I could do this.

I needed to do this.

It—

It wasn’t my day to get what I wanted. I barely registered the sound. A crack, coinciding with the noise of the crowd. Lord of Loss went still.

My back had been turned, so I hadn’t been in a position to see it.

One bullet, from somewhere nearby. Fume Hood on the ground, Tempera beside her.

It wasn’t my day to get what I wanted.

I’d frozen. A lot of people had.

“Go to her,” Lord of Loss said. “Help. I’ll let you go if you let us go.”

Numb, I nodded.

“Let people know it wasn’t us. This wasn’t our plan,” he said, behind me.

I flew as much as I walked, and dropped to my knees at Fume Hood’s side. I put my forcefield up, tried to position myself where I could be a wall for her.

“Put your hands here,” Tempera told me.

I did, pressing down on the stomach wound. Blood pooled out, covering the backs of my hands.

The crowd had gone still. There was a murmuring, and people were drawing closer to watch and to see.

Reminiscent of Vikare.

In the background, Longscratch and Crystalclear had already apprehended the suspect. A protester that had been in a building nearby. Hunting rifle. The villains were leaving.

“Not—” Fume Hood grunted.

“Not?” I asked.

“Not a good day,” she muttered, through gasps.

“No,” I agreed. Very much agreed.

Landon had come closer, and was helping by getting the first aid kit out. Tempera took the components.

“Not a good day for any of us,” Tempera said, giving the crowd a glance.

Daybreak 1.7

The sun was just starting to set when the police were wrapping up with us. They’d had to arrive first, of course, the ones who had been on the scene were compromised, victims as much as anything.

Nobody Kingdom Come had affected remembered much of anything. It was as though they’d fallen asleep—they remembered losing awareness, some reported briefly coming to in the middle of things as the building had shook or they had been knocked around, and they hadn’t really processed or understood much of those glimmers.

A few had reported me as a recurring image.

There was some concern that Kingdom Come might have absconded with someone or that not everyone that had been in the crowd was accounted for, but from what I could tell, it had been an all or nothing thing. People remembered coming to, many of them dangerously close to a superhero fight in progress, but the recollections were hazy.

I sat on the sidewalk near the front door of the community center, aware that it was very late in the day. The sky was orange-yellow now, with darkness on the eastern horizon. The thickest parts of the clouds overhead were cast in shadow, zig-zags of darkness through the amber.