I flew like a bat out of hell straight to the station. I was hoping that some of our radio equipment survived, but I wasn’t overly optimistic about our chances. I arrived not long after New Wave.

  We’d taken precautions to replace windows in the station with polycarbonate in the past few days, but supplies were short. We’d replaced some; the rest had been boarded up with whatever lumber and plywood we could get our hands on. Most of the bulbs and light fixtures in the building had safety covers installed over them to prevent someone from accidentally smashing a bulb when moving equipment around. The damage was fairly contained at the station itself. The combination of an early warning to get people to safety and the precautions we’d taken kept most of the injuries to superficial or low-priority cases.

  The place was swarming with people as I dropped straight into the courtyard. People were screaming and holding bleeding wounds; some were milling around, dazed and clearly in shock. The place was all dark. I didn’t see any of our capes out here, but Chess Team was manning the walls and roof.

  “Boss!” Bishop called out to me from the front gate guard post.

  Okay, priorities. I padded over upright and on two feet, eye level with the guard post.

  “Make it quick, Bishop, I’m very short on time.”

  “Ma’am. Cape forces are inside with their wounded. We had an engagement with three hostiles. Mutants, twisted things, no matching IDs on any of them. They were able to get in under our radar before the blackout; we’re not sure how. They took a hostage and exfiltrated. About ten, maybe fifteen, fatalities, civilians. We weren’t able to stop them and didn’t want to risk collateral kills with bigger ordinance.”

  I took a breath and let it out slowly. I braced myself.

  “Who was kidnapped?”

  “The Dallon girl, ma’am. The healer. They–some woman who could barely speak–were asking after you, said they were taking her to the school.”

  “Fuck. Which one?”

  Bishop shook his helmet.

  Closest is Winslow, but it could be Immaculata or Arcadia, too. Or even the university.

  My jaw creaked with the strain I was placing on it. “Okay. Any fatalities on your team?”

  “Mild injuries from shrapnel on some of our gear, but we’re all mission capable.”

  I nodded once. “Huddle with your team quickly and divvy this up. Break out road flares and chemlights from our supplies, and get some markers up for people to locate the station in the dark. Hang some off the roof. Fire off some aerial flares to signal downtown. White-green-white in that order. We’re mostly intact here, just dark. I’m going to get some people tasked out to get makeshift lighting going so you all have a perimeter. I want everyone of ours inside the walls unless they’re on a task, like the lighting. I’m going to open the gate, but only a little, enough to allow people in and out single-file. Expect us to take on a lot of wounded from the surrounding area.”

  “Full copy, ma’am. And if we get a positive ID on the Nine?”

  “Amber signal flare if there’s hostile parahuman contact, red signal flare if it’s the Nine and you’re sure of it. Be on the lookout for false positives and decoys with Bonesaw, she’s been known to do that sort of thing in the past.”

  I paused a beat. “And if you are sure it’s them, engage as we briefed. Full force, soft targets priority, avoid wasting resources on Crawler or Siberian.”

  “Affirmative. We’re on it.” He took off at a jog across the top of the wall.

  I dropped down and yelled at the fire station, “Brandish! Manpower! I need you!” I moved over to the gate to try and get it opened up partially without destroying it. The careful application of force got the heavy motors moving with only a mild shriek and groan. I managed to open it about three feet without damaging it; that was more than enough.

  Carol and Neil came running out.

  “Glad to see you’re okay, Apex,” Brandish said.

  “How badly did you all get hit out there? And what the hell were all those huge explosions?” I didn’t direct the questions to either of them specifically.

  “Rail tankers that weren’t as empty as they were supposed to be. Siberian seemed to think it was funny when they randomly exploded,” Manpower said.

  “Flashbang and Glory Girl are out of commission. Flashbang took a blast from Shatterbird that wasn’t fully shielded. He’s stable for now, but… It’s bad.” Her voice wavered; she was struggling to keep her composure. “Glory Girl was attacked inside. She was trying to protect Amy–” Her voice cracked, and she sucked in a gulp of air through her teeth. I put a hand on her shoulder, gave her a gentle squeeze, and looked at Manpower.

  “Glory Girl’s got a serious wound on her leg. She needs surgery; we’ve… cauterized the bleeding, but it’s not good.”

  Fuck. If only Amy were here. I can’t leave her with those monsters a moment longer than needed, but I have to see how bad Mark and Vicky are. She wouldn’t forgive me if I went to rescue her and one of them passed away.

  I cleared my throat. “Okay. I’ll do everything I can for them. I’m not Amy, but I do have Vivian, and she’s pretty good.” Manpower looked confused.

  I held my lower left arm up, and the pod cracked open, numerous spindly insect-like limbs popping out, and far more tendrils and tentacles. Neil stiffened up at the sight. Carol’s lips turned into an immediate frown.

  “Listen, I know what it looks like, but she’s an entire operating room. I’ve saved several people’s lives with her.”

  Carol’s composure broke, and she threw herself into Manpower’s arms, sobbing loudly. “Please, I don’t care, save my husband and my baby girl.”

  Her cries joined the chorus of pain and misery surrounding us.

  “I will, Brandish. I promise. And I’m going to get Amy back, right after. But I want to make sure those two are out of immediate danger first. I need you right now, Carol. Please.”

  She wiped her face and nodded quickly.

  “Manpower, our security team can’t operate in the dark with all their equipment out of commission. I need you to get five or six strong guys, give them some axes, pipes, whatever. Break into some of the nearby buildings and have them start smashing up furniture. I need you to get oil drums, barrels, car wrecks, anything you can get your hands on, and we need to get some fires lit around the perimeter. You handle the big stuff, make sure that we’re not accidentally going to burn the entire block down, and keep them safe while they get the fires going. Pump some fuel out of the tanks so they can get them lit quicker.”

  Neil nodded quickly and strode off to the station. “You, you, you!” He started pointing out people and gathering them up into a quick gang.

  “Carol, we’ve got wounded here, and a whole lot more coming. I need you to get three or four people, anyone with first aid or medical training, even if it’s basic, and get triage set up right away. I don’t want people bleeding to death or standing in this water if they are sliced up any longer than they have to be. Get the priority cases first in line at the clinic, and the rest lined up based on need.”

  She coughed and wiped her mouth, looking around and nodding quickly. I could see that she was taking in the sights of all the other wounded.

  “Who’s been doing the cautery?” I asked her.

  “Crystal, she’s got better fine control than Sarah. I can do it too, if it’s really bad, but better if Crystal does it,” she replied.

  “Okay, good. Get her set up with her own line, and get some tourniquets going to buy you more time. You all in New Wave are better at the medical stuff than Eclipse or Flechette are. I’m going to go help your family right now. We need Lady Photon up above to guide people in and keep a lookout. If Crystal needs a break, they can swap out, but I want someone in the air with Blaster abilities. Worst case, they can shoot any of the Nine and mark targets for the security team.”

  “I–” She gave me a quick hug and murmured, “thank you.”

  “I’ll get my parents going on organizing people and getting a little militia formed up, for whatever it’s worth, and send people your way for support. Mom knows everyone here and their skillset, practically. Keep people calm, and pace yourselves. I feel like we’re in for a long night.”

  Carol and I headed inside together. She worked her way up from the first floor. I jumped up to the landing pad and wriggled my way through the doors like a giant blue lizard creature.

  There were chemlights already lighting the interior of the station, and the clinic had them on nearly every surface. Thank god for duct tape.

  We didn’t have any actual doctors at the station. Well, technically, we did, with Amy. She had an honorary medical doctorate. But the only real medical staff we had was one nurse, a retired nurse, a veterinarian who had lost a chunk of their leg, and a dental hygienist. The clinic was packed, but not because it was crowded. It was a small clinic, barely more than a glorified first aid station and exam room, but I’d stocked the thing to the gills.

  Money well spent, fuck.

  I stuck my tail through the doorway, up above everyone’s heads. People were comfortable enough around me to not give too much of a shit about a tree-trunk-sized appendage slithering around near the ceiling.

  I projected my voice through the doorway. “Miss Brenda, I need Glory Girl and Flashbang brought out here into the hallway, ASAP. I’m going to take over treating them.” She looked up at my eye in the middle of my claw over her head. She didn’t even bat an eyelash. Old nurses who’d worked in a hospital setting? They had seen shit. Bulletproof. I respected the fuck out of them. She turned to our vet and gestured. “Unlock the stretchers and roll them out into the hallway. Everyone else, make room!”

  A little girl, maybe ten years old, was masked and gloved up next to Brenda, holding up a large chemstick while Brenda worked with a pair of forceps to dig chunks of glass out of someone’s thigh. Crystal was on the other side of the exam table from the girl, and Brenda was gesturing with her suture needle for Crystal to do electro-cautery. Or laser cautery. Whatever. The dental assistant was doing a similar operation on a folding table covered in plastic wrap, along with the other nurse.

  Mark was rolled out into the hall first. He was stuck with IV lines and was getting a blood infusion. He… looked bad. He had gauze and some kind of plastic taped down tightly over his shoulder and upper chest, and it was stained with blood. He was unconscious and had an oxygen mask on. It was hard to tell with the yellow and green lighting from the big glowsticks, but his color seemed off. I’d wait on treating him until I saw Victoria.

  Vicky was rolled out next, and although she wasn’t nearly as bad as Mark was at first glance, I could tell by looking at her that her vitals weren’t great. Her skirt was missing, and she had a pair of compression shorts on, and one leg partially cut for access. Her top had been removed as well, and she just had a sports bra on with one shoulder strap cut off. The bra was soaked in blood, and her hair was plastered to her back, clumpy and sticky.

  She had two wounds that were wrapped, one on her right leg that covered nearly her entire thigh, and one on her left shoulder. She also had a compression bandage wrapped around her head and holding a gauze pad in place along the left side of her head. Her eyes were open and glassy, her pupils looked like pinpoints, and she was sucking on a lollipop and drooling on herself. She had a big, dumb grin on her face.

  I prepped Vivian, who started fully opening and exposing her myriad parts.

  “Miss Brenda? Is that other girl, the one with the leg and arm amputations, stable at the moment?”

  “Yea, she’s sedated and getting more fluids, but she’s stable.”

  OK, power, Vivian, whatever. Take a look at these two, and start with the one who’s more at immediate risk of dying. I need both of them to be stable and recovering as quickly as possible. Back on their feet and able to fight, if possible, but I have to go rescue Amy before they get tired of waiting for me and leave with her. Oh, and don’t make any weird changes to either of them, please.

  Ten or more thin tendrils snaked out to each of the beds and traced over the wounds, and a few pierced Mark and Victoria.

  “Hehe! Morgan, you’re supposed to take me on a date first,” Victoria babbled, her voice slurred.

  I pulled my tail out of the operating room and started to wander around for it, trying to find someone suitable for what I was looking for. From where I was near the staircase, I had pretty good reach on the first, second, and third floors. I found a younger kid wandering around, and I waved at them with my tail claw. They yawned and waved back. I made the ‘come hither’ curling finger motion with one claw, and led them back to me.

  Meanwhile, I scooted a bit closer to Victoria, as Vivian had made up her mind which of the two she was going to treat.

  “Hey, Vicky. Don’t worry about Viv here, she’s great and going to get you fixed right up, okay? Don’t look if it’s going to bother you, you can count ceiling tiles, or we can just chat some, if you’d like.”

  Vicky giggled, then asked me, “Am I going to get a tattoo too? I saw your naughty little secret!”

  Oh my god, what do they have her on? She’s blitzed out of her mind right now!

  “Do you want one? I can give you one, if you want. It’s not made to be decorative, but it sure is pretty, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, then her eyes widened, and she burped. “Oh noooo, everything’s spinning!”

  “Yes, no moving around at all, please. We can’t really immobilize you with your power, so you have to behave.”

  “Youuu can call me… Miss Behavin’!” She went into another giggling fit. I chuckled too. Vivian moved in and started slicing off bandages and plastic over Vicky’s leg with a level of precision I doubt I could consciously replicate.

  Meanwhile, the kid, who I wasn’t sure if they were a boy or a girl, had made their way up to where I was sitting and working on Victoria.

  “Hey, Apex!” The little kid said. “Are you going to beat up and stomp the Nine for us?”

  I turned to look at them and nodded. “Yep. I already beat up Shatterbird for hurting people; she had to run and hide with her friends.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The kid did a fist pump and went, “Yeah! Heroes are gonna win and save the city!”

  I wish I had your joy and innocence right about now. I can’t unsee the body parts and mutilated remains of people the Nine have left in their wake.

  “What’s your name?” I asked them.

  “Alex!”

  Well, that doesn’t narrow things down at all.

  “Hey, Alex. Do you know Miss Rivera?”

  The wrapping on Victoria’s leg was cut loose and pulled off. The wound was… horrific. Her thigh was sliced right down the middle, from just below her crotch to just over her kneecap. Frayed and burt ends of muscle fibers, nerves, and blood vessels were sticking out of each side of the gash. Vivian pulled wadded gauze out of the wound and tossed it to the side. It landed on the floor with a wet, bloody splat. I could see Victoria’s femur, and there was a V-shaped gouge down several inches of the middle of the bone.

  “You mean Boss Lady!?” Alex asked excitedly.

  I bobbed my head.

  “Yeah!”

  Tentacles and tendrils alike moved in on Vicky’s leg, and my lower left hand, under Vivi’s control, started slicing away at the burnt tissue where she’d been cauterized, while tendrils toyed with the sides of the wound. Vicky’s hand strayed down near the wound cavity.

  “Whoaaaaaa, coooool!” Vicky mumbled while drooling on herself.

  “No touching, Vicky! Your hands are filthy!” I said, somewhat sharply. Victoria brought her hands up to her face and looked at them. “Oh wow, you’re right! I need to wash them…”

  I turned back to Alex. “I need you to go find Boss Lady for me, and bring her here, right away. Tell her it’s me who needs her, please. Can you do that?”

  Alex gave me what I was pretty sure was supposed to be a salute, then ran off.

  I turned back to Vicky. I was trying very, very hard not to think about the smell coming from her leg.

  It would have been fine, great, even, if it had smelled bad. It didn’t, and that was way worse.

  Victoria started looking around all of a sudden. I chided her for not holding still, and she looked back at me. “Where’s Amy? Shouldn’t she be doing this?” she demanded.

  I cleared my throat. “She’s being held hostage right now. I’m going to go get her as soon as we’re done here, with you and your dad.”

  “What!? Ohhh. That’s right! Hatchet Face took her! Hey, let me up, I gotta go get her! Do you know where she is?!” Victoria started trying to get up, and I pressed a palm square against her chest and lightly pressed her back down.

  “Vicky. You’re in a critical condition right now, and you can’t go anywhere. Please let me fix you up.”

  “I feel fine,” she protested.

  “I know, you’ve got some awesome painkillers right now, but your leg is wide open; if you started bleeding again, you’d be dead in less than a minute. Amy would not want you to be like this right now.” I tried to placate her. She couldn’t afford to use her Brute rating right now; she’d literally wind up killing herself. If she wouldn’t behave, I’d have to have Vivi give her a nap.

  That might not be the worst idea.

  Victoria let out a whine, then huffed. I took my hand off her chest, and she lay back, turning her head to the side

  I’d try and distract her. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Vivian was still cleaning out the burnt and dead tissue with her leg wide open, but looked to be wrapping up. I was hoping she’d get to stitching, or whatever, soon.

  “I miss Dean,” she said quietly. I pointed my head at her and studied her face, trying to show that I was paying attention. I reached out with my lower right hand and offered to hold hers. She took it with her uninjured arm and squeezed. I squeezed back.

  I was going to say something, but she started talking with a few tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “We weren’t, you know. We weren’t good for each other. I know that. He did too. We talked about it. But we were all we had.”

  I squeezed her hand. This really wasn’t the time for this talk, but fuck it. She’s drugged out of her mind and probably won’t remember it.

  “That’s not true, Vicky,” I told her.

  She turned her head to look at me. Her brows drew together.

  “There were others, Victoria. People you could have gone to, people who cared about you in that way.”

  Her eyelids narrowed, then she shook her head fractions of an inch. “No, I talked with some of the others. They had other things going on, or people that they liked. I made a real doofus of myself asking Carlos last year,” she sighed.

  I reached out with a few strands of hair to wipe tears from her cheeks. “Did you really think it was only the boys who had their eyes on you in school, Victoria?”

  The wrinkles on her brow intensified. “What are you trying to say, Morgan? Who else would it be?”

  “I’m just saying that it seems like you might have been ignoring a full half of your suitors, you silly girl,” I said to her softly. I wiped away another tear that was being stubborn on her cheek, then I gave her a little tap where it had been.

  I glanced down at her leg. Tendrils had laid down some gray cement-looking stuff in the groove carved into her femur and were currently daubing sticky red blobs of foam at different points along the inside of her thigh muscles. Several more, rather thick ones came out of Vivian and slid up Vicky’s chest and into her carotids along each side of her neck. I both felt and saw the tendrils engorge as fluids were pumped through them and into Vicky’s bloodstream.

  Make her better, please. I can’t afford to lose her with everything else going on.

  Victoria winced as the liquids entered her system and let go of my hand, reaching up and taking the lollipop stick out of her mouth. “Mmh, that burns something wicked,” she grouched.

  “Your leg is hurting?”

  “No, whatever that stuff you're injecting is, it feels like hot sauce in my veins.”

  I laughed out loud. Only she would say something like that.

  Of all the things, hot sauce? Really?

  She giggled a little bit, too. The long articulated limbs started to grab inner chunks of her thigh and stick them together. They stuck as if bonded with superglue, and Vivi worked from top to bottom, one layer at a time. Quickly and efficiently.

  You’re a lifesaver, Vivian. Best idea I’ve ever had.

  “How long?” Victoria asked me out of the momentary silence.

  “Hmm?” I asked her, slightly distracted by the approach of my Mom with Alex trailing along behind.

  “Hold that thought, Vic,” I turned to my Mom.

  “Are you and Dad safe? Nobody injured?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, we’re not injured. What did you need?” She sounded more tired than usual.

  “Sorry, I know how busy you are, but we’re taking in wounded. Can you direct anyone with any kind of medical treatment experience at all to report to Brandish, and then send her maybe half a dozen to a dozen other volunteers to help her with triage and first aid? Preferably, people who aren’t adverse to the sight of blood, some of the wounded I saw coming in outside are in rough shape.”

  Mom pulled out a pen and added a note to her arm, both of her hands and forearms all but covered in fine scribbled lines. “Okay, I’ll get them going right away. Are you going back out?”

  I nodded. “I have to, I’m just making sure Glory Girl and Flashbang are stabilized, then I’m leaving to go get Panacea.”

  Mom looked up at me, her eyes watery. “Please, please don’t go out there alone. Take someone with you, take your sister, anyone else. Without any way to communicate now, we’re down to smoke signals and signal flares. It could be hours or days before anyone realizes individual people are missing.”

  I hesitated. “I could take one or two people with me, but I can’t take any more than that. We need coverage here, at least a few of the Nine are… not terribly far away.”

  “Fine, but try and take Eclipse, too. She’s losing her mind being here while other people are out getting hurt fighting.”

  “She’s–” I paused.

  Have I been sheltering her? Maybe…

  “She’s our best defensive specialist, but yes, I’ll take her. Please get someone to locate her here and send her to me. I’m stuck here until I’m done fixing up these two.”

  Mom choked back a little sob, then gave me an awkward side-haunch-hug. I hugged her with my tail; my hands were occupied.

  “Oh! And Mom?” I asked her as she turned away. She looked back. “Can you get Dad to find our super handyman, and see if he can’t rig up some kind of spotlight up on the roof? The security team is operating in the dark out there, and the less they can see, the worse they are at doing their jobs, and the higher the potential for accidents. Everyone’s on edge.”

  She nodded quickly and took off. Alex lingered.

  “Alex!” I called out to them.

  “Yeah, Apex?!”

  “Please go find Miss Landry, make sure she’s okay. If she is, ask them to get the kitchen crew together, get a fire going, and please prepare some simple hot food and strong coffee for the injured people. And Alex?”

  “Uh-huh?” They were hopping, visibly bouncing with excitement.

  “Great work, thank you for being my runner!” I hoped that there was some warmth and energy in my voice.

  I got another salute, and thumping, squeaking sneakers took off down the hall.

  Vicky’s leg was nearly done, Vivi was gluing her skin together and spraying what looked like too-thick soapy water on top.

  Vicky hissed through her teeth. “Ffffffudge. I can feel that!”

  “Leg’s almost done, Vicky, sorry this is taking so long, but your leg was… yeah. Real bad.”

  She flapped her hand on her good arm and was sucking in quick breaths and holding them for a few seconds. Vicky had a pretty high pain tolerance from what I remembered, so this had to be particularly bad to be registering like this through her painkiller haze.

  “How long?” she blurted out, taking another breath and panting it right back out. “How long did you know that, you know, you liked…”

  I thought my heart was about to do a backflip in my chest with the way it suddenly lurched.

  How long did I know that I liked her?

  “...Girls?”

  Oh, thank fuck.

  “Well, apparently, I got bad about it when puberty hit. At least according to my parents. But um, yeah, even before then. I liked hanging out with boys and doing more boy-stuff sorts of things, but that was more a competitive thing, I think,” I said, having dropped my volume back down to hopefully be just the two of us. There was a lot of background noise between crying, moaning, and the occasional scream coming from both the clinic and the long line leading up to it. Still, it was fairly busy and crowded in the area, although Carol’s team was doing a good job keeping people orderly and from crowding too badly.

  I think the giant, open-wound surgery I was doing in the hallway right outside the clinic certainly didn’t hurt for people to see. It can be hard to really contextualize how bad your injury is and why you’re being forced to wait if you don’t have any insight into what’s going on further down the line.

  Vivian wrapped up with Vicky’s leg and moved to cutting off and removing the bandaging over her shoulder. I reached down and slid Victoria’s blanket down some to cover more of her leg now that the surgery was done.

  “Thanks,” Victoria whispered.

  I stuck my tongue out at her, which earned me a giggle.

  Her shoulder was nearly as bad as her leg was. An axe that must have been damn sharp had bit into her shoulder, breaking her left collarbone. The break was mostly clean; there was a big shard that had been blown off the opposite side from where the axe had hit the bone. Vivian started on her clavicle.

  It felt like an hour had passed already, but I knew it was probably barely over ten minutes in reality. Trying to keep track of time with all this shit going on, talking to three people at a time, doing surgery, and everything else was really throwing things off.

  “Victoria… You’re really lucky to be alive with these injuries. You could have died insanely fast from blood loss.”

  “Amy… She saved me.” Victoria’s face darkened.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her softly.

  “When that brute came, she told him and the other one he was with that she’d come willingly and not put up a fight if they let her stop my bleeding really quickly.” The tears were flowing once again. “He left her with the gorilla-thing watching her so she could use her power, and she touched me. They didn’t let her stay more than maybe five or ten seconds. Then she… went with them,” Victoria clutched her blanket in her fist.

  “I’m going to get her back, Vicky. I don’t care what it takes,” my voice carried the vehemence I felt just as effectively

  “I should have been able to protect her. I should have–”

  She’s spiralling.

  “Hey. You did what you could. You had your powers blocked out by a Trump. Most people in your position would have failed.”

  “I could have trained harder with you and Uncle Neil. I never really took it all that seriously, because–”

  I placed an index finger on her lips and shook my head while Vivian worked away, gluing bone back together and building up this layer of thin, clear honeycomb structure along the parts of the bone that were exposed.

  “Listen, Vicky. You’re upset, we’re all overworked, you’re wounded, and out of a fight you want to participate in. And you’re on a shitload of drugs right now and high as hell. I know you want to blame yourself. Please stop, you’re hurting yourself, and she wouldn’t want to see you doing that, especially not for her sake. I will literally rip this city apart if I have to, and I won’t be alone.”

  Vicky squeezed her eyes shut tightly and nodded several times rapidly. I removed my fingertip and caressed her cheek with the back of my fingers. Vivian completed the repairs to Victoria’s clavicle and started cleaning out the deep wound.

  Thumping bootsteps came up the staircase behind me. It was George, our wonder-handyman and welder supreme. He was wearing the most stereotypical redneck getup I’d seen in days. Blue denim overalls, a flannel long-sleeve with the sleeves rolled up, and tall, stout-looking rubberized work boots. An unlit cigarette hung out of his lip. He knew I didn’t like him smoking in here and was good about respecting my wishes.

  “Boss,” he drawled in his somewhere-from-the-south accent. It sounded more like ‘bawws’ to my ear. “Heard ya was wantin’ me to work on a rush job project. Can ya give me a bi’ more details onnit?”

  I swiveled my head one eighty to look over my back at him, and he flashed a toothy, coffee and tobacco-stained set of teeth at me. “Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward, at least, I think it should be. I need a real bright spotlight that either takes some kind of bulb you can find that isn’t smashed and batteries we have available, or something that doesn’t run on power at all. Need to be able to illuminate out to a hundred and fifty yards or so, and be able to aim it down the streets and at the rooftops around us, from on top of our high roof.”

  “Welp, I got an idea on how to do that real quick, boss, but I’ma need someone to scrounge me up some special supplies.”

  I nodded. I’d figured we’d need some kind of parts or salvage run.

  “Tell me everything you need to get started on it right now. The sooner that light is able to be lit, the better.”

  “Yup, you got it, boss. I need a real strong fella, or hell, lady, don’t matter. Someone what can lift a few hundred pounds of metal up five stories and who ain’t gonna drop it, on account of it maybe blowin’ the whole buildin’ up if they mess it up, an’ all. Then we need a couple a bags a quicklime. Maybe like three or four, give me a bit a extra material in case I botch th’ first attempt ‘er two.”

  “Quicklime?” I asked.

  “Yea, boss. Calcium Oxide. Be better’an the hydrated stuff, even though that stuff is a whole lot easier ta get.”

  “Where can we find it in the city, George, and is it dangerous?” I was going to ignore the blowing up the building part at the moment.

  Vivian was done affixing muscles and reattaching severed parts in Victoria’s shoulder, then moved on to repairing her skin next. Once again, Victoria stiffened and let out pained grunts.

  “Yeowch, that looks downright unpleasant, Miss Girl. Hope yer feelin’ better right quick,” George said.

  Miss Girl? That’s a new one, I sorta like it, though.

  He looked back at me. “Any place they woul’ be mixing up cement an’ concrete.. The proper stuff, not the quick bag kind, so, you know, wit’ piles a sand an’ gravel and a mixer. Construction sites. Dockyard prolly got some that was shipped in that ain’t gonna be water damaged.”

  I nodded. “Okay, I don’t need the details, I’ll save you the time. Manpower is working on getting some burning barrels going outside the wall. Go up to the roof, call Lady Photon, she should be up in the air above us, so give her a shout. Have her get her Manpower for you, and tell him what you need. Tell him it’s now a priority, per me, his crew can take over any remaining burn sites.”

  He gave me a lopsided grin, looking rather ghoulish in the green lighting of the chemlights. “You got it, boss! We get this done, I’ll give you a light what can burn the eyes straight out a them doghouse nine!”

  Vivian pulled my arm away from Vicky’s shoulder and moved up to her head. The fingers of my left hand casually flicked out and sliced the bandages clean off her head in a way that made me downright nervous. I examined Victoria while Viv worked on her head wound. She looked much better. Shockingly so. I was still pumping juice into her arteries at a steady clip, but her color was back, her eyes were looking far less like she was a junkie, and the worst wounds I could see on her were scabs on her knees and elbows. Even her bruises looked like they were receding.

  “How are you feeling, Vicky?”

  She rolled her eyes up to look at me without moving her head. “Um, yeah. Pretty bad, but also, pretty good? It’s strange.”

  “Mind explaining, if you can? Be helpful just for reference’s sake.”

  “Well, I feel beaten up and sore now, which I didn’t feel earlier, and like I have a bit of a hangover. So worse in that way. But better overall. Way better.”

  …Huh. She’s less loopy, but still slurring, though. That’s uh. Probably not good.

  I wasn’t sure if Vivian could actively read my thoughts, or only things I deliberately tried to send her way, or if it was just the timing while she was poking around Vicky’s head, but she seemed to perk up and take a much more active interest in Victoria’s dome. Several of her folding limbs started doing this scalp massage maneuver, and four new tendrils popped out of one of her side ports. They approached Vicky’s face, and I also felt as if the ones in her neck were also up to some stuff.

  “Hey, Vicky? I don’t know what Vivian’s doing right now, but do your best to remain calm, please? No flying, aura, or powers?”

  “M’kay,” she said, and looked quite apprehensively at the four red, wormy tendrils sliding closer to her face.

  They paused three or four inches out and shivered in place, with two aimed at her eyes and two aimed at her nose.

  “Apex? Uhh… I don’t feel comfortable right now–” Vicky’s voice rose.

  The tendrils stopped shivering and opened up, looking like a trumpet or something at first, then they split, and split, and split some more, until there was what looked like forty or fifty swaying strands, each so fine they made hair look coarse, barely even visible.

  “Apex, Morg, please, no, please… PLEASE!” She shouted as they wriggled closer, and started to pull her head away, looking like she was about to roll out of the stretcher entirely, had the rails not been up.

  “Vicky!” I shouted and grabbed her upper body in my big hands, holding her firmly in a grip that I knew felt like it was cast iron. “Hold still, I’m not going to hurt you, but you could hurt yourself super badly!”

  She was struggling in my grip, I reached out with my lower right hand to try and hold her head, and Vivian followed along, grabbing the other side of her head with my hand.

  “Please! Don’t… Move!” I urged her. “I got you, just relax, relax!”

  “What the hell is going on out here!?” The vet poked their head out around the door.

  “Surgery, it’s fine, she’s just scared!” I answered.

  Victoria was whimpering; she’d squeezed her eyes shut and was mumbling a mix of my name and ‘don’t panic,’ at a fevered rate.

  I shushed her and soothed her with my voice to the best of my ability, but I couldn’t deny that, were the situations reversed, I’d probably be pissing my shorts right about now.

  Hundreds of filaments slid up her nostrils and under her eyelids. Vicky stopped breathing, and I was terrified she’d passed out, or worse. Then she blasted out an exhale and gulped another lungful of breath.

  I dropped my head low, right over her, and my voice lower. “Talk to me, Victoria. Let me know you’re conscious and if you’re in any pain.”

  She panted several times and gulped, her voice tremulous and breathy, “I’m–I’m–no, no pain, but this is… the worst sensation I’ve ever felt. It doesn’t hurt, but I can feel… They're moving over my eyes and in my head.”

  “Can you hold still if I let you go? I’m pretty sure you’re getting actual brain surgery right now.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice tiny and hollow. I released her head, only to caress her scalp and the sides of her face, carefully wiping away the tears she was squeezing out of her clenched eyelids.

  Vivian released her head also, pulling back some while the tendrils did their thing to address the wicked lump on Victoria’s noggin, near the crown of her skull on her left side. All six of her bug legs were poking, prodding, and making injections on, in, and around the lump.

  “You have a really bad knot on your head. I know you’ve got a legendary hard head, but I think you took it a bit too far when you didn’t have your shield up. What did you do, headbutt Hatchetface?”

  She let out a choked laugh. “No… I fell over after he cut my leg, and my arm wasn’t working, so I couldn’t catch myself.”

  I wiped away a few tears. “Nonsense. Glory Girl wouldn’t tip over and hit her head. She saw the chance to land a powerful hit and headbutt a Brute without her own powers available. Because that’s just how much of a fighter she is, and how much she loves her sister.”

  I got another half-sob, half-laugh. “I don’t remember that happening.”

  “Of course not, Miss Girl. You hit him so hard you blacked out, but others saw it,” she was visibly relaxing as I whispered to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered back.

  “Don’t apologize for lying here while someone roots around in your noggin without any anesthesia, you’re a fucking champion. ”

  “Not… Not about that. For not opening my eyes. Before. For thinking I had to keep trying to fix something that was broken from the start, and for… not seeing other options,” She murmured, barely audible above the background noise.

  But I could hear her.

  “I can’t make you feel a certain way, Vicky, and I would never ask you to, for that matter. The most I can do is ask you to open your eyes, and consider your feelings, and not the feelings that your Mom, Dad, Coach, or anyone else tells you is good or bad for you.” I stroked her cheek with the back of my fingers.

  “Morgan?” She asked in that same barely audible voice.

  “Mhm?”

  “Was that day, and that night, back in April? The one with the Merchants?”

  “Yes, I know the one you’re talking about,” I was smiling with my voice now, because that was the only option available to me.

  “Was that like… A date for you?”

  Another tendril slipped out of Vivian, this time on the far side of her shell, and reached over to plug into the lump on Vicky’s head. I felt it pulling, rather than pushing fluids. The limbs continued to meddle with it from the outside.

  “Yeah, I suppose it was. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I did catch a few feels. Especially when we were flying out there and you were carrying me. But I also wasn’t comfortable in my real body at the time, either, so that was really messing with my head at the time.”

  She smiled and twitched the tip of her nose. “Ugh, itchy. I didn’t really think about it that way either. But if I look back at it as a date now…” She trailed off.

  I didn’t say anything, I just held her and tried to comfort her around the deep invasion taking place in her body right now.

  A tear slipped out of her eye, and I moved my thumb to catch it and whisk it away. “No crying on my behalf, Miss Girl. That’s not allowed.”

  Her smile widened ever-so-slightly. “It was a happy tear,” she informed me.

  “Well… Those are acceptable right now, but only if you’re sure.” I teased.

  “I just thought that, as a date? It was the best one I’ve ever had. Just… Two people being themselves, nothing more or less, no expectations. Just having fun out in nature, then almost beating up some scumbags. And then… Oh god, what I wouldn’t give for a big hamburger right about now. Just remembering it is almost painful.”

  “I think it might be a bad sign if your idea of an amazing date is destroying a national park, terrorizing local youth, and then racking up a triple-digit bill by eating enough greasy burgers to kill the young or elderly outright. Are you sure you’re not moonlighting as a villain, or about to make a heel turn?”

  A giggle, and no crying.

  Small victories.

  “Mm. Sleepy. The fire you’re pumping into my veins has left me all warm and snuggly,” Vicky said, her voice sounding like she was already entering a twilight stage.

  I adjusted the blanket over her and tucked her in. “Normally, you’re not supposed to go to sleep with a brain injury, but that playbook wasn’t written with parahuman medicine in mind. If you feel tired, get some rest. Your body probably needs it.”

  “Mm,” was her only response.

  Her breathing became deep and regular. I checked her pulse. Strong and steady. Vivian withdrew and retracted a couple of minutes later, and Victoria didn’t wake up.

  Melody was coming down the hall and had Flechette in tow. Both were fully geared up and strapped with their kits. The three of us started to talk over battle and rescue plans while I worked on Mark. This was taking longer than I would have liked, even though it would probably be considered extremely fast, given what was being done.

  I could only ask Vivian to hurry so much; it was pretty clear to me after having treated Victoria that these two likely wouldn’t survive the night without an immediate intervention. Taking them to the hospital wasn’t an option; I doubted they were any better off than we were right now. At least we had some form of parahuman ability to assist.

  We’d have to make the best of the hand of cards we were all stuck holding.

  We’re coming, Amy. Be smart. Be brave. Be yourself.