Those Who Walk in Darkness

Her hand to Herbert's door, a cop posted one to each side. This was going to be good, Soledad thought. It was going to be good to be in a hospital not because a freak put her there, but because that's where she put the freak.

Herbert was in bed, his right shoulder well bandaged. As Soledad came in, his head turned toward her very, very, very slowly. The sluggishness was courtesy the Versed he was being fed by IV drip, the midazolam HC1 spiked with a double dose of hydrochloride. A special cocktail mixed just for hyperkinetic freaks. Kept them lucid but put their metabolism in near suspension. It'd be enough to drop a normal man into oblivion. Herbert's speech was slowed but hardly slurred.

He smiled when he saw"… Bullet." Words seeping from him gradually."You came."

"I don't like that; getting called Bullet."

"And I don't like getting shot, but that didn't stop you."

"I'm sure that MTac you wounded didn't much care for it either."

Herbert gave a slow roll of his eyes. Only kind he could."He was going to kill me. I tried to grab the gun from his hand." He squirmed a little, worked at making himself comfortable but found he couldn't. A bullet wound—the flesh and bone the slug tears away. The deep-tissue surgeries required to mend the defect— tends to keep you from getting cozy."All he got was a graze to the thigh. I'd trade him any day."

"It's your own fault. We didn't have orders to shoot you."

"No one told me."

"No one told you to run either." To the point: "You asked for me. Why?"

"I wanted to meet you, meet the person who was able to shoot a hyperkinetic."

"Taking your kind out isn't that big a deal," Soledad fronted. Up until the slug found its way into Herbert she had no idea if it would really function, if the science that worked so well in theory, on paper, could perform in fact. There was no need for Herbert to know that. Let the freak think MTacs could take him and his flying, burning, mind-reading and super-whatever friends out at will.

"Don't bother with the bravado. I'm already impressed. We all are."

"We? Other freaks?"

"That's what I like about you police: unbiased, impartial. But, yes, we are impressed by you. By how you handled Clarence—"

"Who's—"

"He was the pyrokinetic you killed."

"Not before he murdered a real human being."

A wave of pain made a run over Herbert. He was doped up, but the doctors had been stingy with the painkillers. Herbert had asked a cop to tell the docs to give him more. The cop laughed. Herbert closed his eyes, waited for the pain to pass. It dimmed but didn't go away."You were able to stop Clarence, and we were glad for that."

That hit Soledad sideways."How's that work?"

"Clarence was an addict, a psychotic and a killer."

"Same as the rest of you."

"Do you know what we are? We're scared people. We run and hide when someone stares at us thinking they know we're different when maybe all they're looking at is just a stain on a shirt left over from breakfast. It's how we live; that frightened. It's the way you've made us. We, our kind, we used to be heroes—"

"Used to be," Soledad was quick to point out."You're nothing but murderers."

"I know a hundred sixty-eight people in Oklahoma City who would say otherwise."

"And I know six hundred thousand people in San Francisco who'd say something against that. If they could say anything. Except they can't. Except they're dead."

The pain came back for Herbert.

Soledad didn't care. Soledad kept swinging."You… you freaks, you're nothing but a bunch of animals. Like pack dogs; less than human. I'll tell you something, if I had it my way, I'd put down every one of you."

Herbert laughed a little. Laughter did nothing to help the hurt.

"That funny to you?"

"The way you talk: We're animals, less than human. You'd kill us all… That's the kind of crazy hate talk they used to throw at Jews, gays." Herbert's sleepy, sedated eyes went sharp for a second. They looked right at Soledad."And at blacks."

Not even a flinch."Gays, blacks, Jews never took out half a city."

For a second it was quiet enough to hear the drip of the IV.

Soledad said: "These freaks that you know so well, all your little freak friends: Let's talk about them."

A couple of tired swings of Herbert's head signified no."I won't tell you anything about my friends."

"Think before you answer. Things don't look so good for you.

Violating the Executive Order regulating the activities of metanor-mals is a—"

"I'll tell you about Vaughn."

"Who's Vaughn?"

"The one you're after. The telepath."

"You don't want to talk about anyone else, but him you'll flip on?"

"Two reasons. He's a murderer. Think whatever you want of us, but those of us who remain have a strict code: We must never use our gifts to take life."

Now it was Soledad who did the laughing."For a bunch of people who don't like to kill you've got racking up a body count down to a habit."

"When I was a child, when I first realized I was… different… well, I thought of myself as you think of me: I thought I was a freak. I thought there was something wrong with me. I never told people about my abilities. I figured they'd laugh, call me names at best. At worst… I thought they would put me in a lab, cut me open and study me. Then one day Pronto made his first appearance. Do you remember? San Ysidro. You're young, but you must… That crazy with the gun in a fast-food restaurant. He would have killed how many people? Except along comes a man who could run faster than the speed of sound. A man who could snatch bullets out of the air. A man who dedicated himself to fighting injustice and serving mankind. Do you know how that made me feel? Can you imagine the joy in my heart to know that I wasn't some kind of mutation, but that I was given a special gift and with it I could help, I could make a difference?"

Soledad didn't have to imagine the feeling. She knew it. Knew it well. It was the same way she felt first time the Nubian Princess went into action. A crew of five bank robbers armed to the eyebrows with automatic weapons, all brought to their knees by a black woman in tribal wrap and Egyptian gold. Just now, remembering the moment, the feeling came racing back. The feeling of a young black girl living in an all-white neighborhood, going to an all-white school. No matter those white people were usually decent… usually… the girl always felt different. Never felt special in a good sense until the day she saw, on television, on the news, someone who looked like her being extraordinary.

And quick as the feeling came back, Soledad chased it off with a mantra: Freaks kill.

"I had always hoped," Herbert went on,"to use my gift to help people, to follow in Pronto's… pardon me, footsteps." He paused."That was before San Francisco."

Soledad said her mantra aloud: "Freaks kill."

"So do normal humans. But we are different from you, Bullet. The difference comes with the responsibility to use our abilities for positive change, not to do wrong. And those like Clarence and Vaughn who cross the line, they deserve punishment. We would have it no other way. There's an old salvage yard just off Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood. As best we know, that's where you'll find Vaughn. Believe it or not, we really hope you stop him."

"How many of you are there? Do you communicate on a regular—"

Herbert made a big show of being in pain and tired, of being unable to answer any more questions.

Still, Soledad had a last few."You said there were two reasons why you'd tell me where this Vaughn is. What's the other?"

"He wants you to find him. Not just the police, but you, Bullet."

"Stop it."

"That's what we all call you. We call you Bullet."

"If you call me that again, I'll—"

"What? What will you do to me, Bullet?"

Wounded, in a hospital, exposed as a freak and facing a life of sedation in a cell. What else could Soledad do to Herbert Lewis?

Nothing.

So she ignored his taunt."Why me?"

"You killed Michelle."

A blank stare.

"The angel. You killed his wife."

Soledad responded to the statement in no particular manner. She remembered that Lesker, her partner at the time, had called the woman, white skin and gliding through the air on wings, an angel as well. All Soledad saw was a freak. And now she saw a conspiracy of freaks. They communicated with each other, knew one another's whereabouts and actions. They even sat in judgment of each other. Forget MTac, the advances in technology, in strategy and skills. The freak problem was getting worse, not better.

Soledad looked at Herbert Lewis, took a second to study his face. She wanted to be able to gauge, after she asked what she was about to ask, any change in his expression no matter how subtle or how quickly it passed. She wanted to be able to tell if Herbert responded with truth or lie.

She asked: "What's revelation?"

"Revelation?" Herbert asked back, as nonplussed as if Soledad had asked him what's water."A revelation is a disclosure or something disclosed by or as if by divine or preternatural means."

Zeiss photographic lenses, of any length, were good. Their long lenses were just about the best in the world. What a longer lens does for you, it provides more subject magnification at a given distance. By moving back, you reduce the magnification ratio between the front and back of your subject because the distance ratio is diminished. So you can get farther from whatever you're shooting without the image ending up too small.

The Air Support Division cops doing a photo recon of a salvage yard in the Valley couldn't keep far enough away from the target they were shooting: the possible locale of a telepath that, if it wanted, could real easy make the pilot fly his 206 Jet Ranger straight into the ground at max throttle. Most photo recons take ten minutes. This one—shot with the longest lenses the LAPD had on hand—took three minutes, and would've taken less if the cops had it their way, before the pilot yanked the stick and peeled the helicopter for Piper Tech.

The photos processed, printed, unspectacular as they were— B&W shots of a ramshackle building center of the salvage yard— were taken to Em Ops for Tannehill and Rysher and Ostrander and Bo and Yar and Soledad to view for all the little the pictures revealed.

Bo, pointing to the building: "This is the only structure on the property. It's been built on a few times over the years. This outer part is all wood, the rest sheet metal."

"And with relatively few people in the vicinity," Ostrander noted,"it will give the freak an advantage in sensing anyone looking for him."

"Able to get any blueprints?" Yar asked.

Bo: "The additions were done without permit, so there's nothing on record."

"So we don't know the layout. Whatever we send in is going in blind." There was a tightness where Tannehill's neck met his shoulders, an aching knot that'd been living there for years but making itself felt with severe pain since the day Valley MTac put itself down. As professional, as detached as he tried to be, had to be, doubt and guilt and stress seeped through Tannehill like a slow-working poison manifesting itself inside him in a thousand ways. A tightness here, a twitch there. Heart palpitations more often than not. Although he believed in the work he did, Tannehill's work very truly, gradually, was killing him."If the telepath's there at all."

"You don't believe the speed freak?" Soledad asked.

"I've learned not to trust where freaks are involved."

Bo: "Why would it say the telepath is there if it's not?"

"A distraction," Rysher answered, guessing.

"A distraction from what? If the telepath wanted to go after cops, it could do that easy enough without dragging them to the middle of nowhere."

Rysher made a point of: "It lured one MTac element out. Why not do the same with another? Lures them out, then attacks another part of the city."

"He could do that without baiting us. Come and go before anybody knew what they got hit with."

The fingers of Yar's right hand did an unending tap-step over his palm. Talk, talk; all this… There was a freak out there. The freak had to be dealt with. How much talk was needed for that?

"He's there," Soledad said, no doubt in her voice."He's waiting there."

Tannehill: "For?"

Soledad: "A showdown. Kill or be killed. He takes out one element to show us how powerful he is. Now he's waiting to see if we've got the apples to ice him."

"If he wants to know if we've got the balls…" Yar didn't miss a beat.

Neither did Rysher."Let's go for a full strike: have all our MTac units hit him at once."

"Remind me to purchase shares in an American flag company. Undoubtedly their price will skyrocket with all the coffins that will need draping." Ostrander had a way of putting pitch-black into dark humor.

"You saw what it did to Valley MTac. It's going to take everything we have just to slow the freak down."

"I promise you he will turn your people against each other, and then the last man remaining against himself."

Rysher gave a cold reminder: "I'm familiar with the MO of these mind freaks."

"Then I'd suggest we take the knowledge and find another way to apply it."

"We could go with nonlethal weapons," Rysher offered.

"Well, that's a good idea." A sarcastic tone made it clear Yar thought otherwise."You can't take out druggies jacked on PCPs with nonlethals, and you want to use them against a telepath? The freak can make the operators choke each other, beat each other to death bare-handed, and they'd have no way to kill it."

"Your suggestion?" Rysher asked, pointed.

"One element. Make it a lightning strike. I'm volunteering Central."

Bo: "It's appreciated, Yar. But cowboy time is still a ways off."

"Yar's right," Soledad said."But for the wrong reason. It should be one element, should be Central. What the freak wants… I killed its wife. It wants me."

"You'd never make it out alive," Rysher said.

"That a fact or wishful thinking?"

A quiet hiss of nasty words came from Rysher.

Soledad ignored them."Look, we take out the freak, problem solved. But if we don't make it, if I don't make it… maybe that's payback enough for it. Maybe it's done and nobody else has to get killed."

Rysher: "So it kills a bunch of cops, and we just let the thing get away."

Yar, talking from experience: "If we can't put it down, you better hope it goes away."

"If we go after it, if we lose out, if the freak's not done killing," Soledad said,"then you don't stand any worse than you do right now."

"With the exception," Tannehill's hand working hard on his neck,"of four dead officers."

"Sooner or later, going against this thing, we'd be dead anyway. This way we just go down first."

"So you're volunteering," Bo, being clear about things,"for a suicide mission."

Soledad looked to Yar.

Yar grinned."To my hearing she's volunteering to get in the first kick to the freak's ass."

And Bo wished, for one split second, he could own that kind of fearlessness again.

Again?

Bo wondered: Did he ever own it? Or was what drove him for so long just the youthful delusion that with enough will you can live forever?

The call was Tannehill's to make. Nothing easy about making it. What was the best way to put down what maybe couldn't be put down; that could probably kill whatever you sent at it? And here, before him, were two cops begging to take the call. How many more in the PD would be happy to stand with them? Where the hell, Tannehill thought, did you get people like this? For whatever their reasons, for whyever they chose to do what they do, where did you find such people?

Tannehill: "I'll put out a warrant. Central gets the call. You go it alone."

Soledad and Ian were having dinner at Soup Plantation, which was their favorite place to have dinner. Not so much their favorite place to eat, but they liked getting the two-for-one special. Soup Plantation didn't actually offer a two-for-one special. What it did offer was an all-you-can-eat soup and salad bar run by college kids and underprivileged illegals working for minimum who didn't much notice or care if one person in a party of two went to the bar and got food that the other person had paid for. More than the okay food, Soledad and Ian dug the" we're getting away with something" pleasure that came with it. Made them feel like they were a couple of kids, like they were back in high school. Even though getting something for nothing was, in this case, illegal. Even though Soledad was a cop. There weren't any freaks involved. No freaks involved, Soledad gave no more thought to scuffing the law for pleasure than anybody else. She chalked that mostly to Ian. Day by day he was making her feel like a regular girl.

Ian said: "You put too much dressing on your salad."

"I like dressing."

"I know, but you put too much on."

"What's too much?"

With his fork Ian reached over to Soledad's plate, lifted some of the lettuce. Blue cheese dressing sloshed from the leaves, the cheese falling like boulders in a goo-slide."That's too much. What's the point of eating healthy if you're going to use that much dressing?"

" 'Cause it's good for you."

"It's nothing but fat."

"The salad's good for you."

"But you've got more dressing than salad."

Soledad speared a forkful of lettuce, lifted it slow to her mouth. Dressing dripped, dripped from her lips and chin. It was funny. Was sexy too. For a sec Ian wished he was the kind of guy, ballsy enough, to slap their trays to the floor, put Soledad on the table and make love to her right there.

They were doing that now. They'd graduated from having sex to making love. From sharing space and screwing to sharing themselves and having something like a relationship. Something like. All that made Ian happy. When it didn't make him scared.

"You just want," Soledad's mouth full of blue cheese dressing and some very little bit of salad,"to eat at Johnny Rocket's."

"I don't want to eat at Johnny Rocket's. I'm just saying if you're going to eat healthy, eat healthy; otherwise… Actually, yeah, I do want to eat at Johnny Rocket's. That crap's good. Life's too short to try and eat healthy and live forever."

"Am I a bigot?"

"We're all bigots." As left field as Soledad's question was, Ian didn't miss a beat answering."I don't care what anybody says, we all carry some baggage in us."

"Am I worse than most?"

"It's all bad, so how do you—"

"Answer me straight. Please."

Now Ian took his time. Thought. Asked: "Why do you care?"

"Served a warrant on a freak. It said I was no better than people who hated Jews and gays. Blacks."

"Hate is hate. So, no, I don't think your hate is any better—"

"You've never talked about how you fall on things," cutting him off, getting a little sharp."You soft for freaks?"

"We're talking about you."

"You are soft for them."

"You asked me a question. Don't take the conversation somewhere else when you don't like the answers I give."

And for a second it was Soledad looking hard at Ian, Ian looking hard right back to her. Then Soledad sat back in her chair, realizing, just then, how forward her little outburst had carried her.

"I think," Ian said,"some of the hurt you have, the reasons you feel the way you do… I understand it, even though it's intangible." Some kind of little laugh from Ian."I shouldn't be—"

"Go on. Say what you're going to say."

"I know why you have it, but I wish you didn't have the hate you do. For what it does to other people, but mostly for what it does to yourself. If I'd known how you felt first off, we wouldn't… there's no way I could've been with you. But I was, I guess I was lucky; I got a chance to see the good in you first. And now, that this metanor-mal would say things to you, that you would care what it said, that you would care what I think… Even in the time I've known you, you've changed, Soledad."

"Well, fuck. Everything around me's changed."

"What? Things aren't supposed to? That's a shock to you they do?"

"Yes, Ian. It is. From half a city being torn away right up to people I thought had my back selling me out." Soledad used a cold, factual tone to make her point."There is no gentle transformation in any of that, so, yeah, I'm shocked."

"Sometimes it's not; sometimes it's not gentle. But however it came, you've changed too. You have. You'll change more. You and me both. And hard as things are for us, for trying to get along in our relationship, or whatever you want to call it… hard as it is, I want to be around when all your hurt is gone. I live for that."

And Soledad smiled. It was a sweet one that warmed across her lips. She leaned over the table, getting dressing on her sleeve and not caring, put her mouth to Ian's. Kissed him.

Yeah. He definitely wished he was a ballsier kind of guy.

And as he thought that, he let himself be.

"Let's go away," Ian said.

"I've got days owed. Maybe we could get lost for a couple of—"

"I'm not talking a vacation. Where would you be happy? Canada? Hawaii? Australia? How far away do we have to be from the rest of the world for you to smile all the time? Just tell me and I'll take you there."

Soledad put down her fork."If we're going to do this, if you and me are going to be together… it won't work with you worrying about me getting killed."

"That's not why I'm… Yeah, I think about that. I'd be lying if I said I didn't. But as I come to know you more I worry less. Sometimes I think nothing could kill you."

"Then why—"

"Look at us: two people stumbling along in life. The only way we even hooked up was by accident. Really by accident. Baggage for days, pasts we don't want to talk about. A world of people we don't even want to know. So, fine. Let's leave all that. Let's… It's like we're no good for anyone but us. And we're no good at all except anywhere but here."

"Here?" Edging forward again: "So get away from here, you mean: get away from hunting freaks."

Ian looked down at the table."From… everything."

"I don't… One second we're talking about salad dressing, then you're asking me to give it all up."

"Give all of what up?"

"My job, my life."

"An obsession as much as a job."

"You don't like what I do—"

"You're the one who said that. Not me. And a job doing what, hunting people down? You sit there asking me if I think you're a bigot, then you go right back to having no problem doing what you're doing."

"Being a cop and being a bigot are not the same thing."

"They are if it's the reason you became a cop: to have a legal excuse to kill the people you hate."

"You know what?" Soledad was already half up out of her chair."This conversation needs to end and you need to get out of my face."

Ian reached out. Ian grabbed Soledad by the wrist, pulled her back down into her seat. In the time that she'd known, yet barely known him, Soledad had always thought of Ian as a sensitive guy. Sensitive a euphemism for timid, but timid not being a pejorative. He was quiet, little on the nervous side. She remembered his panicked look when he caught a glimpse of her off-duty piece the afternoon their cars collided. Soledad remembered his halting, breathy request for a first date. Things that made him more human than the hard guys she mixed with daily on the force.

But all previous concepts of Ian got shoved to the side by the strong hand that latched on to Soledad's wrist with a firm, firm grip. It surprised Soledad. It was unexpected; hard but not harsh. It directed her to shut up, sit down and listen. It also revealed to Soledad an as-yet-undiscovered attractiveness in Ian.

Ian said: "What did your job," again, derisive there,"give you except months of getting slow-roasted over coals? The same people who were supposed to be supporting you were ready to hang you, couldn't turn their backs fast enough on you. Lied, Soledad. They lied to your face."

Ian eased up his grip. Soledad was almost sorry for it.

He said: "I don't want you to give up your life. That's not what I'm asking. What I want… I want you to start a life with me. I want us to start one together."

"What are you saying?"

"What I'm… I'm trying… I'm telling you…" Fumbling, fumbling."I'm saying what people say to people every day. I'm saying what you said to me. I'm saying I love you."

"… Fuck…"

"I tell you I love you, and you say fuck?"

"… Yeah…"

"You told me you loved me. It's only supposed to work one way?"

"No, but… Fuck…"

Ian laughed some."Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"You love somebody, it's nothing. Easy. All you've got to do is sit there and love them. Somebody loves you… that's obligation you're feeling."

"Fuck. Thought love was supposed to feel good."

Ian shrugged.

"This how you felt when I said it to you?"

"I felt kind of like all the oxygen suddenly left the planet. Lightheaded, like Goodyear just bought my skull and was using it to sell tires above a sporting event."

And Soledad laughed.

"Can't believe," Ian said,"this is new to you."

"It's new to you."

"I'm me. You're, you know, pretty. You should've had lots of guys after you."

"Should've." Soledad picked up her fork, moved around the food on her plate. That's all she did, move it around some. Didn't eat. Put the fork back down."High school. But that doesn't count. That never made me feel… I'm a pain in the ass. You ought to know that by now. Guy's don't… I don't even like talking about this shit."

"But we are talking about it. So…?"

"So…"

Soledad's brain did a thousand calculations in a single second. What had the LAPD done except try to lynch her? What would being an MTac get her except dead? Eventually. Why was she doing what she was doing? Because the law said to, or because guilt told her to? Didn't know. She didn't know. And what were the chances of ever in her life finding another man who fit her as snugly as Ian did? Zero.

But…

There was the telepath. There were two ways to stop it: by ending its life or by, maybe, it ending Soledad's. And could she share that with Ian? How would he take, how would anyone take, the person they love going kamikaze with their life? And if she hid it from him this time… call it what it was. A lie. If Soledad lied to Ian this time about the whys of her life, what was to keep her from lying next time? The time after? What was going to keep her from protecting him from her life same as she felt she had to do with her parents as long as she was MTac?

Nothing.

But…

But that was a discussion to have with herself later. In a day. If she was still alive.

Now?

There was responsibility. For whatever her reasons, there was obligation. No matter how the cause was viewed, right or wrong by any sense, any form of measure, Soledad was at the start of Vaughn's rampage. She was at the start, so…

"I have a thing I have to finish first."

"Soledad—"

"Just one, and then we can talk about—"

"I don't want to wait. Let's go now. Let's you and me get up and go and keep going and never talk about our lives up till now again."

"You said you weren't afraid anything was going to happen to me."

"I'm not."

"Then please let me finish this because…" Now her hand was taking his, holding it strong."Because there's no other way except for me to finish things."

Ian looked to Soledad, looked her in the eyes: determination as solid as his disappointment. He mouthed" Okay" but didn't really make a sound.

He and Soledad went back to eating their salads. She hurried her meal because she just wanted to get home and get in bed with Ian and hold on to him until four in the morning when she and the rest of the element would assemble to serve a warrant on the telepath. And when they were done eating, this time, going, Soledad left enough cash to cover what she'd taken for free.

Soledad had a pair of Bushnell's focused on the salvage yard. Junked cars, junked appliances, plain junk piled all around. A rambling shack, built on piecemeal over the years, until it was a study in sprawl. Part wood. Part sheet metal. All quiet.

"See anything?" Yarborough asked.

"Nothing."

Different than their last call, different than most, the four MTacs were head-to-toe in full reg body armor. Fritz helmets, Kevlar, Nomex, knee and elbow pads… Part of the return to by-the-book dress was in response to Eddi accidentally just about putting down Vin. Part was in response to the fact they were going up against something that could real easily make them try to kill each other.

"Maybe the freak's standing right in front of the place," Eddi pointed out,"and it's just puppeting us not to see it."

"Except," Soledad said,"none of us are bleeding out the nose."

Vin: "Or maybe it's just making us think none of us are bleeding."

"Or maybe we're all on a beach in Maui and he's just making us think we're outside a junkyard in North Hollywood." Yarborough was heavy on the sarcasm."Getting paranoid does us no good. When you get puppeted, you know it. There's a few seconds of queasiness, light-headedness, and you get the nosebleed just before" — he touched the scar on his temple—"the freak takes over. Feel any of that, let one of the others know before it's too late."

"So they can do what?" Vin asked.

"So they can shoot you before you take out the rest of us."

Soledad was pretty sure Yar was being hyperbolic. Sort of sure.

"You all knew the deal, and we all took it. We're alone on this, and we got better than our usual bad chances of not walking out. If you believe we're good as dead, however things happen, you won't be disappointed. Going against a telepath, best we can hope for now, one of us dies last."

Pep talk over.

Yar gave the sign and the element moved on the building, paired off and keeping low. It was Yarborough and Soledad, Vin and Eddi.

The closer Yar got to the building, the more clearly he recalled the night he'd mixed it up with a telepath: Three other cops put bullets in themselves. The feeling of being trapped in his own body, buried alive, the muzzle of his gun pressing against his head. Thought it would feel cold. It didn't. He remembered that very much: the warmth of the metal on his flesh. Then Yar felt nothing. Then he woke up in a hospital. The doctors told him, miracle, a slug had passed through his brain and done no damage. See, Yar had joked. Pays not to use your brain. Or sometimes: Pays to be stupid. Sometimes he said: All the beer I've drunk, didn't have any brain left to damage. In public he joked like that. Attitude was his cover. In private, when he thought about the incident, if he was lucky he made it to the bathroom. Otherwise he just puked on the floor.

Yarborough asked: "Soledad, any chance you figured out a bullet to take care of one of these mind-control freaks?"

She answered, flat: "There is none."

The convergence was measured but not tedious. Slow going only in the care and caution the pairs took. Movements forward followed by moments of stillness, of listening and looking. Looking for something that could strike without showing itself. Self-analysis for bouts of nausea or dizziness. When all that came back negative, the pairs would move again, then stop and one more time run their checklist.

On the metal side of the building Soledad and Yarborough made a window. Vin and Eddi arrived at a door around a corner perpendicular to it. The window was unlocked, the door open. Both parties gave a serious visual check to the inside of the building, then eased their way through the ingresses.

"Nothing," Yarborough said, hushed."Probably got himself holed up near the center of the place."

Eddi, fast: "Let's check it out." She caught herself giving orders. Caught Soledad giving a look.

Yar didn't own a lot of ego, but he had earned SLO, and he'd earned the respect that went with it. Most likely, from anybody else, he wouldn't've cared for orders getting tossed past him. To Eddi all he said was" Let's," and threw her a confident smile.

Out the door of the room was a hallway. Long. Lined with the sheet metal of the building. Two by two in a covering formation the MTacs made their way toward whatever waited.

What.

What was certain. How was the unknown. How things would kick off and how things would end. How, and how many of them would leave the place alive.

Soledad tried not to think of Yarborough's question: Did she have a bullet for a mind-controlling freak?

And Soledad felt… fear. She had a thought of death, and it made her afraid. Not of dying. Dying was nothing. But… Ian. With Ian in her life the thought of death made her realize how much there was to be lost in life. A future, a family. Possibility. That's what Ian gave her, and that's what she was suddenly afraid of losing. When there is no possibility, living or dying, what's it matter? An existing emptiness versus an eternal emptiness. Variations on a theme. But when you stand to lose all the possibilities of all the days that you are owed, that's when life becomes precious and death becomes significant.

Death, for Soledad, had become monumental.

Bad time for it.

Vin: "Hold up."

Everyone held.

"Thought I heard…"

Soledad did a quick look around. The hallway was narrow, tight and poorly lit. Bad place to be when bullets started flying. Too hard to hit the target without hitting one of your own. Maybe, Soledad thought, that's just the way the freak wanted things.

Soledad: "We've got to move."

Vin, again: "Hold on."

"You feeling something?"

"No, but I—"

"You getting scared?"

"Hey," Yarborough said, voice soft.

"I thought I heard something, something moving. I don't want to run into a trap."

"What do you think we're standing in?"

Eddi gripped a little tighter on her HK.

"We move," Soledad said,"or we end up doing the freak's work for it."

"Hey," Yarborough said one more time.

They all turned and looked at Yarborough. They turned and looked and they saw disbelief in his eyes. And they saw what it was Yarborough could not believe. Shock numbing him, dumbing him down, made him point out what couldn't be missed.

"Look at that," Yarborough said, quiet, fading."There's some metal sticking out of my chest.

There was. There was the sheet metal of the hallway formed— having formed itself—into a long spike that punched Yarborough through the back, diminished none by his body armor, and kept on until it erupted from his chest. And like living, viscid fluid, the metal withdrew itself from Yarborough, returned to being nothing more than wall. A gaping wound the only evidence of the violence that had happened. No longer held in place, blood geysering from the tunnel in his body, Yarborough puddled to the ground.

Eddi was first to him, screaming his name.

Yarborough tried to reach up, touch her face. His limbs were feebled. His hand never made it."I didn't… didn't tell you…" Unable to focus, his eyes spun freely in their sockets. The hole in his chest wheezed as he worked to draw air."Never told you… God, I could go for Taco Bell…"

Yarborough's eyes finally locked on something a million miles away.

Dead.

Soledad gave one split second to something she'd just realized: She wasn't even sure of Yar's first name."Metal morpher," she barked.

The remaining two of the element kept low, did some quick looking around, Eddi staying close to Yarborough's body like she was standing honor guard.

Vin: "You see him?"

"He's probably tactile, uses the metal walls as a conductor. He could be anywhere."

"How does he know where we are?"

"The telepath, it's giving him a mental picture. We've got to get back to the wood part of the…"

Soledad trailed off, went quiet, listened to a sound getting louder. Drawing closer. Tickety-tick. The tickety-tick of metal tapping on metal.

From the far end of the hall, from the darkness, came engine blocks. Moving on their own. In-line 6s, V-6s, big block V-8s, a Hemi mutated, sprouting arachnid legs. They scurried along the walls and ceilings—hideous, hungry things—for what was left of Central MTac.

Eddi whipped around her HK and was the first to cut loose with live fire. Her response time: zero. Wasn't by accident she'd scored so high at the academy.

Good grades weren't much help against animated engine blocks. Bullets weren't much better. Dead on target, all they did was nothing but ping-ping off the living metal.

Fast as she could, Soledad ejected the clip from her piece and swapped it out with one marked in orange, set her piece for single fire. She took an extra split second to aim her shot, be sure of her shot. It's what Bo would've done.

She fired.

The bullet hit the lead-most… thing. The bullet was tipped with Semtex. The impact, the Semtex, lit an explosion that blew a fat chunk from the aberration. The thing made a noise that was as much the grinding of stressed metal as the shriek of a dying animal. The concussion of the blast kicked it backward into a second spider/engine. Both fell to the wood floor. No longer in contact with metal, no longer in contact with their master, they went back to being hunks of automotive hardware.

Soledad, stepping up and taking charge: "Move! Get to the wood part of the building."

Eddi: "We've gotta take his body!"

Another spider/engine scrambled fast along the wall for them.

Again Soledad fired. Again her aim was true. A third thing twisted and shattered, joined the other two motionless on the ground. The same dying cry echoed off down the hallway.

Soledad took Eddi by the shoulder, threw her in the direction she wanted the younger woman to go."Move!"

Eddi led the retreat with Vin right behind. Soledad had the rear, she had the most precarious position. She had the O'Dwyer and her bullets too.

Two more freak things came up fast, and they went down quick with one shot apiece. There was no extra ammo. One clip. Twenty-eight rounds. No shots to be wasted. None were. Each slug fired struck a target. Each target was obliterated. Hitting the mark, for Soledad, wasn't the problem. Problem was the things kept coming. Each a little nastier than the one previous.

Eddi reached a door, flung it open. Just beyond: axles and pistons and rocker bars. Mufflers and tailpipes hung from chains that stretched up to the ceiling. In the room there was nothing but toys for a metal-loving freak to play with. Nothing but tools for him to kill with.

"… Fuck…" Eddi yelled to the others: "No good!"

Vin said: "Keep going, down the hall."

Soledad said nothing. Soledad was up to her eyeballs in morphed engine blocks. Quick as they came she took aim, fired.

She fired…

Fired…

One of the things skittered up a wall, over the ceiling, positioned itself to attack from above. Soledad took the shot, aim off a little. The slug, the explosion, tore up part of the creature. Not all of it. The bulk of the beast, its momentum, kept it moving for Soledad; lifeless when it lost contact with the metal of the structure. Still deadly on its own, a few hundred pounds of projectile. Soledad took the impact in the chest, in the chestplate. Kept her from being crushed as the crippled engine rode her to the ground. The air got punched from her lungs, the gun from her hand. She was pinned tight and easy prey for the little creepies that she couldn't see, but could hear tickety-ticking for her. Her hand flailed for her piece. Her body squirmed trying to pull free of the dead weight.

Tickety-tick came the things.

Soledad gave up on the gun. Twisting, twisting, she snaked her right leg up…

Tickety-tick…

Getting a foot under the block, struggling for leverage…

The glint of light off approaching metal…

The shadow of six-legged mutated movement…

Soledad pushed off with her leg, kicked the block up and back, into one of the approaching things, stumbling it. Hurting from breast to thigh, Soledad rolled, grabbed up her gun, raised it up, fired. The hurt threw off her aim, but it wasn't so off that the slug, the contact explosion, didn't shred the engine and send it to the ground.

How many had she taken out? Nine? Twelve? Didn't matter. They kept coming. The metal-on-metal sound squealing from the dark. Soledad tried to stand. Her right hip wouldn't take the weight. Her left leg wouldn't help out. She was spent. Spent, and good as…

… Ian…

A hand on her vest yanked Soledad to her feet. Vin."Come on. Die now and I'll never get a date."

Weakly: "Fucker…"

Lurching, stumbling backward, Soledad fumbled her way up into a near-running position helped along by Vin at rear guard, firing his weapon, for all the nongood it did.

Eddi in a doorway at the end of the hall: "In here!" Her waving arm, the look on her face urging them for her.

Then her face changed. The hard young woman became a billboard of fear.

Soledad turned, looked behind her, saw one of the things leap forward and take Vin down. The thing blossomed a mouth, a cavernous hole brimmed with sharpened fangs that chomped down on Vin's right leg. It tore out a chunk of meat, blood spraying, then spat it loose, sent it flipping, sent it bouncing off the wall to the floor where the mass spasmed where it lay—eleven feet, more than that, from the rest of Vin. The thing gnawed on. Tearing flesh, the cracking of snapped bones audible under the screams that wailed uninterrupted out of Vin.

The thing raised up, bared its teeth at Soledad, hissed and taunted before going back to its meal.

The bloody mouth was her bull's-eye. Soledad clicked off two rounds. The first erupted from inside the monster, wrenched it with convolutions as the force of the blast punched it apart. The second bullet sent what was left of the mutant skittering back the way it had come… along with more of Vin's severed leg.

Soledad grabbed Vin, hauled him for Eddi and the sanctuary of the waiting room, the chore made more difficult by Vin's uncontrollable body motions that were response to his unimaginable agony. The lingering hurt of taking an engine full in the chest didn't help speed Soledad up any. She limped Vin closer to the door… closer…

From deep in the darkness of the hallway came the tickety-tick multiplied. Another batch of things, scampering, like they could sense they were losing their prey. Little killers afraid they'd have nothing to kill. They came pouring from the dark like banshees out to snatch up souls.

"Oh, shit!"

Soledad sucked a deep breath. Gripping hard, she heaved back Vin, cleaned and jerked him though the doorway as Eddi slammed the wood door shut and threw the lock. A second later came the sound of heavy, misshapen automotive parts thudding against the pine.

They wouldn't get in, the wood like holy water to the unhallowed.

Soledad ignored the things, focused on Vin.

Vin.

His freak-amputated leg, blood free-flowing from it, Vin repeated a disjointed phrase he'd locked into a continual loop: "Not too bad not too bad is it it's not too bad not too…"

Soledad pulled loose Vin's belt, tourniqueted it tight above the knee of his right leg. Of what remained of his right leg. It stopped the bleeding. Some.

She was suffocating. She felt like she was. Taking off her helmet, vest, Soledad peeled off her Nomex top, stripped down to her T-shirt. Still couldn't breathe right.

Fear.

She didn't dig the feeling.

Eddi wiped the sweat off Vin's face. Tried to. There was too much to get clean.

"Not too bad not too it's all right it's not too bad…"

"You're going to be good." Soledad tried to keep the authority in her voice while at the same time excising the blind hope."We're going to get you out of here, get you to a hosp—"

"Behind you," Eddi shouted.

Soledad juked to the side as a metal tendril honed to a razor's edge extended from the crack where door met floor and took a decapitating swipe at her head. The tendril paused at the far end of its arch, then snapped back in Soledad's direction. She flattened herself as the blade sliced just above her. She rolled back and away as its spike-point raised up and slammed down into the ground where she lay a second previous.

Eddi stepped up, her HK leveled and spitting bullets. Rage came spitting from her mouth: "Ahhhhhhh!"

The slugs tore at the metal but did no real damage.

"Hold it! Hold fire!"

Eddi came off her trigger, chest pumping with each hot breath.

"Bullets are no good, and punching holes in that wood isn't going to make things any better." Soledad went for Vin. She said: "Help me."

Eddi took hold. Together they pulled Vin deeper into the room, farther into relative safety.

The tendril swung at them, but the metal was stressed to its limit. Finally it retreated the way it had come, disappearing back through the little crack. Waiting just beyond the door.

Vin managed: "Messed up… messed up good, Solahhh…" He was barely intelligible, his words smothered under a blanket of delirium.

"Saved my life's what you did." Soledad fished a small pack from one of her pockets.

Eddi kept out a sharp eye for any more living metal and, never mind what she'd been told by Soledad, kept her HK ready.

From the pack, a first-aid kit, Soledad took out a morphine injector, cracked it open, exposing its single-use needle.

She said: "Gonna give you a little something. Cut back the pain, put you out."

"Don't wah… want to be out. Want tuh—to hel—"

"You've got to rest some. Might need you for backup." False hope she was giving him. But hope.

A swipe with an alcohol rub. The needle got jabbed into the sterile spot on Vin's arm.

Soledad followed that with: "We've got 'em good, Vin. Don't you worry about it."

"Don't let umm… while I'm ouu, don't lee the doctahhs take mahh leee…"

Gone. Half sedated, half passed out. And when he came around, Vin would know the truth. The doctors wouldn't take his leg. The freaks had beat them to it.

Soledad, to Eddi: "Go to Tac-1, radio for backup?"

Eddi shook her head."If you're coming off the game plan, don't do it for me. I'm not having any boys roll up and save my ass so they can give me shit about it later. Just us girls is fine."

Eddi was impressive. Soledad had to admit it. If she was scared, if she was at all broken up about Yarborough getting speared, or freaked about Vin getting chewed up, she did a good job of keeping it hidden behind a tough front. And Soledad also had to acknowledge, finally, that one day Eddi was going to make for a helluva MTac. All Soledad had to do was keep the girl alive long enough for the day to come. For the minute that meant keeping Eddi's bluster in check.

"Don't kid yourself. It's me they want."

"Looks like they're going to get two of us coming at them for their trouble."

"They're going to get one." Soledad checked her gun's digital counter. Twelve bullets. Not much firepower against animated car parts."You're staying with Vin."

"Soledad, gun or no: You go after both of those freaks alone, you're dead."

"We both go after them, we're both dead. We're split up, it'll be harder for the telepath to track the two of us at once. If I can take out one of them, it balances things in our favor. Give me ten minutes. I'll do what I can, then come back."

"And if you don't?"

Matter-of-fact, like she was giving the time of day: "Then I'm dead, and you're on your own."

Soledad didn't bother gearing back up with her helmet, her vest. She had her piece. That was the only thing that was going to get her—her, Vin and Eddi—through the dark ride that waited.

She sat, listened. Heard nothing.

She went to the door, pressed her ear to it.

Quiet.

Sure it was. If the freaks were going to lull her out, they weren't going to do it by having mutant engines baying at the door.

Soledad thought for a second. Outside the door was the long hall. All metal. That'd be the first part and the hard part. Like running a gauntlet. It was nothing but a canvas for the metal morpher to do with like it pleased. There was the room off to the side that was off limits, the one that stored all the automotive gear. There was another door at the end of the hall. Soledad couldn't remember if it was made of wood or metal; had no idea if the room beyond was safe or freak-friendly. But to even get that far, first there was that hallway.

"Shut this thing behind me. Tight." Soledad flicked back the lock. Her left hand clutched the knob of the door, her right her gun.

From behind: "Soledad…"

Soledad turned to Eddi.

"Kill one for me."

Soledad pulled open the door, went into the hall. Behind her she heard the door get slammed, the lock get thrown.

The hallway was fifty, maybe just more than sixty feet in length. The dark made it seem twice that. A blind run was the temptation but wasn't the smart choice. Moving fast would just keep Soledad from seeing what killed her. So Soledad eased forward. Going slow gave her time to look, to think, to listen. Adjust to whatever waited for her.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Something definitely waited.

Something would happen.

Nothing.

Maybe, she reconsidered, she should make a run. She'd already been there. She knew: Getting caught up in the hall was no good.

Nothing.

Maybe she should—

Something. Something happened quick. The only warning: the cry of stretching metal. One of the walls spontaneously generated a spike that drove pistonlike at Soledad. She moved. Moved with speed. Faster even than she thought herself capable. But potential death's got a way of putting a rush in you. Jerking down, to the side, pressing a hand to the floor and using it to help her spring away. In the middle of all that she had to twist and move again. Another spike, this one formed at the ceiling, plunged down for her.

Rolling now, forward. Always moving forward. No stopping. No pausing. Behind her was killer metal. Ahead, a chance, no matter how slight.

Each move she made was like tripping a wire. Spikes sprang, shot, materialized all around her. They cut, slashed, whipped at her head. Jumping up, she grabbed one, used it to flip over another that tried to cut her down at the feet. An airborne swirl, laying out as yet another spike jabbed itself across her abdomen. Soledad, the living metal that tried to cut her down: They were a blur of motion. A funky ballet.

Soledad's feet touched ground, sent her tumbling, braked her.

Straight ahead: A sharpened metal finger raced to spear her.

Weapon raised, she fired. The bullet, the explosion, shattered the finger, sent metal shrapneling around, slashing at her skin, as she launched forward. Always forward. Alwa—

"Daaaaah!"

Midmovement, Soledad's left thigh went white-hot with a flash-fire. Through the meat, just missing the bone, she'd been impaled. Stuck like a butterfly pinned to corkboard; immobilized, held for the executioner's blow. It came, and came as overkill: a pair of skewers moving for her from front and back to do to the vitals of her body what the other spike had done to her leg.

Except there was the gun, there were the bullets.

Soledad fired in front. The bullet hit, the metal disintegrated.

She twisted. Full-on pain.

She fired at the skewer that held her in place, blasted it from its anchor and freed up her leg.

She dropped, both to avoid the spike and because the blinding hurt in her leg told her to. The pain got amped ten by ten when Soledad gripped hard and ripped what was left of the metal from her thigh. Intense to the point of almost blacking her out. But to go out was to die. That thought alone kept Soledad functional.

Yards from the door. The spikes came, urgent, as if with their animation-owned intelligence: If she makes the door, she's safe. The corridor was bloated with the sounds of slashing, grinding metal. Limbs independently formed and reached and moved to kill. Soledad felt her skin shorn by the tips of the spikes, torn by their edges. From above, an entire section of the roof swept down to guillotine her. To the left and right fresh-formed blades swatted at her side. All were avoided, barely and with a minimal loss of flesh and blood. What couldn't be dodged was blasted to pieces.

Four bullets left.

Three.

The door just ahead.

The metal-morphing freak would have to do better. It'd have to come up with something else if it wanted to stop Soledad.

It did.

With the door just before her, just beyond her reach, there rose one last creation that coiled and twisted and hissed no different than a virtual snake getting ready to strike. It seemed to balloon and swell, seemed to draw up as much mass as possible in deference to the tiny, mighty woman before it. It, by way of the freak, knew she was formidable. It, by way of the freak, knew if it couldn't stop her where she stood, maybe there was no stopping her at all. The thing had one chore: slaughter the woman.

Soledad, knowing all else was just foreplay, stood her ground, stood resolute. She stood ready to destroy or be destroyed.

In anticipation the thing hovered and tensed. Reared back, shot up, then forward, speeding for the kill.

Aubrey took his hand from the metal wall. In his mind he couldn't see the woman, the police lady, no more.

Blood for blood. That's what Vaughn had told Aubrey. When Aubrey was scared, after he'd heard about the cops who'd killed themselves, knowing it was Vaughn who'd done the killing. Blood for blood, Vaughn'd told Aubrey when the others had come for Vaughn. When Vaughn did what he did to them, killed them, he'd told Aubrey blood for blood. Vaughn really bad wanted the blood of the police lady the others called Bullet. No matter he should have run—no matter he wanted to—Aubrey'd promised to help Vaughn.

Vaughn and Michelle had always been there for him. Shouldn't he be there for them; for what Vaughn was doing in Michelle's name?

That's what Vaughn had said anyway.

Blood for blood, he'd said.

Aubrey knew he wasn't smart like Vaughn. Not as powerful. Not nearly. But with Vaughn's help he had been able to do some hurting. With Vaughn's help he had been able to see the police people. Through the sheet metal of the building he'd been able to send his energy, make his little things that did his hurting for him. They'd done some good hurting. One of the cops was dead. One was chomped up. Aubrey liked the little chompy things. Before… before the president said he couldn't use his power no more, couldn't make things, Aubrey liked to make little things, little pets to play with.

But he didn't used to make them hurt people before.

Before.

Blood for blood.

And then there was the police lady called Bullet. Aubrey was going to kill her for Vaughn. For Michelle. Was going to, but she wouldn't die easy. Aubrey sent his little chompy things after her. She shot his little chompy things up. Aubrey tried to jam her with his pointy points. One got her in the leg. That's it. Not enough. So Aubrey sent that big snaky thing to cut her up just like Vaughn said he should. He made the snaky thing, and the snaky thing struck, and right when it did… Aubrey couldn't see the police lady no more. Aubrey couldn't hear Vaughn thinking in his head no more. Aubrey didn't know if the police lady was alive or killed. Why wasn't Vaughn talking to him? Why wasn't Vaughn telling him what to do? Why wasn't…

Because maybe the police lady, Bullet, wasn't dead. Maybe she had gotten past Aubrey's most excellent snaky thing. Maybe she had gotten to Vaughn. Maybe Vaughn was…

Aubrey bit at his thumb, began to shuffle, back and forth, one foot to the other. A low tone seeped out of him: "Unnnnnnnnn…" A sound he made a lot; a frightened little noise.

If Vaughn was gone, if the police lady had gotten him— Couldn't've. She couldn't've. Nobody could stop Vaughn. But if, if she had… then what was going to keep her from getting him?

"Unnnnnnnnn…"

Rat-trapped-in-a-maze-terrified, Aubrey started to stumble around the room, bumped into a car door frame that slid from the table it was leaning on. It clattered, loud, to the floor and kicked some hubcaps when it landed there. The sound of it all made Aubrey jerk, jump. He was afraid. All that metal around he could control and shape and bring to life. All the metal in the building that he could touch by conductivity, animate by exceptional ability, and he was afraid of one woman.

Not just a woman.

A police lady with a gun and some real special freak-hurting bullets.

"Vaughn…" A scared kid calling for its daddy after a bad dream."Vaughn…" He was still out there somewhere. He had to be. Had to.

A passing shadow made Aubrey's heart skip. A slight noise made his flesh sweat.

Once more, louder: "Vaughn…"

Shadow and sound together. Aubrey turned, looked up.

From above, from the rafters, Soledad sailing toward him. Something in her hands, something that swallowed Aubrey in darkness.

Then sudden violence, a burst of pain.

Then nothing.

Aubrey was gone. Vaughn was aware of it the second Soledad took him out. Incapacitated. Maybe he was dead. Didn't matter. Vaughn knew that the MTacs, even with him guiding Aubrey, letting him see them, were too much for his formidable abilities but limited intellect. But it didn't matter. Aubrey was expendable, and to that end he'd more than served his purpose. One cop killed, one cop torn up. The two who remained either too stupid, too scared, or too dedicated to turn tail and run. Whichever, Vaughn was fine with. If they were scared or stupid, then they'd die hiding or running. If they were dedicated, proud, vengeful, then they'd still die, but they'd stand and fight first. If that's how it was, Vaughn would have a chance to control them, torture them before he slaughtered them. Better still, they'd slaughter each other.

And then it would all be over. Michelle could rest easy. And Vaughn would join her. He'd be sent to join her. If not by the wave after wave of cops who would hunt him down, then by the other metanormals for his breaking of their most sacred tenant: Above all else do no harm. So quaint in the face of reality. So sickening in light of the fact that their kind are forced to hide in shadows, conceal their abilities, act, think, be normal. Or die.

So if that was the choice—live in fear or die, let Michelle's murder go unpunished or die, make a stand for the hunted and murdered or die…

Strange. Powerful as he was, Vaughn found himself a little anxious about having to face down the woman: Bullet.

Eddi had her HK up and aimed, ready to fire the instant she heard a sound at the door. If she'd been a little more jumpy, a split second faster with her trigger, Soledad would've been on the receiving end of a swarm of slugs.

Soledad called through the wood: "Eddi…"

Eddi opened the door, weapon poised, eyes checking Soledad for a bloody nose.

Soledad struggled into the room, her thigh oozing steady, lugging a body on her shoulder half wrapped in burlap. She dumped it on the floor like she was dumping a sack of potatoes but with even less care.

"The metal morpher." Already Soledad was moving for Vin, checking his leg.

"What about the other one?" Eddi asked.

"Still out there. He's playing with us. Used this freak to whittle us down."

Vin stirred. His eyes opened but stayed unfocused."Sooolaaa-dahh…" was as unslurred as his speech would get.

"Soledad…" Eddi nearly echoed Vin, her voice as unsteady as his.

With the end of her T-shirt Soledad wiped down the sweat on Vin's face."Almost out of here." Soledad used her shirt to wipe her own face."One more to get. He's going to be the hard one, though."

"Gaahh buuhleet fffa frreee…"

Breaking open another morphine injector, Soledad jabbed Vin's arm with the needle.

Eddi reached a hand to her upper lip."… Soledad…"

Vin began to surf a morphine dream. Where speech had failed him before, now even sounds were beyond him. His lips moved in silence. To Soledad they looked like they were saying: I love you.

Eddi, urgent: "Bullet!"

Soledad looked up.

Eddi said: "My nose is bleeding."

The next second was both instant and elastic. Long enough for Soledad to suss that Eddi's nose was bleeding because she was about to get puppeted by the telepath. Long enough for Soledad to grab for her piece, start to draw it. But not hardly long enough for Soledad to finish the job. Eddi's foot whipped out, caught Soledad's wrist and cartwheeled the gun across the room.

As fast as Eddi had moved, Soledad matched speed. Her right foot sprang out and smacked hard against Eddi's chest, doing double duty: It sent the girl flying backward and her HK skittering over the floor into the dark. The move was instantly followed by a charge from Soledad. A charge that got aborted when Eddi pulled a knife. The knife. Daddy's knife. The one meant to be driven hilt-deep into the chest of some freak. The one the mind-controlled Eddi was now trying to plunge into Soledad.

Stillness.

Eddi hesitated, fought against her unseen master. Pleading: "Bullet…"

Then, with all the malice the freak could feed her, Eddi came at Soledad. The knife in her hand was a stainless-steel blur that whipped and whistled, twisted then whipped again with its own imposed agenda: kill.

Even as she fenced and dodged, Soledad was amazed at the swiftness the freak moved Eddi, how precisely it directed her strikes. The thing that amazed her more was her own ability to keep just beyond the blade's edge. Desperation gave her speed same as the freak's hate gave Eddi fury. Soledad's arms swirled in front of her, a couple of snakes dancing, blocking, blocking.

Her leg went hot.

Eddi throwing out kicks to Soledad's wounded thigh, striking low while the knife went high.

The tip of Eddi's blade caught Soledad above the forearm. It tore her skin, sent an arch of blood streaming and forced from her a single grunt of pain. The knife came round again. Blocking as Eddi slashed, Soledad hemmed up the girl's right arm. Eddi swung with her left and that was caught too. Soledad jerked her close, held her tight.

"Eddi… Eddi, you gotta fight it."

"I…" Tears from her eyes. Blood from her nose."I can't."

Eddi's body dipped forward, down. Her leg whipped up behind her. Soledad saw the sole of Eddi's boot racing for her face. A second after that Soledad was a good twelve feet across the floor shaking her head clear as she sprang standing.

This was gladiator entertainment. Either the freak would kill Soledad by way of Eddi or Soledad would have to kill Eddi to stop the freak. Neither was much good as far as Soledad cared. But to change the situation, first off, the knife had to go.

Moving for Eddi, Soledad left an opening. Deliberately. Not too wide, but very inviting. A space between rib and waist that casually said: Insert blade here. A few feints, then Eddi… the freak by way of Eddi—went for it. All the symbiont got for its trouble was its wrist grabbed, yanked, twisted until the knife clanked to the floor. Still moving, still pulling, Soledad wrenched Eddi into a choke hold.

Into Eddi's ear, but to the freak: "Leave her alone. You want me, come and get me!"

"Bullet…" Eddi's voice, weak and scared."Don't hurt me."

Sympathy eased Soledad's grip.

Mistake.

Eddi kicked up and across her body, nailing Soledad in the head. Again Soledad took a short flight. Again she got dumped hard on the floor. Soledad was getting sick of the ride. She wasn't sure if the telepath was giving Eddi her skills, or if it was just using Eddi's own moves with a taste of her latent dislike of Soledad baked in. But what was becoming job one in Soledad's game plan was that Eddi's high-swinging, hard-kicking legs were the next thing to get taken out of the equation.

Back up, back on her feet, back to fighting. Soledad went back at the girl. She was getting puppeted? Too bad. Soledad threw punches, threw them hard. Kicks got delivered to hurt. To the head. To the head, to the ribs. Chest. To the head.

But fast as Soledad could strike, Eddi could counter and with more added. Soledad went from throwing punches to blocking punches to taking them. She took a hit to the face, felt her eye swell. A blow to the jaw, and she felt her teeth crack, her lip split and shoot blood. It flowed in her mouth, her throat, and made her nauseous.

Change of tactic.

Soledad moved backward, took off like she was running away, running scared, running toward a wall that would trap her. Eddi followed. The freak took the bait: Smelling the kill, it moved its host close.

Soledad, foot to the wall, stepped up, swung around, kicked back, landed a shot hard to Eddi's fast-approaching head.

The girl took the shot full on, did a boozy pirouette and dropped down, her left leg spindling out in front of her.

Bull's-eye.

Taking air, Soledad spun, extended, brought her boot down on target: Eddi's knee.

The burst of the synovial sac was gunshot loud. So loud it was audible under Eddi's scream. A scream that said the leg was good as useless.

Soledad pulled back, took a breath. One breath was all she'd get in before Eddi came at her again, never mind her busted-up knee, like Soledad had done nothing worse than give her a foot massage.

Of course, she kept coming, Soledad thought as she went back to ducking punches. Eddi's knee was messed up, she was in bad pain.

So what? The freak didn't feel a thing. The freak just made Eddi keep on fighting.

Taking Eddi apart piece by piece was no good. If she didn't out and out kill the girl, Soledad knew she'd just end up crippling her. A knockout punch was the only way to go. One that would put Eddi down, keep her down.

Wait for the opening, Soledad coached herself.

Eddi came on, fists pumping for Soledad's head.

Wait…

Every blow meant to break Soledad, to batter Soledad. Every one of them meant to beat her to bloody death.

Wait for it…

Eddi, possessed and puppeted Eddi, tried to throw a kick at Soledad's throat. With her bad knee it was like trying to use a busted tree limb as a whip.

What Soledad was waiting for. She took Eddi by the leg, took hold tight. Pulling, putting her weight into the move, she spun, spun Eddi around until the girl left the ground, took flight, sailed in Soledad's grip, guided straight toward one of the vertical supports in the room. Eddi's chest took the impact, caved in as her torso wrapped around the beam. A hurricane of air rushed from her crushed lungs; body armor the only thing that kept her rib cage from shattering. Eddi fell out all over the floor, unconscious and free of the telepath's control.

Soledad felt the rain of perspiration sliding over her, down her arms. She felt each drop that clung, that clung to the ends of her fingers, then fell away from her.

A hand to the girl's throat, Soledad checked Eddi's pulse. Weak. Breathing shallow. Her leg, where her knee was snapped, was all twisted up. Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked. Maybe, Soledad thought, doctors would be able to hack it back together in a way Eddi wouldn't be stuck with a limp for the rest of her life. Assuming there was to be a rest of her life. Eddi, banged up and knocked out.

Vin, doped up, torn up. At the moment their fates and futures very much rested entirely with Soledad.

Soledad looked around the room, saw her gun lying in a pool of light. She laughed. Was that supposed to mean something? She crossed to the gun and picked it up, swapped out the clip for another marked with a clear band.

In a loudly spoken voice: "I'm coming for you, you son of a bitch!" Soledad said to the telepath: "I'm coming to kill you!"

Right here!" Soledad screamed."I'm right here, freak!" she ranted. She'd been on a rant since she'd left Eddi and Vin in that back room and wandered out into the building. She ranted, yelled. She breathed verbal fire. Soledad did everything but think. Lack of thought, rage as a blind to her designs, was her only defense. In her hand, her gun. That was her only chance."You scared, freak? Got no more little girls to hide behind; do your fighting for you."

The sun cast odd shadows through half-boarded windows. Broken glass bent light into colors. And there was the metal and the auto parts. All still and lifeless now. They'd stay that way.

Then Soledad got with a thought: What if it wasn't just the metal morpher backing up the telepath? What if it had other flying or radiating or freakishly powerful friends?

Then Soledad got with another thought: Other than her family, Ian, cops who'd go 'cause they had to, her funeral was going to be a lonely event. She wondered if Gayle would show.

Too much thinking.

"I'm going to put a bullet in your freak head! Put a hole right in it and let your freak brains come spilling out!" Keep ranting.

It was close, sucking on Soledad's fear like a crackhead on a pipe.

Just keep ranting."What kind of freak head you got anyway? One of those big fat Star Trek heads to keep your mind-reading freak brain in?"

Close. Soledad could almost feel him. Almost. Was that the mutie trying to work its way into her brain?

"Shooting that thing is going to be like popping a balloon. Come on out so I can stick a pin in it."

Nothing. Very suddenly there was nothing. Literally no sensations at all. Soledad saw nothing, could see nothing. There were no sounds, smells. She had no feeling of the ground beneath her. There was no up or down, or sense of space. There was only an endless, endless white. A pale night without limit. Soledad closed her eyes to shut it out. Thought she closed them. The white was still there. She screamed. Thought she screamed. The silence was as undisturbed as before she'd tried to make a noise. Soledad was in a vacuum, aware of nothing except her own swelling terror.

From the center of the emptiness, from everywhere, came a voice.

More than that.

Words weren't spoken. They simply existed.

And the words were: That easy. It's that easy to take everything away from you just like you took everything from me.

Soledad was flying.

As quickly as sensation had been replaced by nothing, she found herself outside on an LA hot day flying on a pair of wings that sprouted from her back. Below her was the street: Olive Street. And there was a sinkhole, and a crowd of people pointing up. Pointing at her. Their faces, clear at a distance, full of revulsion. And there was a cop in uniform: tall, thin. Slight, but at the same time imposing.

The cop said: "This how it was? The sinkhole would've killed how many? Couple dozen people?"

This wasn't real. Soledad knew she wasn't outside, that she wasn't flying. She sure as hell didn't have wings. This was not real. Unreal as it was, Soledad could feel the air on her skin and taste the smog she floated through. The telepath had taken her own memories, built a stage and set a scene. But that was all it was: sleight of hand done with thoughts and remembrances. This was not real. Soledad tried to convince herself as she turned her head to shield her eyes from the too-warm sun.

"Michelle saved them." He didn't shout. But the policeman had no trouble making himself heard to Soledad way above him."She knew she could get sent to prison. She knew she could get…" His voice slipped and caught."But she saved all of those people anyway. And you…

"How'd you feel when you killed Michelle, when you murdered my wife? You feel special then, Bullet, huh? You feel invincible? Powerful? Did you even feel anything at all, or was shooting her no different than stepping on an ant? Lemme show you something." The cop, the telepath, put a hand to the gun in his holster."Lemme show you how Michelle felt."

The cop drew the gun.

Instinct made Soledad want to fly off, put as much distance as she could between herself and the cop.

Pointless.

She wasn't flying anyway. She couldn't move any farther away than the freak would let her. The thing was just working her; pumping up her fear because it could.

Thought it could.

Soledad wasn't playing. She wouldn't try to escape what couldn't be escaped. She wouldn't let herself be afraid of what didn't exist. Children were afraid of monsters in the dark. Soledad wasn't a child.

Below on a street that wasn't there the telepath took aim.

It's not real, Soledad told herself.

It, the freak, Vaughn, fired the gun.

She told herself: What's not real can't hurt you.

The bullet struck Soledad in the chest. The pain it ignited consumed her body. She looked at herself, saw the wound. Not too big. Not hardly big at all. How could something so small hurt her entirely? Sky and earth traded places. Soledad went into an ugly tumble for the ground; in turn the sun speeding away and the street rushing closer. No way to judge the distance and no way to prepare for the impact. No time for either.

She hit.

She hit the ground hard. Sounds poured into her ears: The slap of a body on asphalt. The endless crackle of shattered bone. The slurping of punctured lungs as they filled with blood. All this gift-wrapped in a new and complete agony that shoved the comparatively small hurt of her bullet wound from Soledad's mind.

The cop walked for Soledad. As it did, its uniform faded back into civilian wear. The street melted and turned to floor. The people, the gawkers, first became transparent images then dissolved to nothing. Soledad was back inside the building at the salvage yard, on the floor; back where she'd always been. The only thing that stayed the same was the pain.

The telepath squatted down in front of Soledad. She craned her neck to look up at it. The rest of her was useless. Bones, maybe not really broken, felt, acted that way.

Vaughn said: "All those people. Michelle didn't know them, but she cared about them. That was her obligation. It was for all of us. We made a gift of the things we could do, and you made us criminals."

"No one…" — fighting her hurt with every word spoken—"… aahh—asked you to be our saviors. No one tuh—told you to."

"Tornados, floods, earthquakes. Crime and terrorism. Every disaster, natural and man-made… every senseless, useless death: You'd rather've suffered all that than let us help you?"

"… You thought you were gods… acted like we were peh— pets. Oughta… ahhh… be thankful while you did Jesus work." Soledad rested her head on the floor, her body wet with the sweat that it shed."… Didn't save us. Made slaves out of us."

"If you saw a rabbit getting torn up by dogs, you wouldn't do anything? You wouldn't save it, wouldn't try to help? Is what we tried to do any different?"

"That wha—what we are… animals for you to protect?"

Just below the virtual pain, Soledad could feel the telepath crawling through her mind, fire ants, getting ready to control her.

Vaughn said inside her: Jesus, you've got some hate in you. I think there's nothing to you but hate.

"… Goddamn right I hate you…"

I try to tell you about my wife, I try to make you feel something, and you don't… No. Know something, I don't think you can feel a thing. I think if you had the chance, you'd kill us all.

"F-fucking right!"

That's a chance you're not gonna…

The ants stopped scurrying.

She couldn't see it, but Soledad could feel the telepath's lips twist. A smile.

The question at the end of a snide laugh: Don't even know, do you? You got no idea.

He must have been figuring things.

Soledad's rage wasn't going to keep secrets hidden much longer. She had to force the issue."Got an idea… How ahhh—bout I blow your head off… Give me baah… back my arms. Juuust for a second. Juhh… just long enough to put a bullet in your lousy freak head."

Quietly, very much in control of himself, not sounding like a killer freak or a husband out for vengeance, Vaughn said, thought: No.

Pain disappeared. Sensation returned to Soledad, but it was not her own. Her body rose, but not of her doing. A consciousness inside her forced her to kneel.

Vaughn, again: No. Then: I don't think that's how things is gonna end. And it's what I'm thinking that counts. So I think you'll lift up your special little gun…

Soledad's right hand curled up guided, manipulated, puppeted by Vaughn. She struggled. She fought. Internally. Physically she did as controlled. The freak was in her now. The freak was her. She was nothing but a bystander in her own body, like one of those dreams where you're awake in your mind, but you won't respond to yourself.

You're gonna take your gun and you're gonna push it against your head.

Vaughn giving a play-by-play to Soledad's action.

Hand shaking, she jammed the muzzle of her piece to her temple. Vaughn was going for the signature kill of the telepaths. He was going to make Soledad empty her own skull and, better, he was going to make her do it with one of her special, freak-killing bullets.

"Y-you fucking…"

And now…

No way to stop him. Soledad's eyes teared. Her breath came in frantic huffs that shot spittle from her mouth.

You're gonna…

She felt her finger curl. She felt the trigger of the gun slide back. The snap of falling timber; she could hear the scrape of metal on metal as she millimetered toward her own end.

Die.

The trigger full back. The gun fired. A simultaneous flash-bang. Soledad's head jerked. It lurched on her neck like a smacked pinata, a spray of red splattering from her temple. Her body swirled and twisted and hit the floor and…

And lay there.

And…

And Vaughn didn't feel anything. He'd expected to feel good. Maybe victorious. At least relieved or satisfied. All he felt was empty where Michelle had been, and killing a cop did nothing to fill the hole.

Gods.

That's what the cop, Bullet'd said: Vaughn and his kind thought they were gods. And because they thought they were gods, because they thought they were above man, they didn't deserve to live. That way of thinking got the cop killed.

And yet here was Vaughn, having ended a life, and he felt nothing. Wouldn't a human feel something? Couldn't only a god take a life and feel nothing in return? Maybe the woman was right. Maybe Vaughn and his kind were gods. And maybe gods had no place on earth.

Vaughn muttered: "Michelle…" It came out as a quiet plea for help. Now what? the name asked. Now that I've done this for you and to them, the normals, and now that I've done this in spite of the other metanormals who are too scared to do anything… now what?

No answer from Michelle. No direction.

Vaughn decided then, lacking any better ideas, to go kill the remaining, wounded MTac cops.

Vaughn had a very good and logical reason for wanting the two cops dead, for wanting to kill them. He thought about it walking the hall to the back room where they were laid out. He would kill one of them and he'd feel remorseful for it and would thereby prove he wasn't a god. Just a man. He'd prove to the dead cop, Bullet, the one he'd murdered same as clipping a nail, just how wrong she was. And if killing one of the cops didn't make him feel… wrong, then he'd kill the other and he would keep killing until something like compassion or guilt or regret flowed back into him. Until something like humanity was part of him again. Because a man who could kill and be carefree about it, whether it was with an ax, a gun or his mind, a man who could kill without pause was nothing short of insane. Vaughn was not insane, or inhuman, or nonhuman. He'd prove it no matter how many bodies he had to stack.

Ahead of him, the door to the back room. Vaughn felt, sensed, nothing from the other side. Of course not. The cops were unconscious, so he couldn't control them, so he couldn't make them kill themselves. Vaughn looked at his hands, clenched and unclenched them. Well, wouldn't this be interesting.

Vaughn smiled.

He moved for the door ready to take back his humanity. The man or the girl: Which should he kill first? The girl probably. More guilt associated with killing a woman. Should be. If he killed her, felt something, he wouldn't have to waste time with the man. But then… what the hell? He was already there. Why not just kill them both?

Hate and rage racing; he sensed them racing up behind him. Vaughn turned. He started to gear up his mind, stoke it like a hot fire ready to do some damage. But his flowering psychosis slowed him down. He was slowed down a step more by shock. Behind him, leveling her freak-killing gun, was Soledad. The one they called Bullet.

Questions: How? How's this possible? How is she alive when she killed herself, when I made her kill herself, when I saw the gun fire and the blood jump from her head?

The bang and the muzzle flash from Soledad's piece were simultaneous. The deep, sharp pain in Vaughn's shoulder came less than a millisecond later.

"Naaaaahhhhh!"

No more than thirty feet from him. Vaughn tried to reach out to Soledad with his mind. He couldn't make contact. His spouting, burning wound made the simple act of even looking at her nearly beyond him.

"Hard to control people when you can't concentrate." Soledad was telling Vaughn the obvious, but she handed out the facts laced with glee.

But he could concentrate. He was more metanormal than this woman was superhuman. If all he had to do was focus to kill her, to finally and forever give payback for Michelle, then Vaughn could concen—

Soledad fired again. A bullet pounded itself into Vaughn's thigh with a loud, dull thud that sounded simultaneously with the crack of his shattered femur. The combo of the new wound and the damage it caused put concentration, mind control and even stable, moment-to-moment thought way beyond Vaughn.

"Nothing special for you." Soledad sneering."Just a regular old bullet." She holstered her gun. Stepping quickly, Soledad covered the distance between herself and the collapsing freak before her.

Vaughn looked up.

Soledad swung her leg in a crescent. The outside of her boot pounded the right side of Vaughn's head. He twisted some, staggered. Somehow he stayed upright.

Soledad: "I take back what I said. You're not hardly gods."

Her leg moved in an inward arc. This time the inside of her foot that came smacking into the left side of Vaughn's face brought him back to center and straightened him some.

"Fact…"

Soledad tensed her body, spun in a tight, fast pivot. Like Tashjian had minded her, she thrust her leg at the last second. The target for the blunt of her heel: the center of Vaughn's chest.

Contact.

Vaughn took to the air trailing streamers of blood from his twin wounds. He sailed, he hit the door behind him. Hit it hard, hard enough to knock it from its rusted hinges and send it to the ground just a moment before Vaughn thudded motionless next to it.

Soledad over the metanormal. She looked down on him."You, your kind, you're nothing at all."

Stepping over the body, Soledad entered the room, checked on Vin and Eddi. Both were breathing, if just barely. Next she checked herself. It seemed like there wasn't a part of her that wasn't bruised, swollen or cut. It seemed like there wasn't a space on her body that wasn't flowing blood. Soledad unhitched a radio from Vin, dropped to the floor as she tuned to Tac-1. She called out her 10–20 and requested a rush on a bus. And then she sat and waited and listened to the quiet.

It wasn't entirely quiet.

There was the sound of a light breeze scraping along the building and the rustle of tree branches. There were birds somewhere not too far away. There were sounds of life. Everyday, normal life.

And there was a siren. Way in the distance, coming closer, was the wail of a racing ambulance.

And there was something else, a scraping noise that wasn't wind or trees, and wasn't outside the building but right behind Soledad.

She turned.

Vaughn clutching a metal rod, a part of a car or maybe the building, but sharp where it was twisted off at one end.

A flash of motion. A blur of hands moving with frantic speed.

Vaughn slashed.

Soledad scrambled out her gun. By the time she had it aimed, it was over. Vaughn was slumping to the ground having jammed the metal up under his rib cage and deep into the cavity of his chest. Blood came like a fountain as his heart pumped itself dry.

He said, as he faded: "… Can have your world… Don't want it…"

Soledad's gun kept up a stare at Vaughn.

He said: "… Can't wait to see what the truth does to you…"

Vaughn went down and stayed down.

Soledad spent a long moment looking at Vaughn's body. After that she went back to listening to the approaching siren. She went back to waiting.

Life was very okay. It was nowhere near great. It was not even good. It was just barely better than all right. Yarborough was dead. Vin had one less leg and would be permanently gimped. Eddi had a badly smacked-up knee but was expected to make a satisfactory recovery. It was possible, if she regained mobility, stability, she would be allowed to return to active duty on an element. In exchange for all that, one freak was captured and another dead. So, for Soledad, as she rode in Ian's Jag, top down, wind tearing through her hair, up PCH north toward Napa Valley—toward five days of rest and only rest—life was very okay.

She'd earned five days. She'd earned way more than that, but she felt like she could take five days. She felt like, five days from work, and the world wasn't going to end. The debriefing Soledad went through after serving the warrant told everyone that the immediate crisis had passed. The final verdict: The telepath, Vaughn, and the metal morpher, Aubrey, were acting alone in an effort to exact revenge for a perceived wrong. And although it appears that meta-normals maintain surreptitious contact with one another, it is at best a loose and unorganized association rather than an extensive and potentially dangerous network.

Case closed.

Even at that, Soledad carried her O'Dwyer with her just as she carried an off-duty piece. The job remained her life.

There was a coda: an award or plaque or some such thing that Soledad was supposed to be given, that Rysher was desperate to give to her, so that he could have his picture taken with MTac's top cop.

One more photo for his wall.

Soledad told Rysher yes, she'd be honored to accept the award. Or plaque.

Yeah.

She checked her watch. Right about then Rysher was probably doing some kind of embarrassment dance to cover the absence of the guest of honor, who was at the moment riding north. Top down, wind tearing through her hair.

Soledad found herself to be surprisingly happy about having the confrontation with Vaughn behind her. Besides being alive, she never fully realized before exactly how much pleasure there was in spending empty time with someone you cared about. And with every mile traveled she found herself taking more delight in the distance put between her and Los Angeles and the LAPD, MTacs and the responsibility of being a watchman in the struggle between freaks and normals.

Soledad thought about what Ian, just days prior, had said to her. Let's go away, he'd said. Let's get away from the rest of the world. At the time, Soledad went through the motions of considering the maybes of the deal. But now, the Jag's odometer scrolling upward, getting away and staying away seemed like more than just a remote, someday possibility.

Why not?

Soledad, in record time, had or had been part of putting down five freaks. The amen to that: and lived to tell. Hadn't she done her part? Didn't those numbers add up to some kind of ongoing sabbatical?

Why not?

The department recognized—was forced to recognize—her gun was a viable weapon against muties. It was only a matter of time before it went into wide use among MTacs. Wasn't that legacy enough to deserve an early retirement?

Why not?

And, yeah, an element was nearly wiped out, but Eddi would recover. Busted knee or no, Eddi would be back doing work in short order. Another element would get built up around her and no doubt, her leading the charge, they'd all be BAMF in no time. And Soledad didn't have to entirely kiss things good-bye. She could work R&D, keep developing hardware for the frontline cops. She could transfer to DMI, start doing some HUMINT for the PD. That's where a good number of half-busted MTacs eventually ended up anyway. And knowing your enemy was the first step toward kicking your enemy's ass.

So with all that balancing things out, why not step aside and let some new blood pump through MTac?

Soledad looked over at Ian, and Ian looked to Soledad and smiled. He was plainly, purely happy. He'd put in the time and ended up with someone he cared for. At that moment, for every moment in his foreseeable future, that was all the more simple bliss he needed.

Her hand to his. A tight squeeze. A transferred affection.

Over the noise of the air whipping around the convertible, Soledad said: "You're right."

"About…?"

"We're no good for anyone but us. And probably we're no good back there." She committed."So maybe we shouldn't go back."

A smile between them.

Ian's head turned to center, saw the black BMW—asshole-driven way over the speed limit—jumping up over a rise in the road, shooting toward them across the center line.

Ian went to Ohshitland, hit the brake, jammed it hard, wrenched the wheel. The front end of the Jag—old, not built for lifesaving driving—dipped, plowed low as it jerked and leaned and stretched desperately to get clear of the oncoming car.

The driver of the Beemer was too drunk or too scared or too something to do much but nothing. Its front fender copulated with the rear of the Jag, sending the English car side-skidding toward the rock face to the east of the road. The BMW whipped uncontrolled in the other direction.

From the Jaguar came the sharp shrieks of tired metal torquing and tires pulling on asphalt. There were no human sounds. Despite the speed and the fact that they were, at the moment, riding an unguided missile, both Soledad and Ian were impressively quiet. Ian was working too hard trying to force the car to a stop to bother with useless wailing. And Soledad, bracing for impact, was swirling in disbelief. This is how she was going to die? After every other thing she'd survived, this?

Only, death was far from a given. Under Ian's persistence the Jag came out of its skid. Wheels back in-line, control was returned to the driver. The Jag slowed. The Jag stopped. Not before scraping a good way along the rock face. But that, together with the smashed rear quarter, was all the more damage that was done.

Ian, danger over, post-near-death-experience shock replacing adrenaline-laced terror, body drenched with four seconds' worth of intense and profuse sweating, turned to Soledad, gave a little" you believe that" huff of a laugh.

Soledad wasn't looking at Ian. Soledad was looking behind them, checking on the other driver, making sure the other driver was okay, even if the other driver was a BMW-driving bastard.

Impacting on the passenger side, the German car had form-fitted itself around a tree in a harsh concave pattern. The engine was hissing steam but ran on, and even up the road and over the odors of smoking tires Soledad could smell leaking fuel. It took no experience in crash forensics to know what that combination could lead to.

Wordless, Soledad was up, out of the Jaguar and over to the BMW. Inside the car, behind the wheel, was a woman. BMW-driving bastards come in both genders. Mid-twenties. Good-looking. Used to be right up until her face got punched by the deploying air bag and her head whiplashed against the glass of the door window. Uncon-scious. Bleeding from the skull. But the slow rise and fall of her chest said the driver was still alive.

Soledad grabbed and pulled the door handle. Nothing. The crash fused it shut tight.

Things got worse.

A popping whoosh. Heat and light. The leaking fuel ignited, almost instantly went from fire to conflagration that licked up over the front of the car.

Yanking at the door, Soledad got nothing more from it than before. A quick look around. No other cars, no one to help. Just Ian standing and gawking deer-caught-in-headlights fashion.

Gas fed fire, the fire burned hotter.

Soledad banged her hands on the door window. It didn't give any more than the door had.

"Help me!" Soledad screamed at Ian.

Ian just stood.

A tire of the BMW burst. Inside the car the driver began to stir. She'd burn alive, she'd burn awake.

Heat should have pushed Soledad away from the wreck. Desperation kept her pulling at the door even as she, with all too vivid a memory of her own fire-related experience, began to feel the blistering of her skin. She went rabid with tugging, pounding and pulling.

"Help me!"

Ian just stood.

And then he did something. As Soledad stared, some… thing, some unnameable event rippled outward from the center of Ian and across his body. All his color, his hue faded. Light no longer reflected from him, but passed through Ian as he phased from material to intangible. Ian stepped to the car, reached for the mangled door of the BMW. Phantomlike his hands passed through it, slipping to the driver's body. He did something to her. Ian changed her. Manipulated her. Whatever, it was so far beyond Soledad she couldn't know, couldn't understand. But with no effort she could see, Ian phased the driver from solid to immaterial as well. The fire burned, but it didn't burn Ian. Couldn't touch him. He ignored it. Existing on the same plane, Ian lifted the driver's body and passed it through the car. The background clearly visible through them, Ian carried the driver to the far side of the road— walking across the pavement the same as any normal man despite the fact he wasn't close to normal—laid the driver down on the soft shoulder, and then did what would be the most difficult thing of all for any superpowered metanormal human. He turned and faced Soledad.

"… I wanted to tell you," Ian started."No matter how you took it, I wanted to tell you. I just wanted to be honest with you and I wanted you to know the truth. Soledad, if I had known what kind of cop you were from the very first, I wouldn't have…"

Soledad reached under her jacket, pulled out her off-duty piece. Seventeen times her finger jerked back the trigger. Seventeen slugs screamed for Ian. Every one of them passed harmlessly through his form with no more disturbance than a stone thrown through a thick billow of smoke.

Gun empty, Soledad went for the Jaguar, for her bags. She hurri-caned through them, found the small case that held her modified O'Dwyer. The first clip her hands found, they grabbed: the red-marked one. The one that had put down the pyrokinetic. Jamming it home, she fired at Ian.

Twenty-eight phosphorous rounds.

And the ghostlike Ian still stood.

The blue clip, the one for speed freaks; twenty-eight microchip-guided bullets. The orange, the green, the yellow clips.

Ian still stood.

In her blind frenzy to kill him, Soledad even emptied the clear-marked clip at Ian: the one she'd used against Vaughn. The one he had forced her to use against herself. Blanks and fake blood-filled gelcaps. Enough to fool a telepath. Enough for him to lower his guard, release his control of a" dead" cop and buy the cop time to kill instead of get killed.

Against an intangible they were just as useless as any other bullet Soledad had.

The rock face behind Ian was busted with gunfire. Chunks of it had been torn away by explosive-tipped slugs. A section smoked from hot lead. But that was the only damage done by Soledad. At the end of all that—anger having burned away her strength—she, like her gun, was spent. Empty clips and shell casings littered the road, and Soledad went to her knees among them. Beaten by lies. She dropped her head, was too weak to carry it.

Ian said: "I didn't want to hurt you. That's why I couldn't tell you."

In a low voice, but in a tone distinct and clearly audible: "I swear to God…"

"I know you must hate me; for what I am and for having lied to you."

"If it's the last thing I ever do…"

"But you have to know this, you have to feel it in your heart: Soledad, I love you."

She lifted her head. Intangible as Ian was, Soledad's look hit him and hit him hard."I will find a way to kill you."

Across the road the BMW was swallowed in flame.

"… Always did pick the wrong woman."

Ian turned and walked. And faded away.

Special arrangements were made for Soledad's new office. The basement of Parker Center. She could be alone there. She could go undisturbed by the useless chatter of others. Soledad liked being alone. She'd gone back to seeing the virtues of independence. Being by herself meant getting things done. Hours hunched over a computer, running specs in virtual field tests. Transferring the results to hardware applications. Long and hard and tedious work, and it was her passion.

Obsession.

It's what she was doing when a cop, a uniform who'd obviously wandered off the beaten path for no other reason than to get a look at the near-legendary Soledad, came to her office door and tried to strike up a conversation.

He started with: "Hey, Bui—," stopping himself very quickly."Sorry about th—"

"It's all right." She didn't bother to look up from the delicate surgery she was performing on a slug.

The cop, nervous: "That was a hell of a job you did on that telepath. The telepath and the metal morpher."

"Thanks."

"Shame about losing a man and all, but still, one out of four isn't… that's a solid way to come out of things. One and a half, I guess, the way Vin got…"

Soledad nodded.

"You know, I'm hoping to make MTac. One day."

Soledad said nothing to that.

"Yeah, I'm sort of friends with Eddi Aoki. You know, just sort of. And I was talking to her about it and she said, yeah, I should think about putting in."

Soledad nodded some more, but that was all the cop got from her.

The cop craned his neck, tried to see what Soledad was working on.

He said: "Heard when Eddi gets done with rehab, they're thinking about making her SLO on Harbor. That true?"

"Why don't you ask her, you two being friends and all."

"Well, we're more like… you know…"

Yeah. Soledad knew. Eddi had probably never on purpose said two words to the uniform. But he claimed he knew her, pretended he did, so he could be BAMF by association. He wanted to play games, that was okeydoke with Soledad. The cop was harmless enough. But if he was going to come around telling tales, wasn't like she wouldn't give him a hard time about things.

"Too bad you two won't be on the same element," the cop said."You'd make a helluva team. And if Reese was still alive—"

"Guess you knew her too, huh?"

"Well, I…"

"You're like Mr. Get Around, aren't you? You just know everybody."

The cop stammered some.

Soledad was glad he'd come by. Could use the entertainment. She checked her watch. Another hour of work…

Work?

She wasn't even on the clock.

Not work, then. This, this was, assuredly now, her life.

Whatever. However you called it.

Another hour, then she would head to the hospital, visit with Vin for a while, see how he was doing. She'd gone every day for the last ten days since her abortive trip north. She was starting to like hanging with Vin. He didn't talk much—when he did, he wasn't as glib anymore—and didn't mind that Soledad never seemed to have a lot to say.

That was nice.

For both of them the arrangement worked quite well.

Getting himself together enough to explain things, the cop said: "I just meant the three of you on one element, you would've been like… like…"

"Like the Erinyes."

"The…?"

"You know how to use the Internet?"

The cop nodded, and Soledad caught him doing so from the corner of her eye.

She said: "Google it up."

The cop did more staring at Soledad, at the chores her hands performed."What are you doing?"

"Working on something."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's a hobby of mine. A little something I spend all my free time cooking up."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. A bullet."

"What kind of bullet?"

"A real special kind. It'll be the best bullet I ever made. It'll be a bullet that can do one job and one job only." For the first time since the cop had struck up the conversation Soledad looked at him. She smiled."It'll be a bullet that can kill an intangible."

I have a name.

I've had it for a long time, but for a long time I didn't want it. A name, a flashy nickname, made me feel like one of them; like everything I didn't want to be. I've seen them destroy, both physically and emotionally. They've wrecked our cities and our souls with equal ease. As a little girl they killed my dreams, showed me how wrong I was to dream in the first place. They killed a cop—a woman—I hardly knew but wholly respected. And as a final swipe at me, they—he—killed what little caring and compassion I had left. He gave it to me, then he killed it.

There's no name for that kind of slaughter.

I have a name now.

They gave it to me: the ones I hunt, the ones who fear me. And if that name can be used as a weapon, if it makes them run and hide and spaz with terror, if it makes the normals feel like we have a chance in this war against the freaks, then I gladly claim it.

Has it come to that? Each side grabbing up whatever tool they can in the armed conflict against the other no matter how small the advantage it brings, no matter how seemingly insignificant?

Jesus help us.

There's no name for the insanity we live in. There's no one way to describe what life has become. It is confusion and chaos. It is amazing in the darkest sense. It is the world I was born into, and all I want is to bring reason to where there is none, return order to where order no longer exists.

I have that now, order. Sort of. Sort of in my world, sort of in my life. I have order because I have a purpose.

I have a purpose. I have a name. My name is Bullet.