Out of the corner of her vision, Clara saw Mod hurtling across the empty streets. Drones laid into the office building with covering fire. A second later, Arsenal burst through half-destroyed windows and landed on the upper floor of the office building. The whizz of bullets faded as drones focused their fire on lower floors. 

The villains had only taken one hostage with them. Oakenheart was escaping with them into the tunnels. 

TINA relayed all this to Arsenal and Mod. With her web of drones and their enhanced optics, she saw everything. 

“Arsenal, heavy drone inbound. Please load up the hostages. A second drone will intercept Oakenheart. Arsenal, the sorcerer is coming your way. 

“Mod, the sorcerer and the sharpshooter have a trap for you on the first floor. An illusion spell meant to funnel you so Angel Eye can hit you. He’s guarding the stairwell to the lower levels.”

Arsenal jetted herself across the room, her exosuit boots scraping against the floor. TINA had sent a floor-plan to her HUD that put the hostages somewhere in the center of the floor. 

She tore a door off the frame and found them huddled in a storage closet—cuffed and with bags over their heads. She counted twelve. 

“One missing,” Arsenal relayed. Then she turned her attention to the hostages. “Don’t worry, everyone. We’re with the Summit. We’re getting you out of here.”

She started ripping open hoods and snapped as many handcuffs as she could. Each hostage looked at her exosuit with open-mouthed shock, but quickly shuffled away so she could help the next one. 

Arsenal tried not to react when she freed Mod’s brother Antony. He was holding it together well, but he looked at her with the same mix of surprise and fear as the others. 

She still hadn’t met Emmett’s family. She’d missed her chance the other night when she and the others hung out on the roof of the shelter. Emmett had always spoken so highly of Antony—star football player, always helpful and cheery. Seeing him like this felt wrong. 

The air hummed and windows shattered as a heavy drone backed up to the building. A wave of gasps rippled through the scared group. The hatch slammed open on the floor. 

“They’re with us,” Arsenal said, trying to reassure the hostages. “The drone is going to take you back to the Summit.”

She ushered Antony and the others to the drone, and they quickly filed inside. Antony and another hostage turned to offer hands to the others as they boarded. For a moment, Arsenal saw the family resemblance between Emmett and Antony—

“Arsenal, behind you.”

Arsenal spun around to find the sorcerer, Lau Keishos, standing at the edge of the stairs. He held a magic wand at his side and was dressed like he’d just stepped out of a fantasy movie. The upper half of his face was obscured in shadow. 

Arsenal moved to put herself between Lau and the hostages. 

The sorcerer glanced at them over her shoulder and smirked. “I’ll wait.”

Arsenal stared him down. Her gauntlets were half-raised and humming with power. 

“Really.” He waved a dismissive hand. “I’m a villain, not an asshole.”

Both hero and villain waited patiently for the last few seconds while the hostages hurried inside the drone. Arsenal steadied her breathing and watched the power and cooling displays in her HUD stabilize. The world grew still and quieter as machinegun fire from the drones slowed to intermittent bursts. 

The drone’s hatch hissed shut. 

Arsenal leveled a gauntlet and fired a kinetic blast at the sorcerer. He held up a hand and muttered an incantation. The blast deflected to the side and shattered a wall. 

She fired a rapid burst, and again Lau redirected them harmlessly to the sides. Neither put effort into the movements—both testing each other. 

Lau’s specialties were listed as abjuration and transmutation. Arsenal didn’t know much about magic, but she knew that abjuration spells were all about blocking or redirecting attacks. Transmutation spells turned one thing into something else, like how he transformed the first floor into a trap for Mod. 

Arsenal wouldn’t be able to attack him directly. She’d have to come at him sideways and throw him off his game. 

COMBAT THRUSTERS ENGAGED

Arsenal shunted power to thrusters along her back. So when stepped forward, she skated a dozen feet across the floor. 

Lau stepped back in surprise, quickly casting another spell. The ceiling melted. Thick tendrils dripped down and blocked her path like stalactites in a cavern. 

Without missing a step, Arsenal skated around and between the first few, but more were descending. Another second, and her path forward would be completely blocked.

Arsenal fired kinetic blasts with one hand and blasted sonic with the other. Stalactites shattered, and then the entire room wavered as the sonic hit the sorcerer. Stalactites turned to dust as his concentration was broken.  

Lau recoiled and quickly cast another spell. This time, the quivering air in the room condensed into a barrier. For a moment, Arsenal saw her quickly approaching exosuit reflected like the surface of a lake.

She slammed into the reflection. It gave way with a splash.

Arsenal found herself surrounded by liquid, as if the entire floor had been flooded. Her suit felt sluggish, her movements slow. No system alerts—that was good, at least. Whatever water pressure the illusion operated under was minimal. The windows were gone, replaced with an endless, sprawling maze of support columns and floating office debris. 

But the room wasn’t the only thing different. Lau Keishos had transformed into a giant snapping turtle. Its beak looked big enough to take her arm off and its shell looked thick enough to stop a tank round. 

Arsenal hung in the water, uncertain of what to do. 

The turtle yawned wide, and water swirled in its mouth. The water inside boiled, and Arsenal finally had the sense to jet out of the way. 

A blast of superheated water missed her, but it was so powerful that Arsenal felt the temperature difference inside her suit. 

The suit might be able to withstand a direct hit, but it could very well trigger a meltdown. That was the last thing she needed.

Arsenal jetted around the floor, trying to put distance between herself and sorcerer’s turtle morph—which now felt like a dragon turtle. But Arsenal was forced to evade, weaving between pillars as the turtle snapped at her feet. Where Arsenal was hampered by the flooded floor, the turtle was thriving.

She veered to the right, weaving around another support column, and just avoided being blasted. 

The column cracked and the building groaned. 

SYSTEMS OVERLOADING

POWER DISPERSAL RECOMMENDED

Arsenal charged her gauntlets and let loose kinetic blasts as she ran from the sorcerer. Columns shattered. She barrel-rolled, blasting holes through the floor and ceiling. 

Rumbling quickly turned into tearing and splintering as the upper floors began to give way. Water lurched, dragging Arsenal backward. 

She looked back and saw the dragon turtle growing huge in her vision. It yawned and its eyes rolled back and their lids closed. 

Arsenal poured power into her thrusters and her gauntlets. She jetted up and over the turtle, then fired. Overcharged kinetic shots slammed into the turtle and blasted it through the floor. 

The illusion faded as the upper floors collapsed. Arsenal burst through the ceiling and into the air. She immediately turned her weapons toward the destruction, ready for the sorcerer’s counterattack. 

The seconds dragged on, and finally Arsenal spotted Lau Keishos motionless beneath a pile of rubble. 

She flew down, ready for a trap. When none came, she dug him out from under the wreckage. He was bloody and didn’t respond to her shouts, but thankfully, he was breathing. 

“TINA, I need a Fast-Response Drone for evac.”

“One is on the way, but you have bigger problems. Reports are coming in that the Deep Ones are beginning a second assault.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

~ ~

The paladin, Oakenheart, hauled the hostage by the shirt collar as the stairwell collapsed behind. Their plan had gone to shit, but that didn’t mean the entire mission had to. 

The hostage tried to say something, but the gag beneath the hood made their protests incoherent. Not that Oakenheart cared in the slightest. She shoved the hostage. They took the hint and shut up. 

Oakenheart and Shifter were being paid good money for this job—good enough to stomach working with a group of villains like the Hellcat Mercenaries. What was the point in being an honest cape when a job like this paid five times her annual salary with the Summit. 

She understood why the sorcerer had forsaken working with the Felwardens. 

Villainy paid better. 

When Oakenheart cared to pay attention to the wider world—politics, corporations, diplomacy—it was easy to see why the world was so fucked. 

Luckily for Oakenheart, her magic wasn’t tied to tenants of morality like other magic-wielding knights. If it was, she suspected her powers would’ve been forfeit some years ago. 

Even beneath the street, she could hear the battle raging above. By now, the artificer in power armor would be on top of them—probably fighting Lau. The gunslinger, Angel Eye, would want the cyborg for himself. Meanwhile, Oakenheart would deliver the target to their employer. 

If the others survived, she’d split the payout with them. So long as the target arrived, alive and intact, she suspected this wouldn’t be the end of the arrangement. Their employer sounded like they had a plan that continued far beyond this one job. 

The hostage mumbled something, and Oakenheart shoved them again. They stumbled blindly into the wall and slumped down. She grabbed them by the collar without pausing and kept walking. 

Footsteps echoed from down the hall. 

Oakenheart paused and yelled out to them. “Who goes there!?”

No one answered. The footsteps only grew louder. A group was coming her way—maybe even as many as ten people. Did the artificer’s group have backup? Or was this some random group of masks still hiding beneath Belport? 

Oakenheart quelled her curiosity. If they got in her way, it didn’t much matter who they were. 

Oakenheart muttered the old words, ones that roughly translated to ‘strength of the ancient roots’ and ‘arms of the youngest trees’. Magic flowed through her, granting her power and speed beyond her mere Class 2 ranking. Nothing would move her, and nothing would survive her blade. 

Oakenheart shoved the hostage behind her. “If you value your life, do not move.”

She stared down the hallway, waiting for her enemies. The distant sound of running had grown to a stampede. 

~ ~ ~