Last chance, Victoria, I thought, my eyes closing as I felt the sensation of the fingernails, my head rocking with the contact. Her power didn’t work while she was touching hair. Throw her through the wall. Follow the protocols.

Her hands moved away.

Amy’s fingernails combed through my hair, fixing it where it had grown out, draping another bare shoulder. I turned my head to look at the other head she’d grown. That breathed with the branching windpipe—that hole that had made it so hard to talk before.

I should have felt horrified.

Your real last chance, Victoria, I thought, my eyes half-lidded, watching. My fingers dug into the sheets that covered my upper body.

The words slipped from my lips, in a tumble of logic and emotion. Logic because I was asking her to undo that. Emotion because I wanted what she’d been selling to me. That future. Being a heroine. I’d wanted to be one all my life.

“Please fix me.”

“I thought you’d say that,” she said. And tired as she was, shaky and not entirely herself, she managed a wink.

⊙

My hand was a claw, fingernails scratching my cheek with the force I brought it to my face, like I was about to throw up from guilt and shame alone. Hating myself for that guilt and shame because fuck her. Fuck no, on every level.

For long seconds, I didn’t move.

Then I resumed the work I’d paused as I sat awash in freshly unlocked memory. Bend this bit of metal, grab this, grab that…

Heave. Lift. Without my flight factoring in, the weight of it drove the few points of contact that were my forcefield into the ground. Two sets of feet, one hand. Less than I’d once had.

Gun. Safe and new, clean metal and violence far removed from that, unlikely to trip any mental landmines or spark any memories. Good gun.

I flew, and with the flight, the way I was lifting shifted, and the modifications I’d made held. I was almost glad it was all fucked up, because that fucked-up state demanded my attention, my focus.

Didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to go back there, or risk another flashback.

Some doors were best left closed.

I steered clear of Engel, and looked for Tristan. Looked for orange motes in the air.

I found red motes. Red sparks that danced through the air and left lines behind them. Tristan was on the offensive against Titan Ophion, who was slowest to recover. Someone had hit the Titan rather hard.

The red lines solidified, becoming the edges of ruins, destroyed building and a bit of metal fencing, like a damaged building that didn’t have any inherent logic to it, sitting at a forty-five degree slant, a hundred feet tall. It came in waves, the second surge of building thrusting up through the first, destroying it while extending just a bit further. The third wave extended further still, maybe two hundred feet long, punching through the second construction with enough force to send chunks soaring into the Titan.