"Go."

  Sam's voice in my ear is flat command, no room for argument, but my body's already moving before she finishes the word. I shove away from the shelf, sprint for the east exit, and behind me I hear--

  Not footsteps. Worse. The sound of metal shelving units being moved. Not knocked over, not pushed aside. Just displaced, like they weigh nothing, clearing a path.

  "He's following," Tasha's voice, tight with fear. "Alex, he's not running but he's not slow either--"

  I know. I can hear him. That same methodical pace from before, steady and inevitable, and I'm running full tilt with cracked ribs screaming at me and he's just walking and somehow I know he's going to catch me anyway.

  The east exit is right there. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

  Something whistles past my head and crunches against the wall past me. Then, just as I'm about to hit the door, a shelving unit skids to a halt in front of it like a dancing piece of furniture from Beauty and the Beast, kicking up sparks as it goes. I glance just enough out of my periphery to see two things; one, Tasha's drone peeking in through the window, and two, Garbage Day's foot sticking out into the air in the aftermath of a thunderous kick.

  "Side exit," Sam says. "West side, near the loading dock. Move."

  I move. Change direction, duck around a row of shelving. My lungs are burning and it's not just from exertion - the smoke from upstairs is getting thicker, drifting down, filling the warehouse floor with grey haze that makes everything harder to see.

  "Tasha," I gasp. "Where is he?"

  "He's... he stopped. He's just standing there. In the middle of the warehouse. I think he's - Alex, he's looking around. Like he's listening for you."

  I freeze behind a shelf full of stolen electronics. Try to control my breathing, which is nearly impossible because my ribs hurt and my lungs want more air than I can quietly give them and there's smoke in my throat making me want to cough.

  "I can smell you," His voice carries across the warehouse floor, calm and conversational. "You know I can find you, right? This is just making it take longer. And the longer it takes, the more it's going to hurt when I catch you."

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

  "Don't answer him," Sam whispers. "Don't make noise. He's trying to get you to react."

  I reach into my pocket, pull out one of the smoke bombs. Last one. Some small, packet-like thing, the kind of stuff you get from one of those fireworks supply stores that are all over Bucks County for some God damn reason.

  It hits the ground, cracks open, starts spewing grey into the already smoky air.

  "Cute," Garbage Day says. I can hear him moving now, footsteps heading toward where the smoke bomb landed. Good. That's good. I move in the opposite direction, toward the west exit, staying low, trying not to kick anything or knock into shelves.

  "He's heading toward the smoke bomb," Tasha confirms. "You've got maybe ten seconds before he realizes - wait. He's stopping again."

  I'm halfway to the west exit when I hear it. A scraping sound. Metal on concrete. Then a whoosh of displaced air.

  "Down!" Sam yells.

  I drop flat and something passes over my head, close enough that I feel the air pressure change. A metal shelf, I think, or part of one, thrown like a frisbee. It keeps going, crashes into the wall behind me with a sound like a car accident. He's just pulling things off the shelves and throwing them now, what the fuck? Who throws a shelf? Honestly?

  Another whoosh. This one hits a shelf to my right, and the whole unit collapses, spilling stolen merchandise everywhere. Laptops and tablets and boxes of clothes, all of it clattering to the floor in a cascade of theft evidence.

  I scramble up, keep moving. The west exit is close now, I can see the door, the loading dock beyond it. Just need to--

  The pain hits before I register being hit.

  Something catches me in the shoulder - the same shoulder that caught the bullet earlier - and my whole arm goes numb-bright with agony. I don't fall but I stumble, crash into a shelf, nearly go down. My vision whites out for a second.

  "Alex!" Sam's voice, sharp. "Alex, talk to me!"

  "I'm okay," I manage, even though I'm not. My shoulder is wrong, not dislocated but definitely hurt worse than it was. "I'm moving."

  But I'm slower now. Favoring the shoulder, breathing harder, and behind me I can hear him moving again. Not toward the smoke bomb anymore. Toward me. He adjusted.

  "The smoke," Sam says suddenly. "He's tracking you through the smoke."

  Then, there's a crashing of glass. "What the fuck?" Tasha yells, loud enough to clip. "Sorry, Mom. Video games."

  I try not to laugh. Now is a very bad time for that. "What?" I ask.

  "Drone feed is down. He just threw something at it. I think it was a cash register?" Sam answers, while I hear some mumbling from Tasha's side of the call. "Oh, shit. I'm getting something on the radio. Tasha, when you get back, do you have a second drone we can spin up anywhere nearby?"

  "What?" I'm at the west exit now, hand on the door, ready to push through. I hear something loud and bright in the distance, like lemonade. "What's on the radio?"

  "Fire trucks," Tasha answers, the sound of a door shutting in the background barely audible. "I called fire trucks before we even started and let them know something was on fire."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Good," Sam says. "Either get out of there or hold out until he realizes he needs to pull a fast exit. Can you do that?"

  At this point, I've totally lost track of the layout. There's smoke pouring down the stairs. I take a second to reorient myself, look at my hands, flex my fingertips. The shoulder he hit is radiating pain all the way down. But it's not tingling, Sam warned me that tingling means nerve damage. Just soreness.

  "Yeah," I lie. "I can do that."

  I shove through the west exit into the loading dock area. It's open to the street on one side, half-exposed to the cold night air, and the temperature drop hits me immediately after the heat of the burning warehouse. My breath fogs. The snow is still piled everywhere, mostly melted slush on the streets but thick drifts in the corners where plows couldn't reach.

  Behind me, the door opens again. He's not even trying to be quiet anymore.

  "Look, kid," he says, stepping out onto the loading dock. The fire hasn't spread past the second floor yet, contained in the records room almost safely, but the smoke billowing out lit by the yellow warehouse lights makes him look like a zombie. Or a mummy. "We don't have to do wrists. I can smash your elbow, we can even do individual fingers if that's better for you. Just need to take you out of action for a couple months while we're busy. Alright? Can we shake on that?"

  I take a step back, hands curled in front of me. Low red flames from my fingertips, just to keep the jets ready.

  "Stay back," I warn.

  "Or what?" He's still walking forward. "You'll burn me? Kid, I've been doing this for years. You think you're the first cape I've had to deal with? Look at you. You're, what, five foot four? I'll snap you in half before you can even give me a blister."

  He looks around, and then bends down, scooping up ice, snow, hard slush into his hands. "Suck my balls," I bark, continuing to step backwards.

  "You're making this expensive," Garbage Day lectures, compressing snow into a snowball - a snowball??? - in a way that looks totally alien. Just sort of... collecting it. Like iron filings to a magnet. His body visibly twitches at the sound of sirens. "My rate goes up for hazard pay. Your boss is going to owe someone a lot of money."

  "I don't have a boss," I answer.

  "Everyone has a boss." He grunts, and the snowball accelerates way, way faster than a snowball ever should - like, bullet fast. It's not snow. It's an iceball, thick and compressed into a solid sphere, and it clips my chest before I can catch it or try to shoot it in half with my fingers. I exhale, and the pain exhales out with it. "Awesome," he breathes, reaching up to the doorframe to rip off an icicle and hefting it in his hands.

  I stumble backwards a step or two. Okay, ow.

  The sirens are getting louder. A block away, maybe less. Garbage Day glances toward the street, then back at me, doing his calculation. Cost versus benefit. Time versus money.

  He rips the icicle free and I see his hand blur - not fast like a speedster, just efficient, his whole arm moving like a piston. The icicle becomes a javelin.

  I throw myself sideways and it punches through the air where my head was, hits the loading dock railing behind me hard enough to shatter. Ice shards spray everywhere.

  He's already got another one. Bigger. From a different overhang, this one thick as my wrist.

  "Last chance," he says. "Give me an elbow and we're done."

  I light up everything I've got. Ten fingers, ten points of fire, burning a billion calories a second, all at plasma torch intensity. I aim for the ground, hoping to make a slick that he slips on.

  Instead, it just turns to steam. A little steam. Steam and hot air and some kind of physics I don't understand sucking the smoke from around Garbage Day's body and into a violent whirlwind.

  Garbage Day makes a noise - surprised, annoyed - and staggers back. The steam hits his exposed skin, the parts not covered by bandages, and I see him flinch. Actually flinch, cover his eyes. I stagger back a little more slowly, blocking myself, too. Into a snowbank. Then, I charge.

  No, this isn't wise. But I'm not letting this asshole get away clean. Both hands down, and my mouth is dry like I've just been eating sand. Four fingers, index, middle, ring, pinky, one combined jet at blue, throwing a knife hand. I push through the wall of steam and jam into his abs, immediately feeling my fingers buckle, while his bandages catch and smolder at the edges just as instantaneously.

  I pull back and aim my good knee for his stomach while he's busy thinking about how he's three seconds from igniting, or at least, that's what I assume he's thinking about. I get him in the gut, and he exhales once, firmly, before swatting me aside like an errant golf ball. I go sailing in a way that seems exactly like bodies shouldn't move when they're punched.

  I skid to a halt in a pile of snow and slush. Ow.

  The fire trucks round the corner. Lights, sirens, the whole display.

  Garbage Day looks at them. Looks at his smoking vest. Looks at me, bleeding and gasping and barely standing. Does the math.

  "Next time," he says, letting the icicle drop, "I charge double."

  He turns and hustles back into the smoke. What? The fire guys are gonna have the place surrounded in a second - are you nuts? But I don't have time to question his poor strategic acumen, sitting in a pile of old, firm snow.

  "Alex." Sam's voice in my ear, quiet now. "You need to leave. Before they see you. Before anyone asks questions."

  "I'm--" My voice cracks. "I'm okay. I got out."

  "I know. You did good. Now move before you have to explain why you just burnt a building down."

  I move. Not running - can't run, shoulder and ribs won't let me - but walking fast, limping slightly, heading into the neighborhood side streets where the snow is still piled and the streetlights are dim.

  "Get three blocks away, find somewhere to change. Ditch the mask and the gear. You'll blend in better without it," Sam orders, and I try to take it in and absorb it with my head spinning.

  "Where do I go?"

  "There's a 24-hour laundromat on Cottman. Near the bus stop. Go there, sit down, act like you're waiting for laundry. I'll figure out how to get you home."

  "Aye aye, captain," I reply, trying to project more confidence than I'm feeling.

  The walk is bad. Every step hurts. My shoulder is swelling, the bullet bruise on my chest is probably purple by now, and I can feel the grazes on my arm and thigh opening up fresh every time I move wrong. The cold helps, actually - numbs some of it, keeps the swelling down.

  I make it two blocks before I have to stop and lean against a building, gasping. The adrenaline is crashing hard and everything hurts and my hands are shaking so bad I can barely get the mask off.

  When I do, the cold air on my face feels like the best thing I've ever experienced.

  I shove the mask and vest into a dumpster behind a closed restaurant. The padding too. Everything that makes me look like Hellhound goes in the trash, and what's left is just Alex Kirby, sixteen years old, wearing a torn jacket and looking like he lost a fight. Which I guess I did. Sort of. I'll get another mask later. And athletic gear is cheap.

  The laundromat is warm and empty and smells like detergent. I collapse into one of those plastic chairs and just sit there, staring at nothing, phone in my lap with Sam and Tasha still on the line.

  "You still there?" Sam asks.

  "Yeah."

  "How bad are you hurt?"

  "Shoulder's worse. Ribs are worse. Everything's worse." I laugh, and it hurts, and I can't stop laughing anyway. "But I got it. The photos. The evidence. I burned their records. I did it."

  "You did," Sam says, and there's something in her voice I can't quite parse. "Congratulations. You just survived your first SNAFU. Now don't--"

  "I'm not stupid." I cut Sam off. "I know what this cost. I know I got lucky. I know if the fire trucks hadn't shown up I'd be on my way to the hospital. But I did it. We hurt them. And they know it."

  Silence on the line for a moment.

  Then Sam: "My dad's going to come get you. He'll be there in twenty minutes. Don't fall asleep."

  "I won't."

  "And Alex?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Don't do this again without backup. Please," Sam pleads. "If I could make you never do it, I would. But just at least promise that you won't do it alone and stupid and dead. Okay?"

  I close my eyes. My whole body is shaking, and I don't know if it's cold or shock or just adrenaline crash. "Yeah. Okay."

  I sit there in the bright fluorescent light of the laundromat, listening to washing machines cycle and Sam breathing on the other end of the line, and I think about what Garbage Day said.

  Everyone has a boss.