They say the louder your proclamations, the less conviction you possess. It should only make sense. Declare oneself a hero and beg the question, ‘Was that not apparent?’ Announce a stand against hatred, and the critical onlooker asks, ‘Only now?’ Promise to fix a city, and one wonders, ‘How? And when?’

Paulo had wanted to wait outside. Henry Othinn had insisted. So he stood a step behind the wiry man, saying nothing, waiting patiently. The silence was a dull membrane, interrupted by the gentle humming of machinery. Monitors displayed red and green bar graphs, blinking with every update. There was more red than green.

It felt like an eternity. Neither spoke to ease the passage of time. There was only the clock, the machines, the tubes, the red. Until finally, Henry had regained enough of whatever drove him to continue his work, and silently removed his hands from the cool fingers of the person on the bed. Were they a lover? Parent? Offspring? Paulo could not see from underneath the layers of equipment and bandages. He could only see the patient’s arm, which looked starved of sunlight.

“Let’s go,” Henry said. They left the hospital and entered a vehicle that would take them to their next appointment.

Henry had said he would tell Paulo why he was doing this. Paulo had not expected it would be like this. It was a sign of trust, and a signing of contract. There was no turning back for their group’s plans when the Awakening occurred. Now there was no turning back for him. As for the lynchpin of their plan…

“Do you think he’d spook?” Paulo asked.

“No,” Henry said. “He cares for his daughter too much. He would do anything to stay in office and to make this city safe for her sake.”

“What if he catches on?”

“He won’t,” Henry said. “Viktor is a good actor. As far as Howard is concerned, Viktor is our boss, and we’re only interested in selling guns. We’re predictable, and so Howard thinks he can manage us.”

The great enemy of even the best laid plans: being understood. Which was why their efforts were so divided, so that if one of them were caught, not even the legendary Whitworth could divine their true purpose. In theory. Paulo saw a complication. It had been bothering him ever since their ‘boss’ gave him jurisdiction over the city.

“You’ve been sulking for a while,” Henry said. “What is it?”

“You were promised a world free from the oversight of heroism.”

“I’m beyond that,” Henry corrected. “I want all gifted away from us, hero or not. At least our mistakes don’t result in such crippling of life.”

Paulo saw his father and sisters vaporize again before his eyes. That had not been the work of a gift. That had been man. Ordinary, ungifted man. He considered mentioning it, but it felt inappropriate.

“We’ve been doing our part,” Paulo said, “each of us to their own splinter of the plan. How do we know we’re all working towards the same goal?”

“What do you mean?” Henry asked. The force took Paulo aback.

“The boss,” Paulo said. Instinct told him to drop the topic. “He is impervious to mental gifts. His presence mutes upon meeting him. And when he leaves we barely remember he was ever there. Who’s to say his goal is what he says it is?”

“No,” Henry said. But Paulo could tell the thought lingered in his mind. “I’ve met with all vectors of our operation. I’ve run our logistics for every movement in New Langshir. If there’s deviation, I would have seen it. Our goals are the same.”

“I suppose so,” Paulo said. He touched his bracelet. It felt cold around his wrist, and fit too snugly.

--

Life used to be simple. The mindless meandering through life was comfortable, predictable, and convenient. She was unburdened by errant emotion, free from excessive torment or the heights of pleasure. It was good to not feel very happy; it set one up for disappointment after that ephemeral period of joy was over.

The world felt too sharp. She remembered events that had already passed with a new flare of wordless thought. Things that had only bothered her a little made her feel furious. She felt surges of joy and waves of frustration in the memories of her friends. A rush of satisfaction and a jolt of fear over past assignments and tests. In retrospect, the young man down at the coffee shop became a lot more stirring.

It felt as though she had a backlog of thoughts all rushing forward. She almost forgot she was in the middle of small war.

“Left balcony!” Sokolov said with professional urgency over the radio.

A hail of fire suppressed the shooters up on the building, allowing another group of enemies to retaliate elsewhere.

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The laboratory had been found off any road or trail, rooted deep in the forest. A long time ago a section of the city’s outskirts had been planted with carbon sequestering trees. Whoever orchestrated the facility had such vegetation growing on the roofs of the complex. A basic disguise. People didn’t see what they weren’t looking for.

The jig was up however. Leaves could not block the infrared bleeding off the facility.

Lyssa listened to the radio buzz with communications she didn’t understand. She could also hear the enemies up on the roof. They were shielded, muffling their thoughts, but she could tell where they were.

Her heart rate accelerated, rising well over a hundred beats per minute, and in an instant the scenery changed. She disappeared from the cover of the trees onto the top of the roof. Weapons were retrained on her, and a stream of hot metal ricocheted off her armor. She wrapped her metalbending fields around their guns and threw it back at them, knocking them out. Face gear shattered from the impact. Lyssa grimaced, disgusted at the force she used. She could see trails of blood and more than one tooth loose on the floor.

Hooks grasped the edge of the roof. Sokolov and his crew ascended to the roof.

“Use your radio,” Sokolov said, eyes sharpened with anger. “We thought you were one of them for a second. A second is sometimes all that matters.”

“I will,” Lyssa said. She was about to turn, but a gruff hand grasped her arm, yanking her attention back.

“We’re not as strong as you,” Sokolov said. “We could die a hundred times before you get hurt once. Don’t be a hero.”

“I understand, sir,” Lyssa said. She pulled herself free.

Was this exercise supposed to be for her edification? Lyssa was not a soldier, she did not sign up to be a soldier. The interaction made her irritated, and her fingernails glowed in response. As they breached the roof door and into the complex, she calmed somewhat, realizing how weak even the most well trained ungifted are.

“Maybe you should let me take point,” she said.

Sokolov considered.

“Sure,” he said.

She reformed her armor and took the lead like a mother hen. Together they moved through cold corridors. The lights had been turned off, replaced by orange emergency torches. No doubt a silent alarm was blaring. The whole place was awash with electric fields and signals.

A metal clinking caught her ear. Then a flash of light and sound. She squinted, covering her eyes. The next moment precipitated into a flurry of muzzle flares and bullets. Except these ones hurt, drilling through her black scales. She took the brunt of the fire, allowing her allies to retaliate, felling a shooter at the end of the hallway. The enemy retreated.

“Are you okay?” Sokolov asked.

“Fine,” Lyssa snapped. She was bleeding. The enemy must have adapted, realizing a gifted was assaulting their keep. The bullets were solid, dense slugs, tipped with a carbon allotrope harder than diamond.

They kept moving. Lyssa reformed her armor and raised her hand, keeping a constant vector of magnetic force in front of her this time. Another assault quickly arrived to test her strategy. Bullets found different trajectories when aimed at her, studding the walls and breaking windows. But no enemies fell either. Again they retreated.

“You’re curving our bullets as well,” Sokolov said.

“I can’t differentiate!” Lyssa said.

The hallway eventually opened up into rooms. Offices lined the right side. Windows lined the left, overlooking an expanse of alien equipment. Tubes and scopes and insidious machinery. Knife trays on carts were parked adjacent to tables. Some tables were still dirty, as if they had been recently abandoned. At the end of the laboratory, giant canisters were filled with bubbling blue liquid. Limbs were nestled within amidst a nest of tubes. Each canister had a wildly different tenant.

One of Sokolov’s men immediately began to take pictures.

“Who has the resources to do this?” Sokolov breathed.

Movement below. Lyssa felt people coming, but she was too slow to alert the squad leader.

“Duck!” Sokolov shouted.

The enemy below opened fire, but not with their rifles. Lyssa felt a torrent of kinetic energy shove her, then pull back again, and forward once more a hundred times a second. The windows shattered. The floor disintegrated, and they fell through onto the lab below, followed by a hail of rubble and sharp shards. The soldiers among them managed to roll behind the cover of the equipment. Lyssa felt paralyzed.

She glanced up and saw one of the enemy operatives point a tubular device at her from behind an operating table. It was not a rocket launcher. If she had been in a humorous mood, she would have likened it to a loudspeaker. She forced her armor to come back. It hurt. She had never reformed her scales so many times in one day. She only realized her mistake when they fired the weapon again. The immense vibrational wave tore the black plates apart, scrambling her innards in the process. She could taste copper.

“Cover me!” Sokolov shouted. A hail of gunfire forced the sonic weapon wielder to duck while he rushed forward and dragged Lyssa behind cover.

“Pull yourself together!” He said.

The gunfire, the pain. She hated it. She could die here. Why had Whitworth sent her? She wanted to escape, regretting ever associating with M.A.G.E a thousand times. But she wanted to return the favor more than anything. It was all too much. She leapt to her feet, screaming.

Pale beams of force-fire erupted from her hands, crushing the enemy’s cover. Before they raised their weapons again she grasped the metal within and crushed the firearms into rough balls. One of them tried to close the distance, brandishing a combat knife. Glowing claws of leaping flame stopped the enemy combatant in their tracks. They fell, five cauterized holes in their chest. The sonic weapon was raised, but she was gone.

Lyssa appeared in a flash of black smoke behind wielder and destroyed the weapon with a slash of her claws. With a free hand she shoved the man’s head onto the floor, knocking him out cold.

Making use of the opening she had created, the M.A.G.E squad had cleared the rest of the room, and was already securing the area.

Sokolov sauntered over, impressed.

“You could lead with that next time,” he said.

Lyssa didn’t hear the quip. Her ears were ringing. She was seeing double. Her body fell to a knee on its own. The adrenaline rush could no longer hide the dense pieces of metal tucked inside her skin. She tried to tug at them, but that only resulted in severe pain.

The squad medic was tending to her, wrapping her wounds.

“It’s not bad,” he said. “Didn’t hit anything critical, your armor must have held them back. Congrats on your first bullet holes, kid.”

Lyssa considered using the last of her strength to kill the medic.