Drums in her ears. Her chest felt like an open boiler. Her skin felt as though she had spent a week out in the sun. Lyssa could no longer ignore what had happened at the insurance offices. That had been her. That was her. Just like how it was her at this moment, tearing the skirmisher limb from limb.

Her fire claws melted through its armor. The cuts were not clean; its travel left a wake of disfigured slag in long streaks. The bot swung what remaining fists it had left. Lyssa blocked one with her elbow. The other threw her through a wall. She laid on a bed of wood splinters and concrete. Flakes of her molten skin came off like spent firewood. She looked at her arms. Her armor was retreating.

“No no no come back!” She said. “What am I doing wrong?”

Let me drive.

Lyssa felt the change come. It was just like taking one’s shoes off, letting someone else into them. She watched her jacket catch fire as she charged forward, slamming into the skirmisher, carrying enough momentum to thrust it through the wall and into the great outdoors. The hot remnants of the machine fell onto the streets below.

She looked over her shoulder. The victim android was still under the desk.

“What are you looking at?” Lyssa snapped. Maybe she ought to just leave it here. No. The objective. She needed to take it to the muster point. That was what heroes were supposed to do. The anger was clouding her mind.

Lyssa thought of calming places. That meadow she once visited, perhaps, a long time ago. Quiet, reserved. Beat by beat her heart slowed and her fire retreated. By the end of it her jacket was charred and full of holes. She picked the victim up and began the walk back to ground level.

That had been too much. The anger had abated, but she still felt veins of stress pull in her heartstrings. How heroes, people after all, do this every day was beyond her. Night after night too. Crime could strike anytime, anywhere, by perpetrators who could have any gift. She could barely protect herself.

Was it too late to withdraw? She looked at the android in her arms.

“Let’s get you to extraction,” she said.

She nearly tripped. For an instant the ground wasn’t where she expected. An earthquake? Here? Her head turned. Down the street a mechanical horror squeezed its width through the narrow passage, shoving the city aside. People were at its feet, barely outpacing its movements. They were a team of applicants.

Lyssa turned the other way and ran. Meanwhile a humming rhythm sounded overhead. A VTOL hovered from behind the shadow of a skyscraper. On its side was the signature red cross.

“Hey!” Lyssa shouted. “We need help!”

No response. It was worth a try. Helping wasn’t their job. Making sure no one died was. But while she was still in the mall, there was every opportunity that she could have been done in by the skirmisher. How would they know? If M.A.G.E was lying about the fatality rate, how could it be proven?

For now she could only run. There were other muster points. She held the victim tight.

---

On the monitor, the young woman turned her head. Her eyes were full of fire. Her hands full of glowing claws. On an adjacent monitor, thermal readouts painted a humanoid sun.

“What are you looking at?”

For the first time in years, Whitworth leaned forward in his chair. He compared what he was seeing with the statistical printout in his hands.

“No shit,” he said.

“Looks like cat-3 vulcanomorph,” Sokolov said. “But they usually don’t come with stoneskin. Either it’s two gifts or one we haven’t had much experience cataloguing.”

“It says here she already had one. Cat-1 resilience.”

The perspective on the monitor wobbled as it left the shelter of the desk and was raised above the floor. The thermal readouts gradually cooled back to greens and purples.

“Either way, looks like we found one already,” Sokolov said.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Hmm…”

“Oh I don’t like that look.”

“Helena Industries never gave a strict deadline for when they wanted the combat data for the gunship. Might as well test it now.”

Whitworth entered a combination on his console.

---

The party was only a few city blocks behind Lyssa and catching up all the time. She looked ahead. Orange smoke marked a muster point only a couple hundred strides away. She doubted she had any more stamina in her.

“Almost there. Almost-”

Hot air stopped her in her tracks. An enormous VTOL rounded the street corner. Lyssa held up a hand to block the dust it was blowing into her eyes.

“I’m not hurt!” She shouted. She looked at the VTOL’s side. There was no red cross. Hatches on metal blocks under the VTOL’s wings opened, revealing honeycomb structures filled with missiles.

Lyssa didn’t think. She held the victim close and dove through a nearby window. Concussive explosions followed within inches of her feet. She angled her body so she fell on the glass, sparing the victim. The android still screamed.

“Really?” She pulled herself back up. It was hard. She was at the end of her rope. Her muscles weren’t listening to her. And she was sure there were bits of glass stuck to her back.

The VTOL lowered its body, affixing its sensors on her. Lyssa was in an empty hall. There was nowhere else to go. A volley of missiles struck the building. The walls cracked. The ceiling sagged. The VTOL was bringing the whole building down on her.

Just like in the Twenty-Four.

When one of Rachminau’s meteors had brought her whole apartment down while she was inside.

When no one had come until days later.

All because a Supe with the gift of being a living computer thought the debris was unstable and should have collapsed at any moment.

Days. She had nearly died of dehydration, breathing in dust, stuck in the dark buried under rebar and concrete, alone.

So she had retreated inward. Where the sun shone and grasses waved gently in the breeze. She stood there now, waiting for all of it to be over.

“What are you doing?”

She looked to her right and saw her twin image. The image was covered in molten armor, hands aglow with fire claws.

“I don’t know what this is,” Lyssa said, “or what we are. But we’re done. This is it.”

“I’m Sethlana. Of the Rage.” The image drew closer. Lyssa could smell the molten metal. “Yours. If you had enough courage to be angry yourself. People walk all over you because you let them. And you bottle it all up into me.”

The grasses were batting her hand. The wind was picking up.

“I don’t understand,” Lyssa said.

“Of course not. People just aren’t good at introspection. That’s why many of them never improve, never move, and only stay still.”

Gales buffeted against her ears.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Lyssa said. “I’m going to be the first fatality.”

“Really?” A second image stepped forward to her left. This one was dressed in a gunmetal grey dress, and wore rings of various metals on her fingers. “That would be convenient.”

The sun was gone, covered by storm cloud.

“What is this?” Lyssa grasped her head. “I’m supposed to be alone in here! What am I?”

“You are alone.” The second image raised a hand.

---

“Guys?” Someone shouted.

The impromptu team hesitated as the enormous VTOL circled a corner. Carrie glanced behind her. The giant crawler was still on their tail, and now they had to contend with a flyer down the road.

“Who has a projectile gift?” Edward called out.

“I do,” a hot-blooded young man said. He ran forward.

“Wait! We have to coordinate our attack-”

But he was already off, throwing balls of green fire at the VTOL. They seemed to only make it unsteady.

“Goddamnit,” Edward said. “Alright everybody, focus the smaller target!”

Carrie began to pull more water to her collection, gathering a warbling sphere of it above her. Xiaoshu broke up bits of sidewalk for throwing. All the applicants prepared their own methods of attack. The crawler was only few steps behind.

“We don’t have much time,” Edward said. “On two. One.”

Carrie aimed a high pressure blast down range at the VTOL. Her eyes widened when she saw the figure duck into a nearby building.

“Oh my god, we have to stop!” She said.

“Fire!”

Stone, bolts of energy, telekinetic punches, fireballs, sand, a plethora of attacks rained down onto the VTOL. Carrie’s mouth went ajar as some of the projectiles deflected off its armor, striking the building. The whole structure began to collapse.

Ooh that’s gotta hurt! I wonder if they saw one of their own when they decided to do that! The announcer said.

“What?” Edward exclaimed. “Lian? Is this true?”

“I-I can feel someone under the building,” she said. “Shit how did I miss it?”

“We have to get them out!”

“We can’t,” the fire slinger said. He pointed at the towering machine still on their tail. “We need to finish that bird off and make an exit.”

The VTOL had been knocked onto the ground, but it was already lifting off again. It looked barely scratched. Edward weighed the options.

“One more time, everybody!” He said.

“No!” Carrie stepped forward. “There’s someone under there!”

“They’ll be fine. The test would have ended if they weren’t.”

“They’re alive,” Lian added hesitantly.

The VTOL turned to face them and opened its hatches, preparing to fire. The applicants brought their own abilities to bear.

Nobody got to release. Lengths of steel thrust out of the ruined building, impaling the VTOL. Wherever it pierced, its armor warped in expanding ripples like a pebble dropped in a pond. One after the other the rebar spears struck until something vital was hit. Its engines spat fire and collapsed dead on the street. Then the spears fell still as well.

Edward said nothing for a second.

“Go! GO!” He called eventually. The applicants moved without any further questions.

Carrie paused when they neared the rubble. Xiaoshu tapped her shoulder.

“Let’s keep moving,” he said.

“Did you see who that was?”

“No. But this place is going to be flattened by the crawler in about ten seconds.”

They moved forward, leaving the ruins and the advancing giant behind.