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Author: Sabrina Labelle

Chapter 49 – You Want To Know What I Took From Charlie

“Welcome to your own personal hell,” Rachel said, twirling Miss Murder’s knife threateningly through her fingers. “I’m so glad we have this chance to talk.”

Miss Murder just glared back, unsurprisingly mute. Zoe and I hung back, willing to let Rachel take the lead on this. She was the one who had a personal history with the assassin, after all.

“I’m gonna make this really simple,” she continued, running the tip of the knife along Miss Murder’s cheek. “All you need to do is tell us where we can find the Celestial. You ready to sell him out yet?”

Both of Miss Murder’s hands were bound, and it was obvious she couldn’t talk. Was Rachel just mocking her? Was it part of her interrogation technique?

“You must be getting tired of him, right? Always following orders, killing on command? Or is that what you want? Is that all you are? A living weapon? If not him, it would have been your family, right?”

Slowly, the anger began to fade. Her eyes darted across to mine, then focussed back on Rachel again. She seemed to be ignoring Zoe entirely.

“You can’t mean to tell me you’re really okay with what he’s doing, are you? The number of people he’s killed? The number of people he’s had you kill? You think all this power he’s amassing is safe? You think you’ll be safe, when he doesn’t need you anymore?”

Miss Murder closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Was Rachel actually getting to her? Was she just playing us? Was there something I was missing?

“You’re already planning on turning on him, aren’t you? You know he’s dangerous, probably better than any of us. But you have to have realised you can’t stop him alone. He’s too paranoid for that. He’s prepared for anything you can do.”

Slowly, she nodded. She didn’t look relaxed, exactly –that would have been impossible with the light current running through her –but she did seem composed. It worried me. It would be too easy for her to have just decided to help us. More likely, she had a plan of some kind.

I looked at Zoe, who was staring intensely at Miss Murder. It looked as though she were trying to decipher something, but didn’t have all of the information. Not unlike me.

“I know the two of you have been through a lot together,” Rachel continued. “I know that you don’t have anything without him. So I’m going to make this really simple. I’m going to offer a trade.”

Miss Murder’s head snapped up, a sudden intensity in her stare. Rachel smirked.

“Give us the Celestial. Give me the Celestial. We’ll take care of him, and you’ll be free. In return, I’ll give you Charlie.”

What?

No, of course, this makes perfect sense. Rachel’s playing her own game, here. The only two significant threats to her are the Celestial, and Charlie. If she can take them both out…

Miss Murder cocked her head to the side, a silent expression of surprise and a request for clarity. Even Zoe seemed surprised.

Should I allow this? Give up my quarry so easily?

There was no way Miss Murder stood a chance against Charlie, though. Even if Rachel armed her and sent her at Charlie like a missile, what could she hope to achieve? Teleport her underground and leave her trapped? Even something like that didn’t seem like it could stop Charlie.

“You want to know what I took from Charlie?” Rachel asked, but the question was directed at Zoe and I.

“The reason she’s still a threat to us?” Zoe asked. “Yes, I would love to know.”

“I took her heart,” Rachel said.

Fuck off.

“Her heart,” Zoe repeated, sounding unimpressed.

“Not literally. The organ is just that, an organ. But back when we were still… together, we experimented. She wanted to find out just what she could survive. As it turns out, she can survive complete obliteration.” Rachel flashed us a grim smile. “All it takes is one teeny, tiny piece. And I have just such a piece.”

“Still impossible,” Zoe said. “For so very many reasons.”

“Believe it or don’t,” Rachel snapped. “The important thing is that Charlie wants it back. That makes it valuable.”

Miss Murder looked contemplatively at Rachel. Then she smiled. Zoe frowned.

“Sabrina. Do you have the girl’s phone?”

“Yeah,” I said, remembering pocketing it before tying her up.

“Check it.”

I dug it out. There was a messaging flashing on the screen.

“On my way,” I read out. “It’s from Ami.”

“Check the last message sent,” Zoe instructed.

Surprisingly, the phone wasn’t actually locked. The message history with Ami was the first thing to come up.

“She sent ‘Suspect trap. Sending location. Back me up?’ just before she attacked us at the warehouse,” I said.

“Fuck,” Rachel said, whirling around. “She probably followed us here. Zoe, can you-”

“On it,” Zoe said, heading for the door.

The door was hurled off its hinges, throwing Zoe backwards. She reacted quickly, but Ami was already through the door, blade drawn.

I felt psychic hands pin me against the wall at the same time as Rachel was knocked off her feet. The straps around Miss Murder’s limbs all snapped, and she was pulled forward out of the chair, separating her from the current that was keeping her from teleporting away.

Rachel and I recovered at about the same time, pushing through Ami’s telekinetic assault and lunging for Miss Murder, but she vanished before either of us got there.

Fuck,” I snarled, using my momentum to move towards Ami. She’d learn not to interfere in our business. The hard way.

I watched as Zoe evaded Ami’s cutting strikes with practised ease, getting close enough to rake her claws across Ami’s face. There was a splash of blood, and Ami staggered back, but before either Zoe or I could follow up the attack, Miss Murder appeared again, grabbing Ami and teleporting them both away.

“Follow them!” I bellowed. Zoe was out the door in a blur of movement, but Rachel stopped me from following with a hand on my shoulder. “The fuck?” I demanded.

“Following them would be a waste of time,” she said. “Zoe’ll track them some of the way by scent, but if Miss Murder was that easy to track, she wouldn’t have survived this long.”

“I’m not giving up that easily,” I said. “She’ll tell him what we’re planning, he’ll be prepared, we won’t stand a chance. Fuck. Since when is she in league with Ami?”

“For a while now, actually,” Rachel said, seemingly unconcerned. I wanted to hit her.

“You knew? And you didn’t do anything to stop it? You didn’t even warn me?”

“Why would I want to stop it?” she asked. “She never would’ve given up any information about the Celestial, even if we actually did resort to torture. And I’m not comfortable torturing anyone, regardless of who they are.”

“Then, what? You were just pretending to help me? Did you just want to see how far I’d get before it all fell down around me? I thought you wanted to take out the Celestial.”

“I do. And really, I’m a bit disappointed you still think so little of me,” she said, feigning pain.

“What’s the plan, then?” I demanded. “What are we going to do now?”

“Wait a little,” Rachel said, shrugging. “See where Miss Murder goes. Eventually she’ll return to the Celestial. Then we just hit him before he has the chance to get ready for it.”

“Huh?”

She laughed, and pulled out her phone. A few taps later, I was looking at a map, with a blinking dot on it.

“Come on, this is one of the oldest tricks in the book,” she said. “I embedded a tracking chip in her. Ami rescuing her was all part of the plan, since she knows she’d never escape on her own. Seriously, Sabrina. What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“So she’s gonna lead us to the Celestial?”

“Soon as she parts ways with Ami.”

“Let’s go, then,” I said. “Let’s go tear his fucking house down.”

 

Next: I Just Want You To Be Safe (Bonus)

Chapter 48 – We Have A Reputation To Maintain

“I think that went well,” Rachel said, as we left Zoe’s hideout together. “You’re a good actor. I’m impressed.”

 I was completely serious, I was tempted to say. I didn’t, though. It was useful, her still believing I was the same naïve teenager.

“We needed to make it convincing. We have a reputation to maintain, after all.”

“Think you can manage a repeat performance?” she asked, twirling a modified pistol in her hands.

“Assuming we can actually capture Miss Murder, sure.”

I was surprised Rachel wasn’t more concerned about that, honestly. Miss Murder had one ability, and that was to teleport. How the hell were we supposed to capture that?

Rachel had a plan, though. She always did. I just had to have faith in her. Could I manage that?

For Veronica, I reminded myself.

We made our way to a warehouse on the other side of the city, one where Rachel assured me a Stars strike was going to go down. I didn’t bother asking where she got her information. She’d yet to be proven wrong, and that was good enough for me.

We arrived before the Stars did, and spent several minutes observing the current occupants, more soldiers. It seemed like the military were sending more and more soldiers in by the day, regardless of how many of them wound up dead or infected. I guess there isn’t much else they can do, is there?

The warehouse was being used as temporary storage for several trucks worth of weapons and ammunition, and guarded appropriately. I counted at least two dozen armed soldiers patrolling, and that many again inside. I was curious to see just how the Stars handled that.

As it turned out, they handled it with lethal efficiency. Ten of them emerged from the shadows, silenced weapons taking out half the patrolling soldiers before the alarm was raised. By the time the reinforcements were surging out to defend against them, the other half of the patrollers were down.

It was impressive to watch, honestly. They outmanoeuvred the soldiers effortlessly, like they knew exactly where they would be in advance. Just how detailed a plan had the Celestial given them? How specific was his power?

“Let’s go,” Rachel said, as the last soldier dropped. We raced towards the warehouse, covering the last of the distance. Rachel activated something in her boots, and some kind of blast sent her rocketing through the air in a surprisingly graceful arc.

She landed in the middle of the kill squad, immediately grabbing the closest gangster by the neck, spinning around and throwing him against the side of a truck. The others opened fire, but I barrelled into two of them, slamming them into the ground without stopping.

We dismantled the rest of the team with our bare hands, making sure not to critically injure any of them. A few of them had those same electric spikes that were designed to take down people like me, but now that I knew to avoid them, they were easy enough to deal with.

When they were all crawling on the ground, grunting and groaning, disarmed but alive, we started to unload the crates of weapons from the trucks. We didn’t actually need them, but if it looked like we were just waiting for Miss Murder, there was a chance they wouldn’t call her.

We’d unloaded ten crates before she showed up. I noticed her first, barely audible footfalls as she teleported slightly above the surface she landed on. Just like Rachel and I had agreed on, I kept unpacking, giving no indication I’d noticed her arrival.

She watched us for several minutes, and we managed to get another few crates stacked up before she made her move. Three quick teleports, edging closer each time, but just out of sight. Had Rachel noticed yet? Did that really matter?

As I was wondering which of us she’d go for first, she materialised behind Rachel, dragging her blade across Rachel’s throat in a savage motion, cutting right through the muscle. Rachel twitched, went limp, and dropped. Miss Murder vanished before I could respond.

Holy shit.

I rushed to Rachel’s body, but Miss Murder appeared in front of me, a hand wrapping around my throat, and then the entire world moved.

We were in the air, falling. She vanished, leaving me to land on my own. The second I did, she appeared again, a vicious slash that carved through my cheek, blood spraying everywhere. Before I could respond, she was gone.

She’s been practicing. She knows how to fight someone as fast as me.

I considered changing forms, switching to Ami’s telekinesis. I’d probably have more luck with that, but it would mean revealing a power I didn’t want anyone to know about.

Not worth it. It wouldn’t help me capture her, which was the whole point. Without Rachel, I had no plan. All that was left was to run, really.

Miss Murder appeared again, running her blade across my back. A warm sensation began to spread as blood bubbled out of the wound. I turned, but she was already gone.

Goddammit!

If she wanted a fight, I’d give her one. She could teleport, but she wasn’t as fast or as strong as I was, and she certainly didn’t heal as fast. She couldn’t even hurt me, not really. I only had to catch her once to turn the tables.

I whirled around, trying to watch every direction at once.  Just try it, you psychotic mute-

There!

She appeared again, but before I could react to her, she stopped suddenly, her eyes bulging. Her body began to convulse, and she dropped to the ground.

What the-

Rachel walked up to Miss Murder’s body, a satisfied smirk resting on her lips. Her throat was still cut open, but there was barely any blood flowing from the open wound. But how? The damage was undeniable. It should have severed her carotid artery. Why wasn’t there more blood?

“Scared you for a bit there, didn’t I?” she said, her voice raspy and weak. “Figured she’d try and trick like that.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, staring at her neck. “How?”

“Made a few modifications. Made the vital stuff a little harder to cut. Nothin’ complicated.” She coughed loudly. It sounded painful. “Anyway. Let’s get this one somewhere safe. Can’t keep her like this for long.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Electric dart,” she said. “Was hard work getting enough voltage in such a tiny package, lemme tell you.” Another cough. “Should release a charge every few seconds, enough to keep her from using her blinking.”

Rachel ripped Miss Murder’s sleeve, exposing the skin of her arm. She pulled out a little box with wires attached, and strapped it the exposed flesh, then pressed a button on the side. I assumed it was a more reliable way of executing the same concept as the dart.

“Let’s get her to the interrogation room, then,” I said, picking her up. Rachel picked the assassin’s knife up from the floor, pocketing it.

When we got to the interrogation room we’d prepared, a different one to the last one, we were both surprised to see Zoe waiting for us. There was an almost vicious look in her eyes.

“What’re you doing here?” Rachel asked, her voice still strained and hoarse.

“I didn’t want to miss the fun,” she said.

“So you’ve finally decided to help?” I asked, accusingly.

“Just with this bit,” she said. “I want to see just how this one works. I’ve never met a blinker before.”

“And you’re not about to,” Rachel muttered. “Unless we fuck up, she isn’t going to be blinking. Only talking.”

That could be an issue,” Zoe said. “She doesn’t talk.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What happened to your neck, anyway?”

“Cosmetic damage, nothing more. I’ll fix it later.”

While they bickered, I strapped the now unconscious Miss Murder into the chair we’d prepared. Rachel ripped at her outfit, exposing more skin, and attaching wires. A constant current would prevent her from teleporting away.

I hadn’t seen her up close before. Curious, I tugged at the scarf that covered her neck and half her face. She was pretty, surprisingly so. Her features seemed Eurasian, and somehow familiar…

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Something wrong?” Rachel asked.

“I know her,” I said softly. “We went to school together. She’s… she’s my age. How did she end up like this?”

My gaze fell to her neck, and the blackened skin in the shape of a hand wrapped around it.

“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.

She stirred, her intense green eyes darting about the room. They settled on Rachel, and her expression shifted from determination to fear.

“Let’s talk,” Rachel said, grinning sadistically.

 

Next Week: You Want To Know What I Took From Charlie?

Chapter 47 – There Are Far Worse Things I Could Do To Him

I stood atop a rooftop, staring down at the street below. According to Rachel’s data, a concept that was meaningless to me, a patrol of Stars was due through the area within the next ten minutes. So long as she was right, I didn’t care how she came to her conclusions.

She sat on the rooftop opposite mine, looking down with a confidence that unsettled me. She looked almost serene, and I wondered if I’d make a mistake, bringing her along.

I glanced at the upgraded gauntlet she’d provided for me. Apparently this one was specifically designed to be able to handle people like Gabriel, and would siphon less energy from me. I’d never admit it to her, but it was a comfort to have it.

She hadn’t brought any weapons with her, which I was more than a little suspicious off. It was possible she had some tricks stashed away in that leather jacket of hers, but we were going up against a whole team of Stars. They were a lot better prepared than the other gangs.

Our eyes met, and she smiled. That was creepy. Creepier still was the way her eyes looked in the moonlight, the dark brown of her irises broken up by softly glowing lines of yellow.

Just how much had she changed about herself? I knew she spent a fair amount of time working on herself, but wasn’t there a limit to this kind of thing? How’d she even managed to do something like replace her own goddamn eyes? What else had she augmented? Is that why she was so confident? Did she just have guns that would pop out of her arms now?

The distant sound of footsteps caught my attention. I couldn’t see them yet, but from what I knew about my hearing range, that put them at about two blocks away. Perfect. I nodded to Rachel, and we backed away from the edges of the rooftops, not wanting to be seen too early.

I closed my eyes, focusing on my hearing. With barely a push, I could hear every sound they made. The gentle thuds of their footfalls, about six of them. Fairly typical sized group. No talking amongst them. They were keeping a comfortably quick pace.

Within a few minutes, they were below us. I didn’t need to say anything to Rachel, she would have picked up on it by now. Besides, the first move was mine to make. We’d already gone over the plan.

Finally. I leapt off the side of the building, enjoying the feeling of speed as I hurtled towards the ground. The gangsters didn’t even notice me until I hit the ground, my knees absorbing the brunt of the impact.

I felt a smile creep onto my face as I looked at them, their faces registering surprise but not, annoyingly, fear. Well, we’d soon change that. My grin widened.

Rachel dropped down behind them, cutting off their only avenue of escape. Not that it looked like they were planning on running, but it was important that they couldn’t. We needed to keep one of them. The rest, well…

Rachel had insisted we not kill any of them. A ‘favour to an old friend’ or something. I didn’t really care. Keeping them alive would make things only slightly more difficult. She never said anything about making sure they could recover.

“Nice night for a stroll, isn’t it?” I said, flexing my fingers and rolling my shoulders.

The gangsters drew closer together, forming a tight perimeter, guns raised and pointed at Rachel and I.

“You’re not actually going to try and shoot us, are you?” Rachel said, her tone full of condescension and disappointment.

I saw one of them fiddling with something on her belt, surreptitiously trying to dislodge it. A metal canister dropped to the ground, and I recognised it only a moment before it went off.

“Flashbang!” I cried out, squeezing my eyes shut. With Zoe’s enhanced senses, it was a considerably more brutal blow, getting caught by one of those. I’d discovered that the hard way.

I missed the flash, but the bang hit me hard, the deafening sound disorienting me momentarily. When I opened my eyes, the gangsters had split up, racing to take more tactical positions on the mostly abandoned street.

Rachel seemed unfazed. She reached into her jacket, pulling out a small metal sphere and tossing it into the air. As it reached the pinnacle of its arc, it exploded, filling the air with what appeared to be dozens of tiny darts.

Several of them impaled me, but I already knew I wouldn’t be affected by the paralytic toxin contained within them. Three of the gangsters were caught in the rain, and dropped in a matter of seconds. The other three had managed to find themselves appropriate cover. Wouldn’t save them for long.

We needed to figure out which of them was the leader. I’d been watching for clues in their body language, but so far nothing had given it away. We had to hope it wasn’t one of the three Rachel had already taken out.

One of them opened fire on me, the bullets ripping through my torso in a tight burst. Heat and pain washed over me, then cold as the fresh night air flowed through the open wounds, wounds that were already begging to close. I growled.

He opened fire again, but this time I was already moving, leaping over his cover, my hands around his throat. It was so tempting to squeeze just that little bit harder, but it wouldn’t have helped anything. I tossed him to the side, enjoying his grunts as he bounced across the asphalt.

A hail of bullets caught Rachel in the back, but they didn’t even penetrate her jacket. So it was bulletproof. I’d wondered about that. Should’ve aimed at her head, idiot. She whirled around, crossing the distance between her and her assailant faster than a person with her abilities should have been able to. How had she managed to augment her speed?

More gunfire directed at me. The one who’d dropped the flashbang. Perfect. As burning chunks of metal tore through my arms, I raced towards her. She stood her ground.

The moment before my fist connected with her torso, her hand twitched, and a thin metal blade telescoped out from a device she’d been concealing. I ran straight into it, driving it right through my chest.

That supposed to stop me, you- a debilitating surge of energy ran through the blade, and I felt my body twitch and convulse. The gangster wasted no time capitalising on my weakened state, drawing a pair of spikes from her utility belt and driving them into my shoulders. They seemed to keep the current going, and I could barely move.

“You think we’re not prepared for people like you?” she taunted, kicking my away from her. I fell helplessly to the ground, furious. “You’re nothing more than a child’s projection of a comic book hero. I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long-”

She was cut off as a dart hit her in the neck. She pulled it out immediately, but it was obviously too late. She wobbled, then collapsed. Rachel’s taunting smirk appeared above me.

“That’s gotta be embarrassing for you,” she said, reaching down to extract the spikes from me. “You barely managed to take out one of them.”

“Go to hell,” I muttered, pulling myself to my feet. My entire body ached. The Stars were really this prepared to take on someone like me? No wonder they were still operating. “Did you figure out who the leader was?”

“Sure did,” Rachel said, grinning. She pointed to the one I’d nearly strangled. “Caught him trying to radio for backup after you wrecked his shit.”

His hands were bound behind his back, his ankles tied together and his mouth gagged. It hadn’t stopped him wriggling around on the ground, trying to get away.

“You can carry him,” Rachel said.

We left the others on the street, unconscious and for the most part, drugged. If anyone else came across them, if any infected came across them…

“We can’t waste any time,” Envy said, whispering the words into my ear as if there was a chance that someone else could hear. “They’ll be fine. And if they aren’t, fuck ‘em. They shouldn’t have thrown their lot in with a gang.”

She has a point.

I carried the battered gangster, and he struggled the entire way to the interrogation room Rachel had set up. It was similar to the room I’d used to trap Gabriel, only a little more refined. It seemed like every time Rachel put her mind to something, she could make it a little better than the last time. That was something to keep an eye on.

With the door locked, we tied the guy to a chair, and removed his gag. He glowered at us, but said nothing.

“You ever interrogated someone before?” I asked Rachel, circling the gangster. “I was thinking of just breaking stuff until he talks.”

“As always, you have no finesse,” Rachel replied, running her fingers down his face. He twitched, and I realised she was running a tiny current through her hand. “I mean, I’m not saying you can’t break things. But there are far worse things I can do to him.”

“You’re all talk,” I said, placing pressure on the guy’s arm. I could feel his bone straining under the force of it.

“No, really,” she insisted. “I could place spikes on all of his bones, so every time he moved, he cut himself up from the inside. Not enough to kill him, just enough for it to hurt. Constantly. Or I could place a disrupter in his ears, so that he always feels off-balance. Or, maybe something that delivers an electric shock at random intervals, just enough to knock him on his ass.”

The guy was trembling, but whether that was from the pain, fear or a combination, I couldn’t tell. I pushed down just a little harder, the tension in his bone just on the edge of breaking point.

“Pfft, what’s to stop him getting all that taken out as soon as we let him go?” I asked. “We should just break his bones, one by one, and if that’s not enough, start taking pieces out, so there’s no chance they’ll heal properly.”

“Okay first of all,” she said, indignant, “my work is not that easy to undo. Second of all, who ever said we’d send him back to his normal life? If he doesn’t talk, I say we just lock him up somewhere dark and forget about him.”

“Finally, something we can agree on. I know just the spot, too. Nobody would ever find him.”

“I can’t help you!” he shouted, and we grinned at each other. Progress, finally.

“Can’t?” Rachel asked, stroking his face again. “Or won’t?”

Can’t,” he insisted. “I know you’re looking for the Celestial, but I don’t know anything that can help you. None of us know where he is, I swear.”

“Sure you can,” Rachel said. “You can contact him, right? We can trace a connection.”

“We get our orders via encrypted messages,” he said. “The only contact I have goes to an automated service that relays things back to him. There’s no way to get to him through me.”

“What do you think?” I asked Rachel.

“It sounds exactly like something he’d do,” she conceded. “I could probably trace him back through it all, but it’d take me weeks, and he’d probably switch to a new system before I did.”

“That’s not good news for our friend here, is it?”

“Not good news at all,” she agreed. “What do you want to break first?”

“I think…” I began, still pressing against his arm. My other hand rested on his thigh, and began to squeeze. I’d rip through the muscle before having any impact on the bone that way.

“Miss Murder can find him!” he shouted, squirming uselessly.

“And what good does that do us?” Rachel asked, procuring a scalpel she twirled effortlessly in her hands.

“Sh-she’s backup,” he said. “If you’d let me call for backup, she might have come. She could tell you. I-if you could get her to talk…”

“Now why didn’t we think of that?” Rachel asked, pressing the blunt end of her scalpel casually into his skin.

“What would make her show up?” I asked, squeezing his thigh tighter.

“A priority mission,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Important enough that he couldn’t just abandon it and try again later. I can’t tell you more than that, I’m sorry.”

We both stepped away from him at the same time. He looked confused, and very badly shaken. Still, he was unharmed. He should have been grateful.

“That’s all we needed, I think,” Rachel said.

“Yep, that basically covers it,” I agreed.

“So, what do we do now?” she asked. “We can’t just let him go, he’ll report what happened here.”

“I still know where that dark hole is,” I suggested.

“Tempting. Instead, let’s give him to Zoe. At least until we’re done.”

“Works for me,” I said.

“Alright. Let’s go wrangle ourselves an assassin, then.”

 

Next Week: We Have A Reputation To Maintain

Chapter 46 – Didn’t She Nearly Kill You

“You’re alive,” Rachel commented, as I stormed back into the room. She sounded surprised.

“You’re different,” Zoe added.

I’m better, I wanted to reply. After all, I had Gabriel’s power, now. The last part of the fight was a little hazy, but I had his power. That was all that mattered.

“I got what I wanted,” I said, shrugging.

“You killed him?” Rachel asked, putting down the circuit board she was fiddling with.

“No. We came to an understanding.”

“That sounds more like him,” Zoe said, surprisingly easy to convince. “Done with the distractions now?”

Not even close. Your pathetic mission to get yourself home is at the very bottom of my priority list, you monster. I need to find Haylie, then destroy Charlie.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said cryptically.

Zoe twitched, a clear sign of irritation. She was having a harder and harder time hiding it. Or maybe I was just getting better at spotting it. Either way, she was easier to read, which was an advantage for me.

“Oh, what now?” she asked, mimicking Rachel and putting down the bundle of wires in her hands.

“I believe I owe Rachel a debt,” I said, my rehearsed lines flowing easily. Rachel gave me a curious look.

“That’s unexpected.”

“I was… angry, before,” I said, and it almost sounded genuine enough to convince me. “I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” she said, her confused expression nearly managing to mask her scepticism.

“Now, I want to help you.”

“With?”

“Your side project,” I said.

“Side project?” Zoe asked, her focus sharpening on Rachel.

“The Celestial,” Rachel replied, answering Zoe and confirming my inference.

Zoe looked exasperated. If I was being fair, I couldn’t really blame her. She’d been stuck here for months, and despite trying to keep herself, kept getting swept up in all of the chaos this city seemed to be embodying these days. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t interested in being fair.

“I think we should bring him down,” I said. “He already found us once.”

“We don’t have the resources,” Zoe argued.

“On that, I disagree,” Rachel said, stepping away from her desk. Zoe rolled her eyes.

“You obviously have some plan in the works.”

“Purely conceptual,” Rachel assured her.

The two of them stared at each other, and the tension was obvious. Their ability to work together was being pushed. Maybe something to distract them would be good for everyone?

“Between the three of us, we can do anything,” I said, trying to channel the naïve optimism I’d been pushing before Veronica had died. They both bought it.

“I’m listening,” Zoe said, though her tone suggested otherwise. We both looked at Rachel, who hesitated for only a moment.

“Alright. Here’s what I know,” she said. “The Stars are the most dangerous gang in the city. Not the largest, but they’re the best equipped, best organised and they have the advantage of prescience.”

“Prescience?” I asked, unfamiliar with both the word and the application.

Rachel sighed.

“The Celestial can, for all intents and purposes, see the future.”

“Impossible,” Zoe said immediately.

“Lot of that going around,” Rachel said dismissively. “But to be more specific, he sees possibility and probability, so he always knows where to be, and where not to be.”

Well that just sounds unfair.

“How the hell do you fight someone like that?” I asked, feeling confident she had a plan, or at least a theory. That was her whole thing, right?

“He’s still limited,” Zoe said. “He has to be.”

“Right you are,” Rachel agreed. “His precognitive abilities seem unreliable when it comes to people like us.”

“Us?” I asked, feigning ignorance. It was new information, but I wasn’t nearly as clueless as I wanted them to think I was. “You mean like, superhumans?”

“Precisely,” Rachel said. “At a guess, I’d say our abilities create an exponentially greater possibility output, and he can’t keep up.”

“Convenient,” Zoe said, almost muttering it. It was a little out of character for her.

“I have a theory about that too, but we’ll save that for another time,” Rachel said. “Let’s focus on what we can do.”

Thankfully, they were both saying exactly the things I needed them to. They were happy to focus on the Celestial, who would bring me that much closer to Haylie.

“Alright,” Zoe agreed.

“His entire network has one very obvious weak point,” Rachel said.

“Him,” I chimed in, surprising both of them. I smiled nervously, almost childishly. Their focus returned to the discussion.

“And how, exactly, do we get to him?” Zoe asked, back to sounding exasperated.

“He’s not well guarded,” Rachel said with a shrug.

“How do you know?” I asked, prompting.

“More people knowing where he is makes him vulnerable,” Rachel explained. “He trades in information. He knows how dangerous it can be, so he relies on his assassin for protection.”

As if for impact, she rubbed her palm, the one that had been cute wide open after her last fight with Miss Murder.

“Didn’t she nearly kill you?” I asked, skirting the edge of provocative. Rachel shook her head.

“One on one, she’s dangerous, but I survived, and I was already at the end of my rope. Between the three of us, we’ll be fine.”

I couldn’t bring myself to take Miss Murder seriously as a threat. With the possible exception of Rachel, her power seemed like the least threatening thing to me I could think of. I mean, teleporting? She didn’t have superhuman speed or strength, just a knife. Even if she could take me by surprise, she couldn’t cause any serious damage, and I doubted she was fast enough to stay ahead of me, especially with Ami’s power.

“You’re assuming my involvement,” Zoe said, almost petulantly. Rachel bristled.

“I told you, it’s all hypothetical.”

You’re getting off track. Focus on moving forward, not whether it’ll work. It doesn’t matter if it works, so long as it gets me close to him.

“So how do we find him, then?” I asked.

“We start at the bottom,” Rachel said. “Go out into the street, snatch one of his lieutenants. Pump them for information, rinse and repeat.”

“How delightfully crude,” Zoe remarked.

“If you’ve got a better idea…”

“I do, as a matter of fact,” Zoe said shortly. “I’m going to stay here, and keep working on the Gate. If you want to waste time on this, fine, but leave me out of it.”

“Happily,” Rachel snapped. “Sabrina, come with me. We don’t need help, especially for this part. If you can provide the muscle, I can come up with a solution to this.”

“I’m all ears,” I said, as she led me away from Zoe.

 

Next Week: There Are Far Worse Things I Could Do To Him

Chapter 45 – All Alone And A Long Way From Home

He moved a lot faster than I was expecting him to. The moment he concluded there was no way to avoid a fight, it was like a switch got flipped. He launched himself at me, a blur of movement I could barely keep up with, even with Zoe’s enhanced reflexes.

He struck me in the temple, sending me staggering back, and before I could recover, he’d hit me again. Each blow was vicious, precise, almost surgical, knocking me further and further off balance. Though it didn’t quite register as pain, the impacts felt deeply uncomfortable and disruptive.

He knows how Zoe’s physiology works. The idea irritated me a lot more than it should have. The bastard had an unfair advantage, and he was pressing it from the beginning of the fight. And why shouldn’t he? There was no spectacle here, no reason to pull punches.

I grunted, leaping backwards to put as much distance between us as possible. I needed breathing room, time to think. Thankfully, when focussed, Zoe’s mind worked incredibly quickly, and I seemed to be able to channel that, albeit only briefly.

Think, Sabrina. What are his weaknesses?

From observation and conversations with Zoe, I knew a few things about him. He was a little more resilient than she was, but she was faster. They were reasonably evenly matched in terms of strength, though she was more designed to cause damage. She was a killer, a wildcard, a singular force of destruction. He was a protector, a guardian.

Zoe’s nails were incredibly hard and sharp. I’d seen her use them like claws, watched them shred flesh like it was nothing more than paper. That was an edge I had.

Gabriel was more intuitively observant. His brain was designed to take in body language and micro expressions, tiny pieces of information, and predict actions and movements. Combined with his incredible reflexes, it was very difficult to catch him off guard or take him by surprise.

His body was more durable than Zoe’s, with denser bones and thicker skin. She was lighter, which helped her move just a bit more quickly. He also healed faster than she did, by a small margin.

So I needed to target vulnerable areas, and do a lot of damage very quickly. The only way to make sure he couldn’t counter everything I did would be to trick him into expecting what Zoe would do, then doing something different. That would only work a few times, so I’d need to make it count.

Technically, I didn’t actually need to beat him in a fight, just challenge him enough that he was completely focussed on the fight. Even still, I knew part of me wouldn’t be satisfied without giving it my all, and he deserved to suffer.

The moment my feet touched the ground, he was on me again, not willing to give me even a second to shift the balance. At least for once someone was taking me seriously as a threat.

Almost without thinking, I put all my weight on my right leg, lashing out with the left quickly enough to catch him off guard and get him just slightly off balance. I tried to follow through with a clawed swipe at his throat, but he was already moving away from it. He struck low, aiming for my thigh, but I twisted away, raking my claws across his forearm.

Blood splattered outwards, less than I’d have expected, but enough to take him by surprise. He actually cried out, though the bleeding had already stopped, clotting in a matter of seconds.

Didn’t see that coming, did you? Arrogant prick.

He switched tactics, adopting a slightly more defensive style whilst maintaining his aggressive pressure. He dropped low in an attempt to try and sweep my legs out from underneath me, a move I barely managed to avoid. Before I recovered, he used his momentum to carry forward into a brutal hook kick, striking me in the jaw.

Fuck! Livid, I reacted instinctively, grabbing the arm that had struck me. He was already trying to twist out of the grip, but it didn’t matter. I’d used the hand that was wearing Rachel’s gauntlet.

I felt the familiar sting as it drained me, delivering an electrical current that would have been debilitating to any human. I wasn’t sure what it’d do to Gabriel, but I was hoping it would at least surprise him.

As it happened, it did more than surprise him. Whether by accident or design, the gauntlet seemed to react differently to him than anyone else I’d tried it on. I could feel it sucking a lot more energy from me than usual, and the shock it delivered was exponentially greater.

Gabriel twitched violently, and I let my fingers clamp down harder, holding him in place. Shifting my weight to one leg, I slammed my foot into his chest. The impact sent him flying backwards across the room, and he collided with the wall with a satisfying thud. I was already moving towards him to follow up.

“She was innocent,” I snarled as he recovered, rolling out of the way of my attack.

He lashed out again, but my reflexes saved me, twisting sideways and striking back. Zoe’s own ability to learn seemed to be catching up, and unless he had any new tricks-

His heel crashed into the side of my head, and for a brief second, I saw stars. He didn’t let up, turning his hook kick into another savage blow, and I staggered back.

No. Fucking. Way.

Still off-balance, I threw myself towards him. It was a stupid, reckless move, and if I hadn’t had the strength and speed of a genetically perfect killing machine behind me, he absolutely would have won the fight right then and there. Instead, he only managed to turn my momentum against me, slamming me into the floor.

I twisted in his grip, shoving the gauntlet into his face. He tried to get away from it, but he wasn’t fast enough. Another jolt of energy paralysed him momentarily, which was enough to rake my nails across his throat, sending a small torrent of blood spilling out.

He grabbed the gauntlet, applying enough pressure to shatter it, and my wrist at the same time. We both backed away, his throat healing only slightly faster than my wrist.

“I must confess,” he said, once he was capable of speaking again, “I did underestimate you.”

Envy whispered in my ear, appearing beside me without warning.

“I’ve nearly got it, but you need to maintain eye contact.”

“I’m going to destroy you, Gabriel,” I snarled, my chest heaving. I wasn’t technically out of breath, but my body had a habitual response to exertion.

The idea seemed to amuse him. He began to unbutton his shirt, already ruined with blood. As it dropped to the floor, he laughed.

“A sentiment I’m quite used to inspiring,” he said. “Nobody’s come through just yet.”

I shook what was left of Rachel’s gauntlet off my wrist. It was a shame to lose it, but she could probably build me another. I’d just have to request one without telling her how much of a difference it had actually made. I still didn’t believe being a ‘tinker’ was a real super power.

Gabriel’s smug expression taunted me, and it took all of my self-control not to race across the room and try to hit him again. Instead, I tried to relax my body.

“Then this will be a new experience for you,” I said.

“I doubt that,” he retorted, but his confidence waned as my body began to change. I let go of the sensation of Zoe, and it was like pulling a plug, all of her power being drained back into the core of my being. At the same time, Ami’s form began to flow in. I could feel my face begin to reshape itself, my hair straightening.

All at once, I was intimately aware of every corner of the room. My presence filled the space entirely, and I could feel Gabriel’s body, every tiny movement.

“What? What are you?”

“Don’t break eye contact,” Envy cautioned.

“You’re not as clever as you think you are,” I told Gabriel, speaking in a new voice. Recognition dawned on his face.

“Exxo? How?”

“Nearly,” Envy chimed in, and I could feel a very palpable tension between Gabriel and I.

“You’re all alone and a long way from home,” I said, wrapping my focus around his body, a thousand invisible hands grabbing at every part of him.

It would be so easy to tear you apart right now…

“Got it!” Envy said, breaking my concentration. It didn’t matter. I could feel a new sensation floating inside of me, a new energy. His energy.

I let his strength fill me, replacing Ami’s, my body changing again. His form felt resilient, tenacious, tense. It was like being a tightly wound string.

And male. I felt my body shifting back to a form I’d tried so hard to escape, a form that had never felt right for me.

Except this did feel right. With all of this power, it wasn’t so bad, wasn’t so alien. It was me.

Oh, it wouldn’t do permanently, didn’t change how I felt about myself, but it was nice, in its own way.

“What did you do?” Gabriel asked, sounding almost panicked for the first time. “Who are you?”

I grinned. No, Envy grinned. It wasn’t me.

“You already know my name,” she said, using my lips.

“No,” Gabriel said. “This isn’t you. Exxo was, is my friend. You’re not them.”

“Maybe not,” she said, as I shrugged. I couldn’t fight her. “It doesn’t matter. I have everything I need from them, just like I have everything I need from you.”

Stop, I begged, unsure if she could even hear me. Give me back control. Give me back my body. Please.

“I’ll stop you,” Gabriel threatened.

“You’re nothing,” I replied, and I couldn’t tell if it was Envy or not. She was gone, leaving the two of us alone.

Chapter 44 – It’s Not Like You’d Miss Me

By the time I made it back to Zoe’s base, my mind was made up. I felt resolve, clarity of purpose, and that felt good.

“Change of plan,” I said quickly, as soon as the door was shut behind me. Rachel and Zoe both looked up from their construction work. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief, playing it up for effect.

“Oh thank fuck.”

“Another distraction?” Zoe asked, equal parts critical and curious.

“I need Gabriel,” I replied, and she froze. Her eyes narrowed, and her lips curled into a sneer.

“No.”

That… wasn’t the response I was expecting. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t in charge, regardless of what she thought.

“You don’t want to be free of him? You’re enjoying hiding?”

“You don’t stand a chance against him,” Zoe said.

So people keep telling me. It’s getting a little old.

“So help me,” I said. “He’s down two teammates, and Ami isn’t exactly helping him. When will you get another opportunity like this?”

There it is. That cleverness, that calculating intellect. You’re weighing up the options, seeing the opportunity. You think I don’t know you, but you’re wrong.

“I don’t want to kill him,” she said. She sounded almost… tender.

“What?”

That was wrong. Of course she wanted to kill him. They were arch-nemesis, locked in battle for what, a century? Two? The details escaped me, but they were at war. His team had captured her. It was all…

“You’ll never understand,” she said cutting through my internal crisis. “We were born together. We rebelled together, ran together. We love each other, and always will. Just because we chose different sides, doesn’t mean I would ever want a world without him.”

But that’s not fair

No, that was a momentary setback, nothing more. I didn’t need her; it just would have made things easier. Well, whatever. To hell with her.

“So you won’t help me.”

“No.”

She went back to work, delicately but rapidly assembling tiny components, putting together what looked like a futuristic circuit board.

So that was that, then. Fine. Gabriel couldn’t be that hard to find, surely.

“I’ll help,” Rachel said. “But only because I don’t think you can kill him. I don’t think you want to kill him.”

Technically, she was half-right. All I really wanted was to take his power. Killing him would just be a nice bonus, after what he did to Veronica.

Wasn’t like I could say that, though. She couldn’t know stealing powers was something I could do, in case I ever had to fight her. It seemed unlikely, but I still didn’t trust her, not by a long shot. She had some other scheme in the works.

“Whatever,” I said coldly.

“Just tell me what you need,” Rachel said, sighing again. Zoe glanced up, and the two of them exchanged a look, but it meant nothing to me.

“Get me in a room with him,” I said. “And make sure he can’t run.”

I could have asked for more. Death traps, maybe. I didn’t want her to have any more control over the situation than I was already giving up by including her.

“You’re signing your own death warrant,” Zoe said, as I walked out of the room.

“It’s not like you’d miss me,” I muttered.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Zoe replied, just loud enough for me to hear.

Rachel joined me in the next room, frantically scrawling something in a large sketchbook. She met my eye, her hand still moving unsupervised.

“I’ve got a plan,” she said. “Help me build it and this will be over a lot faster.”

Perfect. Something to take my mind off of things, and the chance to pre-vet the place and make sure Rachel didn’t leave any nasty surprises for me, as well.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

We found an abandoned apartment complex, not too big, not too far from the city centre. I spent the better part of a day salvaging yet more scrap, a job I was very familiar with, and carrying them to the site Rachel had picked out.

She started working immediately, bashing down walls and setting up some kind of arcane construct inside them. I only caught glimpses, watching it all progress in stages, but I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what she was doing. All I knew was that it looked incredibly complicated, and she’d spent all of half an hour thinking about it before she started working.

“This was all off the top of your head?” I asked, dumping another pile of heavy metal in the middle of the room.

“That’s how my power works,” she said, shrugging and not taking her eyes off the wires she was delicately threading.

Twenty-two odd hours later, with neither of us resting, the work was done. Rachel showed no signs of fatigue, and she’d worked so fast, so relentlessly, I began to suspect she’d replaced herself with some kind of robotic clone.

When she finally did relax, though, it was the most human display I’d seen from her in a while. She groaned loudly, leaning back on her hands with her legs spread. I just watched as she let herself tip over, bouncing on her shoulder once and rolling onto her back.

No rest for the wicked, Rachel.

“So, now how do we get him here?” I asked, standing above her, arms folded. I wasn’t even close to worn out. If anything, I felt ready for a fight.

“Already took care of it,” she mumbled, eyes closed.

“How?”

“Don’t ask,” she said. Her eyes fluttered open, and she pulled herself back up to a sitting position. Our eyes met, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw concern. “Just… don’t die.”

“Won’t be a problem.”

She nodded, hauling herself to her feet, and brushed the dust and plaster off her clothes. We exchanged one final look, then she left.

The moment we were alone, Envy appeared in the centre of the room. She looked satisfied, confident even.

“Just do exactly as I say,” she instructed.

I didn’t bother saying anything back. She walked over to a wall, leaning against it, and I took her place in the centre of the room. Together, in silence, we waited.

It didn’t take long for Gabriel to arrive. I’d have to grill Rachel later to find out what she’d done to lure him here; it seemed very suspicious. He just walked in like he was expected, and even smiled when he saw me.

“Hello again, Sabrina.”

This is a trap, you idiot. Aren’t you supposed to be intelligent?

“Gabriel.”

He looked around casually, his posture relaxed and his expression friendly. We’d see how long that lasted.

“I seem to have walked into a trap,” he said idly. “How clumsy of me.”

His arrogance grated on me like nothing else had. No fear, no concern, just… indulgence. He was treating me like a child, playing pretend.

I’m going to enjoy killing you.

“Everyone seems to be underestimating me, lately,” I said. Time for that to change.

He smiled more broadly, his eyes locked intensely on mine. It was mildly off-putting.

“My apologies. What can I do for you, my dear?”

Arrogant, pompous shitheel.

“I need him distracted,” Envy said. Gabriel showed no signs of having heard her. “Thinking about you would be even better. Fight him.”

I cracked my knuckles, smiling genuinely for the first time in days.

“You infected Veronica, Gabriel. You can die.”

No fear, no concern. Just indulgence.

“C’est la vie,” he said.

Chapter 43 – Stop Telling Me Who I Am

“I have a location for you,” Zoe said, handing me a folded up piece of paper. “She’s there a lot.”

That was the first and last thing she said to me about it, which was exactly what I wanted. No questions, no warnings, just information.

It had taken her a few days. That was fine. I spent that time preparing, going over everything I knew about Charlie.

Number one, she was a better fighter than me. She knew her way around a fight, probably had some kind of martial arts training, and she’d been a costumed vigilante even before Impact Day. In a contest of skill, she’d kick my ass.

Number two, she was vicious, and she was clever. She’d lied to Rachel, manipulated her and used their relationship to get what she wanted, then left Rachel broken and half-dead. Her intellect was not to be underestimated.

Number three, her physical ability was likely on par with mine. I didn’t understand the specifics, but it seemed like we were both derivatives of superhumans from the other reality. My power came from Zoe, hers from someone called Wendy. From what I’d gathered, Zoe was the superior fighter, but Charlie was closer to Wendy than I was to Zoe. That more or less evened us out, in that respect.

That might have been a comfort, if not for the first two points. If we were equally matched physically, her skill, experience and cunning would all give her the edge. In a head-to-head fight, I’d lose.

Except I had more tricks up my sleeve. I had Ami’s power, too, and I’d been practicing. It wasn’t even close to perfect, but I was pretty sure I could do some serious damage with it, especially if she couldn’t see it coming. That would be my trump card.

Previously, Charlie had presented herself to me as a pacifist. She didn’t even want to kill the infected. I would have expected that to give me an edge, if she hadn’t then resorted to cold-blooded murder. No certainty there.

The plan was fairly simple. Corner her, fight her, see which of turned out to be stronger. If it was her, I’d bust out Ami’s power, take her by surprise, rip her heart out before she could do anything about it. If I was stronger, I’d do the same, but with my bare hands.

I still had Rachel’s gauntlet. I doubted its electrical discharge would do much to Charlie, but wearing it made me feel a little safer. Like I had an extra weapon, another person on my side. And I could feel a little more righteous about the justice I was dispense. Charlie definitely had it coming.

“Sabrina.”

Rachel was waiting for me by the entrance, leaning against the wall, one knee tucked underneath her. She wore a haunted expression.

“Don’t bother, Rachel.”

“I just want to tell you what to expect,” she said.

I hesitated.

“Fine. Talk. Fast.”

“You can’t beat her,” she said. “It’s impossible.”

Great. Thanks for the pep talk.

“Nothing’s impossible,” I said, taking another step towards the door. If she was going to waste my time, I wasn’t interested in waiting around.

“Sabrina, she’s immortal. Literally. No matter what you do, you can’t kill her.”

It was amazing how little that word meant to me. Was I supposed to care? Functionally, I was too. So was Zoe. So were a bunch of others. It just meant killing her would take longer.

“Good. I can do it as many times as I want, then.”

Rachel recoiled, clearly not expecting my anger. Little did she know.

“Jeez, Sabrina.”

“She has to have a limit,” Zoe interjected. I hadn’t even realised she was paying attention. “We all do.”

Rachel’s eyes darted between the two of us, and she looked uncertain, like she was trying to make up her mind. Her hands clenched into fists, then relaxed.

“No, you’re not understanding me. Zoe, you have a huge reserve of energy. Enough to draw on to heal your body over and over, but like you said, it has a limit. Your body is still a container for it. Take enough damage, and you wouldn’t heal. The energy would escape, or be used up, and you’d be dead.”

Zoe looked genuinely alarmed, more so than I’d ever seen her before. There was a dangerous glint in her eye as she stared down Rachel.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I understand how things work. So trust me when I tell you, Charlie is different.”

“Impossible,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “Energy isn’t limitless.”

“Charlie’s is,” Rachel insisted. “That’s my point. She is impossible.”

Who cares? She can heal herself infinitely? So what? That just means I can keep killing her, over and over and over and over…

“Great, well, you two nerds have fun arguing about that,” I said. “I’m heading out.”

Neither of them stopped me. I shifted into Zoe’s form, already wearing my costume. It felt like the appropriate aesthetic for avenging Veronica.

The address Zoe had given me was for a warehouse along the riverbank, beyond the commercial part of the city. I couldn’t even imagine why it would be the sort of place Charlie would frequent, but it didn’t really matter. As long as there was a chance I’d see her, I’d wait as long as I needed.

“Sabrina, please don’t do this,” Envy said, appearing in a nearby window. I just ignored her. She couldn’t stop me, and I wasn’t interested in hearing her lecture me about it.

I only had to wait for a couple of hours before Charlie showed up. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle. Thankfully, she was alone.

Finally.

I dropped down from my vantage point, landing directly in front of her. She didn’t seem at all surprised, just stopped walking, her hands in her pockets, her trench coat fluttering behind her.

“Found you,” I said, letting my lips curl into what I hoped was a vicious grin.

“Sabrina.” She smiled back at me, almost compassionate. Almost… pitying. Bitch. “I heard about Veronica. I’m so sorry.”

So you won’t even admit it. You’re just making this easier for me.

“I’m sure you are.”

Once again, no surprise registered on her face. And why should it? She knew exactly what she did.

“Ah. I see.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked, not really caring what she had to say. There wasn’t any combination of words that could convince me not to go through with this.

She didn’t even try, though. Her body language shifted, almost imperceptibly, to a more defensive stance.

“I can’t explain it in a way you’d understand. All I could do was make it painless.”

That’s it? That’s all you can say in your own defence? You murdered her, you killed my best friend, a girl you’ve known for years. But hey, at least it was ‘painless’.

“A luxury you won’t be afforded,” I growled.

That time, she did look surprised. Her eyebrows arched, and her eyes grew wide. Not with fear, more… curiosity. I hated her.

“You want to fight me?” she asked, the same way a concerned parent might question a child’s wardrobe choices.

“I want to kill you,” I corrected her.

“That’s not like you,” she said, still sounding concerned.

I caught a flash of Envy, still watching, still silent. Good.

“Everyone needs to stop telling me who I am. None of you know me.”

“Evidently,” Charlie said, sighing. Her shoulders slumped, but if anything she seemed to be relaxing, not tensing up.

Don’t underestimate me, bitch.

“How many times do you think I have to rip off your head before it stops growing back?” I asked, letting all of my malice and aggression flow freely. If she wasn’t going to be intimidated by my words, I’d just have to show her with my actions.

“Go home, Sabrina,” she said calmly. “Find a healthier outlet for your anger.”

Don’t. Talk. Down. To. Me.

“Are you threatening me?”

“No,” she said, sighing again. “I’m very deliberately not threatening you. I don’t want to fight you.”

“Scared?”

In that moment, all of the compassion disappeared from her face. Good, it was clearly fake anyway. She didn’t know how to feel compassion.

“Sabrina, you’re becoming a cliché, and it’s boring me. I like you, I really do. But don’t push me.”

That’s it.

“DON’T TALK DOWN TO ME!” I shouted, loud enough that several windows shook. Envy looked almost frightened. Charlie seemed entirely disinterested, which was only making me want to hurt her more.

“Don’t act like a child, then.”

“You killed my best friend, you sociopathic bitch,” I spat.

Just hit her, I kept telling myself. Talking is a waste of time. Just hit her.

“She was infected, remember?” Charlie said. “Blame Gabriel for that.”

Oh, I will. Right after I’m done with you, I will track him down, and I’ll destroy him too. I’ll destroy every last one of you, if I have to.

“You said you could save her,” I said, barely aware I was fighting back tears.

“I tried.”

“Not hard enough.”

She hesitated, her eyes scanning me. Reassessing my threat? Trying to decide where to hit first? Checking me out?

“I’m leaving, Sabrina. Do us both a favour, and don’t follow me.”

No. You are not getting out of this, you are not walking away from me. You will answer for what you did.

“Fuck-” I began, but the you never came out of my mouth.

“Stop,” Envy said, just a voice in my ear.

I was frozen, completely unable to move as Charlie turned on her heel, and walked away, calmly, patiently. The walk of someone completely without fear.

It was only once she was completely out of sight that I was able to move again. I collapsed to the ground, my entire body aching.

“What?” I choked out, confused and in pain. Had Charlie done something to me? Was there more to her power than I understood?

“I told you not to fight her,” Envy said, standing right in front of me. Not a reflection, no mirrors, just her, standing there. “She’d destroy you.”

“What did you do to me?” I asked, still struggling to talk. I felt so weak, when I hadn’t done anything at all.

“I saved you,” she said passively.

“You-”

“We’re not enemies,” she said, not letting me finish. “Sabrina. We’re in this together.”

No. No, no, no. This is not fair. This is not how any of this is supposed to go.

“You can control me?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. How was she here? What had changed? “I can resist you. It’s not just your body anymore. It’s ours.”

“I never agreed to that,” I said, shaking.

Of course it wasn’t simple. How could it possibly be simple? How stupid was I, to honestly believe I could just one day get all of these superpowers, and not have to pay a price?

“Without me, you’d be dead,” Envy pointed out.

“That still-”

“I know,” she said, and she sounded sincere. She placed a hand on my cheek, and it felt warm. “I didn’t want to ever do this to you, but I had to save you.”

“You betrayed me,” I said, too weak to even push her hand away.

“It’s my power you’re using to fight.”

I felt defeated, barely able to support myself. My body was shaking, weak, and I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. I dropped to hands, my chest heaving, letting the sobbing overtake me. Envy just stood beside me, one hand resting on my back, between my shoulders, the other gently playing with my hair.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It felt like hours. It could have been minutes. It didn’t matter.

I’d lost everything. I lost Veronica, lost my home, lost my purpose. I’d lost control over myself. I’d lost my future.

“You’re certain I’d lose?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said immediately.

“Why? What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

“Charlie, she’s…” Envy paused, and the pause felt pained, uncomfortable. “I don’t know the word. Essential? She’s like a law of this universe.”

What.

“What does that mean?”

“It means if you want to be able to challenge her, you need to use power from outside her universe,” Envy said.

“Like you?”

“Exactly,” she said, smiling.

“I already have you,” I pointed out, but she shook her head.

“I’m not strong enough yet.”

Yet. She said yet.

“So what do you need?” I asked. This fight wasn’t over yet. Together, she and I would get stronger. Then, we’d crush everyone else.

“Collect the power of the others,” she said. “Start with Gabriel.”

“And who else?”

“We need Haylie,” she said.

There’s that name again. It seemed like everyone was looking for Haylie. Even Veronica had written a bunch of notes about her.

Who was Haylie? What made her so damn important? What was she, their damn queen?

“Doesn’t everyone?” I said dryly.

“Gabriel first,” Envy said, ignoring me. “Then her.”

“Then Charlie?”

“Then Charlie,” she said. “I promise.”

Chapter 42 – Not Human Anymore

“Veronica’s dead,” Rachel said.

I just stared at her, willing her to take it back, to tell me it was a lie, a bad joke, anything. She shook her head.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure there was anything I could say. It didn’t seem real. Veronica couldn’t be dead. Charlie was going to save her, wasn’t she? How could she be dead?

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe Rachel had confused somebody else for Veronica. How did Rachel even know who Veronica was? Surely it was possible it was just a mix-up…

“No,” was all I managed to croak out.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “I-“

“Take me to her,” I said, cutting her off. It didn’t matter what she said. It didn’t matter what anyone said. I needed to see her.

Rachel looked hesitant, almost uncomfortable.

“Are you sure? She’s not…”

“I need to see,” I insisted. “Who did it? Charlie?”

“It didn’t look like Charlie’s work,” Rachel said, trying to conceal a grim expression. I immediately felt guilty, remembering exactly how intimately Rachel was familiar with Charlie’s… work.

“Right. I’m sorry,” I said, though even I didn’t really believe the forced compassion in my voice. I couldn’t barely think about anything other than Veronica.

Rachel didn’t say anything. The silence began to drag out, then Zoe joined us, as unreadable and aloof as ever.

“Who was she?” she asked, as if she’d been present for the entire conversation. Well, knowing what her hearing was like, she probably had been, wherever she’d been in our little base.

“My best friend,” I said, nearly choking over the words.

“Nobody important, Zoe,” Rachel said, almost like she was trying to argue with me. “Mortal. Inconsequential.”

Rage flared up instantly. How dare she?

“She was not-

“Why was she in the city?” Zoe asked, dispassionately.

Keep your cool, Sabrina. Zoe is not your enemy. She’s being logical, considering the angles. You need that.

“She was looking for me,” I said. “It’s my fault.”

“Why do you want to see the body?” she asked, catching me off guard.

What did it matter why I wanted to see the body? Did she not possess basic empathy? My best friend was dead, and she-

Right. Not human. Not even close. Of course she wouldn’t understand.

“What do you mean, why? She was my best friend. I want to say goodbye. I want to know what happened.”

She considered that for a few seconds, then turned to leave. As she did, she called back over her shoulder, “Don’t take too long. We don’t have that luxury.”

“You are not the boss of me, you-“

Rachel stepped in front of me, her eyes flashing with a warning of danger. It was enough to shut me up.

“Alright, I’ll take you.”

That was her last word on the subject. She grabbed her jacket, that black fake-leather thing, and a utility belt. Was she expecting a fight? Well, the city basically wasn’t ever safe. I grabbed the gauntlet she’d made for me, transformed, and we left together.

We walked in silence, keeping as rapid a pace as Rachel was capable of. I probably would have been impressed with her, under better circumstances. She was still recovering from her fight with Miss Murder, and between her skeleton and her portable armoury, she was carrying more weight than a person her size should even be able to support. Somehow, she still moved as fast as any athlete I’d ever seen.

She was so different to when we’d first met. No longer the frail, shivering husk of a human, ruined by Charlie; she was powerful, determined, unafraid. I had to wonder about that. Like me, her power was getting stronger. Where had hers come from, though? What was causing them to become stronger? At least I partially understood mine.

“You need to be careful with her,” she said, out of nowhere. “Don’t provoke her.”

This was about Zoe? Why did she care?

“Or what? She’s gonna attack me? Why would she? Besides, I can take her.”

I wasn’t actually as confident about that as I hoped I sounded, but it felt unimportant. Zoe and I, we weren’t enemies. We had no reason to fight, even if we occasionally got on each other’s nerves.

“I doubt that, but fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She seemed annoyed. Whatever. No skin off my nose. We didn’t need to be friends.

As we walked, I realised I recognised the neighbourhood. A deep, chilling dread washed over me.

“This is where I saw her,” I said weakly. “She was with Charlie…”

“I really don’t think-” Rachel began, but however she was going to finish that sentence got drowned out by my guttural scream.

I saw Veronica, lying on the ground, glassy eyes staring up at the sky. A massive gash replaced her throat. The pool of blood she was lying in had already started to congeal. The smell was overpowering.

“Veronica! Oh, no, no. Oh god, no.”

Whatever I’d been picturing, however bleak, however grim, it wasn’t even close to what seeing her in front of me actually felt like. I felt unstable, like the ground was moving, my head was spinning, the world was racing past me. Nothing felt real.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said, placing her hand on my shoulder. It felt heavy. I shrugged it off.

“Her throat is slit,” I growled, trying to focus on something productive. Something useful.

“The Celestial’s assassin?” Rachel offered, crouching by the body. “If Veronica was poking around…”

“She didn’t deserve this,” I said, barely able to look at her. None of this was right. None of it made sense. I wanted to hit something, tear something apart, but it wouldn’t help. Nothing I could do would make a difference.

“No arguments here,” Rachel said.

“I’ll kill them,” I snarled, as the thought crystallised in my mind. If not progress, then justice. “Both of them.” The Celestial and his wretched assassin. I’d rip them to pieces with my bare hands, and whisper Veronica’s name in their ears before they died.

“Hey, that’s a sentiment I can get behind,” Rachel said patiently. “But…”

“But?”

“You know how dangerous they are,” she cautioned.

“And you know how powerful I am,” I retorted.

Part of me knew she was right, but I didn’t care. It was the only thing left for me to do. I couldn’t save the city, couldn’t undo the damage that had been done. I couldn’t save Veronica. All I could do was get vengeance.

“You’d lose,” Rachel said. “We’d lose. At least, without a plan.”

“A plan?”

“We could help each other,” she said, suddenly focused. Intense. “Your muscle, my brain. We could find them, make them pay.”

Telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. Why? What did she get out of it? What did she care if I ran off and got myself killed?

“What’s your stake in this?”

“I have my own issues with them,” she said, shuddering. “Let’s leave it at that.”

I noticed something then, sticking out of Veronica’s satchel bag. Ignoring Rachel, I leaned down and extracted it.

“She had a diary,” I commented, more to myself than to Rachel.

“Maybe you shouldn’t…” she cautioned, but I ignored her. This was the closest I could get to what was going on in Veronica’s head, before she died. I needed to know.

“Heh. She had a name for you,” I told Rachel. “You met her?”

“Once,” she replied, looking uncomfortable. “I liked her.”

“She called you Silver.”

“Huh. I like that.”

I kept flicking through pages. All of the notes, they were so very Veronica. Reckless, analytical, passionate. And her determination to find me, to save me…

It broke my heart.

“Okay, we-” I began, but stopped when I saw Envy, staring at me from a window.

“She’s lying to you,” Envy said.

“What?”

“Huh?” Rachel asked, and I realised what it must have looked like. I stopped speaking halfway through my sentence. Dammit, I didn’t want her to know about Envy.

“Sorry, I…” I fumbled for some excuse, some explanation that would satisfy her.

“Phone call,” Envy suggested.

“Right. My phone. I need to… Can I have a few minutes?” I asked, certain I looked like a complete idiot. So long as Rachel left me alone, it didn’t matter.

“Sure,” she said, sounding sceptical. Still, she left.

“Talk fast,” I demanded, as soon as Rachel was out of earshot.

“The assassin didn’t do this,” Envy insisted.

“How do you know?”

“Traces of energy,” she said, as if that explained anything. Still, it was good enough for me. Envy was some kind of weird supernatural entity. It’d pass.

“So who did do it?” I asked. “Not…” If Rachel was lying, what reason could she possibly have? Who else could she be covering for?

“No, the cyborg is innocent,” Envy said, as if reading my mind. “Of this, anyway.”

“Then?”

“The Vigilante,” Envy said, and my heart stopped. “You’ve encountered her before.”

No. No, that’s not fair. I trusted her. I gave her a chance, I left Veronica with her…

“Charlie.”

“Yes,” Envy said. “I’m so sorry, Sabrina. I know how much this hurts you.”

“So Charlie did this,” I repeated, focussing once more. It didn’t actually change that much. It just gave me a new target.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll kill her, too.”

“What?” Envy said, clearly taken aback. “No, Sabrina, that’s not-”

“Not what?” I demanded. “Not a reasonable response? Not like me?”

Go on. Say it.

“Not like you,” she said.

“Yeah, well, surprise,” I snapped. “I’m not like me. Not anymore.”

“Sabrina…”

“No. Listen. Everything has changed. Monsters are real. My city is burning. My best friend is dead. I’m turning into a… I don’t even know what. I’m sure as hell not human anymore. And you, you are just a voice in my head. You don’t get to judge me.”

Too loud. Rachel probably heard. Whatever. It didn’t matter. Maybe she was scared of Charlie, maybe that was reasonable. I didn’t care. Charlie was going to die, one way or another.

“You’re right,” Envy said. “I’m sorry. Just, please, don’t go after Charlie. It’s not a good idea. You can’t beat her.”

“I can try.”

“Not yet you can’t,” she said, her tone still soft. “But I can help you. Trust me, and I can make you strong enough to fight her.”

Of course, she had her own ideas. Everyone did. Everyone just wanted to use me. Rachel had her schemes. Zoe had her schemes. Envy had her schemes.

“I don’t see why we can’t do both,” I said, dismissing her with a wave. “Rachel! I know you’re listening.”

“Only for my name,” Rachel replied, stepping back into the alleyway.

“Whatever. We’re going home.”

“Okay.”

I saw Envy watching me, watching us from windows and mirrors, but I ignored her. She needed me, and we both knew it. She’d help me get stronger, because she needed me to be stronger. That suited me just fine. We were just going to do it on my terms.

Rachel didn’t say anything the entire way back. She seemed pensive, lost in thought. For all I knew, she was just daydreaming about the next ridiculous weapon she was going to build. Didn’t really care.

I barged into the main room, surprising Zoe. Not with my presence, but with my attitude. She narrowed her eyes at me, putting down a welding torch.

“Zoe.”

“You seem… intense,” she said. “Did something happen?”

“Yes. We have a new objective,” I told her.

“Oh?”

“We’re going after Charlie,” I announced.

What?” Rachel asked, suddenly tense.

“Why?” Zoe asked, far more composed.

“You know why she’s a threat,” I said. “Let’s deal with her before she deals with us.”

A satisfied smirk played across Zoe’s lips. She folded her arms, leaning back against the bench behind her.

“You think I’m interested in your revenge fantasy?”

Don’t take the high road with me, you bitch. I know what you’re really like. I saw you tear apart those thugs.

“After everything I’ve done for you, you owe me,” I snarled.

“No, I don’t,” she replied, unfazed. “But I’ll help you find her. And that’s all.”

“This is a bad idea,” Rachel interjected.

“So I’ve been told,” I said. “I don’t care.”

Chapter 41 – Playing The Saviour

Part 5 – Celestial

Watching Rachel patch herself up, it occurred to me how severely I’d underestimated her. When Miss Murder had appeared and they’d both blinked out of the fight, I was half convinced it was the last time I’d see her alive. She was already exhausted, and she’d used all of her weapons. I’d seen her in a fight, and outside of a very durable skeleton, there wasn’t anything superpowered about her.

Zoe and I had been left with a couple dozen armed thugs, and for the first time, I’d seen her fight. It was terrifying. She moved like a wild animal, literally tearing the gangsters apart like they were toys. I only saw her get hurt once, a single cut that sprayed a tiny splatter of her blood against a wall. A second later, the gangster was dead, and the wound had already healed.

Rachel had dragged herself back in shortly after, bleeding but mostly intact. When I asked her about Miss Murder, she just grunted and said the assassin was ‘handled’. She staggered into her workshop, and the sounds of grunting and banging followed.

We began cleaning up immediately. There wasn’t a lot of stuff outside of the rooms of salvaged tech we’d really collected, and Rachel and Zoe had been pretty good at disposing of waste. What was left we managed to quickly transfer into a shipping container, which Zoe and I were capable of carrying between us. Perhaps not the most subtle, but in the middle of the night, in a largely abandoned city, we managed. Rachel stayed behind longer, and met up with us later.

All three of us laid low for a while. Zoe and Rachel more or less had everything they needed, at least for a while, so I spent my time trying to get the hang of switching between Zoe’s and Ami’s powers.

Ami’s power was a lot more difficult to get a grasp on than Zoe’s. Whenever I took her form, I gained an incredible situational awareness, as far around me as maybe three metres. It was an overwhelming sensation, like my body had expanded and was pressing up against everything nearby. I tried to visualise it like I’d grown dozens of new arms, extending out in every direction, and I had to manage sensory input from all of them, and learn to control them. It was like that, only much more complicated.

On the other hand, switching between the forms was pretty simple to grasp. In both cases, my body changed physically to someone with a physical resemblance to the person I was copying, but nobody would ever confuse me for them.

I kept Zoe’s as my main form, the sort of secret identity I claimed as the vigilante that protected the city. Considering it changed my race, build and even perceived gender, it was a pretty solid disguise. Ami’s form was more useful for utility than any sort of combat application, and I had a feeling my telekinesis wasn’t as potent as hers. It was possible I just didn’t have the same degree of control, though.

Only Zoe knew I could take more than one form. Rachel knew I could shift between my natural form and Zoe’s, obviously, but I deliberately kept my second transformation from her. I still didn’t entirely trust her. So far as I was aware, nobody else knew I could shapeshift at all, or ‘steal’ powers. There was that one boy who’d seen me shapeshift on the rooftop that one time, but I wasn’t particularly worried about him. Oh, and Charlie had insinuated something, before her declaration on TV…

Without much to do, I found myself wandering the city, enjoying the freedom of moving unhindered. With Zoe’s power it felt amazing, like I could do anything. Running as fast as a car, jumping over buildings, and hardly anyone in the city to hide from.

Then I saw Veronica. I wasn’t at all prepared to find her in the city, and I was immediately petrified for her. She didn’t have any superpowers, and there was a reason everyone was evacuated from the city.

She was slumped against a wall on a rooftop, and I probably would have missed her if I hadn’t smelled her from a block away. That was another weird side to Zoe’s power, her senses were ridiculously heightened, and though I didn’t immediately know that what I smelled was Veronica, I did know it was familiar.

She stirred when she saw me, giving me a curious sort of look, almost like she didn’t quite believe I was there.

“A rooftop is an odd place to take a rest,” I said, hoping my voice was different enough that she wouldn’t know it was me.

“Stay away from me,” she threatened. “I’m contagious.”

I could feel my heart drop down to my feet. Contagious? She’d been infected? Of course, the chances of her avoiding that were next to none. The damn virus, or whatever it was, was airborne, and there were plenty of infected around spreading it.

I did my best to keep my face neutral. She didn’t know we had any connection, and I wanted to keep it that way.

“I’m immune, it’s fine,” I said. “What are you doing up here? The city’s been evacuated.”

She shifted uncomfortably.

“Probably. Doesn’t matter. I can’t leave,” she said.

She couldn’t leave? Oh, she was infected. Of course-

No, that didn’t make sense.

“Because you’re infected? That can only be recent,” I pointed out. It only took a day or so to turn, from what I’d seen. “The evacuation was weeks ago.”

“I’m looking for someone,” she said, surprising me.

“You are? Who?”

“I…” She hesitated, and we locked eyes. She took a breath, and nodded. “My best friend.”

Her best… Me? She was looking for me? Oh, no, of course. I’d basically just disappeared once the evacuation was ordered. I hadn’t explained anything to anyone.

It was my fault she was here. Which meant it was my fault she was infected.

“They’re missing?” I asked, trying not to give away how I was feeling. It wouldn’t make sense to her.

“Yes. She should have been evacuated, but she wasn’t. I need to find her.”

I seriously considered dropping the disguise. I could just reveal myself to her, tell her it was okay, tell her she needed to be safe.

But it was too late. She was infected, and there was no coming back from that. If she knew who I was, what I’d been up to…

She’d blame me. It would be fair, but it would kill me. She’d blame me, she’d hate me, and I didn’t want her to feel like her sacrifice was in vain. She needed what little hope she could hold on to.

“How do you know she’s not dead?” I asked.

“I don’t,” she confessed. “But until I know that she is dead, I’m not giving up on her.”

Present tense. She was still looking, still fighting, even though she was infected. Still as tenacious as ever.

What a waste.

“If she was infected, you’d never know,” I pointed out to her, not entirely sure why.

“Yeah,” she agreed, coldly. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

Idiot.

“Sorry. I just… think you should get somewhere safe,” I said, knowing there was no point, to me saying it or her doing it.

“Too late for that. Infected, remember?”

She let that sit over my head for a while, unable to know just how much it was tearing me up inside.

“Yeah. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, what do you care?” she snapped. “You don’t even know me.”

I want to hug you so badly right now.

“I don’t need to know you to feel empathy. I wish I could help you.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

Another pained silence. What else could I say?

“Ah, hey,” she said, her hostility melting away. “I’m sorry. I’m a little crabby right now. Maybe you can understand.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to live,” she said, sounding a little distant. “But I did want to say. You’re… you’re an inspiration. It seems like you’re the only person trying to make the city safer, and not just working to some secretive personal agenda. So, thank you.”

Don’t do this to me, Veronica. God, you’re gonna make me cry.

“Making the city safe is my agenda. But thank you. I appreciate hearing that.”

Great, what a genuine response. You don’t sound like an asshole at all.

“Well, isn’t this touching,” a third voice said, surprising me. I knew that voice. She’d snuck up on me. How? I hadn’t heard or smelled anything…

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“Playing the saviour,” Charlie said, smirking. “I keep telling you, I’m not the villain here.”

“Says the person who threatened to kill someone on national TV,” I retorted. I’d seen what Rachel had looked like, too. Without Zoe, she’d still be a broken husk. Charlie had done that.

“How is Rachel doing, anyway?” Charlie asked, infuriatingly smug.

“You stay away from her,” I warned her. I might not have trusted Rachel, but she certainly didn’t deserve whatever Charlie was gonna do to her.

Charlie sighed, taking a threatening step towards me. My body stepped back before I realised.

“I wish I could,” Charlie said wistfully. “Unfortunately, that’s not an option.”

“I’ll stop you,” I said instinctively. Apparently being protective was in my nature.

“You can try,” she said lazily. “But right now, I need to take care of Veronica, here. Or would you prefer to let the infection take her?”

The way she said it, it was almost like she was threatening me. She knew how important Veronica was to me, if she knew who I was. Did she know who I was? I had to assume so.

Wait. What did she mean by ‘take care’ of Veronica? Surely not…

“You have a cure?” I asked, desperately hopeful. “That’s impossible.”

“No, not a cure. Nothing quite that impressive. But…” She tossed a bottle to me. I caught it before I even realised my hand had moved. “Still fairly impressive, if I do say so myself.”

“What is it?” I asked, feeling stupid. I looked at the bottle, but it was just a bottle, unmarked. It sounded like it had pills inside of it.

“Resistance,” Charlie said. “You and I, we’re immune. And we’re not the only ones. There’s just enough of me in these pills to keep the infection at bay. One every eight hours. See if you can’t do something similar.”

You’re okay giving this to me? If I gave it to Zoe, or Rachel, and it really does have your genetic material in it…

“Since when are you a chemist?” I asked. She was still a girl my own age. Unless her super strength came with some kind of super intellect as well…

“Oh, I didn’t do the heavy lifting here,” she said. “I just bled for them. Now take them and go.”

She obviously wasn’t giving me a choice. That was fine. Being around Veronica was difficult enough, and Charlie did not make for good company. Even still, she’d given me some small glimmer of hope. If she really could keep Veronica from succumbing to the infection, I owed her more than I’d ever be able to express.

“Fine,” I said, before jumping off the roof. It was the biggest mistake of my life.

The very next day, Rachel approached me, a haunted look in her eye.

“Veronica’s dead,” she told me.

Chapter 20 – Take It

I was not prepared for the violence of Ami’s attack. She threw herself at me with a frightening speed, a flick of her wrist turning into a diagonal cut that threatened to behead me on the spot.

Thankfully, as fast as she was, I was faster. My instincts, or more likely Zoe’s instincts, had me leaping backwards, light on my feet, just out of reach of her dancing blade. She was deadly, and brutally efficient, but every move she made, I seemed to know exactly where not to be. My body moved on its own, except that it didn’t, because every move felt intentional, and I felt completely in control.

A wave of what I could only assume was psychic energy knocked me off my feet, but body balanced itself, riding it out, and I landed gracefully on my feet. She never relented, forcing me back, keeping me on the defensive no matter what I did.

It was obvious she knew exactly what she was doing. My powers were the same as Zoe’s, and she must have fought Zoe countless times before. More than that, Zoe was an experienced fighter herself, and I, I was just a scrappy teenager who’d spend most of her life avoiding any sort of violence.

A small part of me wanted to believe that could work in my favour. Like, maybe I’d win by being unpredictable and raw. The rest of my brain, infinitely more practical, squashed that hope quickly. That only worked in movies, and as ridiculous as my life had become, it was far from cinematic.

As if to remind me, Ami’s next attack came closer than ever, her sword actually slicing through the skin of my forearm. It stung, but the wound healed itself within seconds of opening. She observed that with scarcely concealed frustration.

I caught sight of Envy, watching the fight with an expression somewhere between amusement and boredom, reflected in a glass pane. She caught my eye, and frowned at me.

“You’re not going to get far if you don’t fight back,” she said disapprovingly.

“I don’t know how to fight!” I protested, stumbling and recovering from another psychic attack. Ami was showing no signs of getting tired. If anything, she seemed to be energised by the encounter.

“You don’t need to,” Envy said. “Just watch what Ami does.”

“That is not how it works,” I complained, throwing myself sideways as I instinctively avoided a psychic wave. Ami hurled a crate at me, catching me off guard, but I twisted out of the way at the last moment.

“You really think Zoe’s power is just strength and speed, don’t you?” Envy said, sounding disappointed.

Irritated, I grabbed the crate I’d just dodged, and with surprisingly little effort, managed to throw it right back at Ami. A wave of her free hand was enough to deflect it, but she clearly hadn’t expected the retaliation, and I saw her falter briefly.

“Isn’t it?” I asked, my mind racing.

“No. She learns,” Envy said. I leapt behind another stack of crates, trying to focus on what Envy was saying. “Almost instantaneous muscle memory. Just try and do what she does.”

She pointed to a metal bar lying on the ground, on the other side of the warehouse. My eyes focussed on it instantly, despite the distance and darkness. Surely not.

I ran towards it, nearly losing my head to a surprise attack as Ami rounded the pile of crates. Once again, my reflexes saved me, as I literally leapt over her, flipping unnecessarily in the air above her. That hadn’t been intentional, and I wondered if Zoe was something of a showoff, and if I’d inherited any of that. In any case, I hit the ground still running, picking the bar up and twisting on the spot, turning to face Ami.

My body seemed to know exactly how to hold the bar, mimicking Ami’s stance perfectly. The weight felt right, natural, and my eyes scanned Ami’s posture, looking for any hint of her next move.

She lashed out, and my arm responded. I parried the attack easily, a flash of surprise appearing on Ami’s face. Frowning, she redoubled her attack, a vicious flurry of sword strikes that I was barely able to stay ahead of.

It occurred to me that if I stayed on the defensive, she would eventually get the upper hand. I only had to slip up once to lose, and it didn’t seem likely that she’d give up before then. I needed to go on the offensive.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than my body responded. A flick of my wrist and the metal bar became a weapon, and Ami had to throw herself out of the way to avoid it. It was obvious she wasn’t nearly as fast or strong as I was. If I could maintain the same level of aggression as her, she didn’t stand a chance.

All of a sudden, a stabbing pain in my gut stopped me in my tracks. Pain felt different while I was channeling Zoe’s power, more like an inconvenience than an actual concern, but it was so unexpected my body didn’t seem to know how to react.

I looked down. My stomach was bleeding, though there was no evidence that anything had cut me. The wound was already healing, but I didn’t understand what had caused it in the first place.

I felt another spike of pain in my shoulder, and more blood began to ooze out. Then my thigh, and my hip. Invisible blades stabbed at me, and I realised only then how much I’d underestimated Ami’s telekinesis. She’d been going easy on me.

A frustrated roar escape me, and I hurled the metal bar at her. It caught her in the shoulder, and she cried out in pain, distracted just long enough for me to charge at her, crossing the distance between us in a moment. I hit her, hard, and she went flying backwards, narrowly avoiding slamming into a pile of crates by creating what appeared to be a telekinetic cushion.

“You’re going to lose,” Envy said, snapping me out of my furious rampage. I snarled at her.

“You wanted this. I thought you’d be happy.”

A psychic blade slashed across my chest, and I danced backwards, realising keeping my distance from Ami was now imperative to my survival.

“Are you ready to listen?” Envy asked, her tone irritatingly petulant.

“I’m all ears,” I growled, still backing away.

Ami began to approach me, blade trailing beside her, a look of murder in her eyes. I wasn’t afraid, not quite, but every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run.

“Then I’m happy,” Envy said, evidently unconcerned about my plight.

“Great. Any chance you could actually be helpful?” I asked, as I scanned the room, looking now for any way to escape without having to get near Ami. I couldn’t see one.

“Take her power,” Envy said, her voice filled with cold power. It wasn’t a suggestion or even an instruction. It was a demand.

“What?”

I caught her reflection, a serious focus that was quickly replaced by a friendly grin. The change was unsettling. She was unsettling.

“What, you thought it was just a one time deal?” she asked, with an almost childlike glee.

“I didn’t- how?” I asked, as Ami drew ever closer. Psychic hands gripped my throat, lifting me into the air. I was out of time. If Envy was going to do anything, I needed her to do it now.

“Don’t you feel it?” she asked, as the grip around my throat tightened. “Can’t you see it in her eyes? Don’t you see your reflection?”

“I…”

I locked eyes with Ami, those dazzling, inhuman violet eyes. At first, all I saw was anger, mixed with a little fear, and a lot of determination. Then something shifted, and I saw deeper. I saw her. I saw myself. I saw everything.

“I see it. I feel it,” I said, completely forgetting about the crushing pressure around my neck,

“Now take it,” Envy ordered.

Power swirling around me, through me, into me. I knew what I had to do. I knew how to do it.

“Yes,” I obeyed.