"Tempest, stop! Please! Ezra-" The last thing I cared about was protecting his identity at that point, "-don't!"
Either not hearing my pleas or not caring about them, he shot past me in the direction of Atticus's fall, a jetstream rustling my hair in his wake
I tried to give chase, to throw myself over every obstacle in my way in hopes of somehow reaching Atticus first, because despite knowing he still retained my healing, and would have it for a matter of days before it would begin to fade, I needed to see his survival for myself. If I didn't confirm with my own eyes what my rational mind already knew, I'd go mad.
Another shake of the earth usurped my balance, and then a small round object ripping through my abdominals from behind completely forced me down to my knees. I caught myself on one hand, only for that hand to suddenly burst aflame. Using the other, I frantically tried to bat the fire out, even as angry red blisters bubbled over my skin. The searing heat threatened to spread along my sleeves, endangering my hair and the rest of my body.
I was seconds away from ripping my shirt off entirely, when I heard, "That's enough," and the flames cut out, leaving the affected area a waxy red. Raw. It felt like I was still burning, even though my eyes told me otherwise.
"So she can actually heal," said a woman, Will--O-Wisp, the mistress of fire. I'd met her twice, atop my sister's school and later at the press conference. "Creepy."
Most people would be horribly scarred for life, but the welts boiled as though in a time lapse, first worse, then better, then gone completely from sight. I tore my attention away from the nauseating view and sprang into a run, dodging a new spray of metal from Ferrus. Compared to the agonizing burn, I'd temporarily overlooked being shot. That, too, healed, spitting a round metal orb from a place caught between two of my lower ribs.
That was the freedom of healing, the true boon of my gift that I rarely considered. I did not fear what they could do to me, not when compared to what they might inflict on others. I would always be fine. I healed. I recovered. I kept pushing forward without true consequence. I-
The ground split around my ankle as I stepped down, drawing me in less like a sinkhole and more like the jaws of a bear trap that threatened to shred me into ribbons at any attempt to break free. I did try. I tried until I saw a shock of white bone peaking out within a mess of red, and I intended to keep trying, when the Constable rounded in front of me, between me and my sole purpose, between me and Atticus. Super guards stuck close to his side. Will-O, Ferrus, and Tectonic, the last of which I was only now understanding had never been a villain in the first place, but rather a Guild plant intended to look like a villain for the sake of the gullible civilians. The same dirty job Atticus once held, meaning they orchestrated the attack on their own Guildhall all those months ago.
With that understanding came anger, so I directed my next words at Tectonic. "You deliberately caved in the prison to kill all the villains before they could escape," I spat. "That's dozens of lives, gone at once."
"Hundreds, actually," he corrected, unabashed. Unlike Tempest and Shade, his mask covered the whole of his face, save for small teardrop carvings for him to see through. "We also take the supervillains caught by the other Guilds across the country. They don't have the infrastructure to hold those animals."
Bile rose in my throat. I knew many of the prisoners hadn't been saints, but others couldn't have deserved the almost certain death inflicted on them. A painful, perhaps drawn out death. Skye's only supposed murder had been a twisted kindness. My grandfather, though already dead, committed no crimes at all and still found himself imprisoned through a complicated web of greed. How many others had similar stories? How many of them were dead?
"Unfortunately," he continued, "some escaped, like you and the traitor. Look around, though. We'll round them up soon enough. There's more of us than there are survivors."
"Atticus is not a traitor, " I snapped. "You all betrayed him first."
"I told you we should have killed him outright the second we caught him," Will-O told the Constable, as though I hadn't spoken. "It was always too dangerous to capture and contain him after what he did the last time."
Exasperated, like they'd had this same back and forth several times at length in the recent days, the Constable said, "Dear girl, you might recall we couldn't even get close to killing him at first. The few fatal blows we inflicted healed right on up, and after we had him subdued it seemed such a waste to execute him when we had his body at our disposal."
"Liar," I growled. My amalgamation of anger and horror at their casual mention of trying to kill Atticus dulled the pain of ripping my ankle free from its confines, and I lunged. Having no tool more vicious than my own nails, I raked them down the Constable's face in one long swipe before any of them registered my freed state long enough to restrain me. "You only wanted him to find a way to get your powers back! You're a fraud! How can you be the Guild leader without being a Super anymore?"
I didn't actually care that he was still the leader; I just wanted him to feel a fraction of my own boiling rage.
Half gloved hands reached around my torso to jerk me away. On my way to land face-down on the ground, I saw Ferrus, Will-O, and Tectonic alternating between appearing shocked and rushing to check on their leader in my periphery, eliminating them from being my apprehender. A knee pressed into my back.
"Stop this," the person - a man - muttered, sounding less demanding than imploring. It was the Constable's loyal shadow, Fate. "You're only making it worse for yourself."
"Good work, dear boy. You two, keep restraining her, but pick her up," the Constable ordered, a hard edge in his voice. "I want her to learn consequences, since evidently she's gotten ideas above her ability now that she knows her wounds won't last."
No sooner was I dragged up by Tectonic and Ferrus when the Constable struck the back of his hand so hard across my cheek that it set my ears ringing.. Flexing my jaw to ward against the stinging, I rolled my head back to leer headlong at him.
"What?" I asked lowly. "Did I hit a nerve?"
Although I anticipated the second blow, it hurt the same. Possibly more, as his mounting annoyance translated into physical frustration.
He raised his hand to go for a third, but Fate startled him out of the moment by interjecting, "Sir."
"Quite right, dear boy. Quite right..." the Constable mused. "Why dirty my own hands? She's hardly a real Super at all. Not worth the time I've wasted, beyond this bizarre little alliance she formed with my Nightshade."
"Are you delusional? He wants you dead! He isn't yours," I spat, struggling to rip my arms free, only to have them twisted further back in retaliation. I gasped when one popped out of place.
At only a sidelong glance from the Constable, Will-O clenched her fingers into a tight fist and feigned tossing some nonexistent object in her hands at my feet. Where it would have landed, flames erupted, licking up my legs, blackening the fabric that clung to my thighs, melting it into my flesh. I was a witch at trial. I was not stronger than that pain, but as soon as I screamed, as though they awaited the exact moment I bent beneath their torment, the fire disappeared, leaving me struggling to fill my lungs. Blinking treacherous moisture from my eyes, I hung limply between the two Supers carrying my weight, though luckily the shoulder had already mended itself.
Why is this happening to me?
The Constable nodded, satisfied, if not entirely happy by my circumstances. He had a lot of nerve to pretend to be so damn pitying when he was the cause of everything, going back to where it all started, after Atticus stole his powers amidst saving his life. "Do you get it now? Why there is no purpose to extending your suffering by struggling? You won't be able to escape us unless we want you to escape. Dear girl, your power can't help you with that..."
Although the skin on my legs felt stretched thin, like plastic wrap pulled too tightly and at risk of breaking down the middle, I forced myself to stand using my own strength. Swallowing hard, I shoved the words past my battered throat, "I will keep trying until I succeed, and when I do, I will find a way to kill you, if someone else hasn't managed it already. I might not be powerful like some of the other Supers, able to conjure wind or fire or storms at will, but the one thing I can promise is that I will outlive you, and I will do everything in my power to make your life as short as possible."
It hurt to voice, because it was admitting the possibility that Atticus might not make it through this with me, that I very well could be plunging into the future alone on my plan for vengeance. I would escape them eventually, I knew that much down to my marrow, but it might not happen within a few days, or possibly weeks. By then, Atticus's mimicry of my healing would fade, and he'd be as mortal as any other villain. They could do whatever they wanted to him after that.
The Constable let out a barking laugh that boomed through the no longer empty streets without sprinkling any true amusement in his warily shifting eyes. "Do you think your power is infinite? What will happen if we injure you faster than you can heal? If we burn you down to cinders, will you still regenerate? Will you feel your flesh melting, your muscles cooking, again and again in perpetuity until your strength wanes? If we bury you? Riddle you with metal and electrocute you? How long can you keep it up? It might be worth finding out."
A shiver ran coarse down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
At the sound of metal blades chopping through the air, a news helicopter flying over the scene of the city's latest disaster, the Constable spared a sour glance over his shoulder to where Tempest had followed Atticus. Previously, I couldn't make anything of their altercation due to the invisible nature of both of their current powers, putting aside the fact that the last I saw of Atticus he'd been barely able to move, let alone use telekinesis. What I saw now wasn't floating people and objects.
I saw ice. I saw shadows moving in eerie, unnatural ways. I saw all three of his powers.
"Go hasten that mess," the Constable told Will-O, jerking his chin towards the fighting. "Nightshade was weakened. Tempest should have wrapped things up by now. Help him do so." And like someone accustomed to being obeyed, he offhandedly commanded Fate, "And do something about the press. We don't need attention of that sort at the present moment."
"Sir," Fate replied softly, unchallenging and meant for the Constable's ears alone. I wondered at what ability he possessed that made the Constable think him capable of grounding helicopters without leveling suspicion of foul play. "In all due respect, more will soon replace that one. I won't be able to send them all away."
"Just do it."
After one last indecipherable look at the Constable and then myself, Fate reluctantly turned away in the direction of the crumbling Guildhall. Instead of ducking inside, he clung to the walls keeping the hovering chopper in his sights until he slipped around a corner.
"He's still pressing an advantage," the Constable sighed in an infuriatingly world-weary way as he watched Atticus toss Will-O high up against a towering building using his telekinesis and freeze her to a tinted window.
Despite my own pitiful situation, I laughed in appreciation for the genius at play. She could defrost herself easily with her fire, only to fall a hundred feet to potential death, or she could wait it out and still defrost anyway due to her body heat. Tempest, ever the knight in shining armor, flew to collect her, but Atticus wasn't having that, and fired a barrage of razor-sharp icicles to keep him too busy to mount a rescue.
Tectonic's grip on my arm grew more punishing to combat my amusement. "I'm more than enough to handle this one. Send Ferrus over there, too."
Grinning widely to counter the spike of trepidation I felt at the thought of Atticus becoming even more outnumbered, I said, "Yes. Please do send him away. I like the odds of dealing with only one of you much better for myself."
"There will be no need for that." The Constable's eyes tracked Tempest's continued attempts to get to Will-O, a worried glint in them. "I have something much better in mind."