But until I earned it, I was back in New Olympus, standing in the dark dockyard as if I’d never left. Two things were a lot clearer now: one, I didn’t really have an option—my whole life I wanted to be something more, something different, and I guess that meant I couldn’t be like the versions of myself who always ended up as conquerors. I couldn’t become who it was very easy to become. And two? I looked damned good in scarlet, white and gold, all thanks to a version of Bianca who’d probably known a version of me her entire life that didn’t cave into being an enforcer and instead did the thing we were always meant to be doing: being a superhero. Just don’t overthink it.

  “Unless you really want to blow it,” I whispered. That’s the last thing she’d said to me, that older version who’d stood with her arms folded and shoulder leaning against a doorway, watching me slide into the suit. For a while, her lips had been thin, almost in a frown. Then I had spread my arms and turned to face her, and she had smiled. Nothing big and nothing flashy, but she’d shaken her head and muttered something under her breath, something about Bianca not believing how it turned out in the end. There weren’t any hugs, just a handshake and a promise that I was gonna keep, unless she came to my reality and took the costume off what would be left of me when she was done beating my face into the ground. She’d laughed after saying that, because it had been a joke. A really stiff, really dry, really hard joke that came with a stare and unblinking eyes. Just keep it simple, that’s all.

  I could work myself up all I wanted, but there was still a job to get done, and I had to do it well.

  The warped air around Caesar rippled as he shifted on his feet, appearing from the darkness surrounding him. Snow drifted lazily in the gusty winds, pelting us in constant waves. Echoing gunfire, more yelling from the city and the streets and the dark alleyways—it had probably all devolved into a riot by now. “A new costume.”

  I turned to look at him, half of me already facing Lower Olympus. Pillars of smoke climbing into the sky, news helicopters that hovered over burning buildings—a growing chaotic mess, and I could bet my bottom dollar (if I had any of those left) that a certain rich lady had made very damned sure things got out of hand, just so she could say something lovely about me on the news tomorrow. Perfect. “Figured I should change it up a little bit.”

  Caesar stared at me for several silent seconds, then quietly said, “Your future doesn’t change.”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “I’d like to think it can, if I can, too, you know.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m sure. Your baser instincts compel you.”

  “Listen,” I said, looking at him, face in a flurry as the wind picked up. “I know there’s a fat chance I’m gonna become what everyone around me thinks I’ll become. And sure, the evidence is right there, isn’t it? But at the end of the day,” I shrugged again, “all I’ve ever done is try to prove people wrong, even if they’re alive or not.” I turned my back to him and looked toward the sky, the heavy clouds turned a faint orange and the sludge-like snow I could smell filling the streets far, far away. “I think, for once, I’m gonna try to prove myself wrong for a change.” I took a step forward, paused, then looked over my shoulder. “Oh, and by the way—you’re gonna help me out soon.”

  For the first time I could remember, he blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You keep trying to make sure I don’t screw up, so how about helping a girl out?”

  “My objective isn’t to guide you or help you,” he said, his voice flat. “It’s to ensure—”

  “I don’t need a speech. It’s either a yes or a no. If you don’t want to, that’s fine by me.”

  He stood still, snow pelting across his neck and sticking to the tongues of blood spread across the side of his neck. He swallowed once, then asked, “You’re not going to kill me? That’s the natural order of your story.”

  “Yeah, sure, but why?” I said. “I’ve been chasing you for months, just for you to end up saying what a hell of a lot of other people have been telling me, so I think I should read the signs and go the other direction for once.”

  “No, you—” He stepped forward, paused, put a hand to his chest and said, “You always kill me.”

  “Lemme ask you something,” I said. “Can you see into the future, or do you just know stuff?”

  “Stuff is a broad sweep of a term,” he said. “I understand more than what many will ever know, but it’s not the future I can see, just the frequent realities of your failures. Every major decision that’s made, every choice that’s taken, branches into another reality, and that’s what I can see—and through all of them, you only succeed once.”

  “Cool,” I muttered, still looking at the clouds, the night, the slow falling snow. “So you can’t?”

  “No,” Caesar said dryly. “I cannot.”

  “What happens now then?” I asked him. “What happens if I let you live and I leave?”

  Caesar remained silent for a long time. Enough time for snow to dust my shoulders and cling to my hair. Not snow, something thicker, something mixed with ash and waste and foul-smelling smoke. “I do not know,” he said quietly. I glanced at him. His eyes had glazed over slightly, seeing reality and split-second possibilities in just enough time it took for him to slowly breathe out through his nose. “I… I cannot see a reality where that happens.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “Guess you work with me now instead of against me. Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Not once has there been a thought of working alongside you, let alone for you. I am a guardian, a—”

  I floated off the ground. “I don’t have the time to hear all of this. Not tonight. You’ll know where to find me, and you’ll have a lot to tell me—you can see threats a long time before they ever come around, so I’m gonna need you to work with me on this, alright?” I looked down at him. “Stop worrying about the threat you think I am, and start worrying about the threats that live in the million-dollar homes and the secret labs where they’re doing Gods know what in there. You’re just gonna have to give me an hour, though,” I spun around and faced Lower Olympus, the faint skyline a backdrop to the deep orange fiery light burning on the streets. “Gotta fix this first.”

  I didn’t wait for him to ponder and question and give me a speech about the natural order and how many times I end up screwing things up in other realities. I was off into the sky a heartbeat later, the wind screaming in my ears and the bitter December air forcing its way down my throat. I paused, floating, and looked at the destruction on the streets. A lot of rioting. A lot more fighting. Superhumans trampling civilians. Buildings burning. Fuck me, the news is really gonna love this one, Ry. I told them to go after the Triumvirate, but someone, somewhere, must’ve had the bright idea to use the chaos to their advantage. Fair game. I fucked up with that. And now it was time to right my wrong, and very thoroughly—starting with a fire that was savagely devouring half of the Lower East End.

  A handful of people were twisting and turning at the large red bolt on a fire hydrant, the flames behind them so bright and hot they stung against my skin as soon as I landed with a skid on the pavement. I looked up at the building, swallowing saliva and smoke all at once. No screaming. Dead or empty. Please, please, please just be empty. I grabbed the man closest to me, a guy loosely wearing a fireman’s jacket, soot on his face and burns on his cheek that made his lips twitch whenever he tried to wipe the grit off his chin. He looked at me, blinked hard, got the soot out of his eyes with a damp rag, then his eyebrows shot up his forehead as he finally saw me in full.

  “How the hell did this start?” I asked him, raising my voice over the roar of the fire. “What happened?”

  “Dunno!” he yelled. “Started off on 29th and came rushing through 6th and down Walkers’ Boulevard. Fucked half the streets down there and cut off most of the access through to Dogtail. Been going on ever since.”

  Fuck me, that’s a lot of ground. “Give me some good news and tell me Supes are helping.”

  “I’m too fucking busy trying to cut her off, but most of the water is down and out.” He adjusted his helmet and shook his head, then swore again and spat on the concrete. It dried up almost instantly. “It’s all just fucked!”

  “How can I cut it off?” I asked. We all cringed as a building collapsed, vomiting sparks and smoke and heat into the air. I grabbed several guys and stopped shards of debris from darting through the air and hitting them.

  “Got a way to convince the people in the Upper West to give us a million fuckin’ pounds of water?”

  “No, but I can fly really fast,” I said. “That can help, right?”

  Another man, short and bald and wearing nothing except a winter jacket with holes burned through it nodded and said, “Yeah. Yeah, that should work. Like a, you know, vacuum kinda effect, sucks up all the air, too.”

  “How fast can you fly?” another guy asked, dark skin and hooded eyes and too old to be out here.

  “Doesn’t need to be fast, just needs to be powerful,” Fireman said. “Hey, I once saw your old man—”

  “—slam his hands together to extinguish a fire?” I asked. He nodded. “Yeah, figured. I can try.”

  “Gonna have to go along the river and make sure it doesn’t reach that god-forsaken trash pile. Oil spillage in there last month never got cleaned up. All that trash and buildup? All that methane from the bodies in there?”

  He didn’t have to explain what would happen if the fire got to the river or anywhere close to it.

  “God,” the old man said, dragging an arm along his forehead. “What happened to this city?”

  “I need you guys to get to safety, alright? Gather as many people as you can and head for Peacemaker Museum, the old one near the brewery.” Flying over here, it was somehow one of the only places that wasn’t on fire. “Do head counts and keep making sure people are together. I’ll try to cut off the fire and get someone to help you.”

  “Hey,” the fireman said a second before I started running. “Between me ‘n’ you, this ain’t natural.”

  I paused and turned around. “Natural?”

  “Yeah, natural,” he said. “Me and a few guys saw some weird shit earlier. The fires came outta nowhere, and the gas lines barely work nowadays, anyway. No explosions, just fire suddenly all over the place, blazing like hell.”

  “It’s atonement,” the old man muttered, hard, long fingers quaking. “We’ve strayed so far away.”

  “Old timer,” the shorter man said, grabbing him. “Let’s get you outta here, and quick.”

  “You guys stay safe!” I said, hovering. “Follow this avenue and go through the alleyways on your right. The fire hasn’t reached there and you should be fine. No Supes there yet or anything, but you better start moving.”

  The fireman nodded, turned, and then paused as the others started running. He flashed me a thumbs up before he ran off, limping a little as the fire buffeted them from one side of the street to the next. I turned, swallowed and nodded and swore quietly. This is bad. Really, really bad. I shot forward, straining my ears for heartbeats, for anything alive. A family in a car, trapped under a pile of rubble. Doors warped by the heat. Tires deflated and melted on the asphalt. I tore through the metal and made sure they were in my arms before taking off into the sky, three of them clinging to me like gum on the bottom of a shoe until I got to a parking lot away from the fire. They wanted to thank me. I cut the father off and told him to focus on his wife and the garrish black burn along her thigh.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  I’d like to tell you it got easier, but then I started finding charred bodies, burned dogs and cats, and all I could do was breathe in the stench of smoldering meat and sludge-like snow that was filling the sewers and spitting and hissing as soon as it touched the metal grates. It was nauseating, sickening—I vomited enough times into my own mouth trying to find people to rescue as I shot through Lower Olympus, weaving past brick buildings and through towering, soot-covered chimneys from shut down factories. A kid who’s hands had gotten burned so badly they were red and black and nothing but fleshy molasses. A couple whose baby had died but they kept carrying it in their arms, running through the streets in a pack of equally confused survivors, fear and panic and shock in their eyes. So much of it that, when I landed in front of them, they all kept running and only stopped several meters away. I took the injured. Came back for the few left behind. The final few, the exhausting final few, fought me every step of the way. They hated the height. Blamed it on me. Then came the couple and the dead baby, which was gone when I came for them, which was nothing but a picture frame the woman clutched to her chest so tightly it cracked.

  This isn’t gonna work, Ry. You can’t keep doing both, and you know that. The thoughts kept coming. The fire kept consuming. And then I flew into the sky and shouted Rhea’s name, shouted and shouted until it echoed.

  She was there barely a minute later, panting, slow, sweaty and covered in grime. She looked me up and down, eyebrows screwed tightly, then shook her head. “What’s the matter?” she asked, half her face bright orange.

  “I need you to do exactly as I say,” I said. She opened her mouth. I cut her off. “People—I need the people wandering around to get to the Peacemaker Museum. If you don’t know where that is, ask Ava or Frankie. If you can get doctors or nurses or whoever, then fine—give them white cloth and mark them out. No more fighting. Just save.”

  “What happened to Caesar?” she asked quietly. “Where’s his head like you had promised them?”

  “If you want a story, go and ask someone to tell you one. It’s not the time. Just get going.”

  Rhea didn’t move. She folded her arms, smoke rising around us. “So,” she said. “It’s true.”

  “What’re you wasting so much time for?” I snapped. “Make yourself useful and GO.”

  She floated just that little bit closer. “I agreed to do this because I like Earth. It’s people, I’ve seen in the past two hours, fight and kill, even when everything around them burns. They’re selfish. But that’s not a new word for me—our own people are that and much more, but the extra mile I’ll go to save them is for one thing alone.”

  I grabbed her by the t-shirt collar and yanked her close. “Save them, and I’ll give you my blood.”

  “More than that,” she said quietly, eyes narrowing. “I want the boy who looks like Zeus and his secrets.”

  “What secrets?” I spat. “Adam’s got barely anything to tell anyone.”

  “The humans created an Arkathian, however imperfect,” Rhea said, shoving away from me. “Once this night concludes, we have much to talk about on a grander scale. Godspeed, cousin. May you not die in the flames.”

  Rhea left with an eruption of smoke, blasting a hole through the sheet of dull grey air.

  I breathed in and squinted my eyes. The fire was creeping closer and closer to the river, to the shanty towns and the buildings that shouldn’t even be standing on a regular day. Then I saw them, people—not civilians, but guys and girls wearing masks and costumes that dragged people out of burning buildings and made sure they were running as fast and as hard as they could away from the fires. Superheroes. Honest to the gods, superheroes. I almost smiled. Then the sound of a brick ceiling collapsing in on itself shattered my thoughts and showered me in sparks that made me wince. I didn’t know where they’d come from, because a lot of them looked…clean, new, different from the ones I was used to seeing leaping through the shadows and from rooftop to rooftop in Lower Olympus. But it didn’t matter. Not right now. They were helping make sure the city was safe, and that’s what mattered for now.

  My biggest problem was the raging inferno consuming the oxygen and the snow and the buildings that stood in its way, but…something was off. Something that raked down my spine as I flew along the streets, over burning cars and warped streetlights and simmering pools of tar where potholes used to be—the fire was alive. Violent. It would leap from window to window, slam into the pavement and erupt in geysers of raging flames. I slowed down, skimming over rooftops, a shadow that danced across the ground as the fire played on below me.

  Then I stopped when ice slid down my spine. Someone’s controlling this thing.

  It wasn’t all of a sudden, it wasn’t a realization out of the blue—no, not that.

  I could see them. I can see you in the middle of all of this.

  And that wasn’t human, not what I was seeing. Not by a long shot. Abominations of burned flesh clinging to blackened bones that burned so hot they glowed bright red wasn’t human. I squinted, swearing under my breath as I watched the creature stagger and vanish and reappear inside one building after another. Then it froze, standing in the empty bedroom of an apartment that was doused inr roaring hellish red flames. It was thin, hunched, looked ugly in its flickering shadow. Then it turned its head and looked at me, its empty eye sockets burrowing through my chest as we locked eyes. For a good several seconds, neither of us moved. And then I was through the window, slamming my fist into its chest and sending us both crashing through concrete and piping and finally into the rock hard foundation. Smoke filled my lungs and the heat stung my skin. I stood up and shoved the debris off my back.

  And it was gone. Nothing underneath me except a shallow crater and dark soot on the rock.

  A sound like some gods-forsaken creature had just shrieked then tore through the air, so loud and painful it made me flinch. The building came down on top of me in a heap of brick and concrete and wooden beams ablaze and burning. I raised my hands over my head just in time to get smashed into and choked with fire and smoke. I was out of the rubble in a heartbeat, erupting into the sky and bathed in ash and flakes of timber sparking away in my hair. I coughed and spat and wheezed, the stench in my throat and my mind focused on finding that fucking thing I saw staring at me from inside the apartment building. Turns out all that coughing gave him the chance to hurl a stream of fire at me from the rooftop closest to me. It swallowed me, chewed me, its flames so agonizingly hot I screamed and shot out of them. But they followed, a viper through the air that darted and moved and only vanished when I got several blocks away. Then I stopped, flipped through the air, gritted my teeth and shot back down the avenue toward the collapsed building. More jets of flame. More times I flew low, high, got so close to the street I skimmed across the pavement, around cars, and finally right toward the creature standing dead in front of me.

  But I didn’t slam into it—I came to a skidding halt in front of it, digging my feet into the pavement and cracking the asphalt underneath my boots. Then I kept running forward, using my momentum as I stumbled, then put my fist into its face with just enough force to make it take a step back. Pain shot up my arm. I swore and waved my hand. Smoke, red knuckles angry with fresh burns. Fuck, that’s hot. Really, really hot. It shrieked, maw open wide and regurgitating ash that glimmered, sparked, then caught, exploding like a fist of hellfire. I crossed my arms and braced as the wind around me burned hot and bright and dried my lungs solid. The explosion left my ears ringing and my vision swimming. I shook my head as the smoke slowly cleared. All I could see, all I could taste, was soot and smoke and gasoline. I spat. Knuckled away the saliva. The suit is still all in one piece. I quietly thanked Bianca, maybe not my version, but mine regardless, and searched the drifting plumes of smoke around me.

  “Whatever you are,” I said, my voice swallowed by the roar of carnage. “I know you’re still here.”

  I moved, flying backward and stopping a meter away from an eruption of fire. I looked around, searching windows and archways and alleyways. I strained to hear a heartbeat. Strained to hear them moving around. Nothing. I didn’t even know what the hell it was, or if it was even human, but did it really matter? No, not really. Not at all.

  That’s why, when I was suddenly behind it, moving so fast it blew apart the heavy black smoke that shrouded it, I didn’t waste a second putting my hand through its chest. It hurt. I swallowed a scream of pain and turned it into a gritted teeth groan as it shrieked and threw itself into a frenzy of whirling limbs and tongues of fire that shot from its flesh and its bones and its mouth in long, lashing whips. I grabbed it by the back of the neck and put it to the ground, my skin smoldering and smoking as I pressed its head harder, harder, harder against the road until it melted, bubbled, hissed and turned back into gravelly oil and chunky bits of wet concrete. Then I stood up and slammed my boot down on its head. An eruption of sparks. A gush of brain matter and a crunch of bone. Pink flesh dribbled out of its smashed skull as its body suddenly jerked, then relaxed. I pulled my foot out of the small crater I made and shook off a piece of skin—or was that brain? Couldn’t tell—and took a step away from it.

  Its embers and burning skin dimmed until it was nothing except the charred outline of a body, still hot and smoldering and smoking, reeking like hot roadkill. A little sour, mostly bitter. I spat on the ground again and sniffed. Where the hell did you come from? I guess the better question was: Who the hell put you together, then?

  Because, unless something—someone—like this was walking around free and normal, then…

  Then I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.

  The fires surrounding me didn’t stop burning though. They kept raging, consuming, roaring wild and loud. But they’d stopped spreading so fast, so violently, and that meant I was back in the air, my knuckles still stinging like hell as I shot toward the river. I did it in sections. One block after the other, slamming my hands together and creating gusts of wind so powerful they knocked over the remains of buildings barely standing up on their own. Power lines were out. Hospitals were charred brick graveyards. Bodies in there, too many bodies, trapped in ICU units, some of them in hallways, a lot of them huddled together and burned so badly their flesh had melted and their skin had become one large pulpy mass. I had to keep moving though. Couldn’t stop. Not yet. Block after block. One section of Lower Olympus after the next. My claps got weaker. My shoulders started aching. Smoke. Smoke was the biggest issue now. It hung like a low cloud on the streets, inside the buildings partially extinguished. The sound of people hacking and coughing was all I could hear as I swept through the city. The hardest part was saving them.

  Not because I didn’t want to, not because my body was starting to wear out, but because I was hot. I didn’t even realize how hot I was running until I tried to get close to a group of homeless people huddled together trying to blindly make their way through the smoke and they all reeled back in shock before I even touched them. I had to look down at my palms, then put a hand to my forehead and my neck. I felt normal. But I guess I wasn’t normal.

  Not when the air just above my skin warped and danced with heat excess coming off my pores.

  I did them all a favor and swept my arm out wide, parting the smoke as much as I could.

  “Peacemaker Museum,” I told them, pointing away. “Go there, get help. Quickly.”

  None of them moved. They stared at me, eyes red from the smoke, skin filthy and hair singed. I stared at them back, and realized I must look like some kind of demon to them. I was hot enough to glow, not a lot, no, that’s weird—I’m talking just enough to softly burn red. I backed away slowly, repeated what I said, and got into the sky one more time. I hoped it would be one more time. The fire had died down. The chaos was now lost in the streets amongst the smoke and the ash and the snow that was melting into black clumps of sludge that flowed through the streets and gathered around melted garbage. Everything stank. Reeked so badly I wanted to throw up. I did end up throwing up once I made sure nobody could see me, and besides, all the smoke and all the flames had made sure the news helicopters had vanished. No more droning beat of blades slicing through the air. No more muted word salad from reporters trying to mix and match what they could see to what they could think. Now it was all so…silent.

  I shut my eyes, hand against a pillar of a building that wasn’t standing anymore. In and out. Swallow. Spit. If it comes, just let it get out of your stomach. So many dead bodies. So many of them underneath rubble and some of them turned into nothing but charred meat. I could smell all of them. Hear the flesh coming loose and clean off their bones in sloppy messes. I tensed my jaw and opened my eyes, pushed off the pillar and started floating again.

  My nose twitched, catching onto a stench that cut through the rancid air like death’s scythe.

  A corpse stood below me, haggard, broken, shoulders hunched and scrawny bones barely clinging to the skin on its body. It twitched. Its head, at least, the gory mess of a state I’d left it in, tilted to look up at me. I tried not to swallow the little vomit I had left as a piece of its brain slid out of its skull and down the side of its throat, burning all the way until it hit the ground at its feet, left there to smoke and sizzle and burn in its own fats. Still alive. And it smelt of Ambrosia. Sickly sweet, always present, Ambrosia. Tiny sparks flickered around its fingers. A surge of fire gushed from its cracked skull like a one-sided mane. This time, I didn’t bother. I folded my arms and—

  It fell to its knees, hung its head, and stopped moving. Figured.

  Human, then. Someone had…

  “Fuck,” I whispered, my gut filling with ice. There were crates of the stuff, entire store rooms and maybe even warehouses filled to the brim with it. Ava’s uncle had so much of it, I thought he was hoarding it. And that had just been one person with that kind of stash. What about other people? What about the Triumvirate? People were turning into things like that right here and right now, and each of them wasn’t gonna die so easily. Not even close.

  Hell, the thing on its knees wasn’t even dead yet—its heart was still beating, even without a head.

  Time for a new plan, Ry. A better one. Even though this one might mean half of New Olympus became superhumans, it would at least also mean they wouldn’t all die. Not unless I died first, searching for the stashes.

  Who knew, after all this time, that Ambrosia might just be the one thing that helped me out?

  Hell of an early birthday present, mom. Thanks.

  What I needed now were a few superheroes. Fast ones. Brave ones.

  Ones who were willing to listen to the poster child of bad decisions.