“She’s dark. Now I have to stop what I’m doing, I have to—”

“You need to do this,” I told him.

“I don’t have to do a fucking thing—”

I pulsed out with my aura. A moment of feral panic, the kind that made someone freeze, instead of flying. His expression twisted.

“Cryptid. Chris, I’m going to be blunt. Do this. There’s zero other choice. I’ll go to the giant.”

“I’m not going to—” he started, but he stopped himself this time, without needing intervention.

“It’ll be fun!” Riley said, through the computer.

“And… if you’ve got any way of canceling out the Simurgh, like you canceled out the other stuff, now’s the time to use it,” I told him. “Chill out, focus.”

He withdrew a syringe from his pocket, and stared down at it.

“You said you had it for emergencies. Unless you’d rather I stab your giant…”

“No,” he said.

He pressed it to his neck, and injected it. With his other paw, he grabbed another syringe, and threw it to me. “Inject her. It should reboot things.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Look after Byron?”

He nodded, silent. Already, the black feathers were growing in.

“Trusting you,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice reedy, thin.

I left the room, grabbing bandages to press to my neck, along with the coagulant cream, or whatever it was.

I flew, Mapwright’s power directing me to my destination.

To the space behind the stairs, where Teacher had kept his propaganda teams.

Where the Mathers Giant was, and all of the capes that had been taken out of action and kept that way by her power.

The Simurgh was there, silent, not screaming, wings and arms wrapped around the giant.

Last 20.5

The one thing that made it possible to even think about defeating the Simurgh was that it took her time to get her hooks in. She was subtle.

Now she had her hands on an empowered, giant-size Christine Mathers. Manufactured for us by my fucking sister and fucking Cryptid. Fucking fuck fuck fuck.

“Master–stranger protocols!” I shouted, before turning away, to limit exposure. I took flight, fleeing the scene. I needed Dinah, Dinah could theoretically get past the Simurgh, give me a shot at the Mathers Giant, and let me inject her with the new command protocols. Which might not even work, if the Simurgh could do whatever she’d done to make the Mathers Giant docile. To make the Mathers Giant hers.

Dinah was down one of the two hallways—I chose the closer one. A coin flip, to get a shot at victory that wasn’t guaranteed. To—

I felt her grab me. There were twenty capes present, subdued by the Mathers Giant, and not a hair on them moved.