A shockwave sent us hurtling through open air. Ezra, having been nearest to Atticus at the time of impact, got the worst of it, while Leigh, farther off, only suffered a few scratches from being tossed off her feet. Since I'd been on my knees when the blast reached me, I flew only a short distance, and hit the ground rolling, my body scraping over the uneven, dilapidated street until finally jolting to stop against the side of an overturned building. Distantly, I felt bits of metal and rock shallowly pierce my flesh, chasing my same path after Atticus's explosion.
I blinked once slowly, and minutes passed in an instant. Shouting. Someone was shaking me.
"Stop," I groaned, blearily batting off the person hovering over me.
My sight adjusted to take in Leigh's tear-stained face. The laceration by her cheek and another streaking through her eyebrow mixed with her tears to create the disconcerting image of someone crying blood.
"We're almost surrounded," she said, voice cracking. She tugged me up by my arm, hugging her second close to her chest, like it was broken. "It's not safe anymore. We have to go now!"
Surrounded? For a single, dull witted moment, I wanted to ask by whom.
Then I processed the words being shouted overhead and took in the swarm of gray closing in, tightening their wide circle. Not around me and Leigh. We were incidental. They enwreathed what had once been Atticus, now Nightshade, returned as a villain in full. His worst fear realized.
He would rather be dead.
He told me so. Hearing his distorted screams beneath the roaring hurricane of power encapsulating his obscured form, I knew I couldn't follow Leigh and leave him to that miserable half-life. Feeling a pain never blunted by joy, a prisoner in his own body.
But what could I do? The kindest thing - what he would have wanted - would be to have someone put him down once for all, ending both him and the risk he posed to others.
As much as it felt like killing a part of myself, I refused to burden another with a life they didn't deserve solely to protect my own fragile emotions. The love I felt for him - and I genuinely thought it was love, the newly budding type that, given time, may have matured into the forever kind - wouldn't stay my hand from what needed to be done.
If I couldn't save Atticus Courten, I swore to find a way to end him.
He loved me enough to embrace his own eternal torment without a hope for reprieve, and I loved him enough to break my own heart.
"Don't kill him! Capture only!"
I tracked the voice to the Constable, who accumulated a new set of protectors to replace the incapacitated, not counting for Fate, the only one of the previous retinue to return to the Constable's side unscathed. Beneath his cowl, Fate alone appeared largely indifferent to the threat in front of him, and ambivalent to his duty as a guard, instead scanning his surroundings in a long sweep. Searching out villains they'd missed, perhaps?
No. That couldn't be it. Any escapee from the caved in prison that remained alive and had avoided recaptured would be incredibly foolish to stick around the epicenter of gathered Supers. Only after thinking it, I realized that the same narrow definition applied perfectly to me. Escaped, undetained.
Foolish for not running.
I let Leigh drag me to my feet before murmuring, "I'm staying." And although our earlier whimsy seemed criminally out of place, like laughter at a funeral, I contorted my lips into a thin smile. "I expect you to find a way to break me out of prison when this is over, presuming they don't get you on that arrest warrant first."
For possibly the first time in our long acquaintanceship, she stayed serious. "This doesn't end well, Lily. You see that, right?"
Leigh was wrong. It had already ended. It ended the second Atticus put his hands to Tempest's uncovered skin. It ended when Atticus got captured, or before, when I forced him to whisk me away from the Guildhall to cover up my mistakes. Everything since that singular choice seemed like a forgone conclusion., and I existed in the blank space after the book spelled out its last words. The only avenue left in order for me to salvage a spiraling situation was to carve out an epilogue Atticus would have approved of.
"I'll be fine," I said. "I'm tougher than I look. Well, that's not true, but I'll heal." On the surface.
"He's my brother. I want to help him, too! It's just - it's just, we can't-"
I cut her off. "You can't, but I owe him this much."
She ground her teeth, clearly warding off the urge to snap at me. "You can owe him this same favor in a week when we are not at imminent risk of the law catching up to us!"
"You heard the Guild leader. He said 'capture'. They want to lock him in a cage, maybe even experiment on him to find out what makes him so different from other mimics. I don't know if that's even impossible at this point, but I can't take that chance."
I had no plan as I stormed past her into the open. Plans were the luxury of the well-prepared. None of my brilliant plans ever seemed to work out anyway, so maybe this was better.
"He won't thank you for getting yourself locked up!" she called at my back
I had no words left in me to say, so I kept quiet, kept walking forward. She caught my arm.
"I'm not like you. I can actually die here, and," her voice wavered in her throat, "I don't want to die, Lily. I was willing to risk it all at the chance of seeing you both safe, but there is no true reward out of this. I won't lie and say I understand everything that's going on, but even I can tell that whatever that thing is," her eyes briefly flitted to absorb Atticus, and just as quickly darted away, "it's not my brother anymore."
Even though I fundamentally disagreed, I at last understood her reservations, why she stuck around so long after my first dismissal. Over the years, we were attached at the hip, no task too simple or menial to not require the both of us, so of course she assumed I meant for this task to be taken on together.
I softened, disentangling myself from her hold and pulling back a step. "Leigh, I want you to go home. I never intended to involve you in the first place, and I would never risk your life, especially knowing there is no real risk to my own. It wouldn't be fair, so I want you to go home, and stay out of the city for awhile."
Unable to meet my eyes, she turned. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
*~*~*~*~*
I carried myself to higher ground to better assess the situation. Although part of me feared the uncharacteristically low roof for that part of the city was in imminent danger of collapse, taking after the other half of the building, it provided excellent views of Atticus lashing out against the dozen-plus Supers in active battle with him. It was a pitiful attempt at subjugation. The Guild's usual combatants had largely been decimated in the altercations before Atticus lost control. The only heavy hitter remaining were an electricity user and an explosives expert. Neither made much of an impact. Furthermore, a quarter of the physically able were too busy rescuing the unconscious from danger and dragging them to safety to assist in taking Atticus down.
Gravel crunching alerted me to someone's heavy-footed approach.
"Why aren't you over there? With them?" I motioned vaguely towards the Constable. "I always pictured you as something akin to his right hand."
"I'm not much of a fighter, to be honest, " Ren said mildly, coming to stand at a comfortable distance beside me, watching the show. "It's really not looking too good for us, is it?"
"I'd like to believe destroying you all would make Atticus happy. It's the least you deserve."
He snorted an amused note of affirmation. "You don't know the half of it."
"Don't pretend to be better than them," I said. "I won't believe you. You are complicit. Every one of you who knew about the fake villains, how you use them to manipulate donors into writing bigger checks, how you imprison Thaumaturges deemed a threat to those in power. The Guild is a greater problem than many of the villains you're tasked with getting rid of.. You are what the villains would have been if they organized and managed to trick people into thanking them for their own exploitation."
"I never tried to stop you snooping around. I didn't even turn in Atticus Courten when he returned to society from his... mental health retreat. He kept his identity secret when he worked for the Guild, but of course I knew Nightshade's true identity. I know everyone's. You glean a lot about a person when you hear their every waking thought. I don't even have to try."
I slid my gaze over to him, too drained to show my surprise. "Why didn't you turn him in?"
He shrugged. "No point, really. I saw the state of his mind after absorbing Shadow's powers. I knew he wouldn't be going home to his family like that. I'll admit I was a bit... taken aback at his later return, not as Nightshade, but as himself all these years later. Call me soft-hearted, kid, but I believe in second chances. I hoped he was putting all that villain stuff behind him and could have a fresh start. It seemed like he would, at first. He kept his head low and wasn't causing any problems, until he took you for a second time, of course.Kidnapping is a nasty habit to get into."
"The Constable would have loved to know all that information early on, I imagine," I said pointedly.
"I believe my dear leader has a tendency to be heavy-handed at times. It would do him well to accept that his powers are never coming back."
"He won't."
"He won't," Ren acknowledged with a small nod.
"You've still lied for him, still allowed the Guild to do all those things without speaking up." My eyes tracked a woman in Elder robes make the mistake of stepping backwards into the long shadow of the Guildhall and immediately be swallowed by a surge of inky blackness. In an hour, the sun would set low enough in the sky to make avoiding such a fate impossible. I reckoned that was the worst of his abilities to combat. Once you were in his shadows, you were stuck, and anyone trying to pull you out get sucked in as well. While the Supers grew weak from exhaustion and dwindling numbers the longer this went on, Atticus only stood to gain power. Finally, I tore myself away from the Elder's flailing limbs being dragged beneath a relentless tide of night and faced Ren fully. "You didn't seek me out just to chat, so why are you here?"
He met my gaze, for once not looking at me like I was an inconvenience foisted upon him. "Let's not beat around the bush any longer. Authority rarely looks kindly on those that know too much for their own good. One of these days, they were going to put me in prison, too. Sooner than later, if I tried to leave. The secrets I could tell you... About the Constable, about the other Elders... about yourself, even."
Given he was obviously awaiting a reaction to the implication that he was sitting on all my deepest, darkest thoughts, I refused to give him one. "I thought you said we were done beating around the bush. They wouldn't have sent you if they wanted me captured, since your powers aren't suited to that task. I could push you off the building and run away. I could push us both off the building for good measure and still run away afterwards, leaving your broken body behind."
He wrinkled his nose disdainfully. "I'd prefer if you didn't."
"So let me ask again," I enunciated slowly, tired of dealing with people who each had their own hidden motivations and sought to use me, while keeping me none the wiser, "why are you here?"
His arms crossed over his chest, cutting sharp wrinkles into his pressed gray suit - not a uniform, a normal business suit, the same as he always wore to mislead people into thinking him powerless. "I think we can come to an agreement."
What did I have to gain from them, after all the muddied water between us? Did they want me to turn myself in in exchange for an IOU to be returned never? Hard pass. "Not interested."
Instead of battling my words, he combated my thoughts. "This would be an agreement between you and me, not the Guild, and I offer you perfect immunity. You ought to be interested in at least that much."
I froze, then shook my head. "You don't have the authority. I'm not that gullible. Besides, you haven't even said what you want from me."
"I want what you want, actually," he replied in a way that didn't seem like an outright fabrication. Still, my trust in any Guild member ran thin. Even Tempest... no, he was Ezra, now in light of his loss of powers... Even Ezra had done more horrible things than I ever thought him capable of. We'd been friends, briefly more, and he'd still done those things. If I no longer trusted him, why trust Ren? Reading my thoughts, Ren sighed, the sound seemingly dragged out of his throat. "We both want Atticus Courten dealt with before he can kill innocent people - and no, before you accuse me, I don't want to capture the kid to experiment on until his skin falls off. I will follow your lead on what you deem fit, so long as he is no longer a public nuisance."
"Like I said, you don't have the authority to make these deci-"
"I will," he cut in confidently, and, for the first time, I caught onto his air of conspiracy. "I will have the authority - and soon. The Guild is the weakest it has ever been. No one has been able to reform it due to the Old Guard jealously protecting their unquestionable authority - voice dissent and risk disappearing forever - but the Guild is currently crumbling, thanks to you and your pet villain. I plan to come out of this on top. It's about time for some secrets to be exposed, don't you agree?"
Too drained to muster up even the most subdued emotional reaction at what would have been fantastic news a week ago, I said dully, "Happy to have been of service. Sounds like you have everything all figured out. I wish you luck."
"I'm gonna need a little more from you than good luck in order for you to earn your immunity. I need you to stop him before he causes more damage." Ren pointed to the raging ice storm protecting - and hurting - Atticus.
"You've got to be kidding," I said when I followed his direction. "I am not that type of Super, for one thing."
My initial plans for killing him were all in their beginning stages, but they carried the common denominator of waiting days, or even weeks, to catch him off guard in a moment of fluctuating power, any moment of weakness. This was the opposite of weak. For anyone else, the mere attempt could be classified as suicide.
"You are the only one who can get close enough to him without dying," Ren pressed, probably scanning my thoughts.
"Not that close."
He briefly examined a message that popped up on his expensive watch, nodding absently to himself. "I am confident I can get you close enough."
"You?" I scoffed. "What can you do?"
Sharply, he looked up from his outgoing text on his phone. "It's like you keep forgetting I read minds. I know every Super who has ever felt discontent towards the Guild. I have allies, people who want to be heroes with clean consciences. They'll get you as close as humanly possible."
I felt suddenly lightheaded, and a nauseating pit formed in my stomach at his assurances. I couldn't do this. Not yet. It was too soon. I had to let go, I knew that, but letting go was a hard habit to start when my every instinct railed against it. I whispered, "I can't."
He fired off another slew of messages, then pocketed his cell. "I'm afraid if we value lives, we don't have time to spare."
Did he think I didn't know that? Even knowing Atticus would be the first to beg me to agree, I wanted to put off our mutual self-destruction for as long as possible, in hopes that a miracle might occur and take the whole nasty business out of my hands.
I rubbed circles on my sternum, as though I could massage the aching pain therein.
Ren considered me, his nearly black eyes fathomless and no doubt seeing right through to my core. There had been a time, recently, when I tried to mask my thoughts, either muting them or making them a confusing mess of useless information. I bothered with neither farce now. What else had I to hide? My secrets were long laid bare at my feet.
"What do you think he is thinking about?" Ren finally inquired abruptly. "While you mope alone up here, what do you think is going through Atticus's head?"
Truthfully, it hadn't occurred to me that he might be thinking anything, or that he even had the capacity for thought left. I whipped my head to face Ren, nearly giving myself whiplash in the process.
"Tell me!" I demanded.
"Admittedly, it's nothing much," he confessed. "Just one word: a name. I think you can hazard a guess as to whose." Frowning, as he heard my initial thoughts on their way to my tongue, he said, "No, not the Constable's. And not his sister's or mother's or father's, either, since I can see those were your next guesses. Must I narrow it down further, or are you really so oblivious? Half - more than half - out of his mind, and the only coherent thought in his head is your name, repeated over and over. He's looking - for you."