He grunted when he flipped with me, and he slammed into the hole in the ground I’d just vacated, with my foot on his chest instead.

  I fired a plasma shot at close range, which was probably a mistake as my shields drained slightly from the backwash, and then I shot straight up in the sky as I nailed the bastard with a follow up rail gun round and a cuff enchantment.

  I had no time to celebrate that I’d taken down two of them, I was getting very low on energy. Plus, the guy that carried the first guy off, that left twenty-seven. I also got blindsided a moment later, and then slammed into a building. There were just too many to keep track of, even with the lion’s share attacking my invulnerable partner. I smashed through a window, and into the posh office of a middle-aged woman who looked very important.

  I sighed as I got up, at least the ex-heroes wouldn’t attack me in there. Of course, I wasn’t going to hide, so my breather only lasted a second or two, and I shot back out the window, just in time to take a fireball on my chest.

  I suspected it was Flare, from last night, he really wanted revenge. It felt like him at least, to my sixth sense. At least the other energy types were splitting their attacks.

  One of them yelled, “Her spell’s almost done! Retreat”

  Oh, hell no. They must’ve all fought with her. I didn’t know her well enough to judge, but they must’ve heard her cast enough to know when she was almost finished. I looked over and saw she was glowing rather brightly, maybe that was how they knew?

  Not that I could do anything about their escape, I hardly had enough energy to remain in the air. My inertial dampers had done well against all those hits, but my body still ached. Of course, nothing was perfect, which was why I had a healing ring, but I couldn’t afford to feed that thing any energy right at the moment either.

  Then I heard Red Siren’s dulcet tones rise from below, and I looked down to see three myriads kicking the shit out of three of the B-class ex-heroes on the ground, while two others looked conflicted, and the other five were making tracks. I’d never heard a sweeter voice.

  Myriad really was a badass, fast, limber, and her opponents just couldn’t match her fighting skills. She was also rather merciless.

  A bunch of the A-class fliers took off like rockets to leave the area, but four of the ex-heroes in the air had conflicted looks on their faces as they looked down at Red Siren, as if loath to leave.

  Then of course, because things weren’t chaotic enough, a loud crash reached me and I turned that way to see a man in an all-black bodysuit. It kind of matched his power, which appeared to be a black hole, or a singularity, that was sucking everything nearby into it except for the supervillain’s crazy laughter.

  My flight systems resisted his pull, and my head snapped to the White Witch, who was being pulled toward the thing. Crap, apparently her shields blocked all energy types, or at least all the ones present that day, plus physical, but not intense gravity. She was being sucked toward the big inky hole in space, that was hoovering up broken road and nearby smashed cars. Even cars up to a hundred feet away were being dragged slowly toward the thing.

  The only good news was that there wasn’t a civilian in sight, they’d all got under cover long before this supervillain showed up.

  I looked down and felt some relief, when I saw the Myriads clinging to telephone poles, and one of them had a firm grip on Red Siren. I shot toward my partner who was still chanting the same damned spell, it must have been almost forty seconds at that point since we were ambushed.

  Her shields sparked off mine, and I grunted from the sudden drain as I extended my gravity field, and I held us both in place. It wasn’t the best plan maybe, but at least she wouldn’t get sucked into a singularity.

  Well, we both would, if she didn’t finish that spell soon. I was literally seconds from being empty. If any of the ex-heroes had attacked in that moment, I’d have probably been killed.

  Her muttering in Latin stopped, and the bright white light exploded outward.

  The pull of gravity stopped, and I blew out a breath as I moved back away from her shield. As long as I wasn’t attacked, I’d be fine. The enchantments alone could let me hover in place, even fly slowly without me feeding them any energy at all.

  I looked around, the five fliers that had stuck around because of Red Siren’s dulcet tones were caught like flies in amber, surrounded by a glowing shield that held them and I could tell it was also draining their energy. The same was happening to the party crasher, and the five of the ten B-class on the ground that had stuck around.

  Not bad at all, we’d only caught a third of them, but ten was a huge number.

  White Witch said angrily, “Thank you for that. Singularity is a pain in the ass, and I didn’t want to abort that spell. I was about to when you took care of it. When did he get out of prison?”

  “Umm, you’re welcome?” I replied, she’d sounded pretty pissed. I also speculated that’s why she didn’t try to fly away from it? Could she not cast and fly at the same time? Maybe she couldn’t spare the concentration. A minor weakness perhaps, with invincible shields and a thirty second spell that took down ten ex-heroes in one shot, but still something I’d need to keep an eye on.

  Jenna said, “Wait one… he broke out two days ago.”

  She rolled her eyes, “And you didn’t tell me? Never mind, we’ll talk about it later.”

  “You okay?”

  She nodded angrily, “Fine.”

  Right, that means not fine, in feminine speak. I decided retreat was the better part of valor at that point, and I dropped the subject.

  I also figured she wasn’t angry at me based on her conversation with Jenna. The old way, all registered heroes for the area were automatically informed by Supermax of any breakouts. The new way, the information was disseminated directly to the MTF, who presumably should be telling us. There’d obviously been a break in the information flow, for some reason.

  I looked around. Besides, we had a hell of a cleanup, and ten ex-heroes and a supervillain to get to the local supermax prison. They’d get a trial of course, but supermax prisons were the only ones capable of holding a super and keeping them drained and quiescent.

  Jenna said, “How many?”

  White Witch replied, “Eleven, including Singularity.”

  Jenna replied, “I called in for a pickup, we can’t host that many here, ETA in thirty minutes.”

  We got back to work.

  Chapter Eight

  Millicent said, “So twenty of them got away.”

  We were all in the command center, the team, Millicent, Carina, and Nate.

  Tina nodded, “My power is absolute against one, but against a crowd it isn’t. The best I can do is influence, and I could only get ten of them to stick around when they called for a retreat. They all know Alyssa’s powers well, and they knew when to call it a day.”

  Well, that cleared things up, I’d been wondering. That was probably the psychic component of her control, her mind couldn’t enslave more than one at a time since its power was split.

  Millicent looked at me.

  “I did the best I could, I took down two while I got my ass handed to me by twenty attackers, but two of them left the party earlier, one leaving with the first I took down. I did however get pictures before the fight started, and I already gave them to Jenna, she should be able to ID them all from the registration database. They were all obviously ex-heroes, and they have to be in there.”

  Alyssa shot me a smile, and said, “He also saved me from Singularity, otherwise they all might’ve gotten away if I’d been forced to abort the spell. Why wasn’t I informed of Singularity’s escape? He was bound to come after me. He’s holding a grudge.”

  Nate frowned, “He was determined to be a threat we could take down.”

  We as in the TAC teams?

  Alyssa shook her head, “That’s not good enough. Are you telling me information is being classified and kept from us, if you don’t think the threat is big enough to need us? We are on patrols after all, and patrolling heroes draw supervillains. Able to take him down or not, you weren’t there, we were, and he took advantage of our precarious situation.”

  Carol said coldly, “I agree. How can we do our jobs if you spoon feed the information only you think we need. We need to be in the information loop.”

  Nate grunted, “It was judged as need to know, and you didn’t. Those monsters out there today just showed us so called heroes can’t be trusted.”

  The blood drained from Alyssa’s face, and both Carol and Tina looked like they could spit nails.

  “Today was very human, and you’re an idiot if you don’t see that.”

  Call me stupid, but I figured I was throwing myself on the grenade, before the three ladies could say something they’d regret. They were all pissed. Not that they appreciated my quick tongue, but at least Carol and Tina didn’t glare at me.

  Progress.

  Nate opened his mouth to let me have it, but he closed it when Millicent raised her hand.

  Millicent said, “Daniel’s right. Fire any thousand people, and three percent of them striking out in some way is statistically probable, and that’s very human. I don’t want to hear you use that word again to describe supers, or any other inflammatory language, or you will be replaced, is that clear?”

  Nate said, “Yes, maam,” as his eyes communicated a desire to tear me to pieces.

  Millicent nodded, “We all in this room are of one mind, to protect the people of Silver City from supers who abuse their power and use them in the commission of crimes. None of us are politicians. That said, my hands are tied. The information dissemination rules and classifications were decided on far above my head, by those politicians. It is what it is, and I already tried to change it and was shot down.”

  It was stupid, but it was also consistent based on what I knew. The government wanted to take control, and they’d reached the point technologically they thought they could get supers under control and had moved to take that control back. Governments tended to hate national security threats not under their control, it probably didn’t help that the ones keeping the people safe were mostly arrogant screw ups.

  On the other hand, even those arrogant screw ups that made up the majority of the hero population were still better than the current tactical teams. Not that I was including anyone in this room in that, I wasn’t arrogant, and as far as I could tell neither were the ladies on the team.

  Millicent continued, “Point being, you four need to be on your guard at all times. I know it shouldn’t be necessary, but there are alternate sources of information. The breakout did make the news.”

  Alyssa crossed her arms, but she didn’t comment. Neither did the others. That whole thing was also a morale problem, we weren’t government agents, despite what our contract said. We were there just in case, and to keep the constituents feeling safe, and most of all we were obviously disposable and easily replaceable. If it wasn’t for the need to be a hero, I’d have walked.

  Rose, can you keep us updated on all that stuff? Search the web for breakouts and pertinent information they’re keeping from us, like supervillain sightings in town without breaking the law. Focus on news sources, twitter posts, social media, all that.

  Rose replied, “Yes, I will do my best.”

  The door opened, and Jenna slipped in.

  Millicent waved at a chair, “What do you have for us?”

  Jenna sat, and then reported, “I have the list of names of all those present thanks to the pictures, and I did a little extra digging. They’ve all cleared out their bank accounts, which means this was pre-meditated, and planned before last night, if things went badly for them. They knew we’d freeze their funds and come after them.”

  She looked at Nate and Carina, “You can check out their addresses, but I don’t think anyone will be there.”

  Carina smiled, “Don’t sweat it, we should do it anyway, there might be clues.”

  Nate looked annoyed at Carina’s casual attitude, which perversely perhaps, made me like her more.

  Millicent nodded, “Shift them all to the supervillain database. Anything else happen we should be aware of? I expect your full reports by end of day.”

  We all exchanged glances, and I didn’t really have anything else to report. We’d covered the fight pretty well. I wondered what the people thought about it, heroes going bad, that just wasn’t going to help any of us, and I bet the press was having a field day.

  We split up after that, and I took the time to fill out my report.

  There was a knock at the open door, and when I looked up Alyssa had a devasting smile on her face, which I tried my best to ignore, even as I returned it.

  “Come on in.”

  She asked, “Not done yet?”

  I smiled, and I waved her around the table so she could see the monitor.

  “My suit has a class-four A.I. in it. Since we needed our own information source outside of what little the government is going to tell us about, I had Rose set something up for us. She’ll also send out text alerts to the four of us, if something like a breakout happens.”

  She asked, “Rose?”

  I smiled, “Her official designation is Power Systems Management, but she chose her own nickname. This might sound weird, but I didn’t even know what I’d created until recently.”

  She nodded, “Good, it sucks that it’s necessary, but I’m glad you’re on it, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  She added teasingly, “I guess you are a geek.”

  I laughed, “I told you.”

  She was also distracting, she stood closely, smelled very good, and I did my best to push that down.

  “Thanks for earlier, I was angry about Singularity, not that I needed help.”

  I nodded, “I got that. You’re welcome. Thanks for finishing that spell, another ten seconds we’d have both been sucked in.”

  She snorted, “That was a bit crazy, I’d never fought so many supers before. We were lucky Tina and Carol showed up when they did.”

  I nodded, that was true, at the very least Tina had saved my life. My shields were paper thin at that point, and she’d kept the heroes from taking a last shot at me with her song.

  “True. It won’t be perfect, but we should find out about breakouts, and villains arriving and leaving at the very least. She’ll be watching the news, social media villain and hero fan pages, sighting threads, all that stuff. You hungry?”

  She nodded, “Starving.”

  I stood up, and we went up to the second floor and the kitchen. I got a cold nod from Carol, and an untrusting look from Tina, but again no glares, as Alyssa and I raided the fridge for dinner ingredients and started up a meal. The other two were already almost done eating, so much for dinner as a team, but I knew it would get better. I hoped.

  The reports had taken a ridiculously long time for a fight that lasted less than a minute.

  “I got the steaks, if you get some sides?”

  She winked in agreement, and we got to work on dinner. It was strangely comfortable, but she was still a virtual stranger. Outside of our short conversation before our patrol, which had shown me a little of who she was but almost nothing about her at all.

  My mind tended to analyze things, and I decided the artificial camaraderie I felt making dinner with her had to do with being treated as outsiders by Nate, and by the government’s ridiculous rules on information control, so they could feel in power. Not so much Millicent, Carina, and Jenna as people, but they would follow the rules whether that put us in danger or not, which would be a wedge in any relationship we could have with them.

  It was that common adversity that was bringing us together, almost as much as the shared danger of the fight had. It was a shallow thing, but it was a start. This new hero life would be harder than the old one, but we would have each other’s backs.

  By the time dinner was cooked, Carol and Tina had already finished eating and left. Things weren’t great there yet, but at least there seemed to be a truce of some kind in effect.

  “So, college?”

  She grimaced, “Yes. I hope you don’t mind night patrol? I have classes three days a week.”

  I nodded, “Nope, that’s usually when most of the action happens anyway, crime I mean. Back in New York it was when I patrolled, and I tend to be a night owl. What are you taking?”

  She replied, “Just general studies for now, being a freshman. I don’t have a major, and of course I plan on being a superheroine for the rest of my life, so I have no idea what to go into when I pick a major.”

  “How did you learn Latin anyway?”

  She grinned, “Powerset. Self-study, but it was so easy to learn, almost like I was just reminding myself of something, instead of actually learning it. That happens for just about everything else too, to a lesser extent, which makes my study time rather short.”

  “That’s good. So yeah, just let me know and we’ll figure out a good patrol schedule.”

  She sighed, “Truthfully, I’m not even sure why I’m doing it, my parents wanted college for me. I had class yesterday, and I do the next two days. So, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday every week. Tuesday and Thursday I’m done by two, Friday by eleven. I’d like at least one day off, on the weekend.”

  “Sounds busy. Saturday off, we’ll patrol Sunday through Thursday, leave Fridays as our shit happens day, in case something comes up on one of the others?”

  She nodded, “That works.”

  “Alright, shall we just stick to early afternoons to ten or eleven at night?”

  She smiled, “It’s a good plan, work outs in the mornings, and Nate can schedule his training for us on my off-school days. Well, we can ask.”

  I nodded, “What time in the mornings?”

  She said, “Six thirty? I need to be at the college at eight, it’s easier just to keep that same schedule all week.”

  “I suppose,” I said dubiously.

  She grinned, “Too early for you?”

  I shook my head, “Thinking of your schedule has me exhausted.”