Angelos.

I grip the ivory rails. My aura bubbles in my veins, and I can feel its heat searing under my skin. It's like radiation, like something expanding out from my core. The sunlight seeps through my eyelids, and I let out a breath. "Barrier, barrier, barrier." I let go and pace, drinking up the heat. Even from so low, the city is beautiful, apartments glittering in the morning light.

 But it's just a backdrop. A set piece to be torn apart if the heroes can't save it. "Does she mean forcefield? I-I can do this, I can do this." I turn back toward the shut door, each thud of my heart like the tick of a time bomb in my throbbing chest.

In the glass, I see my reflection.

The smirking boy in black. His hands pressed against the door, his smile crooked. I grab for my patch to remind myself he's just an illusion. Not real. But the patch isn't there. His blacked out eye is my blacked out eye. His dark mask is my dark mask. I turn my head so my blind side's tipped away. He is still. You and I are one and the same. 

I press my palms flat against the glass, over the flickering image of his upturned hands. You need me.

My chest heaves. The voice is back. The thing is back, the monster inside me, the thing that wants to pull my strings. I can't let it in. But that's who comes out when I use my power, and I need more power than ever before to create a shield around the city. To keep the hostages alive. I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my mind, and it feels like an afterthought. "Oh, God," I whisper, "what do I do?"

"Hey, kid?" a woman asks, but I hardly hear. The reflection's eyes on mine. Goosebumps ripple up my arms despite the morning's heat. I refuse to turn away. It feels like weakness. "You okay?"

I shake my head. For a henchman, the woman has such a gentle voice. It barely sounds above a whisper. "What would you do, ma'am?" I try to make myself sound smooth, like my hands aren't trembling against the glass. Like I'm not about to have another panic attack. "If you had the choice, would you help Owl, even though you know she will hurt many people if she wins? Or would you fight back, and let innocent people die because of it?"

"Ah," she says it so gently. In the window, I watch her knock back her hood. Strands of blonde hair, almost white, fall in front of her face. She tucks one behind her ear, her smile as sweet as it is sad in the glass. "Owl has made lots of people ask themselves the same question. Fight at Owl's side, or watch your family be picked off one by one. Join or watch your city fall."

"That's terrible." I can just imagine it. Owl, dragging supers out of their homes, offering them The Choice, that awful smirk stuck on her supervillain face. You can't deny it, says the voice attached to the reflection. I'm you. I clench my jaw, ignoring it to the best of my ability. These poor henchmen. I wonder if Jaylin has a similar story.

"That's how Ivy and joined, and we'd been thinking of escape for so long..."

I shoot a look at my reflection, who grins back. It's like looking at the lord of the flies if the lord of the flies were a mirror instead of a decapitated pig's head. You can't escape me. "I'll help you escape if this blows over." The 'if' hits me like a gut-punch, because even I can't convince myself it's a 'when.'

"Your friend, the one who's a cat, already did."

I shake my head. "That selfish prick? Must've got the wrong cat-boy."

She laughs softly. The slowness of her speech, the easy way she lolls her arm over my shoulder, it doesn't seem to fit. The situation at hand is too tense for this, and yet it's comforting, the way she carries herself. I dig my nails into the glass, smearing it with my fingerprints. "Not a selfish prick. Maybe a self-absorbed one..." Her smile glows on the pane. "You must be his friend."

"He's threatened to stab me. Twice."

The other hooded figure balls her cloak over her shoulder. She's lanky, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, her face pale with black smudges under her eyes. Both women are handsome. I wonder if it's a job requirement.

The woman swings herself up on the rails. She's wearing dark skinny jeans and a wrinkled blouse, the sleeves rolled up to expose her bruised forearms. Two hands raised, she signs at the woman beside me. She signs back.

I draw in a breath. You can't escape me. The words echo in the back of my skull, the empty smirk aimed dead at me. I don't have to do this alone, but I have to do this. I close my eyes. "You came back?"

"It's a bad time to run. The barrier goes up, there's no escape."

"Then leave now."

"And let so many people get hurt?"

It could be a trap; it could be Owl's doing to keep my guard up. But I have to ask. "Did you phone in a tip about Owl's attack?"

The woman on the rail smirks. In fact, her whole face lights up. She mouths something at the door too fast for me to read. I frown, drinking in the smoky smell of the city, the honeysuckle sweetness of the flowers stacked on the mayor's table hardly denting it.

My knuckles rattle against the door. The women can't be seeing my reflection, can they? They must think I'm insane.

"Yes," the henchman says. "We've blended for the most part, but I fear it won't last."

"Then I'll help." You and I are one and the same. Accept it. The words blasting by in my head are too bland, too empty to belong to me really. The me in the window is just a cheap copy, a shadow of everything I hate about myself.

And I need it.

I let my muscles relax and my breath fall away in a sigh. The bubbling in my blood comes stronger now, so much stronger I wonder if it'll strip my veins of their linings. My reflection grins back at me. The time for crying is over. I push back against the window and lift up my head, taking in every detail of the creature I've learned to hate. Sure, voice, I think back at it, sparing only a second to contemplate how close this borders insanity. Whatever you say. "The moment my flames go up, get down and get away from me. Can you clear the balcony behind us?"

A pause. "Probably. We can try to take out Owl, but only as long as that barrier is up. Otherwise, the hostages are in immediate danger."

Inside, I hear the click of footsteps.

My powers explode, all at once. Frying heat, tearing from my heart and down my limbs, the sun glinting in my bleary eyes. Barrier. Barrier. The world around me is melting, the building tipping to the side like dripping candle wax. I press my head against the door, my fingers gripping at the door so hard the tips go white against the glass.

Then the melting world goes black.

I stifle a scream, my thoughts growing sharper, funneling to the subject they normally funnel to when I shift: killing the person who got me into this stupid situation. The importance of keeping the hostages alive seems to slip by, and the more I fight to keep my conscious thoughts, the more I feel like I'm drowning. It's akin to something like being sucked under quicksand, grabbing at the grains for something to hold on to, all to be sucked in deeper. 

Maybe Owl isn't so wrong. Maybe we're meant to do bad things. Maybe it's in our blood.

I am blind. Perhaps from the shock, perhaps from melding with the creature opposite of me. Two blind, mirroring eyes. I don't know if it's temporary or if it's for good. I don't know, and frankly, all I can think about is the barrier. The barrier. I raise my cuffed wrists, squeeze my blind eyes shut, focus, and listen to the 'clink!' The chains snap and fall away, landing at the toe of my sock with a rattle. Screw astronomy. I ought to start a gig as an escape artist.

I start with multiplication tables, listening to the soft footfalls of the two women. Starlight City rests in their hands. If no one can get in, then not even the military can save us. And it'll be all my fault.

We should join her. The voice is slick, something low and smooth. We could rule. We'd be in charge for once. No more running and hiding. 

Very melodramatic, that Luce.

The air crackles with hot static that makes my scalp prickle and the hairs on my body stand up. At first, I think I hear something like a roar. The shuddering underfoot caused by a freight train. I rub and bat my eye, my wings straining against my ties. They're an afterthought. All that matters is getting up and keeping up that barrier. So innocent people live. So Owl wins.

I open what used to be my good eye. The darkness lifts. The lens is hazy, like I'm looking into smoke, but I can see into the distance enough. In school, because The Academy is the place to go if you're paranoid about everything and anything in the natural world, teachers showed us how to spot a tsunami. 

The ground will shake. You'll hear a whistle or a roar. The sea will calm, and a single wave will spread across the horizon, the foamy white cap forming an unbreakable line as far as the eye will see.

And that's how my aura looks now. I'm willing the barrier up. I'm willing it so hard that even Evil Voice can't stop me. Despite the drunken smiling, despite the dizzied notion of how pretty the sparkling aura looks in bands, I concentrate on it. I lift my shaking hands, begging it to go up. To some poor outsider, I must look like a witch, draping the city in black magic.

Go up. Go up. Go up. The purple washes over the sky, in a crash of colors. It overtakes the wisps of clouds and paints them the same color as my aura. It goes up with a roar, and a pigeon perched on the rooftop above gives a shrieking coo and plummets. Its gray feathers crackle with the energy of my aura.

If Heaven's up there in flight, that could be her.

The bird tumbles through the air and with a prick of power I set it upright and plop it onto the opposite balcony. Some part of me wants to crush it, no reason, just because I can.

This is how a know I'm losing it.

The strain is immense. Physically, mentally. If I had to compare my aura to something a little more tangible, I'd compare it to a clump of extra limbs. Like, like cyborg arms, new and gangly, stronger than the rest of me, but that take more focus to control. Building up this barrier is like stretching said cyborg arms across the entire length of the city. Lots of focus. Kind of painful.

Every muscle in my body is tensed, every thought in my mind about keeping up the stupid barrier. The urge is primal. Even as my head begins to spin and my knees get shaky, it's all I can think about. The me left in me just wants to save the hostages. I think the other wants to help Mom.

That other me is a real jerk.

You're just weak. You know you want in on the power. Isn't that right?

That's right. Isn't it? I feel looser somehow, like there's a flood of new, fluffy chemicals knocking around in my brain. It makes it even harder to hang onto a shred of my conscious and conscience. Even now, I know I'm slipping. Behind me, the women have disappeared. Leaped buildings, probably, like they said they would. The tide ebbs. Aura flows back to my body, and screw that cyborg-limb analogy. I'm drowning.

One and the same. I and it are one and the same. The most powerful creatures in the world. Even stacked against my Mom and my Dad, I can crush them. And Gats?

My heart pounds, faster and faster. He's still my friend. Why is this so hard to remember? I'm losing myself. I don't want to lose myself. I'm scared of losing myself to this thing.

I grasp at the door so hard my fingers chip through it, gripping shards of glass. Tight purple threads hum above my head, cutting the blue sky into checker squares. It's beautiful. Beautiful and empty.

Earlier, maybe only a couple of days ago in fact—though it feels so long ago—Jaylin asked me to rule at her side. A villainess and villain. A queen and her king. It made me hate her.

Now? I might take her up on the offer.

My head hurts. My body, my heart. I'm being split again. The thing I've been pushing out is back. I can't fight the drunkenness, the giggling, the gnawing feeling that this is all a game, and I, the pawn dragged from square to square. And why be a pawn when I can be queen?

Slipping... slipping.

As I fall, my last thought is that I hope the hostages are okay. That, and the fleeting realization that the world I know is unraveling, and I'm the one yanking the thread.