Angelos.

Did you know? The fastest way to draw attention to yourself is to walk into a mall shirtless with your wings exposed. I try to move fast, hoping people will only see flashes of a flesh-colored beast and chalk it up to their imaginations. Though I have a growing feeling I'm jostling my innards with all these sharp stops, I ignore it and slink through the upper and lower decks.

I notice everything. The flicker of lights, the white gleaming tiles, the temperature a few degrees too cold.

I hate this mall. I hate the smell of bleach and perfume that permeates its every inch. I hate the hip people and their stylish clothes and no cares in the world. I hate myself for being so angsty. I creep through the cold, sterile halls eventually find the marker of doom—the Super Supply store sign—hissing above my bruised face.

I still have no plan, and I don't think waltzing in there and asking, "Hey, do you know where Syndicate holds its prisoners and how to infiltrate it?" is a particularly grand idea.

I sigh and push open the cracked glass doors, lace drapes brushing past my face that smells like rats and cigarettes. The whole place smells like rats and cigarettes, and honestly, nothing's changed since last time I was here. The place is still crammed with merchandiaw, still blanketed in dust, still a fire waiting to happen. It's almost eerie.

The bell-chimes ring. I brush my hair out of my face, moving my head side to side to make up for my blind eye. The darkness, the smoky smell, they make me feel like I've entered the set for a film noir. "Um, hello?"

It occurs to me that maybe I shouldn't call attention to myself, but that occurrence comes too late.   

"You should get out of here, kid," booms a voice from behind a counter. I jump, a fresh wave of pain tearing up and down my leg. A man smirks at me as I whirl around, his chin propped up on his knobby hands. His hair is up in a ponytail, tied back with a big, blue bow. Looking at him, I miss my back-lengthed mess.

"I need help."

"I see that." The man swings his legs on the counter. "Do you need to wash up or something? Or buy a shirt?"

I hug my chest, fighting a blush. "Um." I walk up and lean my hands on the filthy counter. To the  right of my elbow sits a box of pepper spray keychains. I wonder if they have much effect on supervillains. Even if they don't, one would be awfully comforting have.

"Yes?"

I look down. The teller's glasses gleam under the cold fluorescent lights, sending a jolt up my spine. "Uh." Intimidation. That's a thing. "I know about this place and I know what you do here." Lies. Both lies. But they sound okay, so I continue. "I have a friend, see? He's in a little bit of trouble with Syndicate." I unfold my wings, stretching them to their full length so their shadow falls over the man. He visibly stiffens, so I continue. "You do know something about them, don't you?"

He sets his glasses down and rubs his face. "Kid, you're putting me in a really bad position." He has a grating, uneven voice that makes him sound like he has sandpaper with his morning milk.

I fold my wings back against my throbbing spine. "Look, he's being held by Syndicate. I know you can't disclose any—"

"Kid, you really ought to get out of here." His mouth presses into a hard line, his green eyes big. My heart flutters. And then I hear them.

Heartbeats.

My body tenses up, every muscle recoiling. Slow and even breaths sound loudly behind me and I whirl around. A hand slams down on my shoulder. Its owner smiles down at me, his dark aviators shielding his eyes and reflecting a bruised, pale-faced boy with his mouth quivering in a silent scream across his lenses.

"Hello, Luce."

Heaven.

Tangled up in Angel's bed, the sheets are still warm where he last sat. My heart clenches up like a fist, and when I see Jaylin staring at Angel's silhouette broken up in the window pane, I lunge at her.

Like mother birds, Toby and the other adults swoop in. He plucks me off the bed and throws me over his shoulder. "I think it's best if I take her home," he says, while I'm squirming, shrieking against his solid body.

Juniper widens her eyes. "Toby, no, that's a bad idea. You ought to keep her in here. They'll—"

"Syndicate has Gatsby!" It's a struggle to speak, and the more I try, the more looks of pity I get. Why is communicating with adults so hard? He's in danger!

"Hey, hey!" The security guard shouts, swaggering through the door "What's going on here?"

I glare at him. Jaylin shrugs and tosses her perfect, wavy hair over her perfect, slim shoulders. 

The crowd grows louder and the adults argue, all while my two best friends are gone. And somewhere, in the back of my head, I know something very bad is about to happen.

Meanwhile, in the bowels of a villain's lair...

The boy's blood runs down Owl's sweater, his heat soaking through the cashmere weave and warming the place where her heart should be. She doesn't flinch as she carries him into the hall, her eyes locked on his bloodied face.

Looking at him, she remembers her years long ago spent in a school basement, hiding from the heroes that paraded in the cities above. She pictures it clearly now, June standing in front of a damp chalkboard, brushing lint from her pencil skirt as she held ip a thin mouse with sharp claws and disfigured pink flaps of flash for earsu

"I spliced a mouse's genetic material with a cat's." The young scientist paused and grinned, her eyes glowing and her greasy brown hair shimmering under the flickering light of a single bulb. Silence ensued from the other supervillain's sitting around the plastic table. They just stared. She blushed and clarified. "You know, because cats eat mice and—"

"Is that all you do?" Fallout sprang up, his black wings arched and bristling. His glare stopped her mouth and had her shrinking back, trembling against the blackboard. "Play with the stuff that makes up animals? People?" His body shook with unadulterated rage.

It was someting in the nineteen-fifties, if Owl remembers correctly, a dark time in history for supers and mortals alike. It was particularly so for a cold war experiment known as 'Fallout,' a boy referred to by the name of toxic rain that fell after a nuclear explosion.

The government had him booked into Russia as a spy, but something inside him malfunctioned. He tore up a hotel, destroyed important homes, all with his experimental pyrokinesis they had toyed with in him. When the government regained control of him, they ripped him apart, tinkered with his insides, and manipulated every cell in his body. Fallout's life had been something of a tragedy: A fifteen-year-old orphan boy with no friends, and no family, just a life of misery and pain.

He broke free by using a geneticist as a hostage in his escape: Juniper Fibbs, a woman who hid her identity just to keep her job. She was a brilliant scientist and a brilliant super, so Owl admired her, even if the woman had once been the enemy. "You!" he shrieked, shaking a finger at June. "I should kill you! I should've killed you a long time ago!"

"Now, now, Fallout." A woman stood up from the plastic table. Her name was Cleo, a lady of frail, short stature with big eyes and a brown wavy ponytail. "We're all victims here. One day we'll take back what was stolen from us, but we need everyone to cooperate." She looked at June with the tiniest hint of a nod, who only nervously continued to pet her new creatures. "We will use this scientist to our advantage. Perhaps she will design something that will be the key to our victory."

Owl looks down at the experiment of a boy, his face contorted with pain. The hall lights flicker, the air smelling of antiseptics and blood. She edges near an unmarked door, "Welcome home."

The boy shoots her a glare, but it's meek. He looks like he's going to collapse. "I want to be back with my girlfriend and my brother." Owl listens, trying to discern all the influences of his European accent. Eventually, she shrugs and kicks the door open. "You'll never see them again. You ought to forget them."

His muscles tighten, coiled against her arms.

"Lady," he growls, but then he starts to cough. She knows the smell of antiseptic is too strong for him, so she shifts his weight, jerking his neck over her arm so he can't escape the scent.

In another life, the makeshift infirmary could be a doctor's office. The walls' light shade of blue had been specifically chosen to be soothing, the sharp scent of antibacterial spray hangs thick in the air. Two gurneys sit side by side, the cabinets behind them filled with every type of painkiller.

She bows her head. She has seen many of her followers wounded, torn apart by skirmishes with Snare, other organizations, and heroes. She remembers her adult son dying in the same room, screaming out as he clutched her hand. "Look what they did to me, mother. Look what they did... " The wounds a Snare man inflicted on him had been mercilessly slow to kill. With his healing factor as strong as his was, he died again and again, moaning and crying, begging for mercy, until Owl could take no more and brought him peace by a sword through her son's heart.

Looking down where her child died, she feels nothing, just an empty, nameless ache. When one lives forever, that's all they can feel. She sets the Gats boy on that very same gurney, his breathing shallow and his cat ears twitching.

"Hold still." He shakes his head, the blood still bubbling. She straps him down and leaves him for a few moments to fishe for equipment. Not that she has much. The boy will be fine, anyway. The bullet grazed him, it might've taken out a chunk of flesh, but that's all.

She decides not to give him painkiller. She just lifts his head and patches up the wound with rubbing alcohol and gauze. He tries not to scream, his teeth ground and his body tensed up, but he does squeak out a few moans.

"You'll live," she says. She tapes down the bandage and he yelps.

"Ma'am," he says again, his head jerked to the side. His eyes are so big, bluer than the sky on a crisp summer's day. She can read him quite easily, the fake calm he tries on, the horrible panic alive underneath. "I know I'm saying this again, and I know you're probably annoyed, but lady, I'm just a cat. I can't serve you in any way, my powers aren't worth it. Please, I beg you, let me go."

Owl shrugs at him and jerks the velcro straps tighter. He winces. She kicks one of knobs below, jolting the bed so it's flung vertical. He squeaks, and she finds it, if anything, rather amusing. "Begging is unbefitting of a super." He glares. She runs her fingers over his cat ears and he writhes, struggling against his restraints. "I'm going to leave you here. I want you to think about what you've done and reflect on how today could've gone much differently were I unmerciful. Do you understand?"

"Go to hell," he says flatly.

A smirk sweeps her lips. She kisses him on the forehead and spins on her heel, leaving him yowling and cursing her name.

She'll have the creature eating out of her hand in two days, she decides.