HANDS GRASP ME, heave me in. Sweat seals the paper to my fingers.
“Jones! Hey, Jones!”
The Captain’s voice crashes over me in waves. A ring fills my ears—constant, reverberating, like someone’s tapping a tuning fork, never giving the note time to die. I look up, dazed. The Captain’s grip on my shoulders tethers me to the world. It’s all that stops me from drifting through the observatory’s open skylight to join the chopper and jet. They float above us, past the glowing roof, cut from the bright white nickel of the moon.
Only—wait. Why’s the roof glowing?
A hundred metal panels arc overhead, all the angry red of a stoplight. They dull as I squint at them, like they’re ashamed to be caught. Frost fractals crawl across their surface instead. Real glittery, something out of a dream.
Weird.
Two specks detach from the jet. They start off tiny, like flies walking over a lens. But they grow larger, larger—
Smash.
“Take cover!” roars the Captain. It’s lost beneath crashes, shrieks. Broken steel hails down, a biblical plague, shards erupting in all directions. Deafening. Disorienting. The observatory swirls like I’m in a tumble dryer.
I lose the Captain, Sherman, Birnbaum, and Turner, too. All of us divided, tossed by the churn.
Two Supers land among the cascade. I don’t see them so much as I feel them. A charge in the air, the tang of ozone piercing through the taste of fear, sweat, and blood.
I try to run, but I stumble. I try to stand, but I fall. Can’t think can’t move can’t breathe—
One of the metal panels, weakened by its overlay of frozen oxygen, strikes the floor to my left, shattering on impact. I fling up my arm. The world fills with stinging wasps, and I scream, and …
… Everything stops.
Is it over? Am I dead, too?
If so, why does my bruised jaw pulsate in time with the cuts on my arm?
All lights are extinguished. Beyond the bubble—I don’t know how else to describe the ice-white membrane in front of my face—the observatory wallows in shadow. I can just make out the shapes of henchmen, scrabbling over one another like rats in a cage. Shooting lightning at whatever moves.
But here? It’s calm. Peaceful.
I suck a deep breath. Like if I inhale enough of this cold, still air, it’ll freeze my insides, stop them quaking.
Then the bubble bursts.
“C’mon, Jones! Move!”
Sherman. Her words are mouth sounds, meaningless. What she’s saying takes several seconds to filter through the marshmallow fluff around my brain. I flinch at every boom and crash, as the heroes—one Surger, one Shaper—enthusiastically decimate our half-built laser.
Sherman loses patience. She heaves me to my feet with no visible effort.
Sidekicks rappel through the busted roof. Five, ten, more. They beeline for the scientists. A few henchmen stand in their way but quickly get out of it. Several flop over and play dead, despite not being hit.
Wise choice. My legs wobble inward. I wonder if I should copy them.
Sherman won’t let me. Her shoulder wedges under my armpit. She points at the door and off we stagger, dragging each other as much as ourselves.
The worst of the downpour is over. A few broken panels cling to their frames, threatening to crash down on anyone who walks beneath. We avoid those areas, but the rest of the observatory isn’t without hazards. Jagged shards carpet the floor. They stab through my shoes like I’m walking on spark plugs.
“Fuck,” Sherman hisses under her breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
She limps, but I don’t see blood. Must be hidden by her hologram. I run my hand over my arm, only to suppress a cuss of my own as I agitate a hundred tiny metal splinters, embedded in my skin.
The Flamer holds his own against the hero duo, crisping their fingers and scorching their hair. He’ll go down—only B-class, after all—but not without a fight.
The smell of smoke liquefies my knees. Sherman hauls me up, drags me on. Rotors rumble overhead. The news helicopter, angling for the best view. There’s the miniature shape of the reporter, playing their audience like an MC: The villain landed a punch! What will our heroes do?
They won’t talk about us. They never do.
The Flamer hollers for help. Henchmen open fire as the heroes advance. Their shots fly purposefully wide, crackling bright off the observatory’s walls. The Surger steals electrical energy from their bolts to add to her own assault as the Shaper melts fallen metal into a red-hot tide.
A stray shot sails toward us. It’s a meteorite, a falling star.
“Shit,” I say.
“Shit,” Sherman agrees.
Then the air solidifies again, freezing with a brittle-snap hiss. The glassy bubble trembles as the bolt strikes it, fraying at the edges.
I try to back up—the fuck is that? But my heel skids off the edge of a broken beam, and I’m still clinging to Sherman, and—
over
we
go.
My back smacks the ground. Sherman smacks me. My lungs pop like paper balloons, wind bursting from my mouth in a noisy gasp. Despite everything, I still worry about her catching a whiff of my puke breath.
Sherman couldn’t give less of an obvious crap. She sprawls on top of me, groaning, legs tangled with mine. Her panting breath breaks over my collarbones. And curving over us …
I stare past Sherman’s shoulder. Ice glimmers back at me.
Oh. Oh.
For once in my life, I have no idea what to say.
Sherman heaves herself up. She straddles one of my thighs, our bodies locking roughly together. Any other time, that might be distracting.
“You’re a Super,” I say. Each word a stone, flung in accusation. “You’re a fucking Super.”
Sherman gulps. I see it through her mask. I assumed she toned those gorgeous shoulders at the park, doing muscle-ups on the monkey bars with the baller boys. But no. They’re just a gift of her enhanced genes. Proof that she’s more, better. One of them.
I didn’t see a Normie shoot a Super on that news report. I don’t know what I saw—but that doesn’t matter. It just lost all meaning for me.
“Jones—”
“Get off me.”
Her hand hovers by my cheek. “Don’t—”
“Get the fuck off.”
Sherman’s mask wags as her mouth opens and closes. She’s not touching me, not quite, but the heat of her palm still caresses my face—until her fingers curl in a fist and she stands. The icy bubble (frozen air; Shaper discipline) fizzles away, leaving us exposed in the middle of the observatory.
Somehow, despite everything, I still hold Amelia’s crumpled pages. I wanna fling them in Sherman’s face, scream that she’s the Super, she should deal with this—but my fingers stay clutched tight.
All around us, henchmen drag battered teammates to the exit. The sidekicks let them. They must be uncomfortable, facing off against Normies. Not like the Flamer, incinerating Amelia as she ran. That’s the difference between heroes and villains. While heroes flex on us every now and then, there’s markedly less outright murder from their camp.
What a low fucking bar.
The Flamer kneels in the wreckage of his laser, defeated. Heroes pose as the freed scientists cheer. I don’t look. They’re the main attraction, we’re the sideshow. But to me, this is about us. Sherman. Jones.
“Sherman! Jones!” The Captain waves from the exit. “Tactical retreat!”
I treat Sherman to one last glare. I’ll deal with this revelation later. Like I’ll deal with Amelia’s final scream (replaying in my head on repeat), whatever secret she shoved into my hands, and the fact that I really, really need to brush my teeth.
We race out, hugging the walls, dark costumes melding into the shadows at the edges of the room. Our team doesn’t look their best. Turner lolls against the window of the Captain’s car, gripping his left arm, blood drooling around a tourniquet improvised from a belt. Birnbaum clutches his chest like he’s trying to squeeze a few more beats out of his heart. They’re alive, though. Considering the bloodbath behind us, that’s the solidest proof of miracles I’ve encountered in my life so far.
I actually ponder getting into the car with them—but no. I’m not that mad at Sherman.
“You good to ride?” the Captain asks as I ram my head into the helmet and clamber on behind her, grasping the seat bar without prompting. Amelia’s papers are now stashed in my shirt pocket. Sherman nods, but neither of us misses her wince when my leg knocks hers. The Captain cranks his ignition. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing.” Her voice is doing its stiff robot thing.
“Bullshit. Follow me. Turner needs stitches; might as well get you lot patched up, too.”
Sherman tilts her head. “You’re taking him to the hospital?”
“No way. Last thing you kids need is medical debt. I got a guy. Just … don’t go spreading it around.” He winds up the window and starts the long reverse back down the hill.
The sidekicks’ flashlights sweep the wreckage behind us. Ahead, a thread of smoke crawls into the sky from the spot where Amelia fell. I can’t look. I shudder, pressing closer to Sherman’s warmth despite myself. Tonight isn’t the worst night of my life—but it sure comes close.