“Good to see you again, little brother,” Maji said, still standing there as shots went off around us, my team and the others there still going at each other. I wasn’t actually related to him, but the man had always used the term ‘little brother’ for those he mentored, me included.

  Small Tink flew by, shouted something about killing the fucker, and went large again as she pummeled into a woman in a mech suit. Erupa’s shadow power took hold as a bullet went through her, not doing any damage. As awesome as that was, it nearly gave me a heart attack every time I saw it.

  Turning back to Maji, I stepped forward, took his hand, and pulled him close. “You don’t have to fight with them. Join me, us.”

  His grip was fiercer than I remembered, his grin eviler. “Ah, but I’ve been briefed about your new situation, your new friends.” An explosion went off from one of Cheri’s guns, but the man didn’t even flinch. “That fine pussy has led you astray, but I have news for you—the women I can introduce you to are every bit as fine, every bit as tasty. Turn this around, and the Gold Reapers can turn our backs on your little stunt.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  His eyes narrowed, barely. “Last chance, Ez—”

  BAM! His words were cut off by my strike to his throat with my baton. It had been clear where the conversation was going, and I wasn’t about to let him strike first. Unfortunately, he had never been the type to fall from just one hit, even a baton to the throat. His red skin had been a clear sign of that, although I couldn’t quite remember which shade meant what. He had all the primary colors, and some meant he was more on the offensive, others meant more on the defensive. Not that I thought about it much at the time, defensive like this would explain why he had been able to stand and talk to me without seeming to worry about all of the fighting going on around us.

  He recovered and came at me without another word, clearly getting the message that I wasn’t about to go back to the ways of the Gold Reapers or any group that wasn’t aligned with the Citadel.

  In my old state, there was no way I would have been able to take him. However, since meeting my team I had expanded my understanding of my mental powers, leveled up, and learned a thing or two about killing assholes. Way I figured it, my chances weren’t half bad.

  At first, he kept the defensive skin on, taking my strikes and eyeing me, weighing me, making mental notes of my methods. I knew this because I could read the calculating confidence in the man. When he changed to blue and his attacks came my way, fluid like water, I knew I was in trouble.

  Or would have been, if not for my team. When his blue energy blade shot out and nearly took off my head, Tink was there. She flew by and hit him with dust and he nearly seemed to lose it. A flash to purple and he was back, moving around me, trying to stay clear of Erupa as she attempted to shadow strike before moving on to other flows.

  “Attack’s coming,” Cheri said to my left, as we glowed with her buffers, defense and whatnot shooting up temporarily.

  Sure enough, Maji leaped for us, double red beams of energy shooting out as his skin changed again. This time he was marbleized blue and red, something I’d never known him to try, but when he missed and I shot, I drew blood with a good hit to his shoulder. He went green, healing if I remembered correctly, and that’s when Erupa came back, landing on his right to catch him with a shot to the thigh and a shadow strike to the chest.

  He maneuvered away from it with purple, seemingly only partly healed, and then came at me again.

  We continued the fight as more of the enemy came around tunnels or jumped out at us as we made our retreat. Maji was too much, even though we were giving him a good fight.

  “Find a path of retreat,” I told Tink, and she flew off, only to call out for me a moment later. We hadn’t needed to go far as a hole had opened up in the wall nearby. Breaker and his team waited on the other side.

  We went through, fighting back Maji, only to see Twitch appear nearby and create first a hold beneath him, then a wall between him and us. He shouted in anger but then was gone, giving me room to turn and see that Breaker and team were going up against Muerta. Taller than I’d imagined, she was a beauty even with half her face covered with that gold mask. All of the bounties placed on her over the years had warned of the danger of going up against her, but here Breaker’s team was, going toe-to-toe.

  Charm was backing up, eyes wide and full of shock as she stared at the Phaser we had encountered.

  “Reina,” Muerta hissed at the woman who Charm was staring at, “keep them out!”

  Breaker charged, and I got the message. While he went for Muerta, I would take out her secret weapon—the one she had called Reina. My heart was still racing at the fact that I’d gone up against the infamous Maji, and as I shot at the enemy and did my best to get my team members’ backs, my eyes were darting about, ready for my ex-mentor to pop back up. I also kept glancing down at my wrist device as if expecting to get a notification that I had leveled up, but so far we hadn’t really been doing enough fighting for that.

  No sign of Maji yet. Had what Twitch thrown at him really worked, or was it possible that Maji had seen in me something he hadn’t before, enough so that he had decided not to return? On my part, after our success on Abaddon and against Master Shen, nothing could stop us.

  So, when the shadow attack worked and Erupa managed to pin Reina to the floor, fist half into her and no sign of Maji, I was getting into it, feeling like this was it—this was our day.

  Then Reina started to move through the floor as if it were nothing, right through Erupa’s grip!

  “Tink!” I shouted, and she was on it, sprinkling pixie dust across the bitch’s face. Reina’s eyes went wide, pink veins appearing around them as she screamed in agony, her body clenching up and limbs flailing about.

  Breaker and his team were still fighting with Muerta and another figure. At one point, I saw what looked like a Grim Reaper or spirit of some sort fly at Breaker, but green lights burst out from him, and he seemed to absorb the spirit. It gave him more power, and gold snakes that must’ve been sent from Muerta burst away from him.

  The other figure with Muerta had fallen—one I heard them refer to as “Plague.” Before I knew what was happening, Muerta was gone and Andromida burst out after her, a tunnel of molten metal forming in their wake that left the room hot and smelling like a car shop.

  “The rest of us?” I asked, trying to figure out our next move.

  Breaker said something I didn’t catch over the sounds of tearing metal, but then pointed and said, “…we’re going to shut this place down from the network side. I want to see that it’s never operational again, and that any senior leadership, or others who fully drank the special sauce, are put down.”

  “Special…?” I asked, then laughed. “Never mind, I get it. Just… odd choice of words.”

  “An Earth thing,” Trunk explained, then turned to Breaker. “Main point is we get to rampage through this place, destroying shit and killing bad guys, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then we get a fuck break?”

  One of the women with him chuckled.

  Breaker nodded. “When you get back to the ships, yes, of course.”

  “Sure, sure.” Trunk started to strip down to his loincloth.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I’m not about to go into war wearing this fucking getup, am I?”

  As he finished removing most of his clothes, Breaker continued, “You have your orders. And Ezra, or Cheri, I understand your powers will help us determine who’s on the enemy’s side and who’s not?”

  I nodded.

  “That’ll do well enough.” Turning to the rest of them, Breaker indicated me. “Follow him. He’ll be your guide. My team’s going to try and help Andromida in the hunt, as best we can. Aegriss, I’m sorry, but they’ll need directions in here and you have the map in you, right?”

  The robot lady didn’t seem too happy with that, but said, “I’ll go with them, but don’t you dare try to ditch me. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

  Breaker nodded. “When you find the top brass, let us know.”

  “Roger that,” I said, standing at attention. This was the shit I lived for.

  “Move out.” Breaker motioned for his team to follow.

  My team cheered and ran after Aegriss while Breaker and his team followed the tunnels created by Andromida.

  8

  Focusing my powers in the specific way of reading emotions to gauge who was on which side was a new one for me, but we raced through the passages with me doing my best. Various stages of aggression, confusion, and fright triggered from ahead, but narrowing in on them and being able to tell how many there might be proved difficult. Aegriss led us on an ever-expanding map, while Letha, Trunk, and their crews took positions as we went, clearing the passages and each room, subduing those who we could, causing some to run when my emotional push did its job.

  “We need to find the top brass,” I said, having just taken down an asshole who knew he was an asshole and had no intention of changing his ways. The rest of his team, at least, had fled after we had established them as not truly loyal to Orion Corp.

  “Meaning whoever is running the show?” Cheri shrugged, swinging her sword as if there was someone to swing it at, but grinning. “Right, right, but… if they’re up here, aren’t they enemy? Why are we thinking otherwise?”

  “The Marines are doing their duty,” I explained. “Doesn’t mean they should all be killed, if it can be avoided.”

  “Breaker thinks they’ll sing a different tune once Orion Corp. is out of the picture?”

  “They might.” I gripped my pistol and peered into a dark corridor. No emotions came from that way, so I believed it was clear. “Point is, Orion Corp. has had too much influence. We won’t know how their defeat changes everything until they’re gone.”

  “My voices keep saying something along the lines of “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out,’” Cheri said.

  I laughed. “An old Marine saying. The voices must be picking them up.”

  “Is that how it works?” Letha asked, walking a few paces behind us. “The voices pick up random things?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Cheri replied, her eyes going wide as she said, “Duck!”

  My sensory ability only kicked in a split-second later, right before I moved and an energy spear shattered against the wall behind me where my head had been.

  Erupa leaped over me and vanished in a burst of shadow, to appear next to two incoming soldiers as she shadow-struck them. The one who had thrown the energy attack, however, knelt with a shield of energy that repelled her strike. He was up a split-second later, converting that shield into a series of energy blasts that shot out at all of us.

  One hit Tink but her shield absorbed it. Another nearly clipped my shoulder but I rolled to the side and came up ready to shoot. My shot was dead on, but his body shield rippled with the impact. It didn’t shatter, making me wonder how strong it was.

  Trunk and Letha were occupied with a couple of other supers or supra tech users who had come at us from another passage, but they were soon dealt with.

  “Let’s see what I can do about that shield,” Tink said, flying over to use her pixie dust. She was dodging energy shards left and right, but halfway there one hit her and sent her flying back.

  I caught her and a moment later she was at my side, growing full-size, while Cheri shouted and charged the guy. She went for a strike and he knocked her sword aside with a grin, but she brought it back with her powers, to his surprise, and hit him hard enough to shatter the shield. A second strike landed, blade halfway into his triceps. The man screamed as Tink went for another strike with her dust, this time sending him into an insane frenzy as he threw himself back, clawing at his eyes.

  “Fucker,” Erupa muttered as she kicked him across the face, knocking him out—or maybe killing him? I wasn’t sure.

  We looked up to see a team of Marines there, sizing up the situation, rifles half-lifted. My powers did what they were supposed to here, telling me they weren’t a threat.

  “Not them,” I said to my team, hand raised toward the Marines. “These ones aren’t the enemy.”

  I wasn’t sure if it would work, but focused as I had learned in my final fights on Abaddon. I needed to expand on my next-level skills. I could push the empath skills outward instead of just sensing, getting closer to basically performing skills similar to mind-control, although it wasn’t quite that. Maybe closer to simply conveying a message. Mind-propaganda, at worst.

  With a push, as the super who had attacked us lay dying, I watched the Marines lower their weapons, turn to each other, and step back as one. They weren’t retreating, but they weren’t going to stop us, either.

  In that moment, we moved on, and the Marines still refrained from firing at us.

  “Keep doing your magic,” Letha said, catching up to pat me on the shoulder. “The more of them alive when we’re done here, the more that will be on our side when the final fight comes.”

  “Sounds a bit like prophecy bullshit to me,” Erupa snarled.

  I laughed. “Hey, if it works.”

  “Not prophecy,” Letha said, pulling back to walk at Erupa’s side now. “Simple math. Less dead potential allies now, more likely to have a larger fighting force later. The enemy is already working its way in—don’t doubt that we’ll have a full invasion to fight off soon enough.”

  No arguments there.

  Aegriss motioned us to the right as she said, “Based on what I can figure, this is the spot.”

  “We’re ready,” Trunk muttered, determination creasing his brow. “Show us to them.”

  She nodded, taking the lead and sending doors clanging shut to adjoining passages. At a pair of sliding metal doors that had the definite look of leading to a room of importance, she had to pause to hack the locking mechanism, but then the doors slid open.

  Turning our way with looks of confusion and anger were three men and two women, all in extravagant military-style suits. Style, I say, because they were the privatized military style of Orion Corp., not the real thing.

  “You?” the man in the center said, eyes settling on me with disgust. “I’ve been briefed all about you, little pissant piece of shit. The former bounty hunter who enjoys biting the hand that feeds him.”

  “Another hand feeds me, now,” I replied, not really knowing how to reply to that.

  “Mine,” Cheri said, rolling with it and giving me an ‘I got you’ nod that almost made me laugh. Almost, because my heart was pounding too hard to really laugh at the moment.

  If I had the situation figured right, this was the man who had paid for most of my bounties, the one who had both kept me alive in a sense and been guiding me astray all these years by perpetrating myths. He needed to be stopped.

  Bile rose in my mouth. “There’s no coming back from what you’ve done.”

  “Is that so?” The man glared, a snarl at the edge of his mouth. “You’ll never stop what we’ve set up. It’s not central, not any more. It’s localized, spread out via hubs. And they’ll find you… All of the people you once thought were friends and family will find you and gut your ass.”

  “Then I better make sure you don’t live long enough to see that,” I replied through strained breaths as I anticipated the strike.

  I expected a great battle, or at least resistance. What I received instead was a blank look of confusion as my baton sank into his skull. The life faded from his eyes as the broken man collapsed to the floor.

  As easy as that, the general was done.

  “Huh,” Trunk said, stepping over to the guy and kicking him, the general’s men and women staring in shock and confusion.

  “That can’t be… it, right?” Letha stepped up next to me, gun aimed at the enemy soldiers, eyes darting between them and the fallen general. “Right?”

  No response from the cowards, but a large screen just past them lit up, showing Maji. He looked at us, then to the floor and the general, and scoffed.

  “I thought this might happen,” Maji said, turning to hit a series of buttons behind him as Reina crossed the screen to his rear.

  “Where are you?” I said, turning, looking for any sight of him. Letha was already moving to the way we had entered, gun at the ready. Darnell, the huge green hybrid, had taken position over the others, looming over them and ready for them to make a move.

  “Oh, far from there,” Maji replied. “See, when I realized what had happened—who you had become, I read the writing on the wall. Those fuckers with Orion Corp. are the past, right? Way I see it, I got paid, so I’m out of here. Our paths might cross again, considering this new righteous bullshit you’re buying into, but here’s my stance—I’m going to leave you to die, and hope I never have to see your pretty-boy face again, you rat fuck.”

  “This isn’t good,” Aegriss said, hands against a wall, eyes flickering as if reading something.

  “He couldn’t have…” one of the Orion Corp. brass said, eyes going wide and fear pouring out from him.

  “What is it?” I asked Aegriss.

  “RUN!” she replied, already moving, gesturing for us to follow.

  The doors started to close as several metallic devices placed along the walls began to shoot off gas, but Darnell grabbed the doors long enough for Aegriss to get back in and reverse them. As we slid through, my skin started burning and my mind reeled as images of flashing lights and bursts of flame filled my vision. It was the gas, I realized as I was up and running, so I pushed confidence out to those on my side and then attempted mental healing on all. A moment later, Aegriss had the doors closed, all of us on this side of it, and we tried to ignore the screaming and shouting from the Orion Corp. leaders on the other side.

  All Maji had managed to do, other than momentarily scaring us, was turn the Orion Corp. fuckers into bloodthirsty maniacs. For that, I might have to thank him. Right before taking him down, of course.