I woke up to the sound of gentle moaning and instantly moved to throw AEGIS off of me as though by reflex, but found nobody there. It took me a confused moment to realize the moans were of pain, and Tem was lying on the floor, making pitiful noises in her sleep.

It just about broke my heart hearing that, and I moved to pick her up and carry her into the bed, where I swore she'd been when I fell asleep last night. While she was in my arms, her eyelids fluttered open and she looked uncomprehendingly at my face.

"Is this heaven?" she breathed.

"Aren't you in pain?" I asked her.

She nodded very seriously. "But I am not in heaven?"

"No, not yet," I said and laid her down. I glossed over a lot of Tem's weirdness, but the fact that she thought Heaven of all places would be full of pain just...I couldn't begin to understand her. "Ready for your painkillers?"

She shook her head. "I don't want any more painkillers."

"Doesn't it hurt?"

"It does not hurt that badly. I do not deserve any better. Please save them for if you are in pain."

"Tem, that's stupid. Take your meds." I poured a couple of pills into my hand and held them out for her. She delicately picked them up in her small fingers, taking care not to touch my skin.

But she just held them.

"What's wrong? Need water?"

"I do not like the pills," she said. "They make me feel like s-s-somebody I am not."

I couldn't imagine how that would be a bad thing, but even I had the tact not to say it. "Um, it's just...for the pain, right?"

"Yes. It does stop the pain. And it makes me feel s-so happy and floaty."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"At s-some point, I have to be me again," she said, seeming to withdraw even more. "I...I don't like being me. It's painful to be anyone else."

This fucking girl was like, trying to break my heart today. I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, which made her jump and then hold her wound as she braced herself against the pain. But even as she did, she squeezed my hand back with all her strength.

"Well I'm not going to make you take them," I said. "But...please do if you want. I'm going to go check on AEGIS, do you need anything?"

"I never need anything."

"I know," I said with a sad smile, and gave her hand one final squeeze. "But if you did, I'd be happy to get it for you."

I paused outside to take in a few lungfuls of the damp morning air and try to clear my mind. Even before Tem had accidentally started me awake, I was already spinning in my own hell of Karu and Defiants and Dragons, cringing at myself at everything from that day.

I'd been so confident, so arrogant. So stupid. And they died for it. Jack had warned me in no uncertain terms that to face Dragon was to face defeat, and it wasn't like I didn't believe him, I just...hoped or thought it would turn out differently. I was an Exhuman, I wasn't your average guy. I'd been through a lot of scrapes, I'd battled my way up and down the XPCA from within and without, and how many people could say they'd assassinated an XPCA director? I obviously wasn't just some guy, right?

Fucking wrong. He'd handled me like I was a child. There wasn't a thing I did that he didn't anticipate, and wasn't a thing he did that I reacted to properly. Whether he was or wasn't an Exhuman, he was so far beyond me, I may as well have been trying to fight a literal dragon. I'd never felt so pointless.

I knocked on the girls' room and was surprised but happy to see AEGIS answer. Back on her own two feet again, she was...well, she was missing an arm, and had apparently traded working arms for legs, as she used one to open the door. So obviously not in the best shape, but getting there.

"Morning wood?" AEGIS asked.

"Good morning to you too," I said. "How's Whitney?"

"Did you come for her? Honestly Athan. I'm standing right here and my legs work again." She lit up as though inspired. "We can do foot stuff!"

I rolled my eyes at her. "So she's fine then?"

"Yes, still sleeping. We were up late having all kinds of fun. She's really smart, did you know? It's a little bit of an unfair competition because my technical knowledge is a hundred years out of date, but that woman knows her way around a bench. I sort of feel like by the time she's done with me, I'm going to be twice the girlfriend I used to be," she giggled.

"Like...in size?"

She gave me a weird look. "I am not going to get fat. What the heck. That's like the only perk of being a gynoid."

"Yeah, sorry," I said, shaking my head.

"You distracted?" she asked seriously. "I was...half kidding about the foot stuff but--"

"AEGIS, please."

"--but if you have something on your mind, I'm cool to talk."

"Actually," I said, hit by an idea. "Do you have footage of the fight with Dragon?"

"Yeah. You want to watch that?" She gave me another weird look and then lifted a foot with effortless balance and flexed her toes under her own scrutiny. "And that's more fun sounding than--"

"Yes, foot stuff, I heard the first two times. Are you programmed with like, a dictionary of all possible fetishes and you're just working your way through it or something?"

"No. But that sounds fun!" She beamed at me.

I rolled my eyes at the monster I may have just created. "Come on, perv. Let's go back to my room and watch the feed."

"I'm actually...kind of plugged in here," she said, taking a step back from the door and showing her hair trailing to a couple of devices. "We can do it in here, just be quiet around Whitney?"

"If it's not creepy to do it over a sleeping woman, I guess," I said.

"Eh. Lowering your guard is inviting an attack, right?"

I glared her grin down until she let me in without further argument. I hooked her into the holo and with hardly any other additional bullshit, started playing footage.

Somehow, it was even more painful to watch than to have lived through. I got to see the whole scene for the first time, Dragon talking about the device and making the Defiant swallow the pills which would ultimately kill them. But it was only when I got to the scene and saw myself getting absolutely pummeled through AEGIS' eyes that I saw just what a mess it was.

"How fast was he moving?" I whispered to her. "He's impossibly fast. Do you think his power is just speed or something?"

She sighed. "I dunno. I thought so at first too. But I've reviewed this footage myself and...as far as I can tell, he's not doing anything an ordinary human can't. Not to say any human could, but just...look at this part--"

She skipped us to a part where he'd been electrocuted by one of my bulbs. Even as he was involuntarily spasming from the waist down, somehow, he was keeping his shoulders level enough to aim and shoot two guns at once, hitting me and more impressively, the fleeing Dork-Hand, despite the distance and his movement on running stilts.

"Yeah, that's super impossible," I said. "He's gotta be an Exhuman. Nobody can do that."

"Someone theoretically could, and he did. I'm not saying it's likely he's human, but...watch closely. All he's doing is reacting to every involuntary jerk. See how his left leg gives under him here, and his right leg goes too? One of those was involuntary, the other...right there...you can see he reacts almost instantly to keep himself level."

"But that's still impossible. Even if he could move like that, he's completely ignoring the pain, he's reacting at the very limits of human reaction speed, fuck he's not even surprised he got shocked from the look of it. He just looks bored."

"Well, he looks like he's in pain."

"But hardly, for how electrocuted he is!"

"Shh, she's sleeping," AEGIS chided me, and I felt stupid and regained control of my voice. "Look, I know why you wanted to see this because like I said, I reviewed it a lot too. I wanted to find proof somewhere that he's Exhuman, something definitive that would, if nothing else, tell us what his powers are. And it's just not there."

"It has to be. He's doing all this impossible shit."

"Humans do plenty of impossible shit, Athan. You ever see the speed of a guy juggling a dozen balls at once? Or the dexterity of some close-up stage magic? Or the reactions of pro gamers? Or the stamina of an Olympian? What Dragon did was well under what those people are capable of. He just...did it all at once."

"While in pain of having his arm torn off. While in a fight. While facing multiple adversaries."

"Yeah."

"Which is impossible."

"No, just extremely improbable. But you're forgetting that we're not talking about human averages here, Athan. Dragon is just one guy, and not just any guy, he's the most dangerous and successful assassin in the world, probably. He doesn't have to be average anything. Statistically speaking, there will be a person born out there who's just better at everything than everyone for whatever reason. And if that one superior guy focused his efforts on assassining, that's where Dragon might have come from."

"Just play it back again, please. The whole fight, at like, half speed."

I watched with a careful eye, honed from dozens of hours of doing this exact thing after football matches. Watch the play enough to know what's going on, but always watch yourself. You needed context, but you weren't gonna fix the other guy's shit, you could only focus on yourself.

And the more I watched, the more I thought...the Defiant didn't deserve me as their last hope, nobody did. I was a fucking mess. My defense was riddled with holes, my footwork was just straightforward and gave away everything I intended to do before I did it. I was too reliant on the strength of my powers and used them at every chance, which made them utterly predictable. Even if a lot of things Dragon did were apparently superhuman, he didn't need to be to put me down.

My mouth felt sour and dry as the recording finished, and as I saw myself getting punched over and over, I couldn't help but to agree with Dragon on that. I was a fucking idiot.

"Wow, was that really your best?"

I turned and saw Whitney sitting up on the bed, her eyes on the holo.

"Apparently," I said with a shake of my head. "It was terrible. I was terrible."

"You were fine," AEGIS said. "Dragon is just a professional killer. And...maybe Exhuman too."

"No, I was shit. I was telegraphing everything I was doing like a complete amateur. You see how Dragon moves here, no lead up, no hesitation, just goes? You can't tell what he's doing until he's already doing it. That's how your supposed to act. That's how a real player moves."

"He's not a player,' AEGIS said with a frown. "And I thought you were fine. You did your best."

"I was shit, and he demolished me for it."

"But not what I'm talking about," Whitney said. "I don't know anything about telegraphing or players, but...you've got lightning powers, right? So what's this mess?"

She stood up and dialed back the holo to a part where Dragon danced out of my range after hitting me plenty, and my swords swiped through the air at him only to fall short.

"My powers aren't unlimited," I said. "I have a maximum range of like, eight feet. They can't go past that."

"Why not? Does it just fall apart or something when you do?"

"No, I just can't. Like you can't reach your arm further than a couple feet in front of you, it just doesn't reach."

"So you're saying--" she said, getting up and putting an empty cup of noodles on the nightstand and then crossing the room to stand by us at the holo. "--that from here, I can't reach that cup and knock it over?"

"I think that's pretty obvious," AEGIS said with an eye roll.

Whitney just gave a sly smirk and picked up another empty cup from behind her, and then threw it tumbling through the air, where it barely clipped the other and sent both to the floor, bouncing on the thin carpet.

"You threw a cup at a cup," AEGIS said. "Wow. Great job."

"I'm saying, if you can control electricity, you can manipulate circumstances in your grasp--" she picked up the cup again "--to affect them when they're out of your grasp." She threw it towards me, and I cut it out of the air before it hit my shield.

"Watch the throwing shit," I scolded.

"Sorry. Forgot."

I dialed back the holo to where I threw a bulb at Dragon.

"So that, basically?" I said with my own smirk, but to my surprise hers just grew larger.

"Yeah, something like that. But you were chasing that Dragon around with your...what appear to be ionizing...floating...semistable closed-current circuits?"

"I call them swords."

"Call them what you want, that doesn't change what they are. If you've got the power to make a circulating closed system like that though, why can't you let that system go, let it drift out of your range and extend the threat?" She tapped the side of her glasses with a smug smirk. "I'm talking ball lightning here."

"Ooh," AEGIS said. "I like where this is going."

"Or...just melt that guy. Your sword is only a few feet from him. You obviously have a lot of current, if you just kick up the resistance, Joule's law handles the rest."

"Now hang on here," I interrupted. "Isn't it weird to be helping an Exhuman with his powers?" I asked her.

"Don't say that," AEGIS interrupted. "She's on your side for once."

"And if she's going to stay there, I want her to be doing it deliberately."

"No, it's a good point," Whitney said, crossing her arms with a small U-shaped frown. "I probably shouldn't, huh?" She seemed to struggle internally as a few expressions crossed her face. "Like, what if you'd used something I came up with to hurt the police? That'd be on me. But on the other hand...not to be flippant here, but how many people get a chance like this to study this kind of thing? Maybe good can come out of it?"

"Oh you're just a huge nerd," AEGIS said, walking over and approximating a hug as best as she could with only one nonfunctioning arm. "You wanna play with his powers. Well, go ahead, I give you permission."

"Uh," I said.

"Not that you need my permission, since Athan's an adult and everything, but never hurts to have the girlfriend's permission, right?" she immediately backpedaled.

"...right," Whitney said with a shake of her head. "I don't know. It's complicated. And I don't have to figure everything out right this second anyway. As I see it, I'll just...feel this out, I guess."

I was about to say how reasonable that sounded, and was just happy to hear she was open to the possibility at least. I was having a hard time with how much Whitney was avoiding my eyes, like she didn't want to see me as a person. It reminded me of a shitty time when everyone in my life was doing that, and I already felt the edges of that same blah-nothing-despair cutting into me from Dragon and the Defiant.

And Karu.

That's what I was going to say, anyway. But as I opened my mouth, instead, a monumental gunshot cracked through the air, unmistakable as Lia's again. And at almost exactly the same time, something slammed into the door with enough force to rattle the windows.

I looked at the others for half a moment and saw alarm in their eyes to match my own. And then, blades out, I bolted to the door and threw it open.

Dragon was already recovered and fleeing, running in the parking lot below us with a bullet hanging in the air by his head in an orange-yellow fog, exactly as we'd seen before. One of his sleeves trailed behind him without an arm to fill it, but in the moment I took to take this in, I realized my shield was strobing from gunfire, that Dragon was shooting me while I was standing there flat-footed and stupid as anything.

Another second later, and Dragon suddenly lunged sideways, throwing himself to the ground in an instant, again moving with the impossible spontaneity which made him unreadable. As for why, that became clear when the ground behind him exploded, sending fragments of pavement flying far enough to fizzle on my shield. A second report rang out less than a moment later, loud enough that I could feel it in my chest. The shooter was close.

Lia was close, I thought, and my heart skipped a beat as I saw Dragon already on his feet and running towards the direction of the shot.

Towards Lia.

Lia was in danger.

I had to move.

But for some reason, I couldn't. Seeing Dragon again, right outside our door, inches and seconds away from barging in and killing us, it had turned my blood cold. No matter how much I screamed internally at myself, no matter how much I knew I had to act, my body refused to obey. My feet both stayed firmly on the ground.

Someone was going to die if I didn't act. Lia was going to die if I didn't act.

Even if I did act, a voice whispered in my mind, I wouldn't be able to save her anyway. I couldn't stop Dragon even if I tried. He was beyond me in every way.

But I had to try. I had to. Lia was my sister, I would do anything for her, even if it didn't work. Even if it was meaningless and I failed. I had to try, damn it.

But still, somehow, my feet refused to move.