I couldn’t figure out what mode to shift to, where I had that one hundred and ten percent to give. I couldn’t reach for the Scholar or the Warrior Monk in this moment and have it fail me. I needed something else. Something more raw.

Wretch, I thought. Forcefield up, I reached for the beam. My hands fell short, but the Wretch didn’t.

Glory Girl can’t win this.

So what does a one hundred and ten percent Wretch look like, then?

I lifted up the steel beam, The Wretch dug fingers in with enough force to leave indents in the warm metal’s surface.

I took off. Lung was preoccupied, sending flame in the opposite direction from me. I had a moment, so I looked up, flying higher to where the air was cooler. A twenty-foot steel beam dangled from the Wretch’s hands, one end held firm enough that metal distorted in multiple places, the other end swinging below us.

In the cool air, looking up and trying to find my center, trying to tell myself I wasn’t making a mistake by bringing the Wretch into this, I could see the blue circles and lines.

A constellation drawn against the night’s sky, directly above Lung and the scene. The motes weren’t moving, though. It was being drawn.

I exhaled slowly, and my breath shook slightly in the process. A tension I hadn’t realized I’d had was released. If Byron was capable of doing this, then he’d confirmed Kenzie was okay. That situation was dealt with.

In the weirdest, most twisted way, it wasn’t even a good ‘dealt with’. That tension had helped in its way, holding me together. Now I had to deal with me.

So stupid, that a mere thought could take me out of the zone and lead to a critical mistake. That gout of flame that could have hit me, if I’d been a half-second slower.

Even when Glory Girl was at her peak, working with reactions primed and giving her supposed one hundred and ten percent, she had—I had been splashed with acid and enzymes, dissolved alive.

One hundred and ten percent Wretch. But I’d pause first before going there. A nod to the Warrior Monk, who was so tired, so beleaguered, her efforts frustrated. I pulsed with my aura, and I watched the aftermath, Lung’s slight head turn, the extinguishing and the shape of the extinguishing.

Goddess was back, and she had friends. People from nearby apartments. Goddess was shielding them as they got into position.

Are we there already? She’s just taking the people she wants, and the people with the ability to detonate the ankle bombs are… secured? Did she and Lookout get them all?

The Warrior Monk recoiled at the idea, recognized it as a cause for alarm, printed in black ink on white paper, all caps, underlined.