Treating Mark turned out to be not quite as time-consuming as treating Victoria had been. Vivi decided that the best thing for him was scraping away some of the outer layers of damaged tissue across his wounds, and then covering them with gloopy, sticky foam that rapidly dried into thick, hard, crusty scabs. It looked absolutely disgusting, like he had some kind of cancerous growth over his arm and shoulder. I could only trust it was good for him. I’d also pumped him chock full of fluids.

  Carol came to visit around the time I was wrapping up with Mark to check in on her family. There was an almost palpable look of relief on her face when she saw Vicky’s condition, and some of the weight on her shoulders slipped off when she saw that Mark was also doing better. She stepped close to me, presumably to speak more privately in the open area of the hallway.

  “Apex… I can’t thank you enough. Are you heading out soon to get Amy?” She asked me.

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah. I wanted to be gone a good fifteen to twenty minutes ago, but these two really needed a medical intervention.”

  Carol seemed more defeated than I think I’ve ever seen her before, despite her mood having improved upon seeing Vicky and Mark.

  “She’s going to think we abandoned her,” she muttered.

  Keeping my voice very low, I responded, “I don’t think that’s true at all. Amy might be a bit of a baby about some things, but you know she’s got a mean streak when you get on her bad side. And she would have wanted me to prioritize them over her. That, I know for absolute certain. She’d give her life without a question if it meant keeping Vicky safe.”

  Carol rubbed her face with her palms, and I saw her shoulders trembling. I placed a hand on her back. “None of you did anything wrong, Carol. I was able to save someone from that carnage, and I wounded Shatterbird decently well.”

  “It’s–it’s not that. She already thinks I’m a terrible Mom. What’s she going to think after all of this? Knowing we sat around while the Slaughterhouse Nine had her prisoner?”

  There were a lot of things that I wanted to say to her. Carol was a bad Mom. Amy did have insecurities about her relationship with her parents. I couldn’t just lie to her in a time like this, and I I couldn’t totally bust her balls, either. I had an idea.

  “Carol, I don’t have any kids, so I’m not the best person to ask about some of this stuff, but I know both of your daughters very well.”

  She had her hair down, and it was mostly obscuring her face, the way her head was angled. I could hear and smell her crying, though. She nodded along to what I’d said.

  “When I get Amy back, I think you and she need to have a talk. Heart-to-heart.”

  She looked up at me.

  “I know you love her. And I know she loves you. But you two need to voice that to each other. She’s very insecure about everything, especially her place in your family,” I told her as gently as I could. “It’s usually good enough to demonstrate the fact you love her, but sometimes people need to hear it, too. And not in a ‘goodnight, love you,’ way, where you’re following social conventions. But to really voice your feelings. I think that would be the greatest gift you could give her, Carol.”

  Carol stared at me, her expression mostly blank, but her eyes searching my inhuman face.

  “She’s not the only one. Vicky needs to know, too. And Mark. You’re a badass lawyer and leader for your family, but I think what they want most of all is a Mom.”

  She frowned at me, her lower lip still trembling and tears streaking her face. I finished up with Mark and Vivian retracted. I sent her to touch up some of Carol’s nasty bruises, cuts, and scrapes while I was still talking to her.

  “You’re like my step-mom, Carol. I’ve told you this before. I’m not saying this to hurt you when you’re already down and out; I’m saying this because I know how much they mean to you. But in the conversations I’ve had with all of them, that’s what they’ve expressed to me. A desire to see the ratios of the many hats you wear changed. But that’s things for later. I’ll get her back, and… Just tell her how you feel, please?”

  Carol’s facial expression broke again, falling back to grief and anxiety, but she nodded rapidly. Stepping forward, she gave me a hug on my upper arm.

  “I will, and I’ll try, Morgan. It’s hard to change the balance of things. You know this now, too,” her voice was softer than I expected.

  “I do. I know how hard it is. I feel like I’ve done more harm to my own family than help in recent months. All we can do is keep aware of it, and keep trying to improve.”

  Vivian pumped Carol with some IV fluids, then we separated.

  Eclipse and Flechette came back up from their supply run. Flechette had a big-ass machete in a sheath strapped to her belt. I turned to both of them.

  “Planning on doing some bushcraft?” I jokingly asked Flechette.

  She brought a hand up and rested it on the hilt of the blade. “When I first started doing this, I used swords and throwing knives. They uh–took them away and gave me the Arbelest after a few fights.” She thumbed over her shoulder at the giant tinkertech crossbow on her back.

  Melody looked over at Lily and asked, “Why?”

  Lily had an embarrassed look on her face answering. “It was deemed uh… ‘Excessively lethal’ after a number of villains sued the PRT for missing limbs.”

  Melody winced, and I clicked my tongue.

  “Perfect. Good thinking, Flechette. We could use some excessive lethality right about now. You both ready to roll out?”

  Both agreed, and we made our way outside to the helipad. I was loading both up on my back when the door banged open, and Vanessa came out in her war gear.

  “I know you’re not about to go do a counterattack on the Nine without me,” she all but demanded.

  I turned my head to address her. “We’re honestly not. We’re trying to rescue Amy while avoiding a direct confrontation. We’re too spread out and have too many injured right now to make an effective counterattack.”

  She stomped up in her armored boots. “That’s a bullshit excuse, and you know it. Why am I not being included? What, you think I’m going to turn on you mid-fight?!”

  Deep breath… Exhale slowly.

  “No, Vanessa, I do not think you have any intention of betraying us. I didn’t ask you to come because I was going to go alone, and was reminded that all communications are down and that going alone anywhere is very, very dumb right now.”

  She crossed her arms and stated flatly, “I don’t believe you.”

  I sighed and placed Flechette on my back, strapping her into place. “Do you at least take me at my word that we’re not intending to attack them, and that we’re trying to conduct a rescue and get out of dodge?”

  “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t go with you.” She flexed her jaw.

  “Brandish, Manpower, Lady Photon, and Laserdream are all fairly beat up and tired from fighting the Nine earlier. Glory Girl and Flashbang are just now out of critical condition. The security team doesn’t stand a good chance of stopping any member of the Nine with our current capabilities. There’s a good chance that they just follow us back and immediately attack. I need good fighters here to keep people safe.”

  “That’s all you ever do! Make me sit and defend!”

  “No, Vanessa, that was your special accommodation request to not fight the last time we were attacked. I would have been happy to have you out on the field, otherwise. And right now, you’re one of our best-suited people to handle members of the Nine.”

  She pointed an accusatory finger at Eclipse and Flechette. “Swap me out with one of them, then.”

  I don’t have the time for this right now, but I also don’t have time for her to take off or get pissy.

  “I need to go,” Melody said from my back. “I’m the only one who can stop Siberian.”

  Vanessa blinked rapidly, then asked: “What?”

  Melody nodded her helmeted head at Vanessa. “I just found out about it earlier when I was with New Wave fighting her and Shatterbird. She tried to attack me because my field was making it almost impossible for Shatterbird to attack us. It didn’t affect her at all until she got close to me, and then she just vanished, along with my field.”

  “Bullshit. Nobody can harm her, not even the Triumvirate. Not even all three of them!” Vanessa snorted.

  “I didn’t say I harmed her. I said I made her disappear. Ask New Wave if you don’t believe me. It happened twice, all of us were a bit stunned by it,” Melody said.

  Vanessa looked at Flechette. “I guess she’s there because if she can off an Endbringer, she can off one of them, too.” Her voice transitioned from angry to just grouchy as she spoke.

  “Pretty much,” I nodded in agreement.

  “This is still bullshit,” Vanessa grumbled.

  “Listen. I promise you that when we make an attack on the Nine, you’ll be the first person added to the roster. Until we can get some communication lines open and get a status on the other big players, I want to keep as defensive a posture as we can manage. If we roll out in force, it only takes one of them to come in here and destroy this place and kill everyone here.” I sighed. “I’d prefer to be staying here myself, but they specifically asked me to come for her. I have no doubts that it’s a trap of some kind.”

  “Fine! But I’m not sitting here all night and cooking, damn it!” Vanessa rapped the capped end of her spear on the helipad surface.

  “Good, I don’t want you to. Patrol the perimeter if you want, and keep an eye out for us; we might be coming back in with pursuit.”

  Vanessa turned in a whirl of steel and locks of blonde hair and went back inside.

  “Hold on tightly. I’m taking us up high and moving fast. I want to try and get an eye on things from above before heading in.”

  “You have no idea how jealous I am that you can fly,” Melody said as I was taking off and started to climb.

  “Pft, of course I do. I used to be precisely in the same shoes as you when I was a Ward.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’s a pretty good point, actually.”

  “Alright, we talked tactics some earlier, but let’s just refresh. Our number one priority is getting Amy out alive and hopefully unharmed. Attacking the Nine is secondary to that. I imagine we will probably scrap. Don’t hold back any on them, shoot to kill, Flechette.”

  Lily grunted. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  “Just to let you know, I’m packing extremely lethal stuff in my quills, but I kept some non-lethals, too, just in case. My aim tends to be really good, but if you see me aiming this–” I held my lower right arm with the rows of bumpy protrusions lining the back up and waved it around for them. “...Please do your best to duck or avoid being in my line of fire. I can’t risk accidentally hitting one of you.”

  I got an “okay” and a “sure thing” back out of them.

  “Something I should mention, too. Since the Siberian isn’t affected by my field up until the innermost layer, it’s not as equalizing as it would be normally. So it’s sort of dangerous for you to be around me. Either stand right next to me, where I can touch you and give you immunity, or stay back. Otherwise, she can just get to you easily while you’re stuck.” Melody’s voice sounded a bit troubled, a little nervous, but not as much as I’d expect.

  “It’s fucking amazing you can stop Siberian, Eclipse. I can’t wait to see all the things you come up with to maximize your ability.” I told her.

  “It is a super-powerful ability, and it’s also very pretty,” Flechette said.

  I spotted Winslow below. There was some light inside a few of the halls; it was the flickering orange glow of open flames. Candles, maybe? I banked and got a different angle of the school. Yeah, it was candles, and there were a bunch set out in front of the main entrance, the doors propped wide open.

  Lily pulled her crossbow out.

  “There’s no way this isn’t a trap of some sort. Be on your guard. I’ll have to drop you two down to fit in the halls of the school. Are you both ready?”

  Flechette nodded, and Melody patted the base of my neck.

  “Here we go, we’re landing aggressively.” I saw Flechette grip her crossbow tighter, and Eclipse was grinning.

  I folded my wings and dove from the cloudy skies. The whistling howl of whipping wind and the rustling flutter of my tucked wings were the only sounds.

  I squeezed both of their thighs and shins tightly and proceeded to snap my wings out, entering a tight downward spiral to bleed off speed. The grunts and wheezes of my passengers were as much of a reminder of the gee forces as the simmering heat in my flight muscles.

  Three loops, then I leveled out and flared hard. Another, harder spike in gees, but this one thankfully only momentary. I was already loosening and in the process of unloading Flechette as I dropped the remaining distance to the ground. Seconds later, I had Eclipse down.

  Even with the attempts to be silent and reduce the impact of my landing, the air blasted by my braking knocked more than half the candles over, and perhaps a quarter of them remained lit. They’d put tiny paper cups around the candles, like it was a vigil. Disgusting.

  Spraypainted over the entrance of Winslow was “WELCOME, APEX!”

  I cracked four sets of knuckles. There hadn’t been any indication of the Nine out and about on my descent.

  “Let’s get this freakshow over with as soon as possible,” I muttered. Flechette stood on my right flank, and Eclipse on my left. We walked up the staircase and entered the school.

  The halls were also lit with candles, and I saw immediately why they’d gone through the trouble.

  This is a game for them. A show, a display. A call for attention.

  There were arrows on the floor marking the path for us. Wet paint, and it most certainly wasn’t paint. The entire building reeked of blood and death. We moved slowly, as I was wary of boobytraps. Eclipse looked like she was going to be sick. Flechette was scowling under the visor of her helmet.

  Some of the classrooms were lit. Those that were had open doors, and were filled with vignettes: Corpses autopsying a flayed corpse in the biology classroom. Corpses hanging from the ceiling by electrical cable nooses in world history. More bodies set up in a mockery of everyday activities in the school central offices, a dead secretary behind a desk, and dead ‘students’ waiting to see the principal.

  Eclipse held a hand up, doubled over, and spewed all over the floor with loud retches. We waited for her, vigilant and as prepared as we could be.

  The bodies had all been posed and ‘brought to life’ with crude implements, chunks of rebar or angle iron shoved through the flesh and rammed into the floor. There were dozens of bodies that needed to be retrieved here. Maybe hundreds, I wasn’t sure how wide-reaching this demonstration was.

  Eclipse stood back up and spat a few times. “I’m good now, let’s keep moving,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse from the vomiting.

  “If I wasn’t concerned about identifying these people and getting their bodies returned to their families, I’d be tempted to burn this entire fucking place to the ground after we get Amy,” I told both of them.

  “Yeah. Not a fan of arson, but this place would deserve it,” Flechette said.

  We continued on, with more of the same sorts of displays in the various classrooms. When we passed the art department, someone in the Nine had rigged up a jumpscare with a body dressed in a bloodstained clown suit. It sprang out from behind the doorway with a puff of confetti. Flechette had jumped in place and shot it square in the chest, then cursed under her breath.

  “These people need to die,” Melody said next to me angrily, just above a whisper.

  “Yes, they do,” I whispered back.

  When Lily had reloaded her bow, a process that only took her a few seconds, we resumed walking. We could hear the chatter of voices talking nearby. Colorful graffiti marked the walls around the wide double doors leading to the gymnasium. I walked in first, with my teammates close by my sides.

  The place had been decorated like it was for a dance or ball, with streamers hanging from the high ceiling, some tables with snacks and refreshments. The bleachers were all fully retracted into the walls, making it a large, wide-open space. Suitable for a fight. Good.

  Jack Slash was standing with a disposable plastic cup in one hand, and looked over from the discussion he’d been having with a wounded Shatterbird, who was covered in gauze on her right arm, right leg, and part of the side of her face. Her lips were visible under the beak of her visored helmet of stained glass, and she sneered at me.

  The hulking mass of Crawler was resting in one corner, lying down like a big cat. Six-legged, with black skin and iridescent armor plating covering most of his hide. He was far bulkier than a big cat, though, like a boar, or maybe a bear. He was also the size of a cargo van, so quite large. I was bigger overall in terms of wingspan and body length by a decent margin, and my gigantic tail made it a very uneven contest. He had more raw body bulk than I did. A far, far too large mouth and many red eyes looked at me from all over his head and body. I was annoyed by the similarities between us.

  I wasn’t the only one, either. I could feel my power stirring as I looked at him.

  On the other side of Jack and Shatterbird, sitting in some folding chairs, was a pair of women. One I recognized, the other I did not. Burnscar was easy to pick out. She was wearing somewhat grungy-looking jeans, sneakers, and a tank top. Her hair was hacked into irregular, short lengths and wild. She had what looked like cigarette burn scars all down her arms and hands, and two lines of them going under her eyes and curling outwards on her cheeks. She could have been pretty, if not for the horrific lack of self-care and grooming. Ritual scarring wasn’t my thing, but I thought bodymodding was pretty okay overall, so the burn scars weren’t as much of a dealbreaker as I might have expected.

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  The other girl sitting next to her was the polar opposite. Well-groomed, with long, dark hair, a somewhat gaudy streak of bright red running down the bangs on one side of her face. She was pretty and well-dressed, wearing a long skirt and a jacket, both colorful.

  I assume that must be Cherish, the wildcard.

  The Siberian was crouched near Bonesaw, who was standing a few feet away from Amy, who was sitting in a chair with a cup held in her hands. She appeared to be unharmed, thankfully.

  Bonesaw seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making her own appearance as unsettling as possible. She was dressed up like a nineteen-fifties schoolgirl, with a blue dress, tall white socks, black Mary Janes, and a long white apron. Her apron was covered in filth and blood, both old stains and still-damp, fresher blood. She looked like she was maybe eleven or twelve, but I knew her actual age was sixteen or seventeen. It wasn’t just the way she was dressed, either. She had the stature and build of a young girl as well.

  Probably has all sorts of things meddling with her biology inside.

  Amy was in her pyjamas, wearing sneakers, flannel pants, and an oversized T-shirt. Her eyes were swollen and red; she’d been crying quite a bit, from the looks of things.

  Behind and around the trio of Siberian, Bonesaw, and Amy was a trio of what I assumed were the ‘mutants’ that had been responsible for kidnapping Amy.

  Hatchetface, I recognized, a mammoth of a man, heavy with both muscle and scarring. He was shirtless, bald, with frayed jeans and work boots on. A rather nice-looking axe was gripped in one meaty hand, the blade wide and lightly curved, and gleaming with a polished sheen. He had spiky bits of metal sticking out of his bald skull, along with a handful of wires, which connected to some kind of minimalistic exosuit on the rest of his body. It provided no protection, just metal bars, straps, and servos.

  Strength augmentation, maybe?

  There was also Murder Rat, who looked like an emaciated figure, with pale skin so white it looked like it was artificial. Claws made from rusting, dirty blades extended from both the ends of her feet and her hands. The ones on her hands looked slightly more maintained. As I walked in, I watched her wiggle around like she was slowly dancing to a song nobody else heard, all while rasping her claw-blades on a sharpening bar held in one hand. The ragged remains of Mouse Protector’s costume, with the big circular ears on a brown hood, clung to her thin body. Her face was horribly misshapen, grotesque surgeries performed on her to make her face look more ratlike, with a dog’s muzzle or something similar grafted onto her face.

  The last of the three wasn’t on file. It was two men, one big and burly, and one thin man, with too-long arms. They were joined together, with the burly man’s head gone, and the thin man’s lower abdomen joined to the shoulders of the larger man. The lower man was on all fours and had been modified to walk around like a gorilla.

  The conversations halted when we’d stepped through the entrance.

  Jack turned and held his arms wide. “Welcome, Apex! We’re so excited that you came! Did you enjoy the entertainment on the way in?”

  I did my best casual prowl-stroll until we were about fifteen feet or so away from the center of their sprawling group. Eclipse and Flechette stayed tight to me, Flechette with her bow out and firmly gripped in her hands.

  This is like Somer’s Rock, in a way. I have to present myself in a certain way.

  I buzzed my wings in place along my back, then casually sat down and curled my tail around, like we were having a casual chat. I kept ready to spring into action. Panning my head from left to right, I acted out taking all of them in, and I curled my tail around Eclipse’s side until my tail claws were resting in front of me. The constant pressure of holding all the changes I’d kept since engaging with Shatterbird and Siberian was weighing on me, but I’d just have to tough it out.

  This is their game and their playing field. I’ll play along if it gets me what I want.

  “Not quite my style,” I rumbled after taking them all in and turning my head back to Jack.

  Jack’s pale blue eyes glittered in the candlelight as he stared at me in silence for several long moments.

  “What didn’t you like about it?” He asked finally.

  Framing this is going to be key…

  I held my lower arms out and shrugged. “I don’t see the sense in killing civilians. Even armed civilians aren’t much of a threat to you. No threat? No challenge. No challenge, then nothing to gain from it. You don’t push yourself and improve off it.” I looked over the collection of supervillains. “It seems a bit self-indulgent, in my opinion.”

  They’ve heard the morality argument countless times. Let’s see what they make of that.

  A pin dropping to the floor could have been heard in the silence. Jack had started squinting as I was talking, but as I wrapped up, he brought his free hand up and stroked his neatly trimmed beard.

  A deep voice, deeper than my own, heavily slurred and distorted, spoke up: “Agreed.” Crawler shifted and looked more directly at me. “Battles are best when they pose a danger.”

  Jack rocked his head from side to side, humming under his breath. He dropped his free hand and took a drink from his cup. “You are not entirely what I expected, Apex, although I do think you might be playing a bit of a game here.”

  “Aren’t you also playing a game?” I countered.

  That got a wide and bright smile from him. I hated to admit it, but he was charismatic and despite having looks edging on the striking side, was handsome, especially when he was smiling.

  “Fair! Fair!” He said with a laugh. Jack set his cup down on a table and brought his hands together with a clap.

  “So!” He said, still grinning. “Shall we get down to it, then? Why we brought you here?”

  I dipped my head to him. I was keeping an eye on each of the Nine, very closely monitoring any of them for movements or indications they were readying to spring their trap.

  “Crawler has nominated you to join us! And we have done a number of other nominations tonight, as well,” Jack said.

  Bonesaw chirped up, her voice high and pre-pubescent. “Panacea has been telling me all about you, Apex! I almost want to change my nomination to you. We could do such wonderful experiments together!”

  Wait…

  I glanced at their close proximity, slowly turning my head to face Bonesaw. “Does that mean you’ve nominated her?”

  She beamed and put her shoulders on Amy, who flinched at the contact. “Yeah! She’s going to be my big sister, if she passes her tests!”

  Flechette muttered something to my side.

  “I have a problem with that,” I told Bonesaw simply.

  “Whuh? But why?” She asked, batting her eyelashes in a display of nauseating faux innocence.

  “She’s mine. And I’m not willing to give her up.”

  Amy’s cheeks colored, and I saw her jaw trembling.

  “Rude!” Bonesaw’s response was immediate, and her body language shifted to something a touch more threatening.

  “If you were concerned about manners, you would have asked before taking,” I replied back, keeping things level and calm.

  Bonesaw stomped her foot, and the mechanical spiders lurking around stirred, rising up at her reaction. The ‘mutants’ behind her also shifted.

  I turned back to Jack. “I’m here to talk and see my friend and teammate return. I’d hoped that we’d be able to come to terms.”

  The dark-haired woman with the hair streaks spoke up, saying: “A lie. Panacea isn’t just a friend, she loves that… thing.” She flicked a dismissive hand toward me.

  Jack turned and started to pace on the gymnasium floor, from side to side in front of the rest of the Nine. “Well, they do say love takes all forms,” he glanced over at me, grinning. “No offense, of course!” He turned on the heel of his cowboy boots and reversed direction. “This is an interesting situation we’re in, different, at least, and something new.” He stopped in front of Crawler, then turned to face me.

  “You said terms? What terms might those be?” He asked nonchalantly.

  “This is my city to watch and protect,” I rumbled.

  I’m not sure if I should keep humble, or go full ego here, fuck. And Cherish is a thinker? Maybe an empath? That’s dangerous.

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Burnt Turkey,” I pointed at Shatterbird with one big claw. “I don’t want you here. I am attempting to be respectful and offer you an exit on your own terms. I am very busy, and it would be my preference to focus my attention on the city.”

  I was extremely tempted to say ‘It would be my preference not to have to handle you,’ but I knew that would only stoke the coals. I didn’t see a peaceful resolution to this; in their minds, they held all the cards, but I would at least make an attempt at trying to talk this out. I knew I was wasting my time, but it was important to me.

  Jack threw his head back and laughed, holding his abdomen with one hand. Shatterbird snarled and bared her teeth like she was barely holding herself back. Quieting down after a moment, he wiped at one eye and turned to Shatterbird. “She sort of got you there, Shatter! Those burns are going to leave some juicy scars!”

  “I’ll fucking kill you!” Shatterbird screeched.

  Bonesaw crossed her arms over her chest and yelled back at Shatterbird, “Language!”

  I drove the salt in deeper. “Kill me? You can’t even harm me, Turkey.”

  There was a rustle and a crash as a large collection of broken glass swept in an open door in the rear, all gathered up into a tube shape and sliding across the floor.

  Jack held his hand up to Shatterbird, and she let out another screech before releasing her control of the glass, leaving it to slump on the floor in a pile.

  “Now, now, let’s not get too hasty on starting this party quite yet,” Jack called out, then he turned back to me.

  “You see, Apex, the issue with your terms and demands is that you don’t have any leverage. Sure, you might have a big job, and a fancy title, and all of that, but what’s that mean to us? Why would we care?”

  I tapped a big claw on the wooden floor with a clack-clack-clack. “You are incorrect about the leverage,” I told him bluntly. “The leverage is the threat posed by me and my two teammates.” I raised my claw and pointed at him directly. “You and the rest of your group are in extreme danger, and by the grace of my patience and character, I’m here talking instead of just attacking you outright.”

  Jack lowered his chin, his eyes twinkling in the candlelight, and his grin went from jovial to manic. “Is that so?” He asked. “Certainly, we’ve seen the photographs, but how could we not question them? Are you simply a figurehead and a paper tiger? I’d be lying if I said we weren’t itching to find out.”

  “Not itching, Jack. Dying. You would be dying to find out.” I pointed at Shatterbird with one big hand. “She’s one of your harder hitters, yes? I was toying with her during our fight. I could have killed her, I chose to send a message instead.”

  There was murmuring among the other members of the Nine while Jack and I did our back-and-forth. Unrest, I could tell. Anticipation. They were practically salivating at the chance to act.

  “As I said. I would prefer not to do that. I’d like Panacea back, and for you to leave Brockton Bay. I think those are more than fair terms, considering who you all are and the status you each hold.”

  Jack waved a hand dismissive of what I’d just said. “I’m starting to think you’re all bluster, Apex. Tell me, have you ever killed anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  In my mind, the people I’d been unable to save during Leviathan had been deaths on my conscience. My action or inaction, the decisions I’d made, had determined whether they lived or died that day. There was also Leviathan himself, which we still weren’t entirely sure if they were a unique type of parahuman.

  “And how did that make you feel when you did?” Jack asked.

  “Like I had failed, and needed to grow and improve further.” It was the candid truth. I felt Melody’s hand touch my side.

  Jack straightened up and sighed. “Ugh, now I’m getting bored, when we started off so entertaining. Well, it is what it is, the reason why we travel to see new sights and meet new people. I suppose tonight you will feel like you failed, regardless of whether you triumph or fail. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Oh, make no mistake, Jack,” I added, just a dab of sarcasm to his name. “I live to fight, and in the case of fighting you lot specifically, I assure you, I will enjoy it.”

  Jack clapped his hands together, and his grin was right back.

  We’re about to engage. This is it. Hit me with that go-juice, power.

  Something lurched and clenched in my upper back, and I felt that strange sensation I’d felt when fighting Leviathan, like white-hot liquid metal was being injected into my arteries. In the space of two heartbeats, it hit my brain, and my perception of everything blurred, like I was looking through a scope or telescope at not quite the right distance. I held still, as I had been, and holding still was agonizing. Every cell in my body was vibrating and humming like an orchestra.

  We’d talked about strategy for when things inevitably went down. Eclipse and Flechette had a simple directive: keep each other safe, and make attacks of opportunity when time permitted. Stay on top of one another so that Eclipse’s field could be activated to protect both of them, and operate like a mobile artillery.

  My strategy was also simple. Avoid Siberian and engage as many of the Nine as I could without restraint. Keep Amy safe and alive for evacuation.

  I watched Jack saying something, and he moved to clap his hands once again, but this time in slow-motion. I made a loud cricket chirp, which was the signal for the other two. It was go time. Eclipse dropped to the floor on her belly, and I was already moving.

  Thinkers, Blasters, and Shakers had a high priority in terms of order of engagement. I picked my first two targets. Burnscar was closer; I could reach her with my tail. Cherish was slightly out of reach of my tail, so I’d be shooting her, then immediately shooting Bonesaw. From there, it’d be Murder Rat and Hatchet Face. The teleporter with caustic weapons and the Trump who shut off powers were both bad and high priority.

  My tail darted forward, sweeping just over Melody’s head, the claws extended like the points on a trident and streaking directly at Burnscar’s chest. I brought my arm up and fired off about fifteen quills in a shotgun-like blast at Cherish. It was likely I’d wind up hitting Burnscar, too, but that didn’t really matter at the moment.

  The rest of the Nine sprang into motion, Bonesaw ducking back and slightly to the side of Amy. I was up on all fours and charging forward. My quills hit Cherish what felt like a couple of seconds before my tail made contact with Burnscar. Cherish’s eyes were bulging as she was peppered on her left side, her arm, and her chest. She jerked backwards in her chair and toppled to the floor.

  My tail claws pierced Burnscar’s chest, encountering an unexpectedly high amount of resistance in doing so, like they were armored or something under their clothing. It didn’t really matter, between the force behind my thrust and the nature of my claws. They sank several inches into her chest, and I triggered a partial release of the bio-electricity I had accumulated.

  Burnscar was there one moment, and simply gone the next. An enormous explosion of blood, guts, entrails, meat, and steam occurred, and a charred, blazing skeleton clattered to the floor about twenty feet away from where she’d been sitting a moment ago.

  Jack had knives out and was swinging, and I could feel blades sliding over and off my hide. His eyes were as wide as saucers as I observed him out of one eye. I was bringing my arm around to fire on Bonesaw, and the Siberian was dashing towards Amy. I’d have to leave her to Flechette and Eclipse; I couldn’t do a damn thing to her myself. With my upper arms, I lunged out and grabbed both Murder Rat and Hatchetface. The weird human-centaur thing was scuttling towards me as well, but I ignored it. Other priorities at the moment.

  It was probably a good thing that this drug cocktail made me a bit loopy. I don’t think Lucid me would have appreciated the sensations of ending the lives of the two abominations in my hands. I doubted either one of them suffered much, if at all.

  I had a better angle to fire on Bonesaw, so I did a rapid chainfire. I was mistaken about Siberian; she hadn’t been going for Amy, but rather Bonesaw. She got in the way of my line of fire, then grabbed the girl up in her arms. Bonesaw was now entirely off-limits. I spun and threw the remains of the Nine in my hands, one at Jack, one at Shatterbird. My aim was slightly off on Jack, and he ducked, managing to avoid the projectile. The other one, Murder Rat, I think, caught Shatterbird in a hard collision, sending her spinning and flying through the air. She hit the floor hard and appeared to be unconscious.

  Crawler had gotten up and pounced at me, surprisingly fast and agile for his size and bulk. He tackled me and sent me crashing to the floor, tearing the entire place to hell in the process. We rolled around and fought like the feral, bestial monstrosities that each of us looked like.

  I caught snippets of action while I was in full-on tooth-and-nail mode against Crawler.

  Jack was pointing and yelling at Bonesaw. Amy had dashed off to take cover away from us. Siberian looked frustrated, or perhaps confused? She had Bonesaw in her arms and was hopping around inside the place, keeping the tinker out of the melee. Eclipse had her field up, and I didn’t see Flechette.

  A moment later, the field flickered off, then right back on, and Jack was pierced through the upper chest, near the shoulder area. He spun with the impact and dropped to all fours.

  Meanwhile, Crawler and I were locked in an intense battle. We’d crashed and thrown one another through several walls and weren’t currently fighting in the gymnasium. We were all but bulldozing Winslow High, which was unfortunate, but sort of unavoidable. The matchup between us wasn’t exactly an even fight. I definitely hit harder and took blows better by a fairly wide margin.

  The issue was his damn regeneration. It was insane. I’d gotten him pinned and ripped his foreleg out with my mouth and had been targeting his mobility. Within thirty seconds, he had his entire limb back, good as new. My stimulants wore off after about half a minute, so I was back down to fighting him without the benefit of the increased performance.

  I pinned him again and bit a huge chunk out of his abdomen. I got to finally see what the nightmare mouth was capable of. Like a shark, my bites acted like an ice cream scoop, just cleanly carving out hemispherical masses of tissue, and in my case, bone and armor. For lack of a better option and to keep the pressure up, I wound up just… gulping the chunks down.

  I just don’t have time to think about how revolting this is.

  Crawler was waning beneath me. I was doing catastrophic damage to his innards, shoving my head in through the hole in his hide I’d made while we wrestled and rolled around and ravaging his innards. I engaged my hair as well, which was digging in and ripping out anything that wasn’t firmly attached. It probably looked like an industrial accident of some sort in here.

  Crawler wasn’t idle while I was doing this. He was gnawing on my right leg and thigh, finding the parts that weren’t covered in hard armor plates and sinking his teeth into my soft armor. He’d been making steady progress, just as I had, ripping and tearing out armor plates on my right leg and abdomen with his mouth and multitude of claws, respectively.

  I’ve got to try and finish this. I can’t find his core; hopefully, I can deal enough damage to finish him off.

  I pulled my head out of his rapidly regenerating guts long enough to jam my tail to enter, and then I dumped the entire remainder of my bio-electricity into his innards. He screamed and roared, thrashing around as hissing jets of steam and chunks of viscera blew out of the huge, gaping wound I’d made.

  I brought my upper arms down to his lower and upper jaw and wrenched, panting and grunting with the exertion of trying to separate that crocodilian maw and get my leg free. Bit by bit, I pried it open while he continued to cook from the inside out. With a roar and a heave, I got his mouth open enough to pull my leg out. I opened my own mouth and proceeded to spray my flamethrower straight down his throat until I ran it dry. He was quite on fire at this point, between my tail depleting and the flamethrower hitting from the other end. His struggles grew weak.

  I gave another heave and ripped his jaw clean off, throwing it down the hallway. The searing hot flames were scorching my own flesh where my armor was torn up or missing.

  Have to finish this and get back!

  I brought my fists up together overhead, crashing through the ceiling in the process. Then I brought them down as hard as I could, smashing his skull into pulp and cratering the concrete floor. The rest of him went limp and continued to burn. The flames were starting to spread, both here from the Crawler inferno and elsewhere, where candles had been knocked over and started secondary fires. This entire place was going to go up in a blaze. I had to get my sister, Amy, and Lily out of here.

  The adrenaline was fading, and I was struggling to keep upright. I was burning up inside, my wings were long-since toast. My right leg was completely mangled and I couldn’t put much weight on it. Both of my lower arms were smashed to pieces and were dangling. Vivian’s guts were dragging along the floor behind me. My lower abdomen was torn open where Crawler had torn most of my plating off and gotten his multitude of claws into my guts. I felt… sort of hollowed out, and my thick, gloopy blood was running like a waterfall in slow motion beneath me.

  I retraced my steps back towards the Gym. I had to detour through a few cinderblock walls where hallways were ablaze, or the ceiling had collapsed. I had to drop my shoulder and shove through one particularly thick wall, and on the other side was a mess of sheet metal and frames.

  Bleachers.

  I dug my claws through them and shoved my big ass through. The sight of my sister and Lily on the other side greeted my eyes. Flechette had her bow up and me square in her sights, but her shoulders slumped when she saw it was me and not Crawler. Amy was with them and seemed unharmed.

  Their eyes widened when I got through the hole I’d made and got a better look at me.

  I knew I looked bad right now, if the way I felt was any indication.

  “Status?” I croaked at the group, panning around with my undamaged eyes.

  I glanced at myself.

  Oh, shit. No wonder they’re looking at me like that.

  Where I wasn’t mangled, I was covered in chunks of meat and gore, blood sloughing and dripping off me nearly from head to toe.

  Flechette’s jaw snapped back into position, and she said, “Siberian took Bonesaw, Slash, and Shatterbird and left. We focused on getting Panacea safe. We took out several of her robots; one of her creatures is trapped over there; it regenerates, and we couldn’t kill it, so I nailed it to the floor.”

  I coughed and spit out a wad of my own blood. I was a bit thankful that my blood had washed the taste of Crawler out of my mouth.

  “Amy, you good?” I asked her.

  She looked a bit dazed, but nodded rapidly.

  “Alright. The building’s burning down. I’m going to go finish that other thing off, and we’ll get out of here together.”

  I turned and headed over to where Flechette had indicated. Sure enough, the human centaur thing had Lily’s long metal bolts through its hands and feet, which were fused with the concrete under the wooden floor.

  It looked up at me and let out a screeching moan.

  “I’m sorry,” I told it. “I hope you find peace.” I used my tail to help support me where my right leg was lame, brought my fists up and together, then once again brought them down, smashing the fused people-creature into a smear at the bottom of a crater on the floor.

  I’m so fucking tired…

  I heard a shout and a crash behind me. I turned around and moved as fast as I could on three limbs.

  A smoking, smoldering, emaciated-looking Crawler had crashed through a set of double doors to the gym. His mouth opened, and he sprayed a jet of vile-looking green spew at Amy.

  Flechette shot him and was drawing her machete.

  Eclipse was out of position to be able to shield Amy with her aura.

  Amy had been glancing at me, she reacted like I’d taught her so many times, bringing her arms up and tucking her chin, guarding her head and torso.

  Crawler’s spit splashed over her, hitting her legs, arms, and lower abdomen. She jerked and threw herself backwards.

  I lunged forward at Crawler as fast as I could go, digging my claws in and leaping. My right leg screamed in agony and crunched, but I streaked across the room and crashed into him.

  I couldn’t see well what was going on behind me with the damage, but I could hear Amy screaming.

  Crawler was laughing, deep, growling huffs.

  Vivian’s in pieces, I’m barely able to fight. Amy can’t heal herself. If she’s conscious enough to use her power, she can probably neutralize elements of his spit, but his files say it’s both acid and putrifying venom, and self-replicating.

  She’d been splashed over all four limbs and a good chunk of her lower abdomen. I think she mostly protected her head and chest. Still… all that meant was that her death would be over the course of minutes, maybe hours, if we could get her on life support.

  Amy’s going to die here.

  The thought caused my heart to break. Maybe a little bit of my mind, too. Not that I was thinking particularly clearly through the hazy fog of pain, exhaustion, and my own failing anatomy.

  My power was berserk in my head as I thought about what I wanted to do to Crawler right now.

  I didn’t have to tell it what I wanted; it already knew.

  I let it through fully.

  While I wrestled Crawler from on top of him, he continued to dig his claws into my guts, as he had been before, and I rained down punches and blows on him that would flatten vehicles. He repaired and was regrowing faster than I could damage him now. I wasn’t going to win this without my power.

  An extremely loud and deep crack and crunch emanated from my chest cavity, where I felt the source of my power burning like the sun. I gasped as I was introduced to a new level of pain I didn’t think I knew existed, and then my chest separated down the middle and split open like the doors to a cathedral of writhing flesh.

  A torrent of tentacles, tendrils, and appendages surged out of my chest, piercing, latching on, hooking onto, or coiling around Crawler. Every single one was covered in my iridescent black claws, black teeth, and black hooks. Mouths on the ends of tentacles by the hundreds, ringed with serrated, razor-sharp, barbed teeth, attacked Crawler. He struggled and fought, and I wasn’t able to put up much of a fight. With my chest open the way it was, I was relegated to flopping on top of him like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Crawler continued to laugh, the laughs turning into manic cackles as I continued to wrap successively more and more tentacles around his body.

  “Yes! Yes! Hurt me more!” He roared out.

  My tentacles weren’t able to keep up with his regeneration, his body mutating and evolving underneath me at blistering speed to try and build resistances against what I was doing. He’d grab and tear several out, while twenty more were gnawing and munching on him.

  Bulging wads of biomass were snaking up the lengths of the tentacles, and more would emerge from my center to attack him. The battle evened out, and then he started to become swiftly overwhelmed, being consumed faster than he could regrow.

  His struggles became increasingly desperate, and he started screaming as much as he was roaring, his size, mass, and strength being stripped from him until he was little more than a half-eaten head and chest, at which point he just gurgled. Moments later, Crawler was no more, and my tentacles bound up a spherical object the size of a softball until it was fully encased.

  The object, along with the rest of the mass, withdrew into my chest, and the missing chunks of my lower abdomen, where it was still visible. My chest popped and cracked once again, then slid closed and re-knit together.

  I was barely hanging on to consciousness, sanity, or maybe both at this point. I’d accumulated further damage, and my hindquarters and tail were limp and insensate. I crawled on my upper arms, turning back around and making my way back over to where Amy, Lily, and Melody were. They’d dragged her away from the rest of the spit and had done what they could for her.

  She was unconscious and breathing rapidly in shallow pants. Acrid smoke was wafting up from her extremities and lower abdomen. Her limbs had been nearly entirely stripped of flesh, exposed, blackened bone visible in numerous places on her legs, and her arms were barely more than skeleton and connective tissue. Melody and Lily had broken out their medical supplies, but there really wasn’t much to be done. There wasn’t much bleeding, the chemical burns seemingly having done a fair job of cauterizing or melting shut the ends of her blood vessels on her limbs.

  She was bleeding and oozing pretty heavily from her abdomen, what was left of it.

  Melody was sobbing and stroking Amy’s frizzy mop of hair. One of the tranquilizer knock-out injectors she carried was empty on the floor next to her.

  Lily looked up at me for guidance.

  My voice came out better than it would have if I weren’t using some kind of speech box organ, as I was panting and wheezing fairly heavily myself.

  “Flechette, Eclipse. I need you two to get back to the station and get assistance. I’ll do everything I can to try and help Amy, and I’ll collect the bodies of the Nine here and get a safe distance from the fires.”

  Melody choked back another sob and nodded. Lily helped her up.

  “Please try and hurry, but stay safe. They’re still out there,” I urged them.

  “We’ll stick to the roofs and go get help. Be safe, Apex,” Flechette said. She wrapped an arm around Eclipse’s shoulders and walked her out of one of the blown-out sections of exterior wall.

  I looked down at Amy. I didn’t know if I could do anything for her, but I was going to try. My power was still roaring away in my skull.

  We have to save her. I know you’re capable of doing things like this. You operate Vivian and save the others. Do whatever you have to, use any resources I have left in me to get her stable for now, and we can try and fix her body later.

  My power responded, and I felt heat in my tongue, but it was tame in comparison to some of the other changes I’d been through recently. I opened my jaw, and it spilled out of my mouth, lengthening and widening. The end yawned open, and fine tendrils similar to what Vivian used slid out, piercing Amy’s upper chest, head, and neck. My tongue proceeded to swallow up Amy like an anaconda. I felt my heart break again when her right hand and lower leg fell off, the connective tissue holding the bones and scraps of meat together falling apart as it was jostled and shifted. Several more tendrils slithered out and retrieved the missing pieces.

  Once she was fully encased, or swallowed, or whatever by my tongue, I crawled around and collected the corpses of the Nine. I dragged Cherish, Burnscar, Murder Rat, and Hatchet Face’s remains behind me using my hair. There wasn’t enough of the centaur left to bother with, or Crawler, for that matter.

  I made my way out of the hole in the wall as the hallways connected to the gym started to light up with flames.

  I tried to hurry, but it was a struggle, between the pain, the exhaustion, and dragging not just my own huge body, but five others along with me, too. My tongue was doing… things, although what, I couldn’t tell. It was both changing itself and working on Amy from what I could tell, but at a fairly glacial pace. I crawled out into the middle of the adjacent soccer field and dropped my head and shoulders down to rest.

  I was lying there, listening to Winslow burn and looking up at the stars, when I noticed lights in the sky approaching at a fast pace. A low, booming peal of thunder tore through the sky, and the sounds of screaming jets approached. One of Dragon’s suits dropped from the sky moments later, cutting off its engines much the same way I did with my wings and dropping the remaining distance to the ground.

  Bright white spotlights clicked on and swept over me and my cargo as she approached.

  “Oh dear,” she said over a loudspeaker. “You look like a bit of a mess, Apex. How are you feeling?”

  I didn’t move when I replied. “Maybe worse than I look. I just sent Eclipse and Flechette back to the station to try and bring some bodies over. The Nine fled with their wounded.

  Dragon’s voice was softer when she asked, “Any friendly casualties?”

  “Near-miss on both Flashbang and Glory Girl. I got them stable at the station, and they’re recovering. A lot of civilian deaths. The Nine filled the school with a bunch of corpses, fires broke out in the fighting, I’m afraid that many of the bodies may not be identifiable when it finishes burning down.”

  I slid my hand up to gently tap my claws on the conspicuous bulge in my tongue lying on the grass. “I have Panacea here, she’s in critical condition, I’m doing what I can to try and stabilize and heal her.”

  My voice cracked before I could finish, and I wound up sobbing afterward. Dragon walked over and knelt next to me, resting a mechanical claw on my back.

  “What happened?” She asked quietly.

  “Crawler. Spit on her, it was bad. Maybe sixty, seventy percent of her body, Dragon. Eclipse drugged her so she’d be unconscious. I–I don’t know if I’m going to be able to save–”

  Dragon stroked my hair and upper back, soothing me and doing her best to calm me down.

  “I know how you feel, Morgan. Colin was attacked at PHQ by Mannequin. Similar condition and severity. I had just gotten him stabilized with medical remotes when everything went dark here. I’m flying down a medical unit over to finish treating him and build him cybernetics, but I’m having to fly it from Vancouver.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you two are fairly close. He deserves better than to be harassed by the Nine.”

  “Speaking of which, do you have any information I can pass on regarding them?”

  Bitter spite bled into my voice. “Yes, you can relay that six of the Nine are dead. Jack Slash and Shatterbird are both fairly substantially wounded; Bonesaw and Siberian are the only others left alive that I know of, besides Mannequin.”

  “That’s… quite a bit to take in, but I’ll relay it. Thank you.”

  “Dragon,” I trailed off a moment. “Thanks for coming. I realize you’re probably here for the Nine and Colin, but I’m happy to see you, too.”

  Dragon resumed stroking my back. “I’m here for you as much as the others, Apex. You’re an obvious target for them. I only wish I could have gotten here sooner. I didn’t want to move any of the Dragonflight in when they were first suspected of being here, so that they wouldn’t be destroyed by Shatterbird. Now that she’s already used her resonance attack, she can’t do it again across a wide area, so it’s safe for me to be here.”

  “Mmm. Makes sense. Still, thank you for being here.”

  My vision was narrowing, and I was losing ground in the battle against exhaustion.

  “I think I’m going to pass out. Please don’t try and remove Amy from me. I’m giving her life support right now, but my batteries are totally drained. I might be out for a while. Is that okay?”

  Dragon paused in stroking my hair a moment, then resumed. Her voice was as comforting as her touch. “Yes, you rest, I’ll keep watch while backup arrives.”

  I shifted some so I could lie flat, and I released my hold on the corpses. Within moments of relaxing the effort to stay awake, I was gone.