I joined in, “Yeah, fuck that, Chris. Poor fucking you. If that’s the bar you’re setting, then there isn’t one member of Breakthrough, living or dead, who hasn’t had to deal with intrusive thoughts, identity issues, and living situations that amounted to a kind of hell.”

“You might not be related by blood, but you’re definitely related by something,” Chris said, his voice low. “You and your sister. You just can’t get over your own shit.”

“You’re actually a monster,” I said.

“I said it a long time ago, I’ll say it again. You’re more of a monster than I am, Victoria,” Chris said. “You and your sister deserve each other.”

It was fleeting, like the impulse I’d use to twitch a finger. A thought, but this thought was tied to triggers and levers.

Forcefield on, forcefield opened up. I didn’t move a muscle, but my hair stirred as the forcefield lunged forward, invisible, to cross the thirty feet between me and the end of the lab where Chris stood framed by monitors.

He moved, quicker than I would have expected. Taloned claws reached out as the forcefield bowled over tables, knocked syringes and papers to the floor, and closed the distance to Chris.

A taloned hand stabbed at the forcefield, catching it before it could catch him. Precise, strong, and sharp enough to pop it. Gone like a soap bubble. His long feathers blew in the resulting breeze that followed the sudden termination of those super-strength movements of forcefield hands through air.

He plans to wear this body indefinitely. He picked a strong one.

He can see you. I looked at those black eyes with flecks of red and gold in them. The pupils were like a goat’s, rectangular.

He lunged, so quickly after his flat-footed preemptive strike that I almost didn’t register it. I flew back to buy myself time, and my forcefield came back up a second before he reached me. She grabbed a table, tore it from the wall, and slung it his way.

He vaulted over it, one leg going out long to rake the forcefield and break her again, before he landed. Even landing was a twisting, multi-layered movement, as he turned, grabbing Rain as Rain produced a silver blade and swung it. Rain was thrown halfway across the room. Rain’s landing saw him put both hands out to catch himself. One of those hands was already broken. His reaction immediately after his fall made that clear enough. Almost incapacitated.

I used my aura, taking hold of desperate feelings, in the hopes of driving home the caring, the need. The fact that billions of lives were on the line. Chris didn’t even bat an eyelash.