She walked away. I took a second, stopping to think.

My head turned, and I looked at the nearest security camera. “We talk later, Lookout. Catch up with you guys in a minute.”

The perpetual little blue light in the corner went off for a second, then back on.

I took flight, feet leaving the ground, and I flew down the hallway, back grazing the ceiling so I wouldn’t bump into any bystanders. I flew with all of the pent-up fervor and frustration I’d been holding in as I’d sat back and watched Gimel suffer its mortal blow.

It didn’t take long to reach the entrance hall. I landed with impact, letting my feet and legs absorb the force of some of my momentum, instead of coming to a stop first.

And then I was outside. Coat on, black sweater, hands in my pockets. It looked more like night than day, with the smoke heavy in the air, and the city keened. Wind shrieking along the devastated sections I had only seen on video so far.

When I flew out into this cold, now-broken world, I took to the air with a violence I hadn’t been willing to use indoors, tearing through the sky in the same way a fighter might punch at a wall to vent his fears or sorrows. No slowing before turns, I just took the brunt of it against my side, and felt the cold and the wind punch through the softer outer layers I wore. No gentleness to the plunges or the skyward soars, no consideration for the g-forces. It was a strain and I needed that strain to leech certain feelings out of me before they overflowed and I said or did something regrettable.

But the air, in a way, fed those negative emotions by the same measures with which they absorbed them. Because as I rose higher to go over clusters of buildings it was too annoying to fly around or through, I could see the city, and I could see the damage. A gaping black yawning through the heart of the city, where it wasn’t stretched thin along the coast in the direction of Boston, and where the buildings weren’t all temporary, one story tall structures, sprawling out and waiting to be replaced when the resources were there. In the heart of the city, the buildings had been tall. Now there was a hole extending far deeper than the buildings had extended up.

No succor in pummeling the sky with my body, here. Not when it answered me with sights like these.

The forcefield protected me from the whipping cold. There was, at least, succor in its companionship.

Soon.

Soon we see what we can do together.