Single-stage trigger vs. double-stage. Usually, the difference between them is just a matter of knowing exactly when the gun will fire. This one time, it was the difference between being a cold-blooded murderer and… I don’t know. Something else.
I hit that point of resistance and stopped. Held it there for an impossibly long moment and then finally let my finger fall away. I wasn’t a Cape. I’d never be a fucking Cape. But I wasn’t the kind of asshole who just sat back and let innocent people die either.
Gun still extended, I turned to the action.
The Stalwart charged through a conjured wall of fire. His orange jumpsuit ignited, and exposed skin went black and smoking, but his extended hand caught the fleeing Pyro’s arm, and the crack of a snapping bone joined the roar of the flames.
Red scrambled backward, one arm hanging loosely at his side, the other reaching behind him for balance. The Stalwart bounced off the wall, changed direction and came right back in.
He was within arm’s reach when Red opened his mouth and spat fire.
Somehow, the Stalwart dodged most of the blast, but he staggered and went to one knee.
I rose to my feet sighted along the Legion gun’s short barrel.
“Red, look out!” Somehow, I’d forgotten Jaws’ wife. Maybe I’d discounted her because she wasn’t a Power. Maybe I’d gotten that tunnel vision Nikolai had always warned us about. It was a rookie mistake, the sort of thing the Academy trained us to avoid.
She screamed her warning and Red was already ducking aside as I finished pulling the trigger.
I guess it’s a good thing the Pyro hadn’t been my target.
Across the room, Firewall stiffened as my round struck him. I’d been aiming center mass, as Jessica taught, but an almost supernatural lack of recoil and my own unfamiliarity with the weapon meant I’d shot him in the right hip instead.
It didn’t matter.
Something spread outward from the point of impact like a ripple on a pond, something recognizable only by the carnage it left behind. It chewed through the Technomancer’s jumpsuit, skin and bones, consuming as it spread. He was dead long before that ripple reached his heart, but it kept on going anyway, even as the last few bits of him crumbled to the floor. In less than a second, there was nothing left to suggest a man had ever stood there.
I’d asked Her Majesty for a guaranteed kill, and I’d sure as fuck gotten it.
The Stalwart used my distraction to get back to his feet. The right side of his face and body was a mass of blood and burns, but he loped forward like a savage on the hunt. First one step, then another, dodging Red’s increasingly panicked blasts.
That should’ve been the end of it. In Cape vids, that would’ve been the end of it, a reformed Black Hat finding his way to the light, finding redemption even as he stopped a jail break before it could truly start. One more example of truth and justice triumphing even over the darkness of one man’s heart.
Problem is, this wasn’t a Cape vid.
Three tables away from me, one of the remaining inmates raised his still-shackled hands. Darkness pooled in his open eyes.
The Stalwart’s own shadow reached up and wrapped itself around him, pinning him to the nearby wall.
Red stopped on a dime and reversed course. His good hand extended in front of him like he was pushing a wall, and fire poured into the Stalwart’s struggling body. When the Pyro’s flames finally cut off, there was nothing left behind but scorch marks on the wall, and a blackened, shriveled corpse that fell to the floor and exploded into fragments of ash.
I recognized the sound that came out of the Stalwart’s father’s throat. I’d made a sound just like it when I was five.
Red spared a moment to spit in the direction of the Stalwart’s ashes and then turned to me, his expression ugly. “If you’d shot me instead of Firewall, you might have had a chance.” Flames gathered again around his open hand.
“Probably should have,” I admitted. What I really should have done was ask Her Majesty for a gun with more than one round. The weapon had gone cold and lifeless the moment I fired it, as if whatever powered it had left with the bullet. I tossed the gun aside and reached for my power instead. “But he was the one controlling the cameras.”
Lights above both elevators went from green to red. Somewhere above us, an alarm began to sound.
CHAPTER 72
I had a split-second to appreciate—even enjoy—the look of shock on the Pyro’s face, and then fire was coming at me like hell’s own fury. There was no dodging that, not entirely, but with the cold emptiness of my power filling my body, I rolled away from the worst of it, taking cover behind a metal interview table that went red, then white, then melted into slag, leaving two half-torched table legs behind. I scooped up one of those legs, ignoring the hot metal that seared my flesh, and dodged from table to table. All the while, I was expecting the Shadecaster to pin me like he had the Stalwart, but the expected attack never came. One quick peek showed me why; the Power was slumped down in his chair, smoke coming out of empty, sightless eyes, as if Red’s flames had burned him through the shadow he’d controlled.
Two down and only Red to go… assuming none of the other inmates were in on the jailbreak… assuming all of them stayed put.
I might actually have a chance.
If you’re ever a Cape—hell, even if you come back as a normal, and go through life never facing danger at all—do me a favor; don’t even think those words.
It’s just asking
