He’d shared all this with me about a week before our neighbors pulled up in our drive after sundown. I’m not sure Dad ever told Elias about this gun.

  When Dad’s mind started to fail, Elias and I debated taking his guns away from him. But he remained as gentle as I’d ever known him. Even when his memories went, his judgment stayed. And when that went… well, the rest of his body failed too quickly for it to be an issue.

  My belt was starting to sag with holsters. But I wasn’t done yet. The invaders hadn’t made it out as far as the tool shed, where Dad kept his coyote rifle. A misnomer, really. It was a Ruger .223 ranch rifle, easily capable of taking down a person. I strapped it over my shoulder. (My good shoulder, that was. Even that weight made my wound throb.) Then I broke the lock on the cabinet that held its ammunition.

  There was a good hunting knife in the cabinet above the TV, complete with sheath. I tested the blade: unused, and still sharp. Then there was a vintage 1950s flip pocketknife in one of the tool drawers. It was much smaller than the hunting knife, but easier to conceal and still plenty dangerous.

  Finally: a hat. Dad and I wore the same kind. His hats were still stacked inside his closet.

  Two high-caliber revolvers and a military-grade sidearm on my belt, a rifle strapped on my back, a vest full of ammunition, a hunting knife hanging from my belt, another knife in my pocket, and dark, bloody red eyes – I looked almost as dangerous as I felt.

  All this weight would have slowed most other people. But I was a mutant. I felt lighter.

  And a little closer to being myself again.

  I noticed that Elias hadn’t cleaned the carpet since Dad had died. I must’ve been feeling better, because I found the energy to disapprove.

  My eyes started burning and watering the moment I got outside. My vision was still bad, and sunlight made it worse. Haze blossomed across the horizon, and made the whole sky seem on fire. But I could still see enough to spot Wheezer. And her eyes were definitely good enough to spot the bananas I held.

  All the crimes humans had committed against her were forgotten, for now. She trotted up as eager and sprightly as a three year-old foal. A funny thing about her was that, even at her sickest, she would never eat bananas peeled. The full peel had to be on, or nothing.

  “Yeah, you’re just as food-motivated as Deadpool, aren’t you?” I scratched behind her ears to her complete indifference. “Good girl.”

  Getting her saddled was a little harder. She wasn’t used to it. She was also a little too old to be a riding horse now, but I knew she could handle this one trip. As much as it pained me to lose more time, I took breaks to pat her nose and reassure her. She looked a trifle underfed, but not much. She’d done well for herself out on her own. She breathed out hard when I mounted the saddle, but, otherwise, it was just like old times.

  Good. I didn’t want to think of her getting old any more than I wanted to think about me getting old.

  I had one last bit of business with my brother before I took off.

  He hadn’t fainted yet. Somehow his motorcycle was in more pieces than before, and he was cussing at it. This was normal. Basically how he did all repairs. I halted Wheezer several horse-lengths away.

  “Pop quiz,” I said. “First thing after you get yourself treated, who are you contacting?”

  “Your friends,” he grumbled.

  “Their names?” I’d drilled this into him just a few minutes ago.

  He sighed. “Domino, Diamondback, Atlas Bear, White Fox, and Black Widow,” he said as if I’d forced the names out of him, like they were ridiculous, which – well, fair enough. He came from a world of family names with long histories, and I’d long ago traded those in for a world of super hero callsigns and codenames.

  I’d given him a sheet of scribbled instructions of at least three different ways to contact Shoon’kwa’s airship. I couldn’t count on his message reaching them in time for them to help me, but if he could manage it… well, their arrival would change my odds in half the time it took to snap. A good merc learns to make their own deus ex machina.

  Good to verify this, but that wasn’t the business I had with him. “Elias,” I asked. “Why didn’t those men just kill you?”

  He made like he was preoccupied with his motorcycle’s engine block. “Hmm?”

  “It’s not that I wish they had,” I said. “But, thinking about it from their perspective, I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t have. They’re cold-blooded enough that they don’t think twice about murder.”

  He kept fussing with the engine, though he did it silently this time.

  “I had to tell them something to keep them from killing me,” he said, at last.

  “And what was that?”

  He pushed the engine aside and looked up at me. “You think I was working with them? That I would lie to you about that? Is that what this is about?”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them who you were working with,” he said. “The things you said about them. Domino, Deadpool, Agent X – those kinds of people.” He turned back to his disassembled cycle, obviously trying to sound unaffected.

  I just about stepped away right there. Didn’t trust myself to speak. The sheer panic at the thought of my team being in danger was like a blow to the belly.

  When he spoke again, his voice cracked. “And when they stopped being able to do… whatever they were doing to you, the only way I could keep them from killing me on the spot was by telling them I would make a good hostage, and that you would try to protect me.”

  I let my breath out, long and slow. When I spoke again, I kept my voice level. “I’m not upset you told them that. You did what you had to. I am upset that you waited until now to tell me.”

  He must’ve been so damn scared. And he was trying his best to hide it.

  He shrugged, subdued. “Yeah. Well. I didn’t want you thinking I was weak, and all.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I don’t think I’d meant anything I’d told him more sincerely. “One of the weird parts of my life must have brought this down on us.”

  “I know you had to leave home,” he said.

  This was probably the closest thing to reconciliation that either of us could get at the moment. “Anything else you can tell me about them?” I asked.

  “Be careful of Wolfram. He was taking the lead. He gave orders to the others, even the mutant with the – thing on his chest. He told me he used to be a priest, or played being one. He would preach to big crowds of people at tent revivals, get them fired up, take them to the middle of nowhere promising a second baptism, then rob them. Just take their bus and leave.” Elias shuddered. “He told me that if he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t just shoot me. He’d take me out into the desert, tie me up, and let nature take its course.”

  My rage stoked hotter. “Who are the others?”

  “I didn’t see them that much. Wolfram kept me in the closet. They were quiet when he brought me out to interrogate me. This is just a gut feeling from the way the others looked at him, but I don’t think they were all working for him. Johnny Dee and Milos, sure–”

  “Milos is dead,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, and then resumed, “–but I don’t know about the others. They kept their distance.” That tracked. Rayyan, whoever he was, was some kind of outsider.

  “I’ll make them pay.”

  “Take care of yourself out there,” he added. “But don’t make them pay. Make them hurt.”

  As reluctant as Wheezer had been to let me saddle her, she was eager as a racehorse to set off on the Mustang’s trail.

  •••

  Whoever was driving the Mustang had no idea how to handle it. The poor thing wasn’t an off-road vehicle to begin with, but there were still better and worse ways to treat it. As I followed the tire tracks, I found flecks of red paint on low-lying rocks, and even a piece of fender on a dry creek bed. They’d tried to take the creek at a high speed. After that, though, the driver seemed to have straightened out, and been more careful. I hated to imagine what the car looked like now.

  “What do you think, girl?” I asked Wheezer. “Insurance gonna cover this, or stick me with the bill?”

  Wheezer snorted.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” The rental insurance contract protected against theft so long as “all reasonable precautions” had been taken… which meant of course they were going to try to screw me. Never trust an insurance company lawyer with a nebulous phrase to weaponize.

  No, I hadn’t rolled the convertible top up before I left. I was too busy getting shot at. Yes, I took the keys with me. No, I can’t prove that – I left them behind to fit more ammo in my pockets.

  Yes, you specifically said mutant powers voided insurance obligations, but this was a gunfight, not a super hero smashup!

  No, I didn’t divulge that I was a mercenary, but you see that little line there that says, “Self-employed…”

  No, I don’t personally know the Hulk. I understand you’re not big fans, but I don’t see what that has to do with–

  Mapping out a nice, heated blood feud with an insurance agent kept me going. I would have liked to say that riding Wheezer was just like old times, but it hurt too much to pretend. Wheezer had never been a gentle ride, and she’d gotten more headstrong as she’d gotten older. Every jostle speared a spike of pain through my shoulder. Elias would never have made it far traveling on her. Every bounce would have reopened his chest wound.

  The Mustang had cruised into what was now becoming a red-tinged sunset, which meant Wheezer and I were in dangerous territory. Traveling into the light would have been dangerous enough with good vision. The scratches on my eyes turned everything into a red-gold blur. Wolfram and Johnny Dee’s gang could have parked a couple hundred feet ahead, and I’d never have seen them. They would have absolutely no trouble seeing me.

  I would’ve preferred to wait until night, use the darkness as cover, but these goons had gotten a big enough head start already. What I did instead was weave back and forth across their trail, using hills as cover, and peering down parts of the landscape that weren’t as hazy as an insurance contract’s acts-of-metahumans clause.

  Not long after that big glob of sunset melted into the horizon, I found the Mustang.

  It was sitting out in the middle of nothing. Both its doors hung open. The seats were empty. It took me a while to circle it, verify no one was waiting to ambush me. I hopped off Wheezer for a closer look.

  First thing I noticed was that the hood was loose. Not propped, but not closed quite right either. I thought maybe they might have overheated it until I peeked inside. Everything was fine except the spark plugs were gone. This was sabotage. They’d left the car out here deliberately, and disabled it before they’d left.

  My phone was still on the passenger seat, where I’d discarded it. It was smashed. They’d even ripped out the SIM card. Then they’d tossed it back onto the seat, a cheeky little joke for me to find.

  Other than Wheezer and me, nothing was moving. Not even a bit of wind.

  I checked the trunk. No spare ammunition there. They’d taken my ammo belts, though I doubt any of them carried the right weapon to fire what they contained.

  I didn’t have to look hard to find the footprints leading away from the Mustang. Four pairs. Like Imperial stormtroopers, they hadn’t bothered to hide their numbers.

  They expected me to find their trail. Wanted me to follow.

  With the way those dolls of his worked, controlling my body as well as my mind, Johnny Dee could have snapped my neck any time he’d had me under his control. He wouldn’t have forgotten or forgiven his last meeting with me, and the feeling was mutual.

  Somehow, he’d gotten out of his supposedly secure prison.¹² Then, before I’d had a chance to realize anything was wrong, he’d gotten me under his control. That I was alive now meant two things. First, he hadn’t finished whatever he’d kept stealing my body to do. Second, he hadn’t expected Magik to create a shield to block his control, even temporarily.

  12 With powers like Johnny Dee’s, no prizes for guessing how that happened. –Ed.

  He was not going to repeat that last mistake. If my shield ever faltered, if he got control of me again, he was going to break my neck. Or shatter my skull. Or twist my spine into a Mobius strip. Or any one of a thousand other terrible deaths before he gave me up again. He was a death sentence, hovering over my head.

  The gang’s footprints trekked out of the surly wastes, and up toward the craggy ridges to the west. Headed up into the mountains. The Mustang wouldn’t have gotten them very far in that direction. Heck, Wheezer wasn’t going to get me far up those slopes.

  “I hate to do this,” I said, patting the side of her nose, “but you’ve done all right without people. Not gonna be the last time I see you. Promise.”

  She would never stay by the car, of course, and it would have been cruel to tie her up. In case I didn’t come back, she needed to be free to find water and forage. Even when she’d been chased away from the ranch, she’d hung around. I was maybe more certain than I should have been that I would be able to find her again. I pulled her tack off and left it in a heap on the rocks. I couldn’t very well take it with me.

  She still followed me for a little while – damn it, my heart can only take so much breaking in one day – but as the terrain started getting rough, she stopped.

  It never got so rocky that the gang’s trail disappeared, but I was hiking mostly uphill now. Exposed limestone towered to every side of me but the path back. The sun dipped farther below the rock faces with each step, and at first it was a relief. The red limning the horizon was enough to see by without overloading my scratched-up eyes. Then, as the darkness deepened, the fog set in.

  The rest of my injuries were getting better. My bruises were shadows of their old selves. The cuts on my face had long since scabbed over, and skin had started to come back in. But my eyes were different. The haze hadn’t gone away. I didn’t even know if it had diminished. The darkness kept me from telling. Like I’d feared, too much tiny debris was stuck in my eyes for them to heal well. I was going to be hampered until I got them cleaned out.

  Half-eroded calciform towers made strange curlicues across the sky. They seemed to move whenever I looked at them. I couldn’t gauge distances. The towers could have been rock formations or, for all I could tell, high waves on stormy seas. The ground dipped and rose under my feet before I saw it. This was the first time I’d felt seasick inland.

  There’s usually no more beautiful night sky than the dry Texas desert. It had been one of the few things I’d unambiguously been looking forward to coming home and seeing. With no big sources of light pollution for miles around, you didn’t just see stars. You saw a river, a cascade of light flowing from one horizon to the next, a million million stars…

  The haze took that sky from me. All I saw when I looked up was a pale gray cloud, the color of ash. An astral boneyard, luminous but dead.

  I suppose even the unfiltered starscape wouldn’t have been the same. I’ve never been off-planet, but I’ve had enough brushes with the celestial¹³ to know about all the galactic empires out there, the planet-eaters, and the battles between gods and aliens and progenitors.

  13 Like in Hotshots #4! –Ed.

  A lot of what I saw when I looked at the stars now was chaos and danger and things I didn’t want to think about. So many of the stars were dead and devoured, and only their light was still reaching us.

  The funny thing about growing old is that you never run out of ways to do it. Some part of me had thought that, by coming back here, I’d see the skies I’d used to see when I was a kid rather than the same one I saw everywhere else.

  It was a lot easier on my spirits to stay focused on footprints ahead of me, and the men I was tracking down to kill.

  The haze and darkness obscured some details, but so far this wasn’t a subtle game. One of the pairs of tracks was dragging, their heels scuffing along in the dirt, and sometimes stumbling. Tired already. They hadn’t had time to pack for the trip. They’d left their spare clothes back at the ranch. They’d spent enough days in the desert to know how cold it got at night – damn cold – but that didn’t mean they were prepared for it. I could handle it. Even if endurance hadn’t been one of my factory-default mutant features, I’d come with heavy clothes.

  I had to rely on my other senses. I stepped along carefully, testing each foot before placing it. The desert night was as silent and deathly as the stars above. I heard each breath as I drew and released it, and was confident I could hear anybody within fifty feet do the same.

  I’m not sure if it was some combination of those senses or instinct that first told me something was wrong.

  After several seconds of stifled breathing and watery blinking, more of the land around me resolved. The gang’s footsteps wandered up a shallow slope and between two rounded rock walls.

  The terrain had become steadily rockier. I’d come close to losing the gang’s trail a couple times as they’d passed over bare stone. In fact, that was what had stopped me in my tracks. The slope leading into the valley had plenty of rocky surfaces. They’d chosen a sandy path to go up instead, where their tracks were easier to see.

  Definitely a trap.

  In spite of myself – heck, in spite of everything – I grinned.

  I turned away from their trail. Instead, I trod lightly over to one of the rock walls, and felt along for a path that seemed climbable or walkable. It only took a few false starts before I was silently pulling my way up. I moved so slowly that someone like Neena would have gone out of her mind if she were here. She never took things slow. The first kind of fight she’d trained herself to get through had been a brawl. But the first time I’d held a gun, it had been on a hunt.

  I had to move like a snail to keep my breathing low and stifled, while keeping my ears open for the slightest indrawn breath. I climbed one-handed. Any time I put pressure on my bad arm, I came close to gasping in pain. Too much of that, and I wouldn’t be able to resist.

  But I got where I was going. I was patient. I had no doubt my quarry was, too.