"So, are you gonna stand there all day lookin' ugly? Or are you gonna do somethin?" Lexi snarled.
That was enough. Like the street back in Thomaston, they came all at once in a swarm. I fought to keep my head above the flow of bodies long enough to feel my adrenaline kick up again as one ripped a hole in my leg. Another slashed through my t-shirt, cutting to the bone.
Power rolled through me, screamed through my veins, and I was home.
I sliced through the thick of them like a hot knife through butter, sending blue blood across every wall in the area and several of my team members. They weren't lovers or friends or relatives in the heat of battle, only those I needed to protect. A Kipa came for my throat and I snapped my hands together on either side of its head, smashing it inward. It went down in a pile, blood and brain seeping onto the floor from the hole that served it as an ear.
Two more came at me as I spun, absolutely raging and on a bender I hadn't had access to in so long. I flew at them, launched myself into the air and came down on them with an overhead swing that decapitated one and crushed the other through a wall and into the abyss of the stairs below.
Edwin and Izzy in my mind, I peeked over to make sure I hadn't thrown a Kipa on top of them but I saw no sign of the duo. Good.
I went back to work on the endless horde of miserable not-alien alienoids and soon found myself back to back with Nishelle, who sent a wave of fire at a trio of Kipas that burnt them to a crisp and caught most of the building down that end of the hallway.
"Really don't need the fire department here right now, Nishelle," I told her.
She ignored me but clenched a fist, stopping the flames from spreading. In a moment, they died. Then we turned as a pair and unleashed hell on the rest of the Kipas in our way.
It only ended when we reached those tall doors. We had to walk over the bodies and we were covered in filth. My heart fluttered in my chest but I ignored it. There was time to be dead when we'd taken down Scribe and, hopefully, sent him home to his daughter.
I put my hand on one of the doors and pushed it open, my partners behind me.
Chapter 18
He sat at his desk, a book filled with nothing before him and a pen in his hand. It wasn't the special sort that Edwin had made for him for all those years, but I had no doubt it would do the job as intended.
As we filed in, he didn't bother to look at us. That's something they don't show you in the movies; the heroes can never really burst through a doorway all at once. We're just too big to fit. Instead, you get something like filing into the cafeteria during your school lunch and it never looks as cool.
"I don't want to do this to any of you. If you'd only fall in line, this wouldn't be an issue," he said, finally lifting his head to acknowledge us. "You don't stand a chance. You know that you don't. And I want all of you to survive this."
The disappointment in his voice, the utter chagrin, was almost too much to bear. How many times had I heard it when I hadn't run far enough, jumped high enough, or fixed whatever issue he'd sent me out to work on? And how often had I heard it in my professional career? Only when I'd accidentally killed Nishelle, only during his testimony against me.
Tears bit into the corners of my eyes and it sucked. I hated it so much that there weren't words for it. Scribe was our teacher, our boss, our friend.
But we had to do what was right. Adam was the one with the voice. I let him take care of the talking, and he did. "With all due respect, boss, we want the same thing. But we're pretty certain that you don't. You've ruined the city and God only knows what you've done with our contemporaries. We can't let this continue."
"You have new friends with you. Starseer, I thought you had more sense than to get tangled up in something like this," Scribe said, ignoring Adam.
Chris rubbed the back of his head. "Worse things than bringing justice to get tangled up in, I suppose, Scribe. Hate to see you go down like this, but if it's got to be this way? Then it's got to be this way. They're trying to give you a chance to pull your head out of your ass, sir. If you won't do it, that's up to you."
"You're all devoted to this cause, then? To bringing me down, killing me in my own office just because I enforced rule on the city? Because I brought order to it?"
I swallowed. A tear rolled down my cheek but I managed to ignore it. "It only comes to death if you make it, sir. Please. Step down. Submit yourself to Logan's care and get whatever's gone wrong with you fixed up. There are places that could help you, ways to assist you. You know that."
"Ah, my little murderer," he said, rising from his seat. "You come here and you speak to me about ethics, about things going wrong with me. You have no idea what games you're playing or what is at stake. You're nothing, Cassandra. None of you are; not without me. Maybe it's time I remind you of that."
It is hard to imagine the sound of
