Blood trickled down the side of her face, running hot and dripping onto her hands. Her chest heaved, and she coughed up dust, hacking as she tried to get the debris out of her lungs.

  She pressed a hand onto the ground beneath her, broken tiles biting into her palms. Pushing herself upright, Vivainne blinked, trying to see through the darkness, only to realize why she was struggling. Her power had stopped working.

  Vivainne froze, growing frantic as she searched for her power core, inspecting it as rapidly as she could. It fluttered painfully, shrunken and small, but it was still there. Still there, thank god.

  Drywall cracked and shuddered as the building settled again, the ground beneath adjusting now that it was no longer being controlled by Vanessa. Just how many powers did she have?

  She didn’t have time to consider that.

  Vivainne pushed to her feet and looked around, struggling in the dark. How was she supposed to get out of here without her power?

  And what about the evidence? She wasn’t supposed to touch anything, or break anything, and now half the building was torn apart, and she’d touched things. She hadn’t even managed to stop Vanessa, and now her sister had the prosthetic arm with the fabricated power core, a vital piece of evidence they needed. What was she supposed to do now?

  Breathing hard, Vivainne fumbled for her phone. She turned it over and over in her hands, mind racing as she tried to figure out what to do. She would have to tell someone, wouldn’t she? Otherwise, the heroes would just find this place all torn up and find her fingerprints all over it. What would they think?

  No, she had to tell somebody.

  Her fingers trembled against the screen as she opened her phone, the light illuminating cracks that weren’t there before. To her relief, the phone still allowed her to open and use it, pulling up her contacts. Since her mother’s arrest, she’d gotten a new phone and phone number, and the only people in it were Recompense, Darcy, and Jordan.

  Jordan would be able to get her out of this, but couldn’t do anything about the clean up.

  No, she had to call Recompense.

  Standing in the middle of the wrecked room, she hit his name and pulled the phone up to her ear as she waited for him to pick up. Her knees went weak as she waited.

  The phone rang once, then twice, and then clicked as he picked up. “Vivainne?”

  “I, uh…” Her mouth went dry. How was she supposed to explain this? “I did something.”

  “What?” His voice went from conversational to concerned in a single inflection. She winced, shrinking back down until she was crouched on the floor. “Aren’t you in your room?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I went for a walk and I ended up at the lab and I found my sister—”

  “I’m coming,” he said, the words feeling like a condemnation. “Are you down below?”

  “What? No, no, I’m at Monet Industries Lab,” Vivainne said. The heels of her feet ached as she remained in her crouch, leaned over her knees and fighting back a wave of nausea. She should never have come here. Vivainne couldn’t even decide why she was here, what had drawn her to this place, when she wasn’t supposed to be here.

  “You’re… Okay, I’ll be right there. Stay where you are. Are you safe? Are you hurt?”

  “Safe, yeah,” Vivainne said, taking stock of herself. So long as Vanessa didn’t return, she’d be fine, and she didn’t think her sister would come back. She’d taken the arm, and the building was silent. Nothing but the creak of metal and cracking as a piece of the ceiling fell to the ground. “Hurt, yeah. A little.”

  “Okay,” Charles said. Noise rustled on the other end of the phone before air rushed into the room, pin prick of light appearing for a single moment before vanishing out of existence. Recompense and Jordan stood in its place, the phone clicking off a moment after they appeared.

  Two drones shot off from Recompense’s belt, lighting up the room as flashlights clicked on. Vivainne looked up, unable to move from her crouch. He hadn’t changed, still wearing a pair of sweatpants and t-shirt, with a red silk robe overtop. Jordan was much the same, rubbing at his eyes and blinking in the sudden bright light.

  “The hell did you do, Viv?” Jordan asked, and stifled a yawn halfway through.

  Charles lowered to one knee in front of her, eyes tracking the blood along the side of her face. “Where are you hurt?” he reached out, turning her head to the side as she slowly lowered her phone. Fingers pulled her hair aside, and she winced as they pressed into a pain in the side of her skull.

  “It’s not bad,” Vivainne whispered.

  He pulled back, and she turned her head back to face him, hardly daring to look into his eyes. “What were you thinking?”

  “I…I wasn’t,” she admitted. Unable to look at him, she stared at the floor, the light only illuminating how bad the damage was. “I went on a walk to clear my head and then I ended up here, and I was just looking around, I wasn’t touching anything. And then I heard a noise.”

  “So instead of leaving or calling for us, you decided to deal with it yourself?” he demanded, voice taking a hard edge she’d never heard before, not when he was talking to one of them.

  Her voice wavered as she kept speaking. “I wanted to see what it was, and I recognized her. My sister, Charles. My sister, and she’d been torn up. She’d been torn into… into a… cyborg? And I tried to get her to come with me. I thought you could help her, you know.”

  “Right.”

  “And then she wasn’t listening, and she tried to leave, so I tried to stop her.”

  “You tried to stop her?” He stood back off, pacing around the room before stopping back in front of her. “Why would you think it was a good idea to fight her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She won, I guess,” Jordan said. He whistled, taking in the damage. “What the hell kind of power does she have?”

  “Geokinesis, and electricity, and shadow manipulation,” Vivainne whispered back. At least, those were all the powers Vanessa had used against her.

  “What? How the hell does she have all those powers? That’s not really how skill-trading works.”

  “Prosthetics.” Vivainne pressed up against her knees and rose to her feet, swaying gently as the blood rushed to her head. The wound on her head pulse, but didn’t start bleeding again. “My mother gave her a bunch of prosthetics.”

  “That’s… kinda fucked up,” Jordan breathed. “You really should have called for backup.”

  “You shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” Charles snapped. She’d never seen his face so dark, glaring around the room, fingers tapping an impatient beat against his leg. “Stay here. I have to make a call, and then we’re going to the tower.”

  Charles stalked from the room, pulling the phone out of his pocket so fast they heard joints pop. Halfway down the hallway, his voice rose up, a barely contained shout.

  “Oof,” Jordan said. He closed the space between them, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t envy you right now.”

  “Thanks,” she said drily.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We all make those mistakes.”

  “Do we?”

  “Maybe not these ones specifically, but supers are particularly inclined toward trouble. It flocks to us, you see.”

  “Or we flock to it,” she murmured. She wiped a hand down the side of her face, clearing the blood away. There was more of it than she expected, blinking in surprise at the amount of blood on the back of his hand. “Ow.”

  “Not bad,” Jordan said, nodding at her hand. “Though, you won’t get a scar.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Vivainne said.

  “Nah, just means you don’t have any way to prove it happened,” Jordan said. He pulled up a sleeve, rolling it back to reveal a mottled white scar against his black skin. “Fought a meta turtle.”

  Vivainne raised an eyebrow. “A meta turtle”

  “Metafauna is no joke,” Jordan said, rolling his sleeve back down.

  Charles stomped back into the room. “We’re headed to the tower,” he barked, “get close.”

  “I’m in my pajamas,” Jordan protested.

  “You can go straight home after dropping us off.” He grabbed Jordan’s shoulder, then turned his attention to Vivainne. She dropped her eyes under the weight and condemnation of his gaze. “Vivainne.”

  She took Jordan’s extended hand, and he formed a pathway across space.

  They stepped out into the tower, in a room she didn’t recognize. Jordan stepped back, giving Vivainne an apologetic look.

  “I’m not sticking around in my pjs,” he said, and using his momentum in a step backward, formed a path through space and vanished.

  “Charles, I…”

  “I am not ready to hear excuses right now,” Charles said, cutting her off. He took a deep breath, speaking slowly when he started. “I need you to understand how serious what you did is. You broke into a crime scene and destroyed evidence. You fought an unknown super who disappeared, with no proof of their existence. You’re not a hero, not yet, and you cannot be doing things like this. You showcased terrible decision making and a complete disregard for the system, for myself, and for your sister.”

  “I don’t understand,” Vivainne said, shaking her head.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I pulled a lot of favors for you, Vivainne, because I know at least in part about what it's like to be in a situation like this,” he said. “I put myself in jeopardy to give you the chance to find answers, in a controlled situation, where you weren’t in danger. And you got the idea that it was fine to go sneaking around illegally because I let you do it once. This puts my judgment in question, and threatens the security of your baby sister.”

  “They’re not going to take her away, are they?” The panic built up in Vivainne’s chest the moment the words left her mouth. She’d just found her sister, just gotten her to safety. They couldn’t just take Vanya away. Not when Vivainne had heard horror stories about the foster system, especially about supers who landed there.

  “I don’t know,” Recompense said. He sucked in a deep breath, taking a step away from her and composing himself before returning his attention. “I just need you to understand how serious this is. I know you’re smart, Vivainne. Why would you do this?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, staring down at her hands. After taking Vanya to the park, she hadn’t been able to sit still, her mind racing as she tried to sort out her feelings and her goals and everything that had happened the past several days. “I just went out for a walk, and then I kept walking, and I ended up there.”

  She looked up, finally meeting his eyes. There wasn’t anything else she could say. She hadn’t set out intending to go to the lab, it’s just where her feet carried her, needing to see where her mother had last been.

  “We’re going to go talk to some people,” Charles said, pointing toward the door. “And I need you to be entirely truthful.”

  She took half a step back, crossing her arms over her chest. “When have I lied?” she demanded. She hadn’t lied, not really. Maybe she’d made some agreements she’d broken, but she hadn’t lied to him. If he didn’t trust her, she didn’t have to stick around. She could find somewhere else to go. At eighteen, that was old enough to get a job and find a place to live, and figure out what to do from there.

  He sighed, exhaling a long breath as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m trying to help you,” he said quietly, clipped and controlled, his frustration transformed into a strain around the words. “I can’t help you if you’re not open with me. I can’t help you if you don’t trust me.”

  “I do trust you.”

  “You don’t act like it. And I can only do so much work on that. The rest is on you.”

  The words settled like a condemnation on Vivainne’s shoulders as he pulled his eyes away, suddenly exhausted. Recompense pulled the red robe tight around his body, tying it at the waist and leaving the room. Vivainne followed, tracking his feet and never letting her eyes leave the ground as he led the way through the tower. She didn’t need to see the eyes on her, or where they could possibly be going.

  He led them to a secluded room, knocking sharply on the door before pulling it open. Stepping aside, he motioned for Vivainne to enter. Without another choice, she swallowed the building pressure in the back of her throat and stepped into the room.

  Most of the rooms Vivainne had run across in the tower were warm, welcoming in a way that put you at ease. This room was the opposite.

  A round table occupied the middle of the room, surrounded by an army of straight, hard backed chairs. Walls pressed in tight on all sides, giving little room to move around or breathe, almost clinical in their emptiness. The only thing breaking apart the slate gray walls was a monitor, currently disconnected from everything, mounted on the wall.

  Two people sat at the head of the table. A man in a dark grey wool suit, a nametag clipped to the front of his jacket. He fiddled with it, clearly displeased with the way it creased his too expensive suit. Vivainne hardly noticed him before her attention was consumed with the woman sitting at the very head of the table.

  Glitter flooded from her clothes. Literally, pieces of vibrant pink glitter littering the table where she laid her hands. A head of blond hair, dark at the roots, curled and pinned back from her face. Manicured nails and a smile too pleasant for the late hour, smiling across the room as Recompense shut the door.

  His presence, usually impressive, was nothing compared to this woman’s.

  “Recompense,” she said, the warmth in her voice calming the nerves fighting for control of Vivainne’s body. “It’s always you, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t seem to stay out of trouble,” he said, letting out a tense chuckle.

  “You could always retire.”

  “Because that worked so well for you.”

  She smirked as he sat down opposite her. “Well, I’m just filling in so Hana can get a well deserved vacation.”

  “And when you’re not doing that, you’re teaching,” Recompense said. He looked over his shoulder at Viv. “Vivainne, sit down. This is Artemis, acting head of the tower.”

  Vivainne’s mouth dropped open before she could stop it. She should have recognized that face. Anywhere else, she would have recognized it, but the hero had been out of the public eye for several years. Not that Vivainne had forgotten her. Too many clips and compilations of the hero filled her watch history, the vibrant pink hero who defied every expectation people had for a Hero of Earth. She’d aged a bit, and of course wasn’t wearing her uniform, but there was no doubt. Vivainne was standing in the same room as Glitterbomb.

  Glitterbomb, Hero of Earth, was going to tell her exactly what her punishment was for fucking up.

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  A gentle tap on her wrist brought her back to herself, and she rushed into the seat beside Recompense. With an effort, she managed to keep herself from spewing every idiodic thing that rushed to her lips, but not the blush that raged across her cheeks.

  “What’s your name?”

  Vivainne blanked. Artemis Carter, Hero of Earth, the famed and feared Glitterbomb, was asking for her name.

  She coughed and forced herself to speak. She couldn’t be so entirely nonfunctional just because she was sitting in front of her favorite hero. But she’d never imagined she’d be this close to Glitterbomb, not even if she became a hero herself, and being forced to talk to her was almost more than her body could handle.

  Why the hell did it have to be Glitterbomb?

  “Vivainne Monet,” she finally managed.

  “Well, Vivainne, why don’t you start by telling me what happened tonight,” Artemis said. “And then we can decide where to go from there?”

  Shooting a quick glance at Recompense, Vivainne received a nod and began to speak. “How much do you know, before I start? About my… Situation.”

  “I’ve been made aware of what’s happening,” she said. “And if I have any questions, I will ask. Jonah, here, may ask questions as well. He’s the attorney currently attending to your case.”

  “My…case?”

  “Your involvement in Vora Monet’s case,” Artemis explained. “He’s here to protect you and keep all the facts straight in regards to the investigation.”

  “Ah.” She breathed in deep, preparing to speak. She didn’t need to hide anything. That would only hurt her, Recompense had said as much. She had to trust him on that, didn’t she?

  The memory of his accusation stung as she began to speak, starting with taking Vanya to the park. It was the only place she could think to begin, and she talked until they came to Vanessa. The moment she mentioned her sister, and what had been done to her, Artemis’s brows creased together in concern. Before Vivainne could question it, Artemis asked her to continue, and remained silent until she completed her recollection.

  Jonah took notes the entire time, pen tapping against the yellow paper whenever Vivainne paused for breath or to take a sip of the glass of water placed in front of her.

  The pen clicked once more as Vivainne finished speaking. “To be clear,” he began. “You only acted once it was clear your… sister was threatening the integrity of the evidence.”

  “Yes,” Vivainne answered, quickly parsing the sentence. “She’d already destroyed most of that last lab, and was trying to take the prosthetic core with her.”

  “And she got away with the prosthetic?” This question came from Artemis, that concern back in her eyes.

  Vivainne couldn’t look at Artemis and admit the truth. “Yes,” she said, staring down at her hands. “I tried to stop her, but she got away. With the arm.”

  “Okay,” Jonah said. He finished writing on the legal pad before glancing to his left at Artemis. She gave him a nod and he pulled back from the table, quickly fleeing the room.

  The door shut behind him, clicking shut and leaving them in silence. Artemis looked across the table, meeting eyes with Vivainne.

  “And now we have to deal with you,” Artemis said, a soft smile still sitting on the corners of her lips.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You understand what you did showcases an extreme lack of judgment and poor decision making.”

  Vivainne swallowed. Was this where her favorite hero told her she could never be a hero? “I do.”

  “And you understand the jeopardy it puts Recompense’s standing in?”

  “I do,” Vivainne said. She didn’t mean to put his reputation in harm's way, and tried to make it clear during her recollection that he didn’t have anything to do with it. If she was the thing standing in the way of her sister’s safety and security, she would get out of the way. “And… and I will do whatever I have to do to fix this.”

  “That’s a good attitude to have,” Artemis said. “And you will make up for this. We prefer to handle these sorts of consequences from inside the program. We’ve found we can prevent more trouble down the line with young supers by providing a support system and consequences that instill a sense of responsibility and morality.”

  “Which means…?”

  “You’ll be doing some community service,” Artemis said. “Help around the tower. Volunteer work for the Unity system.”

  “Oh, okay.” That wasn’t as bad as she’d expected.

  “What specifically?” Recompense asked, speaking up for the first time. He’d remained silent throughout the conversation, his brooding more than loud enough.

  “The holidays are coming up, and the tower has several programs directed at the community,” Artemis said. “I believe Hana will agree with the decision. Those programs are a particular passion of hers, so she may have a specific idea in mind. You can participate as well.”

  “I was already planning to,” Recompense said.

  “Wonderful, because now it’s mandatory,” Artemis said. “You did contribute to this, after all.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, please don’t call me that,” Artemis said, groaning.

  Recompense smirked across the table at her. “You’ll have to get used to it eventually. You brought it on yourself, you know.”

  “I know,” she said, shaking her head with a rueful smile. “I retire and suddenly everyone thinks I’m old. Everyone forgets that someone has to fill these rolls. We can’t all be in the field all the time.”

  “I know,” Recompense said. “I do appreciate you dealing with this problem tonight.”

  “Didn’t think it was wise to wait,” Artemis said. She smiled and pushed back from the table, remaining in the rolling chair. “One last thing. Vivainne, how old are you?”

  “Eighteen. Why?”

  A smile curled at the corners of Artemis’s lips as she rose from her seat, eyes twinkling as she looked down at Vivainne. “No reason.”

  She walked around the room, laying a hand on Recompense’s shoulder as she passed by. “We should get some coffee,” she said. “Catch up before I have to go back to New York.”

  “I’ll come by in the morning,” Recompense said, following her with his eyes as she walked out of the room.

  The door shut behind her, and Vivainne turned to Recompense, the comment unable to be contained. “She was hot.”

  “Stop it.”

  “It needed to be said!” Vivainne threw up her hands.

  “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “I am,” Vivainne said. She sighed, looking across the table at him. “I am, I promise. But that was also fucking Glitterbomb.”

  He glared, and she dropped the smile. “Sorry.”

  “I just want you to learn from this,” Recompense said. He leaned back, letting out a long pent up sigh. “I don’t blame you for the way you behave, given how you were raised and who you were raised by, but you need to adjust. Appreciate what you have, don’t take it for granted, and don’t make stupid decisions. You’re an adult, Vivainne, you want to be a hero, and you want to take care of your sister. You know what those three require? Responsibility.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want an apology,” Recompense said. “I want you to think about the kind of person you’re going to be now that you’re free from your mother.”

  He pushed back from the table, checking the time on his phone. “Looks like we’ll have to find another way home. Jordan has patrol tomorrow, and I won’t wake him.”

  “I’m fine to walk,” Vivainne said.

  They left the room, passing quietly through hallways to an elevator far smaller than the one they usually used. He keyed in a code and opened the door, bringing them down to the ground floor. They passed outside into the illuminated parking lot around the tower. Gradually, they left the lights behind as they moved onto the street.

  In the dark, Vivainne risked touching her core again, relief releasing its hold on her shoulders as she found it was no longer fluttering. It had stabilized, and though the cracks were of course still there, they had not spread.

  A car passed them on the street, headlights blazing at them before flying past. No one else moved in the night, leaving them unbothered as they tracked down the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know how to trust you.” Vivainne looked up from her feet, glancing sideways at Recompense. “I don’t know how to trust people. But I want to trust you. I’ve wanted to trust you since the very beginning.”

  “I know,” Recompense said. “You’re just going to have to keep trying until you get there.”

  “I will.” she whispered. There was so much she needed to learn, and sort through, and this was one of those things. She knew she couldn’t go through life never trusting anyone, not if she wanted to do good. She also didn’t know what it was like to trust someone implicitly, to just know they wouldn’t hurt you, but Recompense was the first person she’d come close to that with. Perhaps she’d manage to get there, with enough time.

  He laid a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You will.”