[IC] The Seventh Division: AW2

[Palindromatic]

THE//SEVENTH//DIVISION

A rumble, an atmospheric roar; the darkening skyline slowly leaking across the pale stretch of blueness threatened to carry along storms with it, to light up the world with its intimidatingly dangerous flamboyance. The scent of rain was carried in the warm breeze, and the temperature had dropped to something warningly cooler than it had been only moments before. There was a thunderstorm on its way, and as Merle Moreau stood on the ledge of the seventy-two-storey building’s roof, she found comfort in watching it loom off in the horizon. It would make its way to them, gradually and at its own leisure. And not a single spec of human traffic on the streets below, not a single vehicle weaving in and around the roads, knew it was coming.

Merle took a step closer to the edge, let her toes hang off and balance on nothingness. She watched a figure in neon pink stand-out with such stark vibrancy amongst the black and greys and neutral tones of businessmen and –women. The downtown core was a sea of skyscrapers and colossal monuments of humanity’s need to overachieve; and the schools of mindless fish were commuters rushing to subway stations, to catch streetcars and buses and head home after a long day’s work. They were waves of suits and ties and gaunt faces drooping into contentment. From so high up, they were not individuals – they were not single-minded persons with fully-realized personalities, hopes, love lives and fears. They were just a collective indication that humanity pressed forward, not because it wanted to, but because it still had to. These people did not work office jobs because they wanted to; they did not shed skin cells in a cubicle confined from the outside world, did not let their eyes find a cozy familiarity glued to buzzing monitors and screens, did not let their name become nothing more than what was etched onto their personnel ID, because they wanted to.

These people, the hive mind of the working class, did not exist in that safe state of vocational purgatory because they wanted to.

And yet Merle still saved countless numbers of them just so that their only issues were remaining stuck in a dead-end office job and let that define their failure in life.

Merle’s failures included letting an entire city die. A city not unlike the one she currently watched over like a ghostly sentinel. The man that just tripped over his own pair of shoes two sizes too big for him next to the raggedy panhandler outside the NBOC Tower knew damn well who Zenith was, what Zenith had done – both good and bad. But it didn’t weigh heavy on them like it did for her. Down by the convenient store, the woman in the off-white pantsuit soiled by the ketchup stain on her left breast from lunch resumed sitting in her padded office chair every day while Merle had spent the past two years mourning over the loss of friends, of family, of strangers she never met but still attended the funerals of. And none of them cared at all about that. Not a single one of the last commuters who trickled down the steps into the subway station cast a single condolence or care her way. Only blame. Only criticism for not trying hard enough. Only hatred and loathing for having given up.

While they caved and allowed themselves to fold neatly into the life of an everyday citizen – haughtily unaware and uncaring because they did not want the life they were rescued to continue living – Merle fought to let them have that life. And she found herself, once again, readying every last atom comprising her body to fight once again for them. And not a single one of them knew it.

A jet flew by overhead, its telltale droning noise catching up with it seconds after it vanished out of Merle’s peripheral vision. More and more of the sky had succumbed to the spreading plague of nasty weather the weatherman forgot to predict. Weather best suited spent indoors with a hot mug of green tea blowing steamy tendrils off into the world while the power was knocked out and the only entertainment was listening to the thunder, watching the lightning, the way the trees danced in the violent upheaval of Mother Nature’s exhales. But not today.

When the noise of the jet hit Merle, she paused, let her eyes lose focus on the street she had been watching, and thought…

In the dead center of a permafrost-coated street, she had stood. All five feet and ten inches of her, her boots rooted to the ground, her fingertips drumming off the assault rifle dangling from the sling draped over her shoulder. It was an accessory of war she had not been sure she would use yet felt comfortable cradling.

The city of Adventbrook silently shivered in the throes of a mid-winter snowfall. It chilled Merle to the bone, made her feel something other than total petrification. Something other than absolute certainty that it would be the last time she ever witnessed a downpour of snow so elegant, so soft. She wasn’t ready to accept that.

Her back had been turned to the remainder of her squad for the solid five minutes that team of four spent staring down their decided-upon target: the massive object in the sky, its body swaying – wriggling gently – as if it were a flag caught in a constant phantom breeze. It had an organic look to it, like a mountain had bred with a whale and the offspring was a demented amphibious crag – a living, fleshy rock, so misshapen and unruly in its stature that no god could have created it with good intentions in mind. Only the goal to terrorize those who gazed upon it with the concept that nightmares didn’t come from under beds or closets; the true terrors emerged from the clouds, from the outer rim of the solar system. The true monsters swam dauntingly through space to the tiny blue planet. And when they arrived, there was no plan to attack instantly. Only to linger, to let every last human see their impressive comfortability in chaos and fear. They didn’t just revel in horror; they bred in it, found love in it. Staring down the long, jagged beast with no identifiable face and no possible limbs or appendages – just one lengthy, uneven body – inspired that fear without hesitation or pause.

A shudder thrummed through Merle’s lips. She blew it to the wind in a gust of visible breath, a fluffy cloud of her final breaths drifting away into the icy chill.

The worst thing to acknowledge about the flying, unnaturally organic beast was it was only one of several. The smaller one with the ridged humps trailing down its curved back reared upwards and shook the falling snow from off its body. It was just one of few. And every last one of them hovered over the city like a stationary blimp reminding the cowering citizens caught in the crossfire of inter-species war to buy a subscription to inevitable death by otherworldly destruction.

It happened somewhat slowly, the inevitable arrival of what was once just pixelated shapes broadcasted on every screen around the world. That had only been mere months ago. Their trek past the planets Merle may never know again felt like it was a slow-burn passage through their pocket of the galaxy. She felt she had time to prepare, both physically and mentally. She though the world had time to prepare, and yet in the corner of her eye she could spot the faces peeking through the windows of the high-rise condominium; people didn’t flee like they knew they should have. They would be casualties on the battlefield.

Merle had not been prepared for that.

The smallest bio-ship of the group that had found a nice niche between the Bell Tower and the library jerked towards the sky, letting out a low grumble as it did so that echoed across the atmosphere. It shook the ground; it was earthquake-causing vocalizations. The bio-ship that could just be glimpsed between the two skyscrapers ahead followed suit – the one directly above Merle and her team let out a shattering roar like a few millions trumpets blaring at once.

Merle’s heart stopped and plummeted into her guts. One of the Polyhedron trio next to her raised his assault rifle; someone outfitted in a massive, mechanical behemoth-of-a-suit engineered by Vorian shot out a plume of liquid flame, revved a motor on its back, sent discharged heat swirling by their feet. Merle herself flexed her hands, felt the cold concrete in her mind, and was ready to rip up the very ground at a moment’s notice.

The roaring swelled, the many titanic howls syncing-up, forming a battle cry in unison.

Until the world fell silent.

And it was the last few seconds before Adventbrook would ever know a living silence again.

A light dribble pelted her nose, followed by its twin that nosedived into Merle’s cheek. Merle returned to the present, became aware of the rain that began to dampen her clothing. The sky was a sheet of multi-layered darkness, no color or light for miles. Even as the street cleared of people who sought shelter indoors, protected from the thunderstorm just beginning to put on a show, Merle still stared downward.

The rain intensified from a light trickle to a steady downpour. Merle wiped the water leaking down her brow with the back of her hand and leapt. With her mind she reached out to the building across the road, felt the sandpapery roughness of the wall in the very epicenter of all her thoughts, and pulled herself toward it. She whipped through the air like a bullet, crossed the gap in mere seconds. When she was close enough, she pushed herself away – felt the wind push against her – and mentally latched onto the cold, metal crane a few buildings down.

Using the various buildings and landmarks, Merle navigated the downtown core, swerving between buildings like a bird on a mission, flying a few hundred feet off the ground. The city zoomed by her in a blur of stone, glass and metal; she hardly paid attention to any of it, save for the next object she would use to pull herself closer toward.

Up ahead Merle saw the skeletal carcass of a building still under construction, its interior left exposed. It was the one, the one she had been looking for for hours and only found when she needed it. She headed towards it, dipping under and around the top-heavy tower separating Merle from her destination. With finesse she had always been proud of she gripped onto the metal support beam visible in the inside of the work-in-progress building and gingerly came to a slow hover before it. She swooped inside, touched her feet down on rough flooring, and was thankful to be out of the rain. The cold had gotten to her, made her feel chilled beyond comfort even in the warm spring heat.

As she ran her hands over her face to flick away the rain that caught her, Merle absent-mindedly turned around, gazed out at the city she was trying to hide from, and –

An explosion, a burst of intense light; Merle was blinded, felt the ground smack her hard in the back, felt her skull slam against the pavement. Heat licked her bare hands and face – her palms bore into the snow beside her, pushed herself up, felt the solid world beneath her feet but still couldn’t see.

Someone screamed, their voice trailing away overhead. Her eyesight returned to her, showed her the grey sky and the massive girth of the bio-ship that slammed its weight into buildings as it chased after someone. Merle covered her head with her arms as debris rained down on the ground. Little black dots ate away the corners of her eyesight. A second explosion ripped through the air and something heavy crumbled nearby.

“Zenith, get up!” A voice crackled in Merle’s earpiece. She didn’t know who it was, didn’t have time to contemplate who had seen her narrowly miss the street that erupted beneath her and took her down with its impact. Merle was on her feet and up in the air again before she fully registered someone had even spoken to her.

Gracelessly, Merle flung herself around a building, was airborne once more. Down the street she saw one of them – not the bio-ships, not the things that carried the enemy. But the enemy itself. It had lowered itself to street-level, was casually strolling toward a tank and an onslaught of gunfire. The long, billowing wings that trailed behind it had flared, the lack of any other limbs, its tendrils lashing around itself rapidly.

In a split second, the tank was pirouetting through the air, and the next moment, it had collided into the building next to it.

“Need back-up on 75th!” Someone barked in the earpiece.

Merle felt the tank in her mind, its rough, metallic edges. She didn’t think of the people trapped in it – didn’t think much of the repercussions. With her own telekinetic strength, Merle lifted that tank high into the air, saw the soldiers scatter for cover, witnessed the hesitation of the squid-like alien. It began to spin around to face Merle, its tendrils darting to stare her down.

It had barely budged when Merle slammed the tank down on it – hard, hard enough to send dust and debris kicking upwards.

“Back-up! 75th and Queen! Now!”

The tank toppled to the side. The being rose, climbing into the air to meet Merle’s level. The tank followed it, twirling in the air like it weighed nothing.

Merle spun around, began to back up. A scream in her ear was cut short, replaced by static. She headed back the way she came, her mind racing for ideas –

Something hard careened into her side. Merle stumbled, dropped a few feet, but quickly regained balance. Her mind locked onto the stop sign below and it was uprooted, floating by her side in a second and inches from slamming into the face of Vivian Pang. Though she wore a suit that granted her levitation, her face wasn’t concealed. Merle saw the fear all over it.

“Run,” Vivian mouthed seconds before Merle was thrown to the side as the tank suddenly replaced the spot where Vivian had been hovering only a second before. The body of Vivian slammed into the face of a skyscraper and fell to the ground with a rain of glass, her arms and legs twisting and flailing around her uselessly.

A nearby bio-ship bellowed.

Merle had the split second thought to zoom downward to the street to reclaim Vivian, to get her out of harm’s way, but just as quickly as that thought was formulated, the tank rammed into the ground where Vivian’s body had been.

It lifted. Merle didn’t dare look at what remained.

Instead, Merle looked over to the alien crossing more distance between them at a slow gait. Its tendrils licked the sides of the buildings, its wings fanned out threateningly. A yell rumbled from deep within Merle’s chest, ricocheted up her throat, and what came out was something bestial and uncontrolled as Merle felt the ridges of its sides, the leathery softness of its wings.

“God fuck you!” Merle spat. She threw her hands out, lashed them to the sides, and watched as the bulk of the alien shot out a spray of liquid as its midsection was bisected. The multiple orifices lining either side flared, its tendrils probed the massive gash in its midriff. It began to decline, jerking around as it did so, and landed roughly in a bank of snow.

“Broadview! Please! Anybody! Broad…”

The old Bell Tower down the road burst forward in a plume of rubble and smoke. A bio-ship emerged from within the carnage it caused, its uneven body thrashing about as multiple members of The Sixth Division gave all they had to make a dent.

An engine whirred overhead; one of the Polyhedron trio flew through the air, and only a heartbeat later, a winged alien chased after the smoke trails the Polyhedron left behind.

Fire shot up into the air to Merle’s right, and an inhuman screech rang out.

Two tanks and many soldiers rolled across the street below, their turrets aimed at the bio-ship that had quickly reduced the number of Division members fighting it.

That moment, when Merle had been suspended mid-air and watching the bio-ship slam its weight into Agatha Thavarasa and sent the older woman careening into the ground, Merle felt it. For the first time in that battle, she felt an inkling of defeat already pulsating through her circulatory system.

It was then that she knew they might not win.

. . .

As quickly and as violently as it had rolled in, the storm had swept across the city and left nothing but puddles and mud in its wake. Merle sat at the edge of the floor, letting her feet hang over the edge, her back resting against the metal ribcage of the scaffolding. With one hand she absent-mindedly rubbed the silky sheer material of her headscarf between her fingertips while she watched the dark clouds drift away.

She had lost track of time, was unsure of how long she had been sitting on the floor watching the city recuperate after the storm. It only became a conscious thought that she had been waiting for some time when she heard the creak of a floorboard from somewhere below.

Merle’s attention perked up. She had bounced onto her feet quickly, had the nearby loose plank of wood pinned down in her mind without hesitation. Even knowing the meeting was a planned event, Merle didn’t want to be too sure things would run smoothly. For whatever reason, someone could have found out about the letter Merle received telling her where to meet, could have found out about the meeting that neither the public nor the former members of The Sixth Division would have approved of. But Merle needed this meeting and this speculated information, and she needed it to go well.

But she didn’t trust it to.

The topmost part of someone’s head emerged first from the ramp leading to the floor. Black hair, parted to the sides and framing a round, pockmarked face. The woman’s eyes were red, her lips cracked, a noticeable lack of color in what had once been warm, brown skin. She made eye contact with Merle, and something of a smile submerged.

“Merle,” the woman softly said. Her eyes shifted to the plank of wood hovering off the floor, ready to collide into the woman at a moment’s notice. “I get it. I get you can’t trust me.”

“Not yet, Maria,” Merle replied. “Not after you left us.”

“Fuck off,” Maria scoffed. “I left because I was pregnant! Because I was scared, Merle! Okay? I mean,” Maria Diaz gulped and pressed her palms to her forehead as she moved further into the room. “Merle… I couldn’t fight that battle. I’m not – I’m just not a fighter, I… I remember things, know things. Know everything. What could I have done?”

It was not a lie. Maria Diaz, known as the “Vault,” had never been anything more than a human computer, a walking Wikipedia. She had been young, still was, and had a bright future ahead of her. Merle knew Maria was drafted into working for various organizations before the war, SETI being the latest. Merle couldn’t blame her for not wanting to die when she couldn’t even fight to begin with, but there was still an unshakable resentment towards the ex-Division member that Merle couldn’t shake.

“But, look, okay? I’m here to help,” Maria insisted. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her biceps for warmth. She looked smaller than the last time Merle saw her.

Merle released the plank of wood. It clattered loudly on the floor, made a heavy thump like –

- Man O’War collapsed on the wooden floor of the museum, the left side of his face torn away, revealing raw bone and sinewy muscle tissue. He had been severed in half at the stomach, his intestines visible, glinting in the light. Merle looked up at the gaping hole in the roof he had fallen through and saw the thick beams of wood hurtling downward towards her. She mentally grappled with the beams of wood and tossed them aside, the ache in her arms and back protesting as she twisted about to dodge the following debris.

“More outside,” Sung Jin Lee declared as he raced across the littered floor of the museum’s lobby, the long, boxy rifle Vorian created cradled in Lee’s arms. He paused short of Man O’War’s body, saw the gruesome mess of the man’s face, and shook his head.

The two shared a moment when they locked eyes. It was a shared thought, no telepathy required to decipher either look on their faces. Both teammates were contemplating fleeing while they still could.

Shards of the long window blew out, peppering the floor. One of the Polyhedron skidded across the floor, having been thrown through the window. Merle ran over and helped the only surviving Polyhedron to her feet, steadying the towering figure donning an all-black armored suit.

“Motherfucker,” Bernice Washington hollered from behind the matte black helmet. She patted Merle on the shoulder, shoved her away, and proceeded to sprint out through the doors that had been blasted away.

Sung Jin Lee watched her go and cast one last look back at Merle. Merle didn’t know then that it would be the last time she saw Lee before his death.

The two nodded to each other. Lee ran out after Bernice, the barrage of gunfire signalling he rejoined the fight against the enemy force that seemed impossible to defeat. In all that time, they had only managed to slaughter one bio-ship and roughly a dozen of the winged aliens.

There were still six other bio-ships and countless other aliens.

Only a little more than half of the Division members remained.

Merle rolled her shoulders back, let out a heavy sigh that felt good to release, and started at a jog towards the door. She saw long shadows stretching across the ruined streets as the streetlamps flicked on, the night beginning to settle in. Several bodies of soldiers were scattered across the steps of the museum. Among them, Lady Lust sat, blood pouring from her gut but the scope of an assault rifle still pressed to her eye, her finger still squeezing the trigger.

Merle emerged onto the steps, looked up at the sky, and saw the faces of each bio-ship staring down the small group of the remaining members.

“We got this, babe.” Merle looked down, saw Lady Lust looking up at her with a weakening, shit-eating grin. The old woman had still worn her silver and black masquerade mask, still smelled like vanilla then mixing with the stench of blood and smoke.

Merle looked back up at the sky, saw a slit in the front of bio-ship peel back, revealing the wetness of a muscly sphincter.

When that opened, and when the winged aliens began to pour out from it, Merle knew it was time.

They – the ones still standing there – were all they had left.

“Merle…?”

Merle blinked her eyes, remembered who she was and where she was standing. Maria had gotten reasonably closer, her arms still folded across her chest but now with her hair tossed back, dripping from the rain.

“Are you okay?” Maria asked. There was genuine concern in her voice. It was an emotion Merle had not heard expressed towards her since she last visited her sister. People didn’t grace Merle with sincere, consoling emotion anymore. It sounded like a foreign language she once knew how to use.

Merle nodded. One hand was clasped over her hip and the other ran through her hair beneath the loose headscarf. She gently shook her head, tried to toss those thoughts from out of her mind. It was not the time or place to be dwelling on that era of her life, Merle tried to tell herself.

“Uh, you were – you were saying…?” Merle mumbled, waving a hand to Maria and gesturing for her to continue speaking.

“It’s, um, what I’m going to say, Merle… look, it’s not a good thing, okay? I need you to know that first so that – I don’t know, maybe so that you’re prepared for this,” Maria said. She was having trouble speaking, pausing and breathing heavily. In-between words she bit at her bottom lip and was unable to make eye contact with Merle.

The other woman took a few paces forward, swaying from side-to-side as she did. She was hesitating, stalling, trying to find the proper words when there was only one way to say it. Merle knew from Maria’s letter what their meeting was about, and yet she wasn’t surprised to find Maria struggling to announce it in-person.

“They’re coming back, Merle,” Maria finally said. She stopped, a good ten feet away, and stared out at the city.

“I know. You told me,” Merle bluntly stated.

“That’s not all…”

“What else is there?” Merle asked. She was aware that her voice was a croak, a tool at her disposal that she had let rust over time. The anxiety bubbling inside her chest didn’t help any.

Maria shrugged, stared off to the side as if awaiting answers from something else. She clicked her tongue and sighed, bowed her head and shuffled her feet.

“Maria,” Merle said, firmly, with confidence that she didn’t feel. The way Vivian Pang would have expected from Merle after all those years. “What else is there?”

“It’s…”

… on me!” Merle panted, murmuring those words and knowing the earpiece picked it up with perfect clarity but not knowing if anyone else would even hear it.

She flung herself towards the bio-ship, rolled onto her shoulder when she roughly landed on its back and performed a haphazard somersault that made her ache all over. Before she had gotten back onto her feet she had jammed the pronged explosive into the flesh of the living construct. It had beeped in indication that it was armed.

A second later, Merle had jumped off the other side of the bio-ship and let herself freefall. She heard the roar of the second bio-ship that had been hounding her down as it crashed into the side of the one Merle armed with the bomb.

In her head Merle locked onto the underbelly of a third bio-ship and swung, swooping over the ground where she spotted two other members taking on several aliens. Merle changed her course, having attached her mind to the backside of one of the aliens closing in on her allies. With all of her mental strength, Merle tore it away, managing to fling it a yard down the street.

When Merle landed on the ground, the bomb burrowed into the flesh of the bio-ship went off, and the night sky was illuminated by the eruption of fire.

Something caught her attention, and taking a chance to look, Merle saw Sheldon Wright and Sung Jin Lee sprawled out on the ground, both staring blankly at the sky. Dead.

“… it’s more,” Maria muttered.

Merle felt her brow twitch, her lips purse into a taut look of disapproval.

“More of what?” Merle growled.

Maria took a sharp inhale that slithered between her clenched teeth. The anger Merle let subside for the former teammate was rising again. She had little patience for Maria’s inability to be outright with the information.

“Of them.” Maria finally answered with exasperation in her voice. “Merle, there’s more of them. So much more – Merle, I… I have no clue what we’re going to do. It’s an army, Merle. Hundreds. An army of them.”

She threw her still-working hand to the side, saw the tendrils of the alien rip away and spray blood around it as they floated away in the wind. She stumbled over the body of a civilian. She regained her balance, felt the warmth of a car on fire brush against her face.

The condensed chunk of a school bus clattered on the ground next to Merle. She didn’t flinch. She hadn’t seen it coming and did not look at it as she shuffled past it.

In the midst of a mind that was failing her, Merle felt the wing of another alien, tried to make it enough of a conscious feeling in her head but the haze creeping across her mind restrained her from doing so.

Suddenly, she was airborne, and the next moment she felt her leg snap in two as the ground caught her. Something had thrown her away and she had had no way of defending herself in time against it.

Merle let out a cry, a striking scream. She toppled onto her side, drew her broken leg up to her chest and clutched it in her arms. Every part of her ached. Ribs were broken, she could tell. She heard a constant ringing and was certain a large gash on her right shoulder blade was leaking blood all down her back. One finger was bent backwards, and her other hand was numb and limp from the elbow down.

For what felt like the longest minute she had ever endured, Merle remained on the ground, breathing raggedly through lungs that couldn’t keep up any longer. It was impossible to hold it, or anything, back any longer. On the cold stretch of pavement dirtied with snow, blood and bodies, Merle let the streams of tears flow freely down her cheeks. She let her chest rise and collapse with every sob. She felt it.

She felt defeat.

“What are we going to do?” Maria breathlessly asked. Merle hadn’t noticed when her old friend had started crying, only became aware of it when Merle could hear the emotional strain in Maria’s voice. It shook, sounded childlike. It was frail and broken and just barely on the verge of total surrender.

She looked up at the stars, felt the snowflakes blanket her bare, bruised skin as they drifted downward in elegantly spiralling patterns. She felt the ground shaking every time a bio-ship roared, every time another building was totalled.

“… s-s…ome… help.” She lifted a hand to her head and fingered the earpiece still clinging to her ear with more dedication than Merle could admit she had at that moment. She wiggled it free and tossed it aside, let it be buried under the snow that didn’t stop falling.

She closed her eyes, listened to the crackle of the fire nearby and the battle beginning to dwindle down – not in their favour. Her fingers dug at the snow and felt every little fractal of ice melt beneath her grip. She breathed in, felt the starch coldness of winter fill her broken lungs whole, and breathed out.

The entire world and everything in and around it lapsed into pure, unperturbed darkness. And Merle was ready to let it.

“Merle… what the hell do we do now?” Maria was only inches away, and Merle could feel the heat radiating off of her body. Her small, beady eyes were bouncing between staring into either of Merle’s, looking for a single sign of recognition and resolution.

But it wasn't the end of her. It was not written by any god that Merle Moreau was intended to die just then. She found no light at the end of a tunnel she ran a marathon's length away from. Instead she was blessed with perfect immobility, imprisoned in her own skin as she smelled the ashy aftermath of fire, felt every ounce of her being succumbed to being utterly decimated. Some sick deity willed her back to life, let her simply wake up in the street she had been left to rot in, still alive.

Worst of all, she watched as the deceased, crippled bodies of every last victim rose into the early morning sky alongside the winged aliens as if it were some misconstrued biblical prophecy come true. Every last one of them vanished into the mouths of the remaining five bio-ships and, as if a battle had not just been waged at all, the bio-ships peacefully and noiselessly lifted high enough into the sky and out of Earth's atmosphere until they were nothing more than a far-off spec.

And that was it.

All they had given, all the time they spent preparing for their final stand; it had all been swept away without a simple afterthought.

It was all over.

“Merle!”

“We’ll do what we didn’t last time,” Merle monotonously, slowly answered, each word stretched out into something dangerously paced. “We’ll win.”

"Who will?" Maria asked.

"The Seventh Division."

[Sigil]

“Yeah, I’m a hero. Hell, we all were. Biiiig fucking heroes, with our public adoration and Pepsi sponsorships. Well, THEIR public adoration and THEIR sponsorships. I wasn’t even a blip on the radar, and for a long time, that was precisely how I needed it to be. Dozens of missions, hundreds of confirmed kills. Even more unconfirmed. I’ve been under assumed identities almost as much time as my real one, which is just eight different kinds of fugly when you think about it.” A mild Virginian accent peppered his rant, becoming more pronounced or less as emotion dictated.

“Big fucking heroes.”

Dante huffed out his monologue while stacking crates, each curiously marked with both, “Educational Materials” and “Danger: Observe Precautions When Handling” in spray-on block script. His breath seemed to scream in the otherwise absolute still of his surroundings, surrounded by temperature-neutral grey and brown stone deep beneath open air.

“Nineteen… Twenty. Ok, about enough ‘Educational Materials’ to last until bellbottoms are cool again. Heh.” He chuckled at himself, and wiped the sweat from his face with his shirt. It took a near herculean amount of effort to get him tired, but he’d been at this for days without rest. He looked at the fruit of his efforts, boxes upon boxes of many and varied supplies, stacked evenly and with great care. Electric droplights, each burning away with LED bulbs carefully illuminated his rows and columns of intentionally mislabeled wares. Orderly, neat, unlike the swell of clustered thoughts trying feverously to express clearly in his mind. Dante laughed again, with a derisive snort.

“I was a fucking shadow.” Dante hissed to himself, “I was a memory. People didn’t even believe I existed.”

In truth, no one really knew for certain who he was. His image was out there, sure, and people knew the handle that went with it, but so far no one could connect Dante to Captain Stabby. At least, no one that also didn’t have something to lose. There was a sense of security in trusting other people that trusted you with information one might use to royally screw them over. Still, even a definitive public image was irksome.

“Had to step out of the dark, like the rest of them. Then what happened, hmm?”

He sat heavily on a nearby box, this one marked “MRE - BULK”, and took a long drink of from a clear green plastic bottle. He thought about the Battle of Adventbrook. Well, the Absolute Failure of Adventbrook, and all of the implications of that loss. They came with six carriers. Six. This wasn’t an invasion, it was a strafing run. He’d done enough of them to recognize defenses being tested. You swoop in, make a lot of noise, gather intelligence on troop strength and technology. Launch a token offensive to see how they respond.

“My God, they must think we’re ripe for the picking…”

And the bodies of the fallen. Comrades in arms, civilians, everyone who died, taken away. The Hell that wasn’t for research, or infiltration, or both. For all Dante knew, there were already walking around in shiny new Human Suits. At the very least, devising new and interesting ways to scour humanity from the planet without soiling their dainty tentacles. “Well, fuck that.” He very eloquently reasoned aloud. He didn’t have to be psychic to figure out that sooner or later they’d be back. They would be back, and he meant to endure, no matter what else.

The last few years and no small amount of personal income were spent on just this purpose, from the moment the joyous news came of the imminent arrival of our brothers from across the stars. Let the optimists talk peaceful exchange of ideas; Dante was going to stockpile tinned beef and sharpen his knives. Lots and lots of knives. More than a hole in the ground with supplies, he had spent considerable time domesticating and fortifying a cavern network high in ‘Squatch country. When he wasn’t working, of course. A few more features, another month or three, and it might even become sustainable. It was an obsession.

“And I wanted to play hero. Yuppers, big hero Stabby, fighting the good fight and letting all that fame take me away from where I needed to be. Stupid, prideful bastard.” Accustomed to working alone the last couple of years, he had taken to speaking to himself more and more. The habit went away if others were present, most of the time. The times it didn’t, he tended to play up the hermit-like role that was granted him by the people living in town. A short drive or moderate hike away, it served as a weigh station of sorts for him, an airlock between he and civilization proper. Not too near to a major city as to be a target, and not too far as to make deliveries impossible. Fewer prying eyes. Fewer people to speak to, hence the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud. Problem was, Dante’s thoughts weren’t all that pleasant.

“Meaty elephant-squids from the sky. Couldn’t be like Starman or E.T., could it? Noooo… had to come down and rip our collective asses wide open.” In his mind, he could still smell the burning, torn dead, hear the screams of the living. When it became apparent that nothing he was capable of inflicting was effective, the good Captain set to locating and evacuating survivors, trying to lower the day’s body count. It was a newish feeling, taking damage to save people, but he could heal so much faster than anyone else on the battlefield, and the people of Adventbrook deserved better than what they were getting.

Maybe he saved lives. Maybe he just prolonged them for a little while. I guess it didn’t matter anymore. He could save a few more lives up in these mountains, if it came down to it. His own citadel under the earth and rock of the Cascades, a potential community underground. Now, how to decide who to tell about it, let alone invite. It’s not like he had an abundance of friends from which to choose. Or he could simply wall off humanity and be alone with his thoughts for an eternity. Considering his cheese was already starting to slip off his cracker as it was, more alone time was probably not the best idea.

Slowly, Dante started out of his cavern and into the basement level of a well-appointed vacation cabin. Climbing stairs, he caught his first glimpse of daylight in days. Cool blue sky filled his eyes and verdant evergreens lifted his spirits somewhat. He took it all in for a moment, reminded himself that the world was still here for the present, still beautiful to look upon. There was the tiniest sliver of hope as long as he set his pride aside and acted like what he was: He was a soldier. He was a tactician. He was a collector of information and an agent of change. He was still Captain Stabby, but not in the way the media used to portray him.

It was time to get back to his roots. He strode to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Staring into the fridge for a few minutes gave him just enough motivation to throw cold cuts between two slices of bread. “Yup, five star cuisine here, lemme tellya.” He sat on a barstool next to a prep counter, sipped his coffee, and fired up a secure laptop.

“We need to prepare. We need to start. I’m almost done on my end; I can defend, I can hide. Now, I need to find others to help attack. We need a plan. We need to get the band back together. So… where do I start?”

The old numbers probably weren’t in service, or didn’t belong to their original owners anymore. It wouldn’t hurt to send a coded message to Email addresses, or check out old online haunts. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to talk to some of the more benevolent contacts from his former occupations.

“What’s the point? These people were as broken and useless as I was, maybe more. Most didn’t want to speak to me then, failure and absence probably made that worse.” Still, the possibility that he was wrong lingered. Maybe they were making their own plans. Maybe they just need each other, if for no other reason than the fact that no one else could understand what they’d been through.

Dante sent off a series of messages, different and varied in form, despite the fact that they all seemed to say, “I’m listening.”

Where to start, indeed.

[McHaggis]

.

[YoshiSkittlez]

"Papa? Why did you come back?"

The soft sound of the child's whisper reached Vivek's ears, drawing him away from his desk within the blink of an eye to kneel down on one knee in front of the couch his child had been laying on for Gods knew how long now. Placing his hand over the small lump underneath the blanket where he knew her hand to be, his dark, brown eyes scanned the frail, paled face of his daughter - the only part of her visible through the copious amount of blankets bundled around her to keep her warm though it seemed that even if he had a thousand blankets to cover her, she still wouldn't be able to warm up. She had said very little over the last few days, her sickness taking off in a sudden spike where even holding a conversation was draining for her. It was by far the hardest thing Vivek had to endure. He would have gone through the torture of those he had been captured by when serving in The Third Division a hundred, thousand times before watching his eight-year-old little girl slowly dying in front of him.

His thumb gently rubbed her hand through the thick blankets, trying to soften his eyes for the sake of his child as she struggled to keep her heavy lids open to look back up at him. It had been difficult to not be angry - with himself for leaving to America, with his girlfriend, Lela, who had abandoned their child to the streets when he had so much family that would have taken her in instead, and with the Gods who had yet to answer his many, many prayers on behalf of his little girl. But around her, around Gita, he pushed back his roiling anger and instead gave her a soft, flickering smile that turned up the very corner of his lips.

The subject of Lela, Gita's mother, came up very rarely since Vivek returned home to India to take over for the well being of his child. Even amongst family - his mother, even, who had found her by the luck and will of the Gods - the situation in which had been created was not spoken of whether it be by some unspoken grace that the trauma little Gita had been put through was already enough and didn't need any stirring, or if by not speaking of Lela, it would somehow preserve her image as a good mother to others. So Gita's question had Vivek refraining from pressing his brows together as he tried to think of the best way to answer in a way that would not disrupt either of the reasoning's they did not talk about or for him to start becoming angry again. Instead, he moved his hand from on top of hers and cupped the side of her face, brushing his thumb underneath the soft skin of her eye and looked down upon her with all the sincerity and love a father could manage for his child.

"Because I made a mistake, Gita. One that will never happen again. No matter what happens, I will not leave you. Not again."

His hand slid up from her cheek, moving to her forehead that was now out of habit for checking her temperature, though even still his touch was soft and endearing, bringing the small child a sense of comfort as she let her eyes slip back closed from lack of strength.

"Mama-" Gita stopped to cough. "-Mama said you... you left because-" Another cough. "-you were trying to make Marica a better place."

"America." Vivek corrected gently. "And not just America, Gita. The world. America was just where they needed me. But what we do, what I helped to do, was to help everywhere become a better place for you to grow into a beautiful woman in a world that is not so unkind."

Gita forced her eyelids to flutter back open to look up at her father once more, a trying smile splitting her lips a fraction to show off her pearly-white teeth.

"Like... like a superhero." she said. A statement, not a question. The word, however, had Vivek's stomach tying itself in knots for reasons he couldn't explain, or didn't know how to. No. He was no superhero. A superhero would never leave their child the way he did. A superhero would not have to stand by and watch helplessly as their child died before their very eyes - they would have found a way to fix it and try as he might, Vivek just couldn't. He opened his mouth to correct her, once more, unable to allow the falsified images his child now had on him to continue to grow making him out to be some sort of glorified person that he wasn't, but Gita, after a small coughing fit, beat him to it.

"Mama... Mama said that there aren't such things as superheros..." Vivek winced. Obviously, he was too late as it seemed that Gita had already a spoken conversation with Lela on the matter. "But... but she's wrong, Papa. She's wrong because I know. I know there is such thing. Because, Papa, I have a secret."

He couldn't help it. Not this time. His brows furrowed in confusion, tilting his head to the side slightly holding his daughter's gaze, silently urging her to continue.

"I know what you are, Papa." Another cough. "I've seen you. You... change things... Mama says I made it up, but I know. I know because..." Gita paused once, being thrust into another coughing fit. It became so bad, even, that Vivek began to rise from is position in front of the couch to fetch her a glass of water, but her frail, little hand slipped out from underneath the blanket and caught his wrist, tugging on him with a surprising amount of strength (though still weak) for her condition that held his attention on her for a moment longer.

"You're a superhero, Papa. But you came back for me, and you lost your fire. I can see it in your eyes"

Vivek shook his head lightly. This was getting out of hand. He had to stop this conversation, quickly, but in his heart he couldn't bring himself to do so. Not if that meant disappointing his daughter. This was the most alive she had seemed in months, how could he deprive her of that light?

"But it's okay, cuz Papa... I found it."

Letting go of his wrist, Gita held out her hand, palm facing up and dropped her eyes from her father to it, as if waiting for something to happen. Her eyes narrowed, a deep look of concentration on her features but finally, Vivek had enough. She was expelling too much energy. He wasn't sure what she was trying to prove, but he had to remember, her health came first. The doctors at the hospital all said the same thing - There was nothing they could do for her but to allow her to die in the comforts of her own home. A few weeks, maybe days... it was all too cryptic for Vivek to indulge his thoughts on.

"Gita-"

His words were immediately cut off as a flickering light caught his attention from out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head, he looked down into the open palm of his daughter and felt his jaw go slack for there, about the size of a walnut, was a small ball of flame, flickering on and off like a light bulb with a faulty wire.

Like a moth drawn to the flame, Vivek once more knelt down at his daughter's side, eyes glued to the small spectacle before him. His Gita... she was like him. He wasn't at all sure what to do with that information; unsure if he should be fearful for what sort of options that opened up for her, not sure whether to be proud, not even sure if he was surprised or not. He reached out his hand to hold the underside of hers, helping to keep it elevated as the strength in her arm began to waver.

"I want you to take it, Papa. Take back your fire. You need it more than I do. My superhero needs it more than I do."

Vivek's eyes moved back to his daughter, watching as her eyes fluttered back closed, a deep sense of pride then finally beginning to surface within him. At only eight years old and she held a wisdom within her that far surpassed his own. Though he doubted that she meant her words as metaphorically as he was taking them, it was exactly what he needed to hear. However, things quickly shifted when Gita let out a soft, long, exhale and the ball of fire within her hand dissipated into a quick whiff of smoke. Her hand fell limp, becoming cold to the touch gradually but enough for Vivek to know what had just happened. He quickly blinked away a few of the pooling tears he didn't know he had been holding back from the bottoms of his eyelids, falling from them to stain his cheeks.

Slowly, Vivek bowed his head towards his daughter, touching their foreheads together and keeping hold of her lifeless hand by pressing it into his chest over his quickening heart. His eyes closed softly, the sound of his own sobbing now the only thing to accompany him within the house that once was the home to three.

---

Large, dark eyes opened rather suddenly, completely withdrawn from the reverie that the art of meditation was supposed to bring. To clear his mind. That had been his purpose. But every time his eyes closed for more than a moment or two, he saw her and for that split second, coming out from his once tranquil state, he could have swore that he could also feel her. Five years later, and the memory still remained with him as vivid as the day itself. Her touch, her voice, even her smell... all engrained into his mind, never to allow him a moments peace.

Sighing, Vivek pushed himself up from his cross-legged position on the mat that had been brought out onto the balcony of his home in hopes that the cool, evening breeze would help to relax him. He took a moment to run his thumb and fourth finger though his hair, starting at the temples and pushing back the thick, black curls from his face before falling back through his fingertips again. Quietly, he made his way back inside, navigating the halls that eventually brought him to a staircase that then led him to the first level of his home. The house itself was much too large for a single man. Even when it had occupied three it was still on the large side, but with his salary as the Madras University Chemistry Professor, he could afford it and wanted nothing but the best for his family. Now, it was nothing more than an empty, hollow reminder of what could have been.

Upon arriving on the lower level, Vivek took an immediate turn and made his way down yet another hall, his eyes baring straight ahead having no drive to glance at the fine furnishings that decorated the rooms and walls, eyes only for the door right in front of him. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open and walked inside. Immediately, his senses were infiltrated with paper, ink, sandpaper and even dust; a familiar, yet welcomed reprieve to help detour his mind.

Walking with a small amount of reverence now in his step, Vivek approached the old, wooden artists desk within the corner of the room and flicked on the desk lamp with a quick switch on its base. The light immediately filtered through the musty air, landing on a large, sixteen-inch by twenty-two-inch paper, filled to the edges with varying shades of graphite and charcoal. It had been something Vivek brought himself to work on in small doses over the course of the last five years when he felt he had a strong grip of his emotions. So reaching over the desk and plucking a 4B graphite pencil from the container of varying types, Vivek took a couple of moments to fill in a few shading areas before he stopped, stood back, and admired his work. His Gita - at the prime of her life. Before death had slipped it's tendrils into her and began to suck her life away over the long, agonizing months he cared for her.

He wanted to do right by her. Gita's last words were for him to bring that fire back into him that he had lost. He wasn't sure exactly what she thought it was that she meant, but to Vivek, it was to get back out there and to keep making the world a better place. But he couldn't do it. Not even when the Alien War came to rise. Not even when they attacked and he was subjected to merely reading about it in the papers, learning about the fall of his kind, only to crumple it up and toss it away. That was a different life he led back then. Getting back into it would be... difficult. And he no longer had the strength. This was his life now. One hundred percent. The daily rinse-and-repeat in the life of a chemistry professor. It was comfortable. It was safe. But it was also lonely.

Setting the pencil aside, Vivek flipped the switch back off, turning off the desk lamp and quietly retreated from the art room, reverently closing the door behind him and forcing his way to the main living room area where a pile of student's research papers waited to be graded on the very same desk Vivek sat at moments before his Gita had passed on.

[DJAtomika]

"Alex, could you go get the cabbages from the yard before it rains please?"

"Alright alright one sec, jeez."

"And be quick about it! I just put the kettle on. Got brekkie all ready, so don't let your toast and tea go cold!"

Alex slipped on his white earbuds as he headed outside. The air was cold, misty, obviously because it was still the morning out in the countryside. The cold ate through the thick jacket he wore as he strode out into their yard, well, to be more precise, their back yard, which was massive. Rows of tomatoes, lettuce, mint and other assorted produce grew silently in their little patch nearby, while a small orchard held apples, cherries, even strawberries. Homegrown goodness that tasted delicious fresh off the vine or stem or wherever.

Bobbing his head gently to a beat, he stooped to grab one of the empty plastic baskets lying around and strode on over to the veggie patch. The rest of their stuff wasn't ready yet, but the cabbages were. Reaching the row of fresh, leafy green veggies, he stooped to uproot the first one and felt a pang of pain shoot through his lower back. Not big, but enough to make him stand up and stretch a bit before carrying on. As he picked each head of cabbage up he inspected it for worms or other hangers-on, shook it once or twice to dislodge most of the dirt, then chucked it in his basket. This process repeated until he stood with an empty dirt row and a basket full of green. Without waiting to wash up, he pulled a leaf from one of the heads and popped it into his mouth, relishing the healthy crunch that it had.

Just right. Perfect for salads. Or, in their case, selling.

He shrugged his shoulders, hefting the basket into a more comfortable position in his hands (not like it mattered) and returned to the cottage. Inside, he plonked the basket and its contents next to the kitchen sink, where his sister was busy peeling a potato that she then dunked into a pot of boiling water.

"That's the cabbages done. Anything else, m'lady?"

Shirley looked up at him with a wry smile, then smacked him gently with the handle of the peeler.

"Go wash up, ya loaf, and come have some brekkie."

And thus their day went on in such slow fashion. It had always been that way, ever since they'd left the Fourth and come back to the UK. Leaving their superhero lives behind had been easy enough; the clothes and identity hiders were just that, clothes, and they went into closets and boxes at the end of the day. Though Alex hated to admit it, a small part of him missed the crime-fighting life, but bygones were bygones. They'd left it behind. Let the younger, more heroic PGs handle justice dispensing in the world. The Mackeys were getting old (not really but still), and he for one just wasn't feeling it any more. Now the life they led was slow, lazy, uneventful but stable. A life they had before being thrust into all this death and doom and disaster.

The scars from their time in the Fourth were still bare, healing but painful to reminisce upon. Had it really been nine years since then? Nine slow, painful years of mending and recovery, of mourning and of grief.

Alex took a bite of his toast, slathered with jam as he liked it, and thought back. When they'd first contacted the enigmatic Vivian Pang the siblings had thought that they'd be in for a good old fashioned romp. They didn't expect their villain to be a telekinetic terrorist, though, and the death that followed in the wake of that revelation was simply too much to bear.

Especially Nicole.

After attending her funeral, the Mackeys had left. It had reminded them too much of their own parents, killed without so much as a thought. Alex was the one that had made them leave. Shirley didn't want to, as much as the death hurt her. She wanted revenge.

The memory brought a faint, wry smile to his lips as they ate. She was always the hot-headed one, furious and willing to get hurt in the name of vengeance. Only through sheer force of will did Alex manage to drag her away from the whole fiasco. Convincing her that dying in Nicole's name simply was not worth it, the Mackeys left America, vowing not to come back unless it was absolutely necessary.

And they never did. Not for the Fifth, not for the Sixth, not for the invasion, though the last had been painful to watch.

But even through all of that, the Mackeys had no reason to return to the fold. Alex and Shirley were simply content to stay here in London, tending to their grocery store as their parents had in life.

He polished off the last of his toast and potatoes and stood, taking his plate to the sink. Shirley was still eating, as slow as she was, he knew she was thinking about the same things he was. He could see it in her. Being a little pepperpot was telling in the way she carried herself; the way she bounced her right leg when she was deep in thought, her furrowed brows and pouty expression as she recalled something that made her fume inside. Alex knew all her tells.

She was restless. Aching, wanting to do something instead of nothing. Shirley was a fighter, not a thinker.

But he wasn't. All his life he'd spent protecting her physically where she couldn't herself. Bullying in school, to harrassment outside in their adult life. With her body she got hit on a lot, but with him by her side at least the perverts stayed away.

Life was simple. Easy. Well, easy enough anyway, without the responsibilities of being a "hero".

---

Several hours later...

"C'mon Alex, it'll be alright!"

"I don't know, Shirl. You know I've never been great at these social things."

"Oh relax, you loaf. You'll fit right in. You're just complaining because you have to wear a stuffy suit and tie."

"Formal events are boring, Shirl. I don't even know why you take me out to these things."

"Oh shush shh shh! Not another word, let me adjust your tie."

Dainty hands adjusted the navy blue tie around the collar of a crisp white shirt. Alex sighed as she tightened the knot and straightened his jacket and shirt then stood back with a grin to admire her handiwork.

"Perfect! Except you need to lose some weight, Godzilla, otherwise I won't be able to find clothes that fit you anymore!"

"I'm not puttin' on weight, Shirl, honest! It's me shoulders, you always forget that they're broad!"

She giggled and placed a finger over his lips to shut him up.

"I'm just toyin', you goof! Besides, I know you like the food at these socials. Don't lie. I can see it in your eyes."

Alex tried his best not to react but in the end his sister's infectious charm made him crack a smile.

"Guilty as charged, Shirl. I'll behave."

She smiled and tutted him as she led him out the door.

"Good! And this time, try not to trip over someone's foot and demolish the dessert table, Alex. Those crepes and bon bons were delightful, y'know."

"Yeah, well, explain something to me, sis."

"Hm?"

"Why exactly are we going to a social commemorating the UK's supers again? I thought we'd left that life behind."

Shirley stopped in the middle of slipping on her evening dress, stunned for a second. Then, almost without pause, she continued dressing herself.

"Well I thought it make for a nice change of pace, y'know? Besides it'd be nice to see some familiar faces after spending ages out here alone, right?"

"But -"

She cut him off with a finger to his lips.

"Ah shush! No complaints! We're going and that's that!"

---

Alex sat in a sedate silence at their table. His sister beside him was busy chatting with her friends that were around them, though he barely knew who they were and who they were supposed to be.

The social, held in a small convention center in the center of town, was mainly attended by psygens present to honour those of the past; heroes dedicated to the protection of their fair city and, by extension, the world. Men and women who'd fought, bled and died for their country and for the safety and sanctuary of the Earth. Big names, big faces, even a celebrity or two were present. But lost in the sea of faces was Alex Mackey. Ever since he'd distanced himself and his sister from the public spotlight he'd grown unfamiliar with the public scene in London. Of course, his family was part of that public scene; the Knights Anglais were once the prima donna superhero team based in London. Though he could never live up to the legacy that his parents had left behind, during the brief period that had followed they'd tried to fill their shoes as best as they could. But after the Fourth Division, Alex had given up.

As he stared out across the hall, through the faces, he tried to recall faces but none came. People walked by and waved hellos, even greeting him by name at times, and he waved back and returned courtesies to complete strangers.

He was started out of his reverie by his sister nudging him on the arm.

"Alex, what's wrong? You haven't even eaten a bite of your bread pudding."

He looked down at his plate. It was true. He was in no mood to eat, even if it smelled and looked delicious. Alex's mind was elsewhere. Without a reply, Shirley instead went back to socialising, leaving her brother to dwell in his thoughts for a while.

Just then, a young man stood from his table and gently rapped the side of his glass with his knife, calling the attention of those present. When he spoke, his voice reverberated all around the room though he spoke softly. A psygen, of course. One with the powers of sound.

Just like mum...

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today as part of the 30th Annual Commemoration of Heroes. I'm sure all of you present understand the significance of such an event. Though my father, the man known publicly as Union Jack, known to me as Paul Billingsfield, is no longer here with us, it is through events like these that we remember the actions of those that have fallen in the line of duty, as he did, along with those that step up to replace such valiant heroes."

A chorus of agreements and 'hear hear's echoed round the room as some raised their glasses in a toast. Alex studied the young man's face. Hints as to his lineage did indeed reside there; the strong, cleft chin, small ears, sharp upward-pointing nose and narrow eyes that had once been Union Jack's defining features were everpresent in his son, Boy London, also known as Arnold Billingsfield to those that knew him personally. He and his sister had once admitted the sound manipulator into the Knights Anglais, and after they'd left the Fourth, they too had left the hero team in his care. The memories, once repressed, slowly began flowing back into him as he looked round the room once more. After a brief pause, Arnold began to speak again.

"To start off today's dinner, firstly I would like to thank, on our behalf, the wonderful caterers of Total Hospitality dot UK, who have once again generously provided our meals this evening, as they have been for each and every one of our dinners."

A small round of applause and several compliments to the chefs rang out from the room. After the clapping died down, Arnold continued.

"Now, this year's dinner is rather special, for we have several guests tonight that have returned into the fold, at least for tonight, but we all hope for good. I will get to who these men and women are later, but for now, I shall move on to commemorations. Tonight, we remember the lives lost in America just two years ago, when the unnamed interstellar menace arrived in a small town and utterly destroyed it, and in so doing destroyed the lives of several of the UK's finest. To Bloody Mary, Hybrid, War Pig, and Mainstream, we raise a toast to you tonight."

As the assembled supers raised their glasses in respect, Alex glanced at his sister, whose expression remained impassive.

"Next, to the lives of those that perished in the recent disaster at the London Eye, where a rogue psygen wreaked such havoc that the whole of London had to be evacuated. To Warframe, Mako, Firework and Lunatic, we raise our glasses to you."

Again, another toast. Alex remained impassive. He didn't know any of these people. None of them made him feel anything. His sister, however, felt otherwise, as not long after she leaned against his shoulder and he felt her draw a shuddering breath.

"Finally, we commemorate our founders. The men and women of our fair city that took up arms when we needed them the most. To Excalibur, Banshee, Union Jack and Lady English, we raise our glasses as a salute to your bravery, courage and fortitude in the face of danger. The Knights Anglais and our allies offer our thanks to you in forging such a strong team of supers to keep us safe. May your actions live forever in our memories."

Having never been to an event like this, Alex was surprised. Their parents, Excalibur and Banshee, or more accurately Robert and Arwen Mackey, were still being remembered to this day? He barely recognised Lady English as being Arnold's mother and Union Jack's wife, but as he took a sip of his champagne and lowered his glass, he couldn't help but feel a little proud at what he'd been a part of. The Knights were their parents' doing, and without them they wouldn't have grown to be the people they were today.

Their host set down his glass and straightened his dinner jacket. After a moment of silence, he continued on in his booming voice.

"Now, onto the happier portion of tonight's dinner: the introductions! Tonight the Knights are accepting three new members into the fold, and I would like to invite them to stand up and introduce themselves! Please, stand up!"

Alex watched Arnold extend his arms and hands in a gesture of welcome as two women and a man from the crowd stood. The first lady, dressed in a gown of dazzling red, made her introduction as Scarlett Clarke, or simply Scarlet. Her powers were that of camoflage and deceit through decoys and hallucination. The next, a young woman called Levia, was a hydrokinetic, a power she demonstrated by levitating champagne from her glass into her mouth and manifesting a ball of water in midair from water vapour. The last, the young man who called himself Balance, displayed acrobatic skill and precision so fine, he balanced himself on the edge of a proffered knife without falling at all and hopped across several tables by way of their placecard holders without toppling anything. Applause came from all around as the three new recruits showcased their talents and abilities to dazzling effect, which their host quietened with a wave of his hands to command their attention once more.

"A very warm welcome to the Knights, Scarlet, Levia and Balance! Thank you for your bravery to step into the life of a superhero, where we do the things that most dare not. Now, onto our last event of the night before we proceed with the dinner proper, we welcome back several distinguished supers who have returned to say hello, or even to return to the Knights. Firstly, let me be the first to welcome back Autumn into the Knights!"

An older man with auburn hair and blue eyes stood and waved with a sheepish smile on his face as their host continued.

"Autumn has spent many years as part of an aid effort in Africa, providing food, clean water and resources to poor, ailing families all around the continent. Today, he has returned home as the company he is employed in has allowed it, since a new super has taken his place in Africa. Welcome home, Autumn!"

More applause rang out in the room as the host waited it out. Once silence again reigned, he began speaking again.

"Next, I welcome, from America, visiting supers Polygon and Matrix! Welcome to London, the two of you, and on behalf of everyone here, I hope you enjoy your stay!"

Alex watched as another young man and woman stood from the far end of the room and waved, smiles on their faces. Scattered applause echoed from around the room as they sat. Then, unexpectedly, their good host turned to face them. Alex caught the former's gaze as his mouth opened to speak.

"Finally, after a very, very long absence, we welcome back Alexander and Shirleen Mackey, known to us here as the Tower and Beacon respectively, and whose parents we saluted not a few minutes earlier. Their parents, Robert and Arwen Mackey, founded the Knights Anglais, and without them we would not be where we are today. Alex and Shirleen, we thank you and your parents for all your hard work and dedication in the Knights, and we welcome you back with open arms!"

His eyes widened as Shirley yanked him to his feet while applause built from all corners of the small room. Alex shielded his eyes from the flashes of phone cameras and tried his best to smile and wave as the crowd present whooped and whistled at their presence. Were they really that appreciated? Alex kept this question to himself as they seated themselves and returned their attention to Boy London.

"Now, without further ado, I welcome you all once again to the 30th Annual Commemoration of Heroes, where we remember heroes both past and present. Enjoy the meal and feel free to mingle, ladies and gentlemen! My work here is done."

The psygen spread his arms and smiled warmly as the final round of applause rang free, while waiters and waitresses ambled into the room with the first course of the night. Shirley turned to him and smiled.

"See? Wasn't so bad, right?"

"I guess..."

"Oh bloody hell, Alex. Stop being such a bloody stick-in-the-mud and enjoy yourself for once! It's not healthy to mope about all day, alright?"

Alex merely nodded as he tucked into his meal. His mind was racing with thoughts, but they worried and troubled him. Why had his sister suddenly taken him to one of these gatherings? If not for the food, what else? What was going to happen now that they were back in the public eye again?

His train of thought was interrupted by a buzzing in his pocket.

His phone.

He pulled the slim smartphone from his pocket and swiped to answer the call as he excused himself from the table and moved outside where it was quieter. Once he could hear himself, he spoke.

"Hello?"

"Alexander Mackey?"

A puzzling voice. One he didn't recognise immediately.

"Yes, who is this?"

"A friend. I want to meet you and your sister on the roof of the convention center. Alone, please."

A chill went down his spine. Suddenly he did not feel at ease at all.

"Why?"

"I will disclose the reason once you and your sister appear on the roof. I cannot risk doing so now, else someone hear."

"And why's that? Who are you hiding from?"

A sigh, peppered with white noise.

"Let's just say it involves a matter of the utmost secrecy. Time is of the essence. Come up here. Now."

Without warning, the voice hung up. Frustrated and confused, Alex returned inside to get his sister, who was talking to the two visiting Americans. He tapped her on the shoulder, much to the displeasure of the Yanks.

"Sis, trouble. We're needed on the roof."

Confused, Shirley gave her brother a look even as she waved goodbye to the two American supers.

"What? Why? Dinner's just started, Alex."

"Listen, Shirl, look here."

Alex raised his phone into her face, making her recoil back a bit from how close it was. Displayed on its screen was the unknown number that had called him just moments earlier.

"This number just called me just now. I don't know who it was, but the voice told me to meet it on the roof like now. Said it was extremely important, something about a matter of the utmost secrecy, exact words."

Shirley thought for a bit, biting gently on her lower lip as she considered her brother's words. Without a sound she rose.

"Alright, let's go."

"What, just like that?"

Taken quite aback, Alex stood there even as his sister made her way through the chairs towards the door.

"Yeah, just like that, Alex. If it's so important, we have to go there, yeah?"

"U-uh, right. Wait for me."

Together the brother and sister made their way upstairs towards the roof. After a brief tussle with a lock that Alex broke through sheer strength alone, they emerged out on the roof in the cold evening air. Breathing clouds of mist, Alex looked around for his mystery caller.

"Voice said it'd be up here! I don't know where though."

"Then we wait, Alex."

Shirley crossed her arms and rubbed them gently, shivering a little in the cold.

Where was their mystery caller? And would they do any harm to the duo?

[Lexicon]

Ghosts

"Hey there, kids! It's me, Kazara the Masked Magician."

Oh really? Maybe if this actress put on fifty pounds and had a beer in her hand I'd believe her.

"Y'know, sometimes, when I'm out fighting for truth and justice,-"

For fuck's sake. Seriously? 'Truth and justice?' I bet Mom came up with this bullshit.

"I get awfully thirsty. So, when I'm feeling parched and need a quick boost I reach for a delicious-"

Be still my beating heart. What, beloved cultural icon Kazara, do you reach for when you're feeling parched?

"Kazarade! That's right. Now available in Strawberry Shadow, Banana Blaze, and Mango Mask flavors. Try all three and you could win a brand new-"

Okay, I think I'm done now.

Samantha Raynor, who now went by Kelsey Smith, shook her head in disgust and turned off her television, plunging the main room of her apartment into total darkness. Thanks to her innate umbrakinetic gifts, however, she almost felt more comfortable in the darkness. Things always seemed so much simpler when the lights were out for some reason. Burping quietly and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, the stocky brunette set down her empty can of Floret's Finest Brew and chuckled to herself. There was a time not so long ago when she would've thrown a fit at that commercial's horrific use of her heroic alternate identity. She probably would've gone so far as to throw something expensive against a wall for no adequately explained reason. That was one of the benefits of being a psygen celebrity beloved in two nations. You didn't need a reason to do stupid shit. Now, however, "Kelsey" just felt sad and faintly disappointed. Was her mother so unimaginative and greedy that the only use she saw for Kazara, besides as the lead character in a summer blockbuster, was to make her a sports drink saleswoman? It seemed a little pathetic, and Sammy was something of an expert in that particular field.

Sighing as she heaved her bulk off the threadbare, blue-and-red checkered couch her father bought at a local yard sale, Samantha trudged into the apartment's grimy kitchenette. Everything seemed to flicker and swirl mockingly around her, which meant she was well on her way to getting smashed. Fan-fucking-tastic. At least the nightmares weren't as terrifying when she was blootered to the umpteenth degree. Maybe she'd actually get something close to a full night's sleep. Probably not, though. Sammy went to put her hand on the kitchen counter to steady herself only to feel the delightful sensation of sticking her hand into a pot filled with what smelled like week old pasta and tomato sauce. She really needed to clean this damned kitchen. She'd promised her father at least four times last week that she'd handle it. It was the least she could do, after all. That quiet, unassuming man snoring contentedly in the master bedroom was the only thing standing between Samantha and the streets right now.

And she still didn't know where he'd put the damned Dr. Grime Cleaning Wipes. Of course, she'd never asked.

After deciding to rectify this situation tomorrow, Sammy opened the fridge and was swiftly reminded what her priorities in life were. The top shelf, which was her father's domain, groaned beneath a veritable garden of fresh fruits and vegetables, several containers of something called quinoa, and a few bottles of orange juice. Sammy's shelf, on the other hand, contained mostly beer and boxes of takeout. Jesus, she needed to start taking care of herself. Maybe she'd start eating healthier tomorrow or something. Right now, she was buzzed and in the mood for something salty or sweet. Possibly both. Samantha opened the box closest to the front of the fridge...and immediately closed it. A few more days and the moldy thai food inside would probably start asking random strangers if it had a soul. Since she didn't feel like dying tonight, the portly Floridian reached for a dark blue beer bottle with an inviting red cap instead. The cap even had a neon yellow smile on it. How cheery! This was Sam's last bottle of the worryingly named Glasgow Smile beer she'd brought home with her after her last visit to the Crowley Estate...no. No. Shaking her head like a dog trying to dry itself, Samantha closed the fridge door a little harder than necessary, flinching as she remembered her father was sleeping in the next room, and savagely twisted the cap off her beer.

No use in stirring up ghosts tonight.

Yawning, the bulky psygen found a clean spot on the kitchen counter to lean against as she took a long drink from her bottle. Oh yes, it was icy cold and as bitter as a celebrity everyone had forgotten. Perfect. Sammy briefly considered making the sojourn back to the couch, but she decided against it for now in favor of trying to figure out what time it was. In light of how many cans of Floret's Finest Brew were strewn all over the sofa it was difficult to tell for sure. The only clock in the apartment's "living room," a cat-shaped disgrace which meowed every hour on the hour, had stopped working several weeks ago. Well, she could normally down two or three cans of beer in half an hour, and there were at least seven cans on the sofa and more underneath. Whistling softly and shaking her head, Samantha took another sip from her imported beer. Math at this probably late hour? Fuck that. Now, she could recall waking up sometime around four this afternoon and searching her sty of a room for something that fit. Her goddamn wardrobe couldn't keep up with her waistline. How awful was that? Sammy also remembered, after apparently finding something tolerable to wear, driving to Bosco's Bar down the street around five thirty and staggering back out a little after nine. Somewhere in that mess a nap happened, though a rather unpleasant nightmare ended that pretty quickly. Too many fucking tentacles. So many goddamn tentacles. Shivering and sipping at her Glasgow Smile, Sammy finally remembered taking a shower and sitting down on the couch just as her father walked in from work. She'd said "Hey, Dad. What's up?" and he'd grunted in that reassuring way he had before vanishing into his room. Samantha belched and drained the rest of her beer as she came to the conclusion that it was probably a little after midnight. That sounded about right.

The overweight Floridian adjusted her gray sweatpants into a slightly less uncomfortable position and plodded back to the couch, taking great pains not to sit on one of her discarded beer cans as she lowered herself down. She'd done that before and didn't care to repeat the trick. Maybe she should just go to bed. Lying on her lumpy mattress was at least marginally more comfortable than sitting on this horrible couch with the television off. In the dark. Like some sort of creep. Or idiot. Besides, she'd finally heard back from the local Stop N' Shop after submitting her resume' to them on no less than five separate occasions. It was the most exciting thing to happen to her in months. Apparently, Stop N' Shop wasn't too picky about who they hired to run their registers, and they'd deemed her worthy of coming in for a job interview tomorrow. At eight in the fucking morning. Luckily, if it was indeed a bit after midnight, this gave Samantha enough time to sober up, find something decent to wear, and drive over. No problem.

Sammy's computer, which was perched precariously on the edge of the coffee table in front of the television, beeped quietly and a mechanical voice said, "You've got mail."

Unusual. Sam hadn't accessed her AOL account in years, because it just so happened to be the one she'd used before AW1. Just thinking about it was enough to make the brunette tremble and she reached for the nearest beer can, hoping against hope she hadn't finished it. But, as White Hat had told her once when he was high at a party in London, hope was for idiots and poor people. Placing the empty beer can back on the coffee table and picking up her hot pink Dell laptop, Samantha set the computer on her lap before opening it and clicking the AOL icon. Once she was in her inbox, the psygen's blue eyes scanned past the colossal amount of death threats and hate mail she'd gotten over the last few years from members of the Sixth Division, each one accusing her of being a coward and leaving her teammates in Adventbrook to die. And then she saw it. There was an unopened email that wasn't from her good friend the deposed Nigerian prince. The email address listed was [e-mail]. Samantha's mouth went dry and something between a whimper and a groan slipped through her lips. What the fuck was this all about? Was someone impersonating Dante Stabbington and emailing her more death threats? Maybe this was her punishment for not cleaning the fucking kitchen. Part of her wanted to delete the email without opening it, but another part, the same part that'd convinced her to drunkenly kiss Dante one night many years ago, wanted to see what her former drinking buddy had to say. Biting her lower lip, Sam clicked the email and read the following message:

Samantha,

I know we haven't talked in a while, but I'm reaching out to our old friends. Trying to see how everyone is doing. I guess I just want them to know I'm here and I'm available if they want to talk. They can reach me at this email address.

Dante

Slightly disappointing. Alright, monstrously disappointing. There was no indication Dante wanted to talk to her specifically, which bothered Sammy a lot more than any shitty commercial. He was just "reaching out to our old friends" and "trying to see how everyone was doing." Everyone, not her. Samantha understood she was technically included in 'everyone,' but the way he'd phrased it didn't make it sound that way. What a crock of shit! She got all worked up over nothing? Pursing her lips and trying to think of something scathing to type back, Sammy finally just wrote:

Doing fine, Dante. Thanks for the offer, though.

Samantha

She clicked the 'send' button and practically threw her laptop back on the table, only to realize the loud thud might wake up her father. Cursing under her breath and admitting it might be time to call it a night, Samantha tried to haul herself up...only to immediately fall back down. A burning coal of self-loathing flared in the heavyset psygen's gut as she struggled to her feet like an old geriatric woman without her walker. Life didn't pull any punches, did it? She was a walking goddamn stereotype. The sexy, skinny blonde who'd devolved into a dumpy, pathetic brunette. It was like something out of a drugstore gossip magazine. Sneering at the thought and making another mental note to clean the kitchen after her interview, Samantha was about to open her bedroom door when the doorbell rang. The harsh, metallic sound nearly made the psygen lash out instinctively with her abilities. She hadn't done that in years! Taking a deep breath and trying to regain her composure, she started walking towards the front door, her eyes narrowed as she thought about who might be on the other side. This was a pretty decent part of Orlando so this sort of thing didn't happen much, though every now and again groups of idiot kids would show up to mess with people on the weekends. Today was Tuesday, though. Still, Sammy didn't want the ringing doorbell to wake up her father so she pressed herself against the door and called out, "You do realize it's after fucking midnight, right? Piss off!"

[Sigil]

Captain Stabby Goes To Town

This waiting and working and sitting and working and training and working was really giving Dante a sense of cabin fever. Not even someone to chat with. No new scenery. Deliveries weren’t coming for a good stretch of time, and he otherwise had nothing to do. His cursory Emails sent to see if anyone was listening hadn’t borne fruit just yet, and staring at his screen was becoming emotionally cumbersome. Yeah, it was time to risk a trip into town, see what the locals were up to. Maybe catch a beer. Definitely catch a beer, and not grain alcohol from his impromptu distillery in the cavern. Not dipping into his titanic reserve of Guinness. No, he was going to spend way too much money on cheap American domestic in a dirty meeting place, surrounded by colorful (if a bit gamy) townsfolk. Maybe get an order of cheese fries with it. He could barely wait. It was time to go out.

He selected a car at random from his reserve of used and refurbished automobiles in varying condition, filled the tank with gasoline from a large, red container, and settled behind the wheel, positively giddy with anticipation at spending a few hours away from his self-imposed exile from humanity. As he pulled onto the nearest paved road, he relaxed a bit. Even smiled.

He punched up his musical selection for the short trip: “The Sound of Music OST”. It was his hope that cheerful and uplifting songs, if made a habit, would help make him less of a nutter than the European Symphonic Metal or aggressive Industrial music he generally favored. The results of his hypothesis were still up for debate.

When Julie Andrews got to “The Lonely Goatherd” (admittedly his favorite song on the album) in her dulcet, mellifluous tones, Dante sang along. Kind of. He really couldn’t sing, much less yodel with the proficiency required to NOT utterly destroy the song. Not that it mattered, he was so animated as to appear(?) crazed as he belted out the words he made in in place of the actual ones, in a warbelling, inexpert falsetto:

High on a hill was the Captain Stabby,
(layee odel layee odel lay hee hoo)
Sharp was the knife of the Captain Stabby,
(layee odel layee odel loo)

Somewhere in the dark crept Captain Stabby
(layee odle layee odel lay hee hoo)
Turned some guy into homestyle salsa
(Stabby stabby stabby, stabby stab)

Were anyone in the vehicle with him, they would have later described a sharp-eyed madman in dire need of copious amounts of Thorazine, but at least he was in good spirits. Ish.

Then the blue lights of a police cruiser caught his eye in the rearview. Crap, did he actually grab the beater without tags or taillights? His thoughts must have been elsewhere. It ran, sure, but… Dante just didn’t need this hassle, and he didn’t have his paperwork with him.

Thinking quickly, he slammed on the gas. The officer gave pursuit, as officers tend to do when someone runs. He just had to make it around a bend. This was a mountain road, that shouldn’t be a problem. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, he pulled over and kicked open the passenger’s side door. As expected, the cop pulled in fast and close, gun drawn, yelling something about hands in plain sight. Dante did not comply. Instead of an unruly criminal, Officer Steadfast ran up to a scene from a horror movie. The poor man in the driver’s seat was perforated with at least a half-dozen combat knives. His torso was covered in his own blood, and his face bore a tired, cold expression.

“He ran… …into the… …woods. Hurry, please…” moaned the obviously mortally wounded driver. A slow exhale punctuated his plea for justice, and his eyes slipped closed.

Just as soon as the policeman disappeared into the trees, the poor driver’s eyes snapped back open. Skillful hands removed the blades from his torso, and he turned the car around. Flooring it, he made it back home without further incident.

“Ok, wait a while, change clothes. Different car, go back out.” He muttered to himself. “You deserve some ‘Me Time’, Dante.”

THREE HOURS LATER

He lined ten shots of Kentucky’s finest sippin’ medicine up on the rough wood of the bar and took a long pull from a pitcher of amber domestic lager. From somewhere on his person, he’d managed to sleight-of-hand three respectably sized personal utility cutters which he used to repeatedly abuse the dartboard, demonstrating practiced accuracy. He’d been at this for a while now, and the few patrons of this semi-rural watering hole were starting to show concern. A pattern had formed; three

Thwack! (bullseye) Thwack! (bullseye) Thwack! (bullseye) Gulp, slurp, belch.

The bartender, a middle-aged lady of indeterminate parentage, kept pouring drinks with her mouth agape, staring at Dante as if he were eating a whole, live chainsaw – with wonder, disbelief, and no small amount of fear. He had consumed enough alcohol to kill a Bull Republican Frat Boy, and kept hurling knives into the exact same spots on the dartboard, now worn through to the knotted pine wall.

That is, up until shot number eight.

Thwack! (bullseye) Thwack! (bullseye) Thwack! (twenty) “Fuck!”

Shot. Beer. Belch. His streak had been broken. He slammed his beer down on the bar, sloshing a good bit out, some spilling onto the otherwise sticky floor. He walked over to the dartboard and recovered his knives, twirling one in his the agile fingers of his right hand. He tossed it into the air, allowing it to spin several times and rotate end over end fully once before the handle slapped gently into his palm.

Dante smiled a bit. And why not? He came into town for a change of scenery, a break from his labors. A brief pause from his life of preparation and training. The fact that he was still hurling sharp things at targets notwithstanding, he was at least getting out. Dante could feel a little of his personal crazy drain away. Hell, due to the unholy amount of alcohol he had been guzzling, he had almost caught a decent buzz. So what if his bullseye streak had been broken? Another shot of brown flammable liquid down, he stared at the knives in his hands.

Time to juggle. Just seemed the thing to do.

The first knife sailed into the air, arcing perfectly. The second followed. Truly a beauty to witness, as the few people left in the bar could attest. The third joined in, adding its own glint of steel reflecting cheap neon signage light. Two more join the aerial ballet, seemingly from nowhere. Over approximately two minutes, he varied the speed of his five Stabby’s Helpers, the angles, even the patterns of motion. Having a gloriously spiffy time doing this, he had quite forgotten the splattering of beer on the floor nearby.

One knife goes slightly off center. Not an issue, but to compensate for the point of catch, Dante takes a step to the side… …and immediately gets taught a physics lesson concerning the low coefficient of friction present with commercial flooring and barley-based liquid. His boot makes connection and flings the rest of his leg out wide. Flailing for balance, his knives spin and fall undirected, clattering to the floor at about the same time he does.

A blinding sensation of what is most likely pain flooded Dante’s senses for an instant, and a muted alarm sounds in his head. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on precisely what it might be. Also, strangely, the flavor of banana presented strongly on his tongue. He gathered up his knives and tucked them away; at least four of them, placed a hand on the bar and pulled himself up.

Everything looked weird, for lack of a better word. Every shape seemed to have an outline around it, and colors were just… off. All of the remaining drunks in the place stared in horror, muted by surreal shock at what they hoped they weren’t seeing: Two inches of sharp steel blade and a wire-wrapped handle protruded from the side of Dante’s head, still quivering slightly in the dim light. A rotund woman from the corner pointed and let fly a guttural scream of sickly terror, her outstretched hand shaking like cartoon electrocution. Dante squinted, still unsure why the television screen of his vision suddenly got the vertical hold maladjusted and the tinting WAY off. His hand explored the area of injury, and when he established what the problem was, a look of sincere relief washed over his features.

“Oh God, I think I just lost purple…” he slurred through the brain damage, “Gimmie hand, preeze?”

He haphazardly motioned to the bartender, and placed her hand on the knife handle. “Now… holdon tight, missy, and tuck in yer little thumbies!” He braced himself against the bar and twisted against the knife to help open the vicegrip of his skull on the blade. A sickening crack later, he shoved himself off of the weapon. The poor drink-slinger was left holding the knife, wet and slick with a fresh spurt of hot redness, mouth wide open and tears streaming down her face. Trembling, she looked to the knife and proceeded to unceremoniously vomit across her workstation.

Dante grabbed the still extended knife, and gave a reassuring smile. Barkeep didn’t seem too reassured, however, still weeping at what she had been involved with. She fumbled with the words, “Are.. …you.. gonna… be..”

“Fine, just fine, ma’am. Feeling a lot better already! I’m just going to go take a nap. Maybe call a few hospitals, ‘k?” He could feel the injury knitting itself as it closed rapidly, his senses already back to normal. He didn’t want anyone else to, though. Too many questions.

Dante tossed a handful of cash on the bar, grabbed his coat, and concluded that his mini-vacation had reached its logical conclusion. In his car, headed back home, he mused, “Went a hell of a lot smoother than last time, that’s for damned sure…”

[Palindromatic]

Gingerly, while discovering pleasure in the friction of her pruned fingertips grazing the silk of her bathrobe, Merle ran her hands up her biceps and let them rest idly on her shoulders. She placed her chin atop her hand there, and – in front of the wall-sized-window that overlooked the electronic embers of streetlights and traffic and whatever else cast the hazy orange glow above the light-polluted city – Merle watched the world. She never understood the beauty in cities, in seeing skyscrapers poke through the robust heaps of clouds, or the dazzling blurs of headlights interlacing each and every highway. The sounds even, the white noise circulating in and around each concrete declaration that humanity could – and forever would – do more and more… none of it was pleasant. None of it was ideal. She was well past her prime and, even with bio-medical modifications ready to readjust her God-given rights to not have kids after her child-bearing days were over, Merle never wanted kids. Seeing the city, the grit and the grime of stone and mortar and glass, the nonstop hum of a few millions’ livelihood, Merle was thankful she hadn’t raised kids in the throes of its relentlessness. She alone could not stand it. Having to watch her own free-thinking responsibilities grow in it, be molded by it, and face the horrors of it would cause Merle to wither from stress in a heartbeat.

That reasoning alone was most likely why she never reproduced, she decided as she turned away from the window. To many, Merle was depicted as a strong, capable warrior who stood by a team and supported it when it needed her the most. To herself, she was the young idiot who sought glory in heroism and purpose in vigilantism. To be like the idols of her youth, to live a lavish lifestyle of saving the day and being romanced by her life’s calling. Simply put: Merle had been a comic book nerd who was given the opportunity of her naïve lifetime. That fantasizing idiot grew into a middle-aged woman who had no identity outside of it, no concept of how to live like a normal human would. She hadn’t even been the best at being Zenith. In her head she knew of a few other candidates who could have taken up that mantle and done a hell of a better job at it. She had taken things too seriously, dedicated too much of herself to it.

She always had been the nervous one, the worst-case-scenario worrier. But when everything she had ever known and loved in life fell through the cracks in her hands like sand, there was none of that glory in heroism, none of that romanticism. It was just her own personal world shattered before her, the death of her family on her, the disappointment of her support system spray-painting the target on her back it would continue to use. All of it was gone.

She had no idea how to exist without it.

Careful not to ruffle the fluffy, gold-and-red stitched quilt draped neatly over the king-sized bed, Merle sat down. She ran her hand along the quit, thought about whether the hotel had it handmade or if every single room had a carbon copy of this same IKEA-brand rip-off. She wasn’t a fan of hotels; she much preferred her house in the countryside, the mass accumulation of all the money that was forced upon her paying for it. The rest of that money had gone to her nephews and sister, some of it sent to various organizations as donations. Mostly to animal shelters. While rescuing people was her passion, animals in need of a loving home was her vice.

To think, if she kept that money, she could have bought a nice condo in the city, have been spared the torture of sleeping in a bed so many others had slept in before her. She missed home, but she knew better than to try and fly home at night. Maria successfully convinced Merle into spending the night in the five-star hotel, in the same room Madonna once occupied, according to the chipper bellhop that was more than thrilled to carry Zenith’s one and only bag to her room. She had no words for him. People-pleasing was not her forte, especially not when the ginger-haired boy recited Zenith’s entire biography for her. It had been an unsettling experience, to say the least.

In the morning, she would leave. Not to head home – not just yet. There was a little inkling nagging away at her that suggested she wouldn’t step foot on the dirt pathway leading up to her red front door for a long while.

Merle glanced over at the mahogany nightstand, at her phone that held the list. A list of coordinates, names, descriptions, contact information, everything Merle needed. Maria had it sent to her in a matter of minutes when requested.

’Oh, Maria…’ Merle thought. It never occurred to Merle that, of all people, Maria Diaz would be the first person ready to save the world again – before even Merle herself stepped up to the plate. That Maria would have all of it wrapped up in a neat digital bow for Merle when they met at the coffee shop –

”But… what have you been doing this whole time?”

The mug clinked loudly on the tabletop as it was set down. With its rough landing, a solo bead of walnut-toned liquid leapt out and hugged the lip of the mug before barreling down its smooth, ceramic side. It slowly wound around the widened base of the off-white mug, preparing itself to merge with the halo-shaped puddle of cold coffee outlining the cup’s bottom, but it didn’t.

It slipped off, remained floating a solid inch off the table, and traced invisible tracks laid down for it as it swirled around in a figure eight. It expanded and contracted as if it had become something living, something breathing.

And with a slight flick of the eyes transfixed entirely on the bead, it burst outward into several miniature copies, each little drop arching upward and down in a synchronized performance. One-by-one, they plummeted back into the heart of the mug, leaving slight ripples in their wake as they melded back into from where they came.

“Merle?” Maria repeated with more force behind her words. Merle had looked up from the mug, saw that permanently-exhausted face of Maria staring intently back at her, waiting for human contact. “This whole time, you’ve just been… what, vegetating? In this idea that you’re, like, you’re a failure?”

“Not a failure,” Merle monotonously answered. She shrunk into herself, brought her shoulders up to her ears as her hands embraced the mug and felt the warmth inside. In her chest she was a mess of live wires flailing around – of heat radiating outward, making her nerves hyperactive, her paranoia all too controlling. On the outside, her face was a blank slate void of any sort of emotion. Over the years, when things dabbled in the all-too-intrusive personal affairs of her life, it had gotten easier to pretend an inner-apocalypse wasn’t tearing her apart on the inside. “I’ve been living,” she added.

“Alone. Purposely alone. Look, I’m glad you’re on-board for this – really, I really am. I don’t know else I would’a turned to, but… you know, we were friends. I’m gonna be concerned when I hear you’ve been isolating yourself, beating yourself up for two years –”

“I’m okay,” Merle solemnly said. She sat back in the chair and looked outside, at the rain that pitter-pattered down on the cobblestone street wedged between shops. “I’m fine.”

Upbeat polka music interlaced with a trill-voiced French woman attempting rapping wafted from the speakers bolted to the high corners of the little café. The café with the potted plants pushed against every corner of the room, leaves branching out to the long windows, the scent of pine commixing with coffee forever ingrained into the wood-panelled walls. The bell above the door chimed every time the unruly wind tried to push it open. The weather continued its angst-filled course of miserable weather – skies absent of color, the concrete dampened with the days’ early rain shower.

“You’re not, Merle,” Maria whispered so daringly gently. Her brow furrowed inward, the corners of her lips sinking into a frown. “And you haven’t been for a while. Merle, please… we spent so long saving the world that everyone assumes we don’t need saving ourselves but, no. No, we do. We break, too, Merle, and that’s okay. It’s completely okay when we do. But we can’t always be the ones to put ourselves back together… okay?”

A gangly barista in a black apron swished by, the dishware in the black bin supported on his shoulder rattling fervently. He flashed an appropriate smile to the awkward young couple at the table across, and a disgruntled one to his co-worker leaning on her propped-up elbows behind the counter. As he passed by Merle, she spotted those large eyes of his slide to the side, eyeing Merle in what he thought was subtlety. His eyebrows lifted, judgingly, amused in a condescending fashion.

“Oh, my god…” the barista mumbled under his breath to his co-worker, who rolled her eyes at Merle.

The telltale flash and shutter-clicking sound of a phone snapping a picture ripped Merle’s attention away. Wide-eyed, she looked at the bald man a few tables down who grinned and snorted when Merle locked her eyes with his.

The barista behind the counter laughed a course, haughty laugh at some joke that had been whispered in her ear.

A pack of arrogant teenage boys knocked on the window from the outside, pointing at Merle and Maria and taking pictures excitedly.

Though she had been breathing – rapid, raggedy inhales that didn’t take in enough air – Merle felt breathless, felt tight in her chest. She bit at the insides of her cheeks, at her tongue. Her body had become a conduit for over-produced electricity, and she was unable to sit still comfortably, unable to keep her eyes from darting around at every sound and action. She needed to run, to hide, in a dark little corner and let it all blow over. What, specifically, she didn’t know. But she needed out. She felt on fire.

“I, uh, I n-need to – I’m just, I’m just gonna go,” Merle quickly stuttered.

She stood too fast and her hip caught the corner of the table, bumping it forward and tipping it entirely. Its metal feet scraped off the floor loudly before the loud boom of it crashing onto the floor came; and the cups of coffee fell forward and spilled onto the floor – onto Maria, who yelped in surprise. The bald man burst into raucous laughter; the barista behind the counter tried to stifle hers while her co-worker loudly sighed and barked for a mop.

There was fervent knocking on the window, murmurs erupting from people Merle hadn’t noticed before. More phones and cameras were directed at her. The world was spinning too quickly and she was unable to focus on one thing. She thought she had been moving but was frozen as her face became bright, hot red.

“Merle, it’s okay,” Maria may have said. Merle saw her friends’ lips move, but the words didn’t make their way to Merle’s ears with clarity. Merle had been occupied with shakily looking around at everyone staring back at her, watching her like an animal in a zoo. For some reason she couldn’t quite explain, she wanted to apologize profusely to each of them.

Maria stood. Merle backed away, bumped into the chair behind her, and sent a glass container of sugar shattering onto the floor when she whipped around to stabilize the chair. More laughter erupted.

“She’s, like, telekinetic. Couldn’t she have caught it?” one half of the young couple whispered.

“Really,” the other chimed in.

“Let’s go,” Maria said as she took Merle’s arm and directed her to the door. But somehow, before Merle could process any of the millions of frantic thoughts rushing through her head, she had bolted out of the door into the crisp downpour of midday’s rain and was airborne.

She was a solid mile away from the coffee shop before she landed on the roof of a hospital. There, she collapsed onto her knees, wrapped her arms around herself and hugged her quaking, rain-soaked body tightly, and cried.

~*~

The first shimmers of a salmon-tinged sunrise had begun poking through the darkened skyline before Merle even thought to close her eyes. She spent the gruelingly long duration of that lonely night in a bustling city mulling over every last thought she couldn’t digest. Most of it spiraled around the idea that their most terrifying, most resilient threat to date had set course to return to their unprepared planet once more. Merle couldn’t sleep knowing all of this, knowing they would soon have to fight them again. They would need a collective force stronger than the one Merle fought with during WW3. If there was absolute accuracy in Maria’s suggestion that the returning alien flotilla was a hundredfold larger, then Merle knew they would crumble beneath the aliens’ brute strength unless they had the entire planet conjoined into one battle-ready army.

The likelihood of that happening smoothly and in-time was another endless tangent Merle wracked her brain over.

With a sigh she blew out and let rumble between her pursed lips, Merle tossed over onto her side, facing the door of the hotel room. She would be heading to London in a few hours, having decided upon the first two former members she would try and persuade into re-joining a failed cause. The list Maria provided her had a solid dozen names – most of whom Merle knew – that would aid them, at least in the initial stages. What “the initial stages” implied, Merle had not yet deciphered for herself. The building blocks to creating a stronger, more unified Seventh Division? Finding charismatic, influential members that could make this Division’s iteration a popular one after its social suicide? What she would even say to them, what she would suggest they do once they all grouped together and were ready to work, was still in its very early formative stages.

Maria only turned to Merle because Merle was the only one Maria knew would not fully turn her back. Merle considered maybe she was the only one who hadn’t turned her back yet; maybe she had been Maria’s last resort go-to gal when everyone else ignored her pleas for help. When Merle questioned Maria as to why the government itself was doing nothing about it, Merle received a wishy-washy answer. She suspected Maria was no longer with whichever organization stole her from the Divisions originally. The more Merle asked about it, the more agitated Maria had gotten. Maria kept insisting it wasn't important, only that they needed to be the ones to do something. Merle left that can of worms unopened but knew something so suspiciously vague needed to be explored at a later date.

Whatever Maria's reasoning for turning to Merle was, it was not because Merle was the sure-fire best suited leader to single-handedly direct them to victory. She knew that. She had no qualms in admitting it. The runs where she had been at the helm of former Divisions were not nearly as serious as potential global damnation. She had co-led those ones; she had smaller tasks, controlled environments, and reliability of an actually formed team who respected her to fall back on. At the moment, she didn’t even know if she would have that.

She didn’t even know if she wanted to be the one to have that.

It was encoded into her DNA, seared into each little moral fiber of her consciousness. She knew, when things such as this arose, she would always want to battle it. It was who she was. Regardless of the scarred hermit she become over the past two years, she still felt her whole body pulse with an eagerness to get a move on and quell the next threat. But shouldering the idea of being the designated ringleader of a shunned ex-vigilante group did not sit well with her. She wanted to run from responsibility of it, to hide from having to face being the strong one. She knew she couldn’t be the big boss yet again. She would flop, disappoint both her team and everyone else relying on them. Yet some unbroken fraction of her couldn’t fathom watching another man or woman run the very reason for her existence into the ground. Not while she stood idly off on the sidelines and let it happen.

Truthfully, Merle didn’t know what she wanted.

Yawning, feeling the sore ache in her shoulder blades as she stretched, Merle slipped out from beneath the covers. She touched her bare feet down on the warm, hardwood floor and hung her head. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally. A craving for coffee temporarily stole her focus as she stared at the little kitchenette across the room. It felt idiotic to be thinking about coffee at a time when doom was lurking at the outer rim of their solar system.

‘But we’ll try to not,’ Merle told herself. ‘We cannot think about this. Not now. Good Lord, not now. Come on. We’ve got to keep it together.’ It didn’t work, trying to sweep her mind away to greener pastures. As she went about her quick morning, she thought of Desecration, of her days in China fighting an inhuman army; she remembered The Psychogenerative Law riots of ’91, and the time a bullet grazed her ear in a bank heist. She had fought other battles. She was a war veteran, the last living member of The First Division; she was a hero to many, an inspiration to millions.

And yet the instinct to return to her countryside home and lock herself away until everything ended. Even the compulsion to fight couldn’t drown that urge.

‘We can survive this,’ Merle lied to herself. ‘We can. We can do this. We have done worse. This is no different. You got this, Merle. You got this.’

~*~

“Pardon me,” Merle mumbled. The tall, thin man with the wispy moustache bowed his head respectfully, one hand tucked behind his back and the other supporting the empty silver tray. He took a step backward, letting Merle slip by him and scoot around the circular table. She tried to glide with a graceful gait she had never quite mastered, but both her natural awkwardness in her own skin and wearing a form-fitting black dress one size too small made it impossible to walk like she knew how to.

Maybe once upon a time she may have been successfully grafted into the socialite scene despite how little she had liked it. Posing this way and that, knowing the proper reactions to camera flashes, hearing her name shouted out like she were a superstar at a concert, they were things her flesh had since shed with a great sigh of relief.

Nearing the back wall of the small convention center, Merle slowed to a stop. She turned around, looking out at the chattering collection of formally-dressed PsyGen’s – some of the most important and influential in all of Europe – and felt a slight inkling of being entirely out-of-place. That discomfort of not belonging crawled across her skin with a warmth she didn’t enjoy. If it wasn’t for the purple-feathered masquerade mask and blonde wig styled in the likes of a mid-1990’s Lady Lust, Merle would have felt nothing but hesitation and doubt attending the 30th Annual Commemoration of Heroes. But knowing her identity was kept under wraps somehow gave her an added boost of confidence being there. No one knew it was Zenith under the mask. So long as she didn’t blow her cover in the most dismal of fashions, she was safe. And she felt it.

“Enlighten me again why we’re here,” the voice of Maria crackled in Merle’s ear. It was an incredulously small earpiece Merle wore, the same kind Vorian von Traupitz once manufactured for The Divisions. Wearing it again brought about mixed feelings of nostalgia and regret.

“To view the clientele,” Merle mumbled in what came out as a poor Cockney accent.

There was silence on the other end. Merle subtly prodded the earpiece with her index finger, thinking it had died on her, when there was a sudden cough in her ear.

“That voice, um… the hell was that?” Maria slowly asked.

“I’m, um, well, I-I need to blend in,” Merle stammered.

“Yeah, but maybe just don’t… do any of that…” Maria answered. “But, so, why the Mackey’s first? Sure, they were hot shit and all, but –”

“I don’t know if your mother would appreciate you speaking like that,” Merle teasingly chastised her friend. With a loose hand she reached out and daintily snatched a glass of champagne from off the tray of a passing server.

“Merle Joyce Moreau, was that a joke you just made? You’re capable of that?” Maria gasped. Merle couldn’t help but crack a smile. It felt like old times.

“I try to seem human every now and then, yes,” Merle replied. She lifted her chin, pointed her nose to the ceiling, and spun around as a portly man attempted approaching Merle. In an accent Merle was certain sounded favourably New Zealand-like, she continued speaking. “To answer your question: they are the only two from the list that have not been former guests of any party and did not attend our aforementioned escapade –”

“Our what now?” Maria interrupted.

“Adventbrook,” Merle whispered from the corner of her mouth. There was an audible, “ahh,” on Maria’s end as she understood. As intelligent as Maria Diaz was, Merle couldn’t deny it that her all-knowing accomplice had not always been the quickest to pick up on purposely elusive explanations.

Or basic common sense.

Clearing her throat and nimbly sashaying further away from the small cluster of retired PsyGen’s that had formed near Merle, she added, “It may prove easier convincing these two to attend our next ball first. And with more numbers behind us –”

“It’ll be easier to get other people to join,” Maria concluded. Merle could almost picture the smug look Maria had of finishing Merle’s sentence for her. Merle would let her have this one, she decided.

What Merle didn’t add to her reasoning was the heavier truth. Alexander and Shirleen Mackey were the only two that Merle could trust that she had not disappointed. Facing the two siblings would take less courage and owning-up for her faults than it would to confront someone who had survived Adventbrook. All of those people Merle had ignored for the past two years. Alex and Shirley would be an easy, guiltless start.

There was an exclamatory shout in the earpiece, loud enough that Merle was certain the identical twin duo Flint and Tinder heard it from twenty or-so feet away.

“And let the records show the Mackey sisters have just showed up, courtesy of front lobby camera A,” Maria chirped. “And might I say, Mr. Mackey, you are one Tower I’d like to explore.”

“I’m heading to position,” Merle briskly said, pretending she hadn’t heard the last bit of Maria’s commentary. She tipped the lip of the champagne glass to her mouth and downed it as classily as she could in one big swig. “I’ll talk to you when I’m there.”

“What, I can’t talk ‘til you get there?”

“I’d prefer it that way, yes,” Merle coolly retorted.

~*~

It had gotten chillier than Merle anticipated, quicker than she could have predicted. She kept her jaw clenched to keep her teeth from chattering, and even as she hopped from foot-to-foot and paced the length of the rooftop, she felt the cold in her fingertips and nose.

Merle had missed the underprepared wardrobe choice mistakes for late night stakeouts. These were all minor details she had forgotten about, the little things about the job that she kept stumbling upon and smirking like an idiot over.

Over the rumble of cars and a bulky plane flying overhead, Merle swore she heard noises in the stairwell – the ricocheting footfalls of heavy feet thudding off the metal steps. Around the corner of the door leading indoors she leaned against the wall, mentally prepping herself for the encounter. She had discarded the wig and mask, feeling no need to conceal her identity in the pitch blackness of night. It would only make for an unnecessary theatrical reveal, and Merle was not the type of superhero to revel in the melodrama of the business.

Taking a sharp breath inward, Merle held the air inside her lungs, desperately straining to hear any noises. She felt her heartbeat pulsing in her head, her ears. She was nervous, and she didn’t know why. The stairwell had fallen silent. Had she been hearing things all along?

‘I should contact Maria and tell –‘

A loud bang of the metal door slamming against the brick wall rang out through the still night. Startled, Merle jumped and retreated further away from the wide open space of the rooftop, slinking along the wall. Suddenly she felt ridiculous for not keeping a readied weapon at-hand. It was not that either Shirley or Alex would pose as a threat per se, but in a convention full of PsyGen’s whose moral status would always be unclear and the possibility of anti-psychogenerative terrorists lurking in the shadows like Merle currently did, whoever burst through the door to the rooftop very well may have been Merle’s next victim.

It brought Merle great disappointment in herself for not thinking the entire scenario through better.

Someone spoke – a male, and Merle couldn’t remember if that was what Alex’s voice had sounded like or not. It had been too long since she last spoke with the young man to recall whether it was deeper than that or not.

A female answered him. Something in that voice rang a bell. Taking her chances, Merle moved forward, careful to walk silently and hold her breath in. She neared the edge of the wall and dared peak around it just enough to make out the forms of a large, thick-bodied man and a smaller woman.

‘This is it. This is them,’ Merle thought to herself. Nervous, still, with a dash of spontaneous self-consciousness added in for spice. She counted down to three several times in her head before taking the first – audibly crunchy on the gravel – step out from behind the wall.

Words didn’t come to her, not immediately. Every last pore in her brain seeped out blanks and uselessness; her tongue felt like it had become a dried, shrivelled worm in her mouth. As the silence dragged on for too long for comfort, Merle parted her lips, let out an airy attempt at speaking, and tried again.

“Alex, Shirley,” Merle greeted the two with a nod. “It’s me. Merle. And I need you.”

[DJAtomika]

"Merle. Merle Moreau."

Alex sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Merle Moreau. The last person he'd expected to see up here. It'd been nine years since they'd both seen her. Nine long years. It had been at Nicole's funeral, that time. After that, Alex and Shirl had packed up and gone home...

Nine years prior
May 27th, 2015
3:32PM

"...and so it is with a heavy heart that I commit to rest Nicole Schuester, a great friend, mother, and an inspiration to us all with her bravery and sacrifice for the greater good."

Vivian Pang stepped down from the podium, wiping away a solitary tear with a scarlet, gold-embroidered handkerchief that swiftly went back inside her handbag. From the front row, Alex could see that she'd been crying too. Who wouldn't have? Nicole was a much loved member of the Fourth. The priest that took over Vivian's place addressed the sombre crowd.

"Would anyone like to share their memories of the departed before she is returned to the embrace of God?"

As several men and women looked around for any potential takers, Alex rose. He strode to the podium as the murmuring around him died down into a dead silence. After a brief moment, he spoke.

"Members of the Fourth Division, comrades, friends. You know me as Sciath, but for today, my name is Alexander Mackey. Nicole was...a dear friend of ours, me and my sister Shirleen. For those of you that can't tell, we're not local. Shirl and I hail from London, England. Merle Moreau picked us up from there because she required assistance from outside the US. When we reached the States, the first person to come greet us was Nicole. We made friends with her after that, fast friends. She introduced us to her family too, a little joy because, well, her family was so close knit."

He sighed as his words trailed off. He could remember meeting Nicole's children for the first time, little bundles of joy that were in awe of all the cool things they could do. Shirl had made some cute light bubbles for the kids to play with, smiled and laughed as she watched them chase the little orbs of light around Nicole's back yard...

As he continued, his voice wobbled a little. The memories did not bring back nice feelings, they did not.

"The day she disappeared, we were part of the supers with her. When I came to, I wanted to look for her so badly, and I did. We did. Everyone did. I...I wanted to find the man responsible. Do horrible, horrible things to him for what he'd done. But none of us could. Then, this happened and..."

He trailed off again, unable to continue with his train of thought. The crowd stared at him as he regained his composure and began to speak again.

"Nicole, she really was an inspiration to us, my sister and I. She was just so brave and courageous. A little brutal, sure, but in the end her actions spoke louder than her words did. She wanted to protect her family. A shining example of a parent, someone we both looked up to a lot. We will always hold her memories in our minds, and may she rest in piece."

As he finished his impromptu speech, his gaze slowly traveled to her casket. Nicole lay within, eyes closed and face impassive, but her thin lips curved in a small smile. Barely visible was the line that separated her head from her body, when Desecration had killed her. She was clad in her costume, sans headgear, and she looked like she was asleep but she wasn't.

She was dead.

Now

"It's been nine years, Merle. What're you doing here again?"

A sigh.

"I need your help."

"With what? More death? Haven't you had enough of that already? Nine years ago, when we were fighting Desecration? And just two years ago, when you lot were fighting those aliens?"

Shirleen piped up from next to him. He could tell she was angry; her voice was harder, with an edge to it. She was getting mighty testy.

"It's...yes."

His sister threw her arms up in exasperation as he sighed and rubbed his face with his hands.

"What now, Merle? Another senseless escapade? Something to while away the time and maybe get more innocent people killed?"

"No, it's -"

"It's what? Face it, Merle. My brother does not want to live that life again, and neither do I. And I did not come to this fancy dinner to get pulled into another suicidal scheme of yours!"

As she turned to leave, Alex stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She struggled against him, but his immense strength and immovable posture made it impossible.

"Shirl. She's serious. She wouldn't have bothered us otherwise. Merle's been away for nine years, and if she wanted to bother us during that, she would've come to us. But she didn't. So why now, Merle? Explain yourself."