LIBERTY

THE GIRL IN THE BOX

BOOK 60

ROBERT J. CRANE

Ostiagard Press

Liberty

The Girl in the Box, Book 60

Robert J. Crane

copyright © 2025 Ostiagard Press

1st Edition.

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CHAPTER ONE

Iwill never be free.

That's the conclusion I've come to after over eleven years in this racket.

And by racket, I mean, “Career that has taken literally everything except my life from me.”

And by “life,” I don't mean social life. It has definitely taken that.

I mean my ability to continue to draw breath. Like a vengeful ex with the judge on their side, it's taken every damned thing else.

All this passed through my mind as I listened to the clink-clink-clink of the metal door to the new Cube's entry rattle, some chain buried in the machinery pulling it back so that its sleek, gunmetal walls could be revealed to me from the concrete intake room where I was waiting with my bounty.

And by “bounty,” I mean, “criminals I'd beaten into submission.”

Waiting behind big metal door number one was one of the ubiquitous guards, in this case Pauline Caldwell, a thickset woman in her forties with graying hair and eyes almost as jaded as mine.

Almost.

“Nealon,” she said, with a wary look over my new friends, all of whom were bound to me by chains connecting their heavy leg irons and metacuffs to what could only be described as a lead. Or a leash. “What magical pieces of shit have you got for us today?”

“Some real high quality dickfishes,” I said, looking over my crop of crap. “Three murderers, two armed robbers, a couple rapists, and, for good measure, a pedo.” I glared at the latter. He was lucky he'd made it here alive instead of being unceremoniously thrown into a woodchipper somewhere in Arkansas. Not my call; just bad timing. Not one of them met my eyes. “Plus five from the riots in Denver and two from San Fran that have to be cared for until their power and complicity can be determined – whatever, why am I wasting my time telling you about these shitheels? Here, sign.” And I thrust my clipboard at her.

“I am acknowledging receipt,” she said, signing page one with a flourish, “of a passel of the worst human beings on the planet.”

Sadly, these weren't even the worst. Oh, they were bad, no doubt.

But I'd met so much worse. These were mid-level turds. They deserved to be flushed, but there were much more gawdawful pieces of crap out there. Fewer now than there'd been a few months ago. But human debris was not in short supply. Not in these days.

Caldwell paused on the page that listed the last applications of suppressant to each, raising an eyebrow. “You didn't go light on dosage.”

“It's non-toxic,” I said with a shrug. “And frankly, I don't give a shit if they ever have powers again.” I glanced at the rioters. Yes, even them. Yes, they'd been mind-controlled into destroying their cities rather than maliciously planning and doing it. But they were all mentally ill (almost entirely) drug users that formed the underclass that you couldn't take five steps in certain American cities without tripping over these days.

They slept rough, strewn about with all their belongings. Ubiquitous. Quarrelsome. Often on a hair trigger, and ready to do unexpected amounts of savage, unprovoked violence to whomever set them off.

I meant them, not me.

...Well, me, too.

Caldwell finished with the last of the intake forms my office had so carefully prepared, and hit that last signature before ripping off the carbon paper copies and handing them back to me. “We'll take it from here. Thank you for continuing to guarantee me job security.”

I rolled my eyes. “People committing crimes guarantees you job security. I'm just the agent of consequences.”

Caldwell could barely control her smirk. “Sure. You're a neutral arbiter.” She laid a hand on one of the prisoners and twisted his head toward me slightly. “This look neutral to you?”

He had a big bruise just beneath his eye.

I exhaled, an impatient noise. “Some do resist arrest, you know.” Especially that piece of crap. Edauntay Crist. A murderer, but his rap sheet also had convictions for armed robbery, assault, rape, drug trafficking, delivery of a controlled substance to a minor (selling hard drugs, in this case meth and heroin, to children), and a host of other misdemeanors totaling 118 prior charges and 52 convictions. (Almost all the rest were pleaded away during Mr. Crist's previous encounters with the justice system.)

Which was a clinical way of saying that he was up to his eyeballs in the drug trade, sold to high schoolers, murdered his competitors and sometimes even his dealers, and traded product to underaged girls in exchange for sex. All this he did with his metahuman powers and guns, both of which he tried to bring to bear on me when I came to arrest him.

In my view, a woodchipper was too good for ol' Edauntay. But the state of North Carolina, the county of Wake, and the city of Raleigh had different ideas, so here he went, into a prison in the Caribbean built especially for metahumans. And, if juries from all those jurisdictions agreed, here he would spend the next thirty to a hundred and twenty years of his life, encased in a cell in this gunmetal gray world, enjoying the fine fluorescent light bulbs that gleamed at all hours of the day, the constant surveillance, and the utter loss of freedom.

One could sympathize. But there was always the woodchipper.

“Looks like he resisted real good,” Caldwell said, pulling the lead and starting them forward into the intake yard. “I guess he's done with that now, though.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Edauntay piped up with the confident assurance of a man who knew he was not fated for the woodchipper. Not today, anyway. “We'll just see what happens.”

“Hey, did you hear about what happened to the last guys that tried to break out of metahuman prison?” Caldwell said, shooting me a look with only slightly masked glee. “The one in Minneapolis?”

“Nah, what?” Edauntay said, trudging along. I guess he was the spokesman of the group. There was one in every load.

“She killed them,” Caldwell said, nodding at me. “Every. Last. One of 'em.”

Edauntay made a noise in the depths of his throat as he cast a final look over his shoulder at me. You could almost see him gulp and accept that he was going to be in here for the long haul. “Well,” he said, under his breath, as the door rattled closed, “maybe she won't be around forever.”

But as it slammed shut with a reverberating sound that echoed through the intake yard, I couldn't help but be reminded that while I'd just delivered these men to their home for the next months, and, in some cases, hopefully, the rest of their lives...

...They weren't the only ones that weren't going to taste freedom for a long time.

Like me. I was never going to be free. Not at this rate.

And with that I turned to leave, so that I could get back to work so I could collect another bunch of these troublesome pieces of crap for prison – and not the woodchipper.

CHAPTER TWO

Jamal

Sometimes even I get caught up in my brother's bullshit.

You'd think that after all these years – and with me being the older brother – I would be immune to Augustus Coleman's bullshit.

I'm not. But not because I don't try to dodge it.

Mostly it's because he's my boss.

Which is a long-winded way of saying...sometimes I caught the worst assignments in the whole damned agency. A thought which played its way through my head again as I sat on a 17th century fainting couch in a suit and tie, the top button undone, my tennis shoes hanging off the end so as not to sully the fabric of this priceless furniture artifact.

The place I was in – mansion, really – smelled old. Not because it was old, but because the stuff in it was old. Real old. I hadn't seen a stick of furniture in the place that looked like it was from a vintage earlier than 1901. Draperies. Tapestries. The house had a turret! The location was a brick mansion nestled across the street from Forest Park in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Gateway to the west.

Gateway to my boredom.

Because this assignment, of all the ones I could have been given? Was the most boring of all.

Asset protection was the official name for it. A glorious way of saying I was the security guard in this lady's city mansion, watching the art collection while she was away at...I don't even know where she was. New York, maybe? I met the client for like five minutes before she took off. Nice lady. New money. Name was Faith Di Novo, a perfect name for someone with new money (“Di Novo means “of new,” in Italian).

Yeah, that Faith Di Novo. The healthcare company billionaire.

Which meant we were getting paid big bucks for me to sit on this fainting couch. A way of covering some of the charity jobs our gang was farming out these days to bring post-riots anarchy under control. Me breathing this rare air was happening at the rate of two thousand dollars per day, and for at least part of it I would be sleeping.

Not bad, especially if I'd been seeing every dime of it go straight into my bank account. Unfortunately, I wasn't, but then, I hadn't solicited the business, closed the deal, provided a contract for Ms. Di Novo to sign, and then paid for my skinny ass to fly out here rather than take a bus or drive from Nashville.

But that was fine. Because I was using my time sitting on the fainting couch to do a little side business for a profit, so as far as I was concerned, we were all good in the non-hood.

And it was nice. Forest Park just sat there, across the street, and I looked out at it through the windows, shades only slightly open in the parlor. It was 1,300+ acres of park that swaddled a zoo, art museum, science center, amphitheater, golf course – and a hell of a lot more. Site of the 1904 World's Fair. Surrounded by swank houses, making it the center of gravity for the wealthy of St. Louis all the way up until the decline of the cities post World War II.

The house had security, too. Every door and window was wired, every room with a window had a glass-break sensor that would detect anyone busting in. Cameras covered every square foot except the bathrooms; a small concession to privacy. And believe me, I'd checked the local network to make sure there weren't any hidden in there before I whipped it out to do my business the first time. I have my dignity.

So what was the point of me being here at two grand a day? Playing glorified house sitter, and ordering Uber Eats for every single meal while I stared at the walls and tapped away at my keyboard for endless hours?

I dunno. My only conclusion is that some rich people have too much money, so they feel compelled to give it away to others in ways like this.

And this, I thought, as I brushed my hand against the delicate silk damask that covered the fainting couch. It was probably the height of 17th century luxury, and it got blown away by my mid-dollar Rooms to Go leather couch at my apartment at home. Not nearly as nice as anything Augustus had, but not bad.

All told, Faith Di Novo informed me in the four minutes of conversation we had before she headed out, her art collection in this specific house was worth $48.9 million dollars – so guard it with my life.

And that was just what I was doing, with my laptop across my lap and an Imo's pizza box on the fainting couch beside me. If she was watching this on the camera, she'd be needing the fainting couch to come to grips with the pizza being on it, probably.

That was fine. I was prepared to accept some blowback from the client for this amount of tedium. It was better than hanging around headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee, lately. There, I was just another face in the crowd that called those offices home.

I put my head back on the wooden edge of the couch and sighed. I remember when what I did used to mean something. When I was part of a tight-knit team that was constantly saving the world, saving lives.

It had been a minute since I'd last saved a life. This was what I did lately. Watched real people’s persons (body guarding) and their stuff (asset protection) while other, stronger metas that were less related to the big boss (and his boss, our mother) did the dangerous work of trying to bring the wild, untamed American cities back under control after the chaos unleashed in the buildup and follow up to China's destructive war with us.

Secretly, I was hoping to tiptoe up to the line where this Faith Di Novo would want to have me reassigned so I could go do something more fun, more suited to my skill set than babysitting an art collection. We'd staffed up midlevel metas just for this shit. I was top shelf; why was I here?

Oh. Right. Because of my brother.

Which left me sure that parking my ass here, working on this coding side job for Cassidy, was the only productive use I was getting out of my time spent on this silk damask...

...Right up until I heard the sound of someone breaking in.

CHAPTER THREE

Augustus

Ifrowned as I was let into the police station jail in Atlanta. The walls were flat, gray brick construction from the era before metahumans were known – back before we knew people could punch through walls. The buzzer noise hurt my sensitive metahuman hearing, and I walked my prisoner forward with care, respecting her constitutional rights so long as she respected my Crockett & Jones Hallam Oxfords. (My $1,200 shoes.)

Which she did. Because Olivia and Angel had put the fear into her when they'd helped me run her dumb ass down on Peachtree Street in downtown.

“Come on in,” the woman behind the counter ahead said. She waved me forward.

I blinked in surprise. “Claire Caine? That you?”

She stared back at me, unamused. “That's Officer Caine to you, Augustus Coleman.” She sounded a little snippy.

“So sorry,” I said, pushing my prisoner forward. “Thought I knew you is all.” The lapels of my bespoke Savile Row navy suit jacket ($10,000) flipped open as I walked, revealing my crisp white Turnbull & Asser shirt ($750). No tie today. I was wearing my sleek Vacheron Constantin Overseas Dual Time watch, though ($26,000). It slipped out from under the sleeve upon the motion of my hand, and the reflection from it flashed in Caine's eyes.

Officer Caine gave me a sour look. She was the mother of one of my classmates growing up. I'd eaten chicken wings in her living room during Super Bowl XLIV. But I guess that counted for nothing now. “What do you got here?”

“This is Lorraine Brahe, the terror of Peachtree Street,” I said, pushing my perp right up to the counter. “This grungy lady's the one who's been scaring people out of their cars as they drive by. Uses her Rakshasa powers to make 'em think there's a something awful in the car with them, then when they bail out, she steals their purse, wallet, cell phone, other shit.”

“Hm,” Caine said, making a couple notes on the paperwork.

“I don't see why what I did is so bad,” Lorraine said, looking back at me, voice gruff. She was on the wrong side of forty and had been living on the streets for a long while – and it showed. “I need to eat.”

“Number one, you're not allowed to steal people’s shit,” I said, because I had nothing better to do while Officer Caine slow-walked filling out the intake paperwork. “Leaving that aside, there's also the matter of Marian Elavsky, Fay Gimenez, and Aleya Jean. Those names sound familiar?”

Lorraine just stared at me, then flicked her gaze away quickly. “Don't know what you mean,” she mumbled.

“Oh, I'm pretty sure you do,” I said, with a little more cheer and charm than was warranted in this case. “Marian Elavsky was the old dame who had a heart attack and died right in her car after you pulled your bullshit on her. Fay Gimenez is the woman who committed suicide after you scared her ass with the illusion of a decomposed corpse in the car with her while she was driving, so she jerked the wheel, hopped the curb, and splattered Aleya Jean all over Peachtree. And see, while I have a low tolerance for pieces of shit that rob others to pay for their drug habit, I have an even bigger problem when your shitty behavior causes innocent people to die.” I kept a light hand on her handcuffs; she wasn't resisting, after all. “And that's not even counting the people you injured as they tried to flee from your creepy trick, like Kathy Greathouse, Elma Berry, and Kirsten-Ellen Vaughan.” There were more than that, but those three stuck out because they'd all been badly injured by Lorraine's tricks. Elma Berry might never walk again, and Kirsten-Ellen Vaughan had lost her arm below the elbow. “I hope they throw the book at your ass.”

Officer Caine grunted at that, then looked past me. Reaching below the counter, she hit the button that opened the door behind me with an aggressive buzzing sound that made me grimace again. “Looks like you have some competition, Coleman.”

“Ain't nobody competing with me and my crew,” I said, with a scoffing born from deep within my throat. The big, heavy, metal door swung open and...

...I had to keep my jaw from dropping.

In came a prisoner, unconscious, dragged along by a short girl with mocha skin, hair pulled back into a high bun with braided details. She was looking out at me through her glasses, and when she saw me standing there, a little bolt of electricity ran over her hand, then across the whites and irises of both her eyes.

Taneshia French. The girl next door.

My last girlfriend.

I said her name as she dragged her prisoner past me, ignoring me in favor of Officer Caine. “I need this one darted and cuffed, please.”

“Oh, I got this,” I said, pushing back my jacket to reach for the syringes at the nine o'clock position on my (Hermès Reversible H – $1,000) belt. I had one buried in the neck of her unconscious prisoner before Caine even managed to open her mouth to reply. Then I pulled a pair of metacuffs out of the case that hung at the seven o'clock behind me, and slapped them on, making sure to ratchet them real tight. “There you go,” I said to her.

“Thanks,” she said, with a sliver of...contempt? To Caine, she said, “This is Niki Bradley. She's been tearing things up down in the Bluff with that bunch.”

“Got a reward outstanding?” Caine asked.

“I don't need it,” Taneshia said, her lips pursing in a tight line when she finished speaking. “Some of us do this for the good of it, not for the almighty dollar.”

“Ohhh, so that's why you're looking at me like I stepped in something,” I said. But she did not, in fact, look at me. At all. She kept her eyes front. “Boy from the hood makes good, people he used to know pretend they don't know him no more. Tale as old as the ghetto.”

She turned to look at me, and the disgusted sneer was something I never thought I would have seen from her. She looked me up and down, and it was in such a way as I could not recall her looking at anybody, ever. “I don't give a shit what you get up to, Augustus. But this thing where you do good and charge people money for it? You done lost your way.” To Officer Caine she asked, “You need anything else from me?”

“Not if you're not collecting a reward, no,” Caine said, head down, looking intently at her paperwork even though she was filling it out at a pace that would have made a snail embarrassed.

With that, Taneshia turned and left, Caine buzzing her out and leaving her half-conscious prisoner at my feet. Didn't even say goodbye. Which, given we'd left things in what I thought was a mutually agreeable place when we broke up, hit a little hard.

“Boy, she don't like you much anymore,” Caine said, pen scrawling so slow I could have written faster with it between my toes.

“I was noticing that, too,” I said, dragging her prisoner up to her feet. She came up easy; she'd been faking for Taneshia. Probably sick of getting zapped by my ex's lightning. “Guess some people get mad when you make a buck.”

Caine grunted, and gave me the eye. “Oh, you're making more than a buck, Mr. Coleman. You're a wealthy man now. Why, I'm surprised to see a fancy CEO like yourself come down here to root in the shit like a pig for your dollars. I would have figured you had employees to do this for you.”

I kept my mouth shut; the only reason I was down here doing this is because I'd used this trip as a tax-deductible, paid-for-by-the-company opportunity to visit my momma and my hometown. Not necessarily in that order. And when the case had dragged on a little long, I'd volunteered to take our prisoner to jail after capture so Angel and Olivia could move on to the next job.

Caine stopped for a second, and looked up at me. “You see your momma yet?”

“Not yet,” I said, a little tense. She may have been the reason I came to town – sort of – but I'd been busy. Helping. With the capture. Or at least supervising it while it happened.

“Hmm,” she said, letting me know exactly what she thought of that. And the tip of her pen slowed (how was that possible?!), as if to back up the contempt I'd been getting from absolutely everybody I'd encountered in this place.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jamal

In a house as buttoned up as Faith Di Novo's, the only noise I should have heard was the subtle sound of air pushing through the vents, or maybe water through the pipes.

Instead, I heard what can only be described as the sound of...straining.

Not a human straining. That would have included the sound of heavy breathing, maybe some running footsteps.

This was a different sound. It was materials straining. The sound of bricks crumbling away, of wood being pushed aside, plaster cracking, and cork insulation squeaking as it moved.

All damned eerie noises. And ones I should not be hearing.

I bolted to my feet, laptop clenched in my hand. I'd just been skimming through some lines of code for this Cassidy project I'd taken up. After all, I was supposed to have a lot of free time this week; might as well use it productively to slam dunk some more cash into my bank account.

The noise was coming from the second floor. I padded out of the parlor I'd been lounging in, into the bright white two-story grand foyer with the spiral staircase that swept up around the circular room. It was wooden and beautiful, and it squeaked under my feet as I set my laptop aside on the piano that rested at the base of the stairs and hurried my way up it to see what was happening.

I reached the second floor and the massive hall that encircled the foyer; doors opened off it like spokes on a wheel.

The sound was coming from the long, extended hall to my right, which led to the back of the house and the guest bedrooms. Pieces of art hung with lights below shining up on them lined the hallway, with its silvery wallpaper gleaming with reflections of the light.

Where the noise was originating was not immediately obvious. It was coming from farther back, and I hurried on, not moving at meta speed, but walking forward so as not to creep into an ambush. But not so slow as I'd miss what was happening.

The noise had become a steady sound, crumbling, cracking. Not loud enough to trigger the glassbreaks scattered throughout the house. Just a scraping, crunching noise as the exterior wall was slowly torn away. I burst into one of the bedrooms at the back of the house to find a hole in the wall just big enough to drive a go-kart through.

Within three seconds of my entering the room, it was big enough to drive a car through, the cloudy night sky shining with the reflected gleam of the city of St. Louis out this makeshift window.

There was a figure silhouetted against the night sky, hanging there as surely as Sienna when she hovered. For just a moment, I thought it was her.

But it was all wrong. The broad shoulders of a man, the extended height – way too tall for her. Long hair swirled around him, though. Bricks peeled off the facade of the house and flew past him like they were being suctioned by a giant vacuum, along with crumbling pieces of the interior plaster and sections of wallpaper that rushed out with a subtle ripping noise.

It looked as though I were staring out from a spaceship in a sci-fi movie, and the hull was punctured and being ripped away by the vacuum. I watched in stunned horror, until I finally mustered the presence of mind to open my mouth in protest. “Stop!”

The shadowed figure stared at me, head cocked. Pieces of building material seemed to swirl around him, oblong sections of rebar rotating around him like a makeshift cage.

He floated forward, apparently disregarding my command, and the debris came with him.

When I raised a hand to give him a zap, I figured out why.

My lightning hit the section of rebar closest to me. It leapt, diffused, across the two nearest pieces, chained over to each of the next and then grounded out on one in the rear, which extended out into the yard and out of my sight.

He had brought a lightning rod to a battle with a Thor type. And – not to get lost with the pun, but – it shocked me.

I gave him another jolt, and once more my efforts grounded out harmlessly, following the circuit around him and out of the house in a blaze of light. The flash of my attack lit his face for a second with each attempt, and I saw tanned skin, aristocratic features, and an unmistakable smile, like a taunt.

“Oh, Jamal,” he said, in an unmistakably thick European accent. Where in Europe, I wasn't expert enough to say, but it sounded eastern. “I'm afraid you find yourself now in a no-win scenario. The only question becomes: will you accept it? Or will you continue to rail against your fate endlessly?”

I sent another shock his way, with the exact same, pointless result. “I suppose we have our answer,” he said.

With a nod, he sent the rebar flying at me, almost too quick for my eyes to track it. Unable to do a damned thing about it, I jerked my head away, closing my eyes.

To my surprise, the feeling I felt was not being impaled, as I'd expected.

Instead, it was cold iron wrapping itself around my wrists and ankles with a groan as it bent.

I was twisted in the air, my legs ripped from beneath me. Chill metal bent around my chest, tearing my shirt, and ripping my pants as it snaked its way down both legs, cold against my skin as though I'd lost bladder control.

The rebar lifted me up to the ceiling and pasted me there, my arms bare and above my head where my shirt had been torn off, my legs exposed and trapped against the ceiling like the rest of me, naked buttocks along with my back touching the plaster, because every stitch of my clothing had been stripped from me by the rebar that now cradled my skin and ran down each limb like a splint. When I sparked it coursed through the metal, grounding out against the house itself.

Below me, the shadowed man passed, his face barely visible by the glow of the painting lights. “Just so you know – I'm not sorry it went this way,” he said with a smirk. “Enjoy your humiliation.”

With that, he brushed past, my lightning routed harmlessly off the bonds that grounded me. I heard him moving around for a few minutes, then the front door opened and the alarm klaxon started blaring.

But I was left hanging, naked, helpless, waiting for the St. Louis police to show up and free me from humiliating imprisonment.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sienna

“What's up, chica?” Alannah Greene asked me as I walked through the bullpen of the Franklin, Tennessee, office of our agency. “You look like you got a storm cloud enema brewing up your backside.”

The last bit she said in full hearing of everybody in the place. Which perhaps would have mattered more to me if I knew more than a half dozen of them by anything other than their first names. “You really need to work on your professional vocabulary, cousin,” I said, brushing past her on the way to my office, where I shut the door.

The place was full of people. Chock full of people. Overflowing with people, all ready to do my bidding in some way because I was one of the senior partners in the business, along with Reed (gone to England to open our first Euro branch) and Augustus (gone to Atlanta on assignment).

So I was in charge, I guess. Lucky thing the business ran without me.

Well...sort of.

My door sprang open a few seconds later and in waltzed Madison Gustafson. Still slim, youthful, dark-haired, and annoyingly peppy, Madison had started her career with us as a mole for a conspiracy of my enemies to make me feel pity in my soul for the wrongs I had done them.

Ha. Ha. Ha. That had cost her the lives of some of her fellow conspirators and several years of her own freedom before she'd gone on to redeem herself by helping me during the China war.

I still wasn't sure quite how to feel about Augustus bringing her on, but I couldn't deny the efficiency that had made her an effective mole the first time she'd worked for us was not an act, and it was better to have it on our side than working against us. I guess. (I was still stuck on being betrayed the first time; my Irish Alzheimer's meant that I forgot everything but my grudges).

“There are about a million items outstanding,” she said, closing the door behind her, eyes rooted to the tablet computer in her hand. She paused, glancing up at me. “Oh. Sorry. Did you need a minute?”

I was already in my chair, looking up at her, presumably in a state of full collapse or something similar. When had I last slept? A day or two ago, probably, before I'd flown with the last load of prisoners down to the Cube. “For what?” I asked with dripping annoyance. “What could I possibly do in a minute that would improve my life in any way?”

“I guess that really depends on how well your husband knows you,” she said with a smirk. Typical Madison. And typical millennial, always delivering the NSFW content right at W. Seeing my lack of pleasant reaction, her smirk evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. “We've got a request from Boston, highest priority. Seems a human prisoner developed meta powers and effected an escape. He's considered dangerous.” She flipped the screen around with a dossier on it.

“Mekhi Bonner,” I said, reading the name. Handsome fellow, though he did have that look hardened criminals tended to develop, the scowl-with-a-side-of-danger look that had allowed people in study after study to instinctively pick out convicted felons from pictures. “I wonder if he's any relation to our old pal Kristina Bonner.”

Madison flipped the screen back around. “Doesn't say. She's not listed under his known associates. Either way, Boston wants him back ASAP.”

I had my head leaning against the leather padding on my chair. “Sure. Boston. Why not?”

“That's the spirit,” Madison said. “You want me to assign you a partner for this one?”

I just stared at her.

“Right,” she said. “Working alone...again. Always, dare I say?”

“You dare to say a lot of shit you probably shouldn't,” I said, prying myself out of the chair. “Why stop now?”

“All I'm saying–”

“Beyond the shit you dare to say that you really shouldn't?”

“–Is that everyone in that bullpen is dying to work with the legendary Sienna Nealon,” she said, pointing at the closed blinds that covered my window. “From the lowest bodyguard and analyst to the – uh – well, Alannah–”

“I work better on my own,” I said, knowing the only people left I would actually want to work with – Olivia, Angel, Augustus, Jamal, Scott – were already on assignment.

“Suit yourself,” Madison said with a shrug. But she looked vaguely wounded; I suppose she did pick up an assignment every now and again, along with the other members of her family that worked for us.

I was too busy not caring, though. I had to get to Boston so that I could bring down this dangerous criminal, Mekhi Bonner.

And then the next one. And the next.

Forever and ever.

CHAPTER SIX

Augustus

Ifinally got out of there, and got my cuffs back. Both sets. Hey, they cost us fifty dollars a pair for the reinforced metal necessary to hold a meta. You try running a business giving fifty bucks away every time you collar a criminal. Which we did a lot.

Taneshia wasn't waiting. Not that I expected her to be. Puzzled by her behavior, I dialed up the office as I headed for my car, a BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe M850i xDrive ($110,000). I'd driven down a couple days ago, getting stuck in traffic in both Chattanooga and, yes, Atlanta. Hard to believe I'd left seven years ago and the already nightmarish traffic in this town had somehow gotten worse.

“Madison,” I said, once the Bluetooth in my phone had synced with the car, and I pulled out of the jail parking lot in a squeal of tires that caused somebody to honk at me. You could argue it was because I cut them off, but we all know it was because I'm a black man in a BMW. “What's the move?”

“The latest move is that I sent Sienna to Boston to deal with a jailbreak that just came in,” she said, voice perfectly clear on my car's Bowers &Wilkins Diamond Surround Sound System ($4,200 upgrade). “Also, I was reviewing assignments and noticed you sent Jamal to babysit a client's art collection in St. Louis?”

I was alone, so there was no need to conceal my smile. “It's a very serious assignment,” I said, keeping the smirk out of my voice. “High potential for danger.” There was no potential for danger. “Could get very involved.” He'd be sitting his skinny ass on a couch alone for the next week ringing up $20k+ for the firm while he watched porn on the internet or whatever he did these days.

“If you say so,” Madison said, clearly not buying my line of bullshit. “Just feels like there could have been a better use of his time, and that any one of our B-tier or below operators could have taken this.”

“Nah,” I said. “This one is A-tier all the way. He was needed for this. Our client's a billionaire. We owe her the best. Plus, we do well for her here, show our seriousness, and this becomes a regular job for us.” That much was actually true, though I had questions about whether Jamal would deliver the best. Getting my brother to deliver was like trying to get a dog to fly without a plane underneath him. Still, for these prices, he could sit his ass in a house in St. Louis and chill while charging breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the agency.

Besides, he'd been specially requested. I didn't feel the need to make that known, though.

“I guess that makes sense,” she said, but she still seemed like she had her doubts. I didn't much care, because I'm the boss. “There was a slight delay in Dallas for Byerly and his team. But we're still on the clock, so they're billing hours. Estimated completion by tonight. The June Randall and Veronika Acheron combo is working that assignment in New Orleans that you told me to prioritize...?”

It took me a second to realize what she meant by that. New client. “Refinery security detail. Right.”

“The initial feedback from the client is really good,” Madison said as I turned onto Lowery Blvd. “They were concerned, obviously, with the background of June, but apparently those concerns have been assuaged by our team's work. So we got an extension on that one for forty-five more days with a possible renewal for a hundred and eighty more – and it could go open-ended after that if they're still happy with our work.”

That was $180,000 right there for the forty-five days. Almost three-quarters of a mil if we got the extension.

How much of that did I get? Less than I wanted, but probably more than I deserved. (About $50k. June worked cheap so far, but Veronika did not, and I split my part with Sienna and Reed, who'd probably insist on giving June a raise for good work.)

“Good, good.” I nodded, hands gripping the Nappa leather with bold topstitching. Felt good. “This is how we win. Match up our high value metahumans with the people who need them and bam – money just rolls in. What else?” I cast my eyes forward; I was still minutes away from my momma's house.

“Nothing urgent or emergent,” Madison said. “London branch sent an update this morning, and their long-term contract with the UK government is paying dividends already. We're getting offers from EU member states now that are interested in contracting our services for various opportunities.”

“Basic stuff? Or more interesting ones?” I asked.

“Mostly basic – crime prevention, since they're seeing a metahuman-driven rise, and some high value protection offers – presidents and prime ministers,” she said, “but there are some more interesting asks. Like Germany, for instance, wonders if we can open up the sealed bunker in that castle belonging to a Henri B. Blanchard.”

“Yeah, we're not taking that job even if we could open it,” I said, because I didn't feel like unleashing a murderously viral plague upon the world. Or exposing how Sienna had stopped those who'd tried to unleash it. Some secrets were best left buried.

“Okay, we'll avoid that one. Anyway, it's all stuff that's going to require a lot of hashing out,” she said, “but there won't be much quick movement on it. They've put feelers out, basically, but they want to dance on the details before settling.”

“Great,” I said, with a surprising lack of enthusiasm. “So what I'm hearing you say is that...everything's running smooth and you don't need me to actually do anything at the moment?”

“Um...nope, we've got everything under control here,” Madison said.

“Well, that's new,” I muttered to myself after we'd said goodbye and signed off. I'd hired Madison thinking we could use help – hers and that of her siblings – in the field. The business had been at a critical juncture; our bodyguard division was taking off, we were receiving more requests for assistance than ever, because we'd all been in hiding from China for months and months, and there was pent-up demand.

Fast forward to now, and things were worse than ever – which was good for our business, because we put them right again. There were eighteen major US cities that had long-term contracts with us where we'd reduced their metahuman crime to nearly zero in a matter of months with some aggressive effort on our part and solid prosecutions on theirs. Turns out that crime is 60%+ driven by repeat offenders, and if you get them off the street, you're just left with the occasional random popping off crimes of passion and a few new offenders rising up to become your repeaters.

Put another way...yes, you can arrest your way out of crime. And it's not that hard. New York proved it in the nineties, turning the city from a crime-ridden slum that people made dark movies about to a Disneyland fantasy.

And, I reflected as I eased my BMW through Atlanta traffic, it was a problem I was getting real rich solving. Sienna and Reed, too, though you wouldn't know it to look at either of them. Maybe Reed, a bit, now that he was married and running our Euro branch. Which I definitely needed to visit, and soon – for tax reasons, surely. In summer. When I could take a few days and check out this fabled “Cotswolds” place that I kept reading about in the Robb Report.

The thought of Taneshia and what she'd said nagged at me a little as I steered the car across a couple lanes and drew a flurry of honks. I didn't even bother to flip them off, because they weren't worth it, and my mind was elsewhere. What was the point of doing any of this for free when all these cities and state governments were willing to reward us richly for the help? Cops and DAs didn't work as charities, so I didn't see why I needed to.

Money was freedom. That's how I saw it. And I'd been raised in a prison of poverty – one of the worst neighborhoods in Atlanta – where the only people who could drive a car like this one, or wear a suit like the one I was wearing, or have a watch like the Vacheron Constantin on my wrist – were drug dealers, rap stars, or those who did both. The Coca-Cola executives didn't live in my hood; the people who owned and worked in the big towers downtown didn't lay their heads down at night in my zip code.

I'd been poor. Now I was rich. And I never wanted to be the former again. That thought guided me as I rolled along at eight miles per hour, heading back to where I'd started from.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jamal

It took the St. Louis police about four minutes to arrive after the alarm went off, but almost two hours to free me from where I hung, naked, on the ceiling. And in the end, they didn't even do it. At a certain point, the force that held up the rebar simply collapsed, probably when the meta that imprisoned me either died (I could hope) or let me loose.

Either way, I came tumbling down onto three of St. Louis's finest and one working man who was trying to pry the rebar. I crashed onto them, prompting a lot of shouting and cops rushing in from other rooms only to find themselves snickering.

I was, however, still stuck having pieces of rebar wrapped around my arms and legs because, unlike the pieces across my chest and groin, he'd bent these tightly around me.

The workman, a rough-looking older guy named Felix, stared at me with a frown. “Gonna need an angle grinder to cut those off.” He didn't seem as distressed about being landed on by a naked man as the three cops did. They'd all retreated, rubbing the bruises from my body and the iron pieces clobbering them on the fall from the ten-foot ceilings.

“Nah,” I said. Now that I was free I could grab the rebar and bend it back. Which I did. The first piece dropped to the floor with a clang, followed by the next three.

“Hey, champ.” Detective Kris McMahon, a cynical-looking Asian lady who'd introduced herself while I was hanging from the ceiling, sidled over, a silky bedspread clutched in her hand. She offered it to me from as far a distance as she could without being in the next county, head turned away from my nakedness. “Mind putting this on? There aren't any kids in here or anything, but some of us could do without the peep show.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, taking it up and wrapping it around myself like a toga, taking particular care to make sure the slit went up my side and not the front or back. My modesty was toast, this was closing the barn door long after the horse had departed, but it was all I had in terms of reclaiming my tattered dignity, and I was all about it. My cheeks felt like they were on fire, and I doubted that feeling was going to subside anytime soon. “You figure anything out yet?”

Detective McMahon beckoned to me, and I followed her downstairs, my toga trailing on every step. “After the perp clashed with you, seems like he went to a specific spot in the house. Just a guess on our part, since without you or the owner to verify, we're kinda in the dark here.”

Once we reached the main floor, we took a left at the bottom of the staircase. Crossing the grand foyer, now filled with local cops poking around, we entered the living room, which resembled a salon from the palaces of a bygone era, the kind of place where you could host an elegant party. Wood floors, floor-to-ceiling windows covered by luxurious draperies. Not my style, but not bad.

On the far wall, paintings had hung from about waist height all the way up to a couple feet above the twelve-foot ceiling. About three paintings had hung on each side of the archway into the living room beyond. One of them was clearly missing.

“Any idea what was hanging here?” McMahon asked, putting her hands on her hips. Turning to look at me, she paused; the curtains had been pulled back for two of the windows facing the back of the house, and we were treated to a sweeping view of the house's pool deck, which was lit up like daylight. “Based on the rest of the house, I'm guessing it was something expensive.”

“I didn't get specifics,” I said, readjusting the bedspread. “The homeowner – my employer – just said she had an expensive art collection. In the tens of millions. How that money breaks down per painting is above my pay grade – and my expertise.”

“She's got real good taste,” came a voice from behind us. I turned to find Felix standing there with his tool bag. He nodded at the far wall. “That's a Monet. That one's a Rembrandt. On the other side you've got a Chagall, if I'm not mistaken. Lovely brushstrokes.”

I exchanged a look with McMahon; she was as surprised as I was by this erstwhile art expert. “What do you know about these paintings?” she asked him.

“Just a little,” he said, easing a little closer, clearly enraptured by what he was seeing. He looked over at McMahon. “My wife and I have a family membership at St. Louis Art Museum. You know – across the street in Forest Park.”

McMahon had her hand over her mouth and was rubbing her chin furiously as she signaled a nearby uniformed officer. “Get at least two patrolmen over to the St. Louis Art Museum in the park and make sure it hasn't been robbed.” After she got a “Yes, ma'am,” she turned back to Felix. “Would you consider yourself an art expert?”

“Me?” He bumped his free hand against his chest in surprise. “No, I'm just a casual enjoyer of the arts. A small patron. Whoever put this collection together is an expert.”

“Hey,” McMahon barked at an older uniformed cop that was crossing the foyer, beckoning her in. She entered the room, platinum hair with darker highlights streaked through it, holding back the hints of her age, which I pegged as late forties. “Felix, this is Officer Carrington Nye. She's going to walk you around the rest of the house, you're going to look at everything, see what you can identify, and Officer Nye's going to write that all down. Okay?” She smiled thinly. “Get to it.”

She did not wait for Nye or Felix to assent. Instead, she beckoned me forward toward that empty gap in the wall where a painting had once hung. As Officer Nye shuffled out of the room, grumbling under her breath, McMahon lowered her voice to speak to me. “If they find any others missing, maybe this was a multi-target robbery. Otherwise,” and she turned her gaze to that blank space above us, “I'm inclined to think that this robber of yours had a personal motive.”

I nodded. “He pinned me up to that ceiling like it was nothing. He knew I was here, he knew how to neutralize me – these are not common things in my line of work, Detective McMahon.”

She hesitated, and when she spoke, she sounded vaguely annoyed. “I've seen you naked. You should probably call me Kris.”

“I have a girlfriend,” was all I could think to say. No, I hadn't seen ArcheGrey1819 in a minute, and no, we didn't have what you might call a real formal relationship...but still. Girlfriend.

She looked back at me like I was an idiot. “Okay, Private Detective Coleman–”

“Sorry,” I said. “You can call me Jamal.”

She did a mocking curtsy, which was a funny thing to watch for a woman in dress pants and a white blouse. “Great. Now that we've got the formalities out of the way – is there anything else you can tell me about this guy who tunneled through the wall – upstairs, no less – subdued you with his telekinetic powers, and then proceeded to steal one stinking painting from among a veritable feast of them, any one of which could retire a middle-class family?” She waved her hand to indicate the masterworks on the wall beside us.

“Yeah,” I said, sifting through the moments of my encounter with the man who'd done this to me. “I got the feeling that whatever he might have stolen here...that he had some kind of personal grudge against me. Which is funny because, as far as I know, I'd never met the guy until tonight.”

“Explain,” McMahon said, crossing her arms.

“Sure,” I said. “See, not only was he loaded for bear – or me, I guess – but he specifically pinned me to the ceiling. Why? He didn't have to do that. He could have staked me, fully clothed, to the ground, and it would have had the exact same effect. He chose to humiliate me. Further, he could have just floated out the same way he came and you would not have gotten here in four minutes. You might not even have gotten here in the morning, because the neighbors probably can't see the hole in the back of the house. It might have been days or longer – until the owner or her staff checked the cameras – before I got found.”

“Which would leave the perp with even more time to get away,” McMahon said. “Huh. You may have a point. But what if it was just who he is? Like, you resisted and he decided to humiliate you because of it? But he didn't want you dead, so he made sure the alarm went off so we'd get to you before too long.”

“Maybe,” I said, adjusted my toga again. “I'm pretty sure the only reason I'm down now is because he let me go. So if he was really worried about my health, he could have let me go ten minutes after he left instead of blowing the alarm and getting y'all to come in here hot. And with his powers, and how he was moving brick and destruction debris...he could have carried every painting out with him. Why not do that?”

“Don't know,” McMahon said. “Fear of getting caught? Inability to fence them?” She paused. “Maybe he was already worn out after tunneling in and holding you up to the ceiling?”

“Maybe,” I said again. “Too many mysteries.”

“Your 'expert' has weighed in,” Officer Nye said from the foyer arch. She looked awfully sour after following Felix around. “Says he doesn't see a single other unfilled spot anywhere in the house. There's a storage room in the basement with some art crates, nothing seems to be disturbed down there, either.”

“Great,” McMahon said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I've got a metahuman art thief with particular tastes and a penchant for humiliation. If it's not my ex-husband, I'm out of suspects.” She turned to me. “You have no ideas?”

“Never saw the guy before,” I said, feeling like I was repeating myself.

“Well...it sure as hell feels like he knew you,” she said, looking at that big, blank space where the art light illuminated the wall, highlighting my failure. “And he damned sure had your number.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sienna

Iset down in Boston's South Bay neighborhood after an hour of devil-may-care, max supersonic flight that probably rattled windows aplenty beneath me.

Too bad I was so far beyond caring. Ohh, your windows rattled? Such a shame. People are dead in Boston.

And they were dead, I knew as I stepped into the Suffolk County House of Corrections intake area.

The neighborhood around the place felt strangely mismatched with its purpose; as I'd come in for a landing I saw an upscale shopping center a couple block away complete with Target, Home Depot, Total Wine, movie theaters, restaurants, and attached hotel complexes. Not exactly the slums of Boston.

But the intake area for the jail jolted me back into a less sunny reality. The smell of blood was still in the air, stale, but present, maybe not even noticeable to anyone but me.

“Thank goodness you're here,” said a young detective who came hustling over to me as I strode toward the front desk. Bright lights along both walls gave me the impression that, day or night, the lobby was well-lit. The smell of blood grew stronger as I approached the reception area, until, standing beside it, it overwhelmed me. “Lewis Moore,” he said, with a strong Brit accent.

“This is New England, not old England,” I said, craning to look over the reception desk. Yep; bloodstains marred the white tile. “You get lost?”

He chuckled, sounding pained. “Came over a few years ago, and liked it so much I decided to stay.”

“Give me the bullet points,” I said, floating over the desk to look closer at the spot where some poor soul had lost their life. “Preferably before actual bullets start coming at me.”

“The perp in question is Mekhi Bonner,” Moore said, from memory, “thirty-six, and with a record that reflects a long career serving at the pleasure of the Commonwealth's Department of Correction. His current sentence was for armed robbery, eleven years, but before he could catch a transfer to Cedar Junction in Walpole he decided to skip for it–”

“Using heretofore undiscovered metahuman powers,” I said, really looking under that desk. Someone's body had been dumped there, and remained there, for quite some time given the level of blood loss. “We'll talk about those later. How many dead?”

“Two,” Moore said. “The front desk guard whose final resting place you're currently viewing. Name was Chloelle Bowen. The other was in charge of monitoring the...well, the monitors. Security cams. An Andria Vincent.” I came back up to find him with a small pad in hand, reading off it. “Both were guards.”

“Got it,” I said, settling back down. “Do we know how he did it?”

“Nope,” Moore said. “Cameras were switched off and the data erased after Vincent was killed. Some sort of bladed weapon, given the, uh...cause of death was slashes to the jugular. This is where it's dicey, see – it could have been Bonner himself – or an associate, since we only know he's missing and the guards are dead. Whoever it was appears to have snuck up on them, since neither exhibited any sign of having put up a fight.”

I grimaced. “So, basically, Bonner could have been rescued by someone else who snuck in and deactivated the cameras.”

“It's possible,” Moore said. “We have no witnesses. It'd be tough for someone to access the unit he was on without being seen by other guards, though.”

“Hmm,” I said, as close to a grunt as I could manage, as I worked through my own thoughts.

It would, indeed, be impossible for someone, even a metahuman, to access a prison and slice the throats of the two guards that might most directly interfere with your attempts to break a prisoner out.

Unless, say, you could melt into the shadows, and only needed to be sure that no one could ever trace what you'd done.

And unfortunately, I knew someone who could do exactly that.

Because when I'd been a prisoner in the Cube, four years ago, someone had come to me and offered to break me out in just such a way.

It happened to be Kristina Bonner.

CHAPTER NINE

Augustus

Driving up to my old house in a top-flight BMW was a hell of a thing. I was raised in the heart of Atlanta's hoodiest of hoods, the place where even the hardcore gangbangers hesitated to go out without looking over their shoulders.

Time had not been kind to the place. I drove past burned-out storefronts, houses that looked like they'd been bombed. My 'hood in the past had to contend with bullets flying everywhere, at all hours of the day.

Now they had to contend with bangers that had metahuman powers. Drive-bys weren't just lead slung in all directions in a hurry and a fury. Now beams of energy with killing potential had been loosed on a neighborhood where life had already been hard, and I was seeing the results.

Needless to say...I didn't much like them.

Unease bubbled in my stomach as I took the last couple turns to Momma's house, like a teakettle heading towards a boil. At the corner was a house where someone had vaporized an entire room, just seared it off with plasma. The one next to it was a burned-out husk, roof timbers fallen down inside. Crime scene tape was wrapped around it, and I slowed before driving the last couple houses.

Pulling up to Momma's house felt weird. One time, when I was twelve, someone had gotten shot three doors down from us. Another, five houses away. That one had been when I was in high school.

A burned-down house on the block, though? Two away from Momma? She hadn't mentioned it, and I hadn't asked, because who honestly thinks to ask about these kind of things?

The house was looking old – paint peeling, lawn overgrown in the places where it still survived. Lots of weeds and dirt showed up in her lot.

I paused getting out of the car. Taneshia's house was right next door, and it was looking...fine. Not amazing, but decent enough.

Up the cracked front walk I went, the Goodyear-welted leather soles of my Oxfords scratching against the concrete of the broken walk. How long had it been since I'd been home?

Too long. That's what Momma would say. I knew before my knuckles even made contact with the door.

She opened it and a smile creased her face. “Oh, look, here's my wayward son.”

“You got two of them, Momma,” I said, hugging her, her small frame against mine delicately.

“My other son visits me sometimes,” she said, pulling away and heading inside, toward the kitchen. Something was cooking, something that involved a roux, that much I could smell from here.

“Your other son ain't got no responsibilities except for his Eurotrash girlfriend,” I said, taking a look around. Everything looked a little more rundown since when I was a kid. Or even an adult.

Momma stuck her head out around the corner at me. “Don't you be talking no smack about Archey.” She waved a wooden spoon at me. “She's a nice girl, and fair sight better than the pigs you probably rolling around with in the mud these days.”

“Speaking of pigs I've rolled around with,” I said, entering the kitchen to find it clear, but deteriorating. The house needed work, and I grimaced to look at it. “Ran into Taneshia at the jail when I was turning in a–”

I had my head turned so I didn't see the wooden spoon, nor feel the wind of it until it got me squarely in the backside. It hurt, though, snapping right into my left butt cheek like someone from my football days snapping a towel in the locker room. “Don't you be saying that about Taneshia,” my mother said, suddenly right all up in my grill – and waving the spoon, too, in my face, like she hadn't just paddled my ass with it. “She's a better girl than you deserve, especially these days.”

“I don't know if you noticed,” I said, taking a step back so she didn't whack me again; I preferred to take my hits from metahuman suspects, mostly because with them I felt justified hitting back, “but your baby boy has had a bit of a glow up since last he was here. New threads,” I popped my lapels, “new car, new attitude, new life. I own a piece of a reputable business, which I have managed to great success–”

“Oh, you're very impressive,” Momma said, making a show of clapping before dropping even the pretense. “Taneshia loved you when your brick-headed ass didn't have a dime. You think you're amazing now that you got a Mercedes?”

I would have straightened my tie if I was wearing one. “It's a BMW, actually. A–”

“I don't give a rip about that and neither did she,” Momma said, waving the spoon like she was deeply considering pasting me across the face with it. Or burying it in my keister. “There's more to a man than what he drives or what he wears. You used to know that.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “money makes you free.”

Momma screwed up her face looking at me like I was an idiot. “What are you trying to get free of, exactly? Free of your old neighborhood? Where you came up?” She made a show of looking around. “You done that fine enough. That why we don't see you anymore around here?”

“Aww, let's pile the guilt on,” I said, delicately shucking out of my jacket and folding it before placing it on the back of the chair that I pulled out from the battered wooden table. “Get it all on the fire. 'Augustus is too good for us now that he's got money.' Or – ‘Augustus is busy, because he's making that money.’ Or maybe when I do come back, you make me feel like shit. So I don't choose to put myself through that very often.”

“Don't you get greasy with me.” Momma looked up from the stove long enough to wave the wooden spoon at me. Again. “The only reason you mad is your feelings hurt. Because what I just said is true. You think you're too good for us now.”

I bit back my first reply, the reply of my heart, which was to say, yeah, yeah I'm better than this neighborhood, better than Taneshia, better than...

Better than her.

But something in me knew that was a line crossed; I swallowed that reply and it burned in my gut. She'd known me for as long as I'd been alive, though, and in her face I expected an expression of triumph.

Instead, she looked as wounded and old and small as I'd ever seen her. “You are a better man than this. Or at least you could be. If you wanted.”

“You ought to know, Momma, that being poor doesn't make you virtuous,” I said. “We've known lots of shitheads that were poor right with us, couldn't do nothing but bad. And I do lots of good. You know how many terrible people my company helps get off the streets? Murderers, rapists–”

“You're doing the right things,” she said, giving the pot a stir as she added chicken stock. It made a slight hiss as it landed. “No one's arguing that. But you're doing them for the wrong reasons, son. You care more about that watch on your wrist than the good you're doing.” She raised the spoon up to jab it at me, and specks of roux and chicken stock hit her immaculate floor. I knew in her head she was making note of them to clean them up later, but she didn't waver from delivering her withering critique. “If you want to do some good, why don't you help Taneshia out here for a spell? Do you have any idea how bad things have gotten? In your old neighborhood? They're calling it a 'lost sector.' Because the police don't dare come here except in force.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got that feeling, driving up.” Turning to look out the front window, I found my car still parked there. For now. If it was still there come sundown, there was a distinct possibility it'd either end up on blocks or just be gone. For obvious reasons, I'd be staying at the St. Regis in Buckhead tonight. (The obvious reasons being that they had a spa and workout facility, in addition to secured parking.) “I take it there's a big dog in this neighborhood that does most of the barking, and a lot of little dogs that circle around him and do his biting?”

She turned around to look at me, and for the first time I realized she wasn't wearing her glasses. “Just like everywhere else, yes.”

I sighed, looking out at my car. “What's this big dog's name? What's he get up to? And where's he hanging his hat?”

“The 'big dog,'” she said, “is a no-neck dude named Big G. You knew him coming up as Granthony Hills.”

“Granthony Hills?” I almost choked on my own spit. “I hate that prick. He beat my ass every day in grade school. Pantsed me, then stuffed me in a trash can. Gave me swirlies.” I rubbed my hands together, suddenly very glad I'd come home. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”

She just shook her head. “There you go again. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

“You said he's a bad dude.”

“I did, and he is,” she said. “He's got this whole neighborhood running scared every time he sticks his head out the door. He took over the Vineyard Court apartment complex. Runs it like his own personal block, like that one in Dredd.”

A frown twisted the edges of my face. “How do you know about Dredd?”

“Jamal showed it to me one time when he came home. You know I am a sucker for that good sci-fi. Anyhow,” she said, turning back to me, “Big G is bad. And if you take him out, you'd be doing us all a favor.” She wagged the spoon again. “But doing good for your own good don't make you good.”

“That don't even make no sense,” I said, nervously checking my car again. I felt as though a strange clock was ticking over it, and surely at least the hub caps would be gone in short order if I took my eye off the ball for long.

“It makes sense,” she said. “You just don't want to hear it. You staying for dinner?” She looked at me, and again I noticed her glasses were gone, because she dropped her head as if to look over them.

“You're making shrimp étouffée, ain'tcha?”

“Yeah.”

“Then hell yes, I'm staying,” I said, and I settled down in the chair with my jacket folded on the back, pulling it out a bit so I could keep a wary eye on my car. Momma went back to working on the étouffée, and I kept an eye out for Big G's associates, because I had a feeling they'd be along directly.

CHAPTER TEN

Jamal

It was an hour later, after I'd found my way into a change of clothes from my bag, after the cops had crawled over Ms. Di Novo's house from top to bottom and pronounced it clear eighteen times, after police had checked the St. Louis Art Museum and confirmed that, no, it had not been in any way robbed, that my phone finally rang with the call I'd been hoping for.

Ms. Di Novo herself. At last.

“What's happened?” she asked, before I even got out the word, “Hello.”

“You had a robbery,” I said.

“You were supposed to be there to prevent a robbery,” she said. She sounded stung, and who could blame her?

“The guy who came in here, he was ready for me,” I said. “He brought props to negate my powers, went to one specific painting and stole it.” I'd had a text message ready for her for an hour with a picture of the wall in question. “One painting, Ms. Di Novo. That's it.” I hit send. “Any idea why that might be?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

I had the phone on speaker, and Detective McMahon was lurking nearby. “Ms. Di Novo, this is Detective McMahon of the St. Louis PD. I'm here at your residence investigating the crime.”

There was a pause from Di Novo. “Yes?”

“Mr. Coleman just sent you a photo of the wall where the painting was hung. Could you identify it for us, so we know what we're looking for?”

“How can you be sure that's the only thing that was stolen?” Ms. Di Novo asked. But her voice sounded a little far away, and I could tell she had pulled the phone back and was looking at her screen. “Not the Monet, not the Manets, not the Rembrandt...?” she muttered. “Only the Kovács...?”

“You have some thoughts, Ms. Di Novo?” McMahon leapt right in.

“Just...it's strange,” Di Novo said, and then she laughed. She sounded almost relieved. “That painting, the one that was stolen, it was...I mean, I like it, it's a personal favorite, even. But it's the least valuable in my entire collection.”

I exchanged a look with McMahon, who seemed just as puzzled as I was. No profit motive in this robbery, then, which...was weird. Well, weirder, since this thing was already weird. “Can you tell us about the painting in question?”

“It's a Hungarian painting,” she said. “I have a photo of it here, let me send it to you. It's titled The Mysteries of the Young Duchess from István Kovács, from his salon of 1836-7.”

My phone buzzed, and I pulled up a message from Di Novo. Clicking on it, I saw a thumbnail of a painting of a young woman with auburn hair in a lovely, flowing dress, the kind that one wore to balls and cotillions and the like back in those olden days. It was a picture of elegance, of a bygone era, with ruffles and folds, yet still hinted at the young royal's trim figure.

Felix craned his neck to look over my shoulder. When had he snuck in? “That's a beautiful painting,” he said, completely absorbed in the image, which I had expanded to fill the screen.

I was absorbed in the image, too, but for an entirely different reason. One that made me almost choke on my own tongue. My breath hung in my throat, and in the middle of McMahon and Felix, I tried very hard not to give away my utter and complete shock.

See, in spite of its origin in the mid-eighteen-thirties, The Mysteries of the Young Duchess was of a very familiar subject. A lovely young lady, to be sure. So familiar was I with her, in fact, that I'd seen her naked. Many times.

It's just that I knew her as ArcheGrey1819.

My girlfriend.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sienna

“What else have we got?” I asked, following Detective Moore deeper into the labyrinthine complex of the Suffolk County House of Corrections. We'd been buzzed past two security checkpoints, filled with guards that looked more angry than disturbed; if I knew anything about prison guard proclivities, any poor prisoner that stepped out of line today was going to find himself on the receiving end of some extra-harsh discipline.

It was, perhaps, an unfair way to handle things, at least to the civilized mind; but in my experience, there was very little civilized about the vast majority of prisoners housed in any sort of corrections facility. And I should know, since I spent my life putting them there.

“Very little, as I've said.” Moore walked as he talked, and we popped into a security checkpoint where, yes, another bloodstained floor waited, and a guard stood with his jaw set, clearly pissed to even be dealing with this. He looked ready to sodomize the next prisoner that looked at him sideways with his nightstick. Also sideways. “I'm meant to tell you – the mayor and the governor would like a photo op and a meeting with you at your earliest convenience.”

I tried to hide the snarl that automatically came up on my lips. Mayors and governors and senators and congresscritters – they all seemed to want pictures with me. Like I was some kind of exotic animal at the local zoo that you just had to be seen with. Sure, I understood the impulse – in these dark times, you wanted to be able to show your constituents that you were powerful enough to be able to call on Sienna Nealon if things went really sideways. And they were, everywhere, these days.

“Truthfully,” Moore said, pausing in the doorway, “I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on the situation, given your rather more comprehensive understanding of metahumans.”

I stared at Moore through rather smoky, uncaring eyes. This was just another of an endless string of jobs, he was just another face in a mass of police officers who had the thankless task of telling me about their latest case, which was always a hopeless one, at least for them, in the hope that I, who had descended from the heavens, clearly, would be able to not only solve it for them but bring the vile perpetrator of this heinous crime to the justice they deserved. “You want to know what I think?”

He stared back at me, too young, too innocent, for this racket. How long had he been in this job? Not nearly long enough. “Yes. You are the expert, after all.”

“Okay, sure, why not?” I said, and stepped past the threshold. “Mekhi Bonner, previously never known to be a metahuman, either acquires powers in here through use of illicit drugs being shared through the population of the jail–”

“But we have no other cases of powers.”

“No other reported cases,” I said, “thus far. Bonner's arrest report suggests he resisted when they came to get him for this sentence, the cops had to subdue him, and he showed no signs of the powers at the time. Which means he either got the drugs that gave him powers here on site...or he doesn't have powers and was rescued by someone who does.”

“You think someone from his gang outside has them?” Moore was looking at me through his glasses, face all screwed up in concentration.

“Maybe,” I said. Why did I not throw Kristina Bonner immediately upon the bonfire of my suspicions? It wasn't like we were super tight and I owed her a ton of loyalty.

But...I did owe her some. And loyalty to the people who'd fought with me may have been all I had left at this point besides a wicked case of alcoholism and a suspicion I'd be doing this until I died. Again.

“What kind of powers would allow for this?” Moore asked.

“A few possibilities,” I said, lowering myself over the blood puddle. Nothing really to see, other than dried blood, but I looked anyway. “Invisible type. Shadow melters. Or, possibly, a phaser.”

“'Phaser?'” Moore mimicked using a laser pistol. Yes, like Star Trek.

I came back to upright, gleaning nothing from the blood puddle. “They pass through solid objects. Remember that bomber in LA a few years ago that was blowing shit up and trying to kill Kat Forrest?” I only mentioned because it got a lot of attention at the time; pointedly ignoring the existence of Kat was one of my main objectives on any given day, other than fulfilling my basic bodily functions and dragging criminals to justice.

“Oh, right, vaguely,” Moore said. “Which one do you think did it?”

“Don't know,” I said, then made a hand gesture at the guard standing...well, guard. “Buzz us in, will you? I want to see Bonner's cell.”

“We didn't find anything that wasn't bog standard in there,” Moore said, hurrying to catch up as I floated onward toward the security door.

“I'll just take a quick look, then, make sure I don't catch something you missed,” I said. The door buzzed, and in I went, finding myself now trapped in between security doors, waiting for the one behind me to close so the one in front of me could open. Standard security precaution in any jail. “We just ruled out an invisible type.”

Moore paused beside me, casting me a look. “How do you figure?”

I nodded at the security camera glaring down on us as I waited for the buzz to sound indicating I could proceed through the second door, into the controlled guts of the jail. “Did you look at the monitors back there?” He shook his head. “There were two; one with standard vision, the second infrared. Invisible types show up on infrared because they give off body heat.”

“But phasers don't?”

“Not sure,” I said, stepping into the central pod of the jail complex. “That's why I only ruled out the invisible type.”

Jails tended to be similar all over. The difference was in the small details, but the large ones were all the same: the walls were solid concrete block, painted neutral-bright colors like white. There was always a courtyard area like this, surrounded by cells. Bars were much less in vogue now than they used to be, though they still had their place in the design scheme and had even made something of a comeback in the last ten years as the arrival of metahumans made even hard Plexiglas much less desirable as a material.

Prisons were where the real bad hombres were. At least in the long term. Most people didn't know the difference, and used the terms interchangeably. You were much less likely to be raped in jail than prison (I've heard). Much less likely to see escape attempts in jail, except from the bad dudes who were staring down a long prison sentence once their trial was complete. From them you'd see earnest attempts to escape, because they knew that when they got to prison, the security would be tighter. Not that it was lax, by any means; but prison was the final destination for those types.

“This is it,” Moore said as we rolled up on the cell in question, as though I couldn't recognize it was Bonner's from the yellow tape across the door, draped like some sort of festive garland. “No cellmate. No witnesses.”

“How helpful,” I said, bending under the tape like a wrestler entering a ring.

“Not very, eh?” Moore asked with a weak smile.

“Extremely, actually – to him.” I looked 'round the cell. It was about what you'd expect – a six-by-ten room with a hardened window of some material that was too small for the average – or below average – person to squeeze through. It had been covered over with an opaque film that permitted very little light in from outside.

There was no décor. His personal effects – the ones allowed in – were in a bag on the bed and basically amounted to towel, toothpaste, shower slippers, and an extra jumpsuit.

That got me thinking. “Do you have his personal effects from his arrest?”

“Ah...no,” Moore said, looking down at his notebook. “They are still in the property room.”

“Interesting,” I said, dropping low to scan the floor. It was hardened concrete all the way around, and smooth, no signs of any sort of place where he could have hidden anything, either there or in the seams between the blocks that composed the wall. I lifted the cot, patted down the mattress, sniffing with my bloodhound nose all the while in search of anything out of sorts. Other than the faint aroma of soap, human skin and oils, and the chemicals that covered over the stuffed bedding and cloth, there wasn't anything here. “Got a record of them?”

“Yes,” Moore said, and shuffled backward a couple pages in his notebook. “One watch, one wallet – complete with ten dollars and two expired credit cards – and a couple of joints in a packet of cigarettes.”

“He pick up a possession charge for those?”

Moore shrugged. “It's legal in the Commonwealth now.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn't care whether someone smoked weed as long as they didn't do it in public where I had to smell its rancid, skunk-like stink with my metahuman nose, but given that every city in the states that had legalized now tended to reek, I had swung back in favor of ticketing and arresting those who lit up in public.

It had also made plea-bargaining offenders like Bonner more difficult. If we picked up a perp on a more serious charge and he had a couple joints in his pocket – and they frequently did – it made the DA's job easier. He could offer to plead the perp down to possession rather than expend the state's time and resources on a trial that they may not win. Some argued this was unfair, but those that did had never been put in charge of getting bad guys off the street.

Looking scum like this in the eyes and seeing firsthand what they did to their victims was enough to put you in the mind of bringing back public hangings.

“If he passed up on them,” I said, “it was a choice.”

“Or he was in too much of a hurry to get back to his gang to take notice,” Moore said.

There was a word that I'd not come across yet in this investigation. “Gang?”

Moore stared back at me blankly. “Yeah. He's got ties to the Blue Hill Crips. All the way back to his disaffected youth.”

I chortled. “Where's their territory?”

“All around his last known address,” Moore said.

“Anyone tried his last known address yet?” I asked, with a plan forming in my head.

Moore grimaced. “Problem with that.” I must have stared at him, because he was quickly forthcoming. “It's in a, uh...lost sector.”

My blood boiled a little in my veins. Lost sectors were a new word for a very old phenomenon: areas so bad the police didn't go except in force. Between the Chinese disruption strategy during the war and the riots Fen Liu kicked off a couple months back, these areas had cropped up in a lot of cities.

This was my life for the last few months. Fen Liu's revenge still paying dividends in terms of screwing me over. As if taking my husband away and leaving me burnt to a cinder hadn't been enough vengeance.

“You want me to see if I can whistle up a task force?” Moore asked, a little unsurely.

“If Bonner's living in a lost sector, how did you guys get him to begin with?” I asked, clenching and unclenching my fists to try and work through my annoyance – at Fen Liu, at Bonner, at life in general for sending events and civic order spiraling so far out of reasonable control.

“Police stopped him near CambridgeSide,” Moore said. “Apparently he surfaced to steal some shit, because they caught him with his trunk full of shoplifted merchandise.”

Okay, that was a little funny. “TVs? Stereos?”

Moore cleared his throat, and a little smile fought to curl the side of his lips. “Ahhh...Gucci shit, actually. Designer clothes and shoes, and some jewelry. Signet rings. Watches. Earrings, actually.”

It would have taken a heart of stone not to cackle as I did. “What are the odds? A prison abolitionist thief with Gucci tastes and a Member's Mark budget. It's never bread or vegetables, it's always flatscreen TVs, designer sneakers, and jewelry. You know how much jewelry I own?” Moore looked slightly terrified for a moment, as though I were expecting him to guess right or die. “You're looking at almost all of it.”

He moved his head as if trying to see if I was hiding an earring on the side of my head. “You're not wearing any.”

“That would be the point, detective,” I said. “What's his last known address? I bet he's just sitting around there, waiting, sure no one's going to come for him with anything less than an armored tank brigade.”

Moore fiddled with his notebook, then flipped it around with the address visible. “He's not wrong, though, is he? It'd take a task force to go in there and roust him without bringing the gang down on your head. They have powers, after all.”

“So do I,” I said, inputting the address into my phone – and sending it to one other source via text, along with an inquiry. After I finished typing, I looked up. “I'm going to drop in. If he's as arrogant as we suspect, I'll bag him right there, and drag him back here before his gang can mobilize.” I brushed my hand against the leather pouch on my belt that bore ten syringes of suppressant. That ought to be enough for Bonner and his nearest associates if they decided to get salty with me.

Moore's smooth face seemed stuck in a grimace. “That could get messy. If things go wrong–”

“Which they frequently do.”

“–We won't be able to get to you,” Moore said. “Not for hours.”

“If we wait,” I said, and headed for the door, “Bonner could be gone before you can muster in force. Don't worry; I'm used to working without backup. Or a net.”

“Here, you're going to be without both,” Moore said, hustling to catch up. “Is there anyone you could call, at least? Maybe that could give you a hand?”

I pushed out through the doors of the lobby and into the cold, watery daylight of the Boston day. “I work better alone.” I was in the sky a second later, already planning my approach to Bonner's domain.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Augustus

Isat where I could look out the window, and the conversation was stilted as Momma tried to engage me about work (always busy, always serious), about girls (also busy, but never serious, and she didn't need to know that), about church (I hadn't been since I left Minnesota).

We were just finishing up dessert – coffee cake from the local supermarket – when there came a knock at the back door, and someone stepped in a moment later. I was on my feet and ready for trouble when I saw who it was.

“Taneshia! Girl, how you doing?” Momma got up and embraced her a lot sweeter than she'd hugged me. She didn't bop her on the head with a spoon or nothing.

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” Taneshia said, and she looked over Momma's shoulder at me. “Augustus,” she said. Like I was something she'd stepped in that she wasn't sure about.

“Nice to see you again,” I said, tipping my total-lack-of-a-hat to her. “So soon.”

“Mmmhmm,” she said, and turned her attention to Momma. “I just wanted to see if there's anything you needed, because I was headed to the store.”

“Oh, I think I'm fine for the night,” Momma said. “I'm going to go tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you for looking out for my momma,” I said, hands in my pockets.

She shot me a searing look. “Someone has to.”

“How's your work going?” Momma asked. She pointed at Taneshia. “She's working for the good of the neighborhood, you know.” Not a question. My mother's spurs dug into me, and I felt my eyelids flutter lightly in annoyance.

“Oh?” I asked. “How's that?”

“I work for a non-profit that funds my hero activities,” Taneshia said, smoothing the front of her blouse.

“Oh, really?” I couldn't disguise my delight. “So you do get paid for putting bad people in jail?”

She kept her face from twisting totally into a sneer, but I knew from our long acquaintance it was a struggle for her. “Barely. I'm just trying to do right – but I've got bills to pay, too.”

“Hey, so do I,” I said with exaggerated delight, like we had this in common. “Mine are just a little higher than yours.”

“I bet,” she said with the trace of a satisfied smile. “How much you pay for insurance on that car out front?”

“A lot,” I said, and then a suspicion dawned on me, and I looked over my shoulder, which I hadn't done since she'd entered so unexpectedly.

Yep. There were four guys out there, going to work on my car in the twilight with tools.

“Thanks!” I shouted at Taneshia, half in sarcasm, half serious. I was out the door in a flash, and I didn't bother yelling at them.

Because, in truth...I'd been waiting for this moment.

I already had a grip on the sands and dirt that comprised Momma's weedy front lawn; I'd picked out the best patches while sitting in that chair, sifted them, gripped them, knowing that this moment would come.

Which is why when the first shout of warning broke from one of the four thieves working on my car, I was already prepared to deal with his dumb, thieving ass.

He caught a brick of sand in the face that knocked him flat to the pavement and then slid down his neck and pinned his hands to the asphalt like manacles. The elements of the earth were at my disposal, and I could turn sand and dirt into a barrier as hard as steel, could throw rocks with my mind.

I was throwing mostly sand and dirt here, but there might have been a few rocks as I planted the remaining three thieves right where they stood, pinning their feet to the ground like they'd been bound there by the will of God.

Not gonna lie, it was funny watching them try to run before realizing they'd been sandbagged. Every last one of them tried to sprint off but instead found themselves wobbling like bowling pins before tumbling over. Sand and dirt ran over them, pinning their arms, too, because I saw two of them going for guns. Non-violent crime only tended to remain that way so long as no one resisted.

“What have we here?” I asked, picking up one of my hubcaps. “Because it looks to me like felony theft. That's three to five years.”

“Your word against ours,” the one at my feet said. He was struggling hard against his fate – and the sand I had binding him to the earth.

“That so?” I reached out my hand, sending a little bed of dirt back through the front door I'd exited so quickly, and it returned a moment later – past Momma and Taneshia, who were watching – to deliver my phone into my hand. The video recording I'd set up just before dinner in the front window was still running, so I stopped it, wound back to two minutes ago, and knelt to show him the footage of him and his boys getting to work on my Beemer. “Witness this, chud. Now tell me – who you work for?”

He looked pissed. At himself, maybe, but also me. “I ain't got nothing to say to some monkeysuit-wearing Oreo like you.”

“That's all right,” I said, and let the dirt I'd used to carry my phone to me, which was still floating in the air over my shoulder, form into a wad. Which I promptly shoved into his protesting mouth. “You have the right to remain silent.”

“Augustus,” Taneshia said sternly from the lawn, “that ain't necessary.”

“Nah,” I said, moving over to the next one, “but it's fun, though.” I squatted down next to him; his face was mashed against the pavement because of the way he'd fallen. “You want to give me a name? Or do you feel like tasting a little dirt? It's good for you. They say it helps stave off developing asthma.” I waved my hand in front of him, and a couple clods floated before his eyes.

“Big G,” he said, keeping his voice low. Like his compatriots couldn't hear him anyway. “We work for Big G.”

“That'd be Granthony Hills, wouldn't it?” I asked.

He looked at me like I'd crapped on him. “No one calls him that unless they want to die real slow and painful.”

“Uh huh,” I said, and with my phone took a quick snap of his face, and then the other three, and sent them to Sierra. I got an immediate answer back. “Well lookee – y'all have almost as many open warrants each as I've got fingers. And that's before the theft and gun charges you picked up here tonight, because I know you fellas – I mean felons – ain't allowed to be carrying pistols.” I waved a hand and they were lifted up. After giving them a quick dose of suppressant each, I bound them to the hood and roof of my car, two to each, then tossed the removed hubcaps into the back seat for now. I gave the lugs a quick check by hand as they all struggled – futilely – against my bindings.

“What do you think you're doing, Augustus?” Taneshia asked.

“Why, I'm cleaning up the neighborhood, of course,” I said. “And for free, since none of these open warrants have a bounty attached, and Atlanta is being stingy about these common criminals.”

Taneshia just shook her head. “I'll go with you.”

I gave her my best smirk. “Because you want to see how it's done?”

“Because somebody ought to be making sure you're not doing something foolish,” she said, climbing in the passenger side of my BMW.

“He's always doing something foolish,” my mother called as I brought the car around and started back toward the city jail – where I'd just been only a few hours earlier.

Next after that...well, we all knew I was going for Big G.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jamal

The Mysteries of the Duchess was a great title for a painting. I knew Arche was...older. I didn't know she was 1800's old, though.

“Well, that gives us something to work with,” I said, my mind roiling as I tried to keep my face as straight as could be. “You got any more questions, Detective McMahon?” I looked at her blankly.

She stared at the screen, not at me, fortunately. “No. But I'll give you a call if anything breaks, or I have any further questions, Ms. Di Novo.”

“That would be wonderful,” Ms. Di Novo said, and spoke more platitudes while my brain spun like tires on loose dirt.

Whoever had come crashing into this house to steal this painting – just this painting, in a sea of other, more valuable ones, had done so with this in mind. With Arche in mind. Surely.

Because why would you steal a painting that otherwise had no intrinsic value?

A further thought occurred, and sent my brain and heart into a spiral like a plane that had lost an engine and in which the throttle was stuck at max:

What if the robber had targeted the painting because he knew, on this particular night, this particular week, I was the one guarding it?

It seemed, after all, an incredible coincidence that this particular painting would be stolen on this particular night, when I was watching it, and it was connected, directly and painfully, to me. And the robber had taken extra care to humiliate me as he did it.

Too many coincidences. Way too many. My mind whirled at them.

“I do have one question,” Felix said. “Do you know if this is a standalone work of art, or part of a series of paintings?”

McMahon and I looked at him; I couldn't speak for the look on my own face – which I hoped was stony, ready to beat everyone at the table at a round of poker, betraying nothing of the frenzy that was going on in my mind – but McMahon's eyes widened in surprise at his question. Because it was good.

“Actually,” Di Novo said, “it is part of a series by this artist, centered on this particular subject. But at least a portion of the collection – the lion's share, as I recall, have been lost in the last century.”

“So there are more paintings of this girl out there,” I said, trying not to betray any emotion, or my myriad, swirling thoughts. “We should consider the possibility that this perp may be uniquely targeting these works.”

McMahon nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Thank you all for your work on this. I need to make some calls.” And she nodded at each of us in turn before politely excusing herself.

“Thanks, Ms. Di Novo,” I said, trying to end the call.

“Mr. Coleman?” Di Novo's came through the speaker. “Am I to assume that, given the events of the evening, your firm will be making some sort of restitution for my loss...?”

A suspicion clamped down on me, and I immediately clamped down on my tongue. Too many coincidences; who had hired me for this job? “I'll talk to my boss,” I said, trying not to say something that might throw up an alarm bell, “but I assume you're insured for the value of the painting and the damage to your house?”

She was quiet for a moment, then huffed slightly. “You can't possibly expect to do business with the wealthy and not offer some guarantee of restitution if your service fails.”

“How about I get your painting back and then we'll talk?” I tried to smile, then hung up the phone. I found Felix staring at me blankly, and said, “Will you excuse me? I'm about to have an uncomfortable conversation with my so-called boss.”

“Oh. Sure. Sorry!” he said, backing away.

I headed upstairs, going down one of the hallways where there were guest bedrooms, but not the one with the hole in the wall where the robber had entered. This put me conveniently away from most of the cops, who had stopped combing through the house, and I positioned myself so I could see anyone come up the stairs before they arrived at my door.

Then I called my brother.

And got his voicemail.

I hung up. Then I called him again.

Voicemail.

Hang up.

Call again.

Repeat. Five times.

Finally, Augustus's voice answered, and he sounded pretty put out. “What? I'm a little busy at the moment.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said sourly, dropping my voice to meta low. “This easy job you posted me on? Just got robbed.”

“Well, why didn't you do nothing about it?” he asked, his mood not improved.

“Because I got stripped naked and pinned to the ceiling by a telekinetic, that's why.”

There was a brief pause. “You okay?”

“My dignity took a hit, but I'm alive and unharmed, if that's what you're asking.”

“That's what I was asking,” he said, a little more gently. “Sorry. I'm dealing with some stuff here. Back home, I mean.”

My blood pressure shot up. “Is Momma okay?”

“She's fine,” he said. “This neighborhood, though...anyway. That's going to be my problem, not yours. What about this thief? You got a line on him?”

“He stole one thing, Augustus,” I said, watching carefully down the hall. “A painting. The least valuable painting in the whole place.”

“...Whut?”

“Oh, it gets weirder,” I said. “The painting was from the 1800's...and it's of Arche.”

“...I say again: Whut?”

“This whole thing is a setup, man,” I said, feeling the emotion boil right out of me. “I got played. It cannot be a coincidence that I get humiliated by a man stealing the painting of my girlfriend out from under me on this job. This was intentional. And Di Novo's asking for damages.”

“What do the cops say?”

“They're on it,” I said coolly.

My brother was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, I could hear him frown. “What'd they say about the painting being your girlfriend?”

“Augustus,” I said, “Arche's status with the law is 'not exactly legal.' She has to use a face scrambler program when she travels to keep facial recognition from catching up to her on CCTV.” One of the reasons she seemed to be less visible in my life of late, I suspected, was the proliferation of Cassidy Ellis's uncrackable encryption software, which made it impossible to use the face scrambler.

“Bro,” Augustus said, voice thick with annoyance, “if this is some sort of inside job, you need to be straight with the cops. This Di Novo lady may be involved, and the cloud of suspicion that should be all over her has got to go somewhere. Now maybe it lands on your perp, but maybe it blows back on you.”

“You think me mentioning to the detective that my criminal girlfriend being the subject of the painting stolen leaves me looking innocent?” I asked, checking once more to make sure the hallway was empty. It was. No noise on the stairs, either. “That cloud would be on me so fast it'd feel like a sandstorm of suspicion...or something. That doesn't really work, does it?”

“No.”

“But you take my point, right?”

“I take your point,” Augustus said. “But I think you're being stupid.”

“Must run in the family,” came a soft, familiar, feminine voice in the background.

“Who's that?” I asked, suddenly concerned that a) someone was with him, and b) that someone was a meta, able to overhear our conversation in spite of my attempt to keep it so low it couldn't be eavesdropped upon.

“It's Taneshia,” Augustus said, sounding highly irritated.

I let that hang in the air a moment as I processed. “You and Taneshia getting back together?”

“No,” they chorused as one, and then he added, “it's part of this neighborhood thing. Did you know Granthony Hills set himself up as kingpin around here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Big G. Everyone knows that.”

“Well, why didn't you do nothing about it?”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “He's got the entire Vineyard Court apartment complex locked up with a hundred bangers, a lot of them metas now. It'd take an army, and maybe Sienna, to dislodge his gold-bricking ass.”

“Well, someone's gotta do it,” he said.

“...And is that someone going to be you?”

“Looks like,” he said. “You need to tell the cops about this painting situation with Arche, man.”

“You need to decide whether it's worth your ass to go after the kid that beat you up in grade school,” I said. “Because Big G? He ain't going down easy. He's a spiteful man, Augustus.”

“That makes two of us,” he said. “Tell the cops.”

“No,” I said. “Get your head out of your ass and walk away from that mess until you have backup.”

“Also no,” he said. “At least call that girlfriend of yours and figure out how she ties into this perp.”

“Fine,” I said, turning again, this time to find McMahon at the top of the staircase and coming my way. “Tell that girlfriend of yours that I like her better than you, by a lot.”

“I am not his girlfriend!” Taneshia shouted on the other end of the phone.

“I was talking about the BMW, but I like you, too, Taneshia,” I said. “Gotta go.” And I hung up as McMahon stepped into the room. “What's up?”

“Who was that?” she asked, probably trying to sound neutral and friendly but unable to hide the edge of suspicion that came from her job. She advanced into the room, shadows catching her face, and any words I could muster caught in my throat as I was unable to produce an answer.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sienna

My bravado to Detective Moore of the Boston PD was almost entirely false.

Cracking a nut like Mekhi Bonner was going to be a pain in my ass, in almost the best case scenario. At worst, it could result in a bum rush-mob scene involving the entirety of his Blue Hill Crips, which would almost certainly encompass dozens or hundreds of metahuman-powered gangbangers who would love nothing more than being able to say they were the one who had killed that bitch Sienna Nealon. Criminals and mercenary scum the world over would keep whoever carried that mantle drowning in his preferred booze and drugs for as long as the boogeyman-like memory of me persisted.

As on the ragged edge as I was these days – a fact which I was acutely aware of – I had no desire to spend my last hours in agony at the hands of whatever tortures Mekhi Bonner's gang could concoct. It'd be a mercy if they merely took my head off with a laser blast or stove it in with a Hercules's fist.

So, what was an enterprising solo detective/bounty hunter to do about the Bonner problem? No backup, target (probably) carefully ensconced in a lost sector, with lots of time to rabbit if the conventional cops decided to muster up a force to come looking for him?

Great question. And one I didn't have an answer for.

So I asked someone who might.

“Okay, Sierra, did you catch all that?” I held my phone up as I hovered in the air about a thousand feet above Bonner's lost sector just outside Boston proper.

The AI answered in my mother's voice, through the speaker on my phone. “I did. I sensed you being false with Detective Moore, however.”

“I don't tell anyone my plans that I don't have to,” I said. “Besides, I didn't have an actual plan other than, 'Get Bonner.' My operational concept is to bust through his door, catch him unawares, bag and drag him up into the air before they can get a defense going, but – as you may detect – there are problems with that, as a plan.”

“Please point your phone in an arc facing northwest,” Sierra said. I did so, and she added, “Thank you. Analyzing.” A moment later she came back on. “There are no visible sentries directly around Bonner's house, but three occupied cars parked on the streets a few blocks away suggest a cordon set as an early-warning system to Bonner if police mobilize into the neighborhood. Furthermore, curtains are open on a few of the houses nearby and faces are visible intermittently at the windows, which suggests that in spite of no posted guards outdoors, potential defenders are lurking in close proximity. Eighteen addresses within a two block radius are known for criminal activity he can be directly linked to. The curtains are open and watchers are visible in nine of them.”

I let out a low whistle. Sierra had gotten good at interpreting visual information; just looking through my phone's camera had yielded all that. And in about three seconds. “So you're saying this is going to be dicey.”

“At least,” Sierra said. “It is also possible that Bonner is not at his last known address.”

I frowned. “Why all the security, then?”

“He may be staying at a nearby house,” Sierra said, “to throw you or any other watcher off his scent.”

“Shit,” I muttered. She had the ring of truth about that one; if Bonner had any brains, he'd pull that trick. “So we're basically relying on the hope that he wants to sleep in his own bed if I go busting in?”

“That and the hope that you will be able to 'bust heads' and leave before your own gets caved in.”

“I don't want to get my head caved in today. I don't enjoy the sensation.” Taking in a strong breath, I decided to change tack. “Advice?”

“Take it slow,” Sierra said. “Loiter and surveil. If he's down there, he's either arrogant enough to show his face out of doors or he's not. If he does, it simplifies matters. You may be able to hit him in transit, in a car, when his freedom of action is confined. After all, the police already arrested him once in just such a manner.”

I grunted. “I hate waiting.”

“I know. But that doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.”

“If it wasn't,” I said, settling into a lounging position on empty air, “I'd already be in there.” I positioned myself so that one of my pockets faced directly at Bonner's neighborhood, and hung my phone out of it. “You gonna keep watch?”

“I'll let you know the moment anything of substance changes,” Sierra said. “Will you be needing a game to play?”

“Actually, I think I might catch a nap,” I said, buttoning my pocket such that the phone wouldn't fall out and crash to earth. “Can you see okay from there?”

“I have eyes on the house. Get some sleep.”

“We'll see,” I said, but within a matter of minutes, I was out, hanging there in the windy Boston sky, nothing to do until Mekhi Bonner showed his face here – or somewhere else.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Augustus

“You feel better about yourself now?” Taneshia asked after we'd dropped off the quartet of losers who'd tried to steal my wheels. “Busting hubcap thieves?” Night had settled on Atlanta, and downtown was glowing in the distance, the towers jutting out of the landscape.

“They had guns, Taneshia,” I said, looking at her sideways. We were cruising back toward the neighborhood. “And warrants for assault, for armed burglary, sexual assault, carjacking, and, in one case, murder. They weren't some twelve-year-olds joyriding in their mom's car without permission, or shoplifting Tootsie Rolls, okay? They were dangerous – and yeah, I'm feeling good about getting their asses off the streets. At least for a little while, because even if they don't make bail, they'll probably be out in a year or two and ready to continue their criminal careers at a higher level.”

She was quiet for a minute there. “That's how Granthony started, you know. Small, and worked his way up.”

“That's how they all start,” I said. “Petty. But they can step up to murder at any time. I never met more than a few who wouldn't kill to save their own necks from the consequences of the law coming down on them.” I looked right at her. “That's what at least two of them tonight were going to do. They were reaching for their guns when I got 'em.”

“And you didn't reach for yours?”

I gave my waist a quick pat; the Sig Sauer P226 I habitually carried “just in case” was still riding comfortably at my side. Sienna had sold me on the virtues of always being prepared a long time – or at least many ambushes – ago. “I don't shoot people, or kill people, unless I have to.”

Taneshia shook her head. “I hate it. When I've had to do it...I just hate it.”

“That's good,” I said, nodding as we passed a convenience store that looked like its best days were well behind it. “Can you imagine a person who glories in it?”

“Yeah,” Taneshia said. “I think you work with her.”

“Pssssh,” I said, dismissing that right out of hand. “Sienna doesn't like killing any more than I do, or you do. But she's dealt with a lot worse people over the years than we have. Worse by far than those dumbasses tonight. People who go right for the gun but don't run as they're doing it. People who walk toward you while they're shooting, cold as hell.” I looked at her. “You ever face down one of those?”

“Once or twice,” she said, and shivered. “Look, I don't know what you think you're doing here–”

“Helping my momma, helping the neighborhood, proving a point.”

“I know you ain't doing this for charity's sake.”

“You're right,” I said. “I'm doing this because my momma threw guilt in my face that I'm living good.” I shot her a dazzling smile. “So I'm doing this to appease my guilty conscience for all my blessings. To prove that I ain't so far removed from y'all that I don't remember what it's like to have Granthony Hills stuff my ass in a locker.”

“So revenge?” she scoffed.

“No,” I said. “I told you – this is me proving a point by getting rid of Granthony.” I looked down at my phone, where Sierra's app was open. “Big G doesn't actually have any open warrants. Imagine my shock.”

“He's too big to be caught doing his own crime anymore,” she said. “Others hold his drugs, his guns, do his misdeeds. You go up and knock on his door tonight, you're going to find nothing in his living room but him and his harem, chilling, watching ESPN.”

“You know that, do you?” She probably did. She waved me off, though, just shook her head.

I pulled into the apartment complex where Big G made his headquarters, and there were already spotters watching me the second I did. I stepped out of the BMW at the curb and clicked the button on the fob to lock it; it beeped, lights flashing as I did it, like a dare to the neighborhood to come and get it.

Clenching my mind around some dirt from the nearby lawn, I laid down a mental marker on it so it'd be readily accessible if I needed it. I doubted the petty shits would move on my car without Big G's permission, especially since I was rolling right up to his crib like I owned the place, but if they did, I'd make an example of four more of them, I didn't care. I was here to send a message anyway: Big G's day was about to be over.

The Vineyard Court complex was a three-story that was organized around a central courtyard with a pool. There was a gate manned with some big dudes, and they swung it open for us, like they were manning the rope line at the club. Taneshia trailed, not saying anything. I sensed she was tense, though, like a black hole of enthusiasm behind me.

Music was thumping with a prodigious bass line once we were inside, and the pool party was clearly in full swing. There were a lot of fine-looking Nubian princesses in bikinis that looked like they'd been sculpted to wear them. I'd brought my Cutler & Gross 1394 sunglasses ($1,100), mostly out of habit, and put them on now in order to keep it from being obvious that my eyeballs were wandering madly over all this exposed flesh.

It was a little early in the season for the pool, being March, but no matter to these fine folks. A splash of water came out of the pool when some banger with a belly jumped in, and I caught a droplet on my cheek. Warm as spit. So Big G was paying to heat this pool, in addition to maintain it.

Didn't take long to find the man himself, either. He was sitting bare-chested, tattoos darkening his already ebony skin on either pectoral, and down his belly. His shoulders, too, were inked, and he was laughing, wearing dark black glasses of his own as he sat in a hot tub mounted up over the side of the pool like a throne overlooking it all.

When he caught sight of me, he didn't stop smiling exactly. But it did deepen into a sneer.

“Look at this bitchass motherfucker,” Big G announced as I walked up. “Remember all those good times I used to have with you, Augustus?” His grin was pure malice. “I sure do. And I'm getting a feeling like we're about to relive them all over again.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jamal

“Who was that?” Detective McMahon asked again. Her face was clouded in shadow, straitlaced and serious.

I was choking on my answer, my guilt at having been caught making a surreptitious phone call getting to me.

Except...this one wasn't the one I needed to fear being caught at. This was a normal, natural first call after a crisis like this. I hadn't made the truly difficult one yet.

“My brother-slash-boss,” I said, shaking my head as if to reboot my lagging, fogged brain. It was not difficult to put on a display of frustration, because Augustus naturally brought it out in me, even at the best of times. “Younger brother, in fact. So...maybe you can imagine, if you have siblings.”

Her eye twitched involuntarily. “I'm the oldest of three sisters, so...yeah.” Some of her suspicion seemed to melt away as she stepped back into the light shed by a lamp on a bedside table.

“Anyway, I'm probably not getting a Christmas bonus from him this year,” I said, “or even a card, maybe.”

She smiled, maybe in spite of her inclination. “It's March, and you've already locked that in, huh?”

“Di Novo is furious,” I said, figuring playing to pity might be my best play here, “So he doesn't really have a lot to celebrate.” Which was not true. All the chaos unleashed on America in the last few months had been great for our business, but that was a grim-ass, ghoulish thing to mention given how many people had died.

“Maybe this will help you,” McMahon said, and she came alongside me to show me her phone. “I found some of the paintings in the same series as the one that was stolen.” She swiped to the left and another painting showed up of – unmistakably – Arche, this time clad in a stunning sapphire blue dress, and standing with a very thin, angular dog, on a background with stormy skies behind her. “This one was stolen from London's National Gallery at some point in the last few weeks, but it wasn't noticed until two days ago.”

I frowned as I stared at the picture. “How does that happen?”

“It wasn't on display,” McMahon said, eyes alight. “It was in storage. And they conducted a top-to-bottom search of the archives before concluding it was missing, with no idea how it had vanished. This one was in a private collection in Shenzhen,” she swiped again, “but the house burned down three weeks ago. The fire seemed to start in the room where the painting was displayed. Everything in it was a total loss.”

“This was awfully fast work,” I said dryly.

She shrugged. “I used AI search. Honestly, it's making the job easier on obscure things like this. Now – there are still three more paintings in this series that we know of. And funnily enough – they're all recorded as being displayed most recently for sale by a gallery here in St. Louis. Downtown.” Her eyes gleamed in triumph.

“How does that work?” I asked, rubbing my forehead. Some tension had parked itself in the lines of my brow.

“Di Novo bought the painting from them,” McMahon said. “I've already got black and whites on the way over there now.”

“Do we have photos of those?” I asked, mildly curious.

“Sadly, no,” she said. “Though I assume the dealer does.” She backed up, heading for the door. “I figured we could head over now, assuming your boss wants you to help recover the painting?”

I hesitated. “He would love that. However...” And here she raised an eyebrow. “...We need to be a little cautious. This guy already walloped me once.”

“But now you've got the measure of him, right?” she asked.

“He's a telekinetic, which is...it's a problem.” I could see she wasn't getting it. “He moves things – objects, people – with his mind. He can throw up lightning rods to stop my power, easy, can push your bullets away if you shoot at him. Can toss us around like we're nothing. He's very powerful.”

“As witnessed by the hole in the wall back there,” she said, frowning as she lightly nodded down the hall to his entry point. “So you're telling me you can't stop him if we run across him? And I'm guessing by your description he can just pluck suppressant darts out of the air before they hit him?” I nodded to that. “Okay. Who does your firm have that can stop him?”

I grimaced. “Short of Reed or Sienna...there's no easy answer to that. It might take a task force.”

“I don't have a budget for that,” she said. “Not for an art thief that took one painting and didn't hurt a soul in the process.” I must have cringed again. “Sorry. Your dignity notwithstanding. Can you pull some strings with your office or call in a favor or something to get backup?”

“Ahhh...” I looked at my phone, which had buzzed in my hand. Message from my other employer – Cassidy Ellis, who I'd picked up that side hustle from. Just a programming gig, but I was supposed to have finished it by now, and her message was a simple ? to let me know she was waiting for the code I'd promised. “I don't think my brother is going to be receptive to me asking for help right now. Given the circumstances.” I hurriedly zapped out a reply to Cassidy, too: Got bushwhacked by metahuman on my primary job. Expect delay.

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but caught herself. “Is this guy dangerous?”

“If you're asking me if he's a threat to others...I don't think so. If he did get the one in China and London, he's going nonviolent with it. He tried to get me to stand aside, and only did what he did after I refused. Stubbornly.”

“There's no way my bosses will authorize the kind of money it'd take to get a metahuman task force out here,” she said. “Not for that. But...maybe if we get close, can figure out who he is, build a case...I can get temporary authorization, enough to bring in your heavy hitters for a couple hours to at least wrap him up.” She had a hopeful gleam in her eye. “But I could really use some help. What do you say?”

This is where I was hung up. Technically, given Di Novo's intransigence, my case was at an end. I'd failed, she was mad, and had every right to be.

But also there was the Arche of it all. I had to talk to her, had to find out what was going on in this. Yet McMahon's sudden earnest insistence that I help her might turn to the aforementioned cloud of suspicion if I just walked away. Or worse – didn't walk away, and she caught me down the line poking into this on my own.

There was a way to handle this, but it was going to be a real thin thread I'd be following to avoid troubles with the local PD and also to keep my girlfriend from getting tangled up in this, imperiling her by turning the eyes of the law toward her. “I'll help if I can,” I said.

“Great,” she said, and suddenly, she was all smiles. “Now let's find out what this art dealer has – hopefully before our perp hits him.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Augustus

“Yo, how much that suit cost you, Augustus?” Big G's muscled arms were stretched out to either side, wrapped around the slim, trim, yet definitely stacked girls sitting beside him.

“Almost as much as this party's costing you, Granthony,” I said, and listened to the music get a lot simpler as the DJ stopped mixing on the fly. There was a grand sucking in of breath all the way around the pool, the hundred-plus in attendance suddenly finding themselves ringside for a verbal altercation that they probably assumed was going to turn physical.

Which was not my intention. Not with these odds. But if it happened, I was going to be ready for it.

Granthony just laughed, though. “Not many G's still alive that can call me that.” He leaned forward, and to say he was big was to say a fully-swole Hercules was mildly large. There was a reason he'd been able to bully the shit out of me all through school, and it was because he was built like a tank. “But you been around since the beginning, and I suppose you and I – we've had some moments over the years, haven't we?” He leaned back. “I particularly enjoyed the one where you got booted out of the locker room without a stitch on during gym class and had to make your way.”

“Aww, you were doing me a favor there, Granthony,” I said. “See, I got my first girlfriend out of that after she saw me running by in the halls, looking for something to cover myself with. Asked me out that very night. Hell, you got me laid for the first time, technically, because she put out. So thanks for that.”

That generated a round of laughter, and the smile slipped off of Big G's face as his insult backfired and the crowd came around on my side. I ignored the look of disgust on Taneshia's. What did she know about being in a pissing contest with this creep?

“Ah, yeah, funny,” G said. “What are you doing back here? I thought you left to go be some white girl's house slave.”

“I don't know if you heard this, because you never paid much attention in school,” I said, “but they abolished that back in, like, 1865. But hey, I know, it's tough for a dealer, banger, and all-around scumbag like you to wrap your head around the idea of a business that doesn't involve stringing people out or stealing shit.”

“Listen to you,” G said, scoffing. “Leave the neighborhood, think you're a big shot, come back here and start running your mouth.”

“I was running my mouth off long before I left the neighborhood,” I said. “Pretty sure that's why you were always mad at me and trying to stuff me in lockers – to shut me up.”

He cracked a smile. “That's true. You always did talk too much for your own good.” He brought his hands down around the shoulders of the girls and pulled them a little closer. “See, I don't like hearing other people talk that much. I prefer action.”

“Oh, I bet,” I said. “Probably the kind that involves a lot of little blue pills to keep you going and dollars passed around to keep the ladies interested.”

G's face seemed to catch a shadow, and darkened a shadow. “You come into my house and insult me?”

“See, I'm glad you picked up on that,” I said. “Because I worried. I said to myself, 'the problem with Granthony is, he may just be too stupid to realize that you're walking into his drug-dealing complex courtyard pool party and insulting the dumb pile of trash right to his face.' I really was concerned.”

Granthony just grunted, letting his hands leave the supple shoulders of the girls who flanked him. “You've seen some shit these last few years, haven't you?”

I stared back at him. “More than you could imagine.”

“Oh, I can imagine a lot,” he said, and leaned his head down, letting his glasses slip down to reveal one of his eyes was just...gone. Like someone had clawed it out of his skull. “Like I imagine things turning ugly around here for you, if you don't head out right about...now.” And he settled back in his seat.

“Why would I want to go leaving when this is such a nice party?” I asked, steeling myself. I gripped all the dirt in the planters around me, and readied myself. If guns or powers started flying, I'd build myself and Taneshia a shield in seconds, and Big G would be the first to die as I worked my way through this place. Her hands gripped my arm in warning, but she didn't know.

Granthony just chuckled. “It's a shame about your car.”

It took me a second to process that between the thudding bass beats. “Excuse me?”

“Your car,” G said. “I don't know, man, I think you've been gone too long. Did you forget what kind of hood you came up in? And you drive a nice BMW like that up in here? Without paying your respects?” He tsked. “It's a real shame.”

I felt blindsided, because...well, this wasn't what I was expecting. There were no guns being pulled, no powers being thrown. Granthony wasn't even threatening me, I realized at last – because he had no intention of doing something that would give a contracted law enforcement officer like myself reason to arrest him.

“Augustus?” Taneshia's hand dug into my arm again.

I felt my mask slip, and I turned and hustled back the way I'd come. “See you later, Baby A!” Granthony called after me. “Way later,” he said, to a round of laughter.

They didn't stop me at the gate. They held it open for me to retreat back the way I came, already at a jog, knowing that when I got back to the street I'd find–

It wasn't as bad as it could have been.

But it was a lot worse than I expected.

Not a single window had been damaged. There were no dings in the car's surface, at all.

But every square inch of it had been tagged in spray paint graffiti. The most vile things imaginable were painted onto the surface. “Uncle Tom,” was sprayed on the passenger side door, and it might have been the least offensive thing on the whole vehicle.

“He was always too smart to let himself be baited,” I said, because I felt Taneshia hovering behind me. “He always waited to hit me until the teachers had their backs turned.”

“This could have been a lot worse, Augustus,” Taneshia said softly.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, turning back to look at the apartment complex. I just stared at it for a moment...

...And the ground started to shake.

Screams echoed through the place as the lights flickered. The complex was experiencing a small, about magnitude 5 earthquake centered on the swimming pool. Of course, saying a magnitude 5 is small is easier to pull off when you're not standing on the epicenter.

The shaking subsided a moment later, and Taneshia looked at me as the lights flickered one last time, then settled into a steady state. “Did you do that just to mess with him?”

“Nah,” I said, and opened the passenger door for her. “I did it to break the pool.”

She stared at me as she stood in the door, paused before getting in. “What, now?”

“I busted the bottom of the pool while I was shaking the foundations,” I said. “Put a big crack in it. It's draining into the sewer system at the moment. It'll be empty in about five, ten minutes.”

“How?” she asked.

“The pool's aggregate,” I said. “Concrete. Made from rock and other such elements.” I waved my hand, and concrete dust swirled through the air around me.

“Hey yo!” Granthony's voice boomed from within the complex.

“We should probably get gone before he gets here,” I said, and she ducked into the car.

I peeled away from the curb before Granthony made it, shirtless, out to the street.

Mess with my car, I'll mess with you. Big G knew that now.

And I figured all I had to do was wait, and he'd provide me plenty of opportunity to arrest his ass for good cause.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sienna

My phone started buzzing madly somewhere in the deep hours of the night, and I came to in a cloud bank, the lights of Boston shining off it, creating a haze around me like the sky around me was on fire. It took me a moment or two to realize where I was, then another couple to recognize Sierra's toning alarm as I fumbled for my phone and came up with it in a tight-gripped hand after fishing for a moment.

“I have visual confirmation that Mekhi Bonner is in his house,” Sierra said, as I rubbed my face. “I confirmed his ID when he looked out the window thirty seconds ago. Since you went to sleep, I have also observed six people in the house with him, all male, all over the age of twenty, five of whom have open warrants for a variety of charges.”

“No surprises, he hangs with a bad crowd,” I said. “Any ID on the sixth?”

“It was a female, Gloria Cheevers, who has seven previous convictions for solicitation of prostitution.”

“Ah,” I said. “Mekhi's arranged a little release party.”

Sierra was actually quiet for a moment. “Did you mean release as in–”

“I said what I said. Let's not dwell on it.” I got out a yawn. “Okay. Plan?”

“The back door to the house seems least guarded. Several of the convicts are presently holding position in the living room. A word of warning: three of them are wanted for suspicion of murder, and the other two have convictions for a variety of acts of violence. You can expect stiff resistance.”

“I always do,” I said, cycling through the options available in my head for powers to use. Fire, Warmind, Ice, Fae webs, Thor electricity, and the Energy Blade were all at full power, along with cracking the Gates of Hell. Plus I had my new charge punch, though I hadn't used it much. Everything else was somewhat weaker, but included Sonic voice, Magneto, Hercules, animal control, and eyebeams (at least).

Sweeping down out of the sky, I aimed myself for the back door of the house. Putting my feet first, I readied myself as a battering ram and smashed in, sending the door flying into the wall five feet inside.

It made a hellacious sound, like a train had hit the house, and reverberated through the kitchen/dining room I'd burst into. There was a guy, tall, dumb, standing with his mouth agape about five feet from my entry, at the sink. He started to reach inside his jacket and I yelled, “HANDS!” in both a commanding voice and also one that split his eardrums.

He came out with a gun – surprise – and I rammed my energy blade through his face while he was cringing. It heated the inside of his skull to 5,000 Fahrenheit in 1.2 seconds; he slumped over, his eyeballs burst and smoking, the blood dripping out of his ears blackened from the heat.

I looked left and found there was nothing but wall there, so I stalked right, and ran into two guys who already had their weapons drawn. They snapped to, taking aim at me–

But I used my magnetic powers to push on their guns. Not much, because that power wasn't strong. I just gave them a shove in the direction they were already going. It looked ridiculous, each of them seeming to find their gun flying of its own accord, hand still gripped on it. They didn't go far, the guns; the guy on my right ended up overtraveling his pistol to aim at the guy on the left.

Then he fired it. Three times. Or it got fired. One of those. Triggers are metal, I control metal, maybe it was him, maybe it was me.

Either way: the guy on the left caught three bullets in the torso and the back of the neck and crumpled over to spend the rest of his brief life bleeding out. I felt sure he would be greatly missed by his fellow criminals and prison abolitionists (but I repeat myself).

But the shooter didn't have much time to mourn, because – as horrified as he looked by what he'd just done (wink wink) – before he could bring the gun back around to deal with the real threat (me, obvs), he caught eyebeams in the face that hit him like a Honda Odyssey doing thirty and knocked him off his feet.

Since he didn't let go of his pistol when he hit the ground, and, indeed, tried to recover by aiming again at me, I rammed my energy blade into his chin as I went by. If violence begat violence, it was safe to say I preferred to end the cycle as much as I could. His heirs, if any, could come after me if they wanted, but his days of trying to shoot me were now over, because the energy blade had run through his brain cavity and put paid to his ticket for good.

“There are at least four more people in the house,” Sierra said from deep within my pocket. “By audio detection. Mekhi Bonner seems to be ahead and down the hallway to your left.”

“Great,” I said, storming into a family room to find three guys bringing AK-47 style rifles to bear on me.

If I stayed still, I'd get shot up, so I dropped sideways, kicking up my legs with my flight powers even as I pushed my head and torso horizontal, and down. Less than a second later I was against the ground, and bullets were chewing through the archway I'd just walked through, showering me with wood chips.

My targets were standing behind couches. I couldn't see them, they couldn't really see me, but they were dead set on raining lead all around me.

I put a stop to that foolishness right away, though, by cracking the Gates of Hell.

From the top of my head to the soles of my feet, a line of crackling scarlet energy burst out of me. It almost looked like it was alive, this cylindrical burst of pure power, churning as it surged forward. It grew the moment it left me, in width and length, and ripped through the couches in front of me as though a buzz saw of pure annihilation had cut through the room.

All three of my assailants died upon impact with it; their legs dropped limply to the ground, and whatever above the waist that might have escaped the energy ribbon I'd just loosed – in one guy's case, his forehead and above, in another's, just half his Celtics ball cap and in the third, not a damned thing – hit the ground where they'd been standing.

The energy ripped through the front wall of the house, dissolving it cleanly and bringing down the roof in the far corner. I dispelled the blast a second later, before it could get away from me and rip through the neighboring homes.

In Edinburgh, I'd seen that power turned loose to cause untold numbers of deaths. So I was very cautious about how I employed it, always dispelling it the moment I was done with it.

Here, though, I probably waited an extra second too long, and as a result, this place's living room was now an open-air patio.

Whoops.

“Mekhi Bonner!” I shouted, coming back to my feet and moving down the hallway. There were four doors; probably three bedrooms and one bath, if I recalled the layout Sierra had showed me. “Come out with your hands up!”

An unprintable reply was offered from a guy who shoved his way out of the first door awkwardly, with an AK rifle in his hands. Getting through the door with a rifle can be awkward, even if done correctly, and this guy did it all wrong. He had the gun down as he burst out, then tried to bring it up and on target – at me – once he was clear of the door.

It was a hell of a mistake to go out on, and it was certainly the last he ever made.

I zapped him with electricity, so much voltage that he actually flew off the ground and thumped into the door jamb behind him, while simultaneously pumping his own feet full of lead as he held the trigger down.

Not that he noticed. His heart had stopped the moment I hit him with the lightning.

He sagged to the ground, eyes exploded. Whatever. Full-auto machine guns like he and his buddies used were a felony to possess without special license anywhere in the United States, and Massachusetts' laws were especially forbidding of such things. Prior felons were excluded from possessing guns, and thus he was guilty of three felonies right there (four if you count possession of the ammo – and I did).

Which is my fancy way of saying I did not give a single solitary damn that I was stacking the bodies in this house. Everybody seemed set for violence and eager to kill me, and I was perfectly happy to reciprocate.

I dipped into the room from whence that guy had sprung, and found it empty. Turning around and keeping myself entirely within this – now cleared – room, I looked across the hall to find an empty, darkened bathroom, and I sent forty thousand volts in to light the place up just to be sure. It bounced off the curtain rod and sparked against the toilet, but I felt pretty confident once it went out that, yes, it was clear.

Two rooms to go.

Using my eyebeams, I blasted through the wall between this room and the one next door, then tapped the power of my Uncle Friday to swell my arm and rip open the paneling. “Heeeeeeeere's Janey!” I shouted, looking inside.

Someone screamed, very effeminately. Yet it was not a woman. It was a man, with a gun, and he was turning to look at me when I tagged him at the base of the spine with the eyebeams, sending him sprawling. I heard his back break, but that didn't concern me much as I pulled myself through the wall and into the bedroom to find a woman also screaming and crying in the corner. “Stay down,” I said, and blasted her into place with a light web that stretched over her, pinning her there like a human-grade spiderweb. She wouldn't be moving or drawing a gun on me, and that was really all I was after.

“Mekhi Bonner!” I shouted again, with one room left to clear. The door to this bedroom opened into the hall, and straight across it was the last one, but I couldn't see Bonner in there.

“Police frequencies indicate that they are aware of this altercation, though no units have been dispatched,” Sierra said. “I believe based on the audio pickups ahead that Bonner may be trying to escape through the bedroom window. It is likely that additional reinforcements from his gang are on their way from neighboring houses even now.”

“Noted,” I said, and drifted forward. I barely showed my face at the door and a pistol cracked ahead as someone planted a 9mm round in the jamb to my left, followed quickly by four more, more erratically, all around me.

I caught a stray round in the left shoulder and knew it only because of the impact. The pain would be following shortly, but I pulled Wolfe to front of mind and focused on what had to happen next.

First...that shooting shit needed to stop, and stop now. I gave a hard magnetic push against the metal object I felt bucking around about twenty feet in front of me, and there was a cry from within the bedroom, followed by a thud as Mekhi Bonner completed his transit out of the bedroom window with my aid.

I came ripping into the bedroom to find another prostitute screaming in the corner of the room, her hands flung up defensively in front of her face, crouching in the altogether with nothing but her acrylic nails as a defense. I blasted her with light webs that bound her to the wall with a thump, and while she screamed, she was otherwise unharmed, and out of my damned way.

Pummeling the wall around the window with my eyebeams, I followed up with a short cracking of the Gates of Hell, enough to rip through the wall but be dissolved a moment later. I flew through to find Mekhi Bonner scrambling across the snow-dotted lawn, trying to raise his gun and run at the same time.

“Drop it, Bonner!” I shouted, with my usual blend of menace laced with guarantee. This was purely playing to the crowd and, possibly, the cameras. If it had been entirely up to me, Mekhi Bonner would have caught a bolt of electricity to the ass and enjoyed a fried, “rectum,” to go along with the, “killed 'em,” he'd earned by shooting at me.

It may surprise you to discover that Bonner did not, in fact, drop it, as advised. It might also surprise you what I did next.

I didn't kill him.

Oh, I wanted to. And I certainly could have. I might even have been on legally okay ground to do so; I had probable cause to believe he was in the house (video evidence from Sierra's surveillance), and every single person in the house I'd killed was 1) a felon in possession of a firearm, 2) shooting at me, including, now, Bonner himself.

But, as Augustus was so fond of reminding me, we didn't get paid bounties based on, “dead or alive.” Not these days. And more was the pity, because frankly, as much as civil society had gone straight to hell, it felt to me like we needed a strong corrective along the lines of mass public executions to return us to the kind of order where you could safely walk down a city street without fearing for your life.

Oh, well. I wasn't the president. Or a legislator.

I was just the hammer of justice.

So I gave Bonner a zap in the lower legs that was well below the lethal threshold even for a human, and when he started spasming, I hit him again right on the pistol. The pistol flew out of his hand and landed in the snow, and he hit his knees beside it.

“Mekhi Bonner,” I said, stepping up and jabbing a syringe into his neck while he was distracted with the pain from getting zapped. “You're under arrest. I really wish you'd keep silent, though I know you won't. You have the right to an attorney, and I'm sure they're going to be super assmad and butthurt about this arrest and the lightning, but all I can say is you earned it, because you really shouldn't have shot at me.”

Bonner looked up at me with his eyes filled with tears, and said a completely predictable and fairly cliched thing. You can probably guess. It involved suggesting I do something that was, unless you were missing at least one rib, anatomically impossible.

Something knocked me back, slapped me over, and cut my legs from under me at the same time that Bonner was dragged from my grasp. I saw motion – shadows, only – and I knew what I was dealing with even before I came back to my feet.

Kristina Bonner had entered the fray.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jamal

Idrove separately from Detective McMahon to the address she'd given me. I followed the traffic laws as best as I could, following behind her at a respectable distance, not doing anything wild or chaotic as we cruised through the St. Louis streets. Past sundown, this area looked to be one of the nicest in town; St. Louis had generally been one of the highest-crime cities in the entire US over the last decades, but you couldn't tell by looking at this particular section of town.

As we drove, I kept my hand casually by my side, frantically interfacing with my phone and tickling the leads to send inquiries all through the internet. I was seeking, searching, trying to make contact.

With ArcheGrey1819, of course. And now I had to wonder if that 1819 in her handle might have been her birth year. The mere thought of that one made me grimace; sure, Sienna had relatives a lot older than that, but I'd been sleeping with Arche for almost three years. I knew her birthday was September 18th, but out of politeness I'd never asked which year.

When we pulled up to the art gallery, I hadn't had any luck with the various electronic dead drops or email addresses, though I'd fired off some five hundred or so probes, trying to make contact. One of the sticking points might have been the cell network I was operating on; it seemed St. Louis might have gotten some of Cassidy's upgrades, which were designed to block illicit activities related to the dark web. Sure, I used a VPN to mask my tracks, but it all still slowed me down, trying to cover my tracks in the process.

And I still had nothing to show for it, though if Arche was out there watching, and awake, she probably knew now that I was looking for her.

The Penrose art gallery had three cop cars parked out front, uniformed police officers just standing around in front. It wasn't hard to spot the owner of the gallery, because he was standing in the middle of the room wringing his hands. I'd always thought that description was overblown, like...who would literally wring their hands?

But he was doing it, his high register directed into a whimper that made the shaved strands of my hair stand on end atop my head. “Why?” he asked, in a voice that made me want to slap him across the face like one of those characters in an old movie and tell him to shape up. “Why is this happening to me?”

One of the uniformed cops was standing with him, and had his back to us. “It's one painting, man. You have a whole gallery of them. And furthermore, the place doesn't even look damaged. Seems to me you got off kind of light on this one. It could have been so much worse.” McMahon cleared her throat, causing the uniform to spin around. “Oh – uh. Ma'am,” he said, nodding at her.

Introductions went from there, the officer recused himself, still blushed from saying – gently – what I'd wanted to. The man with wrung hands was Eliot Penrose, the proprietor. And in due course, he informed us that, yes, the painting from the series in question that he possessed had been stolen this very evening, in an audacious heist that had resulted in his door lock being ruined(!), his security cameras being taken offline, though not permanently, and his silken underwear being soiled from him being vapidly brittle. (That last bit was an assumption on my part, but it seemed well founded the more I spoke to him.)

“I just don't know what this city is coming to,” Penrose said, his hands absolutely red from wringing. He'd gone full Ricky Bobby and had no idea what to do with them.

“Yes,” I said, unable to hold back, “and previously St. Louis had been just such a safe city.”

McMahon sent me a look that could have melted...well, aluminum foil, because it wasn't too harsh. “Exactly,” Penrose said, responding as though I'd been fully serious rather than deadpan. Clearly his experience was different than the average citizen...who didn't live in the nice neighborhoods of town.

“Mr. Penrose,” McMahon said, “two things: first, do you have a picture of the painting in question? And second, do you have the names of the other owners of this series? Since we know you sold at least the one to Miss Di Novo.”

He fidgeted; we were standing in his office, a cramped room at the back of the gallery with security monitors that were aglow, showing in high def the police officers milling around the front of the gallery. “Of course,” he said, with a sigh like he'd just lost his tickets to a prized opera (which is, I imagine, the sort of thing he would be upset about). He'd collapsed in his desk chair, and now slid around to the filing cabinet behind him, opening the top drawer and rummaging for a moment before letting out another wail of despair.

“What?” McMahon asked.

“The bills of sale,” he cried, “they're gone!” As though someone had chopped his johnson off. Seriously, how did this man navigate the vicissitudes of life? He had all the resilience of single-ply toilet paper in a hurricane.

I exchanged a look with McMahon. “Do you have a digital record?” she asked with a patience that was really remarkable given the situation at hand.

“I had to send my computer into the shop last week,” he sniffled. “It got a virus of some sort. All my data was lost.”

That tickled the back of my mind. But to McMahon, I said nothing. Instead, I came up with, “And you don't remember who you sold these paintings to?”

He seemed to try to compose himself, an effort that appeared, given his softness, Herculean. “I recall one of them. A regular. Linda Voogt. She has a house over near Forest Park. The other - I don't know.” He put his face in his hands. “I assume one of my assistants sold it. Yes, I think so. It didn't fetch a good price, maybe $10,000 at most.”

McMahon raised an eyebrow; like her, that was a lot to me. She nodded to the uniformed officer; he was standing with another cop, who had her back turned to us, watching the street. “Call that Voogt lead in, will you? Get an address and send units.” Turning her attention back to Penrose, she asked, “Would there be any record of the pictures online?”

“You mean the paintings?” he asked coldly. Apparently pictures was too loose a nomenclature for them, at least for his delicate tastes.

“Yes, those,” McMahon said. The woman must have been a saint in a previous life; I was ready to club this dipshit and I hadn't even spoken to him at any length.

He sighed and fiddled with his phone, then made another exasperated noise, this time like his prized dog, freshly groomed and ready for the kennel show, had just run off and jumped in a mud puddle. “My website's offline.”

Another little tickle hit the back of my mind, but again, I said nothing.

“If you think of anything else,” McMahon said, catching a nod from the officer, “please, don't hesitate to reach out.” She practically threw a card at him, then went immediately to the uniformed cop. “Address?”

“It's right down the street from your last call at 1553,” he said, and McMahon broke into a jog, out the door in a second.

I was after her a moment later, and stepped out in time to see McMahon jump in her car. “You get the address?” she called to me, already in drive and rolling. I nodded, and she burned out before I even made it to my car, which was parked legally, across the street.

Slipping in, I hit the ignition and started reaching for my seatbelt.

I didn't quite get to it when the passenger door opened and someone got in.

You want to talk about alarming moments? Having someone jump in your car with you unexpectedly in any situation can raise your heart rate. When it's St. Louis, in the middle of the night, and you've already been stripped naked and bound to a ceiling once in a night, it's a quick way to send the old ticker into the stratosphere.

But once I saw who it was, my terror at least died down a little.

Because there beside me, in the passenger seat, dressed in the uniform of the lady cop who'd been lurking in the art gallery while we talked...

...Was ArcheGrey1819.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Augustus

Idrove away from Big G Granthony's apartment complex in my tagged-up BMW, seething. I clutched the wheel, pigment in my hands faded from how I was holding the stitched leather so tight. “I can't believe that clown. You know, John Travolta was right in Pulp Fiction. There really is nothing more chickenshit than messing with a man's car.”

Looking over at Taneshia beside me, I saw nothing but disgust radiating off her features. I'd seen a lot of looks from her over the years, but disgust wasn't one I caught all that often.

“What?” I asked.

“You just started a fight with Granthony that you didn't have to,” she said. “That's going to have consequences, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “That was the point, remember?”

She rolled her eyes. “Listen, you may be out of the neighborhood, but some of us still gotta live here, Augustus. And the cops ain't coming lately, which leaves the trouble that falls up to me.”

“Seems to me his trouble hasn't been getting dealt with properly,” I said. “So I guess I'm just not sure what trouble you're having fall on you.”

“The kind that just caused you to turn tail and run out of Big G's apartment complex,” she said. “The kind that's going to hit your momma's house in about an hour. So get her out of there and take her to your hotel, Augustus.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You think they're going to come tonight? Then I extra super duper gotta hang around.”

“You can't even stand when your car gets messed up, Augustus,” she said. “What do you think they're going to do when they go to find you at her place and you ain't there? Do you think that house on the corner burned down all on its own? No. Big G is coming, and he's going to wreck your momma's place because you just humiliated him in front of everybody.”

“I got people I can call, you know,” I said. “I can have them down here, lickety-split, and we can–”

“What?” she asked, glancing at her phone, then thrusting it out at me. “Start a war in the neighborhood like your girl Sienna is doing up in Boston right now?”

I looked at it; it was a news item with no photos about some sort of calamitous violence in Boston that Sienna had (allegedly) perpetrated. It sounded like rumors from a reporter who hadn't left their desk to actually see what had happened. “You know these reporters, Taneshia. They lie. Probably just heard some chatter on Socialite and reposted it, didn't even kick off their fuzzy slippers to see for themselves before saying it.”

“Yeah, I'm sure when I read all hell breaking loose involving Sienna that it's totally fictional.”

I pulled the car up to the curb, because we'd arrived at my momma's house. “I'm going to finish what I started, okay? I'm not leaving y'all in the lurch–”

“I wish you would,” she said, throwing open her door. “We all have to live here after you go back to your perfect life, Augustus. And you just threw a grenade in the middle of our shit that the rest of us are going to have to cope with.”

She slammed the door, and I killed the ignition and got out. She was storming across the lawn, trying to put distance between me and her. I would have let her, too, except under the eaves of her house I saw somebody move in the shadows. “Taneshia!” I shouted, and leapt the car. Already, I had dirt ripping out of the lawn, preparing to shield her if need be.

Turned out there was no need. A tall, lanky, blond white man in a suit hustled out of the shadows and caught her in an embrace that was...reciprocated. “I just heard,” he said breathlessly. The age lines on his face put him at about forty, forty-five. The easy strength he exhibited when he caught her told me he was a meta. His accent was Nordic, somewhere.

And he was holding my ex in a very familiar way. Then kissing her in a much more familiar one.

She parted from him self-consciously, then looked back at me, smoothing out the mess he made of her hair and clothes, clutching her like that. I was standing about ten feet away, giant clods of dirt hovering behind me, caught looking like a moron because my ex now had a new boyfriend...

...And he was a middle-aged white man.

“Augustus,” she said, sighing after she'd composed herself. “This is Hans Sigurdsson. He's–”

“Yeah, I got it,” I said, ignoring the knife I felt twisting in my gut. “He's your boyfriend.”

She raised her head high, her chin pointing at me, like she was looking down on me. “He's also my boss.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sienna

The appearance of Kristina Bonner, dripping out of the shadows like oil coalescing into the figure of a human being, changed the whole equation for me. Her face came into solid view first, features forming into their usual configuration and leaving behind that insubstantial, shadowy appearance to become the brown eyes, button nose, and tightly bound hair – along with her clothing which was expensive and always on point, fashion-wise. Emerald green tailored coat over an exquisite blouse and pants, Hangisi pumps, Cartier bracelet – she wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion, but she was dressed to kill.

I had my hand up, ready to throw fire...

...And found I couldn't.

She'd interposed herself directly between me and her brother, meaning if I wanted to take the shot I'd be shooting through her.

One hand rested on my pistol, the other extended toward her – and him, by extension – ready to fire something. Flames, Magneto powers, ice, Fae webs, something.

Yet nothing came out.

“You can't have him, Sienna,” Kristina said, finishing her withdrawal from the shadows. She was in a crouch, putting her body between him and me, wisely. Or foolishly, if my desire to shoot her got too high.

“I don't want him,” I said, “the state of Massachusetts does. I'm just here executing their will.”

“You've been doing a lot of executing lately, haven't you?” She pointedly looked at the house behind me.

“Not as much as I'd like. Not as much as the world seems to need.”

“Let this one go,” she said, and I caught a glimmer of desperation in her eye.

“That's not how it works,” I said. “I don't come for him, someone else will.”

She made a show of looking around. “You really think anyone else is going to put themselves through the foolishness you just did?”

“Yes,” I said. “Eventually. Do you not get it, Kristina? This lawlessness is a temporary thing. It is not going to stand forever. Do you not hear the chattering creatures in Washington? The talk on the streets? People are fed up.”

“Some of us are fed up, too,” Mekhi Bonner said. He'd gotten tentatively to his knees behind his sister. “With you modern-day slave patrols trying to always be kicking us down.”

I blinked at him, then looked at Kristina. “I can't tell if he's being serious or not.”

“I am the deadest serious man you ever met,” Mekhi said, peering out from behind her.

“Well, you're getting close to half right,” I said.

“Shush, Mekhi,” Kristina said, looking rather urgently back at him, then at me. “Listen–”

“No, you listen,” I said. The patches of snow on the ground around me glistened as the sun broke from behind the clouds. “If it was just some rando standing here instead of you, you'd both already be cuffed or dead.”

“I didn't let him out,” she said, and stared back at me with clear resolve. “But I'm not letting you take him back.” She raised her head high and looked me in the eyes. “You owe me.”

That lit a fire in my belly. “You are aiding and abetting an escaped felon, Kristina. You want a fair deal? How about this: you leave in peace, and I take him back – alive – to serve out the rest of his sentence.”

“I'm not going back,” Mekhi said, trying to thrust himself around her but catching himself on her outstretched arm. He was getting belligerent, the dumbass, while she was trying to save him from his inescapable fate. “Prison is bullshit, a means of control pushed on us by the white man.”

I felt my eyes almost fully roll back in my head. “You were convicted of robbing black victims by an all-black jury, dumbass. Wanting you in prison transcends racial lines. Because you're a giant piece of shit who can't stop harming others, and making bullshit excuses for being a generally terrible person who can't function in polite society.”

“Why do I have to conform to your notions of politeness?” He thrust his chest out at me, and once more, Kristina was holding him back with minimal effort because the dumbass was depowered. Still couldn't keep himself from acting like a dumbass, though. I was starting to get the notion that not only had this idiot apple fallen from a different tree than his sister, they might not even have been in the same orchard.

“First of all, not doing armed robbery to innocent people fits neatly into the definition of 'politeness' shared by almost the entire world,” I said. “Second of all, if you want to be such a throbbing dick, may I suggest procuring yourself some acreage suitable to the task of insulating yourself from said world – say, a thousand or so – in the middle of nowhere, where you can just be the giant dick you were born to be where no one will be bothered by you; I've got a cousin who needs that sort of a buffer from modernity, so I'm sympathetic to your plight.”

My phone chirped. I fished in my pocket for it, not daring to look away from the Bonners. “You have about ten seconds before an overwhelming number of men with guns will be arriving at your position,” Sierra said from my phone.

“I helped you fight the war,” Kristina said, her hand extended toward me like she was trying to tame a particularly dangerous animal. “I helped you get your man out of Chinese prison. Now I'm asking you to do the same for me.”

Someone took a shot at me from behind, and a bullet smacked into the ground at my feet. I didn't even turn, throwing a spear of ice and impaling the dumb bastard right below the chin. “You are asking,” I growled, catching the look of bleak fear on Kristina's face, “for more than I am capable of giving.”

“That's what I said to you.” Her voice was soft. “But you showed up on my doorstep anyway, and five minutes later my deluxe New York apartment in the sky was in ruins.”

I grimaced, rage causing my teeth to lock together and grind. “They were coming to kill you.”

“Because of you.” Her pride was annoying, and came out as she lifted her head and pointed her chin at me. “You owe me.”

Three more guys came charging around the corner of their house, leading with their faces – and AK-47 barrels – and every single one of them caught an ice spear to the throat. When I turned back, Kristina was pushing Mekhi back with everything she had, because the dumb shit still seemed to want to charge at me with nothing but his bare fists.

The sound of men with guns thumping toward me was now inescapable. Every one of them had surely done terrible things, and they were all deeply in violation of the laws of Boston and the state of Massachusetts.

Yet...I couldn't just massacre them all. Nor could I bring myself to burn Kristina to the ground and seize Mekhi and fly off into the (total lack of) sunset.

“Loyalty wins this round,” I said to Kristina. “It may not win the next, or the next after that, come to it.”

“Wouldn't you do anything for your brother?” she asked.

I launched into the air, letting her get the last word in. As I shot up into the gray sky, I saw hundreds of guys converging on my position. Some were moving meta fast, coming from blocks away; all were armed in some way.

Mekhi Bonner had assembled his own private army. There were many such cases, we were learning, in the wake of the Chinese insurgency that had brought American cities to a state of utter chaos and lawlessness.

It burned in my gullet that I had to fly away, watching Kristina hold her brother back like some queen holding the leash on her stupid chihuahua, trying to keep it from attacking a scarred, old pit bull.

I wasn't leaving Boston. Not yet. I'd retreat, lick my wounds, consider my strategy.

And I'd be back for Mekhi. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a month, when he dropped his guard.

But I wasn't going to leave him free. Not a chance.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jamal

“What the hell?” I hissed, because Arche had really taken me by surprise here. Jumping in my car unexpectedly on a city street in St. Louis, when I'd assumed – incorrectly, clearly – she was in Europe (as she often was) had set my heart to racing.

She stared across the rental's center console with that serious, eastern Euro sort of look, and spoke in her familiar, clipped accent. “Well? Drive.”

“Where?”

“After her,” she said, motioning in the direction Detective McMahon had driven off. “You're going to the scene of the next robbery.”

I started the car, but wasn't pleased about it. “So you're neck deep in this, then?”

She settled into position beside me, fastening her seatbelt. “I assume you've seen the painting by now.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know I never asked, but it might have been polite to let me know you've celebrated a centenary.”

She stared at me a little strangely. “I've had a bicentennial, if you want to get exact.”

I flinched a little. “Not sure I actually wanted confirmation of that.” I kept my hands on the wheel, but the change in my pigment around my fingers and knuckles indicated how hard I was gripping it. “So what's the deal? You wanted to retrieve some paintings of yourself to further remove yourself from the system, and you used the telekinetic guy as your cat's paw?”

She reached over and gripped my hand, and when I looked into her eyes, I could see a real fire burning in them. “I have nothing to do with him or what he's up to.”

I stared back. “Then what are you doing in St. Louis?”

She gave my hand a squeeze, let it go and turned to look out the windshield as the darkened streets of downtown St. Louis slid by. “I came to steal the paintings myself, but apparently I was too late.”

“Ah hah,” I said. “So you are trying to retrieve them to remove yourself further from the grid.”

She shook her head, and now that she'd removed her policeman's hat, her auburn hair whipped around her with emphasis. “I might have been content to leave the paintings where they were, but when the one was stolen from the London gallery, and I started to look into things, I noticed a pattern forming.”

“And the pattern is that The Mysteries of the Duchess were beginning to fall into someone else's hands,” I said.

She nodded. “The entire series is based on me, obviously, in my youth.”

“Yeah, let's talk about that a second,” I said. “You were a duchess?”

Her eyes fluttered skyward, her lips curled in disgust. “Yes.”

“I note you opted not to mention that, either.” There was a warm feeling in my gullet even as I kept my hands on the wheel, and my attention – well, maybe up to 55% of it – on the road, as I merged onto Interstate 64, eastbound.

“You could have asked about my past, if you were that interested,” she said. “I assumed because you didn't, you were content to leave it where it lay.” Her voice had an interesting feature to it where it rose into very high notes in many places throughout, giving it a melodic quality, even through her accent. “Just as I never saw fit to mention your old girlfriend, Flora Romero, the one who–”

“Thanks,” I said, the steering wheel emitting a squeal as I squeezed it tighter. “I remember pretty clearly how she died.”

“The point is,” Arche said, leaning across the console to me, her breath in my ear, “our relationship was based on the now and the future. I saw no reason to drag the past into it.” And here she grimaced, then withdrew. “Unfortunately, the past had no intention of going along with my plans, as it seems to have desired to make itself known and involved, regardless of my own preferences.”

“So you know this guy, then?” I asked.

“Yes.” Simple, as answers went. Elegant. Yet completely unsatisfying.

“Did you get me assigned to this detail or did he?” I asked, because this was the question that was burning up my mind.

“I did that,” she said. “I thought maybe you could keep that painting safe while I dealt with other matters.”

“The dude ripped my clothes off with his mind and grounded my every effort to zap his ass,” I said. “What exactly did you think I could do against that?”

“More than you did,” she said, sounding slightly irritated. “Perhaps I should have warned you, but I knew you were not in peril. Simeon would not have harmed you. It is not his...style.”

“Yeah, I just got stripped naked and humiliated. No harm, no foul.”

She shook her head, and produced a phone from her pocket, which she flashed at me. “You're hardly the only one naked and humiliated. At least yours was short lived. Mine might be eternal.”

I almost put the car into the freeway barrier. Because the image on the screen was another painting, of Arche...

...Except in this one...she was nude. And with a look on her face like she had...well...just about any time we were intimate.

“This is the painting that we're on our way to right now,” she said, and a little flash between her hand and the phone caused the screen to change to yet another nude that I would have been simply delighted to examine under other circumstances. “And this is the one that they have not figured out yet, the one your effete gallery director cannot recall the sale of.”

“Where is it?

“In the St. Louis Art Museum,” she said, matter-of-factly.

I stared at it for a moment. “Why don't I get on the horn to McMahon right now and whistle up more security for it, then?”

She stared back at me. “The security on the one in the museum is not in question. Simeon cannot get it – yet. The museum has taken metahuman theft very seriously, and employs a system that can very thoroughly lock down the museum, and floods the entire place with suppressant gas upon any irregularity.”

I stared at her. “So he grabs a gas mask and goes to town. What's the problem?”

She shook her head. “That's not their only countermeasure. The walls and doors are reinforced to make tunneling through – as he did at the Di Novo house – impossible, at least on a short time frame. In the longer term, it summons the police, and Simeon does not want this complication, as evidenced by how he handled all the other robberies thus far.”

“Okay, you keep saying his name like it means something,” I said. “How do you know Simeon? And why is he so gung ho to steal your...uh...19th century nudes?”

She gave me a somewhat disappointed look that was, thankfully, something I'd rarely seen from her in our long association. “His motives are his own.”

I waited for more. Why was there no more? “That's all you're going to tell me? His motives are his own, so he's on an international crime spree to steal pictures of you naked–”

“Don't be ridiculous. In most of them I am fully clothed. Elaborately so, even.”

“Stop sandbagging me. You clearly know him going back. How? Why? I need some information here.”

“You're a man of some means,” she said, and popped the door open to the car, interstate rushing by. “Why don't you scour the internet for your answers?”

With that, the sneaky little telescoping metal arm she kept around her right wrist shot up like one of Doctor Octopus's limbs in the Spider-Man movies and caught a lamp post as we went past at about seventy-five. It yanked her up out of the passenger seat and she was gone, disappeared into the darkness.

I was left with my rental car's door rattling, only barely closed, heading back to the area of the first crime, seemingly with even more questions than I'd had before she showed up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kristina

“Have you suffered some sort of brain damage?” Kristina asked, once Sienna Nealon had flown off and disappeared into the iron-gray clouds that blanketed the skies above Boston. Mekhi had been trying desperately to get around her hand that was extended out to keep him from charging, bare-chested and helpless, against the most powerful woman in the world. “What were you going to do, punch her?”

“I was going to knock that bitch out,” Mekhi said. His boys were arriving now, all armed and huffing. Huffing paint, probably, which is how they got so stupid that they barely seemed to notice the four dead/dying bodies that had giant icicles sticking out of their throats or chests. Mekhi threw a hard (for a human) flurry of punches at the air. He'd been a boxer in his youth, and had apparently kept up his skill.

“She would have turned your head into a canoe,” Kristina said, looking around as still more idiots with guns hopped the waist-high fence or trickled through the gate into the backyard. “With one punch.”

Mekhi scoffed. “She'd have to land one, first,” And he made a show of dodging, then stopped juking. “Good to see you, sis. You showed up just in time.”

She stared right at him. “Just in time for what?” She kinda wanted to hear him say it.

He must have been in a scoffing mood, because he smirked, looking around at his boys for support as he traded greetings and fist bumps and bro hugs with them. “Just in time to see that bitch turn tail and run off into the sky.”

“She only 'run off' because of me,” Kristina said.

“Yeah, I'm sure the hundred of my boys coming in had nothing to do with it.” Some of his boys laughed as he said this.

Kristina cast an eye over to where the final of 'his boys' that had confronted Sienna was twitching and breathing his last. “Oh, yeah. She was real scared of them. Tell me, how many of them did she go through inside the house?”

Mekhi just stared her down. “You’re my sister, Kristina. And I forgive you for being obstinate.” He looked up, and apparently was satisfied with what he saw there. “It's cold out here, and I need to talk to my boys, because we've got plans for what comes next.” And he nodded at the sky. “Come on – if you want.” With that, he turned toward the street, and, presumably, some other house that wasn't open to the elements.

She'd been waiting outside, in the snow, in the shadows, for almost twenty-four hours now. She was cold, and tired, and had little interest in hearing anything from her brother other than a detailed plan for how he'd skip town to save his own neck. She certainly hadn't done this for her own health, or for glory, or any other of that bullshit.

But her baby brother didn't even seem to acknowledge her. He was walking with his arm around the neck of a big dude who had a rifle slung over his shoulders. “That's right!” Mekhi shouted, and the crowd of similarly armed young men whooped and hollered.

When Kristina looked at the sky, she couldn't see so much as a pinprick above her in the clouds. But she knew that Sienna was up there, somewhere, like the blade of a guillotine, waiting to drop when the time and place lined up for her convenience.

And that put a little extra haste in Kristina's step as she followed Mekhi down the street toward his next abode.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Augustus

There I was, standing on the lawn in that space between my momma's house and Taneshia's, looking at her being held 'round the shoulder by a tall, lanky, blond man who was smiling at me beneficently while I had immense clods of dirt hovering behind me like twin moons waiting to fall upon us.

But really...I felt like I'd already been clobbered by a falling moon.

Of course Taneshia had a boyfriend. We'd been broken up for years. I'd moved on...many, many times, actually, with many women. As often as I could, really, though I'd never kept an actual, committed girlfriend in the years since. Just a series of lovers that would pass through my life through one door and exit via another. So I'd moved on, in my own way.

Why wouldn't she have?

But it occurred to me, standing there like a moron...I hadn't actually figured on her moving on after we'd parted. I'd known in my mind she would. But my heart was a different matter.

And in that moment, in my heart, I felt a stabbing pain.

I showed none of this to either of them. I played it cool, stepping forward, reaching out my hand like a gentleman, saying, “Augustus Coleman. Pleased to meet you.” Like I was in some business meeting.

“Ah, yes,” he said in a clipped, Nordic accent. “I've heard so much about you.”

“All filthy truths, I'm sure.”

He seemed to take a moment to process that, then guffawed. “Ah. It's all good, I assure you.” Then he turned his attention back to Taneshia. “I heard about the incident at the apartment complex.”

“That's already out there?” I asked, a little shocked that the middle-aged white dude would be plugged in enough to the neighborhood to pick that one up already.

I wasn't the only one playing cool; Taneshia stared at me with a look chill enough that it could have come from Sienna's fingers when she was playing Elsa from Frozen. “Hans run the non-profit that pays me, I told you. He's got deep connections to the community.”

“Just trying to help where I can,” he said, still cradling her in his arms. “You are okay, then?”

“We're fine,” she said, and rather pointedly. At me. “For now.”

“I'm trying to get a message to Big G, to appease him,” Hans said. “His wrath sounds...considerable after this insult.”

“You think you can make peace?” she asked.

“Why would we want to make peace?” I asked. “We need to bring this shit to a head.”

She gave me another pointed glance. “You have learned all manner of bad lessons from your mentoress. 'Bringing shit to a head' means people die and the neighborhood gets wrecked. You really want that? Because it'll start right here.” And she pointed at Momma's house. “Promise you that. Big G knows where to hit you.”

She had a point. And I hated that. “No,” I said, “I suppose I don't want that. But I'm going to be ready for it.”

With that, I turned on my heel and headed across the lawn. “Where you going?” Taneshia called after me.

“You said it yourself,” I said. “You really think I want to leave my momma here for what's coming down?” I was texting frantically as I walked, and when I reached the front door it flew open before I could knock. Momma was standing there staring at me. “Oh. Hey.”

“'Oh, hey,' yourself,” she said, hands on her hips. “I heard what you did.”

“You did? Good,” I said, beckoning her with my hand. “We need to get you out of here.”

She tried to stare hard at me, but some of the effect was lost because, even a step up, she was still shorter than I was. “You expect me to leave my house because you weren't smart enough to know not to go kick a hornet's nest?”

“I mean, I'm gonna come back and make sure they don't do nothing to your house once I get you someplace safe,” I said, “but I can't really fight it out with Big G's boys with you standing behind me. So if you could get out of here–”

“While we're gone, they're going to burn my house down,” she said, those hands just fixed on her hips. “It don't take that long to get from Big G's to here.”

“I can get you out of here, Ms. Coleman,” Hans said from behind me. When I turned to look at him, he shrugged in earnest. “I'll happily take her away.”

Taneshia was still clinging to her man, and it irritated me more than I can describe. “Hans is good. You should take him up on his offer.”

He looked at her. “You should come with me, too.”

Now a real tension emerged on Taneshia's face, and it almost felt like I was looking at two distinct sides of her personality; one that most definitely saw the reason in his suggestion, and that side continued to look at me with the self-satisfaction of someone who knew I was an idiot that was about to justly face the consequences of my actions.

But the other side...

She clenched her fist, and her eyes fluttered closed, then re-opened, rolling. “I can't just leave this moron to die.”

“Who's dying?” I asked, a little insulted. And a little flattered that she cared, even if it might have been just a little.

“I don't think you should get involved in this,” Hans said, sounding a little alarmed. A little tense.

“Yeah,” I said, taunting. “Stay out of it. I got this.” I'd already gotten a reply from my text to the office. Cavalry was on the way and would be arriving in about four to six hours, depending on traffic. It should be light at this time of night, but there was no accounting for how it could be flowing in both Chattanooga and Atlanta, both laws unto themselves in terms of traffic.

“No help is coming to you for hours,” she said, “and Big G's going to show up whenever he feels like it. You don't want my help? Fine.” She shook her head. “Come on, Momma. Let Hans get you out of here.”

I turned, bracing myself for an argument. It didn't come, because instead, Momma reached down and grabbed a rolling suitcase from behind the door and down she came, about bowling me over. “You already packed?”

“It don't pay to be caught unprepared or unawares with your dumb ass rolling around causing problems.” She leaned up, kissed me on the cheek. “Don't do nothing too stupid. If it comes down to it, you run away from that Granthony.”

“I ain't running,” I said. I ran from his ass enough in my youth, and those days were over.

“Then you are stupid,” she said, and rolled on away toward Hans. He took up her luggage, though it didn't look like she needed help, and put it in the back of his car, which was a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport ($4 million)(!!!!). Momma watched me out of the passenger side as he executed a stylish three-point turn in the road and then drove away, past the burnt house and disappeared out of sight.

“What's your plan?” Taneshia asked, once they were out of sight. “Hero man.”

“The usual,” I said. “When they come, I batter the hell out of them with all the powers of the earth until they cry, 'uncle.'”

“The only, 'uncle,' they're going to be crying is, 'Uncle Tom,'” she said, pointing at that particular piece of graffiti on my car. I tried to hide my pained expression at the defacement of my property. “Granthony is not an idiot. He's going to be ready for you. You need a plan, then a backup plan, and also an escape plan if things go real hard sideways.”

“I'll handle it,” I said, with a confidence I did not necessarily feel. That was one of the first lessons of leadership that I'd learned; don't let 'em see you bleed. Or see that your guts were churning.

Taneshia just stared at me for a moment. “If your pigheaded ass dies, I don't think I even care anymore.” And she turned on her heel and stormed off back to her house.

A little part of me whispered that she might not quite be telling the truth.

But I wouldn't have bet my BMW on it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Jamal

Ifound the address across from Forest Park, just down the road from Ms. Di Novo. The whole area was supreme elegance, like when they'd built it, it had been the premiere address in town and never quite lost its luxury, even when St. Louis's star had begun to decline.

This mansion was a little smaller than Ms. Di Novo's, but still crammed with turrets and ivy-covered facades. Five police cars were already in the drive when I pulled up, plus McMahon's unmarked car. By the time my shoes hit the driveway, McMahon was already coming back out of the front door, and by the pissed-off look on her face I knew we were too late.

“Looks like he hit it right after he bound you up,” she said as I met her up on the front steps. She glanced down the street, in the direction of the Di Novo house. “He must have had the first painting in tow when he got here.”

“Anyone home?” I asked, looking past her into the beautifully lit foyer.

She nodded, her black tresses moving with her head. “Yeah. The uniforms are cutting her free now, but I wanted to give the poor old lady a chance to compose herself and go to the bathroom before I started grilling her.”

I grimaced. The same guy who'd stripped and bound me had worked his viciousness on some poor old broad? Dirty pool. This Simeon was really proving himself to be a grade-A bag of douche.

Merely thinking his name gave me a hot flush of irritation. Why wouldn't Arche tell me anything about him? That may have been the most maddening part of our entire exchange. If he was just some stalker or hanger-on she'd come across in her youth that had followed her through the years, I'd have known what to do with him, with his memory.

As it is, her silence had left him uncategorized in my mind. And my mind was doing a heck of a job finding a category for him.

Like...ex-boyfriend. With lots of baggage. Maybe some emotional damage, to quote Steven He.

I went inside with McMahon and found myself in a house that was similar but different to Di Novo's. It had a style all its own, more classical, slightly less contemporary. This was definitely the home of an older woman; the paintings were more scattered, and more stylistically classical.

“What's the name of the victim again?” I asked, as we stepped into a living room that had – I estimated – about 50% of the number of paintings as Di Novo's house.

“Linda Voogt,” McMahon said, eyes scanning the walls. They were certainly sparser, which I thought gave the place a less crammed feeling.

It wasn't more than another couple of minutes, which we passed in silence, before Ms. Voogt entered. She was wearing a cotton nightgown that had a flowery pattern on it, her silver hair pinned back for sleep. By the lines on her face, I estimated she was no older than about sixty-five, and wearing it pretty well. She had a pleasant look about her, a smile on her lips, and she greeted me among all the others in the room with a simple, “Hello.”

“Ms. Voogt,” Detective McMahon said, “are you feeling up to answering some questions now?”

“Oh, certainly,” she said pleasantly, as she sat down on an overstuffed couch with a floral pattern. “I just needed to...” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “...To tinkle first. Please. Go ahead with your questions.”

“Uh...what can you tell us about the man who robbed you?” McMahon said, notebook in front of her, pen poised to take it all in. She also had her phone on record mode, and set it on the table in front of Ms. Voogt.

“Such a polite young man,” she said, with a little sigh. “I don't approve of what he did, obviously, but I have to say...he was so sweet about it all.”

I exchanged another look with McMahon. “So you didn't get left naked and stuck to the ceiling, then?” I asked.

“On the contrary,” she said, looking greatly offended by my question. “He apologized for everything, asked me if I needed to go to the bathroom before he tied me up – and he used the best-quality Egyptian cotton sheets to do the deed. He covered me up in a blanket for fear I'd get cold, and told me he'd be calling the police to let them know where to find me so I wouldn't have to wait too long for rescue.”

I stared blankly at her, then looked at the nearby uniformed cop, who shrugged. “We were already pulling into the driveway when we got your call. Dispatch sent us after someone phoned in a tip about a lady who'd been robbed and tied up.”

“What a gentleman,” Ms. Voogt beamed. “He kept his word.”

No naked binding? No ceiling? A tip-off call to the authorities rather than just busting down the door to set off the alarm?

Oh, yeah. It was personal between me and this Simeon. He'd decided to hit me with as humiliating a punishment as he could for failing to yield to him. Meanwhile he practically left this sweet old lady with her hands loose and a cookie jar in reach.

“As for the painting,” Ms. Voogt said, sighing once more, “I can show you a picture of it, if you'd like.” She bustled over to the corner of the room, rummaging on a bookshelf and coming back with an old-fashioned, sticky-paged photo album. Flipping through, she came to a photo of the painting Arche had shown me on her phone, one that included her nude upon satin sheets.

“Gulp,” McMahon said. It was a sound that originated deep in her throat, maybe inaudible to most, but I caught it.

Yeah. It was that kind of painting. Ms. Voogt had her eyes slightly closed and an expression of contentment as she gazed at the picture. “I want it back, obviously. In spite of being a very small fish in my collection, it carries great sentimental value tied to my late husband.” She looked over at us. “It served as a sort of inspiration for–”

“I don't need any of that information,” McMahon said, hastily scratching out the first part of the sentence she'd started jotting to transcribe Voogt's comments.

“I managed to dig up some intel through a 'net search,” I said, looking to McMahon. “Another painting in the series is in the St. Louis Art Museum.” Zapping my way through my phone, I closed my eyes for a second and – there, in the gallery, I found it online and brought the picture up on my screen.

McMahon rubbed her neck, and behind her Voogt fanned herself. “I've got five cars on the museum right now, checking in at regular intervals, and everything seems fine so far,” McMahon said.

“Their anti-meta defenses are solid,” I said. “But that doesn't mean they're impossible to breach.”

McMahon cast her head back. “Doesn't seem likely your thief is going to grab three of these in St. Louis and pass on the fourth just because the museum is a harder target, does it?”

I shook my head. “Not after going to the trouble of snatching paintings around the world, no.”

“And five patrol cars' worth of cops isn't going to stop him.”

“Probably not, no,” I said.

She swore under her breath. “What about the museum defenses?”

“I mean...with the right preparation, I think he can take 'em,” I said.

“How would he do it?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm just telling you that it's probably doable.”

McMahon sighed and closed her eyes. “The commissioner is going to have my ass if we know this is coming and it still gets stolen. But he's unlikely to sign off on additional budgeting for you to get some meta backup.” The look she gave me was pure, “Damned if you do, damned if you don't.” “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I don't know,” I said, glancing down at the picture again. One thing I was sure of – I wanted to keep Simeon from getting his hands on it. For more than just ethical reasons.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Sienna

Iwas stinging from the encounter with Mekhi and Kristina – and running away – hanging out in the clouds, debating what to do next. My face was hot and flushed, my hands were shaking with fury.

Not because of Mekhi. That guy was an idiot, and if Kristina hadn't been there, or he'd been an only child, the guy would have been cuffed and dragged in 2.3 seconds. Or just become a human skidmark if his boys had shown up a touch earlier.

“Damn me and my stupid loyalty,” I muttered. Then I heard a chirp from my pocket.

Sierra spoke after I fished it out. “If I may...” She actually paused.

I debated whether to say yes or not, and finally landed on... “Yes?”

“You seem to be a little harder-edged than you have been previously,” Sierra said. “Your drive to capture criminals and restore order to America is admirable, but it is leading you into dangerous situations you might before have been more likely to employ a more collaborative approach to tackle. Such as this one.”

“I don't feel like being sociable,” I said, lifting my head to look at the sky above. You couldn't see the sun, or even tell where its glow originated beneath all these damned clouds. “I feel like getting my work done, getting this country's crime rate back under control, and collecting enough money to GTFO when Wade is finished with his service rebuilding the CIA.”

Sierra's voice adopted a gentle timbre my mother's almost never found. “Have you spoken to him recently?”

“He's busy,” I said. “And so am I. We're probably on opposite sides of the planet at the moment, and thus opposite sleep schedules. So no, I have not talked to my husband lately. Just as I haven't talked to my brother lately, or anyone else.” I ran a hand through my hair and found it loose and tangled with countless flyaways. And I was without a hair binder. Alas.

“What about Dr. Zollers?”

“He's putting Russia back together for the umpteenth time, remember? See above, re: other side of the planet, competing sleep schedules, etc.” Using light webs, I bound my hair back into a bushy ponytail. “Look, I appreciate the attempt to use a friend subroutine or whatever other bullshit you're employing, but I really just need a new plan for separating Mekhi from Kristina so I can cuff him and repatriate him to the jail without engaging in a philosophical debate with an old...” I semi-closed one eye. “...Friend seems too strong a word. Ally, maybe?”

“While I am not advocating for this course,” Sierra said, “it seems to me that countless contracts to restore order are presently available to you, and in cities much more chaotic than Boston seems to be. You could simply let this one pass, for now, and circle back to it at a later time, when Kristina has gone back to her life and Mekhi is thus more vulnerable.”

“Yeah, and watch him slip out of town and move along to some other rock to hide his face under? I don't think so.” I squeezed my hand closed, then frowned. “But...he strikes me as just prideful and dumb enough to not run.”

There was a beat, then Sierra spoke. “Remind you of someone?”

I glanced at my phone. “Sarcasm?”

“I am always learning and improving.”

“Keep working on it,” I said, and then, grudgingly, “But you're not wrong. If there's anyone on this planet who understands the flaming pride associated with battering your head against foes that are way outside your ability to take on, it's me.” I brought my hand up to my chin and rested it there. “And what's he doing with an army? That is not normal behavior for a jailbreaker. You bust out of jail and organize a resistance movement? That's awfully grandiose.”

“Again...remind you of someone?”

“Uh, the last time I broke out of jail, I fled the country,” I said. Sure, I was unconscious at the time, and technically Lethe was doing the fleeing with me in tow, but...

“You broke out of custody only three months ago, during the DC riots,” Sierra said, “and then promptly organized a defense of the White House.”

“Okay,” I said, annoyed, “but see, that barely counts.” I sighed. “I suppose I should go tell Detective Moore that I ran into problems. What are the odds that Bonner disposes of all those dead bodies I left behind in his house and on the lawn?”

“Very good odds,” Sierra said. “It seems unlikely he'll go to police, given he's currently wanted by them.”

I groaned. “I should probably file a report, then. In order to avoid crossing over into the lawless void that he so professes to want to inhabit.”

“Probably,” Sierra said. “For ethical reasons, at least. And consistency.”

“Yeah,” I said, and reoriented myself according to the GPS direction she gave me on the screen without my even asking. “For that.” And I took off, but not so fast, to face this particular bit of music.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Augustus

Isettled down sitting on Momma's front steps, staring out at the street and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood as I waited. It had been a long time since I'd done this, sitting on my momma's front porch. It was a pleasant night, as they went. March in Atlanta was about as good as the weather got; any later in the year and things started to get warm.

Looking over at Taneshia's house, I saw her pickup truck parked on the street. It was an old Ford Ranger she'd had for a long time, blue and beat all to hell. Seeing it made me chuckle, because...damn, we'd had some good times parked in that thing.

But those were over now. She was with Hans the Norseman. Rich boy.

And I didn't need her anyway. Things were good in my life. Money. A carousel of women on speed dial.

Plus my car. Which needed a paint job, maybe a little buffing, but was otherwise okay. I sighed, staring at it, parked, all tattooed up, at the curb.

The slightly warm, humid tang to the air came to me as I breathed in through the nose, and out through the mouth, exhalation stirring the tiny hairs starting to form on my upper lip. I was supposed to be in my luxury hotel right now, or partying it up in some swanky club.

Instead I was sitting on my mother's front stoop, waiting to see if my childhood bully turned gang leader was going to avenge the insult I'd paid earlier this evening.

And, when I heard the first motors revving in the distance...I knew he was.

A whole host of them followed after, cars lacking mufflers, all heading my way.

I stood, readying myself, because now I knew they were coming. And I figured I ought to at least be ready to greet them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Jamal

Ileft McMahon to wrap up her interrogation and stepped outside. I couldn't see the St. Louis Art Museum from here, but from the GPS I knew it was close. I could sprint and be there in minutes. Take the car and it'd be almost the same.

And right there, in that museum, was Simeon's endgame. At least for now.

All those stolen paintings the world over, and thanks to one sniffy little art dealer, they ended up landing mostly in St. Louis, Missouri. What were the odds they'd end up here, where they could cause me maximal trouble, and where I had minimal assistance?

Probably low. Which coincided with my confidence that I was going to be able to stop Simeon before he stole them all, with or without the St. Louis PD's assistance.

The air had a chill snap to it as I stood outside the Voogt mansion. Couldn't see the arch from here, couldn't see downtown. St. Louis was a sprawling city, way larger than I would have guessed before I visited and saw it for myself.

My phone beeped, and I looked down at it. We need to talk, it said. No name. No number. Just coordinates that were about halfway to the art museum in – according to the overhead GPS map – a shrouded grove of trees.

I looked back through the windows at McMahon. She was still talking to Voogt, and might be for some time. My next move was logical: get to the museum.

So I got in my car and started driving. Next stop: not the museum. But the one after that would be.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Kristina

“The problem with this society is it is a carceral, controlling society,” Mekhi said, walking through the front door of some house. “In spite of the marketing, freedom don't live here.”

“Uh huh,” Kristina said.

“You think prison does anything?” Mekhi asked. “You think it reforms anybody?” He shook his head. “It creates a pipeline where someone goes in a minor offender and comes out harder, ready to commit the real crimes, the serious ones.”

She shrugged. This house was a wreck, graffiti on the walls, furniture she didn't dare touch her tailored coat to. “What should you do with those people, then?”

“I don't think those people exist without prison,” Mekhi said. He was flexing his gun hand, grimacing as he did so.

Kristina laughed. “Mekhi, people have been murdering each other since Cain and Abel. Since as long as there's been people. You think that just stops because you want to do away with prison?”

“We've known for a long time how to build a better world,” Mekhi said. “One without poverty. Which causes crime. But some people are too greedy and stupid to do anything about it. Well, I'm gonna fix it. First steps are happening right now, sis. The only question,” Mekhi said, smirking at her, “is are you in?”

She rolled her eyes. “I only came here to make sure you weren't getting yourself killed, little brother.”

“Well, are you satisfied?” he asked.

She went quiet. “No. I'm pretty sure if I leave, whatever damnfool idea you presently have in your head, you're going to go do, and it’s going to bring you face-to-face with Sienna again. She's not a patient lady, brother. Me being present is the only thing that saved you just now.”

“So be present,” Mekhi said. “Unlike Mom, our entire childhood. Come with me.”

“I got things to do,” she said, feeling really pinched.

“What, shopping?” he asked, laughing. “I'll get you something Gucci if you come with me. I'll get you lots of Gucci if you come with me. You'll see. There's plenty of that slop to be had, all there for the taking.” He eased a little closer, put an arm around her waist. “Thanks to you and that serum you smuggled me, I got out.”

“Don't be mentioning that to anybody,” she said, feeling a real tension inside, an irritation.

“But I wasn't alone in there,” he said, “and other people need to get out, too.” He leveled his gaze at her. “This is an unjust system, Krissy. And it needs to fall down. Now...you with me?”

She knew she shouldn't be. Nothing but trouble was going to come from this. From him, really.

But she'd raised him. Raised him when their mother didn't. Couldn't, because she was strung out. It tugged at her inside, that desire to say, “No,” and to walk away...

Yet somehow she still found herself saying, “Yes,” and nodding.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Augustus

The roar of engines was continuous thunder as eight cars came to a stop on my street. They came in a convoy pattern and so a couple stopped farther up, past me, and the balance to my left, with three scattered just in front of me, curving slightly around my car.

I should have parked the BMW on the next block, but I'd been worried about having it out of sight for too long. Foolish, probably, but I should have thought it through.

Looking back, I saw the curtains stir at Taneshia's house. She was keeping an eye on me, but had no reason to stick her head out, I suppose, until she saw how things developed. Who could blame her for being at war with herself over whether to help me or not? We were laboring under a common misunderstanding; she thought being poor made you good, I thought being poor didn't make you anything except poor, and that being rich was better and a hell of a lot more fun. Speaking from experience.

Some punk little hanger-on ran around the back of the Dodge Charger that had parked nearest to me and hurried to open the back door. Big G came out, disgorged from it like an elephant from a clown car. He had on his black glasses and he surveyed the street like a king looking over his lands. Thugs and punks were popping out everywhere, most strapped with guns, some not. I saw a few of them light their hands off with plasma, fire, green lasers, that kind of thing, like someone with a pistol racking the chamber before a shooting.

I suppose I should have been grateful they didn't just pull a drive-by. That was probably more Big G's style.

Standing on my front walk, I should probably have felt like I was facing a firing squad, because I kind of was. There were, what, thirty or so of them? – and one of me, since Taneshia hadn't popped her head out yet.

Was this fine? Yeah, in the sense of it being like the dog in the burning house in that cartoon, everything was fine. In the current scenario, I was the dog, and while that one panel was internet famous, in the rest of the cartoon the dog eventually burns to death.

I'm sure Big G was envisioning just such an end for me.

“You always did stick around longer than you should have, Augustus,” Big G said, stepping up on the curb, his army behind him filling in like a phalanx. “I liked that about you. It always made you easy to find when I felt like beating someone's ass.” He slapped a meaty fist into his opposing palm, and it sounded like a gunshot rang out on my street.

“Yeah, your girlfriend always said I was longer lasting, too,” I said, and theatrically slapped my own fist into my palm. “You know, I ain't the little junior-sized bitch I was back when you made a sport of kicking my shit, Granthony.”

He barked a sharp laugh that turned into a wheezing guffaw, and inclined his head so that his glasses slipped down a bit. “You still ain't shit, boy. You think you're a big man because you're a big shot, with some agency, and powerful friends.” He made a show of looking around. “Where are your friends now? Huh?”

“Oh, they're on the way,” I said with a confidence that probably looked insane to everyone standing on the street with him. “But I don't need them to beat your ass into the earth, Granthony.”

A couple shotguns got racked just then, a very intimidating sound to the uninitiated. And anyone with sense.

“I guess I'll stay off the grass,” Granthony said, walking up the cracked pavement path toward me very slowly. He should have been a theater kid. “What are you going to do, Augustus, when my boys blast your legs off?” He paused about five feet away. “When you're just sitting there, bleeding out? I'm gonna rip you in half myself, and enjoy doing it.” He looked down at me, again over the glasses, with his lone eye.

I stared back and raised my voice. “Y'all are trespassing, and some – probably most – of you got priors. That means owning or possessing a gun is an automatic felony for you – and the DA here is a personal friend who will gladly prosecute your ass to the maximum. Put your guns down, get back in your cars, and go home. This is your only and final warning.” I set my chin and looked right at Granthony the whole time. “Y'all don't have to go down with Granthony's dumb ass, but if you stick around, I'm going to make a bitch out of every last one of you.”

“You talkin' awful big without your girl Sienna standing behind you,” Granthony said, lifting his phone. “But we all got the memo – she's up in Boston. And her brother's in England. Yours is in St. Louis. Your squad's back in Nashville. Even if you whistled 'em up, they're hours off. So who you got?” He made a show of looking behind me. “Huh? I know the cops ain't coming to back you up. Where's Taneshia? Even she's smart enough not to throw in with your dumb ass. So who you got?”

“I got me,” I said, listening to the chuckles behind him, the little whoops and shouts of, “Hell yeah!” and “Get him, G!” that were all the encouragement he needed. “What else do you think I need, Granthony?”

His face darkened and flickered, and I knew that look.

It was the look he always got right before he was about to throw a punch on me.

“I've had enough of Augustus, boys,” he announced, and the guffaws and calls of encouragement cut off like they'd just lost all power. “I want you to aim at his legs...and drop his ass right here.” He took a few steps back. “If you see so much as a grain of sand move anywhere on this street...you kill him right here.” He smiled smugly.

I saw the guns raise. Saw his boys take aim.

No dirt or they'd lead me up. I couldn't assemble a shield out of nothing; I needed it to be moving before I could put enough in front of me to block bullets, especially a swarm of them like was about to be coming at me from the thirty guys on the street.

Big G took a knee, and all around, before I could have even hoped for or prayed for a shield, they started firing, the flashes lighting Granthony's face and flashing off his glasses, his smile one of total victory.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Jamal

Iarrived at the meeting point, or at least as close to it as I could get by car, and parked on the street. How would I explain this to Detective McMahon, I wondered, if she asked where I'd been? My only thought was that I was hungry. Clearly I needed a middle of the night Jack-in-the-Box run in order to sustain me through what was going on.

The little copse of trees that stood in the middle of the meeting point provided very effective screening from the road. So effective that I couldn't see if Arche was there waiting for me.

Keeping a close eye out, I went in, avoiding the branches that seemed to want to whip me around the face and buttocks. I felt them roll over my bare hands as I came through into a small clearing. “Arche?” I whispered, under the clouded, reflective sky, shining the lights of St. Louis back down at the earth. “You here?”

One of the boughs behind me squeaked as it bent, and as I turned, it snapped back and slapped me squarely in the right buttock, just hard enough to sting. “Ow! What the hell?”

“Why would you think it was Arche that was contacting you?” came a voice from above.

I snapped my head up; the voice was not that of my girlfriend. Too deep, too masculine.

It was Simeon, descending with his arms spread from his body like some benevolent god coming down from the heavens, a little smirk of satisfaction perched upon his lips.

I'd just been lured into a rendezvous with the man who'd humiliated me, and was trying to steal the paintings.

Also known as a trap.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Sienna

“Detective Moore – do you mind if I call you Lewis?” I sat across from the detective in question, my tired facade showing rather obviously in reflection on his spectacles. He was staring at me from across his desk, which was tucked away in a corner of the police department bullpen, and he wore a bit of a wince crossed with...well, being cross.

“I think I'd prefer you not, at least at this moment.”

“Keeping it formal. Fair enough,” I said, nodding along. “Formality has its place.”

“Yes,” he said, “and I feel that one of them might be after you've admitted to trashing a home that you were not supposed to be at, and killing ten people you were not authorized or invited to kill.”

“They came at me with rifles,” I said, spinning my phone around so he could see the dead. I had video of most of the kills, thanks to Sierra's placement in my pocket. “What do you expect me to do, let them riddle me with bullets and dump my body in the Charles? There's forbearance and there's suicide; I'm okay with the former but draw the line at the latter.”

“I think,” Moore said, pulling off his spectacles, breathing on the lenses, and then proceeding to polish them with his handkerchief (who carries a handkerchief?), “I might have preferred you holding off until such time as we could have coordinated a response–”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. “Were you ready to spool up all available officers to go crashing in?”

He blinked at me, and his eyes looked strangely small without the magnifying effect of the glasses. “Well...no.”

“You hired me, or Boston did, to solve this problem,” I said. “We all know how I solve problems. So you can't come crying when I go to solve the problem in my own special sort of, uh–”

“Idiom?”

“Sure,” I said. “And you especially can't get mad when Mekhi's boys try to murder me while helping him resist arrest, fail spectacularly, and get themselves all killed in the process.”

“I think I am allowed to get incensed at whatever I choose.”

“Fine,” I said. “But be mad at yourself, not me. I'm a scorpion, don't get mad when the scorpion does scorpion shit, especially when it happens in the middle of a zone where you exercise zero civil control at present. Did you even get a call about this?”

“Uh, a few 9-1-1 calls, yeah.”

“And what was the department's response to them?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest.

He carefully replaced his glasses onto his face, not meeting my gaze. “They, uh...went on a list. Which will be followed up on, uh...”

“When you've reasserted control over the rebellious neighborhoods and you finally feel okay with sending police patrols in again?” I asked, not exactly merciful in my rhetorical victory.

“Something like that,” Moore said, and finally looked up at me. “Look, we're in a spot of bother, no one would argue otherwise. But doing what you've done simply lends credence to voices like Bonner's who say that our system is cold and brutal and oriented to the killing of criminals rather than the rehabilitation.”

“That's such horseshit,” I said, my voice rising high enough to draw eyes from all over the bullpen. “We have tried every-which-way to rehabilitate prisoners, especially over the last few years. We have gentle-parented the shit out of them, trying desperately to see things their way, grant them early parole, give them education programs, reintroduce them to life outside – and you know what? Crime has done nothing but go up. When do those they harm get a say? Because they're speaking loudly, especially now, and the message is: no more of this shit. We want to live in peace.”

“You know I don't disagree with you.” Moore adjusted his spectacles again. “I do everything I can, every day, to see the victims are heard from, and the offenders are prosecuted. But everything that happens after I build my case is in other hands, and is often political.”

“I know that.”

“Then you know there's pressure,” Moore said. “That yes, the pendulum is swinging back to your way of thinking and away from Bonner's. That the American public has had quite enough of this permissive prisoning, where we let the violent run rampant on the streets. But there are still limits. And doing as you've done today – well, it does strain them. People who are happy to throw Mekhi Bonner back into the clink will perhaps think twice if video of your exploits today get out.”

“Because of how it looks.”

“Yes. Going in and killing innumerable people is not considered acceptable by some percentage of our society, regardless of how guilty they are.”

“It was not 'innumerable.' There was a definite number.”

“It looks bad, Sienna,” Detective Moore said.

“I don't give a fuck how it looks,” I said, my voice reaching a register it never did in polite conversation. “I care how it is.”

“Boston didn't get like this overnight, and you're not here to solve all the problems, Sienna,” he said with a wry smile. “One thing at a time, eh?”

“Fine,” I said. “Bonner, then.”

“Bonner,” he said with a sigh. “So...what's your new plan?”

But before I could answer, every cell phone in the place started going off. “What is it?” I asked, as the detectives started to rise up and bolt for the exit, like this was some beehive that had been angrily disturbed.

Moore looked pale, deathly so, as he read from his screen. “That's the alarm for the House of Corrections. Someone seems to be staging a breakout.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Kristina

“This is a bad idea, Mekhi,” she said, but really, she was along for the ride.

“This is hardly the first prison break you've helped organize,” Mekhi said, grinning. His boys were grinning, too, and there was a lot of laughter happening in spite of the seriousness of the situation. They were standing before the looming Suffolk House of Corrections, the tower of it seeming to glare down at them. “I heard you talking to Nealon. Why am I not surprised that Queen Justice favors incarceration for the black man but liberty for her own man?”

Kristina felt a little prick of doubt, like a sliver rammed into the back of her mind. “That was from the Chinese government, who had kidnapped him, tortured him–”

“Every day in prison in America is a torture,” Mekhi said.

She looked him up and down. “How much do you weigh?”

That seemed to take her brother aback. “Why does that matter?” He brushed a hand against his belly. “You saying I'm fat?”

“When we pulled her husband out, he musta weighed ninety-eight pounds,” Kristina said. “You been in for a bit, but you don't look like you weigh close to ninety-eight pounds. Look like you might have put on five or so. But tell me again about the torture.”

“I shouldn't be surprised you'd be defending a system stacked against me,” he said. “I suppose it's worked out beautifully for you. Look at those fancy clothes. You didn't even have to steal those, did you? Though you coulda.”

“No, I didn't steal my clothes,” Kristina said. “I worked for them. As one does.”

“When one perpetuates an oppressive system, yes,” Mekhi said. His grin was gone, at least, replaced by a petulant, irritable smirk. He looked over at the big guy next to him. “Come on, Maurice. Let's start breaking down this oppressive system.”

“You got it, boss-man,” Maurice said. He closed his eyes, and started to glow, a soft illumination covering his skin that wasn't hard to see in the dim light. When he opened them again, the glow seemed to separate from his body as though it had been catapulted off of him. It flew forward, this ball of might, crashing into the wall of the jail–

And shattered it as sure as if a trumpet had sounded and it was the walls of Jericho. A fifteen-foot stretch of the wall simply collapsed, leaving a hole plenty wide enough for all Mekhi's boys to enter.

“Let the breakout begin,” Mekhi shouted, and hoots and catcalls and shouts of joy followed his words, “it's Bastille day!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Augustus

Granthony had assembled a firing squad for me, a small army of thirty or so with guns and metahuman powers. He'd brought them right to my mother's doorstep and parked them here, lined up on my street while he'd talked shit at me.

Then, when he'd had enough, he'd threatened that if I moved so much as a speck of dirt, they should kill me. And either way, they'd take out my legs. He'd stepped back and taken a knee, grinning at how cooked I was, and then the shooting started.

The screaming started a second later, thunder of gunfire and whizzing of bullets crashing home against metal and blood and bone, the soundtrack of violence such as my neighborhood had known all my life, from childhood to present.

Fortunately, as was usual up to now, the screaming was not mine.

It was, however, Granthony's boys.

He spun to see what was going on; he'd given a simple order, after all – shoot my ass down, especially from the waist down. He'd wanted me crippled, bleeding out, so he could just rip me in half or do whatever it was that suited his black heart.

Unfortunately for him, his best-laid plan just went right off the rails.

“What are you doing, you dumb motha–” Granthony shouted, because – inexplicably, I'm sure, to him – his boys weren't shooting at me, or anywhere near me.

They were tearing each other up like they'd gotten in a gang war. Bullets were flying, ripping into every man on the street as a war zone erupted behind him. Not one of them was shooting at me, they were all pointing their guns at each other or trying to let go of their guns or run away–

And it wasn't working. Guns were hanging in midair and drawing a bead on their own, firing down at whichever of these dipshits was closest. Half of them were already on the ground, a few dead, most wounded. The blood was running toward the gutters, and fallen bodies were everywhere.

To this chaos was added an additional bit; a few hands lit up with metahuman energy powers like fire or plasma, starting to glow in the night, even in the midst of the circular firing squad going off in the street.

That was going to be a problem.

I didn't reach out with my hands, but I reached out again with my mind, and my fresh Magneto powers, and flipped over three of the cars onto the boys I saw about to release some energy on my ass.

More screams.

More collateral damage.

The shots were fading now, the guns out of ammo where I'd blasted through every round in the magazine. Each one that ran empty, I let fall on the street, the sound of it clattering lost in the dying throes of the gunfire.

Only a few of Granthony's boys were still on their feet. All but two of those that had somehow escaped the shocking reversal of fortune they'd just experienced were running flat-out for the ends of the street, all thought of coming after me lost somewhere in the ether.

Mike Tyson said that everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Big G wheeled on me, his face creased with shock and rage. “You doing this?” he asked, and threw a punch at me.

I hardened my skin into tree bark – this was my Ent power, like the trees from Lord of the Rings – and he slammed his knuckles into my jaw and they all broke. Granthony didn't scream, to his credit; he did grunt, and grab his shattered hand.

“This is me,” I said, drawing water out of the air and then hardening it into a knife of ice and then burying it in his wrist, right between the radius and ulna. It ripped out the other side and he cried out; I made it grow and spike through his veins, and now he screamed.

Then I zapped him with a burst of electricity that caused his heart to flutter and sent him flying backward.

Now, I didn't think that one through all the way, because he plowed right into my car, hitting the passenger-side door, and shattering the windows on that side. The ones on the other side had been destroyed in all the gun play.

This made me mad.

“You wanted no dirt?” I asked, advancing on Granthony, who was crawling across Momma's weed-strewn lawn, where he'd bounced. With a wave of my hand, weeds wrapped him up, pulling him down to the earth, which embraced him like it was a long-lost friend, burying his face so he couldn't breathe. “You're getting all the dirt today.”

“Augustus, look out!” Taneshia's voice shattered the night, and I looked up to see one of Big G's last remaining uninjured boys come charging toward me.

“Pathetic,” I pronounced, and zapped him with a flash of lightning that – I swear – allowed me to see his skeleton like in the movies. Poor bastard dropped and slammed into the curb.

Taneshia came running up as the weeds wrapped Granthony tight. I stooped, slapped a syringe into his ass – just to add insult to injury – and depressed it, filling him with enough suppressant to put his powers out for the next 24 hours. “You been keeping this up your sleeve this whole time?” she asked. “You took the extra serums?”

“Just the one,” I said, leaving the syringe sticking out of Granthony's ass like a flag. I stood, and surveyed the damage I'd done. “I already got maxed on my own power way back in the day when President Harmon shot me up. But I'd be crazy to have this job, and all this money, and not get the other upgrade.” I looked at her and smirked myself. “You never know when you might need a little extra power – or six – in this line of work.”

You could thank Reed for that one. After he showed me what he'd gotten, I knew I needed some of that.

“Look what you did, Augustus,” Taneshia whispered. She brushed my arm loosely, looking over all that I'd wrought.

There were more than a few dead already. Blood was running down the street, into the gutters, and the screams and moans of the wounded and dying made it sound like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan had played out right here.

“Yep,” I said, with a small tinge of satisfaction in spite of the gory nature of the scene. “I did that.”

She looked up at me, horrified. “You proud of yourself?”

“I'm not sorry,” I said, stepping off the curb to take a closer look. “They came to kill me, Taneshia. Would you be happier if I'd let them?”

“I'd be happier,” she said, “if you hadn't started this shit at all.” She looked up; must have noted the buzzing. “Are those drones?”

“Yep.” I had my phone out, interfacing with them, through Sierra's app. It was identifying each one of the fallen bangers in Granthony's army, and doing triage on them at the same time. Prior charges and convictions were flashing across the screen, along with medical concerns, and I waved a hand as I passed the first of the fallen. He had three bullets lodged in his upper thigh, none immediately fatal.

A heavy dose of dirt clapped down on him, binding him to the street and sealing up his wounds. I locked it down so he couldn't escape and wouldn't die. He tried to struggle, but had no luck, and I buried a syringe between his shoulder blades and suppressed him as he jerked and yelled. His strength faded against the bonds of earth I'd sealed him with seconds later, and I left him to move on to the next.

Taneshia was following along behind, watching as I did my work. Some resisted, some tried to fight back.

Every last one of them failed. The twenty or so survivors, they all ended up trapped in bonds of dirt, suppressed out, disarmed. I even saved a few lives with my Persephone powers, where Sierra suggested they were needed.

Funnily enough, there were only two guys Sierra identified that didn't have a criminal record as long as my arm. And they were both under eighteen and had one merely as long as my hand with all the fingers extended. Well on their way. I looked back at Taneshia as I worked on the last of them. “You're welcome.”

She had been seemingly shell-shocked, but snapped out of it to look at me now, eyes afire. “You really think you did good here, don't you?”

I stood, my work done. The first sirens were audible now, because I'd informed the first responders that they could proceed without fear because now...the neighborhood was safe.

“Here, laid out on this street,” I said, “are over half of the repeat offenders responsible for turning this area into a dangerous cesspool.” I threw my arms wide. “Every one of them that lived is going to be facing charges.”

“Your word against theirs, Augustus,” Taneshia said, folding her arms across her frame.

“Au contraire, Taneshia,” I said, waving at the half dozen quadcopter drones hovering over us. “Sierra's monitoring drones have been here all along. They captured the whole thing, and it's all getting turned over to the DA.” I clapped my hands together, and made like I was brushing them off clean. “We got footage of this from fifteen different angles, video of every face, every action. Every crime they committed is all there in living color, and thermal imaging. So, like I said – you're welcome.”

“You really think you did something here tonight, don't you?” She just stared at me coolly, those arms folded across her.

“Yeah, I do.” I looked down at Granthony, who was unconscious on the ground beside my poor car. “This neighborhood's problems just got a lot smaller thanks to me. Guns off the street. Dangerous felons out of circulation for at least ten years each, probably more for most.” I gave Granthony a nudge with my foot, but he was limp, though still breathing. “And this fool's out for twenty-five to life.”

She stared at me hard. “I'm sure that'll fix everything.” And she turned, heading back to her house. “All it took was shooting up the neighborhood. So proud of you.” The sarcasm could have melted steel.

“Not a single bullet went past a thirty-yard perimeter around the fight,” I called back at her. I'd been careful; I was a master of magnetism now, after all.

She didn't seem to care. She had her own ideas about what was right and proper, I supposed.

The first police car pulled up moments later, the first ambulance shortly thereafter. To myself, I smiled. Because this was what I'd wanted all along.

It was just that with Taneshia furious...it didn't quite feel like it was supposed to.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Jamal

“Simeon,” I said, my hands crackling with lightning as the thief of my nightmares descended from above using his telekinetic mind powers to lower him to the ground. “You're the one who messaged me?”

He frowned as he touched down as delicately as if he'd just come down a half-step. “Between our earlier encounter and this, I am sensing you are quite slow. Not sure I see the appeal.” His Eastern Euro accent was even more pronounced now. He looked at my lightning-covered hands. “Put those away before you get hurt. I'm here to talk, there are no paintings to be stolen out here.”

I didn't put my hands down, but I did kill the wattage running across them. Could he get some defense up in time to block me if I tried to zap him? Maybe. He was a powerful telekinetic; he might be able to bend a branch down in the path, and then it'd be grounded away, leaving him free to once again strip me naked and leave me hanging from the nearest tree by my ankles or something. Which would be about on par for how my night was going.

“What do you want, Simeon?” I asked, trying to keep calm in the face of being completely overmatched. My heart was thudding at the prospect of reliving my earlier humiliation in a much more public setting. Naked and afraid, part deux. I could sense it in the air if Simeon didn't care for what I had to say.

He stared at me as though I were stupid. “I want the painting, of course. How is this not clear? I have taken all of the others. Why would you not think I want the last?”

“Why are you meeting with me, then?” I asked. “I'm the one who tried to stop you from taking the last one.”

“Yes, I recall,” he said. “But I thought, given the benefit of hindsight, and a couple hours stuck naked to a ceiling, you might have reconsidered that foolish stance.” He tapped the side of his head. “Learn. Grow. Adapt. That sort of thing. It's a hallmark of humanity, you see, the ability to learn from past mistakes.”

“I don't know that I view opposing you as a mistake,” I said. “Though getting pinned naked to a ceiling certainly wasn't in my list of favorite life experiences.”

“Just count yourself lucky there wasn't someone around to make a painting of you in that condition,” he said with great amusement. “Anyhow. The painting. The last one. Let me spell this out since you seem quite slow: the police want your assistance protecting it. I want your assistance in stealing it.”

“I'm not a thief,” I said, my cheeks burning.

“Au contraire,” he said with a guffaw. “I've looked through your history. You've stolen many times in your life. Admittedly, you seem to have stopped a few years ago, but that sort of impulse doesn't just vanish. And of course, you've done much worse than steal. Thievery is very low in the pantheon of your sins.” His eyes glittered in the dark as they caught the reflection of the clouds above for a moment. “You've done murder, Jamal.”

“I have killed in the line of duty,” I said slowly, a little tingle running down my spine, “but–”

“Not that,” he said. “I'm talking about Joaquin Pollard, Kennith Coy, and Roscoe Marion.”

If before I'd felt a chill along my spine, now it was a full-force blizzard, goosebumps everywhere.

“I see you haven't forgotten their names,” he said. “That's good, I suppose. You should never forget your first murders.” He chuckled. “For a meta, it'd be a sign of memory loss.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

“Jamal, why do you insist on insulting me?” His face twisted as he scoffed. “Your expression tells the truth better than you do. Those men murdered your first lover, you revenged yourself upon them. It's a simple transaction, and one that can be understood by any man. It's a tale as old as time, and still popular to this day.” He flexed his fingers in front of him. “I'm talking about another simple transaction: extortion. You help me get the painting, I don't humiliate you in front of the entire world.”

“I don't–”

“Shhh,” he said, and a branch whipped across my lips, pine needles brushing them and forcing themselves into my mouth. “I don't need an answer right now. I can tell your tiny brain is going to need some time to chew this over. And that's fine; I don't plan to make any moves tonight. I need my sleep, you see. I need to be well-rested for this, because it's going to take all my skill and ability, and all of yours, to pull this off.”

“So you can't do this without me?” I asked, brushing the tree branch away from my face enough to speak.

He scoffed, snorting. “Of course I can do it without you. It will just be much messier, and involve murder rather than mere theft.” His eyes flashed dangerously. “Also, there is that matter of the humiliation I promised you.”

“You want to make that more explicit?” I asked.

He sighed. “I suppose I'll have to for you. Honestly, I thought you'd have more wit, more imagination. I really don't know what she sees in you. Is it the power that you have in common...?” He shook his head. “Fine. You want explicit. In front of the museum there's a statue of Louis IX. A great king. A great man.”

“Personal friend of yours?”

He chuckled. “I'm not quite that old. In his hand is a – I can't recall, exactly, it's either a sword upside down, or a scepter.” His smile faded. “If you don't help me, I'll see you stripped naked and bound with your ass riding it.” He smiled. “Is that explicit enough for your simple mind to comprehend? Think it over. Take the night. We'll talk again in the morning.”

With that, he rose up into the air, the benevolent god removing himself from my unworthy presence.

His threat, though, hung in the air as I stood there in the darkness, long after he'd gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Sienna

Ileft Moore and fled the precinct, in the air as soon as I was out the door. I crackled into near-supersonic, heading toward the Suffolk House of Corrections.

Thundering through the air, I felt an unholy rage burning within me. I had fought the war with China, battled my way through at great personal cost, in the lives of friends and family, and endured Fen Liu's revenge against America and me in the form of setting off these little chaos bombs throughout the country.

How many people had died because Fen Liu had given superpowers to the worst human beings in America? How much chaos had been sown in our cities? For the last few months – ever since I'd pulled my head out of the sands in Greece – I'd been fighting this particular battle. How many criminals had I rounded up and put away?

I'd ground myself to a nub, spending every hour of my day hunting these assholes down. I'd talked to family members of murder victims who were holding back tears, rape victims who were barely functional and jolted at any noise, people whose arms now ended at the wrist because a metahuman crime ring had decided that stealing watches and rings was easier if you just chopped off the appendage and ran for it.

All this and so much more. The sixteen-year-old girl who'd been mugged on the street for her phone and now had permanent brain damage from being bashed over the head by the thief with his Hercules powers. She'd been heading toward at least salutatorian if not valedictorian, and first in her family to go to college. Or the wife of the store manager who'd put his body between a thief stealing a GoPro and the exit, only to catch a purple energy blast that nearly cut him in half.

Day. After day.

After day.

These were the people I spoke to. And the criminals, who never accepted one ounce of responsibility for what they did until, miraculously, they came before a parole board. Then it was all tears and, “I feel the weight of what I've done every day...”

Until six months later when they got caught slashing up a little old lady for her jewelry and her TV.

Because they always did.

Day after day of my life I pursued these dipshits, these human squirts of diarrhea. I lived in a tent in the woods, I spent half my time flying from city to city, to the worst hotspots, where things were the closest to falling completely out of control–

And I did it because I could not stand these worthless shits, these things that had once been, perhaps, human, but had decided that their fellow man was not human, not to them–

They were prey, mere objects to sate whatever desire was on the mind of the criminal at the moment.

I would never be free because there were always going to be people like this out there. And as quickly as I rounded them up, it seemed they were out again, doing the same shit, in the same places.

What's the definition of insanity? Because I felt like I was going insane, like I was taking crazy pills, to quote Zoolander. If they weren't busting out like Mekhi Bonner, they were bonding out, paroling out, or just being released.

And nobody seemed to give a shit but me and the cops that were fighting the same lonely war on the worst elements of society. The elements that did not give a shit if we had a society so long as they fulfilled whatever twisted desire was on their mind at any given moment.

My husband was gone, dedicating himself to the rebuilding of our nation's security against outside threats, and I was doing the same against the domestic ones.

But shitbags like Mekhi Bonner just kept making my job harder. If not impossible.

So, yeah. I was boiling with rage as I came streaking out of the sky toward Suffolk House of Corrections. Not making excuses, just...there is a reason for what I did next.

It's just that no one saw it as reasonable except for me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Kristina

The first news van rolled up right as Mekhi's boys were walking in through the prison wall. Another was coming along right behind it, and stopped about twenty feet away, cameramen hurriedly deploying onto the street and fussing with their equipment. They had the cameras on almost immediately, and Kristina melted into the shadows before they could get so much as a lens pointed at her.

“Yes,” Mekhi said, grinning as he stood in the breach, watching them come his way.

“You brought someone out here to film your crimes? Absolute galaxy brain move, baby,” Kristina said.

“It really is,” Mekhi said. “You think people support this cancerously carceral system? That they support the annihilation of liberty at the hands of oppressive persons like...well, well, well.”

With a thump, Sienna Nealon landed just ten feet away from him. In its way, it did have an echo of truth.

And finality.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Sienna

Mekhi Bonner dodged into the House of Corrections with a laugh as I landed, forcing me to charge after him. Movement in the shadows clued me in that Kristina was close at hand, and I hurled fire at the wall in order to deprive her of places to hide. Other than a shriek – and the sudden movement of the shadow into the hole in the wall – she didn't react by doing any of the things I hoped for, like showing her cowardly self and letting me pin her to the wall with light webs.

Instead, I was forced to follow them both into the darkness within, just two shadows slithering about in the empty quiet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Kristina

She fled, because she wasn't stupid. Fled into the House of Corrections, sliding across the shadows of the room within, behind a Coke machine, across a cabinet, and then around the doorframe into the room beyond, as Mekhi laughed and ran inward.

Walls were broken, already blasted by Maurice and his power.

“This prison will hold my brethren no more!” Mekhi shouted, and ahead, another wall was blasted down. “No prison can restrain the human spirit!”

“If a prison won't do the job,” Sienna said, her voice sounding so extraordinarily malicious that, even in the shadows, Kristina shuddered, “then death is going to.”

Another blast shook the whole place, jarring Kristina from her hiding place under a sink. She didn't scream, but it wasn't because she didn't want to.

And coming in behind her, tentatively creeping, cameras pointed, were the reporters that had arrived just at the beginning. Kristina, for her part, shut her mouth and let them come, content to hang here, torn between wanting to protect Mekhi and flee for her life.

CHAPTER FORTY

Jamal

Icaught up with McMahon as she was getting out of her car just outside the main entrance to the museum. A host of cop cars – well, about six – were parked out front. I'd passed a couple more on the way in, so it looked like she'd at least managed to call up some amount of cavalry.

“Hey,” she said, looking up from her phone, where she was frantically texting. She didn't seem to notice that I was late in arriving, which was fine by me. She was back to it a moment later.

“Back atcha,” I said, following her toward the museum entrance. I paused and turned; there was the statue of Louis IX, just across the road, much bigger than life and with his sword held blade-first, hilt sticking up in the air menacingly.

I grimaced. Could Simeon plop me down on that? Yes. He absolutely could, and probably with minimal effort.

Would he? I had no reason to believe he wouldn't.

McMahon looked up from her phone, then glanced around once we were inside the museum entry. We'd come into a massive lobby that stretched through the center of the building, which I was learning from my phone had been built for the 1904 World's Fair. “Your eyes look really creepy like that,” McMahon said, stepping off to the side of the entry. The marble floors echoed with every step.

“Sorry.” I stopped; I knew I'd had lightning flashing in them as I'd perused the internet through the electrical connection with my phone's charging port. “Sometimes I forget I'm doing it.”

“Whatever,” McMahon said. “I've been doing a little looking into...things.”

“What things?” I bit the bait.

She crossed her thin arms in front of her. “You.”

I felt the drag on my brow as a frown appeared. “What about me?”

She looked past me, where a smattering of cops were lingering at the entry. Lowering her voice, she said. “You didn't live the most innocent life before you got into this line of work. You were a suspect in two murders in Atlanta in 2016?”

I felt like someone had smacked me across the face, or goosed my ass when I wasn't looking, or mounted me upon a statue's sword hilt. “Where did you read that?” None of that had ever been printed; Sienna had helped me skunk the charges, and they'd gotten pinned on someone else. I'd gone and done a bit in exile, then worked my way back to the right side of the law, where I'd remained.

“Doesn't matter, it's out there,” she said, utterly dismissive. “Is it true?” Now she was locked in on me.

I felt a bead of sweat pop out on my forehead. Face to face, I was not the most skilled liar. “Nobody ever came after me for that.”

Her shoulders sagged. “That's not a denial.”

“Because I've had to kill people before in my line of work,” I said, frantically trying to keep from sweating my way through my shirt. “You know this. It's out there. It's part of the game.”

“I didn't ask you about other times,” she said, not letting up one inch. “I asked you about Atlanta, 2016.”

How the hell was I supposed to answer that? “It's all of a piece,” I said. “The guys in question weren't innocent victims. I didn't have a badge or sanction yet, but I was still in the middle of a case, trying to save lives.” I avoided mopping my brow, because there were some big, fat lies in there.

Yes, it was a case. For Sienna, and Augustus, to a lesser extent.

For me...it was revenge on the men who'd killed my first love.

The cloak of righteousness might have been on me, but I didn't have a fig leaf of the law's protection for what I did. Sienna at her worst would struggle to justify what I'd done to those men. Probably.

McMahon looked at me, unyielding. “Why don't I believe you?”

I couldn't manage to stutter out an answer to that. “I've been working in this field for years,” I said instead, deciding to ride around the accusations. “I've got a reputation, I think, for doing the right things at the right times. I don't know where this other business is coming from. I've never been accused of anything like what you're talking about. No one's ever said anything to me about it.”

“Mmhm.” She was looking me dead in the eyes, arms crossed, chewing on the inside of her lip like she was contemplating something very deeply. My guilt or innocence, it seemed. “I think,” she said, seemingly finally coming to a decision after what felt like long minutes of silence, “I need your help. But I don't want your help. So...” She shifted her small frame, moving weight from side to side. “Maybe just do your job...and stay as far away from me as possible. That way, maybe we won't have a problem. Because I don't work with murderers. I put them in prison.”

With that, she turned her back and walked away, leaving me sweating...and with another problem to deal with.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Sienna

It was hide and seek with Mekhi Bonner, and I was already out of patience. One of his metahuman accomplices had battered a hole in the wall of the jail big enough to drive a garbage truck through, and had proceeded to do exactly the same throughout the facility as we reached each successive wall. The place had a fine aura of dust motes hanging in the air, mingled with the chemical smell of these types of places.

I wasn't flying in recklessly at this point, because I was moving into a nest of potentially very angry men, both the liberators and soon-to-be liberated, some of whom had powers, and the rest of whom were simply dangerous on their own merits. I could still die from being clubbed unconscious and beaten to pieces, and as I crept through the Suffolk House of Corrections with the screams and shouts ahead, it was a thought that was top of mind.

Shadows pooled in the corners of guard break rooms and secure hallways. Someone screamed and leapt out at me from a storage closet, and I had barely enough time to process that it was a banger in street clothes before I caught him in the chest with my energy blade, causing him to gasp and his internal organs to combust.

He didn't just give me a kiss as he died, though. His hand made contact with me, something sparked and exploded against my rib where he touched me, and I was flung into a cabinet, destroying the particle board structure with my rib cage. Which did not take the blow gracefully but did, fortunately, return to its original shape within seconds thanks to Wolfe healing.

“Urngh,” I grunted, pushing back to my feet after the kamikaze attack. The man who'd gotten me was smoking quietly on the ground some twenty feet from me, very close to where I'd started.

This was what I was facing. Potential attacks from powered individuals, from any angle, at any time. Either of the Bonners could leap out at me at any moment and slide a shadow blade into the base of my skull. All I'd feel was a sudden, freezing sensation and it'd be lights out.

Forever.

“Bastards,” I muttered, pushing through and ignoring the residual pains that cried out, phantom-like, from my body where I'd just been struck. Someone came lashing out at me from the next hole, wielding white, snake-like energy whips. One of them crackled and seared as it grabbed my wrist, wrapping around it and snugging tight.

I blasted back with eyebeams and pasted whoever it was across the face, knocking them over. The energy whip snapped tight, yanking me forward along with them. I jolted a round of electricity out of my hand where it had been pulled taut by the whip and it followed the lash back to its source and lit up the face of one of Bonner's gang enforcers. He danced and jerked in the fury of the lightning, and then keeled over.

Dead? Probably not, so I pinned him with light webs to the concrete wall. I couldn't afford to have him escape behind me and then hit me in the flank, because it tended to happen at the most inopportune times. Still, that would be murder outside of a war zone, so I didn't do it.

But know that I wanted to. Know it. Because I realllllly did. I'd had enough of Bonner and all his associates, known and unknown. I wanted to put every last one of them six feet under. They were an affront to my life, anarchy of the worst sort; not the placid arrangement of each individual tending to his own sphere in peace but the rampant aggression of predators seeking prey.

Another guy leapt out at me, followed by another, one of them possessed of the thick tree-like skin of an Ent, the other with vicious fingernail claws that slammed into my cheek and took out three of my teeth. The Ent tried to wrap his arms around me, to restrain me while the Bastet-type went to work on me, attempting to slit my throat.

I flared Gavrikov's fire, and it lit up the whole room.

It also crisped both of them, at least partially. They backed away, not because they wanted to, but because they had third-degree burns over every part of their body that had been exposed, second-degree on the parts that had been covered by t-shirts and such, and first-degree ones in every crevice and crack that had been most protected.

Also, their clothing was on fire.

I bled, and it steamed across my clothing as it dripped from my face and neck. I was making a gurgling noise as I waited for the wounds to heal, and once they did, I spat a glob of mucus and blood that had gotten trapped in my throat during the healing process. The Bastet was squealing, in flames, and came running at me.

It was a simple decapitation with my energy blade. I probably should have gone gentler, but trying to slit my throat had pissed me off, and returning the favor didn't seem out of line. His head went flying, and a moment later I slammed my blade into the Ent's heart and he let out a dying grunt as the temperature of his innards matched those of his burning exterior.

Something flashed behind me; a glance back revealed someone following with a camera, another leading them with a microphone. “Sienna Nealon!” the mic'd woman shouted. A reporter, clearly.

“Ugh,” I said, reacting as I typically did to reporters. And I kept going, because I didn't have it in me to give an interview when ahead, somewhere, was Mekhi Bonner doing his level best to unleash all manner of hell upon the people of Boston.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Augustus

“That's the last of them?” Detective Sorensen asked, as we watched the final member of Granthony's crew get loaded into a paddy wagon, a suppressant needle still hanging out of his ass, metacuffs rattling as they moved him inside with the rest.

“I think so,” I said, vaguely proud. I looked down at my phone; I'd called off my crew, and they'd turned back at Chattanooga, so no harm, no foul. Business was all wrapped up here, Granthony the first to be cuffed and led away. I'd already received acknowledgment that his ass was processed at the city jail. Others were moving through the process, a van load at a time. The early acknowledgment from the DA suggested I had a slam dunk case here.

Also, no windows left in my car. And a lot of graffiti. Some dings that weren't going to be easy to buff out. But other than that...

Part of me wished Taneshia had still been here so I could have rubbed her face in it. What she'd said had burned my ass. I'd done this one out of a sense of civic duty, for no money.

That there ended up being rewards on over 3/4ths of Granthony's crew seemed like it didn't matter. But whatever. I wasn't too proud to take the cash and send it on to the company's accounts. That was a couple hundred thousand in revenue, which wasn't bad for a Saturday night. Take out the expense of fixing my car, we still had a decent little profit margin there for my side quest to rid my neighborhood of scum.

“Augustus!”

I turned and saw my momma hobbling up the sidewalk toward me. She'd ducked under the police tape and one of the cops was shaking his head at her. She came right up to me and brushed some of the dust off my jacket lapel. Then she looked up at me. “You get it settled, then?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Granthony and his boys are heading to jail. Got a mountain of evidence to send them away. Problem solved.”

“I'll believe that when I see it,” she said.

“Well, you ought to be seeing it soon,” I said, watching as the last paddy wagon started down the street. “Because with Granthony and his boys off the street, it ought to get real quiet around here.”

She sort of sniffed. “Well. If that ends up happening, maybe people will stop selling out and stay.”

I blinked a couple times. “What do you mean by that?”

She shrugged. “No one wants to live where things are always going off like this, Augustus, and everybody's got their limits. People were picking up and moving out.”

I put my hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Well, that can come to an end, now. The only reason people will have to leave this neighborhood is because they don't like being around Taneshia.”

Momma frowned. “She's a delight to be around. The only person who has a problem with her is yo' dumb ass, and you might want to consider the reasons for that.”

“I'll consider them later,” I said, shrugging that one off and heading for my busted-up car. “I gotta go meet with the DA and talk things through, make sure these clowns get prosecuted properly so they don't boomerang back on y'all.” I adjusted my lapels. “It's a lot of work making sure bad guys stay locked away. I know certain parties say it should be a charitable endeavor, but I always felt like doing a good job entitles you to a decent day's wage.”

“Oh, is a BMW part of a decent day's wage now?” she asked dryly. “Must be why I see all the honest officers driving them out of the station house. And all the firemen, too, come to think of it.”

“Sorry, is your contention that this job, wherein I clean up your neighborhood so you can live in it without fear, should pay worse?” I asked, taking some of the air out of her. “And thus motivate less people, of lower quality, to do said job? Just trying to get it straight here.” Hah! I had her.

“Augustus,” she said, as an ambulance pulled by, going real slow, the lights off, its passenger already beyond help, “if it was in my power, y'all would all get paid millions, because you're doing important work. But that ain't how it goes now, and you know it. Taneshia thinks you're a fraud not because the job you're doing is worthless, or because the people who make it ought to go begging.” She shook her gray head slowly. “She thinks you're a fraud because instead of acting like you're doing public service, you're doing Augustus a service. It's not the suit. It's not the car.” She shook her head again, sadly. “It's the way you wear them both. It's who you are, now. You care more about that car than you do anyone else.”

I scoffed. “I didn't get the car out of here before I took on Granthony, did I?”

“You didn't get me out of here, neither,” she said, turning to walk up to the house. “You had Taneshia's boyfriend do it.”

“His car's almost as nice as mine! And he runs a charity!” I called after her.

She didn't respond. Just kept shaking her head.

That might have hurt worse than what Taneshia said.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Kristina

She followed because she didn't have a choice, not this deep in. Behind her, light flared, heat pulsed, and she felt it like someone had turned an oven on. It was only two rooms back, at most, and someone had just met Sienna Nealon – and lost, based on the sound coming out of there.

Mekhi was ahead, and she was watching him as he cheered on Maurice. “Bust it, bust it,” he chanted, and Maurice pulsed, blasting another hole in a wall that had security doors to keep people in – and out.

This was the entry to the main cell block. When Mekhi stepped in, there was a sound of someone dying – guards, she suspected – and then cheers, followed by a whole lot of electronic doors being released all at once.

Kristina slipped inside, then popped her head out of the shadows next to Mekhi as he perched inside a guard station. Two guards were down, on the ground, blood trailing out of their mouths and eyes, still as the death that had settled on them. “You really had to do that, huh?” Kristina asked.

He did a double take, seeing her head sticking out of the shadows in the corner of the room above him. “Death to all oppressors,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Great and small.”

Another howl of rage and pain came through the wall behind them. “Sure, oppressors,” she said, dipping right back into the shadows. “Good luck with that one.”

“Ain't scared of her,” Mekhi said. But he, too, melted into the shadows beside her a second later, putting the lie to that.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Sienna

Igot whacked in the back of the head by a dude the size of my hand, hitting me as hard as a full-sized meta.

Atlas-types. Grrrr.

I was lucky he hadn't figured out how to shrink to the size of a molecule, then expand to full size while up my nose or something, blowing the top of my skull off. It was certainly possible, and with my luck, he'd be likely to figure it out in the next five minutes.

It was obscenely dark; the lights were all out, and my eyes were still blurring from the stars I was seeing from the hit. I staggered back a step, assessing what had just happened. And being annoyed the whole time, because getting punched in the back of the head by a gremlin with super strength was not my idea of a good time.

But he couldn't take damage in little mode like he could as a full-sized person, so as he skittered away, I managed to zap him with a full-force bolt of lightning that made him scream (very high-pitched), as he thudded to the ground in a painful-looking roll. He was dead before he came to rest, which happened to be right at the feet of the stupid reporter who was following me. I swear, these people had more ambition than sense; how suicidal do you have to be to follow Sienna Nealon into the middle of an in-progress jailbreak? I caught a glimpse of another moron reporter behind that, and realized yep, there were two ambitions-exceeding-their-brains morons on my trail.

What I didn't realize at the time, was that they'd just fed the entire city of Boston a video of me electrocuting what looked like a child.

And that even now, across the city, phone lines to city hall were burning up with complaints. Local politicians were getting inundated by furious calls from angry Karens who wanted my skin peeled off for murdering a kid. That it was actually a twenty-nine-year-old repeat offender by the name of Lawrence Kincaid, who was wanted for murder, would not come out until later.

For now, half the people in Boston who believed their lying eyes had just watched me kill a kid. Some would swear it from here until their dying day, regardless of any evidence to the contrary, because that's just how people worked.

And meanwhile, I proceeded innocently (okay, maybe not really) into the jail's cell block, listening to the clamor and clangor of a riotous escape in progress, my internal teakettle boiling over.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Jamal

After McMahon dropped her confrontational bomb on my ass, I was left wandering the museum, a uniformed cop trailing me at all times like a suspected shoplifter in a store. It felt awkward for me and them, so I tried to keep myself to the main lobby to make it easy, because The Mysteries of the Duchess painting happened to be in a gallery just off that space. I waited for McMahon to move out after giving her orders, then wandered in to look for myself, figuring giving her some distance was my best strategy.

Sure, I could have left. But that would have felt like waving the white flag on what she'd said to me. It also would have opened me up to the possibility, later, of being publicly sodomized on the statue outside. So there were multiple reasons not to just blow this all off and run for the hills, which was my first instinct.

Staring up at the painting, I found myself once again looking at a nude oil painting of, putatively, my girlfriend, though even that was somewhat in doubt at the moment given the last time I'd seen her she'd thrown herself from my speeding car. It was hard to wrap my mind around exactly how completely borked my situation had gotten in the last few hours. I'd gone from sitting in comfort, watching the house of one of the richest women in the Midwest, to being humiliated, accused, threatened, and watching my relationship self-destruct in an explosion of suspicion and misery.

This was not shaping up to be the best night of my life.

The painting was just as it had appeared in the picture I'd seen. Arche was laid across a soft background of silken sheets, tastefully draped over them almost like Marilyn Monroe in her Playboy spread. The brushstrokes were impressively done, the painter no amateur. No, it wasn't done by some old master, but whoever had painted them had real skill, and had a passion for the subject.

Which made it even more awkward, really. Were these Simeon's paintings? I had to wonder at their origins.

“See anything you like?” the question was almost growled at me by the uniformed cop that was trailing me, and it took me until now to realize that under the hat was Arche, though she looked considerably less pleased than in the painting.

“No – I mean yes,” I said, and her scowl did not change one bit. “I mean...whatever.” I didn't even know how to answer her anymore. No one walking by would mistake her for the figure in the painting.

“Has Simeon approached you?” she asked, sidling closer.

“If by approached, you mean threatened my anus with breakage from being impaled atop that statue outside...yes.”

She jerked her head around. “He probably wouldn't do that.” She hesitated. “Probably.”

“You're old friends, are you?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes away. “We're acquainted. When you live as long as we do, you meet certain people over and over.”

“How?”

“Metahumans are drawn to seats of power,” she said, pretending to look closer at the brushwork. “My father was a duke as well as a metahuman – obviously. He didn't just get that honor handed to him. He went to war with the king and was rewarded for his efforts. Others did the same, it was a fairly standard path to riches in days of yore. It worked all the way up until World War I, actually. Then it went rather badly for many of the metahumans involved.”

“So how did you meet Simeon?” I asked.

I could almost feel the irritation come off her, but her tone seemed normal enough. “Same old story: he was the son of some important noble.”

I waited for more. “And...?”

Her nostrils flared. “And we met, he charmed me, and we rollicked for a hundred years between silken sheets.” She wheeled on me. “Is that what you want to hear?”

“Is...is that what happened?”

“No,” she said. “We met at some function or another and then, unlike now, chastity was forced upon us by religious expectation and lack of reliable birth control. I was later betrothed to someone else considerably more important, et cetera.” She turned back to the painting.

“I feel like I missed something in that et cetera,” I said. “Okay, you didn't get down and dirty with Simeon. Why is he so obsessed with the paintings?”

Her eyelid twitched but she didn't look away from the canvas. “He's not 'obsessed' with them. Probably. He's barely troubling himself at all to do all this.”

Dude was ripping off all these paintings around the world and barely breaking a sweat. Yeah, that sounded right. Check. “Okay. He's still put together an international itinerary of art theft. You don't do that for – no offense – low value art.”

“Some taken,” she said, nostrils flaring again. “This art ruined my life, okay? He wants it because it commemorates a moment for him, I expect.”

“See, there you go again being sly about the sequence,” I said. “If you could be just a little more forthcoming, maybe lay it out for those of us who don't have the benefit of two hundred years experience to have witnessed the history, that'd be helpful.”

Her eyes flashed with annoyance. “He painted them. We could not consummate our relationship because of the reasons I mentioned before, but I let him paint me in these risqué poses. I grew up in Hungary, not France; when the paintings were showcased, my marriage prospects were destroyed along with my house, because I was the only child.” She turned on me again. “Are you happy now, Jamal? To hear these titillating details of my history? My past shame?”

“Not one bit of this makes me happy,” I said. “Not being stripped naked by your ex...painter or whatever, not being remonstrated by you for failing to stop his happy ass from doing that and then stealing your pretty picture, not being threatened with pole-riding if I don't help him commit a felony – not any bit of this is fun for me, okay, Duchess?” I kept my voice meta-low, but it was fairly exploding with emotion. “And especially not the detective who has discovered the murderous secrets of my past that I desperately hoped would stay buried. So no, no part of having the multiple swords of Damocles hanging over me is bringing me even a scintilla of joy.”

She seemed to get quiet for a moment, still herself. “Well...this probably isn't going to help, then.” She looked up at me. “I want you to help me steal the painting before Simeon can.”

I groaned, closing my eyes. “You serious? Like I'm not already in enough trouble with Detective McMahon?”

“If you do what I tell you to, she'll never be able to prove it was you,” Arche said, edging slightly closer to me. Close enough I could almost feel the heat of her body, and it reminded me of good times past, ones in which we were wearing much less and were in much more collegial environs.

I looked at my scuffed-up shoes. “Does that make grand theft art any more right?”

She made a scoffing sound deep in her throat. “Please. I do six more terrible things than stealing my own nude pictures back every day before breakfast.”

“I know you have, in the past,” I said. “But you don't have to do it that way going forward. I thought the war was your chance to reset. How many more times do you want to go to work for someone like Hades or Caden Sims, who are threatening to wreck the world?”

“This is not me working for a villain,” she said. “It's me trying to recapture a part of myself that was stolen against my will. These were never meant to be displayed.” She thrust a hand at the painting. “They were supposed to be something between myself and Simeon. Just the same as the moments you and I have shared. How would you feel if someone took those moments, those private moments, and gave them to the whole world to see?”

I couldn't argue with that. “I'd be upset. But it's been two centuries. Why now?”

“Because Simeon does not deserve to see me like this anymore!” she hissed. “He and I had our time, and it ended in betrayal when he ruined my life. I accepted that these were out there, in the world, in collections, beloved by strangers, but cannot abide the thought of him taking them. I will not have it. So yes, I will take this one, and I will take the rest.” She set her chin, pointing it at me. “Will you help me or not?”

I felt completely hemmed in by terrible choices. The St. Louis Police – or at least Detective McMahon – was all-in on this case. To steal the painting from beneath her nose could be detrimental to her career, to say nothing of her trust in me if she figured out I had a hand in it.

“Think about it,” she said, brushing past me. “But don't think too long. I have to make my move soon – before he does.”

I wanted to verbalize a thought. What if I don't help you? as I watched her walk away.

But I didn't really need to ask. The implication was clear by her emotion, and how she felt about this.

If I didn't help her in this theft...

...We were done.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Sienna

Istepped into the cell block to find a scene of utter and complete chaos.

And you know how I was feeling about chaos at the moment.

Prisoners were out of their cells, mingling in with members of Mekhi Bonner's gang; the only way you could tell them apart was the bangers wore street clothes and the prisoners wore orange. A few of them opened fire on me the moment I stepped inside, a rifle round catching me in the side and sending spikes of fire running through my left kidney as I dove to the side.

The moment I was down, I tapped Wolfe healing and also Magneto abilities, sending the rifle sideways even as I grew back the skin ripped asunder by the rifle round. I heard a few people take rounds, which, to be brutally honest, I found hilarious because I was in a hateful mood. Did they deserve it? Wasn't for me to say. But being confined to the most serious cell block in the jail, I had a feeling they didn't not-not deserve it.

When the gunfire ceased and the screams took its place, I came back to my feet. The reporters and cameramen were only thirty feet away from me now, pointing their stupid tools of the trade at me as though spectating on a zoo animal engaging in a mating ritual or eating corn or something. Assholes.

I ignored them and focused on the task at hand.

This was a prison break.

These people were generally terrible, and celebrating the fact that they thought they were about to be free.

What would they do once free? Well, I couldn't say for sure, but I had a few ideas: namely the same shit that had gotten them locked up in the first place.

“I am Sienna Nealon,” I said, using the tone of voice I reserve for criminals, and Cali when she'd just shit indoors. “Go back to your cells and you will not be harmed. To Mekhi Bonner's jailbreakers – lay down your weapons and surrender. You have until the count of five to comply.”

And I started counting.

I didn't even make it to two before the most ambitious of these little shits started to try and break past me.

They came in a charge, fifteen or twenty guys, all bumrushing the hole in the wall. Every last one was wearing an inmate uniform, and they didn't seem exactly sure where I was.

I was so over this. So beyond over it. So unwilling to let a single one slip away to do...whatever it was he had it in mind to do once he was out...that I saw red.

Blood red. Pure red.

Fury. Like I was channeling ol' Wolfe one last time.

One of them saw me as he broke out through the hole beside me, and he swung at my head. It was slow; entirely human. I could have just dodged it and let it go. Reprised with a punch to the face that would have shattered his jaw. Even that would probably have been too much.

Instead, I dropped sideways.

And I cracked the Gates of Hell.

The onrush of energies burst out of me and ran across the distance between us like a tide racing up the sands. It cut through every last one of them like a guillotine through a mouse tail, chopping and burning and leaving not one of them alive.

Then I dissolved it out of existence.

And I truly did not give a shit.

“Final warning,” I shouted to the idiots inside. “You will not be escaping today. Get back in your cells – or die. And I really don't care which you pick.”

“What the hell are you doing?” A voice cracked through the silence that followed that, causing me to turn.

There, beyond the reporters, beyond the cameramen, were a half-dozen cops making their way in behind me.

The speaker, leading the way, was Detective Moore.

And boy did he look pissed.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Kristina

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Kristina whispered. She could hear the conversation, the pause in the next room, after the men who'd just charged had been massacred.

“Nah...let's wait a second and see what happens,” Mekhi said. She couldn't see his face, but she knew he was grinning.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Sienna

“Have you any idea what you've done?” Moore asked, looking at me across the giant hole in the wall that some meta had made. There might have been a few...pieces...halves...of human remains between us, the remnants of a dozen-plus would-be escapees. Moore was horrorstruck, and I could hear his phone vibrating furiously in his pocket on a continuous loop, text messages and calls triggering on a near-constant basis.

I flashed a look at the human debris at my feet. “Thus far, I have prevented 100% of potential escapees from escaping. That's what I've done. What have you done, besides flashing those spectacles at me like you're sending out an SOS? Underrated song, by the way.”

“What?” Moore looked absolutely aghast, like I'd just told him I microwave tea (I do, and Brits are always scandalized by this). “Have you any idea what they've filmed you doing?”

“Swatting bothersome flies, mostly,” I said, honestly unsure what he was on about. Had they filmed me doing something bad? I couldn't remember doing anything other than my job. With an excess of zeal, perhaps, but still. My job. “Why?”

“The political higher-ups want you out of here,” Moore said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in a very American way, like I was being ejected from a baseball game. “Now.”

“Oh, so you're going to deal with this?” I asked, pointing at the hole in the wall. “That'll go well.”

He reddened. “You have to leave. Now.”

“They're going to escape.”

“No one cares at the moment!” Moore said. “They want you bloody gone!”

“They want me gone?” I asked, hearing a rush of blood in my ears. “Who wants me gone?”

“The governor. The mayor. The city council. The mums' league of Worcester. Everyone with a phone and an email address!” Moore said. “And probably the people with pens and paper, too, it's just that given the dearth of owl mail, those haven't quite made their way to us yet.” He slid across the hole between us, dodging corpse fragments, and leaping past me to take up a position on the wall next to me. He kept his gun down so as not to present a threat, but nodded at the cameras. “You've just shown the people of Massachusetts an eyeful of something they didn't want to see – how the sausage of justice gets made.” He glanced at the body fragments on the floor and swallowed heavily. “Honestly, it's a bit much for me, too.”

“You're all so fucking weak,” I said, contempt just dripping from my words. I looked up at the cameras. “You want me gone, Boston? Fine.” I gave the cameras the double bird. “You don't have to tell me twice. I'm out. Peace, bitches – though I doubt you'll find it. Best of luck with it, though.” And I maintained the dual middle fingers on my way past the reporters, who were shouting countless questions, and made my way back to the next hole in the wall, and the one after.

Because they hadn't sealed the perimeter. The police, I mean. The scene was uncontained, and they were telling me to leave.

So I left.

And as I did, I saw another explosion on the other side of the House of Corrections. A stream of ant-like figures came swarming out.

There was the big jailbreak.

Not my circus.

Not my monkeys.

Not my problem.

Not anymore.

I turned south and hit supersonic, rattling everything beneath me. Which was fine by me. More than fine. I felt spurned, and they should feel it, too, with a little window rattling as reprisal. It wasn't the worst thing they'd face because of my departure, that much I knew.

If I wasn't wanted here, I'd just head home.

To hell with them all.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Kristina

The wall of the Suffolk House of Corrections blew out under the nearby freeway, and eight cell blocks' worth of criminals came flooding out, uncontrolled, into the streets of Boston.

Kristina, for her part, stuck to the shadows wherever possible, sliding under a nearby overpass.

There was no plan, save for to get out. Police sirens sounded in the distance, but they wouldn't make it in time.

“Freedom,” Mekhi announced, back to human form, and watching it all unfold with great relish. This was his dream, after all. His breath puffed out in little clouds as he stood there, arms crossed in front of himself, beaming.

Kristina, for her part, felt slightly less sure. But there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Augustus

Idrove my rattling, busted-ass BMW into the parking garage for the city jail, and met the DA, a sharply-dressed, coffee-scented middle-aged lady named Tamara Ellison, who had big, warm eyes that turned real flinty the moment she stepped foot in a room with a criminal. She wore a fitted blazer, and a pencil skirt that was just short enough that I got possessed of the need to keep my eyes in the far north of her hemisphere, if you know what I mean. Out of the tropics.

We went through the cases one by one, reviewed the drone footage. I filled out paperwork under her guidance until my hand hurt, and we talked to every one of the perps, one by one, usually for about ten, fifteen minutes, with counsel present in some cases.

As you might imagine, this took hours. Hours and hours.

Coffee fueled me, as during breaks I stepped out into the hall with a window where light appeared on the horizon early in our meetings, then brightened the sky as day broke, and continued to progress upward until it reached its apogee and then descended.

By the time we were on the last of the suspects – Granthony, of course – it was faded, the skies outside the window turning an orange-ish hue. I was on my...tenth? Fiftieth? Cup of murderously strong coffee. My heart was thudding a dozen extra beats a minute just from caffeine consumption, and it was the only thing keeping me upright at this point.

“You know this last one personally?” Tamara asked, looking at the final file. The stack in front of her was high, and she'd written notes in the pages and margins of each as we talked. Credit to her, too, she still looked perfectly composed in spite of our marathon session.

My eyes wandered south as my attention span shortened and my self-discipline cratered, drinking in the artistic curves and lines of her hips and legs beneath the hem of her skirt. I was tired. I was feeling drawn. I had a dozen messages of varying levels of urgency waiting on my phone from Madison, and it was getting hard to compose responses. “Yeah,” I said at last, fighting my eyes back up above the center-line of her body before she caught me looking. “I've known his dumb ass since grade school.”

“Probably keep those editorial comments to yourself while we're talking to him,” she said, and buzzed the guard to bring him in. She studied the notes, then frowned. “No counsel for him. Which feels a bit odd, since so many of these creeps had lawyers. A disproportionately high number, actually.”

“Hmm?” My brain was too fatigued to fully process her statement.

“Just weird, that's all,” she said. “Most of the time we get these bangers, they don't have lawyers, and they roll on each other constantly. A lot of times they don't even require a deal, they're proud of whatever gawdawful antisocial thing they did because they view their actions as completely justified.” She jotted a few more notes in the margin. “You know, rob a guy and say, 'He was richer than me!' like that's totally fine so long as he didn't have one dollar less in his wallet than the robber. Or they'll commit a rape and say, 'She was begging for it!' Not with her words, but with her eyes or her lips or something.” She shuddered. “And of course the murders. Their victims always had it coming for some reason. Matters of honor, the rest of the gang would think him a pussy if he didn't, and so on.” She finished writing and looked up. “Huh. Guard's taking a minute on this one.”

I perked up; for the first time I realized that there was serious background noise outside the interrogation room. My fatigue was acting as an impermeable bubble, and it felt like my head was underwater.

Yet when I forced myself to pay attention, to try and push consciousness into my flagging brain, I could hear outside the room–

And it sounded like a riot.

“What the hell...?” I muttered, and went over to the door, thudding my palm against it. The guard on the other side of the two-way glass hit the buzzer, and I opened it, stepping outside.

Just in time to almost get knocked over by a couple paramedics hustling by with an empty stretcher.

“What's going on?” I called as they bolted past, hurrying down the hall. I followed at a trot.

“Someone got stabbed,” one of them said.

I busted ass, broke into a run, and passed them in a second. When I hit the security gate, it was already held open by a guard, and I passed through way ahead of them.

Following the noise, I knew where I was going, taking each corner almost before I reached it.

Until I came around the last bend, and found a scrum of guards standing and kneeling around a fallen body.

It was Granthony.

“Holy shit,” I said, pushing my way in. They didn't keep me out, or try to. “Granthony – what happened?”

The question answered itself; his upper body was bloody as hell, punctured all to shit by some sharp object. I didn't even bother counting, but there had to be upwards of thirty stab wounds. Someone had diced his ass up.

He was wheezing, but he saw me, locked on, and raised a hand up. I knelt and took it. We'd had our differences – to say the least – but that didn't mean I was going to deny him comfort in his last moments. “They got me,” he said; I was only able to catch it because of my metahuman hearing. I could hear the blood bubbles in his lungs.

“Who got you?” I asked. The paramedics were still many turns behind me, but I was juicing him with my Persephone powers. He was so torn up, though, I had real questions about whether I'd be able to repair the damage in time to save his life. “Granthony, who did this?”

“The...boss,” he said, blood-flecked spittle flying out of his mouth and coating his chin, mingling with the patch of hair just below his lips.

“You got a boss?” I asked.

He jolted again, body spasming as it died. “Had. Think he just...fired my ass...for not killing you.” He was laboring to breathe. If he'd had his meta powers, he probably could have survived it. But he was drowning in his own blood.

“Who's your boss, Granthony?” I asked, holding his hand tight. “You tell me, and I'll get him for you. You know it. I'll roll right up on his ass and take him out. For you.”

“I know you will.” He nodded, the light in his eyes already starting to fade. “It's that...white boy...got your girl.” His body was tense; it couldn't get any tenser. “Hans...” His eyes became unfocused, and he looked past me. “You get him, Augustus...you get him...for me...make me sorry I beat yo' ass....all those times...”

Granthony relaxed, all the life leaving him. His head lolled, and his grip died with him.

I put his hand down across his chest and stood, surrounded by guards. “Who did this?”

One of them shrugged after a bunch of uncomfortable looks were exchanged. “We didn't see.”

“Well, you got footage of it, yeah?” I asked. There was blood on my hands.

That same guard shrugged. “Maybe?” He called down to someone on his radio, spoke to them for a moment, during which I zoned out, thinking about what Granthony had said. “Uh...” he said once he was done, “...I guess the cameras were off in this sector?” A question that wasn't a question.

“I bet they were,” I said, and turned to find Tamara standing there. “One less to prosecute.”

She was frowning. “I hate it when it happens like this. He tell you anything?”

“He identified his boss in a dying declaration,” I said, not bothering to hide it, since the guards had all heard it already, anyway. “Said he worked for Hans. You know Hans?”

The DA's perfectly manicured eyebrows threatened to climb up to her hairline. “I know Hans. And that...is a hell of a thing to say as you're dying. That's tossing a rhetorical grenade on your way out the door. He's been funding the work Taneshia's been doing bringing the bad guys to justice.” She blinked, and for the first time her own fatigue showed in the shadowed lines of her face. “You don't believe this, do you?”

It sure was convenient. Taneshia's boyfriend and employer – the very heart of her and her argument against me, Mr. Non-profit Justice, being the big villain behind whatever was going on in the neighborhood. “Yeah,” I said, feeling what should have been joy, at winning, turn to ash, because...damn, Taneshia was going to be pissed, and not a chance she'd believe me, “I do.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Sienna

Iflew and flew, and didn't stop until I got home to Tennessee.

My phone was silenced, no updates could break through, and I'd turned Sierra off.

I didn't want to know what was happening in Boston. Hey, maybe they were experiencing an unprecedented outbreak of good feelings and peace. Sure, the containment unit holding all the violent criminals currently awaiting trial had just been cracked open, and anyone who wanted to had escaped, but those were surely good people who'd just had some bad breaks, right?

L.O.L.

I came down hard, and heard the shriek of Ricardo MonFalcon saying hello in his own particular way as I landed. He was far enough off that he didn't hear me say, “I bet the governors, mayors, senators, and congresscritters don't want a meeting and a photo now.” I laughed, but it was joyless, mirthless, filled with bitter, blistering rage.

It just figured that Gerry Harmon's hometown would turn on me like this. They had to be carrying around some residual irritation that I'd killed their most famous president since Kennedy.

There was a loud caw from above, and Ricardo swooped in. He dropped something at my feet, and it thudded against the ground, bringing with it a smell ripe with death. I covered my nose but it didn't help, because my sleeve had blood on it. Though admittedly it wasn't as rank as whatever Ricardo had brought.

I bring you triumph! Ricardo exulted from the nearby branch where he'd landed.

At my feet, in the dark, I could barely make out the figure of a rabbit. Pretty fat one, too. It barely twitched, definitely dead, last neurons firing as it ended its life there among the crackling leaves that covered the forest floor.

“I wish I had triumph of my own to offer,” I said, looking over at the gray, weathered, secondhand tent that was staked between two trees. My home these days. “But all I've got is failure, Ricardo. You keep that. I find that failure doesn't leave me very hungry.”

Your hunt will surely go better next time, he said, with the confident assurance of a hawk who knew little to nothing of the affairs of men. You will bring triumph. I am sure of it.

“Wish I shared your confidence,” I said, pushing my sleeve closer up to my nose. I was already using my magnetic powers to unzip the tent flap as I came up on it. Ricardo, never one to hesitate, swooped down behind me and picked up his prize, carrying back up to the treetops to feast.

There was something elegantly simple about living just to feed yourself. If you got a kill – triumph. If not, you'd triumph tomorrow. So much easier than the world of human politics, where I could get a kill any day I wanted.

I'd just pay dearly for it if I got the wrong one.

But I determined to harden my heart; the consequences of Boston deciding to yield to lawlessness wouldn't fall on me sitting out here in the Tennessee woods, after all. They probably wouldn't fall on the teary souls up on Beacon Hill, either, who had watched on their televisions and smart phones as I'd dissolved escaping prisoners into free-floating atoms. The police would form a tight cordon around their neighborhoods.

As per usual, the people who would suffer the bad, weak decisions would be the ones least able to bear them. The strong would do what they would, and the weak would suffer what they must. I think Thucydides said that.

Or they'd just die. Probably a lot of that.

I couldn't do anything about it, though. For all my talk about being a goddess, I wasn't. People had the right to govern themselves, and make their choices – and the people of Boston had chosen this.

Let them live with it – or not. I was free of their bullshit responsibilities, at least. And I settled down to take advantage of that by going to sleep.

It didn't happen for a long while.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Augustus

“Look, we can't just arrest Hans Sigurdsson on the say-so of a dying gangbanger,” DA Ellison said, following me through the security checkpoint. It was back to locked down, and she had to wave her badge in order to get us through. “He's a pillar of the community. And his father is...” She shuddered. “Well, to steal a line from Ron Burgundy, he's kind of a big deal.”

“Which explains how he got his fancy sports car while running a non-profit, I guess,” I said, as we were buzzed out the other side of the gate. “Or maybe it doesn't.” Lifting my phone, I clicked into Sierra. “I need a deep dive into the financial reports of ol' Hans' non-profit, the one that's been funding Taneshia French.”

There was only a pause before Sierra answered. “That non-profit is funded 70% from donations by Lars Sigurdsson, the father of Hans Sigurdsson, 10% of the funding comes from close associates of Lars, and the last 20% comes from a variety of government grants. In the last five years, the cumulative funding rose to $522 million dollars. Outflows in that time period totaled $450 million, 65%, or almost $250 million of which came in the form of salaries and other compensation to the NGO's six officers, administrative office expenses, and travel–”

“Whoa,” I said, and looked back to see Tamara blanch. “That's a lot of money being paid to the people who run your organization.”

“Another 33%, or $149 million, seems to have been used to purchase real estate throughout the Bluff neighborhoods of Atlanta,” Sierra said. “And finally, roughly $100,000 over five years was paid in the form of stipends to Taneshia French.”

“That's a rounding error,” I said. “But they've been touting how they're helping the neighborhood the whole time, right?” She nodded. “Meanwhile, they're all pocketing a quarter bil over the last five years themselves? And investing another $150 million into the local real estate market?”

“After it's been driven down by all the gang activity,” she said. “But if they're supposedly tied to Granthony and his gang, where's the monetary tie that would allow him to call Hans his boss?”

“Probably somewhere in the quarter billion the administrative staff split,” I said acidly. All this time Taneshia had been looking at me like a greedy turd for making money cleaning up the streets, and it looked like her boyfriend had laundered a fortune from his daddy that he'd turned into a real estate empire through deceit and corruption.

Seriously, I should have felt like a king after this news. But all I felt was sick to my stomach.

“If you can prove any of this,” she said, “it's money laundering. It's racketeering. We could get RICO charges and really send this guy away for a long time.”

I grimaced. “With daddy's money behind him, our case is going to have to be airtight. And with all the money they've been pocketing, I guarantee you those NGO officers are going to have lawyers.”

And Taneshia still wasn't likely to believe me. In fact...she was probably going to hate me when this was all said and done.

“Just the donations and spending and government grants and real estate buying isn't a crime,” Tamara said. “It's sketchy as hell, but it's legal. I need some connection to illegal activity. Money laundering. Bribery. Pay for the bangers who are doing bad things in exchange for lowering the neighborhood's property values.”

I rubbed my face. “With this kind of money behind him, you don't think he's stupid enough to leave an obvious trail, do you?”

“You'd think the PR hit alone from revealing what he's been doing with his money ought to be embarrassing enough to make a man crawl into a hole in the ground and pull the dirt back over his head.”

That made me laugh. “With his daddy standing right behind him, ain't no one going to report on that.” I paused. “But someone did just make a move on Granthony, and it probably wasn't one of his rivals from a nearby territory.”

Tamara stared at me. “It could be. But it probably wasn't.”

A thought occurred to me, breaking through the brain fog. “Can you lock this place down? Keep anything from getting out, cell phone messages or anything?”

She stared back, frowning. “Already have. Standard procedure during an emergency like this. Why?”

I turned and hurried toward the exit. “Because we don't have a great hand at the moment. But if Hans doesn't know what happened in here, we might just be able to bluff his ass into thinking we've got a winning hand. Just keep the place locked down and keep any messages from getting out, even from the guards!” And I hurried back to my car, already thinking of my next move...and the one after that.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Jamal

McMahon didn't care when I stepped outside to make a call. She did watch me, though, and so did the rest of the uniforms. I guess she'd shared her suspicions with them, because I was never out of sight of at least one of them as I strolled outside and plopped up against the base of the statue. The future resting place of my ass, if I didn't figure some shit out real soon. The cold marble against my back, chill bleeding through my jacket, I dialed the office on my phone and waited to see who answered. It was the middle of the night, but we had people working 24/7 these days.

Some secretary answered on the second ring, spit out the official agency name that no one ever seemed to remember, and asked me – politely – the reason for my call.

“This is Jamal Coleman,” I said, “in the field, on assignment in St. Louis – and I need to know if there's any backup available. Put me through to Madison Gustafson.”

After telling me to wait, “One moment, please,” I heard the buzzing, booping sound that indicated a call transfer.

Madison picked up on the third ring, sounding groggy as all hell. “Jamal?”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering if there was an all-night coffee shop nearby. Simeon said he wasn't going to move on the museum until tomorrow, and McMahon wasn't going to miss me if I was gone. “I've got a problem up here. Any chance for backup?”

Credit to Madison, she snapped right awake. “We don't have anyone nearby,” she said, sounding drained, and a touch upset. “Your brother just summoned the cavalry to Atlanta, then called us off after he wrapped it up solo.” A horn honked in the background. “Eight carloads of us, all stuck in Chattanooga traffic.”

I glanced at the faceplate on my phone. “At this hour?”

“Yes, and I don't want to talk about it,” she said. “How serious is your situation? In case of emergency, I can break the glass and send everything your way. It'll take a bit to arrive, but we could be there by morning if we drive through the night. Assuming we can ever get out of Chattanooga, it's like eight hours from here.”

This whole thing would be settled in eight hours, one way or another. Simeon had made that much clear, and Arche had no intention of letting the museum open tomorrow with her painting still on display. “Nah, this thing's coming to a head quicker than that. It's probably not that serious.”

“Right,” she said, and it was like she was remembering the details. “The art theft. Yeah, our insurance has the replacement value on that one covered, and Miss Di Novo is...not pleased. She hasn't sent over the paperwork officially yet, but I think we can safely say your assignment is concluded.”

“I know,” I said. “I got that feeling. But I was trying to work with the St. Louis PD to recover the stolen painting, and I chanced my way into figuring out that this is a string of thefts. Hate to leave an assignment unfinished, y'know? Or a villain out there who's gotten the better of me.”

“Sure,” she said. “But we really can't...I mean, if you need help, we'll send it ASAP. It's just...if your assignment's over, you should probably call it quits and come home.”

“Home,” I said, the words feeling a little ashy. “Sure. I understand.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, if there's not anything else, I'm going to go back to trying to sleep. And hopefully when I wake, many hours from now, I'll no longer be in Chattanooga traffic.” A horn sounded again behind her.

“It's good to have a dream,” I said. “Thanks, Madison.”

“Take care, Jamal.” And she hung up.

I sat there with my back against that statue. No help was coming, because no help was available. If I wanted to run, it was going to be down to me.

I was on my own.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Kristina

Night had fallen in Boston, and Kristina had followed along with Mekhi and the escapees into a booming commercial district. Tall glass and steel buildings rose up above them, the laughter of the men – and they were all pretty much men – echoed down the streets.

“I told you I'd get you Gucci,” Mekhi said with a grin as he led the parade into a mall. Probably old, but it had the flash of being redone, or brand new. They flowed in through the doors, surging the population of the mall radically in a matter of minutes, the sparse walkways suddenly flooded with people. Ill-mannered, yelling, shoving their way into stores.

“No – no – no!” A shopgirl in a teenage clothing brand store got picked up and carried toward the back of the store by a leering man in an orange jumpsuit. Kristina closed her eyes, but she could hear a curtain tearing – and then other cloth tearing–

“Please – please!” A man in a suit was trying to move out of the way of a shirtless man in orange Department of Corrections pants. But the prisoner was a reflex type, and every time the man in the suit would move, the meta would match him, grinning like a cartoon hyena stalking its prey.

“Store you're looking for is this way,” Mekhi said, casually strolling past. The man screamed, but it cut off quickly, and when Kristina looked back, she saw blood on the prisoner's hands, and the man in the suit had fallen to his knees.

Half his head was missing.

“Focus on the goal,” Mekhi said, grinning, catching Kristina's chin with his hand. There was a flash, though, and screams, and she looked–

A line of people waiting for coffee had lightning running between them. It sparked, and made them dance surreally. Kristina locked eyes with one of them, a woman in her forties wearing an apron that suggested she might have been a barista or a server. She was being jolted continuously by one of Mekhi's gang, who was laughing riotously at the scene.

When he cut the flow of juice, every last one of them keeled over. Small fires burned on the wood counter, and Kristina knew even as she turned her head back around–

Every one of them was dead.

“You got a real nice-looking lady,” another man said. Orange jumpsuit, again, thick Boston accent. He was standing in front of a young couple holding hands, right next to the railing that looked down to the lower floor of the mall. They looked uncertain, were nicely dressed, him in a red polo and jeans, her in a slightly tarty dress covered over by a knee-length wool coat. Tres chic.

“Uh...thanks?” The man didn't seem to know how to respond to that.

It didn't matter. The prisoner triggered eyebeams that sent him flying over the balcony's edge and plummeting thirty feet to the tile floor below. He landed with a sickening noise that told Kristina everything she needed to know about what was happening, as did the jeers of the bangers and escapees as the prisoner with the eyebeams dragged the screaming woman away, a dozen others trailing behind them.

“This is a necessary reaction,” Mekhi said, catching her eyes as she tried to look away. “To a vile system.”

“How is this necessary?” Kristina asked. For the first time in her life, maybe, she'd lost her appetite for shopping. She tried to create tunnel vision, keep fixed on Mekhi, but it was hard. Behind him, a man with steel skin stomped his way through fleeing shoppers, flinging his arms as he bulled his way through. The results were predictable to anyone with a knowledge of the laws of physics, and she found herself squinting to avoid seeing it.

The screams, though, some of them from children...they were not so easy to shut out.

“The system has created this situation,” Mekhi said, never short on self-assurance. “Where some live in luxury, and others in penury.”

Her eyes snapped open, and she slapped him across the face. He took a staggering step back, and looked back at her, shocked. “What the hell?”

“Don't kid a kidder, Mekhi,” she said, looking at him in cold, stark horror. “I've done some very bad things in my time. I never did them because I was poor, and none of these people are doing it for that reason, either.” She watched as a man from Mekhi's gang held tight to another man, this one with a beard and trucker hat, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, who was screaming and trying to tug his arm away, to run, to escape. The banger came down with a glowing, plasma-coated hand–

And burned the man's arm off at the shoulder.

The man screamed, and then passed out, keeling over and revealing rubber soles worn down almost flat on his cheap boots.

“They're doing this because it's fun for them,” she said, feeling sick as the banger laughed and then took the man's leg off at the knee. That just made him laugh more.

“Yeah, it's fun to tear down an oppressive system,” Mekhi said, working his jaw, keeping his hand tight against it. “Especially after it's had its way with you for a while, like it has a lot of these folks.”

“Oh, boo-hoo, Mekhi,” she said. “Oppressed? Why? Because you gotta follow the same laws as everyone else in the system? Cry me a river.”

“Easy for you to say when you've been using your powers to escape the system anytime it's come close to you,” Mekhi said. “See what happened the minute I got the same thing given to me? I was able to escape the consequences, too.” He smirked at her. “When equalization occurs, the results change to become more favorable to those oppressed by the system.”

Something terrible happened behind her, and she heard it, but didn't dare look. There were so many instances of terrible things happening around her, though; she could hear so many of them. Smell others, and it made her want to cover her nose with a perfumed wrist. Cover it and keep it there, to run off the taste of malice. “This is what you wanted all along?”

He stretched his arms wide to encompass everything around them. “This is freedom, baby.”

A phrase came back to Kristina from somewhere in her distant past, somewhere she couldn't quite place it. “'Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows.'” She looked around, and in her bones, she felt – and knew – it was true.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Augustus

Ifollowed Sierra's guidance to the offices of Hans's organization. I shouldn't have been surprised by what I found; an opulent, six-story office building in a suburb called Duluth, just off the freeway. Walking up to the place, I realized the entire building was occupied by his group because they had their logo right behind the receptionist's desk at the entry. A pert little white girl with a raven pixie cut looked up at me, smiling, as I came in. “How can I help you?” she chirped. Like a bird.

“Yeah, I'm here to see Hans,” I said, looking around. There was a water feature running behind the company logo. I guess this is what you got for your quarter billion in office expenses. Or however much of it was office expenses. “He around?”

“He's at the gym right now,” she said.

“All right, which gym?” I asked, readying myself to drive to whichever one he was a member of.

She stared back at me blankly. “The one on premises here.” She pointed just down the hall to her left. “Oh – but do you have an appointment?”

“No, I do not,” I said, and headed down that hallway as she rose behind me making squawks of protest. “Don't worry. I'm sure he's going to want to see me. He took care of my momma for me last night and I just want to thank him.”

“Oh – oh – okay,” she said, seemingly short-circuiting. “Mr. Sigurdsson, there's a young – uh – man – here to see you, says he wants to thank you for helping his mother last night–”

The hallway was long. A big-ass corridor, with doors on either side. But I found the gym easily, because pretty swiftly, windows opened up on the hallway into the company fitness center–

And it spanned this entire quarter of the floor. From where the receptionist area ended all the way to the end of the building.

As I walked, I spied an Olympic-sized pool complete with diving board, a fitness center with the latest and greatest weightlifting and cardio gear, a sauna, a cold plunge, what looked like a yoga area, massage rooms.

And at the far end I saw Hans standing in the midst of a series of kettlebells, talking into his watch and peering out the windows at me coming toward him.

He hurried over and opened the door, which had a keycard reader on it that I suppose I wouldn't have been able to breach without frying it with electricity or ripping it open with magnetic powers. “Augustus,” he said, sounding a little surprised. He had beads of sweat rolling down his face, but the fitness center smelled impeccably clean. “I wasn't expecting you.”

“Nah, I just wanted to drop by and thank you for what you did for me last night,” I said, squeezing in through the open door. “Momma's grateful, I'm grateful. We're all just real grateful.”

“Oh. Well, you're welcome,” he said, pulling a towel off a beautifully stocked cubby beside the door. It also had water with fruit cut up in it. Two varieties: limes and lemons, and some sort of berries. They were sweating with condensation.

Did I mention he was the only guy in the company gym? Because other than maybe some of these servants like the receptionist, he and five other people were the only ones working here. I was split between jealous and angry, and couldn't decide which was winning.

“Also,” I said, because I wanted to see him sweat more, “Granthony had some interesting things to say when I spoke to him just now in jail.”

Hans froze, partway through toweling off his face. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Someone tried to kill him. And failed, because of me.” I waggled my fingers in front of him. “New Persephone healing powers for the win on that one. Anyway, Granthony started singing a pretty interesting song about having someone big and powerful and connected standing behind him for a real estate scheme involving bringing down the home values in the neighborhood and then buying it all up. Real long-term planning and foresight. Lotta money required.”

Hans looked like he was trying his best to shit out a brick. Trying – and failing. “Is that so?” Sounded like it, too, his voice all high and squeaky.

I took a step closer. “That's so.”

“Well, you know, you really can't trust these criminals,” he said, pouring the remainder of the water over his face. Some poor janitor was going to have to mop that up later. “They'll say anything to weasel out of their situation.” He started to wander back over toward the kettlebells, slowly, nonchalantly. “I mean...who did he even accuse?”

“We really gonna play this game?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. My shirt was scuffed up, I had a wicked need to re-up my deodorant, and my jacket, pants, and shoes had seen better days, even compared to him in his designer gymwear.

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean.” Now he was sweating a lot more than he had been when he'd answered the door.

“Did you just not have enough?” I asked, shaking my head. “I mean...I don't get it, personally. Maybe it's the broke kid in me talking, but, when you got a foundation with a quarter billion in payroll for six people, it feels like you could live on that pretty comfortably–”

“It doesn't go as far as you might think,” he said, head down, a few paces from his kettlebells and stopped there. “You get accustomed to a certain standard of living, and daddy isn't going to just fund you forever. You need something sustainable. Self-sustaining, even.”

“So you needed a real estate deal that was going to pay off for years to come,” I said. “Look, I respect the hustle. But you had to know this wasn't going to go off that easy. I mean, what's Taneshia going to say when she finds out–”

I'd half expected him to reach for a kettlebell and hurl it at me. They looked metahuman standard; a couple hundred pounds each. I could catch 'em, though, with my fancy new Magneto powers.

That wasn't what he did at all, though. Instead he reached up, fist glowing, and then slammed it down into the ground–

The gym floor exploded as a shockwave of force destroyed it and expanded out at me faster than I could dodge. The blast knocked me off my feet and sent me crashing through the windows behind me. I came down ass-over-teakettle out in the hall, landing on my arm first, then my side, and finally thudding against the ground.

There was an alarm blaring in my head as I picked myself up, aching. Through the shattered window I could see a hole in the far wall.

Hurtling through the window back into the gym, I ran through and out the hole in the front of the building. Or, as real estate developers would probably advertise it to their next tenant: a new external entrance allowing for al fresco workouts.

There was no sign of Hans.

The son of a bitch had gotten away.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Jamal

My head was back against the stone base of the Louis IX statue, the cold of the marble plinth seeping into the ache in my skull. My scalp felt tight, my hair buzzed close to it, and the clouds shrouding the skies above St. Louis were not worth staring at, so I closed my tired eyes. My phone buzzed in my hand, so I reached out to it with my powers and checked the notification.

Another message from Cassidy: ?? Give her another few hours without an update and I'd get three question marks. I imagined a slowly escalating number of question marks, in the months and years to come, until finally, eight years from now, her final message would be enough to fill the phone's RAM and crash the whole OS.

I sighed, keeping my eyes clenched shut. There was no reason to be rude to Cassidy, who'd been more than generous with me as a (secondary) employer. I had flexible hours and assignments, all programming and coding jobs that she offloaded to me because...well...I could do it faster and easier than anyone but her and Arche, probably.

Deciding to get out ahead of this – and because I had literally nothing else to do at the moment, being at a dead end – I dialed her up.

She answered on the third ring, and by the echo I could tell she was in her immersion chamber. “What?”

“You're the one messaging me question marks,” I said. “I'm just trying to answer: I'm going to be late.”

“You're already late,” she said, and I heard a faint splash through the connection, then the pecking of her hands on the keyboard. “How much later do you intend to be? Because I need this code, Jamal. I'm compiling right now, and without your portion of the program...”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “But unfortunately, I'm embroiled in an art theft.”

“I thought you said this was going to be an easy assignment. One in which you'd have lots of time to work on the mind-numbing bit of busywork I sent you.”

“Look, I didn't choose for one of my girlfriend's exes to decide to start stealing nude paintings of her–”

“...What now?”

“–And I certainly didn't decide to hang myself, naked, from the ceiling of a house–”

“I am so lost.”

“–Or to be blackmailed and threatened with forcible, statue-based sodomy–”

“Those are words that are not normally used in conjunction.”

“–To participate in art theft or get dropped like a hot rock–”

“STOP.” Cassidy's voice echoed and boomed over the phone speaker.

I stopped talking, and felt my cheeks burn. I'd let myself get wound up over the last few hours, and I hadn't even realized how twisted I was until I started to unspool on her.

“I can tell you're a little nonplussed,” she said. “Okay. It sounds like you're in a complicated situation not of your own making. Been there. Consider the deadline rescinded. I'm going to hand this off to someone else. If you happen to get back to it in the next couple days, great. You'll definitely beat anyone else to the punch in terms of getting it finished quick.”

“Cassidy,” I said, “I'm sorry.”

She was quiet for a moment, then she huffed out a breath. “Anyone who exists in Sienna Nealon's orbit for very long is familiar with the roughly one million ways things go awry like this. Interpersonal drama is bad for business, but...it's a feature of human life, apparently. I won't pretend to understand what you're going through–”

“It's a long story,” I said, sighing. “That may result in a prison sentence depending on what I do next.”

Cassidy was quiet for a long moment. “Speaking as a person who has eluded numerous felony charges in her life...none of them have to stick to you. But there does tend to always be a price paid. There is no actual Get Out of Jail Free card.”

“I don't know that I provide enough value to get out of consequences again,” I said. “I've got a lot hanging over my head, Cassidy. Including a threat by one of the parties involved to dredge up consequences for actions long past. I'm caught between three pillars here – a threat of violence against my person, the possible destruction of my relationship with Arche, and the unearthing of my past.”

“Those are unenviable options,” she said, and another splash suggested she might be back to work. “If I were you, I'd either pick the one I hated the least...or opt for None of the Above.”

I laughed. “I don't even know what None of the Above would look like in this scenario.”

“It looks like pissing everyone off,” she said, and huffed one last time. “I leave you to it. I can't see how I can possibly help, now that I understand your situation. I do wish you luck, though, and not simply in hopes that you'll complete that programming for me. Though there is a generous paycheck waiting if you do, obviously.”

“Thanks, Cassidy,” I said. Though I wasn't sure why. For the grace afforded me on that programming assignment I'd never get around to completing at this rate, I suppose.

“Sure, sure,” she said. “If I can be of assistance, blah, blah, blah – whatever. Good luck.”

She hung up, leaving me standing there in silence, the clouds overhead glaring down at me with the city's glow.

And unfortunately...I had less idea than ever what I should do.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Sienna

Ididn't fall asleep right away. I tossed and turned, and ignored my phone as it cast light into the darkness of the tent. Outside, naked tree branches rustled, and I sensed Ricardo when I reached out with my mind in a fit of restlessness somewhere around three in the morning.

But I also sensed...something else.

Someone...else.

My mind powers were a curious thing; I'd inherited the telepathic abilities of President Gerry Harmon, but I'd never been able to control them very effectively. He'd been a practicing mind reader from a young age, and I was coming into it fully developed and with some (probably bad) cognitive habits. I hadn't become an alcoholic because my coping mechanisms and patterns of thought were properly developed, after all.

So if I used my telepathic abilities in a crowd, I got overwhelmed, like someone turning the radio to max right next to my ear. Use them out in the wilderness like this, coupled with my animal control/speaking abilities, and I could read Ricardo's mind. See through his eyes. As long as there weren't too many other (human) minds around, it was easy to manage.

And there were never other minds around out here. Not anymore. Not now that Reed and Perugini (or rather, Dr. Treston, now) had moved to London with Eilish to open our European branch.

There was one out there now, though.

And it was coming right for me.

Not slowly, either. It was really moving, thirty or forty miles an hour, churning through the woods about twenty feet off the ground. There was a rustling of boughs, wood squeaking slightly as it bent to accommodate wind – or other commands–

And I knew in that moment, even before I probed the incoming mind any further, who was coming at me.

I grunted and flopped over, unzipping the tent with my magnetic powers. I was still fully dressed because this wasn't a lonely Greek isle, and my husband wasn't here, so there was no reason not to go to bed in my clothes. I floated above the forest floor, though, because I wasn't wearing shoes.

Out of the darkness, being handed from branch to branch by the trees, came my cousin Alannah.

“The hell do you want?” I called out as she dropped the last ten feet or so and landed in a crouch in front of me.

“What I wanted was to be sitting with my cheeks split on my familiar stool at the bar,” she said, hair all bushy from the wind, “maybe go home with someone who'd split 'em for a different reason. Unfortunately, I didn't get what I wanted on either count tonight, so here I am, looking for your sad, sorry ass instead.”

Staring at her with my arms crossed, I found myself shaking my head. “I always find my ass sorry when I ask you these questions.”

She scowled. “You seen what's going on in Boston?”

“No,” I said with a shrug, and turned back to my tent. I had a few snacks stashed away inside, and boy was I hungry. “But that sounds like a Boston problem, and an Ass-a-chu-setts problem, since they sent me home.” Lifting with my powers the metal cooler that I used for just this purpose, I brought it to me and started rifling through it for something suitable.

Alannah stared at me. “You really just gonna stand there and eat beef jerky or some shit while those people up there suffer?”

“People suffer all over the world, Alannah,” I said, trying to decide between the jerky and the RX bar. I was out of blueberry, which was my favorite, and I wasn't sure chocolate sea salt was the right play at this hour. “In order to avoid accusations of being some sort of busybody goddess interventionist who breaks shit and murders millions, I try to limit myself to interfering in those places where I'm invited. Boston rescinded their invitation. Boston can deal with the fallout of their decisions on their own.”

“Cheez Louise-us. You are serious right now, aren't you?”

“As a case of the herp.” I decided on the beef sticks. Not jerky. Chomps brand. Holding up the cooler, I offered her one. “See, natural law is a funny thing. You make decisions, they have consequences. If you decide that, for whatever reasons – suicidal empathy, a simple failure of your brain's functioning survival instinct, whatever – that you no longer need to incarcerate that segment of your society that preys upon others, well, there are consequences for that. Enjoy, Beantown.”

“Really,” she said, looking around. “Is this what you do now, between jobs? You quit and come mewl in the woods all alone like a whipped dog?”

I levitated the cooler back to me. “Sometimes I perch on a branch and hoot like an owl just to scare the squirrels.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now, I'm not an alcoholic–”

“Yet. You're still young.”

“–but I need you to answer me a question,” she said. “How long's it been since you've been to a meeting?”

I sent the cooler gently back into the tent, and zipped it up. “I haven't been drinking, if that's what you're asking.”

“That's not what I asked. At all.”

“It's been a minute,” I said. “Why?”

“Just a thought I had,” she said. “Because it doesn't feel like you're doing so well, and I was wondering how long your emotional teakettle had been boiling without any release. This who you are now? 'I'll save people – if I feel like it.'” She altered her accent to sound very posh, very uppity – but still with the vestiges of her southern drawl. “'I'll save people, if it doesn't get in the way of my nine o'clock hot yoga class. Or my juice cleanse. Or my three o'clock appointment to have my taint waxed and my asshole bleached.'”

I pretended to think about this. “I doubt asshole bleaching would work on metahuman skin.”

“Whatever,” Alannah said, making a retching noise. “This is how it's going be? You just...tired of helping people? Beholden to the bitchass governor of Ass-a-chusetts? You're fine with people getting murdered and all tore up so long as Governor Slapshot Bahston Yahd doesn't get sideways with you for rounding up criminals?”

“I didn't make these choices,” I said, looking away.

She shrugged. “Y'know, it's weird seeing my cousin, who I so admired for her inflexible moral backbone, going softass bitch because some New England pricks decide to let the animals she's spent her whole life going nose-to-nose with have free reign to just prey on people.” She rummaged in her pocket and came out with a cocktail napkin. “You need this to wipe the tears out of your eyes?”

My skin burst into flames. “I am sick of this shit, Alannah. Sick of dealing with people who cannot comprehend the presence of evil in this world. Who are so addicted to feeling high on their own supply of self-righteousness that they cannot imagine people who exist solely to hurt others. We understood once that those people exist, that we cannot figure out how to reform them, and that they simply need to be removed from society in order to have a society.”

“Yeah, it's a shame that people got stupid about that,” Alannah said. “But hey – people are stupid about something all the time. Even some kinda smart people. Like this cousin I had, for instance–”

“For fuck's sake.”

“Nah, for Boston's,” she said. “You done being stupid? Because there's a lot of people getting hurt right now.”

“They told me to get out,” I said, the fire guttering out off my skin, faint wafts of smoke crossing over me as it fled. Beneath it, my clothing was fine; a little refinement I'd made to my powers in the last months. I was finally in control enough, even in a moment of rage like this, that I no longer burned myself into the nude when I lit off.

“And I'm telling you to get back in.”

“They are the duly elected political leaders of Boston.”

“And I'm just a girl who knows what a murderer looks like when he's bearing down on his victim,” she said, eyes getting hard and flinty. “I don't give a rip what Governor Good Will C–”

“Whoa.”

“–ing says about criminal justice,” Alannah said. “Not when another US city is burning, and they're fine with it burning. They may be fine with it – I'm not. I'm over this shit where cities burn because we let a small sliver of animals run riot. We put rabid dogs down, still, and we damned well should, in spite of what some nimrod who's never taken a veterinary medicine course in their life opines about how it's not merciful.” She lowered her head and stared me down. “Now you get back up there and don't you dare even think about coming back with your tail between your legs. Because there ain't no one who gets to win over Sienna Nealon, you hear me? And definitely not because she just leaves the field in the middle of the fight. That shit don't fly – but you do. So – fly, bitch. Get after 'em.”

“All right,” I said, and leapt up into the air, cracking the sound barrier as I did so. “I will.” Not that she could hear me.

But that was all right. Because the last thing I heard before the sonic boom kicked in behind me and knocked her flat on her ass was her cheering me on with a whoop that they could probably hear all the way back in South Bay.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Augustus

Idragged my aching bones out to the receptionist, who was in a real tizzy, panicked and crying, and asked her if she'd seen anything. She had not; not Hans running past outside, nor going for his car, which was still parked out in the lot in the front row spot reserved just for him. (The sign read: Reserved for CEO. Ass.)

She was in such a mess that she didn't notice me slip past her in the chaos of her calling the police and fire department, and I managed a quick search of the floor – which had a cafeteria with no one but the five staff members in it, and an array of lunch and snacks that wouldn't have been out of place in the pre-prepared case at Erewhon.

For six frigging employees. Seriously, this racket.

The back of the building was opulent conference rooms with water features and screens for teleconferencing, a movie theater(!), and some flex space. If you squinted, or maybe just went into the flex space, everything seemed kind of reasonable.

Climbing to the upper floors, though...I just got sicker, angrier, and more jealous.

Every director in the company had at least half a floor allocated to their personal use, and not one of them was on site today. They each had slickly-decorated waiting areas, and for those whose offices I slipped into (which was all, thanks to my Magneto powers defeating their door locks) every last one was decorated with marble, hand-made wood furniture, and reeked of opulence.

When I got to the top floor, I half expected Hans to have a pretty sick office.

It was way more than that, though.

His office took up half the floor. The other half of the floor was living quarters for him. I guess in case he was working late and didn't feel like driving home. Or maybe he just wanted to entertain on the premises.

His bar alone was stocked with liquor worth more than my frigging car. His entertainment center rivaled the theater downstairs. I met his personal chef, Frieda, and his personal masseuse, Helga, who I had a strange suspicion based on her small amount of attire (almost a bikini), might also have been his personal prostitute.

Very sweet ladies, those two. Neither claimed to have seen Hans lately.

When I came downstairs, I gave a quick statement to the police about the incident. I'd already called Tamara and let her know what happened, and how Hans had blown his own facility open trying to get away. What he planned to do next was an open question, but she had promised that his assault of me was cause enough for a warrant, and the cops were already locking the place down in preparation to sift through every office in an opportunistic search.

I stood outside, letting the wind stir my hair. My whole outfit was in tatters, my suit past the point of even the best of tailors being able to rescue it. The shirt was wrecked. Shoes scuffed, the leather torn. Watch face cracked, no longer ticking.

How many thousands of dollars was that down the drain? More than I wanted to count.

Was there evidence enough to make a case against Hans in the building? No idea.

Could he be prosecuted based on knocking my ass through the window? Maybe. It'd be pretty dicey, though, I figured, since I hadn't been on the most solid ground entering his premises, and – in spite of some excellent footage retrieved from the security cameras of our conversation and his subsequent blowup – he hadn't issued the world's strongest confession.

My layman's opinion? With a good lawyer, he'd beat the rap. A really good lawyer might even be able to Uno-reverse things around on me in a truly uncomfortable way. His daddy probably had those kinds of lawyers on speed dial.

My phone was buzzing in my pocket before I even realized it, and I fumbled for it. It had been going off intermittently with updates from Madison about prosaic office matters for a while, and I wanted to check to make sure this wasn't just another of those courtesy texts that I could reply to at my convenience.

It wasn't.

Momma was calling. And when Momma called...

“Hey, what's up?” I asked the second the connection was made.

“What's up is I've got your mom,” Hans said on the other end of the line. He sounded shaky. Pissed. Ego inflamed. Good sense all run out.

“Augustus!” my mother shouted from in the background.

“What the hell are you doing, man?” I asked, mostly because I could not believe this ripshit moron had gone this direction with his planning.

“I'm doing what I've gotta do,” he said. “The way I figure it, you're the key witness against me.”

I blinked a couple times. Yes, that was true. It was also true that a reasonable lawyer could make me look like a greedy dumbass that was just after his money or something along those lines with very little effort. And in front of a jury, no less. But I didn't feel the need to share this information with him. Because I wasn't his lawyer, and he'd kidnapped my mother.

“So what do you want from me?” I asked, feeling a tense sensation forming like a storm cloud in my gut.

“Go to your mom's house. I'll give you a meeting spot once you're there. I'll pick somewhere outside the reach of the cops. You play nice, I let your mother go. You decide to try and spring a trap, or call for help from your superpowered friends – your mom dies.” His voice was high, and taut. “The way I figure it, even with Granthony, they've got no case if you're gone. So...you're going to be trading your life for the woman who gave you life.”

“Augustus, you stay the hell away!” Momma called in the background. “That's no kinda deal, I'm old!”

Hans was quiet for a moment. “I could toss in a sweetener, I guess. The old lady plus Taneshia – for you. How's that sound? Two for one.”

“How do I know you'll keep your word?” I asked quietly.

“You don't,” he said. “But I can guarantee you that they'll die if you don't come. So there's that. You have a chance to save your ex and your mother if you play ball. If you don't...they die in thirty. Ball's in your court.”

And he hung up.

Leaving me thirty minutes to get to my mother's house in order to try and save her and Taneshia...

...Or have them die, and it be all my fault.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Jamal

Ihung up with Cassidy and stared up for a while at the statue standing tall above me, under the clouded glow of the St. Louis lights. The chill seeped on me, and I shivered. Was this really what life had become about for me? Not a series of things I wanted, but a series of options I didn't?

Did I want to help Simeon?

No. I'd been a thief, and Sienna had convinced me, in a moment of surprising subtlety (for her), that being honest and earning my own money to pay for what I wanted was much easier on the conscience. Plus, he was stealing pictures of Arche that she flat-out didn't want him to have.

The only point for him was that I valued my anus in its current pristine condition and functionality. He'd owned me in our last encounter, and I couldn't see a way where that didn't happen again in our next.

Did I want to help McMahon?

Kinda.

She was in a tough spot, trying to do the right thing by the law and her employer. Keeping art from being stolen by thieves seemed like an unvarnished good to me. Especially since Simeon wasn't planning to do anything good with his ill-gotten gains, and Arche absolutely didn't want him to have the paintings. Add to that her threat to bring the hammer down on me and dredge up my past sins if things went bad, and I was motivated to assist her, too.

I couldn't help that, in spite of her dangling that over my head like an executioner's axe, I did generally like McMahon. I felt for her. She was in an unenviable spot.

Did I want to help Arche?

Yeah.

I suspected a lot of people could sympathize with her position. She was getting hit with the ancient equivalent of an ex who was threatening to circulate nudes given freely while they were together. Only the most morally depraved could possibly side with him on that one.

Arche and I had a slightly tangled history; I'd always had the feeling she wasn't quite sure what to make of me. We'd been together, technically, for years, though there were long stretches where we didn't see each other because of her work or mine.

She'd been there for me, though, in small moments, and in big ones. She was old school, and now, maybe, I finally understood why.

Because she was the product of a different time. Stoicism was still a practiced value back then. No wonder she always felt like she had her walls up around me. Even in the unguarded moments, when we were snuggling on a couch in some AirBnb, she'd be smiling, but wouldn't say anything.

That silence was golden to me. I wanted more of it.

But stealing the painting would burn me, forever. McMahon would make sure of that. I'd be branded, I'd be out of a job, and, hell, Sienna and Augustus and all the rest might even be forced to come hunt my ass if the truth of my past got out. They'd be sorry about it, for sure, and Momma would wallop my brother all about the head the next time she saw him, but...

...He'd do it. And he'd be right to do it. I sighed, a little steam blowing out of my mouth into the chill air.

My phone buzzed. You make the right decision yet?

It was Simeon. Of course.

And just like that it occurred to me...

I'd been looking at this thing all wrong.

On my phone, I hurriedly hit redial. Cassidy picked up on the second ring, and, though somewhat restrained, some exasperation still shone through as she said, “What?”

“I think I know a way to get me back to programming for you faster,” I said, “and the good news is, it shouldn't take much of your time at all...”

CHAPTER SIXTY

Sienna

“Talk to me, Sierra,” I said, slowing down just enough around Pennsylvania so I could have a conversation. The wind was still whipping around me prodigiously, but it abated enough at this speed so that she could hear me and vice versa. I was still going over six hundred miles per hour, though I didn't have a speedometer handy. “What am I going to be flying into?”

“A real mess,” Sierra pronounced, voice amplified to maximum and still barely audible over the jetstream. “In what is probably no surprise to you, Mekhi Bonner's jailbreakers have not simply decided to choose peace. Last night they moved into and proceeded to sack an upscale area of Boston in a scene reminiscent of the memories of Minneapolis residents following your temporal incident there two years ago.”

I winced. “Ouch. Are there any powered people trying to stop the...riot, for lack of a better word?”

“It is nothing less than a sack of the city, the sort of thing often witnessed in the ancient world,” Sierra said.

I frowned. “Very poetic.”

“I'm afraid I can't claim credit,” Sierra said. “That's from a new podcast that's currently going viral on the subject, Valhalla x Tartarus.”

That caused a slight twitch at the corner of my eye. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am quite serious,” Sierra said. “The quote is from episode 12: Carthage to Commonwealth. They are actually livestreaming right now–”

“YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.” My voice boomed. “Hades and Odin have a podcast?”

“Your grandmother guested in episode ten – Greco-Ronin: The Valkyrie's Origin.”

“And you're just telling me this now?”

“Apologies,” Sierra said. “It's a daily podcast, but it's just going viral now. I was unaware of it until about two hours ago.”

“You brought it up so tactfully, too,” I said, steaming. “Does anyone actually know who they are?”

“They're not hiding the ball on it, so yes,” Sierra said. “The Justice Department has declined to prosecute Hades for his crimes in Revelen after he assisted you in the war against China, and Odin has no outstanding warrants, nor does Lethe. Using their real names seems to be part of the reason it's going viral.”

“Whatever, I cannot focus on this right now,” I said, closing my eyes. “Boston. It's under siege, at least in sections?”

“Correct.”

“Where's the worst of it going off?” I asked, grimacing. I was steeling myself to go in there and mop this shit up as quickly as possible. Which would probably involve a lot of dead bodies and a post-battle plea for mercy from the Commonwealth.

“The upheaval is currently confined to downtown,” she said. “You have a variety of messages from local authorities, including Detective Moore, the mayor, the governor, and several other politicians from the area. There are several tearful apologies on your voicemail. In fact, the governor's office is calling again right now. Shall I put them through?”

“No,” I said sourly. “Get me Detective Moore. He was at least sincere, and he was probably right to call me out for going too hard into the fight without considering who was watching.”

“Patching you through. He's answering.”

“Sienna?” Moore's Brit accent kicked in through the buffering air. “Thank goodness. We need your help.”

“I'm listening,” I said. “What's the situation?”

“The governor's shitting his pants,” Moore said. “Turns out that the people who called in a lather about your excessive force are calling back now that the prisoners are marching through their neighborhoods. They're begging for you to bring your show on the road – as in their road, preferably before their houses are destroyed and their families annihilated.” He paused. “Sienna...the death count's already in the thousands. We're losing officers. Turns out Bonner's men brought serum-laced drugs with them to the breakout. He calls it 'Empowering a Generation–'”

“Sounds like something he would do,” I said. “I'm en route, should be there in a few. Is your department assembling for battle, or are you doing your defense in a scattershot fashion?”

“Definitely scattershot. We're calling up everyone we have and getting kitted out, but officers are currently responding to as many emergency calls as possible at the edges of this thing, trying to pick off strays from the main, uh...riot...as they can. Suppressant or lethal force are being freely employed, but we're not having much luck. These are wolf packs. They're just ripping through the streets and anyone who crosses their path is getting killed–”

“I get the point.” I was almost to New York City. “I'm going to hang up and kick into overdrive to get there faster. When will your people be ready to attack?”

He hesitated. “Is that what you're calling for, then? Full conflict in the streets? Knock-down, drag out?”

“You're not trained for anything else,” I said. “And you don't have any contractors like Jeremy Hampton's crew to do this in a military style, so...yeah. You're going to need to march right up to them and fight, preferably while their backs are turned dealing with me.”

There was a brief pause. “Sienna...there are hundreds of them. With powers. I know you're the best, but in numbers like this, without backup...even you'll be overrun.”

“Then make sure you're there to be my backup,” I said. “See you in twenty. Watch for my signal and swarm. Nealon out.”

I hung up. Sierra waited about five seconds, then said, “You don't have anyone coming to assist you, do you? Someone I don't know about? Because my knowledge of your team's position suggests that absent a teleporter I'm unaware of, they're all well out of range to get to Boston in anything approaching a timely manner.”

“Nope,” I said. “I am going in solo. As per usual.”

She went quiet. “Gulp,” she said.

That fit. And it saved me from having to do it myself. With my fate in mind, I turned up the speed and jetted ahead, making for Boston as quickly as I could manage.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Augustus

My mother's life, and Taneshia's, were in the hands of a rich boy who'd never faced consequences for anything he'd done.

I don't know that I'd ever been more terrified for anyone in my entire life.

Ignoring the damage to my car, I drove as fast as I could to my mother's house and squealed up to the curb, scraping the tire against it with a gawdawful squeal.

Didn't care. Didn't matter.

I leapt out and ran across the lawn, burst through the front door, which was ajar. “Momma!” I shouted. The kitchen had mess all over the floor, an impossible state for my mother to voluntarily leave it in.

She'd definitely been kidnapped. Any lingering hope that Hans hadn't been enough of a bastard to go after my momma evaporated in that instant.

He was really doing this. Making me give my life up for my momma's. And for–

The back door burst open and Taneshia was there, eyes blazing as she took in the mess. “What happened here, Augustus?”

I let out a breath. “You're okay.”

“That wasn't a question.” She stared at me, brow furrowed into deep lines. “You weren't inquiring about my health. You thought something happened to me? Why?” She looked the place over again with a quick glance. “What is going on?”

I tried to find my way in to explain. That her boyfriend was bad. That he wasn't what he'd held himself out to be. That he was milking his daddy's money for hundreds of millions and paying her scraps to do the job he professed to want done.

None of that came out. Instead...

“I'm broke, Taneshia,” I said, and watched her eyebrows raise a few millimeters. “Momma's kidnapped, and I'm broke.”

“Broke?” She laughed, seemingly born of nerves. “Augustus, you're driving a top of the line BMW. Your fit costs more than I make in a year. Now, I'm a little more worried about what you said regarding your mother, because of the two outlandish things you've said, the one about you not having any money is definitely the wilder.”

“Every dime I make, I spend,” I said, holding up my wrist, where my watch sat broken. “This ain't the first expensive suit or watch I've gone through. I keep buying more, and I get mad every time one gets ruined. But I keep buying 'em – and I'm about six hundred thousand in credit card debt. Plus the cost of the car lease. Yeah, I make good money, but I burn through every bit of it and more.”

Her eyes seemed to be bulging. “Why...are you telling me this?”

“Because I'm a fraud, Taneshia,” I said. “I have no regrets about being paid for what I do, because it is righteous. I might do it for free. Hell, we do pro bono jobs, especially for small towns that can't pay. But I'm telling you this because money has not been freedom for me. The more of it I make, the more of it I spend. It's a treadmill I can't get off of. It's just me trying to impress people I don't like to hide the fact that the people I do aren't around anymore. And I'm telling you this...because of the things I have to tell you, this one's the easier.”

“Oh, this was easy for you?”

“I didn't say it was easy. I said it was easier.” I heard something burst outside, behind me, and I turned...

My car was on fire.

“Augustus–” She started past me, rushing toward the door.

I stopped her with an outstretched hand. “Don't. He's gunning for you, too.”

Her eyes were bulging, but she wasn't fighting to get past me. “Who's gunning for me? Augustus, your car is gonna burn–”

“I don't care,” I said. “Let it burn. It doesn't even matter.”

And burn, it did. Fast, too. It was fully engulfed in ten seconds, the fuel tank going off as whoever had started the fire really turned it up to max flame to get it over with quick.

“Augustus!” Hans's voice echoed through the house. He was hanging somewhere above, flying. I glanced out the window, the sheers hopefully protecting me from being seen. He hadn't lit the house on fire yet. Fortunately. “Augustus...come find me at Vineyard Court apartments. I have her there. Give yourself over, and she lives. Don't – and she dies. Taneshia, too.”

“What the f–?” Taneshia almost got past me again, but I put my hand up to keep her from running out. “Is that Hans?”

“I didn't know how to tell you,” I said, stepping away from the window. “He's the bad guy in all this. He was funding and directing Granthony. He killed him in jail, but G told me right before he died what was going on. When I went to confront Hans about it, he flipped his lid and went crazy.” She was staring at me like I was out of my mind. “He's been using his non-profit to launder himself and his friends a fat salary and live like kings while he's directing other money to buy up land, which he's running down in value.”

Taneshia's eyes got real big. “I wondered who'd been buying everything up.”

“Wait. You believe me?” I asked, my voice cracking a little.

She frowned, and slapped my shoulder. “Of course I believe you. Augustus, dumbass, I've known you all my life. I've known Hans for fifteen minutes. And he just admitted, while flying overhead, that he kidnapped your momma and wanted to kill you, and possibly me. Unless you got Rakshasa powers and made that shit all up for my benefit?”

“I don't have those, no.” I looked back out at the street, where my car was now a charred husk. “Besides, you could feel the heat coming off that when it went up. Your boy's got a whole suite of powers. Best money can buy, I'm guessing.”

“You boys got something in common,” she said. “He's holed up at the apartment where we saw Granthony the other night?”

“That's what it sounded like,” I said. “He's got my momma, Taneshia. I–”

“I know.” She patted me on the shoulder. “You're going to want to kill his ass.” She leaned in a little bit. “But I gotta tell you...I'm not okay with that.”

“No?” I shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, I guess we can take him in, if possible–”

“No, I mean I'm not okay with you killing him,” she said, eyes flashing dangerously. “He pulls this shit in my hood? Where I'm the hero? I'm going to skin that son of a bitch alive.” She went for the door, and this time I did not stop her.

“Hell really does have no fury like a woman scorned,” I said, following after. It was nice to not be on the receiving end of her anger. This time.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Jamal

Iducked back into the museum after I finished my call with Cassidy. About ten feet inside, I felt eyes on me, and turned–

McMahon was standing just inside the entrance, phone in hand, but looking right at me. She was relaxed, wary but searching. For the first time I realized she was wearing black leather biker boots.

“Those are a nice touch,” I said, wandering toward her, and giving her shoes the nod. “Bet you've buried those in a perp or two's ass.”

“No, I wouldn't sully these boots by touching them to some perp's ass,” she said. “They're my nicest pair.” She maintained a steely gaze on me. “But if you screw me over on this, I will bury both of them all the way up your tailpipe.”

I winced. What was it with people threatening my rectum tonight? “Duly noted,” I said, and turned to walk away since she clearly wasn't in a talking mood.

“I can't figure you out,” she said, stopping me dead in my tracks. “Looking at your past, you ought to be in prison. But Sienna Nealon gives you a pass and you end up working for her. Is that just because of your brother?”

Standing there, my back to her, I felt a little chill run over my skin. “Where I started ain't how I have to end.”

I turned to find her looking at me. A little desperate; her job was on the line, after all. “How are you going to end?”

“Hopefully walking away with my ass intact and no boots buried up in it,” I said, and I caught the slightest movement of her shoulders. Laughter, but restrained. “I'll circle one more time and then I'm gonna head out for a while, get something to eat and come back. You think you can handle things for a bit while I'm gone?”

The laughter vanished as she tensed. “You really think that's smart? With this guy out there, threatening to come at us at any moment?”

“You really think me being here is going to make one iota of difference?” I asked. “After what happened to me last time?”

She deflated. “Maybe not.”

“I'll be back as soon as I can,” I said, walking away. “For whatever good it does.”

Stepping into the gallery, I checked the corners. Two officers, neither was Arche. I paused in front of the painting, and stood there for a minute. Two. Three.

Then she was there. Standing at my side.

“What are you doing, Jamal?” she asked, in that accent of hers. Sounded a little like heaven. Or home.

“I like you,” I said, exploring every curve of the painting. It was impolite to gawk, especially at a woman's nudity, but damn, it was nice. The curves and the lines...there was an aesthetic pleasure to watching her that felt beyond sexual; it entered the domain of art and beauty, and my head swam at the sight of her on the canvas. “I like seeing you.” I waved a hand at the canvas. “I like seeing you like this.”

“Then help me,” she said, keeping her eyes forward, her voice low enough to avoid being heard by anyone but us. “Hell, you can have the painting if you like it that much, just help me get it out of here before he steals it.”

It was my turn to deflate. “I can't help you steal the painting, Arche. I don't want to be a thief anymore. Not for myself, not for anybody else.”

She bristled beside me. “Fine, then.” And she started to walk away.

“Arche,” I said, calling after her, meta-low. She paused, but did not look back. “Can you stop Simeon?”

She turned her head so that I could see her in profile. Damn, she was beautiful, even with that big, bulky cop jacket and hat. Her cheeks bore red from her anger, but her eyes showed hints of fear. “No. I don't believe he'd hurt me, but...no. That's why I wanted to take the painting and be gone before he came.”

“You may not think he'll hurt you,” I said, “but I am damned sure he's going to hurt me. In fact, I can guarantee it based on what he's said and what he's done already.”

She hesitated, and I could see the conflict play out on her face. “Maybe,” she finally conceded. “But in my mind, that's all the better reason to snatch it and go.”

“It's not who I am anymore,” I said. “Or at least not who I want to be.”

Her shoulders slumped, ever so slightly, and she inclined her head toward the painting. “And this is not who I want to be anymore, at least not in public. Yet there I am, frozen in time, my humiliation laid out for all to see.” She started to walk away again.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Me, too,” was all she said before turning the corner of the gallery and disappearing into the one beyond.

As soon as she was gone, I sighed. Pulling out my phone, I knew what I had to do.

And I wasn't looking forward to any part of it.

I sent Simeon a text.

Ready. Meet at same spot.

The buzz of affirmation came in a moment later.

Closing my eyes, I sighed.

It was time to do this.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Kristina

She'd faded to shadows in the mall, but lingered nearby as the night wore on. She didn't know why; she was bearing silent witness to horrors that were unspeakable, cruelties that no one should have had to bear.

Very few who encountered them were surviving their night with Mekhi's bandits. These men had seemingly left their humanity behind, some deep instinct within them triggered that had them laughing and raucous among their own, even as they did things that would not have been out of place in the sack of a city. The first bar they'd come to had been drunk dry in minutes. Anything that hadn't been consumed had been shattered and destroyed, all the wood put to the torch along with the building and the occupants.

All dead. Many such cases, as the kids said these days. Every building they came across seemed to see that pattern repeat, whether a restaurant, a clothier, a car dealership, an office...

Still, Kristina watched.

Watched...and helped here and there where she could.

They were on a city street, and she watched two laughing, joking men, one still in orange prison pants, the other in jeans with a heavy coat, peel off and walk down a side street. They paused as a man went by on a bicycle, at top speed.

“Watch this,” one of them said, laughing, to the other. He reached out his hand and tossed a fastball pitch–

A blue wad of energy flew across the street and landed just off the path of the bicyclist. He tried to swerve, to give it a wide berth, his face twisted in terror. He was trying to flee, and wanted none of what either of them had to offer–

The energy ball exploded, sending him flying over the handlebars. The bike went one way. He went another.

His assailants laughed, cackling as they made their way over to his fallen form. “Good one,” said the man who hadn't thrown the charge bomb. He picked up a parking meter, ripping it out of the street. “Watch this.” He lifted the meter high over the unblinking, dazed eyes of the cyclist–

Kristina slipped out of the shadows where she rested beneath a park bench and stabbed into the man holding the parking meter, catching him in the spine just beneath the shoulder blades. It wasn't the most immediately lethal spot, but she wasn't feeling immediately lethal.

After what she'd seen this night...she was quite content to practice slow lethality.

The meta banger dropped the parking meter with a clang as it made hard contact with the curb. He dropped with a wet thud against the sidewalk, groaning in pain, unable to move anything below the shoulders.

“What the hell?” The bomb caster missed what had happened, and Kristina had already slipped back into the shadows by the time he made it over. He stepped up–

And she sliced in, cutting his spine in just the same manner, leaving him gasping as he keeled over.

It was a little too late for the cyclist, unfortunately. He breathed his rattling last, eyes fixed on a distant point somewhere far above her, and the dawn-tinged sky.

“Damn,” Kristina whispered. This had been a mess all the way. How had she let herself get suckered into this?

Her stupid brother, that was how. Mekhi had talked his nonsense, and she'd just gone along. Because she'd raised him, yes, but also because sometimes he just talked and talked and talked and wore you down with it.

She should have known better. She knew the depths of what lingered at the bottom of the ladders out there in the rough parts of Boston. Not the good folks, there were plenty of those just trying their best and not quite making it.

No...it was the people that Mekhi had collected out of the House of Corrections, and the ones that had followed him looking for fun instead of running at the first opportunity. Some people were just damaged, unfixable, and they made themselves that way through either upbringing or choices or both.

Now they were running loose all through Boston, a parade of violence while decent folks were hiding under any rock they could find. Horns were honking in the distance; the freeways were jammed, anyone who could get out was trying to.

Like this poor soul. She listened to his death rattle as he departed this life with his last breaths, body seizing up as he went. Watched him go...

...And wondered what she was supposed to do about it.

But she didn't wonder too long. Because a sonic boom cracked between the buildings, and something slammed into the middle of the street behind her and around the corner. Screams – full-bodied, from the throats of grown men – echoed through the streets around her. A body landed beside her, smashing into a car, smoking from some discharge of energy or heat that had burnt it.

“What's up, bitches?” came a voice, booming out, over the shouts of the mob that Mekhi had assembled.

Kristina knew that voice. Only a day ago, she would have been real sad to hear it.

Now...it was like music after a long silence of deafness.

Sienna Nealon had returned to Boston.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Sienna

Icame plummeting down out of the heavens without slowing much, my fist wound up and charging with that new power I'd picked up defending the White House a few months back. It glowed with a reddish tinge, and when I struck the ground the energy built up in my fist discharged into the pavement. It spread in an explosive event, racing out around me in a circle for thirty feet, sending bodies flying and on fire (because I threw in a little Gavrikov blast afterward for good measure).

This was war. If anyone wanted to contest my methods, they could take it up with the corpses – or me – after it was done.

My entrance sent the rats scurrying away – mostly. A few brave souls came at me; a steelskin, a plasma type, and an Achilles (you could tell because his shirt and pants were mostly shredded but his skin looked flawless except for a couple burns).

I set the Achilles on fire, face first, with a blast of flames, I magnetically pulled the legs from underneath the steelskin and slammed into him with eyeblasts to the neck, toppling him over, and the plasma type I menaced with moisture I pulled out of the air, then listened to him scream from the burns as it was caught between his bright blue superheated coating and his skin. Funny how they could tolerate plasma but not superheated water.

Yeehaw.

“It never ceases to amaze me how you do that.” Kristina Bonner's voice came at me from behind, and I turned to deal with her, keeping flames at the ready–

The steelskin smashed into me as I got distracted, though I could have sworn I heard Bonner try to offer a half-hearted warning. She didn't quite get it out in time, but hey, she tried.

And I got pulped. Eighty-seven bones broken, attacked by a nearly-invulnerable metallic beast with a bad attitude and a wicked case of halitosis. I went flying through a nearby plate glass window and crashed down, but not without first smashing through about six tables in the cafe I'd just invaded.

Every one of them hurt. Every single one.

Kristina Bonner's head poked out of the shadows of a server's station. “You okay?”

I was bleeding a lot, from the mouth and everywhere else, but I managed to mumble, “Do I look okay?” I was speaking around a few missing teeth and a tongue that had been partially bitten off.

“No,” she said, then looked up because the sound of something big and mean stomping its way toward me was shaking the ground. “I'll try to distract him.”

“Don't do me any favors,” I muttered, spitting out four teeth. I would have spit out five, but the last one had clung to the gums and my healing had pulled it back in rather than growing a new one. Hurt either way. The smell of acidic coffee hung in the air around the tang of iron that came from all the blood.

The steelskin roared a moment later, then a table went flying through the wall behind me and into the kitchen. Order was up, I guess.

Kristina's shadow slithered past a second later. “That might not have done much to help, but know that I tried.”

“What, do you want a participation trophy?” I floated back to upright, just in time to see the massive bodybuilder of a steelskin charging toward me. He was going to slam right into me, and I was going to quickly become some sort of canned product. Possibly, given how salty I was lately, an organic sardine substitute.

So I screamed.

No, not in fear. Not the damsel-in-distress kind.

The Brance Venable kind. Followed by floating up to the ceiling.

The steelskin gripped his ears and staggered, collapsing mid-charge, destroying the barista station behind me. I floated closer, aiming for his silvery ear canal, and directing my scream right at it. I found I could see the sonic vibrations cutting through the early morning air, and when I directed them into his ear, it made him writhe and buck in a way that told me I was having some effect.

I kept the stream of sonic hell pointed at his ear, watching him spasm. Blood started to squirt out in a gentle fountain, first across the side of his head, then wider, spattering the ground around him.

The moment his skin started to change from steel back to, well, skin, I didn't hesitate for a second.

He caught a full-bore blast of flame that cooked him down to ashes, carried to him on sonic waves that had already started to collapse his head. This time, I almost hoped someone from Boston's news stations was filming me, because I wanted to have to explain that, yes, I was this ceaselessly cruel, especially against someone who had just tried to convert me from a living, breathing human being into a ketchup-colored smear on the floor of this Starbucks-alike.

I found I no longer cared about being thought cruel; better to be thought cruel to this type of human debris than let him continue his rampage through the streets of Boston and to injure and kill however many he'd done so to this night.

“You look like you've got something on your mind,” Kristina said, slipping out of the shadows in front of me, apparently with the expectation I wouldn't treat her in the exact same manner. “Or something to say. Spit it out.”

“My kindness is mistaken for cruelty, because I aim it at the innocent people who suffer,” I said, looking at the pile of ashes that had been a human being only moments before. A flawed, angry, murderous human being who'd forfeited his life. “The cruelty of people who champion this piece of shit and those like him is mistaken for kindness because it's disguised as compassion for those who happily prey on innocent souls.”

“That's deep,” Kristina said, clearly uneasy with my philosophical bent. “You were right.” She hesitated. Or maybe just waited to see what I was going to say to that. “Hear me? You were right. Happy?”

“You're going to have to be more specific,” I said, looking past her, out the window; Mekhi's mob had scattered and fragmented. Now they were going to be harder to round up. “I'm right about so much, and so much of the time.”

“My brother's an insane piece of shit,” she said. Like that wasn't obvious.

I rolled my eyes. “Anyone could have told you that. Except maybe some douchenozzles in Boston and elsewhere that think, for some reason, the people we put in prison don't actually, on balance, deserve to be there.”

“What I wanted to believe was that my brother wasn't out of his blessed mind,” she said.

Staring her down with narrowed eyes, I asked the question that had been on my mind for a while. “You smuggle the formula in to help him escape?”

“No,” she said. “But I did come to help him once I heard he was out – and I knew that you were coming for him.”

“I don't begrudge you wanting to save your brother's life,” I said, lifting a hand and pounding three incoming guys with Fae light webs that took them off their feet and pinned them to the pavement just outside. They struggled, and I bound them up more. They looked like Hercules types, and maybe something like a luck-changing leprechaun, so the webs held, no need for a public execution. “Reed and I have played those games on each other's behalf several times, and against all manner of injustices. But,” I said, “Mekhi's sentence was entirely just. I read the case file. He was guilty of everything.”

She sighed. “I know it. Hell, I raised him, Sienna. He's not my son, but he might as well have been, for all the help we got from our mother. I didn't have powers when I was raising him, and I was not up to the task of keeping a rebellious young man in line. You think I don't know he got up to bad? He's always up to his eyeballs in it.”

“You gonna stop him, then?” I asked.

“You gonna kill him?”

“If he doesn't stop? Yes,” I said. “Prison's the mercy option. That's the thing these prison abolitionists never seem to get. The other option is me.” I lowered my head and stared her down. “Death.”

She stared back at me, as if afraid to look away, then she shivered and closed her eyes. “I don't want him to die.”

“He gets to decide,” I said. “But those are his options.”

“I'll help you as much as I can,” she said. “But if it comes down to it–”

“You step out the way and I'll pull the trigger,” I said. “You get in my way...you'll catch the bullet meant for him.”

She looked back at me, then nodded. “We understand each other.”

“Good,” I said, as another half-dozen metas came running at us from outside. “Because I got a lot of work to do.” And I turned on the next, and the next, energy blade already cutting through them on one side and lightning flying on the other.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

Augustus

“So what powers does your boyfriend have?” I asked Taneshia as we jogged down the street toward the Vineyard Court apartments. The sun was high overhead, glaring down at me, a little watery for the cloud cover. Humidity was already heading up there, making me sweat.

Or maybe that was Taneshia by my side. She was keeping up. “I don't know...exactly.”

I frowned and looked over at her. “I thought you were dating this clown?”

She got this shy, sheepish kind of smile that only ever showed up when she knew she did wrong. I remembered seeing it in elementary school when she took two candies from the teacher's dish when she was supposed to take one. “We've been on three dates.” She glanced over at me. “I mean, we've known each other longer, just...”

I stared at her, and almost ran into a parked car. Dodged just in time. “What's all this about him being your boyfriend?”

“You don't need to get greasy with me, Augustus,” she said, not breaking stride. “You know why I said that.” And she fixed her eyes straight ahead.

“Were...were you trying to make me jealous?” I asked, and she looked away.

“Yeah, and you would have figured it out right away, too...if you still knew anyone in the neighborhood who liked you enough to talk to you,” she said, now looking at me, and not in a favorable way. “I've heard all about your revolving door of girlfriends, okay? Didn't need you thinking I'm sitting around waiting on you to stop being a player.”

“Something I gotta tell you,” I said, huffing a little bit. Someone honked as they passed; we were still about six blocks out.

“You gonna try and claim you didn't have a factory line of girls hopping into and out of your bed back in Nashville?”

“No comment,” I said, and boy did I get a glare. “But...I don't like any of the women I've known since you.”

“Aww,” she said. “You're so sweet. Still a man-whore, though.”

“You think I'm bad? You should meet your new boyfriend's personal masseuse.”

She kept jogging, clothes clinging on her nicely, and she turned her head slowly, and coolly, to look at me. There was ice in that girl's eyes. “What makes you think I haven't met Helga?”

“Oh, that's weird,” I said.

We left the broken sidewalk and headed toward the bushes that covered the windows on the side of the apartment block. There were cracks running up the walls that I wasn't sure had been there before I'd pulled my earthquake trick. From inside, I heard Hans bark sharply about watching the gates, and I had a feeling there was going to be trouble waiting the moment we popped our heads up at one of the entrances.

“Can't go in the front, huh?” Taneshia said, hearing the same thing I did.

“I mean, we could,” I said. “Sounds like he's got at least a little help, so hard to say what kind of trouble that means. If I can get to Momma, though, and protect her – he's got nothing but his powers to fall back on.” I hesitated. “Which we only have a basic idea about.”

“We plan for him being the worst,” she said, “and hope for the best. Can you get the drop on him? Maybe snake your mother out of there without him seeing?”

“If someone were to distract him,” I said.

She scoffed. “You could do that all by yourself, these days.”

“Yeah, but...I have to show you that I need you in order to repair this rift between us.”

There was a little flash of amusement in her eyes. “I already know you need me. The car. The clothes. All of it. It just screams...yeah, you're dead inside.”

“I have been dead inside,” I said. “But I'm coming back to life now.” Looking up at the rooftop, three stories up, I frowned. “Let's go up there.”

“I know you're not going to say you can jump that.”

I shook my head, then reached out to the street. The nearest manhole cover came rocketing my way, and stopped beside me, where I stepped right onto it. “Alley-oop. We come down on them unexpected, you watch my back, and grab her if you can get to her first.”

“Bet.” She held out a fist, and I bumped it. Before she could escape, though, I caught her wrist and pulled her up. Kissed her full-on.

She accepted it for a bit, but when she parted, with that wicked flash in her eyes again, she said, “I am thinking about all those other girls you been kissing, though.”

“Uh huh. Is this one of those things where the more I kiss you, the quicker you forget about them...?”

“Maybe.” She smiled slyly at me. “You can experiment with that later. For now, we ought to get after it.”

“Yeah-huh.” I grabbed her up onto the manhole cover with me, snugged her arm tight around my waist like Batman and Vicki Vale, and kissed her again as it vaulted us up to the roof and settled there. We belly-crawled to the edge and looked over into the courtyard, where Taneshia gasped under her breath.

I'd done a lot more damage to the place than I'd realized in my earthquake. Not only had the pool cracked and emptied, it was busted down the middle with an aggressively large fault line. Like six feet wide. I could hear water rushing through underneath from whatever pipes I'd busted when opening it up.

Also...Hans had...and there was no way to sugarcoat this...

He had a frigging army.

Every one of Granthony's boys that hadn't been at my house the other night was here. He might even have pulled from other gangs in bordering territories, there were so many thugs ringing that courtyard.

Taneshia made a subtle gulp in the back of her throat, because...even for me, with my new powers, these were deep odds.

“Well,” I said, looking over everything we were facing, “we might need a new plan.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Jamal

Ifound Simeon about thirty minutes later, in the bushes, exactly where I'd told him to meet me. The sun was starting to peek over the horizon, and he had a look on his face when I arrived, out of breath, hustling into the bushes. “What took you so long?” he asked, clearly put out at my tardiness.

“Man, you try escaping the attention of the St. Louis PD after art under your watch just got heisted,” I said. “Plus, I was trying to layer in some backdoors in the system to make our job easier just now.”

He relaxed a touch, then smirked. “Well, I can't complain if you were trying to make our job easier.” An invisible force clamped around my arms and legs, pinning me in place. I barely held onto my phone as he yanked me closer. “But if you betray me...well, you know what's going to happen next. Now let's get to it.” And he let me go.

“Yes, sir,” I said, picking up my own weight again now that I was free. It felt funny, being back in control of my body. But I followed him back to my car.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Sienna

The men – and they were all men – who had followed Mekhi Bonner into downtown put up a hell of a fight.

They didn't win, though.

By the time Moore and the task force pulled up, I'd either killed or captured every single one of them, binding them to the pavement, the sides of buildings, or whatever was convenient.

Credit to Kristina: she'd done her part. Several times as I was about to be set upon from behind, she'd slipped out of the shadows and ended some poor fool who thought he was about to make himself famous killing Sienna Nealon. Instead he caught a shadow blade to the throat, or the base of his spine, and that was that.

Downtown Boston was a mess, and I felt confident that a number of bad boys had escaped my dragnet. Mostly because Mekhi was nowhere to be found.

“So this isn't it?” Moore asked, dressed up in heavy tactical gear, black helmet, and looking like a total dork.

I shook my head. The streets were misty, though the sun had risen overhead and was beginning to burn it off. “Bonner's still loose. I'm guessing along with a squad of his nearest and dearest. They might have decided to head back to their hidey-hole, figuring that we won't have the stones to go dig them out.”

“Right.” Moore watched as a couple of his men dragged a dosed-up escapee toward a SWAT Bearcat, metacuffs and leg irons clanking as he moved. The escapee cast me a fearful look as he went, and as he went past, I got the distinct impression he'd peed himself. Moore's phone buzzed, and he went for it. Staring at the screen, his thin eyebrows arched. “Or, alternatively...” He held it up so I could see the screen.

It was an alert, one echoed immediately on every radio within listening distance. ALL UNITS: Suspect Mekhi Bonner plus twenty to thirty sighted outside MCI Cedar Junction. Prison break likely imminent.

I only stared at it for a moment before darting a glance up at Moore. “How far?”

He shrugged helplessly. “Walpole – which, with the freeways jammed, will take hours to get to. Sienna – every state unit we have is in here. There'll be almost no one to defend it.”

“Not so,” I said, and leapt into the air, already in motion. I broke the sound barrier a second later as I established direction and turned south toward Walpole.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Augustus

Iwas lying across the edge of the roof and looking down into the courtyard, Taneshia breathing softly beside me. Hans had a damned army down there, spaced out around the perimeter of the pool, which was the centerpiece of the complex. I could see, in spite of the damage, the rusty metal pool furniture standing out against the light concrete.

And in the middle of it all, sitting in one of those chairs in the deep end, beside Hans, was Momma.

“I know your new powers are a little extra,” Taneshia said, eyes wide, looking down at the small army gathered below, “and I ain't meaning to doubt you, but...”

“That's a lot of guys,” I agreed, picking up where she left off. I saw quite a few guns. Which could make things either easier or more difficult depending on how well I worked my magnetism powers. All it would take was one stray round hitting Momma...

“Can you protect her?” Taneshia asked.

I grimaced. “Gonna be tough. I start moving earth, they're going to notice. Throwing those chairs around might protect her from a punch, but they ain't holding back bullets or blasts. I could maybe throw an ice wall up around her, but that'd take time. Not enough water to get a Poseidon barrier up.” I shook my head. Now I was regretting draining the pool to spite Granthony. Thirty thousand gallons of water would have been real handy for stopping bullets and energy blasts.

Taneshia was frowning, puckered lips. “What's the point of them fancy new powers if you can't do shit with them?”

“I can do a lot with them, okay?” I was feeling a little defensive. “It's just...there are still limits, you know?” I stared down at the trouble waiting below. “Maybe we take out Hans first, then ice over the pool while we're inside, then get the hell out by riding our way through the storm tunnels below?”

I could see the skepticism on Taneshia's face. “You want to try and ride out through storm drains? Those ain't exactly deep and wide.”

Someone shouted below us, and I looked to see a mofo with an AK pointing up at me. “If you got a better plan,” I said, thrusting my hand out and grabbing his rifle with my mind, “I'm listening. But you're going to have to make it fast, because we are in it now.”

“Following you,” she said, as I leapt over the edge of the building, the manhole cover catching me about a foot down. Taneshia dropped beside me; sparks already flying off her hands. Before we even landed on the perimeter sidewalk around the pool, her lightning ripped across three dudes with guns and powers about to go off.

For my part, I was pushing on everything metal that was nearby. Guns were getting yanked from hands, shades were pushing into faces, belts were thumping into guts. Even the rusty chairs around the pool were moving, scraping across the concrete deck.

Momma screamed something beneath the sound of the chaos, and I caught a glimpse of Hans’s face, crimson with anger before he disappeared beneath the lip of the pool as we stepped off the manhole cover and charged. Leaping over the fence, which was rattling furiously from my uncontrolled pushing of everything metal, I saw Hans again at the bottom of the pool.

He was standing next to Momma, and I threw the manhole cover overhead at him, like I was chucking a tomahawk. It came whizzing down like a meteor out of the heavens–

And didn't do a damned bit of good.

Because before I could land it right between Hans's smug eyes...

...He punched Momma as hard as he could. Hard enough it launched him back ten feet, and sent her flying in the other direction.

She smashed into the wall of the pool so hard the cement cracked around the imprint of her body.

Hard enough to send shatter marks spiderwebbing along the concrete for ten feet in every direction.

Hard enough that I could hear it over the thunder of guns firing.

Hard enough to kill, easily.

He killed my mother.

And all I could do was scream as he did it.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Jamal

“You know what we're walking into here?” Simeon asked as I pulled the car up in front of the museum. It was still two hours until it opened. Cop cars were spaced out in front of the entry, but fewer. I had a feeling St. Louis PD brass had started reeling in the overtime and sending the uniforms back out on patrol or sending them home rather than continue to pay.

Which worked for us. The fewer cops, the fewer witnesses, the less likely we'd have interference in what came next.

“I can't crack their security systems,” I said, my phone in hand, “but I can disable both the main power and the backups. This is going to cause some other problems with the door locks, but they're not going to be difficult to circumvent on site. The big issue,” I said, glancing up at the giant statue of Louis IX, which seemed to be looming overhead as though reminding me of my impending fate if I screwed this up, “is that even with the main power off, I need to erase the cameras before we leave, or else they'll have a lovely record of our faces from the minutes between when we come in and when I'm able to trip off the backups.”

Simeon just stared at me, unfazed. “Good, good. I'm glad you're on top of all this. And the police?”

“They're drawing down,” I said, nodding at the cars. “We'll get 'em running in different directions, then I can seal each gallery individually, locking them inside for the duration of our time here. The only gallery we leave open is the one with the painting, and it's right off the main hall. We'll have maybe five cops to deal with between entry, target, and exit, which is back out the way we came. I disable the alarm triggers on the painting, we pull it, and we're out in two minutes or less.”

He nodded, and made a small noise of approval. “Now I can see why she likes you. I appreciate this level of thoroughness, and I can see you have taken my threat seriously to put in all this effort.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I have my priorities in this, and they are, in order, not getting caught, and keeping my ass intact. Because failing at the first means failing at the second, you get that, right? I'm not a big guy, and if I go to prison, it's going to be just as bad for me as the statue, because I'll be suppressed and easy pickings for the baddest of the bad.”

Simeon stared at me, very seriously. “You do this for me, we'll make sure you avoid that fate.” Then he chuckled. “Except perhaps through Arche. That will be your problem, though, not mine.” He stuck out his hand. “Yes?”

I hesitated before shaking it. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Then let's go,” he said, and popped out of the car. I followed, into the early morning chill. The sun was coming up back in the direction of downtown. “I can't wait to see you work your magic.”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said, hitting the museum's internet. Priority one was to drown out their service provider so that no traffic could come in and out. To that end, I unleashed a botnet attack from an old Chinese network I'd tripped over a few months ago that no one had cleaned up yet in the aftermath of the war. It was just a bunch of little software packages that had been installed in computers across the world without the knowledge of their owners, waiting on a command.

I gave the command. And in the next thirty seconds, the St. Louis Art Museum's website and internet service provider got hit by over seven billion requests. Their website crashed in twenty-three seconds. The service provider did the same ten seconds later.

No camera data – or any other kind – was getting out of the museum now. Even their cell phone backups were being overwhelmed.

That meant that the only place the cameras throughout the museum were currently storing footage was on the servers inside. Which had firewalled up and shut down all outside access until this storm of internet activity was over.

Cutting the hardline – the actual phone lines that allowed the museum alarms to dial out to police – was already done. I'd hit a box on the way over, in the middle of the park, that governed all the phone lines from here to the main network. Thirty seconds and a few zaps had brought that bad boy down. Running a cell phone jamming program from my phone would tie up the backups for that, too, and keep McMahon or the other officers from dialing out.

Now we were down to radio, and making sure there was no camera footage of what we were about to do.

I pulled a bandana over my face, one that I'd purchased at a nearby Walmart, and snugged down the baseball cap that was sitting atop my head. I was wearing dark shades, the better to obscure myself enough that hopefully McMahon wouldn't be able to plausibly identify that it was me. I jammed my phone down in my shirt, too, and kept my hands free, communicating with it via electrical surges through my chest rather than my fingertips. A little unwieldy, but still possible, and that way it wasn't going to be obvious by the sparks from my fingers who I was.

It was just going to be obvious because McMahon wasn't an idiot.

But I was seeking plausible deniability here, a way to put a gloss on this that allowed for reasonable doubt. Simeon gave me a pitying look and shook his head, not bothering with masks or hats or sunglasses. That was a luxury I couldn't afford, but I assumed his plan was to be on another continent in the next twenty-four hours, neatly outside the reach of any trifling concerns about arrest and prosecution.

We breezed in through the museum door and he waved his hand, sending the two cops flanking either side flying into the walls and pinning them there. He stripped their guns, tasers, and suppressant pouches from them along with their belts in about 2.1 seconds. The belts went around their faces, along with socks(!) he'd pulled from them that I hadn't even noticed. He gagged them with the socks and used the belts to keep them tightly in place, and kept walking like this insane use of power cost him no effort at all.

The gates rattled shut on every gallery except the one in question, big, heavy doors of steel that reminded me of hurricane shutters. They clanked as they descended and thumped closed with the finality of a vault door shutting behind you, trapping you somewhere you did not want to be.

“Look at you,” Simeon said lightly as he floated along toward the last open gallery. “You're doing so well. Keep going. Lead on. You will have nothing to fear from me in no time at all.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying not to sound too sour or apprehensive. Obviously, I was both. But I was trying not to sound like it.

McMahon was nowhere in sight, and I was both thankful and concerned about that. What were the odds she'd have stepped to the ladies' room right at the moment we were coming to steal the painting? I mean, it worked out real well for me if that was the case, it just seemed so utterly improbable as to defy belief. But hey, sometimes we got lucky–

I managed to hold onto that happy thought right up until I turned the corner of the gallery–

And found McMahon standing there, her pistol drawn, ten feet away pointed right at my face.

Right behind her, looking even angrier – if such a thing was possible–

Was Arche.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Sienna

Icame screaming down in Walpole to find the prison's gates already breached, a giant hole in the wall big enough to drive my sense of rage through. The main facility was smoking, too. But not the ordinary kind of smoke, caused by a fire.

A different kind, with an intensely chemical smell.

The kind – I just got a feeling – that was produced by power-granting serum aerosolized.

A bad feeling. A sinking feeling. That was what hit me as I came in for a landing.

And it was born out a moment later when I saw something in shadow creeping out to one side, and a dozen – no, a hundred figures ringed around me, not one of them with a friendly face or pleasant intentions.

I'd walked right into an ambush.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Augustus

My scream echoed through the yard of the apartment complex when I saw my mother smashed into the side of the pool, her body hitting the concrete hard enough to break it with spiderweb cracks for ten feet in every direction.

Beside me, Taneshia let out a blast of lightning that coursed through six guys charging in on us while I exploded with a sweep of metal pool chairs that stampeded over the eight coming in on our right. The chairs hit with a force that made what Hans unleashed on my momma look like a mouse headbutt compared to an elephant charge. Those men were pulped.

And that was just the start.

Maybe for the first time in my life, I understood the rage that boiled beneath Sienna's pasty visage. Lightning exploded from my fingertips, running toward Hans, who batted it down. Every gun in the place got ripped from the grasp of whoever was holding it, and more than one trigger finger came with them.

The ground shook beneath us, sending anyone who wasn't ready for it to their knees; I caught Taneshia with my arm, but everyone else took a dive except us and Hans, who was floating.

Water sprayed up uncontrollably from the crack in the bottom of the pool, blasting Hans and sending him jerking back. Spikes of ice followed, as my brain lost any control and my fury took over.

“Augustus...” Taneshia said beside me, her hand clamped on my arm.

I didn't stop. Because I didn't care.

Hans killed my momma.

He was going to die with the taste of his own guts on his tongue.

The overgrown greenery surrounding the pool area was whipping and smashing whoever walked by on the sidewalks in its grasp; countless branches seizing hold of humans by the arms, hands, legs, neck, whatever was handy, and hauling them into the air with animalistic fury.

“Augustus, watch out!” Taneshia leapt up beside me. There was a steelskin coming in fast whose skin was most definitely not steel. He leapt the chair I flung at him, then another, vaulting past it like he had reflex powers, too. Taneshia threw herself at him, colliding with him and knocking him off course as her hands flared lightning bright enough to blind him and little else. She twisted back to shout, “Get Hans!” And then she fell over the downed fence with the rubberband man, grappling with him.

I spun back around and realized I'd made the cardinal error in a fight. I'd taken my eyes off my enemy.

Because there was Hans, his hands glowing purple, and his smile cold fury, about a foot from my face.

No way to block it.

No way to absorb it.

Nothing to do but die.

Hans just smiled. “I guess your car can't save you now.”

And the glow of the blast that was going to kill me exploded in my face.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Jamal

Detective McMahon's gun was pointed at my face, which was hidden behind sunglasses, a bandana, and a low-pulled baseball hat (St. Louis Cardinals, in case you were interested). None of that was likely to stop a bullet, which I was already braced to accept, cringing as I waited for the gun to go off.

It did not.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Simeon chided, sending Detective McMahon flying across the room. Joining her a moment later went Arche, in her police uniform, and – I think – unnoticed for who she really was by Simeon. Both women hit the far wall, about twenty feet up. I grimaced; number one, it looked like it hurt.

Number two...if they managed to free themselves, it was a long drop to the ground. McMahon had been spun upside down in flight and now rested feet up, gun hand pinned flat to the wall beside her. Her long, black hair fell down in a straight waterfall. The rage boiling off her could have peeled the paint off every canvas in the room. Arche was hung up beside her, and looked just as furious.

He didn't stuff socks in their mouths, though. Presumably because their outrage would go unheard by anyone but us.

This was it. I'd cleared the electronics, and he'd cleared the gallery.

“The painting?” Simeon asked, nodding at it. Focused on the one thing he cared about, and it wasn't stealing for money.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to muffle my voice as I went up to the painting. I caught a glimpse of McMahon glaring down at me, too; she looked even more betrayed than Arche, if such a thing was possible.

“You're not getting away with this, Jamal,” McMahon called across the distance between us.

“Don't know who you talking to,” I said, trying my best to muffle my voice with middling results. Hey, I was going for deniable, not perfect. I wasn't Troy Baker, after all.

Focusing on the painting, I felt around for the release. Finding it, I gave a little unseen zap to the security mechanism – just enough to fool it for a minute – and then pulled the painting. It came off easily with just a little damage to the frame.

“Magnifique,” Simeon said, taking it up from me as I handed it back. “You've done well.”

“You may take that painting,” Arche said, from her position on the wall, “but you long ago lost everything it represents.”

Simeon did a double take. “Zsófia? Is it truly you?”

With her hat off, and her cheeks burning, it was obvious now that it was Arche. Simeon still strolled closer, as though afraid it might not be her.

Or just being cautious. He passed a bench and lifted it up in front of him like a lightning rod, then another, letting them orbit around him to bleed off any electricity hurled his way. Just like he had in the Di Novo mansion. “It is you! Skulking about like a common cop. Hoping to do...what?” He held up the painting. “Keep me from securing the last remnants of my beautiful memories of you?”

“I am not who I was in that painting,” Arche said, seething. I watched McMahon's head spin doing a double take of her own. “I am not yours anymore. It does not belong to you, or anyone else–”

“Oh, but it does belong to me,” he said, lifting it up in a jaunty wave. “And there's nothing you can do to stop it. Nothing any of you can do. Not you,” he pointed the corner of the canvas at her, “not you,” then at McMahon, “and, finally,” he brought it around and pointed it at me, “not you, either.”

“I'm not trying to do nothing except keep my ass from getting – oof!” One of the benches slammed into me mid-sentence, catching me across the chest and lifting me off my feet. It drove me into the ceiling above, and I felt my hat, sunglasses, and bandana ripped off as it did.

“Oops,” Simeon said with a smirk as he clutched the painting. “But now...you really will do nothing. And you will continue to do nothing until her friends get here,” he pointed back at McMahon, “at which point you're going to experience a long period of that violation we talked about at the hands of your fellow inmates.”

It was hard to argue with him on that one, because...

...Once again, he'd pinned my ass to the ceiling and left me powerless in the face of his obvious superiority.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

Sienna

Afew years ago, facing an onrush of furious, recently freed and murderous prisoners assaulting me at my office in Eden Prairie, I'd let my control slip for a moment in the depths of a beating, and one of the souls in my head made a fateful decision for me.

Gavrikov, responding to my impending death, had unleashed a wave of fire that had turned the surrounding area into a firestorm that vaporized every single one of the prisoners trying to kill me.

The consequences of that simple act of self-preservation had dogged me for years, the intensity turned up by a hostile press and the animus of Gerry Harmon and a network of douchebags that later became my arch-enemies, turning me into a pariah that was hounded across the country and then the globe.

Letting loose with my fire powers had been something I had been very hesitant to do ever since. Losing Gavrikov's soul had stripped them away, but when I rediscovered them, they were considerably weaker. Doing something like Eden Prairie had not been something I'd been capable of repeating...nor eager to try.

Now I turned loose a blast that was very close to what I'd unleashed on that day so many years ago. All my restraint had now flown; I had no more fucks to give.

Every prisoner surrounding me was reduced to ash in one furious blast of fire. Things in the room where I found myself caught flame. Things not meant to burn – ever, because they should have been incapable of it – started to burn.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Kristina Bonner's voice asked from somewhere behind me, and I spun, half-expecting her to leap out at me. “Down here,” she said, and suddenly it sounded like she was between my legs.

She was. A small shadow crept across the ground, and then she popped out into human form, hot-footing it awkwardly across the melting tile.

“Where the hell did you come from?” I asked, watching her dance. She turned her feet, at least, back into shadows, giving her the appearance of her lower body disappearing into wisps of smoke.

“I was riding your back,” she said. “Sensed what you were doing, caught on just before you leapt up.” She brushed her hands together, brushing off her impeccably tailored coat. “I couldn't just let you come here and kill him without at least trying to bust some sense into his skull.”

“You really think he's going to listen to reason now?” I asked, throwing an expansive wave around to indicate the vaporized remains of...well, everyone who'd just tried to stop me. Their shadows were burned into the walls, and across the floor. That was all that was left of them.

“If he doesn't, that's on him,” she said, stalking forward and disappearing into the shadows beyond this burning inferno of a room. “If I don't try...that's on me.”

“Stupid.” I sighed, rolled my eyes, and followed her.

But I did understand where she was coming from.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

Jamal

Here I was, pinned to the ceiling of the St. Louis Art Museum. Arche and Detective McMahon on the wall to my side, helpless. Simeon had the object of his desire, cradling the painting, the oil colors glaring like a beacon as he flashed it up at me, wooden benches orbiting him to keep me and Arche from frying him with a lightning blast.

Betrayed by the villain. So shocking. And after I'd broken the law and helped him heist this.

“Surprised?” Simeon grinned up at me.

“Not really,” I said, afraid to mention that, honestly, I was just glad he'd left my clothes on this time.

“If it makes you feel better,” he said, “I would have landed you ass-first on that statue outside if you'd denied me. You were going to end up humiliated either way, Jamal – but this way you get to maintain your ass virginity until you get to prison. And hey – maybe you'll find a nice man who'll treat you right. Or you might escape.” His grin was like a knife, malicious, sliding into my back.

“Nope,” McMahon said flatly, from the other wall.

Simeon shrugged. “Or not.” He turned his attention to Arche. “Tell me: does it burn you, knowing how much effort you've put in over the years to hack these museums, keep them from putting these paintings of you on display? I know you drove down the prices when they showed up in galleries, trying to scrape together enough money to purchase them for yourself. That you've retired...what? Twenty-five of the series?” He lifted the painting up, staring at it.

I raised up my hand and aimed it at the canvas, which he'd conveniently put above his head. I sparked a shot off it, and it burst into flames, the oil paint combusting the moment it took the hit of electricity.

Simeon yelped and threw it down, stomping on it. But the damage was already done.

He looked up at me with a furious sneer. “Petty,” he said. “You lose, so you destroy my prize. But the joke's on you; I still have four more.” He shot the same look at Arche.

“You ain't got nothing,” I said. “Why do you think I was late to show up to our meet?”

He looked up at me, eyes slitted in disbelieving, annoyed suspicion. “Sure. You just discovered the location of my treasure trove–”

“At 1822 Bleecker Street, yeah,” I said. “And I burned it.” His eyes widened as he realized I wasn't lying. “Every. Last. Painting.”

His mouth slipped open, falling into shock. “But those paintings – they were the last – they were–”

“Not yours,” I said, looking over at Arche. “She's not yours, and she never will be yours again.”

Simeon was boiling. “I was just going to let nature take its course with you. But now – now I am going to take pleasure in finishing you myself.” He raised his hands, and the benches started to spin, as he'd added five more. “I'm not going to make it quick, either, Jamal.” The nearest bench spun menacingly, faster, preparing to strike me dead.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Kristina

Kristina got out ahead of it, moving through the prison knowing she was going to have to move fast to beat the pissed-off succubus. Lighting off all that fire had made for a hell of a show, but it was also a worrying look into Sienna's state of mind.

Nothing in reserve. That was the polite way to say it.

It might have worried her more if her own neck was sticking in the stocks. It worried her plenty enough that Mekhi's was, though, and she was conflicted on what to do about it.

She slid into the control room ahead and found him there, working on a computer to unlock doors, dead guard at his feet. He spun as she slipped out of the shadows, as if he could hear her.

“You after me, Kristina?” Mekhi asked, fingers lingering on the keyboard. “Thought you left me behind back downtown.”

“I left you behind because of what you were letting happen,” she said. “What you were excited to have happen.” She shook her head. “Do you have any care for how much misery you unleashed today?”

“I unleashed misery upon my enemies,” he said, sticking his chin out, and smiling. “I have no regrets.”

“What the hell did that poor girl back at that mall do to make herself your enemy?” Kristina asked, and she felt a burning in her eyes. “What'd she do to have you be okay with what your boys did to her? To you to make you hate her so, Mekhi?” She clapped her hand against her chest. “I understand hating the leaders of this system if you're feeling raw about it, but you didn't go after them. What is it about the ordinary people that makes you hate them so?”

“Pfft, I don't hate 'em. They're just cogs in the machine, I don't think about them at all,” he said. “Like programs in The Matrix. They don't mean a thing to me, but they keep it all running.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” she asked, that burning in the corners of her eyes still going. “'They keep it running?' They're trying to live, Mekhi. Trying to live and maybe find a little slice of happiness. And you went after them. Not the people up at the state capitol. Not the people in DC. You went after the man on the street that wasn't doing anything to anybody but–”

He moved so fast she didn't even see it coming; he reached out and punched her square in the jaw before she could go to shadows, knocked her flat. “You know,” he said, while her ears were ringing and her jaw was feeling like someone had just shoved a cherry bomb in her mouth and lit it off, “I'm hearing a lot of anti-revolutionary bullshit coming out of your mouth...and I think it needs to stop now.”

The ringing in her ears from the blow started to fade as she pushed back up to her hands and knees. Mekhi was glaring down at her, and she looked at him through squinted eyes. “I'm trying to save your life, fool. She's coming for you, and your only hope is to give up so she doesn't turn your ass into a shadow on the wall permanently.”

“I've been doing fine dodging that bitch so far,” Mekhi said. “No thanks to you.”

“Entirely thanks to me,” she said, still on all fours. “And you're welcome.”

His eyes flashed as he raised a fist again. “Ain't nothing to thank you for.” He brought it down, and she dodged it just in time, turning into shadow and leaping away. “You ain't done a damned thing for me except slow me down this whole time – and I'm done with it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Augustus

Hans's hands were glowing with purple. I knew that power.

My head was about to be dissolved in a blast of energy, not a damned thing I could do to stop it. Nothing I had would block it. Nothing in range could hit him.

So I prepared to join my mother in death, because...hell.

I'd failed.

Failed as a son.

Failed as a boss.

Failed as Taneshia's boyfriend, way back when.

Failed to be smart enough to know that money didn't matter in the face of all those other things I was doing wrong.

The glow surged, and I started to close my eyes. Taneshia screamed somewhere behind me, just as powerless to stop Hans from taking my head off my shoulders.

Which is why it came as a big damned surprise when something hit Hans so hard he screamed, and I felt him go flying by about six inches past my right ear, my eyes snapping open just in time to see his loafers go sailing past.

Because standing there, looking about mad as hell, but without a scratch on her...

...was my momma.

I must have gulped. Must have made a noise. I don't know what it was, but she sure as hell knew the meaning.

“What?” she said, and cracked her knuckles. “You didn't ever realize that you, Taneshia, and Jamal weren't the only ones drinking out of the tap at our house when Edward Cavanagh ran the experiment that gave y'all powers?”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Sienna

Iwas leaving a trail of bodies, and I had no regrets about it. Boston and Massachusetts were about to experience a dramatic drop in crime for the next twenty or so years, because every motherfucker that was in prison for killing that would have gotten released at the hands of some bleeding heart on the parole board was now a smoking pile of ashes in the entry of the Correctional Institute.

So, yeah...I wasn't doing so great. But I was having a ball.

“Why are you the way you are?” I asked, burning the very soul out of a guy who'd tried – for some reason – to kill me with his bare hands. His eyes rolled back in his head and he drew his last breath. I got my answer – it was a combination of a dad that left before he was born, a mom that tried but failed to rein him in, and a guy on his street who got hold of him at a young age and did stuff to him that made me want to throw up in my mouth. His soul screamed as it left his body and ended up in mine, a very satisfying sensation that I ignored as I threw his consciousness into a torture chamber in the back of my mind without another thought.

Being a succubus was better than drinking, at least when you were using your powers. Why had I tried to hide from this feeling for so much of my life? Why hadn't I embraced it, like Wade did, and ripped every useful power out of every useless turd I'd fought along the way? It only made me more powerful, and given all the shit I'd had to deal with, why hadn't I just embraced the goddess within?

I was the most powerful woman on this forsaken planet. They expected me to solve their stupid problems for them. And useless pieces of shit like the guy I'd just killed were their problems.

This was just me doing what was expected of me. I would countenance no more bitching over the hows and whys; if anyone didn't like it, I'd happily accept a trip back to the Greek isles and they could solve their own problems and calm down the disastrous shitshow of their failing cities all by themselves.

Through glass ahead, I caught a glimpse of Mekhi Bonner. He was hammering the hell out of someone, then chasing them around with his fist raised. I saw a shadow move across the far wall and realized–

He was beating the hell out of his sister.

Something about that set my brain on fire. Even more inflamed than it already was, I suppose.

I shattered through the armored plexiglas window, breaking it along with my shoulder.

Mekhi Bonner looked up, and I saw Kristina slither past in shadow form behind him, escaping his attention as he turned to focus on me. “You again,” he said, like I was the most tiresome thing in the world.

“Me,” I said. “Again. Bonner, this is your last chance.” I circled him, floating, and watching Kristina circle behind him.

“Prison is bullshit,” he said, and spat at my feet. “Every day is hell in there. I'd rather die than go back. If a system is what it does, then any system that has to restrain its people is an oppressive one by default.”

I just chuckled and shook my head. “Sometimes, Bonner, when the person in question is a complete and total piece of shit, they deserve to be oppressed. It's a new thought in our super stupid society that there aren't some bad people that need to be kept from doing awful things to other people.”

He smirked at me, and boy did I have a sudden desire to wipe that look off his stupid face. “I was just thinking that...about you.”

I stared at him warily, trying to ready myself for whatever he was about to throw at me. “Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it, big boy?”

“This,” he said, and leapt at me, shifting into shadow and disappearing in midair.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Jamal

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

Simeon's voice echoed through the gallery, a plaintive scream. He held the burnt-out remains of the painting in his hands, staring at it as though it had held some piece of art that was world-changing, like the Mona Lisa, rather than an $8,000 canvas of my ex-girlfriend in the buff on satin sheets with bedroom eyes.

“Struck a definitive blow against the 19th century version of revenge porn,” I said, hanging like a dumbass on the ceiling.

“Jamal,” Arche said softly. Her eyes were worried, gentle as I'd ever seen them.

“I did it for you,” I said, holding tight to the plaster above me, digging my fingers in.

“And I'm going to do this for me,” Simeon said, and one of the benches lifted menacingly toward me. I had a dark feeling that it was going to be going somewhere that I was going to regret. As it flew toward me, and my body was tugged and turned awkwardly around, I ripped into the drywall, hanging there as Simeon prepared to do his worst to me.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

Augustus

“Been opening my own pickle jars just fine for the last few years without you boys around,” Momma said, cracking her knuckles. She was standing there, fresh as a daisy, not a mark on her from the absolute battering that Hans had laid upon her.

“Momma!” I grabbed hold of her by the shoulders, giving her a shake, looking her up and down. Her clothes were damaged, ripped in a couple places, and there was concrete dust all over them.

But other than that...she was fine.

“Are you...are you an Achilles?” I asked.

“I don't get cut when I accidentally hit my hand with the kitchen knife anymore,” she said. “So I'm whatever that means.”

“It means,” Hans said, rising up behind me, floating in the air, “I'm going to have kill your son in front of you, and then come up with a creative way to kill you.”

“I don't need a creative way to kill you,” I said, and launched lightning at his ass. It zapped him hard, and he dropped to the ground and hit his knees. “The old-fashioned ones will do just fine.” I prepared to give him another jolt.

“Oh, Augustus,” Momma said, grimacing.

I zapped him and looked back at her. “You ain't gonna give me no static about hurting him, are you?”

She made a face. “No. Hurt him more. But what should I be doing?”

“Help Taneshia,” I said, and she started off to do just that.

She didn't quite make it in time, though, because another blast of lightning hit Hans from behind, causing him to spasm and jolting all his muscles at once.

“I'm fine,” Taneshia said, stepping up. She looked a little worked over, but otherwise fine. “Turns out the Rubbermaid man had a glass jaw.” She cracked her knuckles, too, and then zapped Hans again.

Hans looked up at the next break in the lightning, right at me. “But...how? You? How can you...beat me?”

“Aww, ought to know this, Hans,” I said, walking over to him, pulling a suppressant syringe out of my belt pouch, and ramming it into his neck. “Ain't nothing like the love of a woman to motivate a man to overcome any challenge before him.” The syringe drained into his blood, and I sparked lightning from my hand. “You're just lucky I'm feeling merciful.”

“I might not be,” Taneshia said, her eyes sparking with lightning.

“Me, either,” Momma said. Then, she sighed. “But we probably ought to leave him alive so you don't get yourself in trouble like that crazy white girl you hang around with.”

“I guess,” I said, as we watched his eyelids flutter. I caught Taneshia nodding, reluctantly, at that truth. We all listened to the sound of sirens coming, though, signaling the end of this particular trial, and Taneshia's eyes met mine and I had a feeling, somehow, everything might just turn out okay. For all of us.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

Jamal

Iwas about to get ripped apart by Simeon and his psychic powers, and hanging from the ceiling as I did, I didn't have a lot of options.

At least it didn't look like it.

I felt the first tugs of his powers at the legs of my pants, and knew I was about to have them ripped down like every day in seventh grade gym class.

My fingers had dug into the ceiling, and it must have looked like I was trying to cling on for dear life.

I wasn't. I was digging for the wires to the security system, which were interlaced all through the ceiling. Not deep, either, I knew from the schematics. And as I was clawing, I just happened to hit one.

Hit it...and snap the sheath covering it, giving me access to the wire beneath.

That done, I bridged the circuit with my fingers, and my powers. My own electricity entered the security system, then found its way through into the power socket beyond...

And then I sent it through the grid...

Until it found that one particular power outlet I was looking for. Marked on the schematics as B13...

It just happened to be the plug on the wall three feet behind Simeon.

All of this happened at the speed of light, fortunately.

As did the burst of lightning that lanced out of the wall and got him in his exposed back, with no floating benches or other bullshit to block it.

Simeon jerked and screamed, taking a bolt of lightning and all 1.21 jigawatts right to the keister.

I didn't stop, either. I kept feeding it into the wire, through the security system and subsequent wires into his ass. Call it payback for threatening mine.

McMahon and Arche plummeted off the wall, the latter somehow landing on her feet. It took me a second to realize how, but she'd caught herself with one of her mechanical arm contraptions. McMahon got caught by Arche, with her other one, but screamed nonetheless.

Simeon keeled over, unconscious but not dead. McMahon, lurching free from Arche's device, plunged a suppressant dart into his neck, and kicked him over, not particularly mercilessly. He seemed to collapse, still breathing between moans. Looking up at me, he gasped, “I see...what she sees in you now.”

I was still hanging from the ceiling wire, but it was stretching, and letting me down gradually as it ripped free, a slow descent. “Thought you would have figured that out the first time you saw me naked.” I dropped the last ten feet, steeling myself because McMahon was looking pretty pissed.

She pistol-whipped Simeon, knocking him cold and drawing blood, then knelt to cuff him, watching me all the while, and keeping her pistol in hand. “So...got anything you want to tell me?”

I nodded. “Yeah...I did it all for her...and I don't regret a bit of it.” And I looked right at Arche, who was already hanging by the entry. With only one long look back, she fled, without a word of goodbye.

“Seems she didn't feel like reciprocating,” McMahon said, finishing up with cuffing him.

“Doesn't matter,” I said, and extended my hands and wrists to McMahon, and waited for her to cuff me.

I didn't have to wait very long. She slapped them right on, then read me my rights.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Sienna

Iblazed fire out of my hands and mouth, creating a circle of it around me and driving every bit of shadow out of the room.

Both Kristina and Mekhi Bonner screamed; the former because his ass was exposed, the latter because I'd just surprised her, and stripped away her cover, too.

“Now that we've got that out of the way,” I said, advancing on Mekhi, “let's talk about prison.”

He glared up at me, sweating under the heat of the fire blazing around us. “I'm not going back.”

“'On this, we agree.” I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up. He tried to hit me with a punch, and I drove my head forward to meet it, breaking his hand against my skull. It hurt like hell, and rang my bell, but I grinned woozily as he screamed in pain, and kept my hand clamped on him, the burn already starting. “See, the problem is...you're up your own ass, Mekhi.”

“Sienna,” Kristina said from behind me, cowering against the flames destroying her chances of going to shadow, “don't.”

“Prison is not the worst of punishments, Mekhi,” I said. “Prison is meant to rehabilitate. And it sucks at that, I agree. It's meant to incapacitate. And that's no fun.” I pulled him closer, right up to my face, and he tried to hammer my jaw with his unbroken hand. I ignored it, pushed the pain away, healing as fast as I could. “But fun's not the point when you've done evil shit. The point is pain. The point is punishment. To hand back to you a fragment of what you've done to others.”

“No...” Mekhi gasped around my fingers. He was feeling it, I was sure, and his eyes were bugging out.

“But you didn't want to stop hurting others, Mekhi,” I said, and my voice was roaring in his ears like wind in a tunnel, I could feel it from his side and mine. “You couldn't, could you? You talked your big game about prison abolition, but really it was a cover for the fact that. You. Didn't. Want. To. Stop. Hurting. People.”

I leaned my face in close as my powers grew to a crescendo. “Can I tell you a secret, Mekhi?” I looked him in the eyes as his started to roll back in his head. “I don't want to stop, either. It's just that I only want to hurt those who hurt innocent people.”

His soul ripped free with a last scream and plummeted into a dark pit of despair I'd made ready for him, where he'd spend his remaining hours and days of consciousness listening to the cries of suffering people...until maybe, just maybe, he'd develop an appreciation for the suffering of others.

Or he'd just suffer himself. I was indifferent to which.

“Sienna...what did you do?”

I turned and found Kristina staring at me. I let Mekhi's body slip from my fingers, and doused the fires around me. “What I had to do.” Looking up, I found her eyes haunted, pained. “I showed him the alternative to prison.”

She was on her haunches, and she looked...just destroyed. “You killed him, Sienna.”

I laughed, and it had a cold quality to it. “I did more than that. I sent him right to...Hades, for lack of a better word.”

“You could have just killed him,” she said, quiet tears running down her cheeks. “Like you did the others.”

“He didn't deserve that mercy,” I said, looming over her. I floated a few inches off the ground, looking down at her.

She seemed...so small, as though she might collapse in on herself. “Who are you to decide that?”

“I...am Death,” I said. It sounded right. And so very final.

She just stared at me, blinking the last tears out of her eyes. “You're something, all right. Not the person I knew before.” She brushed at her eyes once more. “So long, Sienna.”

And with that, she became a shadow, and then was gone.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

Jamal

It wasn't too long before I found myself dosed and stuck in an interrogation room, alone, cooling my heels. It was a courtesy, really, that McMahon had extended to me, putting me in here by myself. She could have stuck me in gen pop where, as a putative law enforcement officer, I would have been given a real rough time.

Former putative law enforcement officer. That's really more how I saw myself now.

Because I'd gotten myself in too deep, this time. I'd put it all on the line for Arche, I'd managed to take out the villain, yet still...

The agency wasn't going to be able to employ me any longer because of what I'd done here. Picking up charges like this...

...Yeah. This door was about to close hard on me.

Speaking of, the door opened, and in came McMahon. She seemed pretty neutral, neither as angry as she maybe ought to have been, nor as friendly as she could have been. She carried one of those ubiquitous file folders in her hands and settled in front of me, reading from it. “So...I called in to Atlanta.”

“Oh?” The cuffs were feeling pretty tight around my wrists. They rattled as I stirred.

“Yeah,” she said, paging through the file. “Turns out the detective down there that liked you for the double homicide moved on to somewhere else. Nashville or somewhere. Was debating whether to track him down when I got a different call.” She looked up. “From the nation's number one defense contractor.”

That made me cock an eyebrow. Cassidy had called her? About me?

“She said I need to turn you loose,” McMahon said. “Needless to say, I didn't take too kindly to that. I resisted, dragged my heels.”

McMahon shut the folder. “So she says, 'You'll do it,' and hangs up. And wouldn't you know it, a couple minutes later, my phone rings and it's the mayor. Ten seconds later, the DA's calling. Then, my boss. After that, President Foreman. Both senators from Missouri.”

“So, anyway,” McMahon said, “I'm not pursuing charges against you. But that doesn't mean I think what you did was right, or in the neighborhood of right. I'm honestly not sure what I'd even charge you with. Arson, obviously, for burning those paintings at his hidey-hole. Destruction of property. But given why you did it...I'm not sure you were wrong.” She shook her head. “Not my call, though. You're free to go.”

With that, she reached over and unlocked my cuffs.

“That's really it?” I asked as she got up and opened the door.

“That's it,” she said, placing the cuffs back in her case. “Not sorry for dosing you. Best of luck. Please leave and don't come back to St. Louis. Say hello to your powerful friends and maybe put in a word for not having them squash a bug like me?”

Stepping outside, I found myself standing under the wintery sunshine. I closed my eyes and let it shine down on me, feeling the weight on my shoulders of what I'd just done.

It felt like I'd thrown away almost my whole life...

...For someone who'd run out on me.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

Sienna

Icould tell by the look on Detective Moore's face that he wasn't what you might call conventionally happy.

He didn't say anything though. Neither did I. Not until we'd looked everything over, in silence, along with his higher ups, and the staties, and everyone else. They pulled him aside then, had a little meeting, chewed the fat, mulled things over, and finally, he came wandering back to me, delegated as human sacrifice to deliver the news that Boston, the state prison system, state police, the governor, both senators, and the Walpole dogcatcher, probably, were all uber pissed at me.

I flipped them a set of double birds. “Maybe if you all hadn't bitched out like a bunch of dickless losers when the shit hit the fan the first time, none of this would have happened.”

No one had the balls to say anything to that. They just kept their heads low and ignored my personality disorder and lack of restraint.

“There's a lot of dead bodies,” Moore said softly.

“No, there aren't,” I said. “I know because I killed a whole host of people, and guess what? Very few bodies remain, especially here.”

He blinked a couple times behind those spectacles. “It's a metaphor, Sienna. There's a body count, it's high–”

“Yeah. I know. Willie Nelson x Snoop Dogg high. Again.”

Moore fell to silence again. “I don't know how to say this to you...”

“Then you probably shouldn't.”

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

“A lot finer than the grand majority of those who have pissed me off lately.”

He reached back and scratched the top of his head awkwardly. “Right. So. I suppose we'll get your report–”

“Approximately whenever I feel like writing it. There are an awful lot of people crying out for justice lately. And order. The basic desire to be able to walk down the street without having their heads caved in by a dipshit meta.”

Moore grimaced. “I would only observe...you seem to be under...quite a lot of pressure.”

“Pressure makes diamonds,” I said snidely.

“Yes, well, depending on where it's directed, it can also make an impacted bowel,” he said. “Just...noting that. For no reason in particular.”

“Subtle, Moore.” I tossed off a salute to him, and gave one last look at the prison, still smoking. There was still smoke rising from downtown Boston, too. “Give your feckless politicians my absolute worst, and let them know I'm unlikely to come here to pull your idiot asses out of the fire anymore. By which I mean stop letting the dumbest and/or worst human beings on the planet have any say in what you do to criminals. Get it? Got it? Good.”

I turned and flipped another double bird at the politicians and bureaucrats milling around, then leapt into the air. I was supersonic a moment later, close enough even the steadiest of them staggered under the blast. The most pitiful or unbalanced definitely got knocked down.

It didn't make me feel that much better, knowing that, even as I turned south and adjusted my course to get back to Nashville as quickly as possible. It was petty, and sometimes that was enough.

Not today, though.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

Jamal

Isummoned a rideshare and sat my ass down to wait on the steps of the police department. I didn't get one of the expensive ones that shows up quick. No, I was a loser, and probably soon to be unemployed, so I'd picked the bottom-scale one, the cheapest, that would probably do multiple pickups along the way so I could make new friends.

While sitting, I was already composing a message to my brother resigning from the agency. I could feel my cheeks burning as I did it, and my anger was rising as I was doing so, because I was furious with myself above all.

How could I have been so stupid as to throw my whole life away for Arche, who'd done nothing more than glance at me as she bolted?

And how could I not have known she would do that? Of course she was going to run; she always ran, in the end. That was how she lived her life. Always running because she was almost always doing something she shouldn't be.

I'd almost gotten my resignation drafted when my phone buzzed to let me know my rideshare was approaching. I got up, and stood there for a moment, steeling myself. I needed to send this message, get back to my rental car, turn that puppy in and head back to Nashville. Once I was there I could...

...What?

Another text message buzzed. Cassidy, this time:

I settled your debts with the people whose art you burned. Wasn't even that expensive. Come work for me full time and we'll call it square. Plus you'll make more than you're currently making.

There was something about that that made me chuckle. I'd just gone head to head with a guy who made me feel so inadequate that it was like I was a mosquito fighting a giraffe.

Why the hell was I doing this anymore? Guarding houses wasn't for me. And chasing bad men was barely my jam. I was happiest when I was behind a keyboard, running across the internet with the 1's and 0's I produced from my fingertips. Yeah, the danger was that I'd slip in for a little too long and have trouble convincing myself to come back out, but...

After living in reality these last few days, why would I want to keep slugging it out here in the real world when I could just find a nice beach somewhere and write code for Cassidy a few hours a day, then spend the rest of it doing whatever I pleased? I heard Aruba was nice. Out of the hurricane lanes. Temperate all year long.

Resign. Take the easy road. Spare my crew the shame of being associated with me after the mess I'd just made.

I walked down to the car and opened the door, sliding into the back seat and not even acknowledging the driver. I'd selected No Conversation on my preferences, so I was surprised when the driver interrupted my train of thought on the resignation letter by saying, “Hey,” in a slightly less deep voice than I would have expected from a guy named Manuel.

Looking up...I found Arche's hazel eyes looking back at me in the rearview mirror.

For a moment, my pulse spiked, and I wanted to say...something. It was anticipation, that old feeling at seeing her, the thrill that ran through my body – and my heart – at the mere sight of her.

It faded. Or at least I wanted it to. “Hey yourself.”

“You couldn't expect me to just stand there and be arrested,” she said, turning to face me. The car drove itself, which was...slightly stressful, though I felt confident she had a handle on it. “That's not who I am. Not what I do.”

“Which makes me look like an even bigger idiot,” I said.

“No,” she said. “Who do you think called Cassidy to make sure you got bailed out? Just because it's not my way to stand there and take hits, don't think I was just going to leave you behind if I can keep you out of trouble.” She reached a hand up and electricity tingled at her fingertips. “You did something for me. Something you didn't have to do. And that means...well, it means everything to me.”

I reached up and felt the electricity tingle off her fingertips as the sparks between us interfaced. “I don't even know your real name until I heard Simeon say it.”

“Yes,” she said. “And that is...on me, as you say. I am a guarded person. I have lived a long time and escaped many...calamities...because I have been very guarded. After Simeon I just had a hard time trusting again. But...” And she took up my hand, even as the car drove on, “...you have proven to me that you are worth lowering my guard for. So...” She tensed, and for a moment I wondered if she was about to ditch out of the car or something, like it was about to crash.

I waited. Waited some more. Finally: “...Yes?”

“Would you like,” she said, eyes closed, as though she were really struggling with this, “to come to Hungary...and meet my mother?” She opened them and looked right at me. Almost right through me, it felt like. She was vulnerable in that moment in a way I didn't think I'd ever felt from her before. Not even when we were naked and pressed up against each other.

“Huh.” I looked down at my phone, at the note so neatly composed there, to my brother and Madison. I'd been so certain where I was going just a few minutes earlier – Aruba or the like.

“...Yes?” she asked. Shyly. Slyly.

With, I thought, her heart wide open.

“I'd love to go to Hungary and meet your mom,” I said, sending the note to Augustus and the office. I changed a little word or two: resign became leave of absence, but the sentiment was the same.

I was done trying to fight crime and restore order for a while. Maybe I'd pass this way again, or maybe I'd never be back.

Either way...this was the moment for a change.

And as we kissed...I felt truly free for the first time in a long time.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

Augustus

Long after the legal troubles were settled, long after the DA had talked me through all that had happened, long after I tucked Momma into her own bed...

Not long after Taneshia and I had gone to bed ourselves...and a little after she'd fallen asleep beside me...

I couldn't sleep. There was something weighing on me. And not just because I hadn't checked messages in a day or so. That was an easy remedy; in fact I started doing it with Taneshia asleep on my chest, taking care not to disturb her. Wasn't tough; the girl was exhausted, and who could blame her after throwing all that lightning today?

Madison had flagged one message especially, from Jamal, with a ??? It was addressed to both of us, so of course I'd gotten it, but she wanted to make sure I saw it.

I read it, then read it again. Then I chuckled.

So Jamal was going to take a little break from this line of work?

Good. I was sick of sending him off to the least dangerous assignments I could in order to keep his delicate ass from getting killed. The world was dangerous, and the last thing I needed was Momma beating me down for losing him. And that was before I knew she was invulnerable.

I texted back, Good for you. Enjoy the leave. If you want to come back, you're welcome, if not, you're smart. I'm taking a little break from Nashville myself, gonna work from Atlanta for a while. Maybe start a local office down here, since we're doing that now.

Settling back, I thought about it. Hartsfield-Jackson airport had direct flights to everywhere in the country. Having an office here was a better location than Nashville, and it was a real good spot to have one to service the entire eastern seaboard, at least. And hell, we needed a western branch, too. Something out of LA, maybe, for all the business we were doing on the west coast.

But first...Atlanta. I'd park myself down here for a bit, get things right with Taneshia, right with Momma, and make sure things stayed right with the neighborhood.

And I didn't need a BMW to do that, either. Or a fancy-ass watch. Or suits that cost more than my first car.

Looking up at the ceiling, pondering the future, and all the possibilities...for the first time in a while, the money thing didn't worry me anymore.

And for the first time in a while...I found myself smiling as I drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

Sienna

I'd lied to Moore in my wrathful fury. When I got back to Nashville, I went straight to the office, closed my door, and worked on the stupid report right away.

I worked through lunch. Worked through dinner.

And at eleven o'clock that night, when the buzz of the activity in the bullpen had faded to a light clangor, and all but the skeleton crew on the night shift had gone home, I was still tapping away diligently at the stupid computer, wondering if I could use my newly-boosted lightning powers to learn to communicate with electronics the way Jamal did. Because it had to be quicker than pecking my way through a blow-by-blow account of all the faces I'd busted up and/or vaporized in the last two days.

God, there were so many.

The knock at my door was Madison, and I beckoned her to enter. She didn't; she just opened the door and stood there. “Working up Boston?” she asked. More than a little tentative; like she was walking on grenades. That were delicate as eggshells.

“Yeah,” I said, pretending I had eyestrain instead of a burning rage behind my temples. “It'll be done in the next hour or so.”

“Great,” she said. “That's not why I was knocking, though.”

“Are you calling it a night?” I looked at the clock. It was eleven.

“I am,” she said, then hesitated. “But also...I need to break some news to you.”

My spine straightened automatically. “Who died?”

“No one – oh, no!” Her hands flew up. “I'm so sorry. No. No deaths. Ah – Augustus is just...he's going to be starting an Atlanta office, and working out of there. And Jamal is taking a leave of absence for a while. Maybe forever. That's all. Just departures, not...final departures.”

“Oh,” I said, blinking a few times. “Well...thanks for letting me know.”

“Sure. Sorry to worry you.” Madison chuckled, in that disarming way she had. “Good night.”

“'Night.” I lowered my head, trying to concentrate on the stupid report. I pecked through another sentence, another paragraph, but I could feel myself slowing.

Maybe it was the tiredness from lack of sleep.

Maybe it was the sound of the faint screaming in the back of my head. Shut up, Mekhi.

Maybe it was...

Another knock sounded and jarred me out of a sleep I didn't realize I'd even fallen into. Angel Gutierrez was standing outside the door, peering in at me through the window. I waved her in, and undid the repeating hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that had streaked its way for forty-two lines down my screen with a point, a click, and a tap. “Hey, Angel,” I said.

She hesitated at the door. Like Madison, only maybe with a death to announce. “Can we talk for a second?” she finally coughed out. Like a cat with a hairball.

I swallowed eight sarcastic responses and let, “Sure,” be the one that flew from my lips.

She closed the door behind her, presumably to keep the eight people still out in the now-jumbo-sized bullpen from overhearing. “You heard about Augustus and Jamal?”

“I did,” I said, wondering if she'd been out there when Madison had told me.

“Bad timing,” she said, helping herself to one of my chairs. “I just...I feel like I'm struggling with who I am lately.”

I felt the desire to laugh out of dry, wretched absurdity. “Must be nice,” I said. She cocked her head questioningly. “Because we all know who I am; I'm Death. Inescapably so.”

She shifted in her chair uncomfortably. “Do you have to be? Like...all the time? Because it seems to me you aren't always.”

I sighed. “It's always there, Angel.” I pushed a pen off the center of my desk to the edge of the blotter. “But we're not here to talk about me. You were saying?”

She nodded, falling back into the groove of her thoughts easily and probably grateful as hell to get away from discussing my problems. “You know I came to Minneapolis to help you rebuild the agency when you couldn't be there, and when Reed was still, uh...”

“Floating around the world with his head and all else in the clouds,” I said, supplying an easier answer for her. He'd had a rough time after the brainwashing Harmon had laid on him, and what he'd done under its influence. I expect it still troubled him to this day, though he didn't say much about it. “I do appreciate that, by the way. I know it was a bit of a leap for you at the time, coming from the hospitality industry into, uh...whatever this is.”

“I just tell people, 'metahuman law enforcement,'” she said. “But...hospitality is actually what I want to go back to. My restaurant folded the first time because I just didn't have the money to keep it running when my audience didn't show up. But now...I've been saving my money through all this, and I found a little space in a suburb outside Houston that I can afford.” There was hope in her eyes; what an alien thing for me to see. “I'm going to give it another shot now, now that you've got things running here, and you're all staffed up. Even with losing Jamal and Augustus, we're so full of players at this point that you don't really need a weak reflex type like me anymore–”

“But we want you,” I said, a bit lamely.

“I know,” she said with a shrug. “And if you need me for an emergency, I can come help. But...you've got enough people for day-to-day now that you won't even miss me. My powers are....” She made a soft exhalation. “...Well, they're nothing compared to some of these folks. Like the Gustafsons, for instance.”

She leaned forward. “I'm always going to be grateful for my time here, because I couldn't have made it through these last few years without you, and Reed, and Augustus. It's just...”

I put on my fakest smile and soldiered forward. “It's time for you to move on. I understand. This is a tough job, and it wears on you. Like a cheese grater on your very soul.”

Her thin eyebrows crept up subtly at that. “A little, I suppose. But I think it just has more to do with the fact that I'm...this is a job to me. Not a calling. You know what I mean?”

I felt the fake smile freeze on my face. “Punching very bad people in the face until they stop doing bad things...it's not for everyone. In fact, it's probably only for a very thin slice of the population. So...yes. I know what you mean.”

“I'm so relieved to hear you say that.” She stood, and it was clear by her posture, by her very bearing, that, yes, there was a weight off her shoulders, one that she'd clearly been carrying for some times. “I know they'll only drag you out of here feet first, but...I just don't want to do it anymore, Sienna.” She straightened. “I've got other horizons I want to pursue.”

I stood to match her. “Let me know when you get your restaurant open, Angel. I'll come eat there. This time I'll avoid touching my eyes after handling peppers.”

“It's a mistake you only tend to make once,” she said with a pained grin.

We stood there awkwardly for a moment, the desk between us. “Neither of us are really the hugging sort, are we?” I asked.

She laughed. “Thank God. I'm going to get it from all the other folks out there that are, and I'm steeling myself for it.”

“Take care, Angel,” I said, and let her leave. I heard her sigh with pleasure once my door was closed.

Yes, the weight was off her shoulders as she started to move around the bullpen and break the news to her friends and associates. Or at least those that were here.

Because now she was free of the burden associated with policing metahumans. Of keeping these very bad people from doing very bad things.

The weight on my shoulders had gotten just a touch heavier, though. I knew this was going to be the case; I'd accepted it, fatalistically, like a Russian. I'd be holding up the pillars of the sky until I died.

This was why I'd never be free.

Sienna Nealon Will Return in

Ten Feet Away

The Girl in the Box, Book 61

Coming January 2, 2026!

PRE-ORDER NOW!

NOTE: There are only 5 books remaining in The Girl in the Box Series. It will end with book 65!

Sienna also returns in the new spinoff, The Girl Who Ran Away, Book 2 which includes special guest star SIENNA NEALON!

Buried in Lies

The Girl Who Ran Away, Book 1

Get it NOW!

Somewhere in all the lies, the truth must be hiding...

Ava Garcia was a normal student – until the day Ty Foster walked into Sunvail High school and killed eight students, including Ava's best friend. Except things don't quite add up. Mysterious disappearances, unexplained accidents, and a seemingly invisible man follow behind the tragedy, leaving Ava wondering what is going on.

Able to remember only flashes of what happened on that day, unable to stomach the lies of the principal, the sheriff, and the mayor, and weighed down under the burden of survivor's guilt, Ava can't help herself – she has to know the truth. And she won't stop until she finds it...

From author Robert J. Crane comes the first tale in a new series set in his multi-million selling Girl in the Box universe.

Get it NOW!

Listening to Fear

The Girl Who Ran Away, Book 2

GET IT NOW!

Bound in Silence

The Girl Who Ran Away, Book 3

GET IT NOW!

Those Deadly Secrets

The Girl Who Ran Away, Book 4

Coming October 2nd, 2025!

PRE-ORDER NOW!

AUTHOR’S NOTE

We’re moving into the endgame now. This is the 60th book in the Girl in the Box series, and the final story arc. I always said I’d write The Girl in the Box as long as I was able to find fresh ideas and approaches, and I am running out of them. So it’s almost time to say goodbye. It’s not right away; I estimate the earliest I’ll get the last book (book 65) out is late 2026. You’ve got some time. And Sienna’s got one final major story arc (which will run from this book to book 64) and a final volume (65) as a coda or epilogue to her story.

Thanks for reading! If you want to know immediately when future books become available, take sixty seconds and sign up for my NEW RELEASE EMAIL ALERTS by CLICKING HERE. I don’t sell your information and I only send out emails when I have a new book out. The reason you should sign up for this is because I don’t always set release dates, and even if you’re following me on Facebook (robertJcrane (Author)) or Twitter (@robertJcrane), or part of my Facebook fan page (Team RJC), it’s easy to miss my book announcements because … well, because social media is an imprecise thing.

Find listings for all my books plus some more behind-the-scenes info on my website: http://www.robertjcrane.com!

Cheers,

Robert J. Crane

Other Works by Robert J. Crane

The Girl in the Box

(and Out of the Box)

Contemporary Urban Fantasy

Alone

Untouched

Soulless

Family

Omega

Broken

Enemies

Legacy

Destiny

Power

Limitless

In the Wind

Ruthless

Grounded

Tormented

Vengeful

Sea Change

Painkiller

Masks

Prisoners

Unyielding

Hollow

Toxicity

Small Things

Hunters

Badder

Nemesis

Apex

Time

Driven

Remember

Hero

Flashback

Cold

Blood Ties

Music

Dragon

Control

Second Guess

Powerless

Meltdown

True North

Innocence

Southern Comfort

Underground

Silver Tongue

Backwoods

Home

Eye of the Hurricane

Ghosts

Gangland

Reality

Allegiance

Shadows

Fallout

Stolen

Scorched Earth

Heart of the Storm

Trigger Man

Liberty

Ten Feet Away* (Coming January 2nd, 2026!)

The Girl Who Ran Away

Contemporary Mystery Fantasy

Buried in Lies

Listening to Fear

Bound in Silence

Those Deadly Secrets* (Coming October 2025!)

The Sanctuary Series

Epic Fantasy

(in best reading order)

(Series Complete)

Defender (Volume 1)

Avenger (Volume 2)

Champion (Volume 3)

Crusader (Volume 4)

Sanctuary Tales (Volume 4.25)

Thy Father’s Shadow (Volume 4.5)

Master (Volume 5)

Fated in Darkness (Volume 5.5)

Warlord (Volume 6)

Heretic (Volume 7)

Legend (Volume 8)

Ghosts of Sanctuary (Volume 9)

Call of the Hero (Volume 10)

The Scourge of Despair (Volume 11)

Rage of the Ancients (Volume 12)

Ashes of Luukessia

A Sanctuary Trilogy

(with Michael Winstone)

(Trilogy Complete)

A Haven in Ash (Ashes of Luukessia #1)

A Respite From Storms (Ashes of Luukessia #2)

A Home in the Hills (Ashes of Luukessia #3)

Liars and Vampires

YA Urban Fantasy

(with Lauren Harper)

(Series Complete)

No One Will Believe You

Someone Should Save Her

You Can’t Go Home Again

Lies in the Dark

Her Lying Days Are Done

Heir of the Dog

Hit You Where You Live

Her Endless Night

Burned Me

Something In That Vein

Southern Watch

Dark Contemporary Fantasy/Horror

(Series Complete)

Called

Depths

Corrupted

Unearthed

Legion

Starling

Forsaken

Hallowed

The Mira Brand Adventures

YA Modern Fantasy

(Series Complete)

The World Beneath

The Tide of Ages

The City of Lies

The King of the Skies

The Best of Us

We Aimless Few

The Gang of Legend

The Antecessor Conundrum

*Forthcoming, title subject to change

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Lewis Moore for the edits, Jeff Bryan, for the proofing, and thanks as always to the great Karri Klawiter of artbykarri.com for the cover.

Thanks, too, to my family for making this all possible.