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The new hero’s uniform was bright primary colours, one of the vaguely beetle-inspired looks they were spitting out this year with yellow goggles pressed over their eyes and an iridescent blue split cape reminiscent of elytra behind them. Dark skin, homemade pronoun pin stuck to the chest of their uniform, and they had to have had their hair done yesterday, because the bleach and the fade were both pin-perfect. They looked altogether too young and excited to be kitted out in combat gear, and their presence in Erin’s office was interrupting the flow state she had been in with her paperwork.
“Fuck off,” she told the power handler who’d brought the kid in. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”
“Foreboding is going to be working with you for the next few weeks, Prescience.” The handler’s expression was bland.
No. She didn’t want this. Not ever, but especially not now. “I do incident response, not newbie patrols,” Erin shot back, ignoring the kid’s hopeful expression to stare down the man in a suit. “And I don’t work in teams.”
“They have a power very similar to yours,” the handler said. “No one else is able to train them effectively. Without your help, they’re going to be in danger in combat.”
Another of the endless list of kids thrown into traffic. She’d gone numb to it years ago. “Not my fucking problem if people aren’t smart enough to stay alive,” Erin said. Her hand tightened on her pen. “Give them to someone else.”
The hero stepped back, glancing aside, but the power handler didn’t move. Erin couldn’t remember his name. He’d told her that she’d been outside too much a couple months ago, she remembered that. “This isn’t an optional request,” he said. “They’ve been assigned to your supervision, your choice is if you cooperate or if we have to audit you for noncompliance again.”
It was absolutely miserable to dredge up the paperwork to prove that she was doing her job. Cooperating, documenting, working with people. The fact that the whole process usually ended in some kind of personal improvement plan only made the prospect less appealing.
Erin bared her teeth across the desk. “Fine. They’ll follow me or whatever.” She remembered his name now. “And by the way, Mark?” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Go fuck yourself.”
Mark smiled blandly. “Always a pleasure to talk to you, Prescience. Glad to see noncompliance isn’t an issue.”
He left, and Erin stared at the new hero. Were they even out of their teens? Their hand fiddled with the seam on the side of their uniform, eyes flicking around the office and then back to her. Erin stood up. “Alright, this shit is only important if you can stay alive,” she said. “We’re going to the training gym.”
“Oh!” The new hero sounded surprised and a bit relieved. They hurried to follow as Erin exited the tiny box of her office. “I’ll do my best not to be a bother.”
“Right,” Erin said. She didn’t look behind her. “For whatever that’s worth.”
The kid sank slowly into a fight-ready stance a body’s length in front of Erin, gaze darting behind her like they expected someone to turn and tell them off.
That wasn’t going to happen. Other heroes knew not to interact with her when it wasn’t for work, and she wouldn’t be surprised if her coworkers would cheer on Prescience taking a few hits.
“Alright,” Erin said, tightening her ponytail and then flexing her hand around the weapon in her fist. There was an elastic band on it, holding it in place even if she lost her grip. “Take me down.”
“But—” the kid started, expression a mix of trepidation and awe.
“Hit me,” Erin barked, and launched herself in the trainee hero’s direction.
In the fraction of a second before she moved the kid had already dodged out of the way. The place Erin aimed for was empty when she arrived, a punch darting in from the side to hit insultingly-soft into her shoulder.
She’d taken harder hits during her medical checkups. Erin pivoted, aiming a blow where that punch had come from, but a block was already in place, deflecting her to the side and following it with a kick to the ribs.
That one was an actual blow, and the kid had muscle. It threatened to knock Erin’s wind out.
Could have been a fight-ending move, except that she did this every day. Erin staggered and set her teeth, turning into the fight again.
The trainee hero wasn’t hard to look at, exactly, they weren’t blurring in place, but every time Erin aimed in their direction they’d just left it. Not a speedster, then, just short-term precognition, trained for combat. Famously hard to hit someone who knew what you were going to do before they did it.
The kid had let her get close, though, and that meant they had less space to maneuver. The last blow had come from behind her, and if she had been fighting someone she’d be looking to clinch the deal right about now. Erin pivoted and swept her arm through the entire space behind her, as much weight as she could throw behind her hand.
The modified taser in her grip made contact and snapped to life, and the kid made a strangled noise as their muscles spasmed. Directly in front of her for the first time since this had started.
Which put Erin in the perfect spot to knock their feet out from underneath them, pin them to the mat, and drag their arm up behind their back until movement would cause pain.
“So, you left me on my feet, which was your first mistake,” she told the hero under her. “You also let me get close, which is really fucking dangerous. You have to make sure they never get to touch you at all. If you’re just stopping some fucking robbery or whatever that’s one thing, but if you’re doing anti-villany work they already know how to counter short-range precognition.”
“Huh,” the kid said, struggling to get their breath back. From the way they inflected that, they weren’t used to this happening. “Did—you used your power?”
“No,” Erin told them flatly. Might as well burst that bubble. “I just stayed up and got too close for you to dodge. It’s what my enemies try to do, if I give them a chance.”
“They know how to counter it?” From the sound of it, this was the first time this had occurred to them as an opinion.
“I’ve been on the scene for 18 years.” Her tone was dry. “People’ve been real fucking motivated to figure this out.”
“Oh.” The hero went limp under her knee, forehead pressing into the mat. “I haven’t—I wondered what it would be like to fight someone who could—do the thing.”
“It doesn’t work,” Erin told them. She let go of the kid’s arm and pushed herself to her feet. “Alright.”
“What?” The newbie hero turned on their side, squinting at her behind the googles.
Well, might as well make clear that they hadn’t been felled with powers. Erin gestured. “Up. Hit me again.”
The kid pushed themself to their feet and upright, shook their head as if to clear it, and launched a kick in her direction. They weren’t pulling their punches this time, it looked like, but Erin already knew how to dodge. She spun to the side, gripping just the faintest strand of her power and pulling.
In the small pocket of space she’d affected, traceries of light spun into existence. There was the thing in space, and there was the thing where it was going to be a fraction of a second later. One of the other training heroes walked across the room, echoes of his steps in faintly branching paths in front of him. A training dummy both was and was not in place as it reverberated under blows. A water bottle rolled inevitably across the floor. The trainee hero in front of her blurred into a bright smear as her power couldn’t parse them.
But if she couldn’t see them, that meant they couldn’t see her either, and if she pivoted and threw a punch for where she had last seen them—Erin’s blow connected with the hero’s chin and they snapped back into her vision. Grip lost on the future, the kid staggered backwards a few steps.
“Oh huh,” the hero said, eyes wide. “You—disappeared?” They had a hand on their jaw.
“Too many possibilities, power can’t handle it,” Erin told them. She’d made her point, she figured. She rolled her shoulders back, eyes cutting to the exit of the gym. “You done?”
“I’m not done, I can keep going,” the trainee hero scrambled to say. Erin looked at them, and they reached up to adjust their googles. “This is better than the villains will do,” they said in cheerful bravado.
Yeah. It was.
Erin held their gaze, but the kid just squared their shoulders and stood straighter, hopeful smile not dropping off their face. She exhaled. “Fine. We’re done sparring.” Better find a way to train this kid while minimizing blows to the head. Erin turned and headed to the side of the training space. “You’re gonna run the challenge course.”
She could hear footsteps behind her as they followed at her heels. “Okay!” Against all reason, the newbie hero still sounded optimistic about it.
Erin hit the button on her phone as the trainee hero crossed the line again and didn’t quite manage to keep her expression blank as she looked at the latest time. They had enthusiasm in spades, but they really weren’t used to working with someone who knew their power. This kid wasn’t going to survive their first encounter with someone who genuinely wanted to kill them.
“How’d I do?” they gasped out, walking in a tight circle with their hands on their hips.
“You’re done for the day,” Erin replied. She stuck her phone back in her belt, waved a hand at the dressing rooms to the side of the practice space. “Go get a shower.”
“Oh, uh, I might just go home.” The kid visibly forced a smile.
She frowned at them. “The showers have like—hot water, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
“I, um.” The new hero pushed their smile bigger. “I think it might be hard to shower without unmasking, kind of.” They laughed awkwardly. “So I’ll just head home.” They sniffed their arm, made a face, and glanced at Erin. “Do you think the dressing room sells deodorant?”
Erin still wore her mask outside of her apartment, but that was more out of a sense of antisociality than any expectation that her identity was in any way preserved. She had no real privacy, and she’d known that for a while, as much as it still rankled. Good on the newbie for still holding onto it. She raised her eyebrows at them. “Yeah, Old Spice’ll fix you right up for the train.” Her tone was a little acid.
“I don’t have to take the train, I’m just over—” the hero started, horrifyingly.
“Don’t,” Erin broke in, harsh. “Don’t tell me your fuckin’ identity.”
The kid blinked at her, eyes wide behind the goggles.
God, she didn’t want to know more about this kid when they inevitably died, and she didn’t want them to give up whatever life they still had while they had it. She was almost out, she didn’t want to watch it all go to hell one more time. “Rent savings of living onsite isn’t fucking worth it,” she told the newbie. “Keep your own place, keep your own life.” She pointed at the door. “Go, head home or whatever.”
“Right,” they said, bouncing on their toes, glancing between Erin and the door. Clearly there was something on their mind. Erin crossed her arms and waited for it. The kid cleared their throat.
“Uh, I was in school when the Baseline Incident happened,” the hero said, expression heartbreakingly sincere. “There were some people who worked at the plant who were related to my class, and they let us watch the news in school. You didn’t give up, even when everything got bad, and you saved like, a lot of people.” They swallowed. “It’s what made me want to be a hero, what you did.” They smiled, intent and hopeful. “I’m—I’m really honoured to work with you, and I promise I’ll do my best not to let you down.”
Erin stared at them.
Orders that doomed them all coming down the comms. The desperation from her team—from her friends—and the later silence. The sickening realization of how fucking unnecessary it had all been. The later discovery that unnecessary was just the start. The goddamn medal they gave her. Having to stand and listen to the PR spin with a straight face. The fact that it was just another part of the same shitty cycle where bright and shiny young heroes stepped onto a wheel and got crushed for it. The fact that she wasn’t even sure how unique the whole thing was.
Erin turned and left.
The alley was dark after sunset, a few spots of brightness from lightbulbs over doorways pooling over battered asphalt. The person she was here to meet was slumped against a back wall, collar turned up around his neck and scrolling on his phone. Erin stepped in front of the technopath she’d fought so many times and tipped her head to the side. “Hey.”
Circuit looked up, the glow of his phone reflected in his sunglasses for a moment before he snapped it off. He reached up and tugged his scarf higher over his mouth, pushing himself upright. “Prescience.” There was a smirk in his voice, muffled by the fabric. “Thought you’d chickened out.”
Oh, she was set on this. She was certain. “I am five fucking minutes late at max,” she told the villain, acerbic. “Got held up signing out.”
“Sure, sure.”
Circuit was taller than her when he straightened out of his habitual slump, and she had to tilt her head to look him in the face. Outside the alley, night traffic swept by. She raised her eyebrows at him, hand coming up to adjust the surgical mask on her face. “Well?”
“Everything’s set up,” Circuit told her. “Even got you a place to stay.”
“I’m finding my own place,” she snapped back. “I’ll work with you, we’re not friends.”
“Don’t worry, I’m in no danger of thinking that.” His tone was faintly mocking. “But you wanna join the crew, we’ve got everything in place. Next week.”
God, that was so close, and it was too far away. “Why not now?” she demanded. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I don’t tell you how to dodge punches,” Circuit returned. “Plus—” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and waved it. “You wanna disappear in the most obvious way possible? I thought you wanted to give your group a little bit of a challenge for tracking you down, but if you want to make it easy—” He raised his eyebrows.
She’d lasted this long, made it through everything, found a contact, convinced them to trust her, arranged a plan for turning traitor. She could wait a little longer. “Fine,” Erin gritted out. “Next week.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Everything’s on there. Do try not to let it be found.”
“Shoulda killed you when I had the fucking chance,” Erin snapped, taking the paper.
“But I’m just so useful.” Circuit returned, amused. He took a few steps back, hands shoved back in his pocket. “Don’t be late.”
Erin swallowed down the urge to start listing obscenities at him. She’d been told that could strain working relationships. “I’ll be there,” she told the villain. She put the paper in her pocket and watched as he turned to walk down the alley.
She could follow him, see where he went, but she’d agreed not to do that. It was part of this whole leap of faith, turning her back on everything she’d worked for and trusting the people she’d dedicated her adult life to fighting. Going rogue, taking that final step. An acceptable level of risk, for a payoff that she wanted so bad she could taste it..
God, she was so close.
Erin checked her phone.
The whole thing—getting held up at the gate, getting here, and meeting her contact—had taken twenty minutes. She still had time before she had to sign back in. She was free in the city with no handler and no mission, no one tracking her because she’d been so well behaved lately. Erin felt a smile creep over her face.
She was going to go to a coffee shop, like an ordinary person, like someone anonymous and unpowered. She was going to get a taste of what her life was going to be like before it arrived. There was a spring in her step when she turned to exit the alley.
The coffee shop was a pocket of golden light and sound amid the quiet of the city at night. She pushed the door open to the ringing of spoons in drinks and the background hum of a handful of conversation, joined the line as the whirr of a blender started up behind the counter. It was all so achingly mundane it made hope stir in Erin’s chest, unfamiliar and destabilizing.
She was going to get to have this. She was just going to get to be a person. There would be villain work, she’d agreed to that—she even agreed with a lot of the group’s aims—but she would also get to go into the city and feel the absence of attention on her.
Erin ordered something seasonal and got a seat next to the window. She tried her best to be subtle when she glanced around, but no one was even looking in her direction. She was just another person in a hero merch hoodie stopping by to get a warm treat against the autumn chill. Erin pulled her hood a little higher and tugged her mask down to her chin, taking a sip of her drink and letting the sound of the city at rest wash over her.
The drink tasted of canned spices and aerosol whipped cream, artificial and processed and delicious. It wasn’t even an unfamiliar taste—there was coffee available at headquarters—but the whole situation made something behind her ribs twist. An unexpected feeling, an emotion long scarred over. She wasn’t used to looking forward to the future. Erin pulled her mask back up over her face and breathed, hand holding onto her warm cup like an anchor point. She was going to get her life back, a life she’d hardly had in the first place.
She was so close to getting out.
When she heard the voice behind her, her brain processed ‘familiar’ before it processed the context of why. She had half-turned in her seat and looked towards the group of rainbow-haired young people seated at one of the long tables, and then she froze as she recognized the way one of the figures moved. That was her trainee hero, maskless, dropping a canvas bag on the back of the seat and sitting down.
“I can’t tell you about it!” they protested to their friends, pulling a cup towards them from a collection in the centre of the table. “You know that, it was kind of in the whole agreement.” They took a sip of the drink, eyebrows raised over the lid.
“Well, is it good?” One of the other figures leaned forward, braids swinging around her face, then broke out laughing as Erin’s trainee made a face. “That answers that.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine!” the hero hastened to clarify. “I have a lot to learn, though, but it’s good.” They nodded, emphatic. “My uh, my mentor’s making sure I’m getting better, and I’m really excited about it.” Joy crept over their expression. Erin felt slightly sick.
The person next to them put a hand on their arm. “I’m happy for you, Aster. You’ve been working towards this for a while, and—yeah.”
They grinned at their friend, face lighting up. “I get to really help people, I think. I’m—” They laughed, waving a hand. “I’m gonna do my best.”
“Yeah?” Another figure leaned across the table. “Did you see anybody famous?”
“I can’t tell you that!” they protested amid a round of laughter at the table. “You tell me how your days went, I can’t tell you about mine! Sky, you go.” Erin’s trainee pointed at a friend.
“Well,” their friend started.
Erin turned back in her seat, looking down at her cup. A little bit of the drink had bubbled through the air hole in the cheap white plastic of the lid, pooling in a misshapen blob on the top. It wasn’t visually symmetrical any more, wasn’t balanced.
She reached out and wiped the droplet away. Her finger left a worse smear of overpriced coffee behind it. The young people laughed behind her.
Laughter from her trainee, who was named Aster. Who had friends who were excited for them to do this job. Who was excited themself. Who wanted to help people.
Erin got up and pushed her way through the doors into the night, cooling drink clutched in her fist.
She should look on the bright side. Maybe Aster would survive and just get ground down. Lose all that enthusiasm. Give up on helping people. That would be good.
She took the direct route back to hero headquarters.
She’d been circling her trainee for what had to be five minutes, and Aster just kept dancing out of range, light on their feet. “You know, at about this point in a fight, I might expect reinforcements to arrive,” Erin said, dry. “You’re not gonna just gonna be able to toy with one person for this long.” She shifted her weight and threw a punch towards Aster’s ribs, the blow going wide as Aster was no longer there.
“I mean, if you have reinforcements coming, so do I, right?” Aster grinned under their yellow goggles, throwing a return kick in Erin’s direction. “Don’t superheroes work in teams? It might be time to start talking about your surrender, if you were a villain.”
“Don’t ever rely on your teammates to bail you out.” Erin’s tone was flat as she avoided the blow and re-settled onto the balls of her feet. “If you get in a situation where you only get out with help, somebody’s already dead.” She still hadn’t managed to land a hit on her trainee, but they’d travelled back and forth across the mat twice now. Aster was right next to some padded blocks that made up part of the challenge course, and that gave her an idea. She threw a kick to the right and saw Aster flow smoothly out of the way of the blow and where she would be once she resettled her weight.
Which put them right in the corner between foam blocks, which meant that when she dove directly forward, there was nowhere for them to move. Erin knocked her trainee to the ground, turning to get them in a choke hold. “Always keep your exits open,” she said, locking Aster in place. “Don’t let them pin you down.”
“Got it,” Aster said, a little strangled. They tapped Erin’s arm and she let them go, sitting back on her heels as they rolled back upright. “You know, I really appreciate the practical examples,” Aster said, grinning at her as they re-adjusted their goggles. “Really memorable way to teach. If this was in a Powerpoint, I’m not sure I’d really get it, you know?”
She doubted that. They’d been training for a week now, and Aster was fast to pick things up, even if they were being taught as imperfectly as Erin managed to communicate. There was just so much to try and cover when it came to the ways someone could try to kill an idealistic young hero. “I’m shit at Powerpoints,” Erin told them, pushing herself upright. “They make you give them in front of people, and that sucks. Works better when I can just stop talking and show you.”
Aster immediately danced back a few steps, out of the range she could possibly dive.
Erin paused. “So I know you weren’t using your powers then,” she said, begrudgingly impressed. ”Cause I wasn’t going to do anything.” She raised her eyebrows at her trainee.
Aster grinned. “Call it an abundance of caution.” They shrugged, cheerful expression still on their face. “You could change your mind, after all.”
“Good,” Erin told them. “Keep that energy. Shit can turn at any moment.”
“Got it,” Aster said, nodding. “Everything is trying to kill me.” They stayed poised on the balls of their feet, ready to dart in any direction, ready for the fight. Ready to throw themselves into danger.
“Alright,” Erin said. She headed to the corner of the mat. “Break for water, then you’re gonna run the Challenge Course again.”
“Oh,” Aster said, determinedly enthusiastic as they followed her. “Here’s hoping I only fall three or four times.” There was a grin in their voice. “I think I’m getting there.”
Despite herself, Erin snorted. “Who knows,” she threw over her shoulder as she reached for her water bottle. “Maybe only twice this time.”
Aster’s face lit up at the joke, and Erin turned away. She needed to stay focused.
Erin clicked her phone as her trainee crossed the line again. Aster flapped a hand at themself as they walked in a tight circle, a little breathless. “How’d I do?”
Still not where she wanted them to be, but a noticeable improvement. “You’re getting faster,” Erin said, pocketing her phone.
Aster grinned at her, joy taking over their whole face. “I’m working on being more—efficient, like you said.” They inhaled and held it, and then breathed out again, stopping with their hands on their hips as they got their breath back. “You always hit the ropes in the same pattern. Was that on purpose?”
Erin paused.
Aster’s eyes widened, and then their grin grew. “You did tell me to work on spotting patterns,” they said, very faintly teasing.
Erin turned away to hide her expression. “You won’t be able to do that in the field, you have to learn people the first time you see them,” she said. Damn, now the kid had her smiling at work. “Good proof of concept, though. At this rate we’ll introduce you to incident processing shit next week,” she said, tone dry.
She wouldn’t be there for that, but still. Maybe Aster would file incident reports about interacting with her as a villain. That was a vaguely amusing thought.
“Oh, that’s good,” Aster said, nodding as their expression got mock-serious. “I hear that’s where the real hero work is, so I’m excited to do real heroism.” They lifted a fist in a salute. “Paperwork—what separates the adults from the kids.”
Erin snorted. “Don’t get too excited, once you fill everything out you have to submit it to the fucking processing portal, and that thing is actually worse than being shot.”
Her trainee opened their mouth again, grinning, and then paused as the speaker crackled overhead.
“Code 4 Villainy Incident,” an automated voice said. “Gamma shift heroes report to transport immediately.”
“Shit,” Erin said, turning to run for the door.
Behind her, she could hear Aster’s footsteps, following.
Code 4 meant villains with an active intent to harm, meant a combat suit. The strips of carbon fibre in the front of Erin’s uniform pressed against her ribs when she breathed. Sirens sounded overhead as the van sped through traffic. She opened and closed her hands, breathing.
The handler on the other side of the van eyed her. “Prescience, this is not expected to take more than an hour,” the woman said. “If you go over an hour, we will be tracking you down.”
Another bound on the edges of her life. The van’s weaving path had Erin constantly shifting in her seat, pulled against the safety belts. She remembered this handler’s name this time, this was Tiffany. Talking to her like she wasn’t continuously aware of the chip in her neck and how clear they’d been last time when they told her the circumstances in which it would be activated. “I’m aware,” Erin said, deadpan.
That clearly wasn’t the level of acquiescence Tiffany was looking for. She leaned forward. “You’re a high value target,” the handler said, aiming an unwavering stare across the van. “Do not put yourself in a spot to be captured.”
Captured. At least that was the talking point that they were going with, that the issue was that she took too many risks. Fantastic, they weren’t openly accusing her of trying to defect. She’d kept herself that much under wraps. “You know, with how you all talk to me sometimes,” Erin said, a smile without amusement forming on her face. “It really seems crazy that they let me go out at all.”
“It’s been discussed,” Tiffany said, sitting back into her seat.
Erin felt herself blanch despite the adrenaline in her system. God. Please, no. A return to that sickening time when R&D had been convinced that they could get longer range precognition out of her if they just tried one more thing, when her life had been a haze of sickness from drugs and the world shifting unpredictably around her. Never ever being alone and never allowed outside. Stuck between narrowing walls. When they’d told her that she was moving back to active duty she’d sat down and cried. To return to that, when she was so close to getting out—
She needed to make this work. “Glad to know we’re all on the same page,” Erin said, mouth dry.
Aster was sitting to the side, hands on the safety belts holding them in place. They watched this interaction with a faint line of curiosity between their eyebrows. Tiffany glanced at them. “Sometimes the villains try to kidnap high value targets,” she explained. “To deprive us of their powers or to use powers for their own aims. So there are tracking chips in high value targets, so we can find them if they ever get grabbed.”
‘Find them,” as though that would be a good thing, as though being chipped wasn’t a tacit acknowledgement that headquarters would put a bullet in your head rather than see you leave their control. Erin was pretty sure they still had guys for the bullet. Just to make sure.
“Oh, I don’t have—is—do I need that?” Aster put a hand to their neck.
Something twisted in Erin’s stomach, sick. As if it wasn’t enough that her trainee was idealistically signing up to throw their life away, they would volunteer for even more. Give up everything, pared away in strips, until they were nothing but what the heroism machine wanted of them. Because they were the sort of person who would throw themselves at a challenge with their whole self, who would tell their friends that they were excited to help people. “It’s only for high value targets,” Erin told them, harsh. “You’re not that important.”
She’d intended it to be brutal, but something twisted inside her again when she saw Aster’s face fall, then set as they nodded determinedly. “That’s fair.” Her trainee grinned. “I’m gonna have to learn to pull my weight first, right?”
Tiffany’s voice was a little infantilizing, the condescension of someone who saw everyone in terms of the value they rated to headquarters. “I’ll bet you’ll be there in no time.”
On top of everything else, the way they treated people. An endless series of hoops to jump for, and all of them were some form of poison. Erin stared blankly at the painted metal on the side of the van, shifting with the vehicle as it moved. She could hear other sirens now, other emergency response vehicles.
The van turned into a spot and braked. “We’re here,” Erin said, hitting the release and scrambling for the exit. She wanted to get this done.
The villains were holed up in a several-story office building. Clear line of sight down the street, commanding the space around them, with the emergency response parked behind barriers at a safe distance. Erin put the offered earpiece in and rolled stiffness out of her neck, steadying her breathing. “Targets are holed up inside the building, we think they’re on the fourth floor,” the site manager said once everyone was gathered. “They’ve got a bomb they’re threatening to set off, and there are about ten noncombatants who normally work at the office who are unaccounted for. We’ve got the building surrounded, but there’s confirmation that Shadow Step is with them, so they have a teleport out. They’ve got snipers in that parking garage who are keeping anyone from approaching. Prescience, we need you to go in first and clear the way for Lighthouse to start getting people to the roof. You get rid of their snipers in the garage and keep shutting down their long range options so we can get closer. Goliath, Iceberg, Lighthouse is gonna bring you up top and you’ll be working down to the main room, high priorities to neutralizing the bomb and locking down Shadow Step. Foreboding, you’ll be going in through the bottom floor, clearing any resistance to get the noncombatants out. Any questions?”
“Do we know if the roof access is defended at all?” Iceberg asked, tucking a strand of blonde hair into her braid.
Five heroes, nonpowered support team in armour standing behind, her trainee with eyes wide behind their goggles as they flexed their hands at their sides. Erin took in her surroundings, the back half of her brain keeping tabs on the conversation as she analyzed the scene. There were several floors of parking garage that had line of sight on the street. She would have to deal with each of them in turn. And if she was a villain trying to keep people from getting closer, she’d be looking at placing people in those corner offices, so it would be best to keep an eye on those. Site manager hadn’t bothered to tell them what their opponents wanted, but it must have been big demands that headquarters had decided not to meet today, and the villains must have paid well to have people willing to make a move that would so obviously call in heroes. High-risk high-reward energy, which always ratcheted up the danger for the people facing them.
She’d known Aster wasn’t likely to make it through their first combat. She’d known that the whole time. They’d trained for street crime and she’d had them a week. She was shit at teaching. She hadn’t even had a chance to try and get them on a lower-risk part of an incident response. The main doors on the first floor were horrifically exposed, and the site manager seemed to expect them to go straight up the front walk in sight of the entire building. They weren’t making it through this.
“The longer we delay the shorter the time on the bomb gets,” the site manager said, effectively ending discussion. “Everyone ready to move?”
Erin adjusted the velcro strap on her left glove, then tightened her ponytail, rising up on her toes and bouncing. She’d be first in. At the end of the line of vehicles, there was an unmarked black van with someone in dark glasses and a surgical mask keeping their eyes on the circle of heroes. The bullet, in case heroes decided they didn’t want to throw themselves at the danger in the right way. “Wait till I’ve been inside the building thirty seconds,” she told Aster. “Then head for the alley on the right, go in the supply door. Get them where they can’t move, don’t let them track your reactions.” She turned her attention to the site manager. “Count me in.”
A voice came over her ear-piece, distanced and clinical. “Five, Four.”
Erin breathed out, a grin forming on her face as she turned to face the street. One more time, straight into danger, this side of the line.
“Three.”
On two Prescience grabbed the entire building with her power, pulled, and moved.
She blurred as she accelerated, the world splitting into a thousand possibilities around her. There was no way that running into gunfire wouldn’t coat her throat with fear, but that was only part of the raging flood inside her as her feet hit pavement. Adrenaline and exhilaration built to a crescendo in her veins as she saw the future and wove between realities. The shining threads of what was going to happen, seconds before it became real. And when she was putting her entire weight behind her power like this, seconds was all the time in the world. It was easy. It was the most challenging task imaginable. It was two decades of practice and experience, coming within a hair’s breadth of death and stopping at the last possible moment.
Nothing else was like this.
Bullets hit pavement, but she was already gone. Sound exploded in the air, voices snapped orders, but she was faster than them, she knew what they were going to do, she’d done this before. She’d faced no-win scenarios, and this was only maybe-win. This was a dance with and around death, and she was very, very good at dodging.
The closer she could cut it the more effective her moves. A hired fighter turned to face her as she closed, and he was going to slash with that blade, but she could step to the side and hit his unprotected neck, and her enemies weren’t the only ones who could use electricity. Zip ties, break the weapon against a concrete pillar, head for the next person trying to kill her.
Heroism grated with an agony too dull to be hate, but using her power in combat felt like being alive for the first time in weeks. Prescience ducked and punched and weaved, pulled on the speed aspect of her power to throw behind blows and rush between cover. The world was outlined around her in gleaming light, and she was still going, she was still alive, they couldn’t knock her down. She was still here.
The sounds of combat had largely faded, and Prescience was standing at a broken plate-glass window, looking out over the street. Emergency responders hurried about tasks on the street below her, and orders crackled over the earpiece.
“Situation report, sound off,” the site manager’s voice came in her ear. “Status when called. Lighthouse.”
Prescience watched as a stretcher was carried into an ambulance, accompanied by police. She could see the brightly coloured uniform from here, though she couldn’t make out details under the shock blanket. A bullet casing rolled under her heel, and she shoved it with the side of her foot. One of her opponents had had the ability to create long stinging threads of energy that wrapped someone and reeled them in, and her shoulder still burned where one of them had scored her.
“Foreboding,” her earpiece said.
Erin tensed despite herself, waiting for the silence.
“Present,” her trainee’s voice said, a little wavery. “Kinda, mostly—I’m fine.”
Erin’s shoulders went down. They’d made it. Against all odds, Aster had pulled through. If there were bodies today, it wouldn’t be her student’s she would have to see.
“Prescience,” the site manager said.
Prescience looked out over the street, over the people standing behind caution tape. How close could she cut it? How long could she push it until they cut their losses, assumed she was gone? She flexed her hands at her sides, rolled her neck. Sometimes she imagined she could feel it, the capsule at the base of her skull, cold tendrils wrapped around her veins.
“Prescie—” Her trainee sounded alarmed.
“Keep comms clear,” the site manager said, no inflection. “Prescience? Status report?”
Would she feel it when they triggered the chip, or would her body just start failing her? When she had been getting particularly bad evaluations, she used to go to sleep not sure if she would wake up again.
She’d made it through everything that tried to kill her so far, but it seemed impossible that it wouldn’t be the people she worked for who took her down in the end. They’d made it clear that she was only so useful as a tool, and she did have such a habit of being hard to deal with.
“Alright—” the site manager said.
“Present,” Prescience said down the mic, smiling out over the street. “Superficial injuries only.”
She wasn’t giving them an excuse today. Not when she was so close. Not when she’d been so good, not when she was almost out.
“Report when called for, Prescience,” the site manager said.
“Last minute resistance, got a little distracted,” she told him, still smiling. “Won’t happen again.” It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t. She was going to see to that.
“Alright,” the manager said. “If you’ve been injured, report to medical. Squad A, report.”
More chatter over comms. Erin watched the sunlight on the rooftops for a moment more, then turned to find the stairs.
The paramedics gave her a bottle of water while they cleaned the wound on her arm. Erin drank it carefully using her off hand and then leaned on the bumper of the ambulance as the worker applied steri strips to her bicep. She watched as Aster talked with noncombatants being checked over by first responders, then started limping towards where she stood.
They grinned at her, then addressed the people in the back of the ambulance. “Hi, um, I’m a hero?” They cleared their throat. “I turned my ankle a little. They said it needed to be wrapped, so if that’s—possible.”
One of the paramedics jumped out of the ambulance and pointed towards a supply crate. “Sit down. Can you take the boot off?”
“I think so, it hasn’t swollen, just—” Aster laughed a little. “Ran on the side of my foot.”
Erin watched Aster’s injury be investigated while gauze was applied to her arm. “You made it,” she told them.
Aster looked up. “Yeah. Uh, your training helped a lot, thank you.” They managed a grin. “They were definitely trying to get close to me, so I couldn’t—” They waved a hand.
“Yeah, they do that,” Erin said, dry. She swallowed another mouthful of their water, watched as Aster’s ankle was wrapped. Their trainee still looked so young. It wasn’t like she had managed to do much of anything to protect them—she never did—but soon there would be nothing standing in their way except efficiency calculations working out acceptable risk. For someone who would throw themselves directly into danger to help people. “You know, this is a dangerous line of work,” she said. “And your power itself isn’t really strong. You can just find a different job. You don’t have to do this.”
Aster’s eyes widened for a moment, startled shock, and then their jaw set. “I know my power isn’t strong, but I want to do this. There’ve been other heroes who’ve made up for it with training.” They nodded, eyes intent. “I’ll put in the work. I want to help people.”
This wasn’t going to go well. It never did. She was as shit at talking to people as she was at being a proper hero. “There are other ways to help people,” Erin said. “Ones where the death rate isn’t so high.” She nodded to the paramedic finishing up their ankle. “You only got that today, but if you keep getting called out you’re gonna do more than fuck up your ankle.”
Aster inhaled, shoulders set. From the look on their face, Erin was pretty sure they were as close as they ever got to snapping at her. Good. Get mad. Stop following her lead. She was a bad role model and worse teacher, and about to betray their whole side to boot. “Look, I know you think I’m just—a beginner, but I’ll prove myself. I’ll show you.” Aster managed a grin, back to determined optimism. “I don’t intend to die, and in another six months I’ll be a high value target too.”
Fuck. “You should give up,” Erin said, intentionally brutal. “This isn’t a good line of work for you.”
For a fraction of a second Aster’s face looked significantly worse than it had been when they were told to charge people firing to kill. And then it set into polite blankness. “I don’t give up, usually.” Aster told her. “Kind of made a habit of not doing that.”
Fantastic. She’d made her student feel bad, and they were more locked in their path than ever. Well, if they wanted to die for the cause so bad, there wasn’t much she could do to stop them. As evidenced.
Her shoulder was bandaged now. She looked at the paramedic. “Good to go?”
The paramedic had a carefully neutral expression. “You’re fighting fit.”
“Great.”
She left without saying goodbye.
Erin filled out the sign-out sheet—hero name, serial number, time leaving, destination, expected time back—and handed it to the gate guard. The woman scanned it and then handed it back to her. “Outside period’s too long, you’re down to 30 minute intervals now.”
Erin stared at her. “Nobody fucking told me this.”
“It’s on your file,” the guard said, expression uninterested. “Something about late response before?”
Did they—did they really. Because she had delayed for seconds at the incident site earlier. She was going to fucking kill that site manager. Erin bit down so hard she could hear her pulse in her ears. “I was unavoidably delayed by combat,” she gritted out.
The guard shrugged one shoulder. “S’what it says. You want you don’t go?” She nodded at the sheet. “Seems like you should be able to get coffee’n come back in half an hour.”
She just needed to play nice long enough to get out. Erin scratched out the return time and wrote in something sooner, then handed the clipboard back. “Sure. Whatever.”
The guard stamped the sheet and hit something under the desk in her booth. The door clicked open. “Enjoy your coffee.”
She wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. Erin pinched her mask tight over her nose, pulled her hood up, and headed for the door.
Her contacts weren’t here, and her mind wouldn’t unlatch from that fact. Erin paid for her coffee and took a seat at the bar, trying to level her breathing.
If she had something to hit, or dodge, or run from, she’d be fine, but she wasn’t any good at just waiting. Not being able to do anything was always the worst. She was supposed to be first to move. She was supposed to be able to rush danger head-on. Erin looked down at her drink, holding onto it without really feeling anything in her hand. What if the villains had decided she wasn’t worth the risk and were just going to leave her hanging? What if they still intended to meet her, but they were going to be late—so late that she ran past her signout time? Headquarters had dinged her for seconds last time, how much of a margin would she have this time? Would she have to go back and live with the walls slowly closing around her? Had someone sold her out, to any of the myriad people who wanted her dead?
She exhaled and made herself drink something, making a face as she realized she’d ordered a black coffee. It scorched her tongue when she swallowed. She shifted her mask back over her mouth and nose, keeping her hand there for a moment and breathing into her palm. She would give it at least ten minutes. And then she would—see what the situation looked like.
An endless period of waiting was broken by a tall figure in a long black coat walking through the front door of the shop. Erin’s heart rate spiked. He’d come, that was her contact, she was getting out. Circuit threw up a hand and all the lights exploded, the machinery in the shop falling silent a second later. “This is a robbery,” he shouted over the reaction from the crowd. “Everybody on the floor.”
They hadn’t left her behind. It was going to work. Erin was light-headed with relief as she slid from her chair to the floor. Circuit’s backup hurried in the door behind him.
“Lock down the cash boxes,” Circuit instructed one of the other villains. “Where’s the manager? You’re going to start the time lock on the safe.”
A figure in a denim apron froze in place, half-kneeling behind the counter. “Uhhhh,” he said.
Circuit stepped to the side and grabbed Erin’s arm, dragging her to her feet and pressing a knife to her throat. When she swallowed, she could feel the cold metal of the blade, an inflexible pressure reminiscent of her combat suit. Erin was so full of adrenaline she could taste it in her mouth. “Let’s try this again,” Circuit said to the manager. “You’re going to start the time lock on the safe, or I’m going to start going through hostages. I don’t want to, but I’m on a schedule. Let’s make our time together as pleasant as possible, mkay?”
The manager nodded and scrambled towards the office, still bent half-double. A villain in red followed him. Circuit manhandled Erin behind the counter, still holding the flat of the blade against her throat. “You’d better not betray us,” he hissed in her ear.
“Don’t plan on it,” Erin returned under her breath.
Circuit nodded to one of the villains who’d come in with him, a short brown-skinned woman wearing an opaque green visor and currently emptying a cash box into a bag. “Amanita, here.”
Erin knew her, this woman could control poison. “Right,” she said. Amanita reached up and touched Erin’s neck, then went back to the cash box as if nothing had happened.
There was a brief feeling like an electric shock at the base of Erin’s skull, and then Circuit pulled a piece of metal away from her neck. “You’re gonna sit back here where we can reach you in case of funny business,” he said in a voice pitched to carry, then pulled the knife away and turned to face the front of the shop. “And I want wallets and jewelry on the floor, throw it towards the centre. Airslash, you pick them up.” He stepped towards the tablets used for cash registers, hand going to deposit something in his pocket. “Okay,” he muttered under his breath as he picked one up. “Surely I can reverse the payments in this time.”
That was it. That had done it. She was out. Erin swallowed through the lump suddenly in her throat and started to sit down, legs a little shaky. She had the strangest impulse to cry, which wasn’t useful for the situation at all. She put her head on her knees and focused on breathing. She was out, she wasn’t a hero any more. She could choose her own life.
“Don’t worry, the heroes are going to be here any minute,” a voice said, horribly familiar. “We’ll get you out.”
Erin raised her head and stared out around the side of the counter. A figure in a blue hoodie was crouched there, red beanie pulled over bleached hair. Her student, her trainee, Aster here to save her when that was the last thing in the world she wanted.
Erin was still wearing a mask, her hair was down, and her expression of stark horror probably didn’t make her more recognizable. Aster thought she was a noncombattant. The hero nodded at her, the calm certainty of someone here to help. “I’m out of costume but I’ll protect you, and I called in backup.”
The whole plan had been to obscure the circumstances in which her chip had stopped sending and buy her enough time to disappear. Kill all the electronics in the shop to stop anyone reporting the issue, neutralize the thing in her neck, move the tracking to a fake, retreat into the city and ‘dump her body’ later. Headquarters would figure it out later when a hostage’s death synced up with a hero’s disappearance, but it was supposed to give her maneuvering room. If a hero had called in a report of villain activity at the exact spot where her chip was, they’d know now that something was up, that she was at the site of an incident and cooperating.
“You’ve killed me,” Erin said, bleakly.
Aster’s eyes widened, and then they put out a hand. “No no, Circuit and Amanita and the rest aren’t known for killing hostages. And I’ll protect you till reinforcements get here!”
“The villains aren’t the ones I’m worried about, Foreboding,” Erin shot back, harsh. “It’s the heroes you just fucking called in.” She threw her power around the shop and pushed it as far into the future as she could reach. Villains darted behind the counter, dipped in light, noncombatants crouched in place, and then the front window of the shop exploded in a hail of bullets. Nowhere to hide. Everything went still. She set her teeth and tried to adjust her power a bit, look for every possible option. Again. Again. Again. No places to dodge, no maneuvering possible. Even if she followed the figures that ran, they were hunted down. There was no getting out of this one.
“Prescience?” Aster blinked at her, visibly recalibrating. “Why would—the heroes?”
Telling people the truth about what started to happen when you were too valuable tended to get them either marked as valuable or disposed of, but it wasn’t like things could get worse for her trainee. “I’m on my final fucking strike,” she hissed at them, “and if they catch me this close to villains I’m not walking away from this.” God, and Circuit and Amanita and the others had taken the opportunity to help her, and all these people who’d just been in the wrong coffee shop at the wrong time. What a way to end, after so long. After she’d been so close. ”And everyone else—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Jesus fuck.”
“You’re—they—“ Aster was shaking their head. “No—what?” Their expression took on the moment of concentration that Erin knew meant they were using their powers, and something stricken entered their face.
“What do you think happened with the Baseline Incident?” Erin shot at them, feeling a mirthless smile turn her mouth upwards. It was a little funny, at the end, to go back to that night. Turning and turning and not being able to find a way out, people she’d trusted being the reason it was going wrong, hearing her friends hurt and go silent around her. Concrete corridors replaced with a tidy shopfront, with the same amount of blood. “Tidal wanted to defect, but they couldn’t let a reality warper leave heroism, and everyone else was just collateral damage. I only made it out cause I was unconscious, and when I woke up they’d chipped everyone over a power level two.”
Aster’s face looked like she’d just destroyed something immeasurably precious, and for a minute Erin tasted regret, hot and bleak. God, she should have let the kid die with their illusions intact. All they wanted was to help people, and that was what was going to kill them. She was as shit of a person and a mentor with this as she had been at everything else. Or—wait. Erin snapped out a hand and grabbed Aster’s sleeve. “We need to get one of—Amanita can knock you unconscious and then when you wake up you say you didn’t see anything.” She stared at her trainee, eyes wide. “That pulled me through.”
“Nope,” Aster said. Their face had set, and they reached up as if to adjust goggles they weren’t wearing. “I’ll cover your exit. You run.”
Erin froze in place and then snapped her power out again. She grabbed as much of her surroundings as she could and pushed it forward. If there was someone actively running interference, her student in a hoodie charging forward, everything took longer. There was time. It wasn’t perfect, but for people who ran there would be a chance.
A footstep sounded beside her and Circuit stepped into view, reaching down to grab Aster by the shoulder. “This isn’t cooperation.”
“No!” Erin threw out a hand. “Headquarters found out. Foreboding’s helping us exit.”
Aster was a little ashen, but determined, eyes on Erin. “No one should be forced to be a hero, and if they’ve been hurting their own people that’s not exactly what heroism is about,” they said. They managed a grin. “Not the way I want to do heroics, that is. This’ll give you a chance, you should go. Take everybody and—” They glanced towards the front window. “I think you have about four minutes?”
It could work, it could give them a chance. This was the best shot she had. This was her future given back to her. Erin took a moment to consider making a break for freedom over the body of her student, using their genuine heroism and desire to help people to cover her exit.
And that was, she found, unacceptable.
There’d been enough death. She’d had to stand by as it happened again and again. She’d been expecting Aster’s death from the moment she saw them. She wasn’t going to make that future real at her own hand, by her own choice. And that left a single obvious path forward.
It was almost a relief, after the anguish of hope. Erin inhaled, shoulders relaxing. She was never going to make it out. It had been too long, she had drawn too much fire, she’d seen too much. She’d defied people too many times. Of course she wasn’t going to get a future where she just got to be a person. Of course, of course. Of course this was how it was going to go. Beautifully straightforward, actually. She just needed to clinch the future she wanted into place.
“No, I’d draw too much fire, and there are all the noncombatants,” she told Aster. “I need you to get all the regular people out, you and Circuit and them, and I’ll hold them here long enough for you to make it into the subway or whatever.” She glanced around, pointed at the villain in red who was still crouched by the safe in the manager’s office, looking in their direction. “Mask can hide people’s tracks.”
“I’m not sure—” Aster started, and there was that fractional moment of concentration again. Erin grabbed her power and pulled.
The world split into possibilities around her, and as suspected, Aster was a blur of light in front of her. “My whole thing is I’m really fucking good at people trying to kill me,” Erin told the smear where she’d last seen her student, as reasonable as she could. “Got medals for it and everything. I can delay them long enough for you to have a chance, and then I just fucking book it. I’ve got speed and Circuit already killed my chip. You’re way better at people than I am, you get the noncombatants out and I’ll meet you in the subway or just keep running, whatever works.”
Aster was still blurry.
Erin inhaled. “We don’t have time—I need you to go,” she said, trying to keep her voice still in incident-mode calmness. “You do the talking to people shit.”
Aster reappeared, determined, but with the smallest rueful smile on their face. “You have mentioned you don’t like the people part,” they said, faintly conspiratorial. With her power, Erin saw the hero get up and turn towards the exit, gesturing people to follow.
They were going to do it. She wasn’t going to have to watch her student die today. Erin felt a rush of relief as clean and cold as meltwater. Finally, finally, she would be spared that particular agony. She gave Aster a grin, keeping her grip on her own power in place. “I’ll give you three minutes, and then I’ll find you again, alright?”
Aster blurred for a fraction of a second, then re-appeared as they pushed themself to their feet and turned to face the front of the shop. “Alright, we are evacuating!” They waved a hand in a rounding-people-up gesture and aimed it towards the back door. “This has been a heroism training activity, we need to leave immediately for the next phase. Leave your items on the floor, you will be reimbursed later. Let’s move, people!”
After a moment of shock people scrambled upright and for the exit. Aster gestured them along, making sure everyone got out. The villains followed, cash box and safe left abandoned.
Circuit paused by the end of the counter, looking at Erin. “Three minutes?” he said, eyebrows raised.
Circuit didn’t have precognition, but she’d given him a good amount of information about how headquarters felt about heroes going rogue. Erin grinned at him, hands opening and closing at her sides. “I’ll hold them as long as I can.”
He nodded, pulled a small chip out of his pocket and snapped it, then left. Erin was alone.
That had been the fake chip, so officially, she was already dead. Funny, she still felt more alive than ever.
Erin breathed out, then in again. Oddly enough, this waiting was easier than when she’d been just desperately hoping that her contacts would show up. A lot less uncertainty this time. Only one way out of this.
In the parking lot, unmarked black vans started pulling in, combatants in armour piling out the back. The same people who came to every high-level incident just in case, sent out for good this time. Erin tied her hair back into a ponytail.
She was going to have to make this good, give Aster and the others the best possible chance at escape. Circuit was pretty decent, hopefully he’d make sure that Aster had someone to talk to about re-aiming their heroism goals outside of the official machine. Even if he didn’t, Aster was going to be a real hero who helped people, she was sure. Her student would get all those regular people out and the noncombatants would never know how close to death they’d come. She bounced on her toes. Exhilaration and adrenaline built inside her. Less fear this time. She already knew what was going to happen.
The hit squad was lining up outside, shields and weapons in place. Based on unmarked uniforms, there were a couple heroes on the field too. She wondered if she’d fought alongside any of them before, and what they’d been told. Taking down a rogue hero was the sort of thing that got you a medal, she’d heard.
She could see a commanding officer clearly counting down. Five.
One last time for the road, one last time to be first in.
Four.
Aster was going to be a much better hero than she ever was. They were going to really help people.
Three.
Goddamn it, she really had been looking forward to living her own life.
Two.
Prescience grabbed as much of her surroundings as she could, pulled the future towards herself, and moved.