Drake felt a fiery blast erupt in his forehead and grind rearward into his skull like a blazing drill bit. As it passed through his head, blossoms of white flame spread outward in all directions to encompass his entire mind. His fists clenched and his back arched in a spasm. A distant part of Drake’s mind was glad that he was in a seated position on the pavement, as the pain that coursed through him was so agonizing that he would otherwise have fallen to the ground.

It’s chill, Lance told him, the voice seeming to echo. I’m gonna show you.

Without explaining what the cryptic statement had meant, Lance seemed to materialize inside Drake’s mind. He was standing in the middle of the white fire, feet planted firmly on some unknown flooring, untouched by the flames. Drake could see him as clearly as he had on the street only moments before and was astonished to realize that he was standing with the youth as well. He tried to think about what this meant - that he was inside his own mind, looking at himself standing there. He winced anew, not from pain this time but from the mental paradox he was forming.

“I need you to relax,” Lance urged. He gestured around their images. “You’re fighting me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“That’s where the static comes from.”

“Static?” Drake asked.

“All this,” Lance said, sweeping his arms out and grabbing handfuls of the fire. The shreds of flame guttered in his palms. “Psychic static. Look, I know this hurts, but you’ve gotta trust me. As long as you fight me, this static’s gonna stay. As long as it’s here, we’re not doing anything but having this conversation. I mean, if that’s all you want, that’s cool, but we could have done that out on the street and it wouldn’t hurt either of us near as much.”

Drake looked around, trying to fight past the pain. He noticed the blaze decreasing somewhat. “How am I... How did...” he stammered.

Lance laughed. “Why are you here? It’s your head, bro. Who did you think was gonna be here?”

The comment brought a smile to Drake and seemed to push back some of the fire. “I see it now,” he said. He looked at Lance, with his sunglasses and West Coast tan, and reminded himself that unless he put his full trust in the youth he would never be free of whatever mental control Doctor Hochek had established over him. He battled with himself to relax, to turn over control of his thoughts to this outsider, and around him the flames dwindled.

“You’re getting there,” Lance said. Drake looked around and saw that the fire had receded to resemble little more than a calf-height fog.

“The brain’s all yours,” Drake said, sweeping his arm as if to invite Lance inside. The last of the flames winked out.

“Wow,” said Lance, pursing his lips and nodding. “Don’t normally see anyone get rid of it all.”

“Yeah? Well, I figure I came to you for help. Least I can do is trust you to help me like I asked.”

“Nice. You, uh, you ready for a ride?”

“What kind of ride?” Drake asked.

“We’re going back a couple days, right? Check on some chickie squiggling your gray matter?”

“I thought you were—”

“Not by myself. Like I said, it’s your head. You’re coming with.”

“And how’s that work? I mean, how do I go through my own head?”

Lance chuckled quietly. “You aren’t really here, man. This is a kind of construct thing. Something you build inside your mind that allows you to experience this version of reality. Some have called it a sensorium, some say avatar-based experience, and then there are other names. Thing is, the names don’t matter. You’re nothing here but a representation of your own consciousness. You could look like you, or like a monkey with a fez on its head, or whatever you want. Most people, they actually look a lot like themselves, but a little thinner, or cleaner, or younger, or whatever it is that makes them feel better. Looks like you got a healthy self-image there, dude.”

Drake looked down, seeing his own body as he had always known it. He shrugged.

“So now, your construct and mine, we’re gonna take a little stroll into your mind. If our luck holds we’ll be able to counter whatever this chick did.”

“How long will it take?”

“For us? Might seem like hours. Days, maybe. Even a year or more. Out in the world, though, you’re probably talking about a few minutes. Everything happens quicker in here, but you’ve got to live through it all, one bit at a time.”

“I lived through it once. This sucks.”

“Yeah? Think about this: I get to live through it too. Think I got up this morning and thought I’d be in your head?”

“Point taken. So what do we do?”

“We start the hard way,” Lance said. A look of deep concentration furrowed his brow for a moment, and Drake felt another stab of pain. The white fire flared for a brief second, but he forced it away by reminding himself what was at stake.

“What’s the hard way?”

“We’re going after your memories. I’m going to look for any signs of tampering or control, and if I find them I am going to modify them to remove that control.”

“You can do that? Just change memories?”

“Yeah. Like I said, though, it’s the hard way. It’s going to hurt.”

“Look, slick. My brother’s in a house up the street a ways. If I can’t do my job the way I need to, he’s going to be hurt a lot worse than anything you can do to me. He doesn’t have you and your brothers keeping the Firsties away from his neighborhood.”

“Well, while I’m in here, neither does our neighborhood.”

“Come again?”

“Ryan’s got some emotion control, but not much. I boost it. Together we make it feel like there’s a reason they shouldn’t be here, and they avoid us. While I’m occupied with you, there’s no one to keep them out. It’s up to Freddie to bounce them if they show up.”

“I thought it was Ryan and Theo. Never heard about Freddie.”

Lance grinned. “Maybe you have problems with your counting.”

“So there’s more than three or four of you here,” Drake guessed.

“Think about it,” Lance said. “We’re the XYZ Kids, man. Like the alphabet?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ll figure it out eventually,” Lance told him, shrugging. “I was serious earlier, though. We don’t have a lot of time to get this done,” he added, taking the conversation back to its original course.

“Then I guess we ought to get on with it, huh?”

“You ready?” The question was as much challenge as query. Drake grinned and spread his hands wide.

“Hit me,” he said. He regretted the cockiness a second later as the world seemed to explode in a symphony of raw agony. The ‘construct’, as Lance had referred to it, suddenly changed from the dimly-lit unknown emptiness to a fully-fleshed picture of Drake’s own past. They were standing in the office with Deanna Hochek. The woman was holding the folder marked with Drake’s name as she looked up to speak to him. The image of the entire room shimmered for a fraction of a second and froze in place, all at a simple gesture from Lance.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” Drake murmured. He tried to see what was written in the folder, but as he closed the distance between himself and Doctor Hochek, the writing on the pages seemed to blur and fade. He clucked his tongue in frustration.

“You only see what you saw then,” Lance explained, catching Drake’s expression. “You can’t see what wasn’t visible to you at the moment the contact occurred.”

Lance looked at the seated woman from many angles, literally walking around the image of her that Drake held in his memory.

“Yeah, dude, she’s a ‘path, all right. Bargain basement technique, though. I’ve seen better work on Coney Island. She’s running a hypnosis mojo on you while she talks.” He pointed to the television and it erupted into motion once more. Lance watched the flickering visions that danced there. “Subliminals in the videos, constant background imagery and sounds. Supposed to keep you calm.”

The frozen memory suddenly exploded into a flurry of motion, then blended with memories of other places and times. Lance watched the memories flick by, forward and backward, as Drake struggled to maintain a grip on his own sanity while trying to keep up with the seemingly unconnected scenes. Every few seconds, Lance would reach out with a hand and tweak some part of one ongoing memory or another. Each time he did so, Drake felt a sharp ache, as if from a recently extracted tooth. Simultaneously, some small part of the surroundings would morph and change in appearance, although sometimes it was only a minute change.

“What are you doing?” he asked after a dozen or so such pains.

“Modifying your memories to try and remove the controlling elements she has emplaced,” Lance explained. He poked toward the picture of Drake seated in a chair and eagerly watching Sexual Harassment- Are You the Office Problem?. “Every one of these films she had you watching has been modified to deepen the control she established. As your exposure continued, so did your indoctrination.”

“Not real sure what that means, but it don’t sound good,” Drake said.

“It means that the more of these movies and things she made you watch, the stronger her hold over you became.”

“Yeah? Let me guess, they also made me want to watch more.”

“That is a possibility,” Lance said with a brief nod. “It would make sense to put in some kind of compulsion at the same time; keep you coming back for more.”

“I figured, ‘cause I got the feeling that watching these things was the most important thing I could do.”

“That fits. Of course, her being in authority helped. You’re supposed to listen to her, right? Well, that softens you up from the beginning; makes you more susceptible to the suggestions.”

“Yeah. I got a hostile workplace suit filed on me and had to attend the training.”

“And somehow you managed to get her,” Lance said. He tweaked another memory and Drake cringed.

“Thank my boss. She’s the one that sent me to this dame.”

“Really? Memory alteration isn’t easy. It makes my head hurt. So you tell her she owes me.”

“Works for me,” Drake said. “She’s the one who’s gonna be paying for all the stuff I promised you guys.”

“I’ll pad my bill then.”

“Hey, just like my expense reports.”

The world around them lit with a flash that penetrated even their meditative state, and the accompanying explosive roar left their ears ringing.

“What was—?” Lance began.

“I’m gonna guess the Firsties got here,” Drake said with a sigh. “Thanks for your help, kid. It was worth a shot.”

Lance nodded and his eyes rolled back in his head for a moment before flicking back open. He looked at Drake, an expression of concern wrinkling his brow. “Well, that’s not good. I can’t get back out,” he said, eyebrows raising above the lenses of his sunglasses.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means the explosion knocked me out in the real world. Until one of the Kids wakes me up, you’re stuck with me in your head.”

“Oh, now that’s all kinds of wrong. What happens if they don’t get to us?”

Lance shrugged, one corner of a lip quirking upward. “Probably get chilled by the Firsties.”

“That’s reassuring. So I can’t wake up, either?”

“Don’t know. Are you knocked out?”

“I don’t know,” Drake said, waving an arm at the expanse of flickering memories that surrounded them for as far as they could see. “How am I supposed to know that? I didn’t even know I could be in here, my head or otherwise. I mean, here I am, standing in my own head, looking around at my own memories like I’m watching a damned television! So where are we?”

“We are actually inside your memories,” Lance explained. “Let me try to stabilize them.”

“Figures they’d bounce around.”

“Nah. Mostly it’s because of the big bang out there. Your brain gets a little scrambled by the concussion. Long as we’re here, though, we might as well have a stable backdrop to work with.”

Everything flickered around them like a guttering candle in a dark room. They were suddenly somewhere else.

The radiator was decorated with flakes of rust, but Drake cared little; it provided the only heat for the basement room. Drake was crouched next to it, long green arms wrapped around it and holding tightly in an effort to pull himself closer to the warmth. He had limited room in which to maneuver, as the room was filled with various boxes and stacks of newspaper. The walls were pale grey concrete that reflected the light from the single sixty-watt bulb which hung on its cord from the ceiling. The dim illumination occasionally glinted off chains, rods, and various items that hung on the wall at random. Many of them were bent where they should have been straight. From upstairs Drake heard the shouting that was so normal to his daily existence. One argument after another. He cringed inside as he heard the sharp report of a hand striking flesh. He wanted desperately to intervene, but years of constant threats and fear held him back. He turned to look in the direction of the cries of pain as yet another blow landed, then lowered his head, hot tears burning tracks from his eyes.

Drake gasped as he recognized the scene. He turned to Lance, seeing that the youth was engrossed in the dank imagery of the memory. As opposed to Drake, Lance was staring around himself in amazement.

“No,” Drake said. “We don’t go here.”

“I don’t get a lot of choice in where we’re going, bro. These are your memories, not mine. If we’re here, must mean it’s important.”

Before Drake could respond, the door to the basement crashed open and a man’s voice shouted from above. The voice made Drake swallow past a sudden lump in his throat. His stomach squirmed and felt cold, and he tasted a hint of bile in the back of his mouth. He pointed to the staircase as the remembered version of himself released from the radiator.

“He’ll come from up there,” he explained, eyes narrowing. Lance nodded.

“What’s the deal here?” asked Lance. His sunglasses reflected Drake’s face back at him. “I get that you’re a kid and all, but -“

“Old man kept the basement cold,” Drake explained in a bitter tone. His gaze had not left the top of the stairs and at his side, his hand was flexing slowly from a clawing position to a thick fist and back. “The radiator was all I had. Half the time he made sure it didn’t work. Stacked up newspapers and boxes of flammables so I couldn’t use my fire to heat the room without burning the house down.”

“And the rest?”

“What, all that?” Drake asked, gesturing at the varied implements. “Just stuff. Old golf clubs, garden tools, lamps, a little of anything. Most of it he hit me with, at least until it broke. He wasn’t intelligent enough to come up with anything that inflicted serious pain. If he’d got off his ass and out of the damned bottle long enough to buy a cattle prod it might have been different.”

“When did you get around to kicking his ass?”

“Never did. I stood up to him a couple of times, but that didn’t last. He always made sure I knew if I fought back he’d go after Mom twice as hard. I mouth off, she gets a kick. I don’t act the way he wants, she gets another. Eventually I figured out it was easier on her if I just took the beatings myself. If I was real careful he’d wear himself out hitting me and wouldn’t have anything left to take after Mom or Monster.”

“Jesus,” Lance breathed.

“Not a name you want to bring up in this house, slick,” Drake said as the shadow in the basement doorway lengthened. Even now, he felt a shift in his heartbeat and his respirations became more shallow.

“Francis Drake! Stand up, Hellspawn, and be quick about it!” roared the voice from the top of the stairs. The light from behind it created a dark silhouette that left the imagination able to assign any manner of dramatic form. As the shape advanced it resolved into a tall man with broad shoulders and a well-coiffed shock of ebony hair shot through with silver. He wore blue-gray dress trousers. Unadorned, simple brown leather suspenders were strapped over a white shirt worn with the collar open. In his right hand was a bottle of amber liquid; in his left a thick brown leather razor strop.

At the radiator, Drake had uncoiled and stood, though his head remained down. The man stopped at the base of the stairs and looked down at him, snorting derisively and taking a swig from the bottle.

“Your mother has been taught the errors of her ways, spawn, and now it is your turn,” he declared in a slurred but powerful voice. The odor of cheap whiskey carried on his breath. Drake was as familiar with that smell as he was with any other, so often was he exposed to it.

“I didn’t—”

“Cursed is the man who dishonors his father!” the man shouted over the timid response from Drake.

“You said I was no man,” Drake mumbled in response, his voice cracking. The strop whistled as it cut through the air, then cracked like a thunderbolt across the right side of Drake’s face. Yellow eyes flashed with anger, then dimmed as the gaze dropped once more to the floor.

“You don’t talk back to me, freak!” roared the man. Liquor-scented spittle sprayed from his mouth in a thick mist as he railed against his son, the strop rising and falling a half-dozen more times in rapid succession.

“I’m sorry,” Drake managed to say between blows across the cheeks.

“We’re leaving,” Drake told Lance, turning his back on the tableau. His voice cracked as he spoke.

“Look, they’re your memories, bro,” Lance said with a casual shrug. “She anchored her compulsions to the feelings evoked by these memories, to the times when you were humiliated and powerless. I can modify them, if you want. For the rest of your life you’ll remember him in a tutu.”

“Don’t touch them,” Drake ordered. “I ain’t ever forgetting what happened.”

“They don’t bother you?”

“Didn’t say that. Said don’t touch them. I don’t want to lose or change even a second,” Drake declared, turning an angry glare toward the telepath. “Everything he did to me and mine I want burned into my head forever. Every time I think about why I do what I do I wanna see that asshole whipping me with a lamp cord. I want to remember it in picture perfect detail, and every single time some other prick out there thinks he can get away with the kind of shit that son of a bitch pulled on me and mine I’m gonna put my foot right up their ass.”

“Easy, there, bro,” Lance urged, raising his hands in surrender as he backed away in the face of the advancing booster. “Two things: First, I just offered. Second, looks like we’re beating the compulsion problem.”

Drake paused, his eyes tracking slowly as he thought. He slowly nodded. “Yeah. Guess we are.”

“Think it’s the association with your father? Maybe that’s why we wound up inside this particular set of memories?”

“Could be. Piss me off enough and it breaks the need to be nice?”

“It is a possibility.”

“Wonder why it didn’t work with Vertigo, then?”

“Before you came to see me?”

“Yeah.”

“I tampered with the controls that the hypno-bitch put in place. Might be pissing you off just got more dangerous than ever.”

“Oh,” Drake said softly. A dangerous grin began to spread. “That could be fun.”

“You want to try again?”

The grin vanished at the thought. Drake took in a slow, deep breath, held it for a second and then let it out with a hissing sound. “I could try,” he said.

“I know it’s rough,” Lance said, offering a friendly grin. “Believe me, I feel it. Your fear, your apprehension, all of it.”

“I ain’t afr—” Drake began, but cut off as he realized the protest was useless. Lance was, in essence, a part of Drake’s own psyche at this point. He would recognize the lie for what it was. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to travel back to darker times and places. He grimaced at some of the fleeting thoughts that he encountered.

“That one,” Lance said suddenly, and Drake opened his eyes. He was sorry that he had done so.

“The great dragon was hurled down,” Drake’s father was shouting. He paced back and forth, a well-worn Bible in his upraised left hand. At his feet, Drake knelt with his head down. “That ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”

Drake glanced up as the man paused in his recitation. His reward for looking up was a boot in the mouth, his father lashing out in a vicious kick that sent a tooth spiralling across the room.

“They spoke of you!” the man roared, his face reddening. “You are no son of mine, but are Satan made flesh, the representation of all that is evil on this world, and the great serpent that will be cast down into the pit once again.”

He stamped a foot down, his shoe squeaking in protest as he smashed it onto the scales of Drake’s left hand. Emerald lips peeled back in a grimace but Drake remained silent despite the angry assault. It was only the first in a series of several such crushing blows as the older man drove his heel down again and again on Drake’s hand. The physical side of the attack was simple enough, and Drake had only to control himself. It was the psychological assault that took its toll. Constantly, his father cursed and belittled, degrading Drake and teaching him that he was some kind of malignant thing; a cancer that must be controlled because it was impossible to remove.

“That helping?” Lance asked.

“Making me wanna puke,” Drake said. “Does that count?”

“Can’t hurt.”

“It all hurts,” Drake said in a low voice. Around them the scene had changed once more.

A folding table took up space in the middle of a cluttered room, and Drake was standing beside it. The walls of the room were decorated with posters and pictures of cartoon characters. On the table, a plastic plate held a scattering of deep brown crumbs. A half-empty cup of milk was perched precariously near the edge of the table as if secretly anticipating a fall from the tabletop.

“He’s only a boy,” declared a female voice. Drake looked up from the table. She had her back to him, but he would have recognized his mother even were it not a memory. His father was facing her, and a very young Monster was clutching at her legs and burying his face in her skirt. Drake could hear the boy sobbing.

“He’s a freak! Just like that one,” Drake’s father spat in response, one thick finger pointing at the reptilian booster.

“Please,” the woman begged, her voice breaking. “Don’t call him -“

“Why not? He is a freak! They both are! Filthy spawn of Satan himself, brought to my home to torment me!”

“I’m not freak,” Monster shouted, glaring from around the calf of his mother.

“Why, you little bastard,” the man said, taking a step toward the woman and child. Behind them, Drake was tensing. He knew what was coming. The fist raised, the flaring eyes, flesh striking flesh - it was all too familiar. In his own case, the strikes were inevitably made with an implement of some sort, his father having determined at an early age that hitting Drake bare-handed was more painful for him than the target of his anger. It was no hardship for the man to smack his wife or Monster, though, and he did so often and with relish.

“Enough!” Drake snarled, shaking his head madly. The image vanished as the man’s hand came down.

“Still need to work through some of this,” Lance corrected. “You need to fight this compulsion.”

“It’s gone,” Drake said. “If it ain’t, I’ll get past it.”

“I know you don’t want to revisit—”

“They’re my damn memories. I revisit them every day. What I don’t like is sharing them.”

“Valid. Not that I like being a part of them, you understand.”

“Ain’t holding it against you, kid. I asked. Just kind of tired of it all right now.”

“Yeah? See anything else going on? Or do you want to play Twenty Questions? I mean, we aren’t going —”

The transition back to reality was sudden and painful, and Drake found himself prone on the pavement with his head twisted to the left. The world was a spiralling mix of colors and flashing lights, and he swallowed, fighting the urge to vomit as his head and stomach seemed to move in opposite directions. His eyes burned with the sudden influx of daylight.

“It’s Ryan,” a voice told him, one of the XYZ Kids kneeling beside Drake’s head. “Sorry about the jolt, man. Usually it’s easier but we had to wake Lance up quick.”

“S’fine,” Drake managed to gasp. He pressed a palm to the side of his left eye, using the steady pressure to orient himself and battle back the vertigo that threatened to overwhelm him. At his side, he heard a grinding, barking noise and glanced toward it to see Lance retching noisily onto the street. “What’s happening?” Drake asked.

“They’re here,” Ryan said by way of explanation. He jerked a thumb up the street. Drake turned to look, the move generating a pounding in his skull. In the distance, he could see the shadowy figures of a group of Humanity First attackers, working their way down the street under cover of random fire from their devastating shoulder arms.

“Lance says you’re the empath?” Drake asked, gritting his teeth. Ryan grunted an affirmative, his attention directed toward his stunned brother.

“Good. Piss me off some more.”

“Come again?”

“Anger. Make it happen and I can nail those bastards. As brutal as you can get it.”

Before the words had finished coming from his mouth, Drake felt a surge of adrenaline. His mind flashed on images of his father again, similar to the memories he had experienced with Lance. This time, though, they were for him alone. Each horrific memory was a stepping stone to the next. A low growl started in his chest and his hands clenched into fists. He felt his heart begin to pound more and more intensely as his breathing became more shallow and rapid. He saw images of the Humanity First goons outside the safehouse that was home to his brother; heard a rough grinding that after a moment he realized was coming from how tightly his teeth were gritted. He dimly remebered the nausea that had engulfed him upon his return to consciousness, but it was overpowered by the rage he felt. Leaving the XYZ Kids behind him, Drake took off in a lumbering run up the street. Ahead of him, a white Chevrolet SUV exploded in a fireball of orange and black. Drake leaped into the air, staying close to the ground as he pumped his wings and used the expanding blaze for cover as he built speed that he would never have managed on foot. He took in a deep, sooty breath as he passed through the fiery cloud, savoring the taste of burning petrochemicals on his tongue. He added his own breath weapon to the mix, flames like liquid trickling from the sides of his mouth in a ghastly display as he emerged from the far side of the fire, opting for the most dramatic entrance he could make. His wings flared wide, bringing him upward to glare down upon the attackers as though he were an avenging angel. Yellowed claws glowed with the reflected light of his attack and the flames that burned around him, and the glint that was in his eyes was just as frightening. He roared for effect, drawing their eyes up to see him.

“There he is!” shouted one of the Firsties, and Drake realized that rather than be surprised or terrified by his appearance, the group was actually looking for him. He cursed, remembering the reward posted by Omega One. He jerked his head forward and left, arcing the flame he spat across the pavement in a slant to force the five terrorists to move to his right. As they obliged to avoid burning, he banked hard and dropped his altitude, narrowly avoiding a snap-shot one of the goons made. A second later, his rear claws were sparking on the pavement. He dropped into a forward shoulder roll, coming up hard as he reached the feet of the nearest one. Drake’s head slammed into the man’s chin with a crunch. A swift right took out a second man, and a flick of his powerful tail took the legs out from under a third. He huffed a quick spray of fire toward the other two - not enough to truly burn them, but more than sufficient to singe their hair and give them the illusion that things were worse than they were. The diversion gave him the second he needed to close the gap and put both of the men down with rapid punches. Spinning, he drove his right foot down onto the chest of the man he had tripped as that assailant strove to rise. Drake leaned forward and down, leering at the man pinned beneath his foot. Saliva ran from the corners of Drake’s mouth, smoking as it landed on the shirt of the trapped shooter.

“Try me, slick,” Drake said, his voice a hoarse growl of sound. “I’ve had a really shitty day.”

“Don’t touch me!” the man shrieked, looking in horror at the enormous green foot that pinned him to the ground.

“What? I’m gonna give you mutie cooties or something?”

“Get your dirty foot off me,” the man demanded, squirming madly in an attempt to escape. Drake leaned forward, increasing the pressure enough to make the man groan.

“Keep bitching and I’ll stomp through to the ground.”

The man slipped a small black knife from his front right pocket and snapped it open in a flash of steel. The blade grated across the scales of Drake’s lower leg, failing to penetrate but drawing the attention of the reptilian booster.

“What the hell are you trying to do?”

A stream of obscenities burst from the man’s lips as he fought hard to extricate himself from under the foot. His fists slammed repeatedly on Drake’s toes with no discernible effect on the giant that towered above him.

“Where’s Omega One?” Drake asked, refusing to release the man.

“Go to Hell,” the man spat, trying in vain to roll onto his side.

“Been there. I got thrown out,” Drake replied, reaching down to flick the man in the forehead with one long talon. Blood pooled in the wake of its passing. “Now where the hell is Omega One?”

The man moaned, face contorting as he realized he was going nowhere. The appearance of two of the XYZ Kids, one to each side of the leering Drake, seemed to make up his mind.

“Command truck, corner of Eagle and White,” he gasped, straining against the pressure of the foot. Drake nodded and took the portable radio from his thigh pocket. He flicked it on and listened for a moment. No one was broadcasting. Keying the microphone, he spoke.

“Hello? Anyone still out there?” he asked in a voice dripping with saccharine sweetness. There was no response for almost half a minute. Drake had begun to despair of anyone answering at all when there was a quiet crackle of static.

“So you still exist,” intoned the voice of Omega One. Drake snickered at his pompous tone.

“Yeah, slick, I’m still here. Big, ugly and all kinds of nasty, and I’m coming for you. Whatcha think? Wanna get together and just get this over with, you and me? I’m thinking a whole Gary-Cooper-High-Noon kind of thing. You and me, we’ll square off in the middle of the street. Last man standing kind of thing?”

“By definition, the only man standing would be me,” Omega One said after a moment. “You are far outside the realm of humanity.”

“That’s okay. I’d bet you can fake it.”

“I know his wife does,” interjected the soft voice of Firefight. The sarcastic quip was delivered with enthusiasm.

“Oh! She shoots, she scores!” Drake crowed.

“I have nothing further to discuss with you,” Omega One declared. In the background of his transmission, Drake could hear sirens on approach.

“Well, you had your chance. Now I’m going to come and get you, and there’s not going to be any kind of gunfight in the street. I’m going to take you down, arrest you, book you, prosecute you, and watch you go to jail for a long long time, where you will become the personal plaything of some very large inmates. How’s that sound, slick?” he asked as he took his foot off the captive Firstie. Bracing his feet against the pavement, he leaped into the air once more and powered himself upward, angling toward the intersection of Eagle and White.

“I do not fear the justice of this world, monster, nor of the next, for my cause is just and my heart is pure.”

“Some pure heart,” Drake noted, looking down on the devastation that had befallen the community. Smoke was thick in the air, carried on breezes from the wreckage of what had once been homes. There were still occasional explosions and gunfire as one group ran into another. From his vantage point, Drake could see bodies in the streets, though whether they were dead or simply unconscious he did not know. Swallowing past the taste of bile in his mouth, he began his descent toward Eagle and White, noting the blue and white step van that looked enough out of place to mark it as the ‘command truck’ for the assault. He gnashed his teeth and dropped to the ground behind the van, wasting no time in closing the two steps that separated him from his target. He gripped the handle and jerked open the rear doors.

The world disappeared in a thunderous rush of fire.