the most qualified person on the planet to make it happen. Let’s make a decision, guys. Are we letting him keep his human stress ball for our own sake or not?”

“Not for our own sake,” Siege said. “For everyone’s sake. For the Skip. For now. Until we have an endgame for all of this. If we ever do.”

Maureen didn’t say anything.

"Do you really think," Siege said softly, "regardless of what we voted, that he would let her leave?"

She breathed in and out slowly.

“Maureen?” Ripper asked, impatient.

She shut her eyes.

Maureen Murphy. Voidwalker.

Coward.