“What… what is this?” Joon started to tremble, rubbing his hands along his neck, his face, his arms.
“The chip,” Reed murmured. “I think they got it.”
Panicked gasps filled the air, and Alex and I lurched forward. I grabbed Joon by the shoulders, and she cupped his scarred face as he stared down at the ground.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “I’ve been in a daydream this whole time, right?” When he looked up, I learned whattruedespair was. Everything I’d felt before was child's play. “This isn’t real. It can’t be. That wasn’t me.”
Alex’s voice broke as she pulled him into her. “I know. We know, Joon. It’s not your fault.”
THIRTY-THREE
LEO
“VTech,”Joon mumbled, and his voice was a husk of itself. “They’re the head of it all. But there're more branches, places that could break off when they go down. This won’t be an easy fix.”
“We’re not expecting it to be,” Alex walked beside me, her hips swaying with determination as the horns on her head lit up the night. “This isn’t about saving anyone right now. This is payback.”
Nightmyre was silent, for once. Everyone within a five-block radius had been quietly evacuated. We were working off the books tonight; it was ‘anything goes’ rules. After Joon came back, Dahlia was there to fill us in. His chip was still settled in his neck. Splinter had reattached it to his spinal cord—if they would have removed it, it would have killed him. For now, we were working with a bandaid fix.
A collar hung around his throat; a small green light flickered on the metal contraption. If it went red, that was our cue to run. For now, the signal disrupted the one in his chip, surpassing it entirely. The VIA wanted him contained for now, while we figured everything out. But Dahlia did have a heart, after all. Sheleft the badge to the lock on his cell on her desk, and took a six-hour lunch break after sending out an emergency evacuation notice for a gas leak.
The mission was given to Alex and me, but Reed and Joon tagged along. We were all furious and needed to release some energy.
“If you go berserk again, I’m electrocuting the shit out of you,” Reed scowled.
Joon let a small smirk slip. “Fair enough, I’ll do my best. It’ll be nice to stretch my legs a bit before going back into a cell again. Three years is a long time—I don’t think it helped the insanity, either.”
My palms sweat as I turned to him, an apology stuck in my throat. But Joon only smiled beneath his new bandages—he preferred to keep the scars covered. We knew we were taking a risk; he wasn’t quite whole again, not quiteright.But this mission had to be done together. Alex wouldn’t have it any other way, and I didn’t think I’d ever say no to her again.
Her Hero suit fit tight against her, that blue mask framing her burning eyes.
“Cinder,” Alex rasped, her chin pointed up as she looked at the skyscraper made of endless windows, reflecting the city behind us. “You won’t burn us, you know that, right?”
I cracked my knuckles as shadows started to appear on the ground floor. “I know.”
It was true—I was certain now. Alex would never be in danger around me. It was everyone else who needed to worry; whoever dared to touch her would be consumed. All the anger I’d stockpiled in life, all the rage and fear and worry, built inside of me, preparing to burst out. My watch beeped again, but it wasn’t a burnout alert. My temperature had gone up only one hundred degrees.
I was in control.
“You did it,” Joon sighed, eyes lingering on my watch, before glancing back to Alex. “I knew you could. Cheap shot doing it while I was gone, though.”
“Yeah, well, I did wait three years,” I smirked.
He let out a raspy laugh, just as Variants started to pour through the doors. “Fair enough. Hey,” there was a tilt to his voice, reminiscent of the Glitch madness, “wanna play a game?”
“Fucking sicko,” Reed huffed, throwing up a shield around us. “You’re going straight back into that cell when we’re done.”
Joon rolled his shoulders, jumped on his toes, and shook out his hands. The madness was still there, just buried now. Tonight, I didn’t mind if it came out. They deserved it, after all.
“We’ll call it a date,” he drawled before he disappeared.
Black leather jackets, with the emblem of an S made of bones painted on the back, swarmed. Variants with poison tipped fingers, with spiked tails and fanged teeth melded with those who had lightning crawling up their arms. Some made the air cold, pushing ice out around them in preparation. But we didn’t flinch, didn’t give a single damn as we kept walking toward them.
Joon was already in the mix, glitching in and out, making their heads whip around as he smashed his fists and feet into them. He was angry—and so were we.
Alex raised her hands up at her sides, and the shadows around us started to crawl forward, stretching out as monstrous creatures appeared around us. It was a fake-out, but good enough to make the Villains coming for us stop in their tracks. To their eyes, it looked like we had a small army at our backs.
“Go ahead,” she said, and the permission was a lifeline. “Burn.”
