I woke up, what felt like five minutes later, to the sensation of Newter jumping up and down bodily on my tail.

  “APEX!” Thump. “WAKE!” Thump. “UP!”

  There was no third thump because I caught him around the waist with my tail.

  I yawned and rumbled, “Don’t you know not to wake a girl during her nap?”

  “Depends, does a girl want to make a shitload of money?”

  I pulled a page from Melody’s book and hopped straight up to my feet. “I’m awake!”

  “Buh, put me down, you big brute!” I brought him around to my front side, feet dangling off the ground, and gave him a big old smile.

  “What was that?” I asked oh-so-sweetly.

  “Nah, I’m good. Let’s go, mighty steed.”

  Voices coming down the hallway told me that we weren’t heading out just yet.

  The other four came into the loading bay: Faultline, Gregor the Snail, Spitfire, and Labyrinth. Nobody said anything about my hostage, but Spitfire did point and snicker, and the sound coming through her gas mask was ghoulish.

  “Status?” Faultline asked me. I put Newter down and ran a quick diagnostic check, which involved craning my head around, some stretches, and a couple of pokes and prods. Right side was good. My chest had a couple of cracked plates, but they looked epoxied together and weren’t going anywhere. Wings were all intact and good. Left side was quite sore in places, but not painful. No unexpected holes anywhere in me.

  My eyes were regrown, destroyed, and re-sealed over chips or cracks. No blurring! I ran my lower left arm through its range of motion and threw a few punches into my opposite fist. Stable, no pain. My left arm bulge and right arm studs were gone.

  I looked around at the floor. My blood, where I’d been bleeding all over when I first came in, was all gone without a trace. Where I’d been lying, there was a ring of shrapnel, bullets, penetrators, and god-knows-what else that had fallen or been pushed out of me while I slept. The clear goop around and in the mess was already starting to evaporate.

  …Huh.

  I brought my attention back to Faultline. “All good! Little sore where I got cooked from the inside out, but otherwise, peachy!”

  I couldn’t see her face with her visor down, but I expected she was making one under it. “We let you sleep. The first time we checked, you were still healing. We missed our original departure window.”

  She pointed at L and Newter. “I want you to go with them and provide them with transport. Can you do that?”

  I heard the unspoken message, loud and clear: Keep my people safe.

  I cleared my throat. “If L is going to be good with flying, yes. I somehow doubt Newter will say no.”

  “Dude, YES!” Was the response.

  I peered down at Labryinth’s mask. It seemed to be secured to her head with multiple straps, and there weren’t any holes in it that I could see. She didn’t move. I turned to Newter. “Go get goggles or something to protect your eyes.” He dashed off at breakneck speed.

  “She’s quiet today. If she’s okay with it, she’ll… climb on. But don’t force it.” I lay down flat on the floor.

  “Alright, hop on up, L. Like a piggyback ride, but cooler. I’ll hold you with my hair, nice and secure.” She moved forward and did as I asked. Guess that answered that question. I picked my head off the floor to talk to her.

  “Okay, going to grab you nice and tight, you won’t have to worry about moving an inch while we are flying, okay? Put your hands up in my hair for me, please!” I kept warmth in my voice when talking to her. With her nonverbal at the moment, I wanted to make sure she wasn’t feeling left out.

  She leaned forward, and I wrapped her up: calves, thighs, waist, arms. Safe as can be. She stroked my hair with one hand and squeezed a tentacle with another.

  Newter came careening back around the corner with a pair of military-style goggles strapped over his eyes, then stopped and tried to figure out where he’d be riding.

  “Think I’m out of seats. You don’t mind if I just carry you in my tail the whole way, right?” I teased him.

  I reached over and picked him up around the waist again, and got an “Aw, man…”

  I set him down, straddling around my waist, gave my power a little splash, and strapped him down by his legs and waist with a few ad-hoc tentacles.

  “Whoo!”

  “All set, Faultline,” I reported.

  “You know where the old lighthouse tourist spot is?” I nodded in response to her.

  “Yeah. That place is a real creepy dump, though,” I admitted.

  “That’s fine. It’s just a meeting spot. You’re heading in on foot from there. Head out, time is tight.” Faultline cleared her throat and added, “Call if anything serious comes up.”

  I poked the door controls and stood in a low crouch. I didn’t want to bonk my passengers on any hanging lights.

  “Good luck, the rest of you. We’ll catch up later,” I said. It sounded lamer out loud.

  “Newter knows routes and safehouses if they’re needed. Fly safe,” Faultline said.

  With that, I crawled my way out into the parking lot, unfolded my wings, and told my passengers: “Hang on, here we go!”

  I crouched on all fours, did an awkward frog hop upwards, and blasted off. With that, we were airborne and climbing.

  “Holy shit, this is awesome!” Newter called out.

  It wasn’t going to take us long to get to our destination, traveling as the crow flies has some real serious time advantages, go figure.

  “This is nothing! Hey, L? You like rollercoasters? Want to have fun on the way over?”

  She can’t answer, dummy.

  “Squeeze twice for yes, three times for no,” I called over my shoulder.

  I got my answer. I did a few light climbs and dives, some banking turns, and then a barrel roll.

  Each time: Yes. Yes. Yes.

  I really hoped I brought L some enjoyment before the storm. Newter, on the other hand, was throwing his arms around and having a grand old time.

  I saw the lighthouse up ahead and the glow of some shapes in front of the building. I quit flapping and glided us in the remaining distance. There was a road bridge that had collapsed or been blown up recently, and with the bridge out, I was far less concerned about damaging the road surface than before.

  I flared my wings as air brakes and skimmed in low. The last few feet, I dropped and skated to as top, skin hissing against the pavement. I jammed my tail through the pavement and used it like an anchor, which stopped us quickly, and thankfully not violently.

  Once I’d stopped, I lay down, unbuckled my passengers, and stood back up when they’d gotten off. L gave me a pat on the shoulder. We made our way over to the lighthouse shop.

  “Thanks for flying Apex Airlines. I’ll bill your boss for the mileage,” I joked.

  Newter cocked his head. “Didn’t she already fill your tank before takeoff?”

  “That only covered the checked baggage. I’m built for speed, not fuel economy.”

  We walked up to the front of the building. Kaiser stood flanked by Fenja and Menja, all three of them in their gaudy costumes.

  “Apex,” he said cooly. “Word on the street is that you had a busy afternoon. Something about the dockyards?”

  I kept my own voice level, bland, and boring. Like we were discussing the weather. “What of it?”

  “Interesting rumors. Very interesting. Seems you were right in taking a seat at our meeting all on your own.”

  I’ll never tire of cape doublespeak. I think that was a compliment. Also, an implied threat. Hard to tell with him. I had sort of figured he was a might-makes-right sort, and it seems I was right.

  “Thanks,” I said and left it at that.

  Newter climbed up a wall and hung out with his goggles up on his forehead, while L stood next to me. I took a seat. The sun-motif girl was here from The Travellers.

  Two mercs from Coil’s guys. Not Chess team, I had looked. A bit less heavily armored than the Chess team had been, but decked out in heavier armament to compensate, I guess. Both had assault rifles slung front and center and an additional gun on their backs. I was pretty sure it was a launcher on one and a big sniper rifle on the other. Both looked dreadfully heavy.

  I heard the click-click of claws on pavement and flicked my gaze over without moving.

  The Undersiders. Or some of them, at least.

  Hellh–Bitch and Skitter, and three of her… dogs.

  Where I was sleek and slippery, a seamless blending of form and function, Bitch’s dogs were more grotesque. Scales, plates, bony growths, spikes, lizardy tails, and exposed muscles in places. My sense of aesthetics and beauty had been warping dramatically in recent weeks, especially with more time around the C53s in Faultline’s Crew. But those dogs? They looked gross.

  Kaiser orchestrated some dumb clock-synchronizing maneuver that reeked of more of that posturing than it did practicality.

  “Move out,” he said when we were done. I hadn’t bothered. I had a phone with an automatically updating clock, like a normal person.

  Bitch turned her attention to her lead dog and did something with her power, because the dog surged up three feet, from the size of a pony to a full-on car. Then the dog stretched and shook, and blood and chunks of meat flew off, splattering all over the place.

  I was blocking L from any splatter, and what hit me just rolled clean off. Didn’t bother me one bit. The rest of them, the E88, Newter, and Sun Girl? Shouting and groaning. Even Kaiser, which was honestly pretty funny.

  Nice move, Bitch.

  She mounted the dog like a warhorse and took off at the lead of her pack, Skitter strolling along beside her. I have Newter a small upnod and offered L a tentacle handhold and stirrup, but she decided to stay on foot. We followed the Undersiders and headed out.

  Newter moved up into the front, along with Sun Girl. I was splitting my attention: about 70% looking for trouble, and 30% spying, or thereabouts.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Ah. Her name is Sundancer.

  Looking at the two mercs, I was reminded of my own weapons.

  I took a moment to consider what I wanted to try and use. The quills were good. Real good. I’d want those, for sure. I pushed the thought to my power and felt the changes start to take place in my lower right arm.

  I still wanted to try and use the whip, but with this many people? The risk of collateral damage was high.

  Hm. There were those ricochets and splash damage earlier.

  I glanced around the group. The mercs looked like they had medical pouches, but I didn’t want to rely on them. Maybe some kind of general-purpose first-aid… thing? Having the basics to cover bleeds, breaks, burns, pain, punctures, and airways would be huge. Maybe I could rig up a belt to fit on an arm or leg for some pouches? Wear it around the base of my tail?

  It was food for thought. It didn’t address what I was thinking of my two remaining places to do something, which were my left arm and tail. I couldn’t use a smoke screen. Pepper spray was sort of notoriously bad for catching a breeze and/or hitting friendlies without eye protection.

  Eh, fuck it.

  I went for another eye in the ‘palm’ of my tail once again, and the whip for the left arm again. I’d experiment more another time. The changes went through with some burbles and popping sounds, which got me a side glance from Skitter.

  The E88 crew slipped into an alleyway as some ABB goons walked through an intersection up ahead. Newter stopped Skitter and Sundancer and pushed them behind a car.

  I pressed up against a building and took cover behind a dumpster. It was a squeeze.

  The patrol walked past our street, and everyone came back out.

  Newter checked his watch and said, “Two minutes until we go.” He pointed at a building on the other side of the intersection, a big warehouse with gang tags all over it. “That’s it.”

  Kaiser spoke up: “My girls and I will circle around and attack from another direction.”

  My girls. Ugh.

  “Hey, no,” Skitter said. “That’s not the deal. We’re in groups like this for a reason, and that reason flies out the window if we split up like that.”

  “I didn’t ask for your permission.” With that, he and his girls went off on their own.

  Skitter asked Bitch to call the other Undersiders to let them know of the drama. She pulled out a phone and dialed.

  Newter took the initiative. It was funny, seeing him like this. Guess he did fit in with the rest of Faultline’s Crew when it was time for business. “Let’s talk plan of attack. Skitter, Bitch, you two have the most experience dealing with these guys, so start us off.”

  Bitch was occupied, so Skitter spoke up: “Bakuda likes to set traps, and if this place is important enough to patrol, it’s important enough to have some traps. Let me send my bugs in first. I can get the lay of the land, and the bugs will also confuse and distract anyone inside, which should make things easier on you guys.”

  “Okay. That’s step one. Bitch, can you and your dogs hit the ground floor? I’ll go in the second-floor window,” Newter said.

  I was content to let Newter take the reins. The way I saw it, I’d had enough guts and glory for one day, so I was mostly here to make sure none of this group had to eat shit.

  Sundancer explained she was ranged artillery, which, okay. She didn’t exactly inspire confidence when saying she couldn’t use her power without risking collateral damage. Newter told her to stick with Labyrinth in the rear to cover our exit.

  It was go time. Newter asked Skitter to lead with a sweep for traps.

  “I don’t think I like mines and bombs very much,” I muttered under my breath. That got a look from Skitter.

  “Something there, one second,” she said.

  A moment later, part of the exterior wall of the building exploded. Chaos erupted inside the building. Two more explosions shook the building.

  She was doing this with bugs?

  “Twenty or thirty people on the ground floor, unarmed and half-naked, ten in the upstairs office, armed. Route’s clear of traps, go!”

  Having the intel was huge.

  I wasn’t sure who I wanted to stick with, Newter going in against armed people worried me a little, but I also didn’t want to leave L alone with bug girl and someone who sounded shaky at best with her power.

  Fuck!

  Bitch charged with her dogs, and Newter took off.

  I called out: “Newter, wait! Let me go in first!” He skidded to a halt outside the base of the wall and shot me a thumbs-up. I turned to Skitter. “Scream the second you or L get into real shit, and I’ll come.” She nodded rapidly.

  I took off on all fours, leaped with my upper arms in front of me, and blasted clean through the second-story wall of the building. The gangers inside weren’t expecting the wall to explode inwards, and I’d caught them partially off-balance. I had already darted two of them when several things happened all at once.

  They started pelting me with automatic fire. Newter darted in through the hole in the wall, running on the ceiling and walls and tapping people with his tail to knock them out.

  And Oni Lee blinked into the room and started laying into me.

  He threw several knives, which did exactly nothing, then teleported in to attack me. While he was in the process of stabbing me, I grabbed his head with one hand and bounced it off straight off the floor. A moment later, dust. A clone.

  Of course.

  I heard two distinctive ping sounds underneath me. I dropped straight on my belly onto the grenades. Lee didn’t give two shits about killing his own people, and I wasn’t going to let Newter get riddled with shrapnel.

  Newter screamed, and then I got punched in the chest and gut, hard.

  Turns out grenades are a lot nastier when you contain them. I coughed and wheezed, then climbed to my feet. The rest of the ABB were down, Lee was gone, and Newter was sprawled on the floor, blood trickling from a wicked gash on his back.

  I heard fighting: the snarling and snapping of teeth, claws on hard surfaces, Bitch and Skitter half-talking, half-shouting back and forth. Extremely loud shots were ringing out from the roof of a nearby building.

  I was between a rock and a hard place. I suspected Lee had split off to attack the others. That was potentially super bad. Newter was down right in front of me, also bad.

  The fighting intensified outside, with more gunfire and at a faster rate.

  I had to trust they could handle Lee. Newter was in rough shape. I didn’t have medical supplies. I started turning the office upside-down, looking for things I could use. There was a bed. I took the sheets off it and tore them into some big strips.

  Bitch, Sundancer, and Skitter came in the office from the stairwell, not long after I had taken my improvised bandages and put pressure on the wound.

  “He’s bleeding bad,” I said.

  “Don’t touch him!” Skitter called out to me.

  Bit late for that.

  “It’s fine! I can touch him. He’s cut badly, around his shoulder and ribs. I’m trying to get the bleeding under control, but I don’t have any proper supplies.”

  Skitter told Bitch to go look for medical supplies and gloves. Then both she and Sundancer searched around in some of the areas I hadn’t already, the smaller nooks, hallways, and offices. They came back with a big plastic sheet around the same time Bitch returned with some gloves and a mostly-depleted first aid kit.

  I got Newter transferred onto the plastic sheet, Skitter and Bitch had an argument over something, and Bitch left once again.

  She returned a minute or two later while Skitter was still digging through the medical kit. Skitter wasn’t quite frantic, but she had a sort of nervous energy about her that spoke volumes about her character.

  She doesn’t know him, but she really doesn’t want him to die.

  Bitch dumped a load of handbags on the floor, and Skitter started tearing through them.

  “Sanitary pads,” she said. Sundancer helped her empty the bags.

  I clenched my jaw. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. I worked on peeling back the makeshift dressing I’d applied and using the remaining sheet material to try and keep the wound clear of blood.

  Skitter murmured, “Thanks,” and started using medical tape from the medkit to tape the pads down over the wound. I recalled Brian saying something about first aid training for the Undersiders during the botched meet-and-greet we had.

  Having training didn’t mean someone could perform when the pressure was on.

  Skitter could.

  They wrapped him in a plastic sheet and tried to figure out how to transport him.

  “Let me handle that,” I said.

  “Brutus is downstairs. Put him on top,” Bitch gave me orders like that was perfectly normal.

  I scooped up Newter and climbed down from the hole I’d made in the outer wall of the building, then, when I was back on the ground level, doubled back inside where Bitch had assaulted the first floor.

  I vaguely recognized Brutus as being the biggest of the three animals.

  Bitch, Skitter, and Sundancer came down the staircase, and Bitch stood near her dog.

  I gently laid Newter, wrapped up in plastic, facedown over the back of the big beast.

  One giantess Valkyrie fist crashed through a nearby wall, followed by another. A huge chunk of the wall was ripped out by one of the twins.

  Skitter was shouting and arguing with Bitch yet again, and then six people in ABB colors backed through the hole in the wall into the wide warehouse floor we were occupying.

  Then fucking Lung just casually strolled in behind them.

  He was bigger than I was by several feet. Covered head to toe in metallic layered scales. His mask was off, and holy hell, he was ugly. An animal skull, part-dragon, part-predator. His mouth was a jagged, X-shaped horror crammed full of uneven, oversized teeth.

  That much at least, I could relate to.

  Skitter yelled at Bitch, shared a few more words, and then she hopped on Brutus with Newter and took off, leaving the other two dogs behind.

  Kaiser and his girls came through the wall next, with the same goofy-ass park stroll energy as Lung. The twins shrank down to go through the hole in the wall, then grew back to a height where they had a little headroom in the warehouse. Maybe twenty feet.

  These people and their showboating.

  Skitter and Sundancer shared some words, then Kaiser spoke up: “Stand down, Undersider. My girls and I have this in hand.”

  “Do you?” Skitter shot back. “You know how this works, right? He gets stronger the longer he fights.”

  Lung thought that was funny.

  “What are you proposing then?” Kaiser asked Skitter.

  “Sundancer and I will help out–”

  Lung shouted what I think was supposed to be “You, bug girl?” Then he proceeded to rush towards Skitter.

  One of the big dogs tackled him, along with a swarm of bugs. They wrestled briefly, then Lung just picked the dog up and threw it across the room into heaps of drugs strewn across tables in loose form.

  The second dog rushed in, and he grabbed it and flipped it over his hip and slammed it on the floor.

  Lung once again went after Skitter, and as I was about to intercept him, blades of metal shot up from the floor to block him.

  Kaiser.

  He systematically herded Lung into a small area, and Lung went to jump out of the makeshift fence. That’s when Kaiser dropped a pillar of steel ten feet to a side and forty feet long from the girders on the ceiling straight into Lung and pancaked him into the floor. The building shook with the impact when the top of the giant mass tore free from some roof support trusses and crashed on its side.

  Kaiser was just standing with his hands behind his back like he was mildly bored.

  “Fenja, Menja,” he called out. The twins advanced towards where Lung was pinned, one carrying a sword and shield, and the other a spear as large as they were.

  I felt a brief twang of jealousy. I wish my clothing and stuff did that.

  Lung started getting up, and Kaiser once again trapped him in a ring of spears and swords, this time a small conical shape that prevented Lung from moving without tearing himself to pieces. Then he summoned or grew–whatever it was he did–a giant blade looking like a twenty-foot guillotine from the roof of the building, which started to sag under the weight.

  A twitch of his head to look down at Lung, and the blade fell into the cone, cutting it clean in half.

  Lung wasn’t inside. He’d used his pyrokinesis to melt the blades and climb out of the prison. Kaiser raised more blades to trap him, but Lung swung his arms and shattered the metal, snapping it clean in half in places.

  Kaiser started monologuing while continuing to attack Lung, and he directed a few smaller attacks at Lung’s people, stabbing them in the feet and hands while calling them animals.

  “Kaiser, no!” Skitter shouted.

  “Not your business, little girl,” he taunted her back, turning to face her.

  “This is wrong…” she replied.

  “Wrong? As far as I’m concerned, the moment you need to fall back on morals to argue something, you’ve already lost the argument. This is war.”

  Lung broke free of where Kaiser had pinned him against a wall and charged Kaiser. Which Kaiser had all but allowed to happen in the first place, in his arrogance. One of the twins kicked Lung into a wall, but he bounced back and shot a huge gout of blue flames at her, which her sister ran forward to block with her giant-sized shield.

  Seconds later, she whipped the shield at Lung, her arm where she’d been holding it smoking.

  Sundancer finally entered the battle. She summoned a ball of light a little larger than a basketball, and oh. The name made sense when waves of heat crashed into me. It was melting the asphalt floor all around her. The ball of light darted across the room at Lung, who fell to his knees when the ball approached.

  Kaiser started shoving him closer to it with a metal spike he’d grown out from the wall. Lung fell to all fours, tried to move, but was sinking into the tarry molten asphalt. Trapped in place.

  The light went out all of a sudden, and Sundancer shouted: “What did you do!?”

  “I ended it, obviously,” said Kaiser.

  Lung was run through the chest with a spear of metal, in the front and out the back. It was holding his chest up from the tar.

  There was a flash of crimson energy.

  Then, wings.

  Bat-like, vast. Silver bones, blood-red membranes. They snapped open with a sound like canvas tearing under tension.

  He snapped the spear holding him off the ground in half and stood. He also grew taller. Fairly significantly. Approaching 20 feet.

  Holy. Shit.

  He pulled the spear out of his chest and cast it aside. Lung flew straight at Kaiser, and he was fast. Before Kaiser could mount any effective defense, he’d crossed the gap between them and slammed Kaiser into a concrete wall, hard. Five or six times in half as many seconds, then threw him aside like a ragdoll.

  The spear twin dropped her weapon and caught her boss midair. Lung exploded in a searing hot ball of fire, and while the twins were briefly staggered, flew out of the flames and used a spear-hand strike of sorts to run his hand with wicked metal claws straight through her abdomen. He yanked it out, covered in blood and gore, and she went straight to the floor.

  He went for Sundancer next.

  She tried and failed several times to summon her sun, but Lung seemed to be using his own pyrokinesis to interfere with it, or maybe block it. He roasted her with a jet of fire, and when the flames receded, she was fine. Not even singed.

  Unfortunately for her, Lung had dashed forward and backhanded her.

  He set his sights on Skitter next.

  I was moving on all fours. I’d had to back and cover with all the literal fireworks to avoid getting roasted. My wings didn’t take kindly to giant balls and jets of fire.

  Bitch burst in through a hole in the ceiling along with her dogs. He ripped her from her dog, threw her dog away like a stuffed animal, and held her in one hand. Her other dogs moved to attack, but he cut or crushed her or something, and she screamed.

  The dogs stopped immediately.

  “Stop!” Skitter shouted and stepped forward. “I’m the one you want, aren’t I?”

  Taylor, what the hell are you doing? Are you out of your mind?

  I rushed him. He stopped me by scooping Taylor up like a doll, one-handed.

  I fired a dozen quills into him.

  Ping. Ping. Ping. Every last one bounced off his scales.

  He turned that monster face toward me.

  “Nuhhh-huhhhhhhh.”

  I got the message.

  Taylor groaned. I think he was squeezing her, but didn’t seem intent on killing her. He could have pulped her like a grape, I was sure of it.

  She flew a bug into his eye, and he dropped Bitch to pluck it out.

  He rumbled something, but it was basically unintelligible as he was.

  The damndest thing happened. He started to put her down.

  What is happening right now? Did someone master him?

  Skitter got her way out of his hand and dropped to the ground, taking a few steps back.

  “Don’t fucking underestimate me!” Skitter growled at him.

  Then he toppled forward and face-planted on the floor.

  What the fuck just happened?

  Taylor summoned a cockroach to her hand as she walked over to help Bitch up. Bitch didn’t take the assist.

  “I covered a caterpillar in Newter’s blood, used this roach to fly it straight into Lung’s eye. As big and tough as he is, a drug that strong straight into the eye? That close to the brain? That’s enough.”

  I just stared at her. Dumbstruck. Never, ever, in a million years would I have come up with something like that. Not in the middle of a fight.

  She pulled out a cellphone and called someone, and had a brief conversation. With that, she hung up, pulled out her knife she’d tried to stab my tail with in the past, and headed over to Lung.

  “What are you doing?” I asked uneasily.

  “Ending this.”

  She grabbed one of the spikes on his face, jammed the knife into his eye socket, and pried his eye out with a disgusting pop. Then the other.

  I think I was mildly in shock. It wasn’t just that she’d mutilated him. It was the casualness of it.

  She turned around with a pair of eyes in her hand and sheathed her knife.

  “It’s fine, he heals,” she said to the room.

  “Sundancer?”

  “I’m alright,” Sundancer answered, voice shaky.

  “Fenja?” Skitter turned to the remaining giantess next, who nodded.

  “Get your sister to a hospital, or a cape doctor, and get your boss taken care of.”

  Her sister had shrunk back to her normal size when she passed out, and Fenja was carrying both. Kaiser slung over one shoulder like a sack of flour, and her bleeding sister cradled in her arms.

  My heart twanged in my chest like a plucked guitar string.

  If I were in her place—if that was Melody—I think I’d be losing my mind right now. Maybe Fenja was a repugnant neo-Nazi, but under all of that, she was still someone who loved her sister. I had to believe that. I had to hope that in this moment, ideology meant nothing.

  I knew it wouldn’t mean shit to me if Melody were bleeding out in my arms.

  “Oh, and Fenja?” Skitter asked.

  Skitter made a point to try and settle a beef between E88 and the Undersiders over the dog-fighting thing, after having just saved their asses. Fenja nodded and left through the hole they’d previously made in the building.

  We left.

  Skitter called emergency services to report the injured and get PRT there to arrest ABB members. Out of the building, we crossed the street to the other side of the intersection, where the wounded from our team were. Newter was up and moving.

  One of Coil’s men was a medic or something. He had proper wound treatments applied now.

  Skitter asked if he was okay, and by the tone of her voice, she meant it. I was having a hard time reconciling that. How could she go from being genuinely scared for someone’s welfare to carving someone else’s eyes out while they were unconscious, back to being caring and soft-spoken?

  “I’m tougher than I look,” Newter told her. “Benefits of my unique biology.”

  “Guess that makes two of us,” I added.

  “Cool,” was all Skitter had to say.

  It was like awkward Taylor was suddenly back, just dressed up as Skitter.

  “The mercs told me you probably saved my life. Thanks for that.” He told Skitter. I was inclined to agree. I felt angry and a little sad at failing to keep him safe. But he was alive, so that was something.

  “No problem,” Skitter said, then continued: “We should get out of here. I called the cops, and ambulances are on their way.”

  “Sure, but I have to ask…” Newter pointed to a stack of paper bags neatly lined up on the sidewalk. “An army of roaches dropped these off?”

  “Oh. I forgot I did that. I took the money from the ABB warehouse. Seemed dumb to just leave it behind if we had to run. Everyone might as well take a bag.”

  “We can take one?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

  She just shrugged. “Consider it a bonus. Thanks for helping. It’s not organized or divided evenly, so sorry if one of them is just a bag of ones.”

  The conscious merc took two bags, Sundancer grabbed one, and Skitter picked one up and held it out to L. She didn’t move or react.

  “I’ll take it for her,” Newter said and took the offered bag.

  She bent down, grabbed another, and held it out to me.

  I eyed it warily. I needed the money, and it was literally just going to get impounded and seized otherwise, but… I hadn’t really done anything in this fight. I mostly stood around, tried to keep Newter safe, failed, and then stood around some more while the rest of them fought Lung.

  I felt guilty. And a bit ashamed.

  I needed to practice more fighting in a team like this.

  For a moment, I had the ugly thought that Phoenix Strike might have done better in this engagement than I had. But maybe that was just the voice of doubt speaking. P.S. really was a special kind of dumb bitch.

  “Apex?” Skitter asked. I’d zoned out for a second.

  “I don’t think I should take one, I didn’t do much,” I answered her.

  “Yes, you did. You helped save Newter’s life, took out some gang members, and would have saved me if my plan to knock Lung out didn’t work.” She thrust the bag at me again, insistently.

  I sighed softly and took it. “Thank you, Skitter,” I said, and I meant it. “I need to talk to you later.”

  She nodded.

  People started to disperse. Sundancer, Coil’s men. Skitter and Bitch were packing up. Sirens were sounding in the distance. I looked at Newter.

  “We can take the sewers back, I know a good route,” he told me.

  “Won’t your wounds get infected?” Skitter asked.

  “Nah. Can’t get infected. Or get parasites. I’m too toxic!” The positivity I was more used to was coming back to his voice.

  “You good to ride?” I asked him, and he thought for a moment, then nodded.

  I grinned at him and lay on the ground, L already moving over to me.

  “So why crawl underground,” I asked, “when you can fly?”